Last bit of New Zealand

Tuesday, November 28, 2006.

Arieh here. We left Auckland today at 05:45 AM which meant we were up pretty early. Our last 10 days in N.Z wer spent, as "planned", entirely on the North Island. Travelling from Wellington to Masterton to Taipu to Rotorua to Waitomo to Auckland. On the way we looked at more dumb birds in a drizzling rain (Mt. Hood), met two more nice people from Masterton (one of whom studied at the Geography building at Givat Ram in Jerusalem in 1972-73), saw the largest clock collection in the Southern Hemisphere, drove over the "Desert Road" of N.Z., luxuriated in thermal hot tubs in Rotorua, walked beside boiling mud, lakes and streams in the Craters of the Moon, Waimanu and Waiotapu, at sultana scones and clotted cream everywhere, took a river tour of the Waitomo caves and saw thousands of glowworms, returned to Auckland and spent 3 wonderful days there with our friends, the Listers, and attended shul again at the Progressive congregation in Auckland. Whew, I am tired from reading this paragraph.

I mentioned in a previous posting about hospitable Kiwis. Well, in Masterton they struck again! We left Wellington on Saturday after services and our goal was Masterton (about 100 KM away). All of you know how "laid back" I am and how anal Val is. This day we decided to do it "my" way--just go to Masterton and "find" a place to stay--no calling ahead. So, off we drove and we got there around 5PM. For the next hour we drove back and forth going from one full place to another. Finally, we got lucky and were directed to a motel off the main street with very nice and reasonably priced accomodation. By then, Val had to have a nap, I fiddled around and around 8PM we went to the only decent place open to "grab a bite". We sat down at a table for 2, ordered, ate and then the guy next me says "where are you from?". We start talking and it turns out Ian had spent a year at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1972-73 studying in the Geology dep't at a post-doc level. (I got there in April, 1973). In the meantime, Val and Jean are chatting away. We are then invited over to their house for coffee and off we go. We spent a wonderful two hours sharing stories, learning about water issues in NZ (Ian's line of work), talking early childhood education in NZ (Jean's line of work), learning about Maori culture (both Ian and Jean had studied the language and culture) and getting tips on places to visit and how to get there. The next day, after trudging around in the drizzling rain at Mt. Hood for two hours, we were ..... eating (what else?) in the coffee shop and in walked Ian and Jean. We chatted for another full hour before we went our separate ways.

And because of them we came across the largest collection of working clocks in the Southern Hemisphere--2,342 working clocks. BTW, the owner bought an old church and had it transported to his farm (about 30 miles) to house his collection. Only in NZ.