Today we drove back into the Lands, to Ernabella, where Jim and Karen and the boys spent a great deal of time – it was the ‘base’ of their work. I finally found a piece of art there that ‘called’ to me, and only afterwards found out that the artist is a “daughter�? of Karen’s. Aboriginal people relate to each other and everyone strictly, and only, by family structure. So Karen and Jim were ‘adopted’ by a ‘family’, and thereafter were considered sister, or brother, or mother, or daughter, or aunt, or niece, etc., and that relationship endures forever.

We spent our last night bush-camping in Ichinpiri, a lovely spot just below a beautiful rock waterhole, which we explored the next morning.

Friday night we stayed in a campground in a tiny campground cabin in Yulara (the resort town that was moved just outside the national park), and Patricia and I opted to sleep on the nearby grassy lawn in our swags. We then got up for an *early* hike through the Valley of the Winds in Kata Juta, which means “many heads�? in Pitjantjatjara language. There are 36 rock mounds over 35 hectares of land. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera, but I have a few photos from Phil. This is a mysteriously beautiful place (more…)

The next morning Karen cooked the grubs (called Maku) crispy in butter, and Patricia and I each tasted two segments. We both wished our stomachs had felt better, because they were delicious – a bit like buttered popcorn and hard boiled egg.

Then we headed off to see if we could find the “Surveyor General’s Corner” the marker of the corner of Western Australia, South Australia and the Northern Territories. Karen had gotten a “mud map” from a friend in the village, and she and Phil (a retired Army Lt. Col.) had some lively discussions over which map would be better to use to find it. (more…)

Wednesday night we spent camped out in the desert not too far from some kind of decaying animal. There is a plague of camels in the center right now and they come into the communities looking for water and then die. We didn’t actually see a dead one near our camp and didn’t smell it until after dinner when the wind changed direction. Tim said “Nevermind, you won’t smell it after you go to sleep,” and he was right. (more…)

One of the quintessential days of our trip was the first Wednesday. We had been camping for two nights at that point and it had been really hot – each day got over 100 but on Thursday it was about 110. The villages had lots of people in them because they were getting organized to go out bush for “men’s business”. There were people driving around everywhere and then they would sit in their cars for a while and then drive around again; all very excited and worked-up. (more…)

Hello from the RED CENTER!

But I’ll back up for a minute…

Sydney is beautiful – I have named it the City of Bays and Beaches. We walked all over, rode buses, two-level trains, and took the ferry, saw flying foxes (HUGE bat-like things with fox faces) in the botanical garden, and swam in several beaches, thanks to my friend Socs, who was a *lovely* host. We have pretty much decided to get back there a little earlier to see more – the weather is like DC in summer: hot and humid. (more…)

Socs, my friend from QIQ and Hyperion was a lovely host, along with his wife Caroline. They took us to the beach for a picnic lunch, and then Socs took us beach hopping. The next day we took a bus to the ferry (they live on the North Shore) over to walk around The Rocks, past the Opera House, through the Botanical Gardens (where we saw flying foxes – huge bat-like things hanging by the thousands from the trees), through Potts Point, then Kings Cross, then took a two-level subway train to Bondi Beach for dinner at Sobo with my friends from hiking the volcano in New Zealand. Whew! (more…)

I can hardly believe it – Patricia and I are leaving in 7 days (Tuesday 20 Feb) for 6 weeks in Australia! This will indeed be the trip of a lifetime. Thanks to Patricia’s months of planning, our trip has 4 parts, plus 5 days of Sydney sightseeing.

Part 1: Karen (my Newkirk sister-‘out’-law) is taking us and 9 others (including Marty – younger son, my nephew, age 23) from Adelaide into the Outback for 10 days. She has done *amazing* work on this portion, excited to have a great reason to go back to visit her and my brother Jim’s old friends and colleagues from the years they lived and worked in the Pitjantjatjara Lands. We will camp most nights, under the stars, often not far from an Aboriginal community, sleeping in swags. (more…)

Hard to believe, but I am HOME now. And my last two days in “Godzone” were as full as any other. For my last morning in Tongariro National Park, my delightful and very gracious hosts at the Tongariro Crossing Lodge, Sharee and Steve Fawlk, took me into Whakapapa Village where I headed off on a 2.5 hour walk to Taranaki Falls, about 6km. It is in between Mt. Ngaruhoe (Mt. Doom) and Mt. Ruapehu, so the views of the perfectly shaped cone of Mt. Ngaruhoe were wonderful… I kept a close eye on it to see if the summit would peek through the clouds, but except for one small corner, it was not to happen. But the rest of the scenery was still worth it. (more…)

This morning (barely :)), one of the lodge owners here took me up to the Whakapapa Ski Field on the Mt. Ruapehu volcano. Some of you may remember it… this is the one that erupted in 1995-1996, and there were photos on the internet of people skiing while the mountain is erupting behind and above them (I have been looking but haven’t yet found them)! So yes, it is another active volcano. All of the volcanoes in the park today were shrouded in clouds, but even though I dressed pretty well (thermal shirt, vest, raincoat, gloves, and headband), I had on thin capri pants and only ankle socks, so my lower legs were bare. (more…)

Hi all – I DID the Tongariro Crossing today! And I was able to view and walk right past Mt. Doom (Mt. Ngauruhoe) – you can hike to the top, but it was just too much of a side trip… as it was, the 17 km (10.5 mile) hike took me nearly 9 hours. It was about 2600 (800 meters) feet up, and 3800 feet (1150 meters) down, and the landscape was absolutely stunning. I am so sorry I could not take photos – it felt like being on another planet. (more…)

Rotorua is a beautiful city in the heart of the volcanic region of the north island – I wish I could have taken more photos of it. But it does have a stinky sulphur smell about it – didn’t really bother me, but it does a lot of folks, even though they say you get used to it.

Here is a beautiful, true story whose history is part of Rotorua, and that we heard at the Maori village on Thursday night: Hinemoa was a young woman who lived on the western shores of Rotorua, and Tutanekai lived on Mokoia Island, a large island in the middle of the lake. (more…)

Thursday early morning we all headed out in a van hosted by Adventure Specialities, a NZ non-profit group whose mission is to work with at-risk kids and families. Our destination was Waitomo Caves, toward the central west of the North Island, about 4 hours’ drive. We made it about 1/4 mile and the engine overheated, so we spent a little over an hour waiting for a replacement van, on the grassy portion between freeway ramps! (more…)

Today was our last day, and I will …sort of… miss it! 🙂 It has been hard work, and it has been really great to be able to switch work sites, though I *did* get tired and sore from painting. Today I was at the experimental house site most of the day, but it was quite hot and I am coming down with a cold and I found myself losing steam so I bugged out the last couple hours and went back to painting – out of the sun. (more…)

My *sweet* little camera is broken. I am so bummed. I think what happened is that something was dropped on it, or it was (unknowingly) stepped on! I pulled it out tonight to take a group shot at dinner, and found an exotic-looking black flower on permanent display with delicate lines through it. (more…)

Yesterday, Saturday, was our 6th workday, and I **really** worked (not that I hadn’t been already!) – I got to work on the new site for the first time.

In case I had not mentioned it earlier, our team is actually working on two new houses under construction. The one most of us are working on is the traditional Habitat house here in Auckland, made out of a heavy, thick “tri-board” (wood chips and glue – very strong) with aluminum siding and roof…very nice looking. The other house has just been started, and is using an experimental design by a local university student architect, who is also supervising the build. That one is using a type of concrete block (I’ll have to find out more later), and we are preparing the foundations for the garage and the house. (more…)

Today was our 5th workday on the house we are building for Juanita, the single mom who will be the new homeowner. She had sick kids on Monday and Tuesday, but has been at the building site for several hours the last two days, working along side us as much as possible when she is not at work. (more…)

Wow – what an adventure this trip has been! When I arrived in Auckland on Sunday (March 5th) at 9am, I was just an hour too late to join the team’s short city tour, so the director of the Manukau Habitat affiliate picked me up and took me to their house to help prepare for the big brunch for the team and all the other kiwis that would join in. (ALL New Zealanders refer to themselves as kiwis.) And it turns out I was really lucky I didn’t make that tour… when they were stopped at a high point above the city and the stadium where the All Blacks (national rugby team) play, the van was broken into and 3 lost passports, IDs, tickets, money, cell phones, cameras, etc! So that was a rather inauspicious beginning, but we have had a great time so far, in the midst of those three having to deal with that. (more…)

Hi everyone! Sorry for the long delay in updating my travelogues here!

Friday (March 2), Karen and Phil and I drove over the mountains north out of Queenstown to the small community of Fox Glacier. It was a lovely, relaxing drive that took about 8 hours, including all our stops for photos and lunch. Luckily, Phil is almost as much of a camera nut as I am. We could see many of the same mountains I had seen before, from different perspectives, and then many new ones as well – all are incredibly rugged and ragged-peaked, with long, sharp jagged ridgelines and shiny granite faces, sheared by glaciers. (more…)

NOW UPDATED! Karen, Phil, I, and 48 other unsuspecting hikers in our group survived the Milford Track – unbelievable!!! It was **very** challenging – it was not 33 miles in 5 days, as I thought, but 33.5 miles in THREE days – I just didn’t read the fine print very carefully! (more…)

What a beautiful day – shirtsleeve weather, beautiful!!

I had planned to take the gondola to the top of one of the mountains just above the city, but when I got to the gondola terminal, I noticed a couple of hikers headed off on a trail, and realized that there is a trail to the top! I had been thinking I need to keep my legs in shape for the Milford Track tomorrow, so this was perfect. It turned out to be more than adequate for this purpose! It was **VERY** steep, and in my sneakers, was quite challenging, but beautiful. It was very like nearing the top of the trail above Bear Lake in Colorado, where the trail gets steeper and rockier. There were many spots where I had to pull myself up using branches and rocks. (more…)

Hello all… I was going to say this was an uneventful day, but the bus ride from Mt. Cook to Queenstown this aftenoon was really rather amazing, in retrospect. It seemed that we crossed the wide high rolling hills (over Lindis pass for miles and miles) of sheep and dairy farms, then vineyards, forever! They truly seemed endless, sometimes barren, sometimes heavily covered with many-colored green shrubs, always very steep, then becoming very rugged. It could have been the hills of Texas, or of southern Idaho. I think now that I would like to see a sheep farm, and plan to check out that possibility. Shops selling the ‘finest merino wool in the world’ are **everywhere** – too bad I rarely wear it, it seems a shame to pass it up. We passed through the glider flight capital of the world – only two weeks ago the international competition was held in Omarama. (more…)

I went to the top of Mt. Cook yesterday! Unbelievable. I splurged on a scenic helicopter ride – nearly an hour – and it [almost] left me speechless. We flew up the Tasman Valley (where I am staying, in Aoraki Mt. Cook National Park), over the Tasman Glacier, which is not the longest in the world outside the Arctic Circles but in the southern hemisphere. I still don’t remember how long it is, but I think not 70km – maybe 27km! We then flew between Mt. Tasman and some other peak, over the Main Divide (I presume their version of the Continental Divide) and landed on the Franz Josef Glacier, which is 11km long. I simply could not believe the spectacularly beautiful scenery – literally surrounded by jagged, pointy peaks and snow, and icefalls! As you can imagine, I was in heaven, or felt like it. (more…)

As I write this, it is about 9pm, and I have a warm buzz from having enjoyed the South Island’s favorite beer, Speights, while spending over an hour in the sofa lounge just mesmerized by the howling winds streaming the snow off the peak of Aoraki Mt. Cook (Aoraki means “cloud piercer”), which was finally bathed in sunshine after being shrouded in rain and clouds all day. (more…)

It is about 7:30pm here (about 1:30 am Tuesday, your time), and I got about 4 hours’ sleep on the plane last night from San Fran to Auckland, so have been up for about 30 hours except for the fitful airplane-seat snooze. I have kept busy today, hoping to sleep like a log tonight!

NZ smells like San Diego, because it has a maritime climate, and when we landed in Christchurch (CC) this morning at 8 am, the city was still blanketed with what Dave & Susie would call the “marine layer” of fog. (more…)