A walk on Long Bay

On Tuesday we left the flat about 2 pm to get to the beach at low tide. And it was so low!

This is facing north but we decided that we needed to walk south to see if we could connect with Torbay. That was as far north as we had gotten.  We walked for well over an hour going south but we are not certain that we succeeded in making it far enough south. We will have to wait for another opportunity to drive to Torbay and park there and walk north to see if we can connect.  I think we were on the north end of that beach where we had only walked as far as the south end of it. There is a plaque which we will have to find to verify.

There were lava rocks that were covered with barnacles and some sort of sea weed. It was soft to walk on. But this is all there was and then bare rock. We saw very little sand.

We had spectacular views of the harbour and of the islands and boats as well. There was a lovely sail boat that was at full sail which was fun to see. 

This is one of my favorite photos that I took that day.. It was just so fun. I think there is a restaurant on the top of that cliff. There were other houses that we saw as we walked further. Every so often there would be a cracking sound and rocks would fall from the cliff.  A bit scary the first time it happened. We were not sure how much of that cliff was coming down up top of us!

This is another one of my favorites for the day. It was just such a great day for a walk. We were so glad that we took the time to do this. We only saw one set of footprints after we left where we started in the first photo until we had walked the hour. There was one very small stretch of sand with a set of prints.  And this was all the sand that we saw!

It was like we were the only people around at all.  We did see two fishermen at the point that we stopped going south. And in the same spot we found evidence of others who had been casting their lines as we found tide pools where they had cleaned their fish and rocks covered with fish scales. Not a very nice thing to leave behind but as the tide came in it would certainly take care of the leavings of someone who was not very polite. 

This was taken after we had turned around and were headed back north. Certainly a camera cannot capture the beauties of the sky and the meadows in the background. I loved the chance to be outside and to be walking on the beach again. I have missed it. There were no shells to share as this is a marine reserve and it is against the law to take anything other than photos and there were not shells on the lava stone. I did find a neat shell right when we started but it had a creature in and so I returned it to the water.  

Hope you like the snaps!

Super moon

I have been fascinated with the tides and the moon since we got here. There are a couple of great websites that I use to see how the tides are when we walk. It was not a big deal when we got here and we would just walk but when we began our efforts to walk the coastline of the north island I began to look for a good site that would tell me when the tides were going to be acceptable for us to get around the points. The one thing I realized (which I probably should have learned while I was in school) is that when there is a full moon the tides have their highest highs and lowest lows. I had never known before that there would be a difference but there is and at times it is dramatic.

Take yesterday and today as an example. The low tide for last night was at 11:18 pm and it was at 1.9 feet. I am not sure what they use as a measure. The high tide was at 5:13 am today and it was at 9.2 feet so the difference is 7.3 feet. On Tuesday of this week, 25 June the low tide will be at 2:30 pm at .5 feet and the high will be at 8:37 pm at 10.6 feet for a difference of 10.1 feet.




The reason there is such a high and a low this week is because there is a super moon. That means that the moon is closer to the earth on this cycle that usual. It will appear 12-14% larger than normal. I guess that it does this at other times in the year but they do not coincide with a full moon so it is not noticeable. So if you get a chance look at the moon your Sunday night to see the sight.

Besides a super moon there is a blue moon.  There are several different definitions for a blue moon. One is that it is the second full moon in one month. So if a full moon was on 1 July then the next would be on 29 July.  The second would be a blue moon. Another definition is a bit harder to understand. Each season is three months long but at times in those three months there will be four instead of three full moons. The third of the four is referred to as a blue moon also.  There is a third blue moon and that occurs when the moon actually appears to be blue. That only happens when there are certain dust particles in the air and all sorts of other things have to line up for that to happen. This kind is not predictable and would not necessarily be world wide.  So to say that something happens once in a blue moon, they could be right.

Bali Ha'i

This last week we watched the movie South Pacific. We have seen the movie before and also have seen it on Broadway. This DVD had an extra disk and as we watched it I became intrigued and downloaded a book about it. It is taken from the book Tales of the South Pacific written by James Michener. It was the first book he ever wrote and he wrote it while stationed on the island Espiritu Santo, Vanuatu. It was so fun to read about all this happening in our back yard. I had always heard about John F Kennedy being a war hero when his PT boat was shot out from under him and he got his entire crew to land. That was in the Solomon Islands in the area they called the Bottleneck in the movie and the Slot during the war. When someone told him he was a war hero and would receive a medal for it he told them that it was a totally involuntary act, they sunk his boat and he had no choice. 

The small island Aoba off the coast of ES is his Bali Ha'i. (It means half of two I think.) Most of the characters in the movie are based on people that he come to know and love while living there. And they are not all from ES. He visited 40 islands during his WWII assignments. In the movie there is the lady named Bloody Mary. She was a real person and she was Tonkinese. I have found that Tonkin was the northern most part of Vietnam. In the 19th century it was protected by France and people from there were exported as indented servants and she was one of those. The coast watchers were real men who would track enemy movement in the waters around the islands and would report it to headquarters. Their live span was very short as the Japanese worked hard to find and destroy them. 

Michener was not the first novelist to work from the islands. He said there were a group of men, he called them islomanes or nesomanics who are people that cannot get enough of the islands and who prefer to live here. People like Robert Louis Stevenson, Herman Melville, Joseph Conrad, Jack London and himself. He told of an interesting experience he had.  

He was going to New Caledonia to see Admire Halsey who was headquartered there. He said "the runway at Tontouta was none too long and ended at an unforgiving range of mountains. Even in good weather, landing was a challenge." He then goes on and describes  landing during a thunderstorm which provoked sheer panic. He said just as they were to land on their first approach the pilot suddenly pulled up and out over the sea. A second approach was aborted like the first. On the third approach the pilot was able to sit the plane down on the slick runway and they stopped just short of the mountains. That night James could not sleep so he went back out to the runway and walked along it, wondering what he would do with the remained of his life. He loved what he was doing in the pacific as a young vagabond but he had no center, no goals. He decided: I'm going to live the rest of my life as if I were a great man...I will erase envy and cheap thoughts and tackle objectives of the moment." He said he did not say "I'm going to be a writer" but determined that he could do better with the writing he was doing on the reports and that he could write better than most of what he read. 

From then on he would write every night with the goal of recording what he saw simply and honestly. He used the people he had met and the experiences he had had to form the characters and events of the book.  

It was a pretty fun thing to learn that this area was such an important part of WWII. It is amazing to me also that there were great battles on some of the very smallest of islands. Kiribati is one of them. 

When the war ended the US was then left with the problem of what to do with all the equipment that had been shipped over to support the efforts. They offered it to the French to purchase but the French knew that they were not going to move it all back so they had no incentive to purchase what was going to be left there anyway. Quoting from the book: "They lined up all the jeeps, bulldozers, ambulances and other heavy equipment near the Segond Channel. The line stretched for three-quarters of a mile. Ignitions were switched on. Bricks were placed on accelerators as the equipment rambled down a ramp into water forty feet deep. Desks and office furniture were also dumped there...Later the area became known as Million Dollar Point, and to this day it is a major diving attraction on Santo." 

Seems like government waste has always been an issue! 

A bit of the tongue....

I often find myself scratching my head as I listen to conversations between the locals. Some have gotten to where they stop and tell me what it is that they said while with others I have to ask the question. I prefer when someone explains without asking. Makes me feel like they really do care that I know what they are saying. So...I thought I would share some of these new words with you. I hope you laugh at times and at other times see the logic in the word.

The first word is redundancy. This is what happens when you are laid off or when there was a cutback at work. You received your redundancy.  And then when you are looking for a new job you do not send out a resume but you provide a curriculum vitae or a CV for short.

The next is The Crown. When we are talking about someone having dealings with the law and a trial will would say: The Court said.  Here it is The Crown and when you work out a deal instead of a plea bargain it is called a divergence. 

Certainly one of the funniest words is whop whop. This means that you are really in the outback or the bush. If you are on one of the islands like in PNG or Vanuatu you could be in the whop whop.

One that I thought was so funny...we have a friend, Tessa who is from South Africa. She is in our ward and she is the assistant/secretary for Elder Pearson and Elder Watson. Her daughter is separated from her husband and she and her twenty-month son have moved in with Tessa and her husband. She said that he loves his grandpa. She called him her husband's underpants.  We would probably say he is his shadow.  Follows him around in the morning like they are joined at the hip. And the baby only wants his grandpa to change his nappies which are diapers.

The one that fascinates me is a plunket. This is so cool. This is a service for a new mom. After a lady has a baby and is home a woman, called a plunket will come and visit. She helps the new mom to adjust to being a mom, gives her advise on feeding the baby be it to breast feed or bottle feed. If the baby is awake and crying all night then the mom can go to the plunket's place of employment and they will care for the baby while the mom gets a good nights sleep. Dad said that when he was working with Watties they tried to be on real good terms with the plunkets and their organizations because they made baby formula and wanted them to recommend that new moms use Watties formula and baby food. This is all supported by the government. Wonder if this can be part of Obama Care?

And that is all I have to say about this!

The Changing Skies

On the same walk on Tuesday I snapped some shots to show you how changing our skies are. There are three photos and I stood in the same spot and just rotated a bit as I took the shots.

Looks like the skies are going to open up and just drench the world below it! But....

But then...

And then....how quickly it changes. It is one of the things that we love the most about this little island!

I Found One!

I have kind of made it a rule that when we go walking I need to find or see something that I have never seen before or learn something from the time spent. As you have seen I have found some amazing things in our travels. Tuesday was no exception to that rule. We have worked through so many of our P-days that we decided on Monday that we were going to take part of Tuesday and walk. It was a lovely day and just the perfect temp to take a stroll along Takapuna Beach. The tide was way out and so we wandered for awhile south of where we usually go.  

When the tide is in it is all the way to where the lady in the white jacket is standing. Well as we wandered and walked I made my first find for the day. A five dollar bill!  I had never found money on the beach before. I really peeled my eyes to see what other treasures I would find. After going south for a good bit (down passed the point you can see to the left) we turned around and walked towards the boat ramp.  Just as we got to the ramp I found it!  

You may remember a few posts ago I told you about sea scallops and that  you would almost never find the a matching top and bottom because you only find one or the other. Well, I found a whole sea scallop!

When the tide is so low the boat ramp has three steps that go up the side. They are long and each step is about 18-20 inches high. I found this right where the first step started. I was so excited to show it off that I ran across the step to the end of the ramp so I could walk up the ramp instead of making that huge step up. As I rounded the corner, in my excitement I went right into the water up to mid-calf but that was ok. I was so excited!

Here is a terrible picture of the connecting joint.  Hard to take a photo with one hand and hold something with the other...anyway it is hard for me. 

It only took me a second to realize that I would not be able to keep this particular shell. There was no way to get the critter out without breaking the shell and that would defeat the purpose of having it. I could have broken it open and cleaned it out and then kept it as a matching set but I could not imagine myself cleaning it out! I took pictures and examined it carefully and committed it to memory. And then... I threw it back into the harbour. 

Farewell to a good friend!

In one of our conversations with Elder and Sister Rowe as they were telling us about our assignment here they mentioned that they drove a Toyota Prius. We were a bit concerned about that since we had never driven one and did not know anything about them. Well, we have loved this little car. It is small and gets great petrol mileage. We fill up about every 6 weeks and can go between 700-800 kg which is about 480-500 miles. Part of the sentiment is that our friends the Nally's drove it first. He was the IFR when they moved the area office from Australia to NZ. They had the car first. They had our furniture first. They were the first senior couple to live at Shoalhaven where we live now. And we know them. He was in the MTC presidency when we started in the district presidency and he is now the MTC President. We love the Nally's. Anyway, the powers that be decided that it was time to get us a new car. We have been flying quietly under the radar since we got here because 1) the car is old by lease standards. I think it is an 08 but purchased in 07. 2) it now has 60,000 kg on it. So on Wednesday we get a message that it is time to service it and here is your appointment time. Then Grant Stone comes to see me and says: what color do you want? He was showing me new cars. I told him the black convertible. He did not even chuckle!  Then he said: come see this car in the car park. I did, it was nice. Five minutes after I got to my office he came in again and handed us the keys and asked for the other ones. 

So, we have bid farewell to our little silver prius and say hello to our new Holden Curve. Holden is the GM name here. We have driven it a total of 6 kg since we got it. We will take it for a longer ride this evening. 

For your enjoyment: