The Weather

The clichés about New Zealand weather are true. It is the land of the long white cloud. You have all four seasons in one day in New Zealand. If you don’t like the weather in New Zealand, just wait a minute. The weather is incredibly changeable and the forecasts mean nothing. You wake up in the morning with a gloriously sunny day and a brilliant blue sky. Moments later, it is sprinkling. Then, the sun comes out and a rainbow appears. Then, it pours. We arrived at the end of winter and everyone keeps assuring us that even though it does rain a lot in NZ, the weather will improve. It is cold in the house, especially in the morning and it is a heavy, humid cold. It is difficult to crawl out from under the warm duvet and place your feet on a 50 degree wooden floor. For our first two weeks in NZ, it was around 45 degrees at night and about 60 degrees during the day. When the sun comes out, it feels comfortable and pleasant. When it is cloudy or raining, it is very chill.

Puhoi

Puhoi is a one-road town. Our house is the third house in on the Puhoi Road after the turnoff from the main motorway. Up the windy, narrow road is the Bohemian Museum, the church (where one of the scenes was filmed in the movie "The Bridge to Terabithia"), Centennial Hall, the General Store, the Puhoi Pub and Hotel (which is famous in New Zealand - every time we mention that we live in Puhoi to anyone, their first response, without fail, is "great pub"), the library and sports hall. Further up the road is the mustard shop, the tea shop, the cemetery and the Puhoi Cheese Shop where they make very yummy dairy products loaded with fat and calories. (According to Gerard, the best yogurt he has ever had. Unfortunately, it is nearly as caloric as ice cream on a per gram basis. Incidentally, they report nutrition information on a per 100 gram basis rather than on a "serving" basis.) It is a quiet place with lots of sheep dotting the greenery along the road. The Puhoi River runs along the town and you can often spot kayakers gliding along in between the steep, muddy banks that cradle the river. There are eels in that river and Xavier and Quentin are determined to catch one!

The Car

We bought a Toyota Estima (pronounced "Eh-steam-a") from a dealer in Warkworth five days after our arrival. Overall, the car seemed clean and ran fairly well. There is a blood stain on the carpet in front of the second row of seats. We have made up all sorts of stories about that blood stain like we have one of the few cars from Japan that had a murder victim or maybe some woman gave birth on her way to the hospital. It is from Japan and so everything in the car is in Japanese. It is a bit of a gas guzzler or petrol pig and the windy, hilly roads of New Zealand don’t help the fuel efficiency. Petrol is $5 a gallon here, so we will be spending a lot on running the car. About five days after purchasing the car, we went horseback riding out in the country on a Sunday evening. When we got back to the car, it wouldn’t start. Not even a burp. Fortunately, Roger MacKenzie who owns the farm wondered if it just might be that the battery connectors are loose and voila, problem solved. As soon as they were tightened up, we were on our way. It did give us a bit of a scare for a moment, though.

The House

Our Puhoi house is charming, but it is like camping with electricity and a roof. It is a cozy little cottage with a rolling green yard decorated with lots of plants, two ponds, and many birds. There are leaded, stained glass windows throughout and when the sun is shining, it makes a beautifully colorful effect. All of our water comes from rainwater collected off the roof. It is important to keep the gutters clear; otherwise, the water supply is interrupted. There is a large water tank, but Beth is always nervous that we are going to deplete our supply with all the laundry, dishes and showers for six people. There is no heat. We have to rely on a wood-burning stove. Gerard and Xavier have taken on the role of fire tenders. They chop wood and make fires, a necessity on cold winter mornings. Dust and cobwebs rule the house. Beth had the illusion that she could clean it up, but clouds of fluff magically reappear only hours after sweeping. We may have to learn to live with the daddy long legs. We have a washer, but no dryer. Beth has to be very clever about how she times the washing, so that she can actually hang out the clothes to dry in between the raindrops. Sometimes, she is not successful. It is very sad to see two loads of clean laundry hanging soaking wet on the clothesline after a heavy rain. The house comes with a resident dog, a male boxer named Denem who is very sweet and easy to live with.

There is also a pair of ducks on the pond and few NZ “swamp chickens” (they are called "pukehos" here).

The Driving

Once we got our rental car, we were on the road, on the left side of the road, that is. Gerard got elected to be the first driver in New Zealand in our clunky, old rental van. It was a little freaky at first, especially feeling so tired. Immediately, we discovered that two clichés we heard about NZ are in fact true: Auckland is a very congested city at rush hour and Kiwi roads are not designed to accommodate so many cars. The major highway that runs from the airport which is south of Auckland toward Auckland does not connect with the major highway (motorway) that goes to the north of Auckland. You are obligated to navigate city streets that often run one-way or forbid certain turns and weave your way somehow to the other motorway. A mixture of our awkwardness driving on the left-side, the maze-like road conditions and thousands of impatient commuters led us to be lost for a good twenty minutes before we found our road and started to sail northward. Once on the right road, it was easy to find Puhoi. Beth didn’t attempt to drive until we bought our minivan five days later.

With time, you do get comfortable driving on the left-side, but some things take more practice. For example, you shift gears with your left hand and your turn signal is on the right-hand side of the steering wheel, while the windshield wiper controls are on the stick to the left of the wheel. Hence, you find yourself frequently “signaling” with your windshield wipers and when it rains you turn on your turn signal. (You might not even know this, because it is so automatic to us, but in the States the turn signals and windshield wipers are on the other sides of the steering column.) Fortunately, the right pedal is still the gas and the left is still for braking (and the clutch is on the extreme left too).

There are some very bizarre yield (give way) rules that never seem intuitive. Consider the following example, which is presented as though you were driving in the US on the right-hand side of the road because it is too difficult to describe the weirdness of this when explained for the left-side driving conditions. You approach an intersection and want to make a right-hand turn. A car coming the opposite direction from you wants to make a left-hand turn (turn into the same street you are turning into). That car has the right of way, not you! (Again, just to emphasize, in the US and everywhere else in the world that we have been, you have the right of way.) Why do they have this complete counter-intuitive rule – because it is more difficult for the approaching car to turn left, they are favored in order to help clear the intersection. Actually, when you think about it, this is a reasonable reason; however, it is just not intuitive to us while driving.

So far, we have been lucky to have made no major driving mistakes. Admittedly, there have been a couple close calls. Gerard had the unfortunate incident of trying to navigate alone while driving and ended up going up the wrong way of the exit ramp of the motorway. Luckily, Beth didn’t follow him in the “new” used minivan, but then she had to remember by memory where we were supposed to meet. It all worked out in the end, but we were both nervous that it would ruin the afternoon.

The Flight to New Zealand

Uneventfully, we arrived at the airport in Philadelphia and got checked in with our twelve bags that all successfully weighed in at less than 50 lbs. We were all sporting some heavily laden backpacks, but we managed to trudge through security without any problems. The flight on US Airways to Los Angeles seemed long and boring. It also flew over dinner time and they served no food. Hungry and tired, we landed in LA. We walked over to the Air New Zealand terminal, checked in and headed up to the gate where there were very limited choices for food. We ate some expensive pizza and settled down to wait for our flight which was running one hour late. We met a nice Midwestern family with a son about Xavier’s age who was just returning from a vacation (holiday) in Australia and New Zealand. We had fun visiting with them. It helped to pass the time. Once we boarded, the Air New Zealand flight was delayed again for some technical reason, but once we were airborne, the flight was a breeze. The children fell asleep immediately, thanks to Excedrin PM and their new flight pillows. Even the parents fell asleep for awhile. By the time the children started to wake up, half the trip had passed. We watched a couple movies, ate some breakfast and we arrived! The food was good and the service very friendly and accommodating. Only later did we discover that our flight had one big bump---somehow, in transit, we left our case with 98 DVDs for the kids to watch during our car trips and 2 of Beth’s favorite Christmas CDs. That made the flight considerably more expensive…and painful.