A Mother’s View
While my parents were here I asked them if they could complete a homework assignment for me. My assignment to my dad was to write a blog post about the first week of my parents time in Australia, and my mom’s was to write about New Zealand. Well, yesterday Mom sent me her blog post, and here it is below. None of the content has been changed. I actually only have read the first paragraph. Uh-oh…
The following is the writings of Nancy St. George.
Peter asked Franz and I to be his guest bloggers and write about our trip to the southern hemisphere. Franz is to write about our week in Australia and I will describe our week in New Zealand. The first lesson I’ve learned about being a blogger is , keeping notes during the trip is extremely important. Details are harder to recall when you’ve been home for a month. Well maybe I’mdescribing bloggers over the age of 50! Thankfully we haven’t returned our travel books to their rightful owners yet so I can come up with some names and places that are stuck somewhere in the recesses of my brain.
I know Peter breathed a sigh of relief when we boarded the plane in Sydney for the two hour trip to Christchurch on the southern island of New Zealand. He did an excellent job of planning a wonderful itinerary for our week in Australia and this part of the trip felt more like a vacation for him. Or so we all thought until we pulled out of the airport parking lot in our rental car. Who ever decided that New Zealanders should join most of the world by driving on the wrong side of the road, and that every time you reached for the turn signal the windshield wipers would come on. Try figuring out which lane in the ‘round about’ you should be in while someone is yelling, “Dad! Move to your left and the windshield wipers are going full speed.” Quite a stressful beginning to the more relaxing part of our trip. Oh yes, and the maps seemed to be written backwards also. How many times did we have to circle back to get to the road we wanted. That was my doing and after much exasperation on the part of all three of us Peter was named navigator for the next day. I have to admit he did a better job than me but I’m sure he learned from my mistakes, and we did have to circle back a time or two.
Franz had done a wonderful job setting up accommodations for this part of the trip. Our first Bed and Breakfast was “Coastal Cliffs” where we were the guests of Glenda and her husband Rick. The drive up to their home reminded me of the zigzag streets of San Francisco. Every turn is hairpin and the addresses all seemed to be hidden. We did arrive safely and the view from the cliffswas unbelievable as was Glenda’s garden. It was autumn there and her garden was still lush and beautiful. I jealously noticed the variety of plants she could grow in the ground that we would treat as exotics or houseplants! The agapanthus were just past their bloom so I couldn’t tell if they were my favorite deep,dark blue.
After two days in Christchurch area we headed out for our trip across the island via Arthur’s Pass. Finally! straight roads without much traffic. We were all thrilled to able to relax a bit in the car. Actually Peter and I relaxed as Franz was our lone driver. I had planned on doing some of the driving but quickly changed my mind early in the week and remained as navigator! Arthur’s Pass was made as a shortcut through the southern alps for the settlers in the 1800’s who wanted a quick way to reach the west coast and the gold fields that were discovered there. The scenery was spectacular, glacial mountains, green green flats with grazing sheep, dry riverbeds and sunny skies. Our destination on the west coast was Greymouth, a small community that was originally a gold and coal mining area. We expected to be greeted with chilly, rainy weather as the west coast was billed as the wet and rainy side. The sun gods were with us though and we enjoyed the warmth of the sun that seemed to follow us on this trip. Our stay atGreymouth was at “Oak Lodge Homestead”,a Bed and Breakfast run by Alastair and Shirley. Now this stay was purely New Zealand. Alastair used to own a huge sheep farm that he ran by himself. He sold it a few years ago and they bought the B&B from its previous owners. They still have some sheep and Alastair does a bit of farming. Peter has posted some pictures of this stay which all of us decided was definitely a favorite stop and one where we could easily stayed 3 or 4 more days. Our next destination was not in our original itinerary but we were convinced by the locals that it was a stop not to be missed. We headed north along theTasman Sea to the small ocean side town of Punakaiki. The highlight was limestone stacks of rock that looked like pancakes jutting out from the beach. It really was interesting and we enjoyed a few hours relaxing there enjoying the scenery and doing a little shopping at the tourist shop..
I ‘m realizing that this is starting to read like a travel log and you can buy books for that so I’ll move on and say that all three of us loved New Zealand and the friendly people, slower pace of life and incredible scenery. We did spend a lot of time on the road because we wanted to see as much as possible, but this left us without a lot of time to explore each of our destinations in depth. Franz and I have decided that we will return to New Zealand as a 25th anniversary trip. We’ll go during their spring and make it a garden tour. The gardens we did see were lovely and I’m sure there are many more hidden away that are open to the public for tours. We have three years to plan and save and look forward to another wonderful trip together. Peter has asked if he can come too and I think he is joking but there were wonderful photo ops. for him and it would be nice to have a garden photographer along! So… although I enjoyed reminiscing about our trip while I wrote this, being a blogger is a bit of work. I appreciate all of your writings Peter and maybe between the three of us we’ll have a good diary of our trip together “down under.”
