Month: December 2012

December 6, 2012

Our blood is thin from seven months in the tropics.  We’re at about the same latitude south as San Francisco is north (but it should start to get warmer here soon as it’s getting to be summer in the southern hemisphere).  We had to dig out all the blankets after finding them stuffed away in the bow.  I want to go back to the tropics!  Waaaaaaa!

Oh yea, it’s not just me, mister whiner, who’s cold.  This is Cyndi on the passage, about two days north of New Zealand.

December 7, 2012

Opua, New Zealand is beautiful. It looks a lot like Maine–a very green and lush version of Maine with hillside-type, woody homes and hundreds of boats sprinkled about.

We thought when we lived in Southern California we were living in the boating capitol of the United States; then we saw Annapolis and realized we were wrong.  Now we see just a glimpse of New Zealand and realize we used to live in boating backwaters.  I think everyone here, even a few of the sheep, owns a boat.

Legacy in her new home in Opua Marina (at least for the next two weeks).

Nearby we had a market with the type of produce we haven’t seen in months!

And even a store with boating supplies!

All this and only a few minutes by foot from our boat. I’m in heaven, despite the arctic temperatures (down to nearly 70 during the day!).

Below, a quick glimpse of the town of Paihia, about an hour walk from our marina or ten minutes by car. It’s a really pretty little town. We are definitely back in the first world. -Rich

December – April, 2012

(The first in what will be a series of “New Zealand Discovery” Posts.)

Our first new discovery in New Zealand was the coffee (see the Welcome to New Zealand post). They don’t do coffee the same way we do in America, and this took us totally by surprise.

The basic cup of black coffee is called a Long Black.  It’s two shots of espresso with hot water added.  Usually it’s added when the coffee is made, but occasionally they will give you a little pitcher of hot water and let you do it yourself.  The other basic cup of coffee is a Flat White, which is a Long Black with hot milk and sometimes a little foam added.  Aside from these two basics, there are the usual coffee drinks to choose from: cappuccino, latte, etc.

As for brewed coffee, it’s pretty hard to find.  There are only two places we’ve seen where one can get brewed or “filter” coffee: Starbucks and Mc Donald’s.  Starbucks of course features long backs and flat whites but sells brewed coffee also.  Mc Donald’s features their Mc Cafe counters and practically hides what they call “filter coffee” in tiny print on the regular menu.

It didn’t take us long to get used to the change because the coffee is really good.  Just like back home, we frequently get a coffee drink out during the day.  I think New Zealanders love their coffee as much as Americans do in that every place sells coffee drinks: even the most out-of-the-way places or rustic bars have a top-quality espresso machine.  One thing you won’t find here is the “never-ending cup of coffee.” The coffee drinks end, and if you want more you have to order—and pay for—a second one.  Somehow, we’ve never missed those American refills, maybe because we seldom go out for breakfast and when we do, we just get larger drinks.

It was fun to finally get to Auckland in January and visit Starbucks and get brewed coffee.  I still love it as much as ever, but when we went back to Opua we didn’t miss it.  I was overjoyed, though, when we visited Tauranga where we will be staying awhile to find it has two Starbuck’s.  Oh happy day!  Then Rich gave me some stunning news: he realized he likes his New Zealand long blacks better than he likes Starbucks.  Except for a couple of years in LA, we aren’t church goers and Starbucks is the closest thing we have to a House of Worship.  We even call it “The Temple.” Rich deciding he doesn’t like The Temple so much anymore is akin to his changing religions on me.  On our second morning in Tauranga, we went to Starbucks for me and then had to walk to a Robert Harris (a New Zealand coffee house) for him.

Now that we’re heading down to Tauranga to stay a few weeks, our marriage could be tested.  I will want my Starbuck’s and Rich will want his long black from a New Zealand establishment (he doesn’t think Starbucks does good Long Blacks).  It may take going back to crappy Polynesian coffee in Fiji to save our marrage. -Cyndi

December 6, 2012

After getting tied up, we felt pretty dazed.  We had about 4 hours of rum-soaked sleep the night before, and we were landsick. Landsickness is what happens when you first step on solid ground after many days at sea.  You feel off-kilter and out of it, slow to process life and slow to react.  We usually treat landsickness with drinking, but in this case we’d done enough of that.  We did know we wanted a nice hearty meal and some coffee; so our friends Bob and Linda suggested we eat at the Marina Cafe, the little restaurant right at the marina.

I had my first culture clash with New Zealand when we went to the counter at the Marina Cafe to order some coffee and lunch.  They seemed to have a good selection of coffee drinks, and I thought a cafe au lait might be very nice!  I ordered one and got a blank look.  It’s half coffee and half warm milk, I explained.  They said, “Oh, like a latte.”  No, I said, not a latte (which is espresso based), just milk with regular coffee.  I got another blank look. I thought maybe I wasn’t being clear, so more loudly I enunciated, “Re-gu-lar coffee.”  I got another blank look.  I said, “You know, like from a Mr. Coffee!”  More blank looks ensued.

Thankfully someone stepped in at this point to explain all the coffee drinks here are espresso based, and maybe I’d like a flat white, which is similar to a cafe au lait.  Rich would get a long black, which was 2 shots of espresso with hot water added.  Well, OK, we could try that, but I thought how odd they don’t have “normal” coffee at this cafe.

I would come to find out that there is no “normal” coffee as we know it in New Zealand, that the coffee drinks here are all espresso-based. Brewed coffee (or “filter coffee” as they call it) is a uniquely American phenomenon, and the Cafe staff must have thought I had a screw loose when I went on about how someone named Mr. Coffee makes something called regular coffee and why can’t they make it like that?  New Zealand coffee will be the subject of my next blog post, but for now we had managed to order two coffees and an open-faced steak sandwich to split.

Bob and Linda found us a table and we sat down to wait for our lunch. This time of the year is busy with all the cruisers from the boats that have been arriving for the past 2 months and locals getting ready for the start of summer in New Zealand. People seemed to be everywhere, and we saw a few people we knew.

We got the info on everything: the cruising club down the way (like a yacht club), the Opua store (the local general store), the town of Paihia about 3 miles away with a grocery store, restaurants and shops, the bigger town of Kerikeri about 35 minutes away with more of all that, the town of Russell a ferry ride away (car or on foot depending on where you catch it), the city of Whangarei about 45 minutes away, farmer’s markets, places you can walk, where you can buy a car, nearby road trips to take, etc. etc. etc.

Up until we arrived, Rich and I had a plan. We’d get to Opua, secure Legacy, then asap (like the next morning) get on a bus and go down to Starbucks in Auckland, about 3 hours south of here.  We’d spend a couple of days there and look into where we could keep the boat.  We were desperate for a city, a real city, with lots of people and restaurants and (of course) Starbucks!  But as we sat here, dazed and confused, with everyone seeming to talk about everything and all the things we needed to experience here, we realized this was all the “city” we could handle right now (plus the coffee drinks were really good).  I think, had we gone into Auckland, our heads would have exploded. Bob understood how overwhelmed we must feel and summed up the information overload perfectly with this statement: “It’s like trying to drink from a fire hose.”  I guess everyone who arrives here goes through it as there’s a lot to process.

After lunch, we went and got some liability insurance (a requirement for getting a slip at the marina) from the people at The Marina Shop, and they were all so nice!  In addition to the insurance, we also got an offer to borrow a car for a day and a Vodafone dongle so we could have internet access.  We then went to the marina office to get signed in, and they were really nice, too.  By the end of the afternoon, we felt no need at all to rush off to Auckand as this place was pretty great!

Several people we knew were going to the Cruising Club that night, the local yacht club which the public can visit on a limited basis.  As much as we would love to have gone, we were too exhausted.  We went back to the boat, had a little more rum to celebrate our real arrival in New Zealand, and then conked out and slept for 12 hours. –Cyndi