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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.

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Letting Others Get a Word in…

So far, I (Lil) have been narrating our adventures. I have a few more thoughts about New Zealand coming, but in the meantime, the kids have taken a turn at writing blog posts. Not necessarily recounting our adventures, but just taking a stab at whatever inspires them. Stay tuned.

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Is it a Campervan? An RV? Or Caravan?

Because one of the kids has been wanting for years to experience a motorhome adventure, we decided to do this for their 12th birthday.

The campervan experience seemed like something everyone does in New Zealand, and a new adventure to us, so we decided to go for it. The infrastructure is very developed in NZ for campervan rentals and they make things smooth and easy. Because it’s winter in NZ, renting the RV was no issue at all, plenty of availability. I can see in their summer it must get very busy, the infrastructure is definitely set up to handle a heck of a lot more people than what we ran into in the middle of winter.

I was daunted by being in such an enormous vehicle. On the wrong side of the road. But I didn’t have to drive, luckily, Jem enjoys driving and likes driving new types of vehicles.

Because it was winter, it was cold-ish and rainy-ish, in so far as we stuck to Northland (north part of north island). Thankfully most of New Zealand is temperate. The North Island rarely gets below 40. Most days it was 50s for the high, with one or two days reaching 60! Nice enough with a sweater. The South Island has some ski/snow destinations. We stayed way away from those.

By the time we got to the Bay of Islands, it was almost warm. Certainly beautiful.

Travel tip: buy full “stress free plus” insurance coverage. Normally we decline all the insurance offered by car rentals but with such limited experience with RVs, I thought, I did not want to worry about accidentally hitting the roof, or something in a blind spot, so I decided to just pay it. And thank goodness. We had a rock hit the windshield, and chip it, and it was all covered.

Super easy. Credit card rental car insurance doesn’t cover RV rentals and a million things can go wrong with such an enormous car; having the coverage was worth every dime.

So, besides the enormity of the vehicle, and driving on the wrong side, and the wind storms, and the chipped windshield, and the unexpected road that becomes unpaved midway through the curvy mountains on the way to the campground, was the fact that I never knew what to call this vehicle. Campervan is the main term, but they also refer to them as RVs (more common in the US) but motorhome is used too. One thing we did learn — it is not a caravan. A caravan means a trailer camper/fifth wheel being pulled by a car. We had seen one campground saying “not suitable for caravans.” But then said perfect for campervans. So, I figured, those had to be different. I finally learned the difference at one of the campgrounds when a New Zealander asked me at the campground if we were in a caravan. Thinking he meant campervan, I said yes. Then he said, “oh that is nice. You have a car you can detach and drive around.” Ah. No, it’s not a caravan.

Overall, we really liked the van life and now are considering doing this back home too!

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Hundertwasser: Vienna to New Zealand

Many, many years (decades!) ago now, I visited a friend in Vienna. We went to a place I knew nothing about called the Hundertwasserhaus. Very interesting I thought at the time. Obviously memorable since I still remember it more than 25 years later. Since that trip, I had mentioned that “famous” architect Hundertwasser to friends and colleagues. No recognition of this person. So, I thought, I guess he was just a local Viennese architect with one unusually designed building.

We arrive in New Zealand, motorhoming our way North of Auckland through Northland and what do I run into, but a Hundertwasser Museum! What?? How did this guy who as far as I know only did a building in Vienna also have this museum in the middle of semi-rural New Zealand (in a smaller town called Whangārei) and yet no one I know had heard of him?

Hundertwasser Art Center in Whangārei

Turns out, like many an American and European, Hundertwasser had it with the rat race and moved to New Zealand, near Whangārei, in the 70s to get away from it all. He became famous here and they eventually built an art center honoring him, about a decade after he died in 2000, based on one of his designs.

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THEN I learn, he has a famous building in New Zealand built while he was still alive — a toilet. Yes, really, there is a public toilet in the small town of Kawakawa that he designed. So, this leg of travel became the Hundertwasser hunt. We went out of our way to stop at Kawakawa (I just love the name of that town) to see…a public toilet. We plan to be in Vienna this fall for a few days and the Hundertwasserhaus will be on the must-see list!

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Birthday on the road! Motorhoming and Fox Flying

The twins turned 12 this summer on the road, and, echoing the lament of kids with summer holiday birthdays heard around the world, they were sad not to have their friends available for a birthday party. We try to have fun trips planned for them on their birthday, but honestly, yes, even in this family, one can only have so many Disney birthdays (last year we did Disneyland Paris, for example).

Because we were in New Zealand, a day ahead of the US, they actually got two birthdays, New Zealand birthday and US birthday. For this birthday, we decided to do something one of the kids had long asked for — rent a motorhome and go “camping” / road-tripping. We rented the motorhome the day before their birthday and drove to a nice campground chain, the Top 10, which is basically New Zealand’s KOA.

We took a pleasant, though muddy, river walk/hike for their NZ birthday, headed toward the town of Whangarei.

We saw the largest flock of ducks just hanging around this river on the walk to Whangarei…with one little pigeon adopted by them among the flock. Can you spot it in the first picture?

I wonder how this pigeon ended up in a family of ducks. Our walk ended up in the “town basin” of Whangārei where we had a birthday meal by the water.

Two of us ordered fish and chips and the consensus was that it was among the best we have ever had, including various places in England! It’s easy to forget, given the lush forest vistas, that we actually are at the ocean here.

The next day, for the US birthday we went climbing in the treetop canopies. What amazing ropes courses and programs with zip lines and challenges.

We learned a new term – flying fox. Flying fox is what they call zip lines here. At first we thought it was just this Adventure Forest that called them that but then we saw them advertised in other places that way.

This locally owned Adventure Forest ropes company is a labor of love, and has been for sale for over a year. The owner is looking to retire, after having opened and run the business for 16 years.

It seems like the perfect dream job for a professional looking for an escape from the rat race who wants to leave it all behind and move to New Zealand.

After three hours at our exhausting ropes course, we went shopping for the girls to pick out their birthday presents.

Then, we had 4 birthday cakes (2 each for each birthday), and of course more presents.

Happy 12th Birthday Girls!

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World Schooling Launched…From Tahiti

We launched our first leg of WorldSchooling by going somewhere we have never been before. The beautiful, amazing islands of Tahiti and Moorea. Technically, our first leg of WorldSchooling was New Zealand, but most flights stopped in either Hawaii, Fiji or Tahiti, so we felt like we should stay for a few days in one of the places if we had to stop anyway. So we flew to Tahiti and stayed in French Polynesia for 8 days on our way to New Zealand.

We left out of SFO. That means we upped our departure day to spend 3 days in San Francisco before heading to Papeete. The girls’ cousin joined us for the Tahiti part of our trip.

Girls had their 6th grade graduation/awards ceremony on a Friday and we left Saturday. Of course. (Itching to depart at the first opportunity!) While waiting for our flight at SFO, we caught a glimpse of Airforce One.

We then arrived to Tahiti, where we were greeted at the airport by a serenade!

We stayed at a lovely villa with a pool and the most gorgeous views, of our second destination, Moorea.

The vistas were stunning, everywhere.

We called it the beginning of Worldschool launch but it wasn’t, not really. It was a glorious break. It was the much needed relaxation, downtime before we being the school year. Summer break. Except Winter in Tahiti. Confusing. Tahiti is lovely. French Polynesia and it’s people were amazingly friendly. So many experiences — the security guard who comes over when we double parked and instead of yelling at us to move, offers to walk with us and help with all our luggage to show us where the elevator is around the corner. The person who runs over and makes sure we aren’t lost. The person who escorted us to our rental house to make sure we found it and knew how everything worked. All speaking French. Which is honestly the disconnect because that famous French aloofness is absolutely lacking in Tahiti. (And not lacking in another French island, Guadeloupe, where we vacationed in 2022, so the contrast was stark. And a pleasant surprise.)

The French Polynesian waters, well, the waters are indescribably beautiful and pictures do not do it justice. We loved swimming and snorkeling, and though we generally dislike hot humid weather, we were fortunate to be there on the “coldest” day of the year, what we call the summer solstice, but I guess is actually their winter solstice, June 21. Late June is a very nice time to be in French Polynesia.

That said, while we love warm water beaches, but dislike heat and humidity, we were beginning to look forward to actual winter in New Zealand. It was hard to say goodby to Tahiti, and of course we are already seeing how to plug a few days into Tahiti during our Down Under Module (2024).