I wish I could take credit for this beautiful drone video but it’s a promotion for our region’s moto, “Taranaki – like no other.”  The famous WindWand sculpture bends and sways over the downtown coastline and looks amazing in the setting sun. The red ball on the top is alight after sundown.

This is a catch up post since almost 5 months have past since the last newsy one.  We haven’t traveled that much but socialising with friends and daily life here in New Plymouth is quite nice.  I’ll try to take more photos going forward.

It’s winter and that means rain, but it’s not all doom and gloom.  Almost daily rainbows and intermittent sunny skies add intensity of colour to the neighbourhoods and beaches.  The often wet skatepark is slowing Kai’s skateboarding progress but that’s probably a good thing.   Here’s a sunset shot Des took on the way home from the Hospital and a scene from East End Beach and skatepark.  No camera effects needed.

Des and Dan at Back Beach headed out for a surf.  It’s short board territory and Des is courageously testing out all kinds of equipment.  Dan holds his 27 liter “potato chip” sized shorty.

I enjoy chatty visits with Candy and Yvonne.  They are both docs at the hospital. Candy is a psychiatrist and Yvonne an anesthesiologist (or anees-thuh- teeest) as they say here).   Here we are on a short trek to Oakura’s “dog beach”, a pretty idyllic spot.

We along with another friend, Helen,  completed an adventure race at the end of March. It was a first for me.  The Spirited Women Adventure race is an all female event in which you navigate a course on foot, mountain bike, and kayak to find checkpoints and hopefully finish before dark.  This year it was in Gisborne on the east coast of the North Island. Gorgeous as!  We had a blast and finished in the middle of our age category (combined ages over 200 years!!)  We competed in the short course and spent 6 hours working our butts off for 35 km.  Lots of fit women in NZed.  I’ll say it again, fit as.

 

Kai is a reluctant subject these days, but I snap one or two here and there.  He is finally  out of braces…  finally.  After 2 1/2 years he now spends a bit more time looking in the mirror!  He’s trying ultimate frisbee on Monday nights. Cool group of players and they huddle to celebrate individual efforts after the games! 

Kai is following the Swedish saga of a favourite rapper, A$AP Rocky (drawn below).  It is quite a surreal circle of characters. If you haven’t read about it,  you might want to… gotta keep up!

New Plymouth hosts the annual World of Music and Dance Festival.  It’s known as WOMAD and the music line up is impressive.    We were thrilled by the Gypsy Kings performance but also loved the Brazilian and Taiwan groups.  Food is super high quality as well. It’s like a smaller, cleaner, family friendlier version of ACL with more dancing.  Costumes are encouraged and the light up jelly fish girls were standouts. 

Our good friend Keun is back visiting from South Korea.  She and Sam are hard at work finishing out Sam’s flash sprinter van.  It is a mirror image shell of our former home on wheels. Sam’s van has sliding door on the left and the steering on the right.  Still so odd. This brings back so many memories for us!  Sam is extremely ambitious.  Water tanks and pumps for kitchen and shower, huge and heavy batteries for a rather complex electrical system, and a concrete floor are all installed.  Don’t forget the convection stove top and giant IMac hanging from the wall. Super lux. They both play piano and have put one in their van.  The keyboard cover will double as a desk.

Candy donated a very nice keyboard to us, so we are all playing a bit at our place. Keun is teaching me piano in her spare time.   In Korea she learned to call the notes  Do, Re, Me, Fa, So, La, Ti, Do instead of C, D, E, F, G etc.  But her accent makes Do sound like “Toe”.   I know the basics but couldn’t figure out where or what a “Toe” note was.  She was emphatic,  instructing me to “start with toe, toe!!”.   Confusing but we’re getting in sync now.

We just finished watching Tour de France. It was so exciting this year!  We rooted for Julian Alaphilippe and of course, The Great Peter Sagan. His wheelies up the mountain top finishes are epic.

 

No TV but we got the projector working. Thank goodness for Tunnel Bear and online streaming sports packages.