Honey, I’m home!

Home is where the heart is, they say. Well, New Zealand certainly holds three things very close to my heart: most of my family, my best friends and delicious food.

One of the best things about returning to New Zealand is being able to see the people I feel closest to, my extended family and my women friends. This year I timed my visit particularly well and was able to enjoy my first family Christmas since my mum died in April 2008. I like to think of the aunt and uncle I stayed with in Hamilton as my surrogate parents. Because they’ve known me all my life and they know my history, I can relax with them, be myself. They are helpful and supportive, and they always make me feel so very welcome.

Christmas dinner with the whanau

I also got to catch up with those of their kids and grandkids – my cousins and second cousins – who still live in Hamilton, and said hello to another, who now lives in Australia, via Skype. My aunt and uncle held a dinner party for some people they know who were also close to my family – my dad’s cousin and his wife, and a good golfing buddy of my mum’s and her husband. And my uncle drove us all the way to Whangamata, a beachside town on the Coromandel peninsula about an-hour-and-a-half’s drive from Hamilton, so I could catch up with another elderly auntie.

I also enjoyed a lovely dinner and catch up with relations from my dad’s side of the family: an elderly aunt who is the sole survivor from my dad’s siblings and in-laws, and her children – my cousins – and some of their children. That was fun too.

Though a couple live in faraway lands, the majority of my close women friends live in Auckland. I was blessed to stay once again with dearest Rosie and her son Stephen and cat Fluffy in their house in Titirangi, a suburb of bush, birds and beaches. Another good buddy, Sue, lives nearby, so the three of us shared dinners and lunches out, went shopping together and saw a few movies – The Hobbit, Skyfall and Quartet. I had a lovely long lunch, with those magnificent publishing women I used to work with at Auckland University Press, and heard about their latest doings and the hot gossip, and we shared a lot of laughs. I also long-lunched with Jo, my oldest friend – we worked together at Air New Zealand many eons ago – and caught up with her news of family, job, etc. I spent the night at the house of friends Carol and John – Carol and I taught English in the same language school – and we ate a yummy meal, drank lots of wine, and chatted till the wee hours. And I lunched with Cathy, another former teacher at that same school. She had visited me in Peru so it was great to catch up with her again.

I value having all these wonderful people in my life and it’s so good to be able to come back to New Zealand and pick up again as if our last conversation was just the day before.

Fresh flounder straight off the barbeque

And, last but by no means least, food! One of the great things about New Zealand is being able to eat a huge variety of fresh, delicious food … with confidence. And, by that I mean, without worrying about what nasty bugs and beasties you’re going to catch from the unwashed or washed-in-bad-water vegetables and fruit in your meals. Of course, you can contract stomach-churning diarrhoea-inducing bugs from any restaurant in any country but the chances of that happening are just so much higher in under-developed countries.

I also love the variety of food available in restaurants and supermarkets. I ate Italian, Turkish, Greek, Thai and good old Kiwi fare, and enjoyed every single mouthful. Christmas dinner was that traditional Kiwi staple of roast lamb with mint sauce, plus the English traditional roast turkey, as well as delicious ham on the bone, and all the trimmings. Divine! And then there’s the seafood – my favourite, and the one thing I missed in land-locked Cusco. Ah, the seafood … I’ll say no more as my mouth is watering at the very thought of it!

Thanks, New Zealand and my fellow Kiwis. It was another truly wonderful visit home.

New Zealand holiday: week three (and a bit)

I got back to Cusco this afternoon but my wonderful New Zealand holiday is still very fresh in my mind, especially as I've just been looking at all my photos. Here are my images for week three ... and I cheated a little by adding a couple of extras.

366/105 April 14, 2012

Though I didn't actually take this one but appear in it instead, I did take others of the same tree and I liked how my green tshirt makes me kind of blend in. And what a tree! It's at the bottom of my friend Rosie's garden in Titirangi (in Auckland, New Zealand) and is a kauri tree. This one may well be as much as 1000 years old, judging by its size. Just magnificent!

366/106 April 15, 2012

Taken inside Auckland Art Gallery yesterday ... looking at the lovely marble bust, and at the old part of gallery building and at the lovely trees in Albert Park beyond. The gallery currently has a splendid exhibition entitled From Degas to Dali which I enjoyed with a couple of friends. It was the first time I had seen the new extension to the gallery, which is a magnificent building in itself.

366/107 April 16, 2012

This is a flower from the metrosideros family, of which 12 are endemic to New Zealand. The most common here is the pohutukawa, known informally as the New Zealand Christmas tree as it produces its brilliant display of red flowers (made up of a mass of stamens) at Christmas time. This miniature variety is flowering now and provides a wonderfully colourful display.

366/108 April 17, 2012

The path around the Community Centre in Titirangi is lined with tiles made by local school children and designed to show aspects of life in the village. This is a good example of Titirangi, a beautiful tree-lined suburb on the shores of the Manukau harbour. The area has long been home to artists and other creative people, so these children probably have creativity programmed into their genes.

366/109 April 18, 2012

I went out for a long long walk this afternoon, partly through the tree-lined streets of Titirangi and partly around the bays that line the Manukau harbour. This was my view at about 3.30pm, and from here I walked straight ahead then turned left, crunching over oyster shells, sliding over muddy ancient lava flows and checking out rock pools. Bliss!

366/110 April 19, 2012

Another day of shell crunching today - I only have one full day of holiday left and it's busy with more friend catch-ups, so I was determined to hit the beach one last time today. I love the feel of the sand between my toes, and the smell of the salty sea, and beachcombing along the high-tide line. Pure delight!

This old tree has obviously seen better days, with barnacles and other beasties growing on it, but what wonderfully tangled roots it has.

366/111 April 20, 2012

On the last day of my holiday in Auckland I think it's appropriate to highlight the city's most well-known building, the Skytower, reflected here in another of the city's skyscrapers. At 328 metres, it's the tallest man-made structure in the Southern Hemisphere and, from the viewing platforms, you get breathtaking views for up to 80 kilometres in every direction. You can go up it, eat in it, and jump off it – and, I don’t mean anything suicidal by that. It’s one for the adrenalin junkies – it’s called Skyjump and basically you’re attached to a wire, then lowered off the side, very fast, 192m straight down. Not for me!

366/112 April 21, 2012

I couldn't resist one last beach picture before I left New Zealand and I thought this was so cute, with the kids' scooter and trike parked by a post at French Bay.

366/113 April 22, 2012

And I just had to add one more New Zealand photo before I left the country. This is the Percival Gull, the tiny plane that Jean Batten flew solo from England to New Zealand in 1936. It's on display at Auckland International airport and seems particularly appropriate as this was the beginning of 2 days spent flying half way across the world, from Auckland back to Cusco, though obviously in much bigger planes!

New Zealand holiday: week one

Either I used my return ticket to New Zealand, or I would lose it. No contest really! I also needed to use my annual leave or I’d lose it. And, though I hadn’t really missed much about New Zealand – no great cravings for peanut slabs or pineapple lumps like some people do – I yearned particularly to see the sea again. I hadn’t realised how much I would miss living close to water until I lived in land-locked and mountain-enclosed Cusco. And I knew it would be wonderful to catch up with friends and family again.

Plans were made, flights reserved, accommodation booked in – THANK YOU SO MUCH, dear Rosie, for welcoming me into your beautiful home so I could enjoy the delights of Titirangi again.

So, how has it been? Well, this year one of my projects on Google+ (where I am daily inspired by the amazing images of my photographer peers, have been welcomed into their photographic community, have been co-opted to co-curate a daily theme page, and frequently contribute my own humble pictures) has been to take one photo every day and post it to a special album. For me this has become something of a personal diary, as I’ve taken images that show aspects of my life, where I’m living, what I’m doing, what surrounds me, what I see.

To document my holiday in New Zealand, I thought I would share the images I have been taking as part of my 366 project, so here’s week one.

366/90 March 30, 2012

I lost a day travelling here to New Zealand so I'm adding two shots for one day to make up for it. Both epitomise my first day back in Auckland, as the friend I'm staying with lives in the bush (NZ's name for forest) so we are surrounded by greenery. This is looking down from her deck into the top of a huge fern (punga in the NZ Maori language).

366/91 March 31, 2012

One thing I have greatly missed living in Cusco has been water! Coming from New Zealand, an island nation, I have been surrounded by water most of my life. It was so amazing yesterday going to Piha beach, on Auckland's west coast, for a walk along the beach.

366/92 April 1, 2012

Another day, another beach ... this is the long long beach at Waipu Cove, on New Zealand's east coast, just south of Whangarei. It feels like you could walk forever!

366/92 April 2, 2012

This is the bark of New Zealand's most famous tree, the kauri. They grow straight and thick, and have very dense hard wood so, when the Europeans arrived in New Zealand in the early 1800s and quickly recognised the value of the kauri, there was mass felling of the trees for use in ship and house building, and for making furniture. As a result of this mass destruction of the kauri forests, it is now a protected species and cannot be felled. The largest kauri tree in New Zealand is approximately 45 feet (14 metres) in circumference and 169 feet (52 metres) tall.

366/94 April 03, 2012

Winter's coming ... but isn't it pretty?

366/95 April 4, 2012

This is one of the oldest buildings on Auckland's waterfront, the former Union Steamship Company office. The architecture of the newer buildings is not particularly inspiring, so I'm glad they haven't demolished some of these older ones.

399/96 April 05, 2012

A sunhat ... an essential accessory in New Zealand, which has the second highest rate of skin cancer in the world.

366/97 April 06, 2012

It's been a glorious Good Friday here in Auckland so my friend Rosie and I joined the throngs at Muriwai, a stunning 60-kilometre-long west coast beach not far from the city. A superb day for a long walk on the sands!