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New Zealand notes, and goodbyes

We had some basic knowledge about New Zealand the way most Americans do — through television. Our favorite Kiwi show is Brokenwood. It’s been on 9 seasons, and airs a season earlier in the US than in its home town. Apparently, it’s not as popular in NZ as it is with us Americans. The Sunday night show were episodes we had seen on a streaming service (Acorn) back home.

Brokenwood is a police procedural, solving murders by local police officers, a detective constable, detective sergeant and of course the senior (chief inspector). It is set in a fictional small town in New Zealand, but the main police station is an actual real building in a town near Auckland. Of course we drove out to get our picture taken in front of it.

In keeping with our police station theme, we then, while staying in Dunedin in the South Island (a city I really loved), did an escape room in the old Dunedin Prison. We have done escape rooms before, but never from an actual prison.

We loved New Zealand, but sadly our Kiwi worldschool module is now over. I declare it a success. We covered lots of New Zealand immigrant history and maritime museums.

Here Sophie learns about the size of a whale’s heart.

A final sail through Auckland harbor a few hours before our flight.

And goodbye New Zealand. Back home for a few weeks and then on to Europe for Module 2!

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Scenic South Island (and North Island too)!

Over our years of traveling to many different locations, one specific activity we are always on the lookout for is scenic train rides. We have done scenic train rides in Japan, Norway, Scotland, and Australia. It has become a little bit our thing. One vacation we were passing through Maine and found a scenic train there.

So we randomly ran into a scenic train in the Northland area of New Zealand, near Kawakawa. Clearly a labor of love of the locals, not a lot of tourists. But it was cute.

Then, during a more serious part of our travels, I saw that Dunedin, a university town in South part of the South Island (or the “Deep South” as they call it here) we also saw they had a scenic train ride inland. So we signed up for that.

Well worth the time, beautiful views, even if it was too early in the morning for some.

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New Zealand Musings

We had been to New Zealand once before in 2017. I had a full-time, 9-5 job then, so we got away for about 12 days and tried to cover a few key places. We all fell in love with the New Zealand laid back and friendly approach to life. One of the kids, upon finding an elaborate playground in the middle of Wellington with a zip line said “I love this new land. They thought of everything in this new land.” And with that, we were determined to come back for a longer sojourn. Well, we all know what set that back a few years, since New Zealand closed its borders for a couple of years, but we arrived here in June with seven weeks to explore the country. (Spoiler alert: once again, it wasn’t long enough)

Once again, right I away, I noticed the lovely vistas of the country.

A few weeks in, and I had some additional observations that I did not notice the first time around. This country is huge. And there is no one in it. Now, I know it doesn’t feel like that in Auckland or Tauranga but we drove hours and hours in many directions and saw open land, rolling hills, vast farm land, forests, and almost no development. Tiny towns followed by stretches of open road.

New Zealand is basically the size of California. But its population is a little over 5 million. In the whole country. Los Angeles County alone has double that number. If you count the general LA to San Diego swath, it is like 17 million people. Three times the number of people in the whole country of New Zealand. They have like 12 acres per person in New Zealand. In California, we have like 12 feet per person. Here, in New Zealand there is so much open space and land per person that it’s like living in one enormous small town. It is a little hard to describe the vibe.

Other places are just cute, or funky, or beautiful, and in many places they make an effort to incorporate Maori culture.

All told we were here seven weeks this time. And the feeling was unanimous — not long enough!

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Playgrounds

It would not be a true narrative of New Zealand adventures without a nod to the New Zealand playgrounds. NZ has the most amazing kid playgrounds. In any and every town. Lots of slides.

Some with zip lines

And some even amazing Steampunk themed ones, in a small town on the South Island known as the steampunk capital of NZ — Oamaru.

This Oamaru playground had the weirdest circular treadmill like contraption. Fun for kids and adults! (Yes, I tried it out!)

And right next door was the steampunk HQ!

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Working from wherever, sometimes even from Churches (New Zealand edition)

A lot of people are wondering if Jem and I plan to be on vacation for the next two years. If only. Instead, we are basically picking up second jobs as 7th and 8th grade teachers. Jem did stop teaching his regular course load and go on sabbatical. I joke that he left his college teaching job to become a middle school teacher. (Not really that much of a joke. And not one he finds that funny). He still has other academic-related commitments, but plans to do a lot of the actual teaching during the next two years.

I am maintaining my law practice. I have a lot of experience with remote working going back more than 15 years. In 2006, I thought I wanted to take a break from the law rat race and move to Hawaii. I moved to Hawaii, but never quite left my law practice and clients. In the end, I worked remotely from Hawaii. I used to say my office was wherever my laptop and cell phone were. I was remote working 15 years before it was a thing.

So, I don’t really plan to do anything differently than I have been doing for the past 4 years, other than adjust for time zones. New Zealand isn’t too bad. Some days I might have to start working as early as 5 am local time, but generally, I can have about 4 hours a day of overlap with US business hours. Not like Japan, where I have 0 overlap with U.S. business hours. For the Worldschool part, I am responsible for overseeing Math and foreign language acquisition but I will do that in the several hours a day I will get back since I am no longer driving to school, picking up from school, and taking to and from activities.

Remote working for me is really no different than for anyone else who has embraced a nomadic remote working life. We look for rentals that have work spaces or hotel rooms with a separate room for me to do calls or meetings as needed. Sometimes I really luck out and my workspace is fantastic. This one this summer had an ocean view.

So did the place we stayed in after that:

Weirdly, both locations this summer were across the street/next to churches. Something Sophie picked up on right away: “Why are our houses always next to churches?”

Our third rental of the trip had this across the street:

Weird. I don’t think New Zealand has that many churches, but we just ended up next to some of the few ones they do have. Very pretty ones to boot; at times I felt like I was back in Europe.