Diary

And then I made my first big mistake (on this trip). We wanted to go see the area north of Auckland, the Bay of Islands to be more precise. So there were two towns to choose from: Paihia and Russell. If you look at the map, you can see these two places are really very close together. Just a few miles of water between them. So it didn't seem there was too much difference between them. And they were both about 160 miles away, that should be feasible in a single day, right? I picked Russell, because it looked a bit more interesting: It is situated on a peninsula. In Holland it would not have made a lot of difference which town you pick, but in New Zealand there was a huge difference. A good travel guide could have given the right answer, but I didn't have one yet...

It all started very well. After packing our bags and checking out of the hotel, we took the SH1 highway to the north. But highways are very rare in New Zealand. Soon the dual carriageway ended and the road continued as a standard two-lane road. In Holland we would call it a "provincial road" and a 50 mph speed limit would apply, but in New Zealand the limit is 60 mph, so we were still making good progress.

We thought we had plenty of time, so when we saw a sign pointing to a historic city, we turned off the road and ended up in Puhoi. Historic? Yes, the history of this village goes back to 1863. On June 29th. 1863 some Czech people settled here in no man's land and built up their village. It makes you wonder why they went here of all places. Puhoi never grew into a city of any importance. But it does have a library, a church (of course) and a mustard factory. I made some nice photos there:


The "General store" and the library.



In the pub and in the antiques shop we saw lots of funny things. And outside the antiques shop we found an ancient bus, apparently converted into a camper van with a funny bumper sticker in the window...


So much for Puhoi, we had to move on!

But the more we progressed to the north, the more difficult it became to go ahead. Especially when we had to turn off the State Highway onto the "Russell Road". That name sounds like you are almost there, but the Russell Road is very long and curvy. We could not drive fast any more as we moved from one U-turn to the next along the coast. It was a beautiful drive with lots of nice views. We passed many small bays with and without sandy beaches. But we were running out of time!

The sun was already setting when we reached the village of Russell. And we were in for a bad surprise: There was no boulevard filled with dozens of fancy hotels. There was really only one hotel and that did not have any vacancies... A Bed&Breakfast maybe? Nowhere to be found... An i-Site? Only open during office hours... One souvenir shop was still open and Julia inquired if there was any possibility to find a room for tonight. Well, yes, they did happen to know an address that might have a room for us. So we went there. There was not a living soul in sight, but there was a telephone we could use to call the owners. But, no, they did not have any vacancies either. They did give us another address: Hananui Lodge on York Street.

We got a very warm reception there. But a room? No, all they had available was a luxury studio at NZ$ 220 a night. 220? That sounds like a lot of money! But still I wanted to take it and I explained to Julia, this was really only 90 Euros. That is not unlike the amount one would pay for a hotel room in Holland. The owner showed us the studio and we were really impressed.


So let's do it! We decided to rent it for two nights. Now we were not homeless any more! and besides that it had lots of space and luxury and it even featured a view on the bay!

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Today I bought a Vodafone SIM-card. People had told us it would be a lot cheaper to temporarily sign up with a New Zealand provider than to use international roaming from my normal provider. But this was not a great success. The card came with some initial credit so Julia started by calling her sister Tallie to tell her when we were planning to visit her, but she ran out of credit within a minute and I was forced to top up my account with another NZ$ 20 to finish the conversation.
At least we knew now when we would be expected in Eketahuna at Tallie and Henk's. But before we were to go there, I wanted to go North first, to the Bay of Islands. So that was our plan for the next day.

This last evening in Auckland I wanted to surprise Julia by going to a real top-class restaurant. In the "Yellow pages" I had found "dine by Peter Gordon". I am not sure why, but I had a strong hunch this was exactly what we were looking for.

I had made a reservation by telephone and 15 minutes before the agreed time we set out for 90 Federal Street. According to my map it should be very near the hotel. Federal Street was easy to find, but where was number 90?? Not a sign of it! So we still managed to get lost. But we came into the same street time and time again; it just had to be there!

We did see number 88. It looked like a big hotel and at the entrance was a very dignified door man. Maybe he knew where to find number 90? It turned out his speech was just as majestic as his looks. In the most perfect British English I have heard in all of New Zealand he said: "Dine by Peter Gordon? Yes, madam, that is in here. You just proceed into the lobby and walk right to the end. And there it will reveil itself before your very eyes." What a lovely use of language! And what good news: We were already there: The restaurant was housed in the hotel lobby.

  
It turned out I had guessed right: Peter Gordon is a cook with international fame and this restaurant has already gained several prizes for its quality. We were welcomed and served in perfect style. It was obvious to see this was going to be quite an expensive meal, but we deserved it!

As a starter Julia had "Warm sautéed Zany Zeus haloumi salad with fennel, shichimi spiced pine nuts, marinated zucchini, honey-comb, lemon, rocket and plantain crisps." and I decided to take "Ras el Hanout crusted baby squid on beetroot, orange, quinoa and hazelnut salad with garlic lemon yoghurt". For the main course we both had "Roast Cambridge duck breast on soft smoked polenta, cumin roast baby carrots and rainbow chard with truffled olive, radicchio and chestnut salad" and we drank a bottle of "Craggy Range 'Kidnappers' Chardonnay, Hawkes Bay 2007" with it. It is quite a mouthful, but that is exactly what restaurants are for.

After that we wanted our favorite dessert: A French Coffee, but they did not know that. So I explained to them how to prepare it and they set out to make it. Unfortunately the result did not meet our expectations: They did follow my recipe, but the coffee they used was by far not strong enough. What a pity. Maybe I should have explained the right way to make coffee first, but to me making coffee goes without saying. I had forgotten people abroad don't mean the same as Dutch people when they say "coffee". The staff was quite shocked by this result and they refused to let us pay anything at all for these coffees.

So the total bill came to NZ$ 200 and that is expensive indeed, according to New Zealand standards: It is the highest restaurant bill we have had in all our vacation. But yet... If you convert it into Euros, it is only 80 Euros. That is nowhere near enough for a dinner for two in a top-class restaurant in the Netherlands!

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We quite liked Auckland by night. One of the most prominent features of this city, especially during the night is of course the Sky Tower. It is 328 meters (1094 feet) high amd that makes it the tallest building on the southern hemisphere. It dominates the skyline of the city and during the night it is illuminated to make it look even more pretty. We were standing at the base of the tower at 1 AM and I made this picture from a somewhat unusual angle.

Then it was finally time to go back to our hotel, where we officially celebrated the start of our vacation with a (Grand Marnier) toast! "Kia Ora!" (To your health!)
The next morning we started with an elaborate English style breakfast and then we went for a walk in the city. Suddenly Julia said:: "Hey, look at that, a dinosaur!" And indeed: The aotea moa (dinomithiformes) is a bird, but it is a very close relative of the dinosaur. For millions of years these were the largest land animals in New Zealand, until they were all exterminated about two centuries ago.
There were 11 species, and this is the largest of them (dinornis gigantues). It could be as big as ten feet, weigh up to 600 pounds and it laid eggs of up to 8 inches in diameter. So this is a life-size statue!

  
We ended up in the park and there it was quite obvious we were not in Holland any more. Look at these palm trees for instance. But there were more unusual species of trees to be seen, with very remarkable roots. Maybe these were mangrove trees? I don't know. I thought those only grew in wetlands or swamps...

  
That evening we took it easy. We were still very tired due to our journey and we had been walking in the city all day long. So we decided not to go find a restaurant, but we had dinner in our own hotel.

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After all the necessary stamps had been put on the forms and in our passports in Los Angeles, we had to wait for our plane to be prepared for the next part of the journey. And then we were allowed back on board.

From Los Angeles to Auckland is even further than from London to Los Angeles: About 7000 miles. So this part of the trip would take even longer than the one before: About 12 hours. I can't handle being locked up for so long very well, but the prospect of a long vacation in New Zealand did make up for a lot of discomfort. Julia handles these things a lot better than I do. She slept a lot and she read her book. I had brought a book along with me too: "The Hobbit" by JRR Tolkien. There happens to be a strong relationship between the books of Tolkien and New Zealand, but more on that later.

I can not sleep in an aeroplane at all. And I kept my book for later. I preferred to listen to an audio book on the in-flight information system: "Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't" by Jim Collins. Interesting stuff, but not applicable for me at work. I sure wish my boss would read books like this one!

If you have been paying close attention, you may wonder what I did on January 15th...
Well, there was no January 15th. for me this year! That has to be due to the fact that we crossed the international date line. When you travel, strange things happen to date and time. But January 14th. and 16th. were extra-long days for me. So that gives some compensation. Man was I glad to finally see the sunrise!

Finally even this flight came to an end and we could get out of the plane at Auckland airport. Here there were some formalities to deal with with the immigration offce too, but that is normal: They want to know who comes into the country of course.
The next step is the luggage claim and... You guessed it: Our suitcase was not there! So we had to go to a desk to report our missing luggage. This was all handled in a very polite and efficient way and we even got a "survival kit" with a toothbrush, soap, a clean T-shirt, some sanitary items and other things you urgently need when you've lost your suitcase. Our suitcase would be delivered to our hotel as soon as it would arrive. Great service!

Finally we were free to stand on our own feet and walk wherever we wanted again. First we went to the Hertz desk of course to pick up the keys to our rental car and the portable navigation system. We have grown totally hooked to our turn-by-turn navigation systems ("Rudy" and "Kitty") at home, so to be without one on our vacation is unthinkable! We decided to name this navigation system "Trudy"...

The first destination was our hotel: Rendezvous Hotel in the center of Auckland, at the corner of Mayoral Drive and Vincent Street. Even with Trudy's help it turned out not so easy to find that. Driving on the left side of the road in a busy city with a navigation system you are not yet familiar with is quite heavy. Finally we decided to park the car and go find the hotel on foot first. Julia soon found it and then everything was soon fixed. It turned out we had a very nice room with a large bathroom.

I had been up for 48 hour now without any sleep and Julia was quite tired too. So first I took a nice, hot bath and then I got into my bed.

We woke up at about 8 PM and we were full of energy again. Our biological clock told us it as early morning; not evening! We went into the city and we were surprised all the shops were closed. It should not have been a surprise; soon it was almost midnight.
There was hardly any restaurant that would serve us a meal at this time of the night. We did find a sort of Turkish takeaway where we could get some falafals... Made of Halal-meat!

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The alarm clock woke us at 5 AM and we proceded to wash and get dressed. Julia had ordered a taxi to pick us up at 6 and take us to the railway station. Everything was well-prepared, so we even had some spare time. We knew there would be little opportunity to smoke during our travel, so we were glad we had time for a cigarette.

We were standing in the hallway at 6 AM, ready for the cab... But it did not come! At 6:05 I took another cigarette. Experience has learned me, that usually the bus will come around the corner as soon as you have lit one up. But this time it did not work. Even when Julia lit up a cigarette too, there was still no taxi coming. Was our journey about to fail even before it had begun?? Julia called the "Eindhovense Taxicentrale"... The phone was answered by the same guy she had spoken to the day before to order our taxi, but he pretended he had never heard of us. And he never drove at this time of day anyway, he said. So Julia called Cibatax and soon everything was fixed. We reached the railway station in time.

Once we were on the train, we could relax: We had made all the arrangements for this trip, now all we had to do is transfer from one transportation to the next and we would reach our destination in Auckland automatically. Julia immediately started reading her first book.

Check-in at Schiphol Airport went quickly and easily. And passport control was no problem either. It is so nice all my personal records now match again with my appearance: My passport and my ticket both have my female name on them. For most people this is nothing special, but I have had to travel with documents that still had my male name on them for years.

Once we were in the transit area, it was shopping time of course. As usual we got our maximum allowance of tax-free liquor and cigarettes. We got 700 ml Grand Marnier Rouge for 24,00 Euros and 10 packets of Dunhill for 30,25 Euros. It is a lot of money, but still it is about half the usual price.
Liquor is, of course, a liquid and liquids are not allowed in airplanes nowadays, but the bottles are neatly packed into sealed bags in the tax-free shop and those are allowed on board.

Speaking of cigarettes... Is there still a smoking area at Schiphol Airport? Yes there is! It was a bit difficult to find, but a bartender gave us directions in Amsterdam dialect. Understandably this smoking area is very popular amongst the passengers and it was very crowded: There was so much smoke in the air, you did not really need to smoke your own cigarette to get the needed amount of nicotine!

Then we were ready to get on the plane, but our flight was delayed again and again. We had to wait for hours so we had clearly gotten out of bed way too early. The first part of our flight would be to London Heathrow but we heard they had very heavy fog there, so they could not accept any incoming flights. KLM offered us vouchers for drinks and telephone to make ourselves comfortable and to make any necessary arrangements. So we returned to our new friend, the Amsterdam bartender. He not only spoke in Amsterdam dialect, but he also had the informal style of conversation that is typical of an Amsterdam pub owner.
He overheard our conversation about what to drink and immediately reacted to it. After all this coffee, maybe we should have a beer now? I was not so sure: Alcohol at this hour of the day? It was not even noon yet! Julia did not have any doubt: She wanted a Hoegaarden white beer. And I took one too: We will not likely find that in New Zealand!

Then, after several more hours, flight KL1009 was finally ready to go. A KLM Boeing 737 took us to Heathrow in little more than one hour. It was very fortunate it went so quickly, because all the slack we had for changing planes in London had been taken up by the delay!

People say Heathrow has been completely modernised, but we didn't see that at all. Just like in past years we had to cover a great distance on foot and by bus to get from one gate to the other. And we were running out of time. The signs were indicating they were about to close the gate for our connecting flight. All we could do was walk as fast as possible: Maybe we could still make it in time?
I also started to worry about our suitcase: Would that be able to make the transfer as fast as we did? In my fantasy I saw our suitcase had grown a pair of legs and it was running along with us...

But we did make it in time. We were able to queue up at the end of the queue for the security check. This time we even had to take off our shoes. Isn't that rediculous? I told them there was no metal in them, so there should be no problem to keep them on when passing the metal detector, but that did not help. Ow well, let them have it their way. "Whatever you want", I snapped as I threw my shoes onto the conveyor belt along with our hand luggage.
Of course the security check did not find any weapons or explosives on us. We had no intention of blowing up the plane and neither had the other passengers. But what about our suitcase? Did that make it to this flight on time? "I very much doubt it", said the ground stewardess. Well, so did I, we would have to wait and see what had happened when we would get off in Auckland.

This second part of the journey we made in a New Zealand Airways Boeing 777. The distance from London to Los Angeles is almost 6000 miles, so the flight takes ten hours and that is not fun at all! Fortunately the Boeing 777 features an in-flight information and entertainment system with an interactive screen for every passenger, so we could monitor the progress and watch all kinds of entertainment and even some educational material.

Finally, finally we arrived in Los Angeles. It was now 8 PM local time, but to us about 24 hours had passed since we got out of bed. And the Americans had some "entertainment" planned for us: We all had to get off the plane and queue up for the American immigration office.
But... but... We did not have any intention to enter the USA?? All we wanted was to get out as soon as possible! Of course burocracy does not listen to reason. We had to fill out the well-known, green I-94W forms, queue up for an officer and talk to him. They also took everybody's fingerprints and pictures of their irises! I really wonder if they have any right to do this, but what can we do about it? We had no lawyer specialized in international legislation with us, so we could only let them do to us what they wanted like a herd of sheep.
Everything was handled in a typical USA way, with lots of stamps and formality and in the end we ended up just where we started in the same plane we had arrived in. Needless to say there was no smoking area anywhere...

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I am going on a holiday to New Zealand for about a month. Of course I will post an elaborate report here. So be warned: If you see this logo, you are reading a page about that strange country on the other side of the world!
Tomorrow, January 14th 2009, we will get up at 5 AM to start this adventure...

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The first Saterday in every year is traditionally the moment for the T&T Eindhoven New Year's reception. But this year Julia and I could not be there. We had other business to attend to: A stage performance by the Gniffels in Utrecht!

The "Vereeniging Groningen en Ommelanden" in Utrecht had their annual New Year's reception in a hall in Utrecht and the Gniffels were contracted to play there. All the guests were seated at two long tables and there was a stage were we could do our performance. It was my duty to set up and operate the audio equipment this time...

When everything had been set up and tested, I had some spare time to drink coffee. The coffee was served in genuine old-fashioned "kraantjeskannen". (I still don't know an English word for those. Does anybody know???)

The afternoon started with a speech by the chairman, who read out the report about last year's activities. After her "Thomasvaer en Pieternel" entered the stage. This is a traditional comic act often performed in Groningen. They also discussed the events in the past year, but in their own special way.

 
After that it was our turn. Julia and Geert-Jan had prepared some songs from their CD "Wijs met Groningen" and also some new songs. The audience had a great time!

 
 
And meanwhile I was taking care of the audio equipment. While I was working on this, I was offered a traditional Groningen delicatesse: "boerenjongens" (raisins in liquor). I never tasted that before.
A huge glass? Noooo, a very tiny MiniDisk-player. I used that to make an audio recording of the complete performance...

After all the performances, it was time for dinner. Traditional Groningen food of course: "Maus!" -- "Errr, what is that?" -- "Curly kale with potatoes and sausage!!" -- Yummy!

 

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