I don’t have much to report lately on our exciting world travels, but I think I need to write a quick post so folks know we are surviving. Meg’s broken kneecap a couple of weeks ago has put us in recovery mode. We decided to find an Airbnb with a good couch and a good kitchen so we can isolate ourselves and take some time to heal. We found one in rural New Zealand in the small town of Tokomaru. It has no restaurants and only one tiny convenience store, but it has lots of cows and sheep. This is the perfect place for us to not get distracted by the outside world and just concentrate on getting those bones to heal. It feels like Covid times for us, but this time we are isolating in New Zealand cow country.
We were supposed to be exploring the South island for a couple of weeks, so we had to find our healing place at the last minute. We found this place just a 20 minutes from New Zealand’s eighth largest urban area of Palmerston North (known as Palmy) which has an estimated population of 90,000 people. We weren’t distracted by the big city of Palmy and just went to the city every couple of days to stock up on groceries. We often stay in Airbnb’s that don’t really have a full usable kitchen so we were excited to be able to cook every night. We also happen to be in New Zealand during the Brick’s promotion at the grocery store- Woolworths. For every $NZ30 you spend, you get a small package of Bricks which are similar to Lego. We ended up buying a “brick” house to hold all our acquired sets. We got 4 brick grandmas, 3 brick compost boxes and 2 brick cats!
OK, we did get out of the house a little bit. We took a couple of drives to the coast to see the non-remarkable New Zealand beaches. One day we drove to the cute little town of Whanganui and Meg hobbled around on crutches to see a small art museum and their Art Deco architecture. But mostly we just hung out in our own cow town. We watched a LOT of Winter Olympics, did 3 jigsaw puzzles and I have walked every street around the town of Tokomaru to make sure I have seen all the different types of cows and sheep.
Our first trip in New Zealand is almost coming to an end and we need to reflect on what we saw and what we didn’t see. A lot of the country side reminded us of rural Oregon and Washington State. The roads were great, people were super nice and overall it just felt comfortable. It often felt much like home, except they don’t seem to have as many problems that America is currently facing. Before the accident we saw a few of the North Island attractions, but many people have told us that the South Island is even better. We are skipping the South Island this year, so we will be back. There is a lot left to see here, and our final thoughts on this country are still incomplete, and will need to be finished another year. Maybe in 2027.
But, we are getting better, and are anxious to get going again. We have an appointment on Monday where they will hopefully replace Meg’s immobilizer brace with something that might be a bit bendier. We are also hoping that they will clear us to fly to Australia. We still have some healing to do, but we are also ready to start seeing something new… It will just have to be done on crutches for a few more weeks. Until then…. here is another pic of cows.
and 1 pig
