No, this is not what I have been doing all the time. And therefore not having had time to post the blogs. I did work at the local practice a bit. We kept ourselves busy. It is just a weird time, maybe that is it. Covid used to be just present in the border MIQ's (managed isolation and quarantine), but recently it got out, spread to a small community in Auckland. And now it is exploding. We're going to get what the rest of the world has already been through. On the other hand, maybe I was just lazy.
While catching up I'll show you what we've been busy with. Still like to cook Indonesian. A gado gado variation.
During the wet winter months Nienke tried to get us to finish a few puzzles. I think we managed one and then just gave up. It is highly addictive and doesn't serve any purpose. I'd rather stay away from these things. Had to laugh about this one a friend posted though.
The European soccer championships were a complete disaster. Knew that this was going to happen. The wrong coach and players attitude. I think this pictures illustrated the disappointment. Getting out of bed at 4 in the morning for that group of uninspired nitwits. Didn't even watch the rest of the tournament. People all over the world are looking forward to these games, getting up at impossible times, being sleepy at work, etc. Showcasing orange flags outside, dressing up in orange. And then the gentlemen on the field can't be bothered, no energy, no spirit, no will. Betrayal!
And we did a bit of cleaning up. Turned out we had a table tennis table! It was hidden under the carefully stored boxes and other stuff in our garage. Made a big pile of things we had not used for quite a while and brought that to the op-shop (second hand shop). Another pile to the tip. And then there was still a lot of stuff on the shelves. Thinking back of our year in South America you don't really need that much. But.... that old lamp might come in handy one day, and .... I will go back fishing from the beach, so that casting rod stays...... And thus the cluttering continues.
Just a few pics of the sunsets and views in between.
After a nice autumn storm some firewood (well, that is after some hard work) came down. Chopped it up and threw the branches on the fire. It took a while before aero planes could land on Kapiti airport again.
Got a nice fire to warm myself on in the end.
The nice thing about New Zealand is is that the climate is very moderate. Even though it is winter, a nice stroll over the golf courts is always possible. The snow on the Tararua's reminds us of the fact that it's not summer yet and shorts are better avoided. Funny how Roger always wears the same shirt when playing golf!
We did a morning walk along the beach and discovered there was suddenly a small peninsula on the southern end of the Otaki river. Interesting, but unfortunately it did not last long. Does show though that our beach is still growing because of all the stones brought on by the Otaki and Manawatu rivers and all the driftwood from Rangitikei and Whanganui rivers.
Found these two sleeping in our letterbox. Homeless as. Dick and Nettie had sold their house before they got a new one. We took them in for a couple of nights being good Samaritans. They cooked, cleaned and got a few other jobs done. We could get used to that....
Look how relaxed Nienke was. I think I'll get her a butler for her birthday.
And the yellow submarine brought the Beatles to Otaki. Big party in the local milk factory (now a classy establishment for weddings etc.). With food from the 60's. I pity those poor people from the 60's, the food wasn't particularly good. The atmosphere was great! Nienke dancing with some friends.
Glass of wine, sitting on the deck after a hard days work, enjoying the view. Great hotel this is.
My guess 4 or 5 stars, at least.
We went to Martinborough for a weekend. A short break. You know, for a bit of walking, some wine tasting, maybe a bit of cycling. I fell for it. Again. My Covid app showed me that we visited 30 shops on Saturday alone. Have to admit that a nature walk would have been asking for trouble.
The sky above the Martinborough hotel (and the house we rented right behind it) was pretty dark. Needless to say that it was quite wet. We had a nice dinner at our favorite restaurant and saw a few good movies in front a the woodfire. Weird how that feels like a holiday when you have the same at home...
Let's have breakfast at the hotel in Lake Ferry and do a beach walk there. Stupid, we could have known, the only thing on the menu that was not fried was the coffee. Breakfast turned into lunch almost at home.
And then, when you get of the highway, drive down Te Horo Beach road and reach the bridge to Sims road you see this. What a view ay, captured by Tokerau Jim, one of the locals in Te Horo, a great photographer.
We bought tickets for the farewell gig of Tim L. Brown and the Caramellos, performing in ...... te Horo Hall. Was likely going to be a nice night we said to each other. A bit of blues... Well, it was bloody amazing. A big band (13 musicians, including a cello) on a small stage, heaps of energy, great swinging blues. How is it possible we never heard this guy before. He lives around the corner!
Just a few more sunsets.
And a joke in between. You have to keep laughing.
And another one, no joke, but soooo nice.
And another one. A big branch I mean. Big pine trees after many years standing fierce in the storms, finally losing some limbs in the southerlies.
Me and my team were ready to start working on it.......
This is the easy part. This happened on one of the least accessible corners of our property. Maneuvering the tractor over there is tricky. Comes with a few shrieks if Nienke is around. Doesn't bother the pigs though. It's sunny, they had food, no need to get up and check where the noise was coming from.
Our good friends Jules and Gareth came over for dinner so I made a bit of sushi. Didn't know their son came as well, they almost managed to eat it all. What you see was just a selection. I could never live on my own, can't cook for one person.
Nienke was given a flight over Kapiti as a birthday present by our friends Maarten en Ria. For her and a friend. It took some time but I was glad she picked me! We flew over our house, around Kapiti island, Mana island, over the Tararua's and the new expressway. Pretty good! Our property from the air.
Although a bit nervous she bravely climbed into the front seat and enjoyed the ride. Brown bag at hand of course.
Sunset shining it's beautiful orange beams over the snowy mountains.
And they are white again, the mountains. Painted these fence rails black once. Looked really nice. Unfortunately time and lack of sun have not been kind to them. A green, mossy layer has taken over. Time for a typical New Zealand product; 'Spray and walk away'. Well, I couldn't spray, so I brushed it on there. They do say you have to be patient, which I am, at times... So far it is not really working. May have to walk away from that product.
Another Kiwi product, a bitumen product for on a flat roof. Now 10 years old and falling apart, entering our drink water system. It is so brittle that I can see where the rats on the roof have been leaning against the window frames to spy on us, black feet against a white frame. After painting up there my shoes and pants where black was well. A far from healthy situation. According to the company it worked even better when it was a bit lose (really). I know there is something lose in that company... anyway, time to divert the water from the flat roof from our water tanks. Dug a draining pit, a few extra pipes, ready. I know Nienke, no idea why that took 2 months.... You have to think these things through you see... In my defense, had to wait for 10 days for one part. The shortage of containers and ships sailing for New Zealand thanks to covid make building supplies scarce.
Yep, we've started vaccinating the population here as well. En mass. So we set up here at the race course. Started really early. So early that when the organiser mentioned there was a doctor there today I asked who that was......
Meet Mahara, my comrade in arms. She is a nurse at Otaki Medical and kindly offered to do the admin part. You know I actually had to do a 4 hour course to become an official vaccinator? I now finally know where the deltoid muscle is and how to stop a bleeding. None of my patients will ever exsanguinate anymore. I feel so much wiser now. I did refuse to do the admin course though. Typing a name in the correct space and ticking a few boxes is too much for me.
The European soccer championships were a disaster, but we can be so proud of our Olympic team. Especially this lady here, Diede de Groot who won the single and the double at the Paralympics tennis. She even managed to win the Grand slam a few months later, something Djokovic failed at. Determination.
Particularly nice clouds.
A second vaccination day. This time we did not do it together with the District Health Board, but only for the Otaki practice. A derelict petrol station gave us the necessary shelter for the sun. Not for the wind though. Managed to do another 160 jabs that day.
Small celebration afterwards with the team. We did our own traffic management, admin and jabbing. Hence so many people.
Bluebottles are weird creatures. It looks like when it is stormy they blow themselves up, only to be blown on to the beach by the wind. They look nice. But as the are family of the Portuguese man-o-war they are not that friendly for swimmers. Nienke once got entangled by one in Antigua. Poor girl had to float in the pool the rest of the day, dozed by anti-histamines.
Look at that long line lying in the sand. It's full of nematocysts that can fire a toxic load into your skin, enough to kill fish, but sometimes also humans.
One weekend we drove north to visit our friend Whetu who lives in Raglan. Yes, that one town in New Zealand we never visited so far. Tick in the box. Nice area. A cosy dinner turned into a spontaneous party that night with some house sitters and their guests. One guy from Holland put Andre hazes songs on. Embarrassing. The others had fun though.
Raglan has many inlets which makes it attractive to fish and do other watersports. Of course it is most famous for surfing. Either one were a bit to cold for us, so we stuck with a beach walks, a toast and some good stories. Oh, .. and that party.
We took the beautiful coastal road from Raglan to Taranaki to visit some other friends. yep, Dick and Nettie, the couple that stayed with us for 2 weeks. Nice beach walk, good place to fish. It's a reserve, so bad luck Dick.
In Taranaki (also called New Plymouth) we visited a few parks where the trees and plants were all enjoying the spring. This park was in the foothills of Mount Taranaki (in the old days Mount Egmont), the volcano. You'd say that Abel Tasman would have come up with the name Mount Egmont, but it was captain Cook, who named it after one of the Lords of the admiralty. Tasman was too buys fleeing from the area to name things.
Nienke is not at home so I can't ask her what the name of all these colored things were. For me they are all tulips.
Attracts the bumblebees.
Nice tulips though....
On the way back home we did every now and then get a glance of Mount Taranaki with the snow on top.
Our poor Louise has a problem. She must have damaged her nose somehow and formed granuloma in her nostrils. Not very handy when you are only able to breath through your nose. Had to call the vet in to do a small operation. She got her nose ring removed and is now on antibiotics. It did help a bit, but there is a long way to go. She is perky enough though and that is good as it would be a big hole to dig!
The other day a big branch fell almost on top of me. One of the pines in our little forest did not have any green in the top anymore. Dead. And that is probably why after a while it the tree decided to shed that lame limb. So I decided to topple the other dead trees as well, I live with a safety manager (amongst other tasks) after all. Just a bit more safe when we walk between those trees.
Small pile of firewood. Again. The firewood shed is full. Ready for the winter. Oh, it's summer.....
Our national museum, Te Papa, in Wellington was able to borrow some surrealistic works from the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen from the Netherlands. We managed to get some tickets for the exhibition. This is the 'Couple aux têtes pleines de nuages' or 'Couple with their heads full of clouds' is from Salvador Dali and actually depicts himself with his wife Gala. Great to see more works of him, but also Magritte, Ouburg, Duchamp and Willink amongst others.
New Zealand is an amazing country, the nature, people, music and art are great. But we miss history. So exhibitions like this and the van Gogh exhibition last year are a welcome cultural experience here in NZ. This is Nienke mimicking a famous painting.
'La reproduction interdite' (Not to be reproduced) by Rene Magritte. We really enjoyed ourselves that afternoon.
After the pleasant afternoon in Te Papa we met friends in Mac Brewery for drinks. The four of us were part of the 'Dutch borrelclub' which had organised a dinner at the new Indonesian restaurant in Wellington 'Seroja cafe'. The owner who runs a similar restaurant in Napier had come over to welly to prepare a 'rijsttafel' for us. It was delicious. We will be there more often. Because of covid we had to dine at 4 different tables, but switching was not an issue......
On a clear day you can see Mount Taranaki from our deck. It's that little grey triangle in the middle of the picture. 165 km in a direct line from our house.
During one of our walks I managed to capture this Tui, busy with his evening concert in the cabbage tree. I keep telling me I need a new phone with a better camera. Although I like this picture I am so jealous of Jim Tokerau whose pictures are just amazing. isn't that a good excuse for a new phone.
Jim made this picture of one of our local Tui's.
An another beauty.
This is not one of his, but two Kaka (New Zealand parot) in Zeelandia, bird reserve in Wellington.
With a few people from the Netherlands (all ex-board members of the U.S.S.V. Sphaerinda, a student sport club from Utrecht) I am writing a book about the history of Sphaerinda. Next year we'll celebrate Sphaerinda's 140th birthday. That's right, from 1882. Here my old membership card. A passport photo was mandatory on the pass, but I only had old school pictures. Doing research in old archives is actually a lot of fun. So far I discovered the names of the founders (we never knew) and where the name likely comes from. Found about 750 documents online about the history from 1882 till 1952. The other can do the last few years.
While working on the computer on the dinner table (Nienke has the other PC's when she is working from home) two Rosellas came checking us out. We've never seen them so close to the beach before. Nice to add these Aussie birds to our flock.
My breakfast on the 7th of October. Nienke used to make me a cheesecake in the Netherlands for my birthday, but we can't find the right stuff for that here. So, a lime pie for my 60th! Delicious.
I am not a person to make a lot of fuss about birthdays, in fact, in the Netherlands I always made sure I was on working that evening. That hasn't changed, so it was an ordinary day. We did invite Guy and Liesbeth over in the weekend as Guy's birthday was on the Sunday. I made sushi,
and they brought yet another cake. Loved the remark on the cake; '60, it's just a flesh wound', a wink to the scene from Monty Python where the Black knight after having lost all his limbs doesn't want to give up 'it is only a flesh wound'.
Breakfast with presents for Guy.
Weather is getting better so we invited Garth, Janine, Marya and Roger over for dinner and a good fire in the garden. Summer season has started.
Mixed feelings though, happy for the summer, but Covid is now taking over New Zealand. Not looking forward to the coming weeks. So we try to distract ourselves and enjoy the relatively free life we have at the moment. Coming weekend another dinner with friends in Welly. Play a bit of tennis. Finished the winter competition last week winning the final. Started summer competition yesterday with a 5 - 1 victory. Life is good now, but what will the future bring? Well you're up to date again. We'll try and be a bit more regular again. In the meantime, greetings from down under!
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