Trip to Taranaki

One of the last big areas we hadn't been to in New Zealand was Taranaki, known for its dairy industry, oil and gas deposits, and the iconic and majestic volcano named Mount Taranaki. So we picked that as the destination for the long Easter weekend and decided to bring our cat along since we haven't found a cattery up in Auckland yet and don't know anyone else who would be in town for the holiday and would be trustworthy enough to watch him with all of his quirks and erratic behavior. He's not just a regular sleep all the time boring cat. Thankfully there was a pet-friendly Airbnb near the location we wanted to visit.

 

Joining the other large percentage of people leaving Auckland for the 4- or 5-day weekend (depending on whether one's work gives Easter Tuesday off), we hit about an hour's delay south of the city where the lanes merge, and some various breaks (including a stop at the Taco Bell out at a truck stop near Drury) turned it into a seven-hour drive to Taranaki. Seeing Mount Taranaki when driving in is a cool experience. It's a beautiful view.

We settled into the place and relaxed - it's funny how sitting all day in the car can still make you tired. The next morning, we headed to Mount Egmont National Park (Mount Egmont is the British name for Mount Taranaki) for a hike since we wanted to take advantage of the lack of rain (since it's on the west coast, it gets a lot of rain). The loop track was mostly straight uphill with lots of stairs, with a lookout area at the top part. One of the stark contrasts is where the farmland ends and the park begins - suddenly it becomes forest-y and dense after miles of pastures with animals.

Mountain-top is shrouded in clouds

View from the lookout area

Another view from the lookout area - the white buildings are the visitor center area, where we started

I noticed some unique-looking fungi or some type of strange gelatinous plant on the hike down and stopped for some photos. One looked like Mancala beads. 

 

We had lunch on a picnic bench with a mountain view, and then headed to the Puke Ariki Museum in downtown New Plymouth. It was a cool museum and the exhibit on inventions from people from the Taranaki region was interesting and insightful. I'm adding to my knowledge of New Zealand by filling in more about the interior regions of the North Island. 

"Labels for beer and soft drinks made in Taranaki"

Gotta love the natural history elements of museums

Wind stones, or ventifacts, created by wind blowing sand against rocks (top)

cool giant crab fossil

The next day we went to the free - yes, free - Brookdale Zoo, which was a small zoo that was part of Pukekura Park. The park was opened in 1876 for the local community and has some other things we didn't have time to check out. The zoo had a children's playground in the middle, with some enclosures around the edge. It had a couple capybaras, meerkats, and reptiles, and a free-flight aviary with some very colorful pheasants and parrots. The one pheasant had a type of feather shield, over which it peaked one eye - very strange but fun to look at! 

 

We then ventured about an hour's drive south to the South Taranaki region near Hawera for the popular and praised Tawhiti Museum. It is a private museum developed by an ex-art teacher, Nigel Ogle, with a love for history, and it covers a large area being housed in a former cheese factory. He has created many dioramas of Taranaki history, many of them based on photographs or artworks from the settler times, as well as life-size models (using casts of real people he knows). It is an impressive collection and does help bring what could be dry historical facts to life. There is a high amount of detail in the dioramas - cats and water swirls and body movements that add to the life-like quality. We went on the train ride and it was a fun experience - something about trains... 

 

 

Otherwise, we tried some new ice cream food items. The new Pineapple Lumps ice cream bar based on the famous New Zealand Pineapple Lumps candies was surprisingly good. It reminded us of the Dole Pineapple Whip in Disneyland. The Ben and Jerry's ice cream bar was more subdued. The tub of Magnum Luxe Gold Caramelised Chocolate was rich and delicious. It actually has a press to break area on the right side where you break the 'crackign caramelised chocolate shell' before digging in. It tasted of Teddy Grahams from the U.S. so also brought back memories.

 

For dinner, we ate at an American-style diner called Deluxe Diner in New Plymouth. Unfortunately, their ice cream machine has been broken for weeks, and we didn't realize they don't actually have all-day breakfast, only until 4pm, but we managed, and the silver lining was that we instead opted to try their pumpkin pie and it was really good. It was homemade and warm and soft with a thick caramel drizzle around the plate good for swirling the pie in before eating a bite. I have rarely if ever seen pumpkin pie served in NZ, and they actually nailed their own take on it. 

It's possible we stopped at the Taco Bell near Drury again on the way back for a snack...  It turned out to be quite an American-themed food experience this trip.

Life in Lockdown

It turned out to be a good thing I went up to Waitangi in early February, since traveling has been off the table during the pandemic. I feel very fortunate to be relatively safe in New Zealand - being an island nation certainly has its benefits - though I worry about those whose fates rest in the hands of less capable governments. New Zealand's approach was to go hard, go early, and it closed its borders and began quarantining all arrivals for two weeks, which helped stay on top of things, although it wasn't soon enough to prevent multiple clusters of outbreaks. It got into two rest homes, so most of the 21 deaths have been in these vulnerable populations.

It has been strange to have the rest of the world experience some of the isolation and working from home that I was already doing upon arrival to a new city. The lockdown has meant that I can't go to local libraries to work, but otherwise not much has changed except for the anxiety of everything going on around me. I have been reading the news more than usual, and watching the press briefings when they announce changes to the alert levels.

I have experienced a city with millions of people grind to a halt, and the empty roads and storefronts have been eerie. It's one thing to see it in the apocalypse movies; another entirely to have the silence of the usual hustle and bustle. More people have been experiencing their local parks and neighborhoods, though, and appreciating the natural world. Hopefully some of these bright sides continue.

Empty highway during Level 4

Some people had creative ways to brighten people's walks

Love hearing the tui birds on neighborhood walks

More cars start returning to the road at Level 3

We have seen how dependent people here are on restaurants making their food for them. Unlike in other countries, all restaurants including take-out were closed here for five weeks. There was panic-buying at grocery stores, and shelves have been clear of flour most of the time. People who didn't know how to cook and/or were reliant on Uber Eats hand-delivering their meals to them had to figure something out. I'm curious what they did. I suspect many women were relegated (even more) to traditional roles of cooking and cleaning for others. It wasn't that long ago that people didn't go out to eat all that much, and certainly didn't buy one or more coffees on a daily basis, so we don't need all of these restaurants and cafes for actual survival, but the convenience factor for those with money seems to have been too tempting. It is predicted that many restaurants will close permanently - some already have - because they can't pay staff and don't expect business to resume to previous levels. But they were already operating on very thin margins, so this isn't unexpected.

Rush on restaurants on March 25, the last day before the lockdown at Level 4 began

People are happy that restaurants reopened for take-out/delivery at Level 3 

We did get some American-style pizza after months without :)

The country moves to alert level 2 in one day, which will allow most businesses to resume but with distancing and safety measures in place. Bars are going to be the last to open since they are high-risk areas and designed to bring strangers together. I am conflicted about the 'return to normality' - in one sense, it has been nice to feel no pressure to socialize or go outside of my bubble, no pressure to work on projects because everything this year has been thrown out the window. But in another sense, continuing to be isolated and watching people suffer because they didn't plan for a crisis (and many couldn't, especially migrants in precarious labor) isn't sustainable long term. The hope is that New Zealand doesn't have to move back up the levels into full lockdown if it can stamp out the virus and quarantine any new cases in Kiwis who return home (borders are still shut). Then domestic affairs can resume more normally, and hopefully we can all continue to participate in conversations about how to rebuild the country in a more sustainable and equitable way. It's refreshing to see these are the kinds of topics in the news here; it gives a sense of hope that is lacking elsewhere.

In house news, we have been experiencing ant infestations and crickets. These worsen when it rains. The ants were almost under control, but now there are single ants wandering around places they didn't used to go, like the couch and doors. It's not clear if they are part of other clusters. As for the crickets, they are bigger and darker than what I'm used to. They also really like to chirp. They have been sitting in the wall in the living room and starting up in the evening, or under the cabinets in the kitchen. Sometimes they crawl across the floor, but they are so fast sometimes we lose them and then hope that the cat points them out to us. We had almost no insect issues in Christchurch, so this is one downside of living in a milder climate. There have been a few tiny roaches, but nothing major yet thankfully. 

one of my plants liked the fall weather and started flowering

 

black field cricket

Orana Wildlife Park, Shakespeare, and Chinese lanterns

We had our last round of visitors scheduled to come during our program, and we got the chance to go to a new place that we'd been meaning to visit before we even moved here: Orana Wildlife Park in Christchurch a little ways past airport. The day we went, we had a very packed day with the park in the early afternoon, an outdoor Shakespeare play 'Two Gentlemen of Verona' in the early evening, and the Chinese Lantern Festival in the late evening.

Some highlights at the park were the lion feeding where the lions climbed onto the enclosed truck to get some scraps, some fun birds like a talkative tui and a mischievous kea, and a lot of tuatara lizards, including one that was just perfectly positioned for a close-up. The cheetahs had also recently been fed and were pacing around and looking so graceful and lean. Big cats really are so similar to domestic ones and so beautiful. The Shakespeare play included one of my former students, and it didn't rain on us so that was good. We popped over to the lantern festival and the timing was good because it was by then dark enough to see the lanterns lit up nicely and we saw lots of new ones -- it's a nice annual tradition in the park downtown.

Now we are nearing the final stretch of completing our theses, which means long hours and getting frustrated at having to go back and re-edit and re-write and cut words and add them and patch holes in arguments and all of the other work to put together an 80,000-word tome. We're not planning other travel or conferences or much of anything to be able to focus on the writing. It will be a challenge for sure.

caught this little critter with its tongue out!

my favorite NZ bird: the tui with two voiceboxes and fun warbles

the very intelligent kea

"Two Gentlemen of Verona" with a swingin' sixties theme