Happy New Year! 🙌
Welcome to 2025 - the year that promises to be big and bold. Thanks to Kimberly for the inspiration.
I think she shares an important sentiment that we can guide our lives with throughout 2025. Find that opportunity to take yourself out of your comfort zone (my interpretation of how to bring big and bold to action) as frequently as practical and possible. That uneasy feeling you have means you are in your learning zone. Maybe start with something small that you've been hesitant with trying to do. Once you start, you'll gain the confidence to experiment more often. Perhaps, by year end, you'll be leaping tall buildings in a single stride.
My journey picks up on Sunday morning with a drive to Mount Taranki for a closer look. The week wraps up arriving in Napier, a west coast city, that is home to Hawke's Bay, lots of wineries and Art Deco.
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Mission accomplished
Now visited the southern most capital
in the world |
The weather continues to be temperamental and unseasonably cool and wet. I've resorted to wearing my jeans given the coolness; around 15C (59F) on average. There are brief stretches when the rain stops and the sun appears (23C/73F). I've been fortunate the rain has had limited impact on the activities I had planned. May additional weather - the weather forecast has limited value; specially the hour by hour forecasts. It's truly a crapshoot on what the weather will be. The Met Service (national authority) has the right idea - use general forecast over larger blocks of time.
This journey, more than any other, is helping me understand the important blessing of all of my previous travels. The blessing appears in the gift of connecting more readily with the people I meet. There is something incredibly powerful when you can share a convo with first-hand familiarity with someone's home country. The experience of having visited their country grounds the conversation in a more personal way.
Travel Administration
Brief follow-up on additional medical type stuff you should carry with you when travelling.
Travel Maps
Tracking this past week's travel: North Island Travel - As of January 4, 2025. Please note my North Island travels now appear in two links: December 1 - December 21 and December 22 - January 4, 2025 below.
November 1 - November 30
December 1 - December 21
December 22, 2024 - January 4, 2025
Hawera to New Plymouth Return
I cobbled together a full day itinerary to capture the highlights between Hawera, where I was staying, and New Plymouth. Going to New Plymouth, as you learn below, was more of an ego thing.
Oh look. It's a relatively clear, warm and sunny day!
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The shadow was dark enough. along
with the lack of clear tire (tyre?)
tracks was enough to confuse me |
The last six km to the centre was like being transported into a different world. Before entering this 'alternate universe" I actually had to stop my car as I was momentarily uncertain where the road was. The trees formed a canopy over the road just ahead which darkened the entrance. Pure magic to drive up to the centre.
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| The entrance is straight ahead - silly me! |
Joan, at the visitor centre, can be added to my list of kind, informative and engaging New Zealanders who I met on this adventure. She confessed she was past retirement age. Difficult to stop going to work if you love what you do and is a labor of love.
Welcome to the only working glockenspiel in New Zealand. The five minute story with figurines (Romeo and Juliet) happens at 10 am, 1, 3 and 7 pm daily. While the story happens on the scheduled time, the time on the clock is running ten minutes slow. Details, details.
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Various doors open on the clocktower
with the different characters to
sharing the story line |
New Plymouth
I've included the short drive to New Plymouth as part of this story to highlight that I can now say I successfully seen Mount Taranki from every possible angle. Yes, I've traveled the roads that go completely around Mount Taranki. I can tell you are so impressed! Hahaha!
Hawera to Wellington
I ended up making the four hour drive without doing anything remotely touristy. The weather was acting up with rain pouring down by the time I reached Wellington. The highways get remarkably better as you approach Wellington - last 70 kms or so. Two lane highway with narrow shoulders suddenly becomes a four lane divided highway, wide shoulders, with 110 kph (70 mph) speed limit.
A notable part of being in Wellington was the hotel staff I met. Naomi (from Zimbabwe); Steffen (GM from Germany), Valentine (maintenance from Germany) and Rachel (from Tanzania). My two months volunteering in Ethiopia was a useful way to connect with Naomi and Rachel. I had the most in depth convo with Rachel. She had spent three years going to university/living in St. Catherines; a city of 137k, 111 km southeast of Toronto, on the way to Niagara Falls. She was studying for her Masters in Biochemistry in Wellington, with the plan of returning to Tanzania to strengthen the country's capability in this field. Her father is a medical doctor. We equally had much to share about how foreign aid was being deployed in Ethiopia as her father had on the ground medical experience in Ethiopia.
What was great overall is that the reception team expressed an interest in my daily adventures (I stayed for three nights). Their interest sparked more convos such as our collective experience with the New Years Eve fireworks which lasted a total of five minutes.
There were two sites for the celebrations designated in the downtown area. Both locations were relatively close walking distance to my hotel. Music, food trucks and fireworks - all the key ingredients for a good time. The short videos below include a short fireworks clip in the harbour (one site) and a band playing at the second site. This blogging site has a 100 meg file size. Working to find the exact number of seconds I can shoot before exceeding the limit.
On a completely different tangent, I was exploring the Wellington Harbour when I discovered the following plaque embedded in the side of the wharf without any explanation or context
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So many meaningful words and imagery.
Still pondering its meaning. |
Wellington to Masterton
I'm now choosing to believe that this lighthouse is the North Island's most southerly point. I experienced a travel first in this two hour drive from Wellington - crossing a flooded road (four times) to reach the lighthouse. My concern was the low clearance that my car has in crossing through the running water. The first three crossings were much about nothing. The fourth section to cross had me stop and think. Vision of me being swept away into the sea! More practically, getting water inside my rental car would be troublesome. What convinced me to proceed was the four young people, who also had initial hesitations, jump into their small car like mine and drive across. We had a brief convo about how they thought crossing had a small risk. If they can cross, so can I and off I went.
Center of New Zealand's Continental Shelf - 1st failed attempt
I noticed, thanks again to Google Maps, there was a location near Masterton that was marked as the centre of New Zealand's continental shelf. Encourage you to click the link below (part of my 2nd failed attempt) if you want a full explanation of what this 'center' refers to. For me, it was one more unique geographical destination in New Zealand to add to my growing list of geographical destinations.
This destination on the east coast came on my radar as the majority of driving going north from Wellington is well away from the coast. I could be at the sea in about an hour to enjoy the surf and the much reviewed fish & chips at the local dairy - a store that serves food, groceries, ice cream and pretty much everything else you'd need. Most small communities have at least one of these most welcome stores. And, in most instances, the local prices are reasonable.
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| I'm standing at the steel gate to take this photo |
I was determined to get a photo of the marker. In my research (link above), I discovered there was a road on the other side of the gorge that led to six km track to the marker. Now, that made more sense. In fact, the Google Map photo of where the track begins included a sign. I was on a mission to see the marker and make a Google Map correction! I let myself be stymied by a steel gate across the road and a warning to trespassers sign. Looks like the road crosses through private land which the Conservation people might have to speak with to reopen the road.
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Here is what I found on Google that convinced me
to make my 2nd attempt |
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Here's what I found - notice the road continuing
in the background. I missed in taking a photo
of the two steel gates with a chain and lock
across the road |
Masterton to Napier
I Digress - Introducing The Forge Restaurant (link to Facebook page)
The isite centre staff continue to be an amazing resource for highlighting the must-see destinations in their part of the world. Peter is my newest BFF. He was a wealth of info about places to see and the local history. An important date was February 3, 1931 when the area experienced an 8+ earthquake. Unfortunately many people died and much of Napier's infrastructure was destroyed. The other major change was the local lagoon disappeared as the earth lifted to replace the lagoon with dry land. The prevalent building design in the early 1930's was Art Deco which the city has done well to maintain.
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isite Centre in background
It's the sculpture that caught my attention |
Travel Administration
In addition to the first aid kit I carry, I also have a few other health related items should the need arise. These items include medication to either stop/start the body's need to excrete, pain medication (including with codeine), bandages (including tensor bandages), electrolytes and syringes. A doctor friend suggested having these handy as clean syringes may be unavailable everywhere I'm traveling. What you want to do is have the most common medications handy in an emergency situation. The conveniences we have at home are sometimes far less convenient when we travel.
Next Week
I'm looking to travel from Rotorua (where I am currently) to Hick's Bay to Gisborne to Tauranga. Getting to these various communities means I will cover coastal region of the North Island's most eastern land mass. There also is the possibility of meeting up with Elizabeth and Barrie in Gisborne, the city where Elizabeth had did a year long teacher exchange several years ago. We shall see what the universe has in mind for us. The drive promises to be demanding as the road is windy for the complete distance.
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