* * New Zealand, Day 1, Whangaparoa

I don’t know what time it is, early in the morning, though. The sky is beginning to lighten. I’m awake (obviously), and my body is yet to adjust to the time difference. So I go with it.

We’re staying with Dave and Janis Hannah. Dave is a Rotarian and I got in touch with him through the International Hosting and Travel Fellowship. This is a “club-within-the-club” that lets travelers share their homes with other travelers. One of the amazing bonuses of Rotary Membership is that there are members literally around the world. My original intention in contacting the Rotarians of New Zealand was to try to attend some meetings and meet some members. Delightfully, it has turned into a bit of couch-surfing, as many have offered us their homes as places to stay. This is a wonderful thing, because everyone knows that the people you meet are the best part of every travel experience. We can already tell that this is a notably friendly country.  

The Hannahs are in their late sixties and are grandparents. Their four kids have all moved out so there are extra bedrooms. They are amazingly hospitable and have provided a great place to land on our first day. Janis has a perpetual smile and a mop of grey hair. Dave is spry and active, with a leathery skin befitting a man who spends lots of time outdoors. He has brown hair that balding guys like me envy. They speak with an accent that is reminiscent to my ears to Crocodile Dundee, although I’m sure they’d think theirs is nothing like that Australian. They trace their roots back to Scotland, and have visited before to attend clan gatherings. They recently returned from several weeks roaming Alaska. Their home has hardwood ceilings and is filled with nick-nacks and accouterments of a life well lived, with jammed bookcases and framed photos of their family and travels. I like them very much and I’m sure Jane and Whitney do, too.

The house is a charming place in a suburb of Auckland called Whangaparoa. The community has the feel of a southern California beach town, with ocean views everywhere and Mediteranean plants like hibiscus and yucca everywhere. The house has expansive decks on the back, the north, which provide views over the rooftops of the community and to the distant bay. Interestingly, their drinking water is provided by the roof of the house, from which Dave has engineered a series of pipes that channel the water into an enormous enclosed tank.

After feeding us lunch of fresh garden lettuce, tomatoes, homemade bread, ham, and cheese, we took showers and naps, and then ventured out with Dave to a local nature preserve. The municipality of Auckland has something like 28 parks in the surrounding area. This was Shakespeare Park, named apparently not for the Bard but for the family that donated the land. The park’s rolling topography had fields of grass and grazing sheep, interspersed with ravines sheltering dense forests. There was one type of tree – I’ll track down the name – that grows into enormous trunks that branch out and re-grow into new trunks. At crooks in the limbs, yucca-like plants then grow, looking like hanging baskets.

There were lots of birds, many of them large and colorful. Dave knew most of them and had clearly had an upbringing close to nature. He was great to have along, as he became our interpreter for everything we saw.

We wound our way upwards to an observation deck with a 360-degree view. In almost every direction, there were expanses of water and distant islands, low mountains, and other landforms. It was amazingly, astonishingly clear. In fact, the air had a clarity I’ve never experienced before. Being an island in a remote section of the world’s largest ocean with relatively little local industry, there is virtually no air pollution whatsoever. On a clear day from home, distant views, especially to the northwest, provide a pinkish band of pollution on the horizon. But not here. In fact, everything about the area was blissfully clean, with the creek in the ravine running clear, the ocean waters and the beach not having a speck of trash, and the same for the roadsides.

The sky has lightened now and I look past the deck to a band of cumulous clouds drifting westward over the northern horizon. None of the leaves of the plants move as the air outside is quiet. A row of holiday lights twinkles across the overhang of the deck. Everyone else is still asleep; I hear someone snoring.

We will depart for the Coromandel Peninsula area this morning where we’ll spend the night at the Hannah’s vacation apartment. We may have the opportunity to provide Whitney with her beach fix, or perhaps visit Hobbiton, the movie set from the Lord of the Rings. Or we may just drive around, exploring.