Margaritaville

"It's Sunday," Tracey suggested.
"Too much information," I retorted.
She apologized: "I guess you don't want to know what time it is."
Me: "Now you get it".


Sadie on the front porch of 907 White Street

We flopped into plastic Adirondack chairs close to the pier in the Key West marina to consider our strategy. We were sun burnt and brain dead after three hours of dolphin watching and snorkeling in the Gulf of Mexico. We went to Waterfront Market and marveled at all the exotic fish, spices and sounds. We got some salmon, rice and strawberries and headed back to 907 White Street, our home away from home.

And what a delightful home it is. We are renting a one bedroom apartment that takes up the whole first floor of a conch house. Tracey informed me a conch house has 1) a porch across the front. Check. 2) a tin roof. Check and 3) interior walls off exposed Dade County pine. Check. With wooden floors, granite counters in the kitchen and bath, lots of tile, high ceilings, and a private hot tub on the back porch, ours is pretty deluxe. A beautiful traveler's palm dominates the lush back yard. Geckos and lizards squiggle in the rustling trees.

Key West is sort of like Central America with better architecture and water you can drink. Roosters strut around the streets. Feral cats prowl for handouts. And the manana attitude is reversed here: the tourists are laid back and the people in the hospitality industry happily do their jobs correctly and on time. What a concept.


Tracey threatened to quit her job and move here. One of our many friendly cabbies told us she would then have to look for two jobs if she wanted to live here, and get a third if she wanted to leave.

Most tourists are enthusiastically embracing the Jimmy Buffett lifestyle. In fact, the original Margaritaville bar and merch is here. I brought Jimmy's "Volcano" to play in our conch house. Sounds just right here.


Tracey on the pedicab. Snake and macaw wranglers are common here.

We've been on the ocean twice. Sunday we were delighted to find that we were the only guests on a trip into the Gulf of Mexico led by captain Anna and her mate Bethany. In fact, at 9 AM, we even had the streets to ourselves. This was a good thing, because I left my wallet on a bench then stumbled away to take some photos. When I realized I was missing my wallet, I ran in a panic back to the bench where I'd left it and found it undisturbed next to some equally oblivious tourists.












The boat trip was a testosterone-free adventure. The snorkeling was okay. The advertisements for "The World's Third Longest Living Reef" are about 98% wrong. Pale fish darted around white coral graveyards. I only saw one giant brain coral with any color, a pale yellow. Not like my first snorkeling trip in Biscayne National Park in the mid '80s, which was worthy of a National Geographic photo shoot.


Dolphins came close to the boat.


Monday we had a more successful snorkeling cruise in the Atlantic. We were on a sailboat with about 18 other guests.



I have to give you my fish list. Black and white stoplight parrot fish, yellowtail damsel fish, four-eye butterfly fish, pork fish, blue striped grunt, yellow goat fish, rainbow parrot fish, great barracuda (about three feet long and slender; not at all scary looking), and comb jelly fish. I was pretty freaked out when I drifted into a school of those jelly fish. They looked like a cloud of clear, round plastic bags about three inches in diameter. I didn't know if they could sting, and I was surrounded by them before I saw them. With all the floundering I did to get away from them, if they could have stung me, they surely would have, but one of the crew said if they don't have tentacles, there's nothing to worry about.

I saw some purple sea fans waving on the coral, but not many. Also saw some southern sting rays, about three feet in diameter. The biggest surprise was a gigantic blue parrot fish, about two feet long. What a pucker-lipped beauty.

As we sailed back to the harbor, we drank sangria and watched the famous Key West sunset, which at least on that day offered no threat to a typical Tucson sunset.

We had two wonderful breakfasts at the famous Camille's restaurant. Both times I had a crab, asparagus and sun-dried tomato omelet. My M.O. has always been not to mess with perfection. Camille's is a sun-filled Caribbean-colored delight with quirky art work. We were especially intrigued by the extensive Barbie collection displayed in one window. Each Barbie was dressed in a variation on the S&M theme. One had a spiked collar, handcuffs and whip; another was wrapped in cellophane and suspended by chains from the window frame.



I have always liked the poetry and karma of Saint Francis of Assisi. I was startled to find this wooden plaque in the ladies' powder.




The first feline companion to adopt Steve and me was Shadow, a quietly dignified black gentlecat. Sunbeam is our current fiery red head, a flirty and talkative jokester. We certainly don't want to drive away the memory of our beloved Shadow, and our darling Sunbeam has not taken his place, but I was stunned and happy to see them both mentioned in the same sentence by this fellow animal lover.



Saint Paul's Episcopal Church is an impressive Gothic Revival structure elevated above Duval Street, dazzling white like cane sugar in the tropical sun. Built in 1912 with an open-timbered ceiling, it is the fourth church on the site. The original was built in 1834. A hurricane destroyed the 1909 church.



The Golden Cockerel Medallion window was installed in 1920 in memory of children of the Lumley family who died in 1907 and 1876. The Golden Cockerel symbolizes watchfulness and vigilance, and is also a reminder of Peter's three denials of Jesus. I just like it because it reminds me of the roosters who brazenly stroll around the sidewalks and plazas here.


Nothing is ordinary in Key West.

Notice that the gingerbread on the porch is actually gingerbread men!

Only in Key West. A sitar-playing Spiderman busking on Duval Street

Same Days, Different Islands

Steve woke up Tuesday morning with the idea that we should not go home earlier, but should stay until Friday, when we were supposed to leave Tahiti. We went back to the airport and Air New Zealand agreed to change our reservation to Friday. We went to the i-site, the free traveler’s information desk at the airport. We should have tried this weeks ago. They found a place for us to stay on Waiheke, and booked our bus back to town and the ferry to the island.

We left most of our stuff at the airport, and took enough for three days with us back into town. We caught a ferry at 8:45 PM for the 40 minute ride to Waiheke. Punga Lounge, our B & B, had arranged for a cab to pick us up at the ferry dock. We got to Punga Lounge about 9:45, and the owners Rob and Dyan welcomed us and brought tea and home made apricot bars to our room. We had a king size bed, private bath and our own deck overlooking rain forest vegetation for NZ$125. The only problem was the mosquitos made us keep our screenless windows shut all night, and the wifi didn’t work.

Punga Lodge is about a 10 minute walk from Oneroa, the main town on the island. Waiheke is popular with Kiwis who come out for a day of swimming at the beach or visiting the vineyards. Some international travelers also make it their place to overcome jet lag at the beginning of their vacation, or like us, a place to unwind at the end. The island is inhabited by a variety of artists, activists, eccentrics and millionaires. Every blissful resident we met feels very lucky to live there.

Our first full day, we took a tour with Rochelle, the owner of Waiheke Island Adventures. She took us to Goldwater Vineyards, where we tasted four nice wines.

Check back for the rest of the story and more photos!

Milford Sound

After long delays due to money changing and grocery shopping, we finally started the two hour drive to Milford Sound in the late afternoon. Hiking and boating used to be the only ways to get there. The road was started in 1929 as an unemployment relief program. Workers used shovels and wheelbarrows. The 1.2 km Homer Tunnel was started in 1935. worked continued on the tunnel until 1948, then stopped until 1952. The road finally opened in 1953. It slopes downhill in a 1 in 10 gradient. Traffic lights stop cars in one direction for 15 minutes at a time, so they can go through the narrow tunnel in one direction from 9 AM to 6 PM. The rest of the time, traffic is two ways. We’re glad we got through just before 6.

Along the way, we passed a wide river bed in the MacKay River, filled with white, pink, lavender and purple lupins. Behind them were snow capped peaks. We were in a hurry to get to Milford Sound, and although we both wanted pictures, neither of us said anything about stopping until about 15 minutes later. We hoped we would come back by them in the daylight, and we did. We went to three locations and I took dozens of photos trying to get the exposure right. Here’s the best one.

A tour bus guide told us the lupines are an introduced species, and like so many of the exotics plants and animals, have run amok. We don’t know whether that is considered a problem.

Another introduced plant that dominates the landscape on both islands is the gorse bush, a yellow flowering bush that can get to be six feet tall or more. It provides welcome visual relief from the endless sheep, sheep, sheep, but it crowds out native plants that are more useful to the native animals. In some places, people apply poison to the gorse, but we read about a gentleman who loved the land and encouraged people to plant saplings of native trees among the gorse. The gorse shaded the young trees until they were big enough to survive on their own, at which point they shaded the gorse and killed it. A wise man, that.

I still need to tell you about how wonderful Milford Sound is, our chill out in Queenstown, and why we didn't go to Tahiti. Check back in a few days.

Tucson Paheka Annoying Hoteliers from Coast to Coast

Paheka is the Maori word for non-Maori. It is not usually intended to be derogatory. It's supposed to mean "foreign" although it can also mean "flea" or "pest".

This far south, the sun stays up really late. We can still read 12 point type outdoors by the dimming light at 9:30 PM. So we’re often out hiking or doing stuff until the sun goes down, then we realize that the restaurants have been closed for an hour, and the backpacker receptionists locked up shop two hours ago. So we show up at our destinations after dark, depriving the managers of much needed rest. We keep hoping to find a place that doesn’t have a 10 AM check out time, but it hasn’t happened yet. This further cramps our style as well as that of the manager, who is always very eager to get the sheets off our bed and into the laundry at the stroke of 10.

Blat is the Kiwi word for driving fast. Considering how much blatting is going on here, it’s surprising we don’t see more accidents. We did see the aftermath of two rather spectacular ones. A garbage truck missed a turn going down a mountain road, and sailed off the road, over a ravine, and landed shiny side up about 100 meters from the road. On another mountain road, a tandem logging train lost its load of tree trunks on an outside curve. They tore away the guard rail and tumbled far down the hill. When we got there, chains were being lowered down the hill to haul the lumber back up. Oops.

We rarely see one of the gaudy orange, navy and white police cars. We do see signs at every car park warning us to “Lock it or Lose It”. Sometimes the signs give more details on the dangers of leaving stuff exposed in the car. We usually comply, but crime doesn’t appear to be a big problem here.

We also don’t see any evidence of homelessness. It is really a relief to walk around touristy places and not be accosted by panhandlers. We wonder how the Kiwis are able to provide social services, health care and good roads with a much smaller budget than the U.S. has. I guess it goes to show what can be accomplished when money isn’t wasted on pointless wars.

Most of the tourists are Kiwis and Aussies. We finally have started to see some U.S. Americans now that we are on the South Island. One shop keeper told us she thought the U.S. workers must have the longest vacations in the world, and was shocked to find we have the shortest. When a worker only gets two weeks off per year, I guess it makes sense to concentrate on the razzle dazzle glaciers and fiords of the South Island. Lord of the Rings fans have flocked here to see the movie sets near Queenstown. I have read that many of the sets have been digitally enhanced and it takes a lot of imagination to see what is shown in the movies.

People in the tourism industry are very worried about the U.S. economy, and many people have asked us when we think it might turn around. They tell us that since the financial industry upheaval in September, they are receiving booking cancellations, and tourists are only booking one month out instead of a year in advance.

There’s something to be said for letting the world vote in the US elections, given that what happens in the US has a profound effect on the rest of the world. If the world voted, we would probably have a better informed electorate and a better quality of government.

We rolled into Te Anau just before dark, of course, but Bob at Bob and Maxine’s Backpacker took it in stride and cheerfully showed us around the kitchen and to our room, a twin ensuite for NZ$75. Bob is especially proud of his wood pile stacked four feet high all around his buildings, firewood made from several types of trees he felled himself and split with a hydraulic splitter. Steve is pretty proud of his own wood pile, and though he had to admit it pales next to Bob’s, he was very impressed.

The exchange rate is shifting in the Kiwis’ favour. NZ$1 = US$0.564.

Thanksgiving lunch was eaten under an umbrella on the sunny sidewalk outside The Fat Duck in Te Anau. Baked sole and rice. We always read the wine menus, and I don’t think they ever have anything but Kiwi wine. We passed on the Sauvignon Blanc Mt Difficulty Roaring Meg (from Central Otago) described as follows: “Displays tropical fruit flavours intermingled with cut grass and dried hay.” I believe this is the wine of choice for New Zealand’s many sheep.

Te Anau (tey-an-ow) is sort of a strange, new, concrete and stucco town next to the enormous lake that shares its name. It seems to lack soul and character. All the shops and restaurants are along two blocks of the main street. A park is next to the lake along with some boats to take tourists to the glow worm caves. A Mitre 10 Solutions, a big box It prohome repair store, is one block away from the main street. Beautiful tree covered, snow capped mountains surround the town. There’s no recent sign of the ubiquitous logging.

Catlins Coast

We finally got around to leaving Oamaru and headed for the Catlins Coast. On the way, we stopped to see the Moeraki Boulders. These round rocks, up to six feet in diameter, look like they were dropped from the sky onto the beach. They are actually calcite concretions that formed under water in the grey smectite mudstone. The process by which they formed is similar to the way a pearl is made. The concretions could have started as a piece of bone or wood. Eventually the mudstone around them eroded away, and the boulders rolled down to the beach. We could see more of them still trapped in the terrace above the beach. Concretions are not rare, but such huge and spherical concretions are quite stunning. There used to be many more, but any that were small enough to be hauled away are long gone.

We also collected a bunch of wonderful little snail shells. They were less than ½” in diameter, and the center spirals were opalescent. The outer spirals were mostly black with a sort of stained glass mosaic. We’ll add them to our sand collection that we display in bowls.

We stopped for dinner in Dunedin, one of the largest cities, which was founded by Scots and has beautiful Gothic Revival architecture. The train station was superb.

Dunedin (dun-ee-din) was originally called New Edinborough, but was criticized as unoriginal, so the name was changed to the Gaelic version.

We got to Nugget View Motel in Kaka Point after 10 PM. The long suffering hotelier let us in. Steve asked whether he liked his work. He said it would be nice to get a break once in a while. This was a very nice place to spend the nights of November 24 and 25. We had a queen size bed, a kitchenette, sofa, bathroom with a towel warming rack, and a sliding door going out to the deck facing the ocean a block down the hill. It shouldn’t be too much to ask, but this is one of the few places where we had a shelves for our stuff in the bathroom, and the sink was large enough that we didn’t get water on the floor every time we used it. NZ$120.


Most of the roads are way better here than they are in the states. Due to the low volume of traffic, most of the bridges in rural areas are one way. As you approach, you might see a sign that says “Give Way”. This means traffic coming toward you has the right of way.

November 25 we headed out in the rain to Nugget Point. From the lighthouse on a cliff high above the ocean, we looked down on sea stacks made of some sort of bedded sedimentary rock that got tilted vertically. They looked looked like gold nuggets to someone. Out on the rocks, we could see elephant seals with their big round heads. It’s rare to see these guys on the coast. Most of them live on islands.

Brown rubbery bull seaweed twenty feet long waved around in the channels between the “nuggets”, looking like enormous multi-armed creatures. New Zealand fur seals, identified by their pointed noses, playfully rolled around in the water.

We hiked to the wide, three-tiered Purakaunui Falls, said to be one of the most photographed falls in the country. We dutifully added our photos to the infinite supply.

On the road to Owatea, we saw some Spur Winged Plovers. These birds have yellow masks that look like they are made of plastic. They could be one and the same bird as the Yellow Masked Plovers we saw in Australia eight years ago. We have always been fascinated by these birds, and wonder what they look like under their masks.

Kiwis call people like me who keep lists of the birds they see listers, tickers or twitchers. Some of these folks want bird names to be standardized, because they think it is cheating to count the Silver Gull in Australia and the Red Billed Gull in New Zealand, when they are really the same bird. I prefer to make up my own rules about twitching, so I count a bird on my list if it is the first time I have seen it in this country.

We took a walk on Tautuka Beach, which may be the most southern point we reached on our journey. We got hailed on during our walk. Later we drove by a pond and I thought I saw some Spoonbills. It was raining and getting dark, but I got Steve to turn around so I could take a look. Sure enough, they were Royal Spoonbills. Huge, fabulous white birds with long, flat, black bills with spoons at the end. I’ve seen Roseate Spoonbills in Florida, but even their pinkness was no match for the amazing bills on these guys.

Oamaru

Another marathon drive, south along the east coast this time, across boring farm land on a perfectly straight road, brought us to Oamaru (pronounced o-ma-roo) on Sunday night, November 23. We stayed at Swaggers Backpacker (see the entry for Waltzing Matilda for a definition of Swagger) with the house mum, Agra, who lives in this crowded little Victorian house with her teenage son and transient folk from all over the world. She has a blackboard identifying the occupants of the rooms, and although we hadn’t committed to staying there before we left in search of penguins, when we returned, we saw she had written “Americans – Arizona” in the space for our room. We had a double and twin in a tiny room with shared bath for NZ$60. We climbed out the window to the fire escape, and could see the ocean about five blocks down the hill across the roofs of the houses, businesses and warehouses.

One of the three big attractions in Oamaru is a few pair of extremely rare Yellow Eyed Penguins. I think there are only 700 pairs of these harassed birds. Dogs and people are their biggest problems. Steve says they look like Sparky with his wrap around sun glasses in the Tom Tomorrow cartoon. We drove out Bushy Beach Road around 8:30 PM just before sun set, walked along a wooden path 200 feet above the orange sand beach, and found a pair of Yellow Eyes grooming each other just 20 feet off the path. Penguins are very shy, so it is surprising that they went about their business with a dozen tourists taking pictures from the other side of the railed walkway. Even more amazing is the climb they made through thick bush to get from the ocean up to their nest.

Oamaru’s second claim to fame is the colony of Little Blue Penguins, which at one foot tall, are the world’s smallest penguins. We paid our $NZ20 each and were admitted to a fenced area that used to be the limestone quarry on the rocky beach at the edge of town. We sat in the covered grandstand along with about a hundred other people and waited for the Little Blues to return to their nests under the cover of darkness after a day of fishing in the ocean. While we waited, a guide told us the Little Blues swim 25 km per day in search of food and dive between 1,000 and 1,500 times. Per day! They are unable to see the sodium lights that illuminate the rocky beach and the grassy terrace where some of them live, but they could see and would be frightened by camera flashes, so anyone who uses a camera would be asked to leave.

Finally, at 9:12 PM, the first raft of fifty penguins was swept onto the shore by the waves. The guide says the birds are very tough, and in the five years he has been giving this talk, he has never seen an injured bird, even when rough seas dash them onto the rocks. Seeing them land was the highlight of the trip for me. They pull themselves up on their feet, then stand around looking at each other for a while. Although they live in colonies, no one is in charge. They bend over like old men and wait for someone else to make a move. Eventually one of them gets brave enough, or gets shoved to the front, and the temporary leader jumps to the next rock and starts climbing across the boulders, using his webbed feet and flippers to slowly work his way up to the terrace. Sometimes they jump and miss their mark, and slip back down, but they get up and continue clamboring to their nests. It’s absolutely adorable to the humans, but I am also struck by how hard their life is, and how they are anything but cartoons, but very real creatures with unbelievable challenges.

It is breeding season, and until the chicks are about eight weeks old, one of the parents stays with the chicks during the day while the other goes out to sea to fish. After eight weeks, both parents go to sea, so the number of penguins returning each night varies. We were there on a very good night, and got to see over 150 penguins arrive over the course of an hour in about six rafts.

We were even more lucky to see two fuzzy brown chicks about six weeks old and nine inches tall standing around hungrily waiting for their parents to return. I was getting worried about them, because most of the adults seemed to have returned. I asked the guide whether any of the other adults would take care of them if something happened to their parents, and he said no, they would die. As he was saying that, the parent returned and the chicks noisily chased him around, demanding that the parent regurgitate fish into their mouths. The guide said we can see why the harried parent was in no hurry to return.

Not all the penguins choose to live in the fenced area, and many wander the streets of Oamaru, going under buildings and screaming and growling all night. We could hear the wee birds from our room, five blocks up the hill. It was wonderful.

Monday November 24 we had breakfast in Oamuru public gardens among beautiful exotic trees and flowers, magpies, mallards and birdsong in the trees. Then we were off to inspect Oamaru’s third wonder: Oamaru Stone. Most of the commercial buildings and many homes are made of locally quarried stone, which the locals claim is soft and easily carved when fresh out of the ground, but it supposedly becomes hard after exposure to the air. It looks to us like limestone, which is a beautiful if odd building material for such a wet place. It seems to deteriorate where the fancy column capitols and pediment dentils are exposed to roof leaks, just like regular limestone. But it does make for a very elegant little town.

We changed some more money, and the exchange rate has again slid in our favour: NZ$1 to US$0.543.

We had lunch at the wonderful Whiskey Tea House in grain and wood warehouse built by the harbour of Oamaru Stone in 1882. The ceilings were twenty feet tall, there were gigantic timbers holding everything up, and the dining room was illuminated by huge arched windows. Steve had salmon caught this morning, and I had vegetarian lasagna with spinach and a big pumpkin layer. Delicious. The Kiwis sure know their way around pumpkins and kumara.

Next door the Whiskey was another limestone warehouse where the local bicycle club kept their collection of antique bicycles. A man in a 19th century vest and bowler hat was helping the tourists ride a bicycle with a front wheel five feet tall, as well as vintage tricycles. More magic.

Banks Peninsula

November 22. My father died three years ago today, after being fascinated and amused by the universe for 97 years. He would have enjoyed hearing about our travels, and would be proud that I am able to make this trip. He is here with me.

Today, we only got a little south of Christchurch, to Banks Peninsula. We went to Akaroa, a cute little seaside town that was settled by a few dozen people from France in the mid eighteenth century. Eighty-five percent of the houses on the peninsula are baches, or vacation homes. Two volcanoes created the peninsula, and the hilly countryside is a stunning contrast to the flat plain the stretches from the peninsula back to the Southern Alps.

We went to a backpacker hostel on the main street and found they were full. The lovely proprietor called every other backpacker in town, and they were full. We drove out of town to the camp ground to see about a motel room. Full. We learned there were two weddings and a vintage yacht regatta in town that weekend. We went to the Hotel Grand, a place we never would have considered unless the alternative was to sleep in the car. Full. I checked the fine print in the Rough Guide and found the Katawea farm stay about 15 km out of town. I called, and they had a room with a private bath for NZ$120. The owner Judy Thacker told us to take our time, get some dinner, but get there before sundown because the mountain road would be dark.

We ate outside, checked out the harbour, ticked the Pied Shag off our life list, and drove to the top of the island as the sun went down. From there we saw the first fancy sunset of the trip.

When we got to the Thacker farm, Judy showed us around outside by twilight. The fabulous Victorian farm house has been in the family of her husband Kerry for 120 years. They raise sheep and beef on 1,000 acres, including several hundred metres along the ocean at Okains Bay.



When she showed us our room, we realized we were lucky we couldn’t get a place in Akaroa. Furnished with antiques and a fireplace, it looked like a decorative arts museum. Our bath room was about 12’ by 12’ with 14’ ceiling, a clawfoot tub, orange and green marble top on the big old oak vanity, brass fittings and a shower with no walls or curtain. It was palatial.

After we had some tea with Kerry, he and Judy and their sons turned on the television to watch the New Zealand Kiwis play the Australian Kangaroos in the Rugby League world championship game.

We were delighted to see the Kiwis perform a haka before the start of the game. Maoris do the haka, a war dance, intended not only to intimidate their enemies, but to show their respect, and acknowledge that the enemy is a worthy opponent. The Kangaroos stood in a long line across the field with their arms around each other’s shoulders while the Kiwis approached them in a menacing wide legged squat, slapping their thighs, shouting, and touching their own chins with the tips of their tongues. The Kangaroos were respectful, but did not back down, even when the Kiwis got right in their faces.

Everyone is surprised the Kiwis made it to the finals, and no one expected them to win, but two hours later at midnight, the Kiwis were rejoicing over the end of the Kangaroos’ 38 year dynasty.

Rugby League is a different game from Rugby, and at 6 AM the Thackers were up to watch the New Zealand All Blacks upset the Aussie Wilds in the World Cup. This was the first time New Zealand won the World Cup in 98 years.

After a delicious cooked breakfast in the Thacker’s octagonal breakfast room with windows on all the walls and the ceiling, we left to explore the surprisingly good little Colonial and Maori Museum down the road toward Okains Beach. On the beach, I took lots of photos of the peach colored scallop shells, sprung open on the wave patterns in the sand on the shore.

We saw a sheep that had apparently fallen off the cliff at the end of the beach and drowned and got buried by the waves on the beach. Then we heard a bleating above us, and thought it was flying sheep, but it turned out to be a married couple of Paradise Shelducks. The male is black and the female is rusty brown with a white head. They flew into a crevasse in a sea cave, where we heard their babies bleating.

We finally figured out that the hawk we have been seeing is an Australasian Harris Hawk, a big brown fellow with white rump.