Blogs from New Plymouth, North Island, New Zealand, Oceania - page 9

When we arrived at Camp last night, we were delighted when the receptionist said that New Plymouth had been blessed with great weather over the last two months....well guess what, as per, we woke to grey skies, closely followed by the heavens opening and unleashing one heavy bout of wind and rain. You know in Edinburgh, during the festival when you all feel sorry for the tourists that visit and have to sit through the tattoo with poncho's on - well thats us today.......big thank you to Frances and Family for our early Christmas pressie of pac a macs, much used, and much appreciated. Our slight glowing tan, is fading back to scottish pastieness again, anyway enough of the moaning, New Zealand is beautiful, and the reason it is so luscious is because of all the ... read more

Well, I guess this is it. We've actually made it home in one piece! The doc says I'll live, too. My shoulder should come right within a year if I can stay off a bike. So we bought a couple cheap cars (inlcuding an old MG convertible to help us get over the loss we still feel intensely). We've now got a phone and are back on the internet too (as of today, hence the long delay after our last blog entry), For those who are wondering, our email address is still: wellsnz@xtra.co.nz and our phone is back the same as it was: (64 6) 758 9589 It has been really great seeing Tao, Ian and Hyunah again. They came up to help us unpack the thousands of boxes that were scattered among friends, in storage ... read more

On Sunday...with 3 of us with very very sore muscles, we left Waitomo. We were all limping and hobbling along. Moaning and groaning about our aches and pains. For once, Dennis was in the best shape of all of us. We drove south towards New Plymouth. It was a beautiful, scenic drive...although like most roads in NZ very windy. We were following Mom and Gary in their van. We made a few stops along the way for beach walks, photos and most importantly beer. We came across New Zealand's "Smallest Organic Brewery" We got to sample different all-natural beers and ales. We purchased a 2 Litre bottle of the lager to save for dinner that night. It was the first time any of us had ever purchased beer in a plastic pop-bottle type bottle. Later in ... read more

22/10/06 Sunday - New Plymouth to Pukeiti Garden *** Note there are three pages of photos. You must select each page to view all photos. New Plymouth was wet and very dead Sunday morning. I turned in my hostel key, jumped in the car and headed out towards Pukeiti Garden. Pukeiti was a last minute destination suggested by Stephanie. Stephanie has enjoyed the photos from Grandpa and Grandma Hazen and Teresia and John’s gardens, and she knows grandma Hazen has a lot of rhododendrons. The Pukeiti garden is an internationally know rhododendron and azalea garden that Stephanie thought I would enjoy. The month of October is high blooming season for the hybrid rhododendrons and evergreen azaleas. Thanks Stephanie!!! The road to the garden went from one lane of travel in each direction to a narrow back ... read more

Good old, Queen - whatever you think of her and her family, she does get us a day off every year. We took advantage of this year's Queen's Birthday public holiday to go away to Taranaki for the weekend. The 'naki is the peninsula sticking out of the west coast of the Central North Island and is about 6 hours drive from Wellington. We didn't fancy doing the whole drive in one evening so we stopped overnight at Wanganui which is about two thirds of the way there and headed onto our final destination New Plymouth the next morning. The next day was pretty clear and meant we got some good views of the sight that dominates the whole region - Mount Egmont or Mount Taranaki depending on your politics. I prefer to use the original ... read more