NEW ZEALAND

These last two years have been quite high lights in my retired life span. My God Daughter Maureen and her husband Kevin from New Zealand came over to stay with me for four weeks in 2009 to celebrate my 75^th birthday which was at the end of September it was her first visit since emigration and Kevin was born in New Zealand. We visited all our local points of interest especially Maureen’s birth place we also went on Euro Star to Paris and by train to Edinburgh. Gambling is quite a big feature in the lives of NZ residents so we had a day at the races and visited a dog racing stadium at Brighton. While they were here it was suggested that my friend Wayne and I go to NZ in 2010 which is exactly what we did.

Most of the arrangements except the flights were selected and bought on the internet which was quite a mammoth task in itself and took many hours. We departed from London Heathrow at 9.00.pm on March 30^th flying with Air New Zealand and had one nights stop-over at Hong Kong flying on the next day to Auckland NZ. After one nights motel stay we picked up our hire car and drove to Rotorua for another overnight stay and opportunity to photograph the local bird life and visit the sulphur pools etc.  From Rotorua we drove to Taupo visiting tourist sights on the way including waterfalls.

After a night’s sleep in Taupo we drove via the lost highway to my God daughter’s house in Hawara. How we ever found this lost road we will never know but it was over 75 kilometres long with no human habitation on the way. Even our friends in NZ had never been along it? 

While staying with Maureen and Kevin we were able to meet the rest of her family which included Letitia their daughter and Carl their son. Both have partners Carl having a little boy called Jake the apple of Grandma’s eye. We also met Maureen’s Eldest sister Helen and family, Brother John and his family, and Barbara who was born between John and Maureen. It was so good to meet up with all the family I had such close connections with when they were young.