Our penultimate day has
arrived after 4 months dodging the New Zealand winter. By all accounts we may
be home a day or two too soon, but it feels as though we have been away a year.
Blair and Meghan drove
us to Osoyoos (tricky to pronounce isn’t it) for a weekend, where we went
hiking and wine trailing. After half a dozen wineries we had succumbed to
visiting Jucy Lucy, forgetting how to pronounce the name of an age old Indian
tribe from about these parts. While in Osoyoos, raging wildfires on all
horizons limited vision to 5 kms or so…not sure those Blenheim fire fighters
had much effect down in Idaho.
Back in Vancouver Diana and I spent
a day hiking in the Lynn Canyon, a short drive north of the city and also spent
more time in Stanley Park. Stanley park is brilliant for walking, biking and
running. We managed two of those three. Blair also bought us tickets to the “Bard
on the Beach”. This is a pop-up Shakespeare type seasonal event and was
fantastic. The play we saw was “As You Like It”, not one that either of us had
studied at school. Where else do you read Shakespeare these days? Surprisingly
there were 28 Beatles songs interwoven into the script, pretty sure that old
William didn’t put them there but this crew sung them in and it was a rip
roarer great night out.
Finally we had to say good bye
to Blair and Meghan. Their 13th floor apartment is two bedrooms but
quite small and I know they will be pleased to have their space back. We really
appreciated our time in the beautiful city they call home and especially
Meghans amazing cooking and snacks.
A flight with Alaskan Air to
Honolulu took us out of falling leaves and crisp mornings into non-stop summer,
all day and all night. The weather here in Hawaii is hot but the beach is only
a stones throw from just about anywhere. We hired a car one day, turned up “Surfin
USA” and headed north to the Banzai Pipeline. I thought while we were in Hawaii
I had to try surfing, everyone does it here and there is surf rolling in on all
sides of the island. It didn’t take long before we were listening to the
Surfaris and “Wipe Out”….darn good music from the olden days.
We also visited Pearl Harbour and
saw how the Japanese caught the Americans napping and wiped out most of their
airforce and navy stationed here in 1942. While they did explain that the
Japanese failed to break the Americans spirit and in fact only strengthened it.
They did tell us that the Americans were ultimately victorious but they didn’t explain
how those final moments were arrived at. There were several Japanese tourists
there so I didn’t dwell on that.
Today we have visited more breweries
and been swimming in the sea. Packing and bracing ourselves for normalcy is
next on the agenda.
But I must tell you about the
President here. We watched a bit of TV and it is like a soap opera, not unlike
Coronation Street. Same character line up and similar story lines. The only
thing is that Donald Trump is the producer, and he casts himself as the lead
actor. Not so bad so far but there is no script, no rehearsals, he just belts
it out at anytime of the day and the other players react best they can. And
this goes on and on. There can be three or four different stories going at
once, no one is sure how they will finish, it is unbelievable. I think that being
in the north of the country, and in Hawaii, that we are meeting people who
predominantly voted for the Democrats. But some of his antics are so far off
the dignity that we would expect of even the most uneducated illiterate of
politicians that one wonders when it will all finish. Hopefully at the end of
his 4 year term if not before.
Better wrap this up and we
look forward to seeing you back in New Zealand…from tomorrow afternoon onwards.
