December, 2012
Late this morning, we stopped at the cafe1 for a long back2 and flat white3 to take on our trip to Paihia4 to enjoy the pohutukawa5 blooms of silly season6 before going for a scorcher peri peri7 in Kerikeri8 and some hokey pokey ice cream9. -Cyndi
The only way I can begin to explain what Cyndi’s talking about is through footnotes.
1. The cafe in question is the wonderful little restaurant at our marina.
2. You don’t order regular, brewed coffee here in NZ10. A long black is a shot or two of espresso with hot water added to fill the cup. It’s incredible – the best cup of coffee I’ve ever had. This is a real treat after the long coffee-quality drought we’ve been through in the Tropical Pacific.
3. A flat white is a long black with milk instead of water. It’s like a cafe au lait, kind of.
4. Paihia is the small town closest to us. We’re in Opua but it’s really just a few businesses, the cafe (see 1 above) and the marina. Paihia is about 15 minutes away by Audi.
5. Pohutukawa trees are NZ’s Christmas trees. They look a lot like bottle-brush trees, blooming with bright red blooms around Christmas time. There are very famous New Zealand scenes with the blooming pohutukawa trees hanging out over the water.
6. Silly season is what the Kiwi’s11 call Christmas vacation. It seems that no Kiwi wants to be home for Christmas – everyone travels, businesses close for weeks at a time and the holiday towns (like Paihia) get very busy.
7. McDonald’s here in NZ serves a sandwich called a scorcher peri peri. Apparently, it’s a spicy Portuguese chicken sandwich which we’ve yet to try.
8. Kerikeri is the larger town about 30 minutes from our boat in Opua. It’s a really nice town, about half the size of Santa Monica maybe. There are a bunch of nice restaurants, two huge supermarkets and one movie theater.
9. Hokey Pokey seems to be the national ice cream flavor of NZ. It’s vanilla ice cream with pieces of sponge toffee (little crunchy bits). It’s good!
10. NZ is short for New Zealand – I’ll bet you figured that out! What you may not know is that the NZ alphabet has one letter that’s different from the US alphabet. Here, when you say the letter Z, you say zed.
11. For some reason, New Zealanders call themselves Kiwis after their silly yet distinctive and rare bird. Maybe us Americans should call ourselves the Eagles or the Balds?
footnotes by Rich
