Ann John Watts

Leaving New Zealand We are in the North Island town of Waihi having left Nelson on Saturday morning, driven to Picton, taken the ferry to the North Island and made our way northward with the idea of visiting the Coromandel Peninsula. We have been busy with many adventures and have lots of great photos and stories to share. Leaving the family was hard but today was an antidote to sadness. Based on suggestions from an “Information New Zealand” staff person we headed up the peninsula to a sand spit outside of Opotere on the east coast of the Coromandel to see if we could see the endangered New Zealand Dotterel nesting above the high tide in the dunes. In the rain we hiked through bush and onto the beach and immediately saw the Dotterels. The nesting ... read more

At last we have time to catch you up with last week’s activities. We have been away on the West Coast for 5 days with very limited email access hence the delay – and a little procrastination. In order to get something posted, this is going to be more of a photo essay than a description of our day to day activities. IMAGES: 1. Melissa and Jan (Mother of Melissa). This was taken at a family gathering at Jan’s house. Guests were mainly family and ranged in age from 88, Melissa’s grandmother, to Lola at 8. A fun evening with lots of stories and fact gathering. 2. Ann and John on a bird watching trip to Abel Tasman Park. We met another “watcher”, so we shared stories and tips on good spots, and then had her ... read more

Ann here. After some rainy days we have a few days of brilliant sun. The view from our house is changing as all the trees are beginning to bud. You can almost see the leaves popping out. We took a long hike yesterday up the Maitai river. John has kept you up to date on activities, I will just add a few observations. New Zealand is Aotearora: land of the long white cloud, so named by the first people to settle the islands, Maoris, some 700 years ago. It is the most apt of names: clouds, ever present, seem to grow out of and spill over hill and mountain, in effect the whole length of the country. NZ has the landmass of Japan or the British Isles but just 4 million people, 1/3 on the South ... read more

We set off for the South Island and the port of Picton in the afternoon on the 8th . The photo from the ferry map shows our interesting route. We sailed west and north out of Wellington and into the Marlborough sounds. It was like sailing up a fjord in Norway. Peaks towered out of sight as fog shrouded much of the land. Luckily it was calm and we watched Olympics synchronized swimming with a group of school boys (they weren’t impressed) in the lounge of the Interislander ferry onto which we drove our car. Again we arrived in the dark and I consulted my Mapquest directions to Philip's house in Nelson estimated to take 1.5 hours. So we ignored the sign that said Nelson to the left and went the Mapquest way. The road turned ... read more

This blog is a way for John and I to communicate with you, our friends and family, during the course of our 11 week adventure to New Zealand. We hope you enjoy the trip along with usOur first step to the other side of the world was to the Los Angeles area where we were lucky to be welcomed by my cousin, Denise Melas and her husband Tony, in their home in Pacific Palisades, California. The last time we visited was maybe 29 years ago and we were hauling around 2 year old twins. This time we ca... read more