Surprise, it is Labour Day. No, not Labor Day

About mid-week last week, we were told that Monday, October 24, is a national holiday, and that the archives would be closed for Labour Day. Last holiday until Christmas.  (Nope, no Thanksgiving here either. In fact, basically no turkey--at least affordable turkey)  Yay! A free day. Well, we had a 3 day weekend. Didn't know what to do with it. Checked the weather, and it didn't look too promising for a 3 day outing on the spur of the moment. So we did Saturday as outlined in the previous post.

Monday started out overcast, and was supposed to deteriorate. We almost beleived the forecast. Went for a bike ride (me) and a hike (Lois).  But the day kept looking better. So we decided to go check out the Wellington Zoo. As zoo's go, it was on the small side. Also not too many of each kind of animal. But they also were caretakers for damaged animals. For instance, one of the penguins had only one wing. Another had one eye. But it was fun, and you could get quite close to many of the animals. In fact, we strolled through a few pens with the animals-like the emu's and kangaroos. No fence separating us. For a fee, you could go into the cheetah pen and pet a cheetah. That sounded fun!!

Here is a general listing of the animals: Kiwi, Sun Bear, Tiger, Penguins, Lemurs, Kea, Tamarins, Capuchin, Gibbon, Otter, Red Panda, Giraffe, Ostrich, Cheetah, Baboon, Tasmanian Devil, Emu, Wallaby, Dingo, Chimps and a few others. Not too big.

We didn't get a lot of pictures because some animals were tired, some very camera shy, some too far away. But here is a glimpse of our safari.

 They had 2 different habitats for the Cheetahs.

The Orangutangs had a hard life. It looked like all were males.

 This was a Tasmanian Devil. My, what big teeth in a small body. About the size of a badger.

The Dingo looked like a nice dog. Hmm. I watched Quigley Down Under too many times.

 A big family of chimpanzees

The red panda, from Australia. It is closely related to a racoon.

 This character is a blue tongued skink. You wouldn't believe how many I took to get one with the tongue out. I did a burst of 54, and 2 of them had it out. He is quick with it.

These little Squirrel Monkeys were hilarious.

Well, that was the safari. 

Sunshine, Ocean (well Sea) and Green stuff

Today was the first cloudless, totally sunny day that we have had for a long time. So we decided to go exploring in our neighorhood. We first went to a place called Battle Hill Farm Park. It was first settled as a family farm in 1849. It had been the location of the last battle between the Maori (indiginous people) and the British (invaders). The farm remained in the original family until about 1980, when it became part of the greater Wellington park system. They still farm and raise cows, sheep, goats, and deer. Interestingly, all mammals have been introduced to the islands, so there were no wild deer. They have deer farms and the venison industry is a lucrative business, but you don't worry about hitting a deer when driving on a back road at night. Only the Kiwi, a bird that is nocturnal, but it is only the size of a football, so no worries. Since it is also dark brown, you probably wouldn't see it anyway.

We hiked around the  farm for a couple of hours and ate lunch there. They have camping in one area, so if anyone drops by our place and wants to camp out, we have found the place. Here are some photos of the farm. New Zealand is always beautiful, but many days are cloudy, so when you get the blue sky in the background, it is amazing.

 The bare part along the skyline is the battle area. 

See, I guess I don't smile in selfies. 

This is the camping area. Look through the trees to see the tent and van.















The road up here is called Paekakariki Hill Road. The road continues west to the Tasman Sea, and ends in the town of Paekakariki.  The road is like 1) the Alpine Loop (for Utah drivers), or 2) Oak Creek Canyon (for Arizona drivers). Not alway a full 2 lanes. But a motorcyclist's fun road.

When we got just over the top, before heading back down to sea level, we got the best view of the west coastline that we have seen so far.

 This is Paekakariki just below us.

 The South Island in the distance. It is a 3 hour ferry ride from Wellington.

Kapiti Island just off the west coast. 

After we drove off the hill, we went to Queen Elizabeth Park in Paekakariki to visit the US Marine Memorial. In World War II, the marines had 3 camps here to prepare for assaults in the South Pacific, and for battle worn soldiers to come here to recuperate after fighting. Guadalcanal soldiers came here, for example. If anyone wants to read more on it, go to this site: http://marinenz.com/ It is very interesting to read about it.  As a side note, the marines were here about 2 years into the war. The single New Zealand men had been gone about the same length of time, fighting with the British in North Africa and Europe. So the girls left behind had gotten a bit lonely. About 2,000 girls married American soldiers....

 This part of the memorial is a likeness of a landing craft. One of the wartime exercises that he Marines did was practice storming the beach. One epic example proved disastrous. 

The orders came to do a drill in late June (nice and summery in WashingtonDC, but the middle of winter in NZ). The timing was also off in that they didn't check the tide, so the landing craft got stuck on the low tide, far from shore, since the bottom was quite flat. The seas were about 6 foot swells. Finally the command orders boats to pull the landing craft back to the ships, but they didn't or couldn't turn them around, so they were being pulled stern first in high waves. The already sodden, almost frozen marines got hammered with wave after wave swamping the landing craft from the sterns. At the end, they lost one landing craft and 11 men. Somehting that didn't need to happen.  You can read the whole story on the website.

This is a replica of the small barracks that the soldiers, mainly officers stayed in. 

This little video was taken on a path just a few feet from the memorial. It is now a bird sanctuary. We didn't see any birds up close, but the sound of several frogs was so loud that I recorded it. Hope you enjoy it.  Never did see the frogs though.

Rawena Bread at Farmer's Market

Two weeks ago, we took the new senior missionary couple, Elder and Sister Hjorten, to our local farmer's market. It is a fun place to go, and it was interesting to see how the Hjorten's reacted to the new culture and new veggies that are available here. As we were leaving, we saw a little Maori grandmother and her granddaughter selling bread. We all wondered what it was. So we went to find out. They were selling a traditional bread called Rawena bread. Turns out it is a sourdough bread. We bought a loaf. Lois got talking to the lady, and lamented that we wished we had a starter for breads and our sourdough chocolate cake. The lady got really interested in a sourdough chocolate cake.

They negotiated and decided that this past Saturday, they would trade Lois' recipe for a sourdough starter. Now we hope to nurse the start into a bigger blob to make a cake.

Interestingly, the lady's daughter married a guy from Louisiana, so the family traveled there for a visit. The lady fell in love with American bread. Said that she bought a loaf in every city they visited.

Note the traditional Maori Moko or tattooing on her face, lips and hands. It is very well done, and really is green.

Downtown Wellington

As we have said before, we work in the National Archives in downtown Wellington. We often go for a walk at lunchtime.  Below are a few of the buildings and interesting sites we have seen.

these first two (above) are just a couple of blocks from our building. They are next to modern buildings.

 These three photos are of one of the Parliment Buildings. The first shows a one lane roadway going to the rear of the building, with the adjacent street to the right going uphill. The trees, shown the second are growing out of the sidehill and just turn upward. I am amazed that with all the rain that occurs here, that they would slide off or the street  slide down. It was a very peaceful, beautiful spot. There are many quiet spots for people to sit in the downtown area.

 The two photos above show some of the beautiful homes nestled into the hillsides. This is about a mile from downtown.

The last photo is where we park. Most people drive small cars. Pickups are the midsized trucks in the US, like the Chevy Colordado, the Ford Ranger. They don't even sell a Toyota Tacoma-it is called the HiLux. All pickups are diesels here.  We drive a Holden (Chevy) Cruze, made in Australia. 

What I wanted to show is how tightly we have to park. There are actually 3 more cars parked behind me. Three on my right and one on the left. These stalls rent for hundreds of dollars a month.  We got ours paid for because of the work we are doing.

General Conference- A week late

For those reading this that are not LDS, we have a worldwide conference every six months, the first weekend in April and October. The sessions this October were the 1st and 2nd.

Because New Zealand is 19 hours earlier than Salt Lake, the sessions each day that are broadcast to churches worldwide don't begin at the right time, so in New Zealand, they just watch recordings the following week. But because of they are streamed on the internet, it makes it quite interesting in deciding what to do.

What we did was watch the Saturday afternoon session live Sunday morning. Then we went to our normal church meetings in the afternoon. We watched portions of the Saturday morning session during the week. Then we watched the October 2 Sunday sessions on Sunday October 9.

Now I know that is not the least bit confusing.  Just think also that we have to try to remember when a good window is to call our kids in the USA. New Zealand has Daylight Savings Time, but it happens the end of September and the end of March, and it is the opposite of the US. So when we arrived in August (winter), Arizona was 5 hours difference and Utah 6 hours (minus a day). When we went on DST, that became 4 hours and 5 hours. When the US goes off DST, AZ will remain at 4 hours, and UT will be...it makes my head hurt.

Anyway, we just wanted to show us on the patio eating between sessions Sunday.