Author: richwest3

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

December 6, 2012

We’re here at the Opua Marina!

 

If you use the above interactive Google Map, you can check out the marina or the nearby town of Paihia just to the north of the marina.

We’re on the E Dock.  We were confused and alarmed by the number of boats at moorings and at anchor as we came into the marina in the middle of the night.  There are a lot of boats here!

 

December 5 – 6, 2012

The Bay of Islands is a very large area, about 7 miles across at the entry and about 12 miles deep.  In the bay are islands, jutting rocks, peninsulas, etc.  We probably entered the area around midnight and then had to motor through all this to Opua (our port of entry) at the innermost part of the bay, a trip that took a little over 2 hours.

I would love to say that, like our friends on Bright Angel, we were astonished at the incredible scenery and beautiful green of the islands. Unfortunately, it was dark . . . really, really dark.  There was a moon, but the cloud cover was thick.  We could barely see the outlines of some of the islands we passed by.  We have a good chart plotter and we trust it; so we were able to just go from one waypoint to another and carefully make our way down to Opua.  Luckily, the wind had nearly died, and it now seemed much warmer and more comfortable.

As we continued inland, the channel became more narrow, and we started to see boats.  There were boats on moorings and boats at anchor.  And they just seemed to be increasing!  We were trying to find the marina and the customs dock, but all these boats made everything confusing.  Why is it that things in real life always look so different than they do on a map?  We even had an aerial photo which didn’t seem to match the reality of the situation.

We finally saw the main wharf but no customs dock.  By now Rich had me get the big spotlight and use it to look at the boats that seemed to be closing in on us.  I was like that panicked girl in Jurassic Park struggling with this giant flashlight.  I know it’s unbelievably bright, and now all the people whose boats I shined it on know it, too.  I also accidentally turned the strobe on, which temporarily blinded Rich.

After the wharf ended, Rich noticed a strange-looking sort of dock structure off to our right.  It didn’t look like anything useful to me, but Rich studied it awhile, then made a sudden hard right.  It turned out we were looking at the very end of the customs dock, and as we motored up to it we could see a sign that confirmed this. Then the dock started to come into view, thank God.

There was plenty of room; so we just headed to the nearest area to get tied up and then figure out what was what.  There was a current running (currents can be wickedly strong through here) but we managed without too much trouble.  After tying up, I found a sign that confirmed that yes, we were in the right place.  We weren’t quite in New Zealand yet as the customs dock floats unattached to land, but it was close enough.

By the time we got showered and the boat straightened up, it was around after 2:30am, but it’s never too late for an arrival drink.  In this case, it was rum.  Well, one rum turned into four rums, which was great fun but not one of our smartest moves considering customs was supposed to come “at first light” whatever that meant.  (It turned out it meant around 10am).  We were conked out by 3:30am.

We woke up around 7am to a cool, gray morning, gusty and even rainy at times.  The weather had taken the predicted turn for the worse, and we felt so relieved to have made it in.  Rich called the Opua Marina and we were thrilled to get assigned a slip, which would save us from having to try to find an empty mooring ball or to have to anchor in this weather.

In preparation for customs and Quarantine, I worked on putting out everything they might be interested in.  I put out every shell we had collected and every woven basket from Tonga.  I located the beans and lentils (which I knew would be confiscated) and put those out, along with the spices for examination.  I opened the food lockers and pulled out the food bins and made a list of all the alcohol we had on board.  We were ready.

A woman form the customs office came by and talked to us and took our pre-filled-out paperwork.  That was very easy.  Then the Quarantine guy came by.  He didn’t have any dogs as we were told he might, but he did go though our all our food storage himself.  Away went our onions, beans and lentils, honey, and surprisingly, our Trader Joe’s Wasabi Mayonnaise. Everything else got to stay (I was especially relieved about our rice and spices).

The Quarantine officer left with our confiscated food and our trash, and we were done!  Now, we could really go to New Zealand.  It was gusty and drizzly outside and we thought we’d wait for a lull before moving to our slip in the marina.  We did wait awhile, but we’d run out of coffee yesterday and had to resort to instant this morning, and we were hungry for a meal ashore.  We decided wind and rain be dammed, we wanted our slip!  We motored over in the wet windy weather and our friends Bob and Linda kindly helped us get tied up.  Now, we were really in New Zealand at last! -Cyndi

December 06, 2012

We arrived this morning at 2:30AM local time after a nice, eight day passage.  We did a lot of motoring in light winds and one day of “hangin’ on” in 20 to 25 knots of wind and bumpy seas, but all in all, it was a great passage.  We’re exhausted.  It’s time to sleep – for two days or so.  More soon.  -Rich