* * Day 7, Dunedin 1

Day 7, Dunedin

We began our day at the vacation home in Akaroa of David and Tracy Fisher, who we planned to meet at lunchtime. We had a simple breakfast of granola bars and orange juice and headed to the main street where we found the managing realty office and paid our rent. From the clerk, we got confusing directions where we could find an even more scenic drive off the peninsula. So we drove away from the village under a dark, heavy cloud-cover, and found a turn that took us steeply up one of the mountains that rims the bay. Quickly gaining altitude, the view opened up and on this curving, winding tight two-lane road, broad green vistas treated us in every direction. Sheep grazed quietly on the hillsides and bicyclists strained with exertion, but otherwise the road was so quiet we could stop in the middle of it to take photos, of which we took many. We spent an hour meandering around there on ridgetop roads, while Whitney slept in the back seat, before finally rejoining the highway and leaving the peninsula.

We reached the outskirts of Christchurch and turned south on Highway 1. Note here that we never actually entered central Christchurch, having heard that the entire downtown was destroyed by an earthquake in February 2011. 185 people were killed by the quake, which was the second worst earthquake in terms of damage ever to strike the country. We met residents of the city who said the quake seemed to last as long as a minute and was as loud as a freight train coming through the living room. Glass windows broke, china fell from the cabinets and framed photos flew off walls. Enormous cracks formed across level ground and landslides fell from cliffs. So we decided not to tour the city.

Highway 1 is the busiest road in the island, but is still in most places only two-lane, with a speed limit of 100 km/hr (about 62 mph). There were multiple passing zones where an extra lane was added for a kilometer or so, but using them provided scant advantage, as almost everybody was going the same speed. We were told there were great views of the distant mountains to our right (west), but the cloud-cover prevented us from seeing them.

Our first destination was the home of Tracy and David Fisher. We learned of the Fishers as they owned a vacation home in Meadows of Dan, Virginia, about an hour from our home in Blacksburg. We turned off the highway in the center of Ashburton, where the traffic was busy enough to be at a full stop. The Fisher home was 6 km to the southeast, on a quiet country road through flat farmland.

Approaching the house, I felt like we were approaching South Fork Ranch in the TV show Dallas. There was an elaborate brick entryway to the broad two-storey home.  Tracy and David burst from the house and greeted us heartily. Tracy and David are Australians, but moved to New Zealand and bought this farm, where they grow grain crops. Both are ebullient and wonderfully vociferous. David was bawdy and comical, regaling us of stories about his journeys across America and around the world. Tracy had a huge smile on her face and glowed radiantly, her pale blue eyes shining. We were also joined by their three kids, two boys and a girl, all around 20 years old. One son was into farming and planned to join his dad in business and the other attended a small church college in Kentucky. The girl was pregnant, and I later learned from Whitney that her husband and first child were visiting his folks for the holiday in Australia.

We were warned by our mutual friends not to talk politics or religion. So what did we talk about? Politics and religion, mostly religion, ours being much different from theirs. We decided that they were devoted Christians living in one of the most secular countries on earth, and we were a blended family with roots in Judaism and Catholicism, now mostly atheist, living in one of the most Christian countries on earth.

Most farmers I know continually struggle, but the Fishers have done well, thank you very much. In addition to the vacation cottage they own in Akaroa, they own another in the Mount Cook area to the west and still another in Virginia. When most people travel overseas, they rent a car to get around. The Fishers buy cars, typically huge American cars from the 1960s, and ship them home. After Tracy fed us an amazing lunch of lamb roast, vegetables, and potatoes, we walked to the garage and barn where they kept three American cars in the former and two huge farm combines in the latter. David and I climbed the ladder to the cab the newest combine that he said cost a half-million dollars, where he sat me behind the plush, upholstered driver’s seat. The machine had a computer and GPS and could navigate itself, while carefully metering the planting or harvest. He explained how his area was one of the most fertile places to grow crops in the world and how, through careful management and green techniques, they attained among the highest yields per acre anywhere, while maintaining soil fertility.

We had a wonderful visit and by the time we left, my gut hurt from laughing so much. We eagerly look forward to seeing them back in Southwest Virginia when they return to Meadows of Dan.

We continued southbound to Dunedin on Highway 1, with Whitney giving me a break for a brief nap, she took  a turn behind the right-side-of-the-car steering wheel and did her first-ever left-side driving. She did great!

We arrived around 6:30 at the home of Paul and Maggie Harris, who were renting us rooms for the next two nights. The Harrises were referred to us by our friends back home, John and Leslie Gregg, who had spent six months living with them in Dunedin ten years earlier. Paul sent us downtown for dinner at a restaurant where we spent 50% more than a similar meal would have cost back home. We came back to the house and enjoyed the next couple of hours chatting in the parlor and getting better acquainted.

The home is a magnificent structure in the Tudor style, on a residential street on a hillside in an older section of the city. The interior rooms have high ceilings with exposed hardwood beams. There is elegance at every turn, from the hardwood furniture to the upright piano to the antique artwork and wallpaper on the walls.

Both Harrises are now retired, but Maggie was an English teacher and was delighted when I presented her with two of my books. “Within the first few pages, I’ll understand your style,” she said.  Gulp! I didn’t find out what Paul did for a living, but we’ll learn more about that today as he is keen to take us touring on the nearby Otago Peninsula, where there are albatrosses, penguins, and other exotic wildlife, “only twenty minutes from the city,” according to Paul. It is early morning now, finally under what appears to be a clear sky.

 We look forward to another day of fun, adventure, and camaraderie here in New Zealand, the most appealing nation in the world.