The Driving Creek Railway

During our two weeks in the Coromandel Peninsula, we decided to take a trip along the Driving Creek Railway, New Zealand's only narrow-gauge train ride.

The one-hour return Coromandel train ride takes you through replanted native kauri forest and includes two spirals, three short tunnels, five reversing points and several large viaducts as it climbs up to the Eye-Full (!) Tower at the top of the mountain.

The railway was started in 1975 as a way for the owner to get native clay and pinewood for his potteries which were at the base of the mountain. After 15 years of construction he decided to open his railway to the public, and has built three passenger trains and extended the tracks every year since then. As they harvest the pine trees which were planted by early settlers, they are replanting native Kauri trees which would once have covered the entire area in huge forests.

Check out this web site for an animated clip of the train route: http://www.drivingcreekrailway.co.nz/Train_Ride.cfm

Tractors in Opiti Beach

On our first weekend at Matarangi, our friends Harley & Lilian came up to visit. As they are familiar with the area they took us for a driving tour. We went out a long windy narrow road to the beach community at Opiti.

Especially in the beach communities where we like to stay, boats are everywhere, but because New Zealand is surrounded by ocean, and there are tides, people generally do not keep their boats tied up at docks. Cities have marinas, but otherwise, they take their boats to the beach or boat ramp every time they want to go out on the water. Sometimes its quite nerve-wracking to come around a corner on a narrow road to be faced with a car towing a behemoth boat to the nearby ramp.

Opiti was unusual for us, in that every home or bach seemed to have an old tractor parked in the yard. We watched a tractor pull a boat trailer up a narrow stream crossing the beach to where it could access the road. Harley explained that people do not like to put their cars in the salt water so they will keep a tractor at the bach to tow the boat and trailer to the beach. One house had two tractors in the yard.

Texas to New Zealand

From Austin we travelled to Auckland, New Zealand. We were quite concerned about the fact that it is two flights from Austin to Los Angeles, and then a 13 hour overnight flight to Auckland. This is a trip that is exhausting at the best of times, and we thought that it would be very difficult for me. We decided that this once we would fly business class for the last leg, from LAX to Auckland.

Because we flew business class we had access to Air New Zealand's first class lounge in LAX, the Koru Club. The best thing about the Koru Club is the beautifully appointed private showers. After a long day of travelling, they were just the thing to freshen us up. Towels and shampoo are provided. The lounge has comfy leather armchairs, free drinks, wireless internet and a never ending buffet for light meals and snacks. Our flight left at 10:30 pm Pacific time, which is 1:30 AM Fort Erie time. A very long time indeed!

Air NZ has lie flat beds in business class for their Pacific flights. We were assigned seats in the upper deck of a 747. It's a small cabin, and each business class seat is angled away from the window and toward the centre aisle of the plane, with a low wall around it, so every seat is private. You can't really talk to your neighbor, and in fact Barry and I had seats in the same row across the aisle from each other so we could see each other but only communicate non-verbally.

Because the leather seats have an airbag in the seatbelt, you can recline while taking off and landing. You can choose to have an early meal instead of the full dinner service and go to bed soon after takeoff. When you are ready, the attendant will unfold the seat into a long, narrow, although firm, bed. There is a cover for the bed, and a pillow and duvet for warmth. The personal TV pulls out from the wall so you can watch it from the seat or from the bed.

We did stay up for the dinner service, so it was more like 3:30 am Fort Erie time before we were able to lie down to sleep. If I ever take this flight again, I will take the light meal and go to sleep sooner.

We slept well, although Barry woke earlier than I did, as he usually does. I got a full 8 hours, waking just as the breakfast service was coming around.

The day of our arrival was long as well, because we had to pick up our rental car, go grocery shopping and drive 3 ½ hours to the bach in the Coromandel Peninsula which would be our home for the next 12 days. We were both grateful that we had had so much sleep on the plane. I was very tired by the time we got there, and in fact I spent the next couple of days resting.

A visit to Austin

On October 13 we flew to Austin, Texas for Barry to present at a conference. It was the first time I had flown in over a year, since well before my chemo, and I was nervous about the length of the trip. We flew from Buffalo to Washington DC, had a layover in Washington and then flew on to Austin. With a taxi ride at both ends and the layover time, we were travelling for almost ten hours. I had a rest when we arrived and still had energy to go out to dinner with a friend.

Although Barry was busy with the conference we went out to dinner with friends every night. The weather was over 90 degrees during our first few days and I spent some time around the outdoor pool. The Hilton is close to downtown and there were many restaurants close by. We also walked by the river most days. Here we are having dinner with our old friends Rodger, and Ray and Elsie.

One of the most interesting things about Austin is the bat colony that roosts under the Congress Ave bridge. It is the largest urban bat colony in North America and every night around sunset the entire colony of about 1.5 million bats erupts from under the bridge in dark streams. Hundreds of people go there every evening around sunset and wait for up to an hour for the bats to appear. The night we went the bats erupted quite late but we were able to get a spot on a dock downstream from the bridge and saw the bats clearly against the night sky.