MATARIKI

 Matariki is the Maori new year. In 2022 it became a national holiday in New Zealand. On last Wednesday night the second year students (Iris's class) had a celebration in her pod. The pod contains 3 second year classes with 3 classrooms and a common area. They sang several songs and showed friends and relatives around their classes. Some Maori games were played. We also were served a soup and sausage dinner followed by hot chocolate. Granny Jo (Annie's mom) was up from Dunedin to celebrate Annie's birthday and Iris's class celebration. Phoebe and Malcie were also present but attended reluctantly.

On Friday, Gene and I walked over to Dan and Annie's house and joined Annie and Iris. Iris was not in school as she had a cough and runny nose. We then went to lunch at Pembroke Patisserie. We sampled several of the pastries after a great lunch. Excellent! The best in town!

Saturday was the Matariki celebration at the beach at Lake Wanaka. In the afternoon we visited Puzzling World (www.puzzlingworld.co.nz) for a few hours of illusions and puzzles. Gene and I chose not to do the maze as it was raining but Annie, Malcie and Iris were not so afraid of the rain. Dan picked up Gene and me at sunset and took us down to the lakefront for the festivities. It was very crowded as people milled about waiting for the fireworks at 630pm. There were bonfires, booths with Maori food and activities for kids. As we were huddled around one fire waiting on the fireworks we stuck up a conversation with a couple with a 6 week old baby who were standing near us. The woman was from Scottsdale and went to Chaparral High School. Small world! The fireworks were outstanding but a shorter program this year from the last. The fireworks were set off not even a 100 feet from where we were standing. Something that would never happen in the US.

Malcie came over Sunday morning and spent several hours working on his Lego. The rest of the family came over later in the afternoon with their dog, Molly and we all took a walk around the neighborhood. We came back here for dinner. Gene and I had sampled earlier in the week a pastry when we stopped for a hot drink. It was called Date and Ginger Slice. We both loved it so I made some for dessert. It was a big success. We introduced the kids to the Abbott and Costello comedy routine "who's on first" which Gene and I performed after printing the script. They were laughing uproariously and took the script home to memorize.

A good week...

                                                        Date and ginger slice

Off to Queenstown

June 27, a very gloomy Monday morning in Wanaka.

 

A great but very busy weekend has ended and we’re sitting here this morning with very little to do.  Joan has come down with a cold and has promised to pass it to me in the next few days.  This will end up being a resting and reading day, at least for me while Joan adds “doing the laundry” to her list of activities.  

 

A review of last week:  on Tuesday we finally took our driving trip to Queenstown.  We had been talking about doing it for a while now and drove off around ten in the morning.  There are two ways to get there, one short and one long.  We decided to enhance our viewing pleasure and took both circuits, starting off with the long one to Queenstown and the short route back.  Two completely different landscapes.   It was sunny when we left but unfortunately we ran into some heavy fog that interrupted the scenic views.

  

The sun lasted through the flat farm terrain but when we entered the Kawarau Gorge, which is supposed to be stunning, the fog deprived us of the view. We were able to stop at a turn out and got a nice shot of the Kawarau River running through it (see nearby picture, Roaring Meg) but otherwise we have to take Dan’s word that it is a beautiful drive.  This might have been a good thing as the road was very very twisty and when driving on the left side of the road safety is paramount. This portion of the trip was 70 miles or 112 kilometers.

 

Queenstown is a very picturesque town, known for it’s lake and mountain beauty and its skiing.  But it is actually more than that for the true sportsman.   Skydiving, bungy jumping, canyon swinging, rafting, paragliding, jet boating, heli skiing, snowboarding , mountain biking, hiking and trekking are a few more of the activities if you are so enclined.   We left these outings for the younger people!  The main tourist area consists of walkway after walkway of boutique stores catering to the sporting group and the souvenir collector.   We both enjoy going in and out of these stores but kept the shopping to a bare minimum.   A nice lunch and the obligatory ice cream cone topped off the day.  As we were leaving we couldn’t help but notice the huge number of very nice apartment buildings apparently rented out by the day or week for the visiting skiers. Business was good in Queenstown!!  

 

The ride back was quite a bit shorter.  We chose to ride over the Cardrona pass which is the site of the Cardrona ski resort, the home of one of the two ski areas used by the skiers from Wanaka.  Very mountaineous and very curvy.  As we drove higher and higher we finally hit snow, snow that closed the road 10 days previous. Thankfully the snow removal guys did a great job and it made the drive scenic yet very safe.  I don’t know how safe Joan thought it was but it was a blast to drive.  It reminded me of a few of our Swiss drives.  Pretty much an engineering feat.  Made it back tired but happy. The return trip was 40 miles or 65 kilometers.

 

More to come.