Gear shift

Well, the moment has come to relate my holiday adventures after readjusting back to working life. I appreciate everyone's patience in this respect. Sadly, the fast paced life I left behind only two weeks ago has quickly been reestablished. It appears that all my patients waited for my return. Some delaying treatment well beyond medical acceptability. I've greeted each consult with a smile, after a momentarily daydream back to scenes from my vacation.

What a week it turned out to be! Before setting out on our driving adventure, my parents and I visited a few of the local tourist spots. These were places I'd looked at or driven by for six months without ever stopping to explore. One was Hawera's infamous landmark, the water tower. Located directly across the street from my flat, it's concrete circularity greets me each morning when I wake. Truly, I've not been that busy, I just waited until my parents came. Being approximately 75 meters tall, it grants a wonderful aerial view of Hawera and the surrounding landscape, giving me a completely different perspective on the size of this "wee" town.

Monday we set off on our ticki-tour. After a quick stop at the local cheese factory to stock up for the week, we hit the road. One of the local car dealers graciously loaned me a larger, 4WD vehicle for the week (free of charge, I might add). Boy did this prove helpful. It was recommended that we take the coastal road up the west coast to Raglan, our first night's destination. Unfortunately, this road included no view of the coast, nor any pavement. Instead, we traversed 150km of winding, dirt road, intermittently stopping to let herds of sheep and cattle cross our path.

Tuesday brought a rainy start. It was the tail end of the bad weather affecting the southern tip of the North Island, something we managed to avoid for the remainder of our journey. As the sun broke, we took off again, but not before a stop to view the famous left-hand surfing break, Bridal Veil Falls, and to support the local economy via purchase of souvenirs. From Raglan we headed due East across the North Island up to the Coromandel Peninsula, located on the Northeast corner. After two days of driving, I was willing to let my mom take a turn at left-sided driving. Thirty kilometers later over another winding, dirt road, this time in the dark, I soon realized this would be my mother's last desire to drive on the left-side and I would be the chauffeur for the remainder of the trip. Luckily, the weather, food, and sites in Coromandel granted me partial repentance. Sunny and beautiful, we hiked down to Cathedral Cove and ate on a beach composed of the finest grain white sand I'd ever felt while entertained by local kids who decided to dress down to their birthing suits for the weather. We held out sticking our bare feet in the sand until we visited Hot Water Beach just down the coast. Here, at low tide, one can find pockets of thermal warmed sand heated up to 60 degrees Celsius just centimeters below the surface. Unfortunately, we lacked the spade to dig our own spa pool. Maybe next time.

Thursday we headed down the Bay of Plenty coast through Mt. Maunganui to Papamoa Beach. Along the way we stopped at a cafe with a beautiful mandarin grove out back and an attached crafts store. Seemingly in the middle of nowhere, it held a steady stream of customers, including our presence twice, as we had to double back to retrieve my mother's forgotten sunglasses. (Sorry, mom, I had to put that in there.) Once in Mt. Maunganui the weather turned icy cold. My father braved the cold, electing to climb to the top of the "Mount", while my mom and I enjoyed some retail therapy. We reconvened in the evening to sit in the heated salt water pools.

Friday we got an early start, driving down through Rotorua and the central plateau with the hopes of making it to the Wai-o-tapu Thermal Wonderland before the Lady Knox Geyser displayed her spray at 10:15 am. Despite much pessimism on my part, we actually made it there in time. Ironically, the Lady Knox Geyser promptly goes off at 10:15 am each morning due to a little encouragement from an organic soap-like substance that changes the surface tension in the heated pools below the geyser. Don't worry, Old Faithful, we know you're still au naturel. Despite this small point of discouragement, the Thermal Wonderland proved to be just that: wonderful. Acclimating to the strong sulfur smell, we were greeted by beautiful pools of fluorescent green and orange throughout the park.

Due to flooding from the prior weeks inclement weather in Taranaki, closing the main road from Mt. Ruapehu to home, we abandoned our planned stay at a revitalized chateau on the mountain. Instead we settled in Taupo on Friday night at a lovely hotel overlooking Lake Taupo. This is the setting for the half-marathon I'm running in only 3 weeks. It gave me the chance to do a training run along the course, but not before we visited Huka Falls, enjoyed a lovely dinner at a winery outside town, took a dip in the natural hot pools, and I got a massage. What a great way to end the week.

As mentioned in a prior blog, I knew it would be interesting to see the country again through my parents eyes. These are a few of things they found intriguing:

1. All outlets have on/off switches. Just because you plug something in, doesn't mean it's going to work, nor charge, as my dad discovered on several occasions with his camera batteries.

2. Cafes are located anywhere. Often they are not in metropolitan areas, but rather alongside some random road with nothing surrounding it for miles.

3. A road is not a road is not a road. Most major "highways" are two lane roads equivalent to our country roads in the states. Most minor roads are dirt.

4. Coffee is not universal. Most restaurants don't have drip coffee, nor decaf. New Zealanders like their coffee strong and wired.

5. The food really is different here. Cream is literally the thick, full-fat substance that settles on top of milk and can clog your arteries just with a glance. Ice cream is the frozen version of this substance. Meat tastes better because it's all free range, grass fed. The stuff Americans pay high price for is the common table meal here. Pumpkin and kumera, two native vegetables similar to squash and yams, are used in everything here, something to which I've become addicted.

6. Dining out is a much more experimental process. First of all, they don't provide bread, like the starch driven American standard. You must order that separately. Water is also not automatically provided. It comes readily when asked for, but is usually out of the tap, displayed in a decorative glass bottle. New Zealanders also like to experiment more with their food, mixing several different flavors in one dish. It's like a party for your mouth. Sometimes good, sometimes bad, as in the snot-colored licorice rice pudding my parents ordered one night, but all-in-all makes for a very enjoyable dining experience.