Adventures in Tomorrowland

Denise said, “Why don’t you go get some KFC?” We had succeeded in eating pretty much everything else in the house in preparation for our big trip the next day. Who was I to argue with her logic? After all, what could be a better dietary foundation for our upcoming twenty-four-plus-hour trip to Tomorrowland than a few pieces of Kentucky Fried Chicken. Original recipe of course. Goes without saying.

On the next day, January 8, 2019, we took an Uber to Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport then a flight to LAX then a flight to Sydney then a flight to Adelaide and then a rental car ride to our downtown area hotel in Australia’s fifth largest city. Door to door it was thirty-plus hours for us, during which I got about two hours of sleep while Denise got upwards of fifteen minutes. Denise doesn’t sleep well during transportation. Cars, trucks, planes, trains, motorcycles, camels. Doesn’t matter. Although, more about camels later. Our companions throughout the entire journey were our long-time friends Bob and Claudette. 

From the perspective of those of us living in the US, thanks to the International Dateline, it’s almost always “tomorrow” in Australia and New Zealand, hence the frame of reference for our thirty-one-day retirement celebration trip. When we dropped the dog off at Denise’s sister’s house, her sister’s husband asked me how we would travel from LA to Sydney. And specifically, would we cross over Africa?

I explained that basically we would go up in the air and fly in a circle for a time. Meanwhile, the earth would rotate underneath us at 1,000 MPH and we would just drift south a bit and wait until Sydney appeared below. While I don’t think he bought it, some space-time-continuum thing like that must have happened, because it was January 8 when we took off and January 10 when we landed.     

And it was clear from the beginning that, as some might say, we weren’t in Kansas anymore. Accustomed to the relatively modern conveyances that one encounters at US airports, I was surprised that the way in which arriving passengers got from the international terminal to the fairly distant domestic terminal in Sydney was by traveling across the tarmac. Who wants the security risk associated with a busload of people on a tarmac at an international airport?

Among the last people who boarded the bus, I stood in a congested aisle with both arms extended so I could hold elevated handrails. That wasn’t particularly good news for nearby seated passengers, whose olfactory intake tubes were in close proximity to my travel-weary armpits.

And as it turns out, they have other stuff on the tarmac in Sydney: luggage trucks, food trucks, maintenance trucks, and airplanes. Lots of airplanes. It was a good fifteen-to-twenty-minute stop-and-go ride in humid, non-air-conditioned circumstances. Or perhaps not such a good ride for the people who were near me.

Upon arriving in Adelaide in the late afternoon, we decided to work out some of the travel kinks by doing a walkabout. Hey, that’s what you’re supposed to do in Australia, right? So we headed off on a riverside path toward the first of what proved to be several botanical gardens that we visited.

Along the way, we saw a colony of several dozen flying foxes (mega bats) that were hanging in, and flying around, some of the area’s tall trees. How big is a mega bat? Well these things were perhaps fifty-to-one hundred yards away and appeared to have two-to-three-foot wing spans on bodies the size of small dogs. Later we learned that the wing spans can exceed five feet. I thought that bats were supposed to be nocturnal, but in warmish mid-eighty-degree temps with a clearly visible sun, these guys seemed to be really getting jazzed up about something. Maybe they were going out for American food that night, I don’t know. Regardless, having discovered further confirmation that we weren’t in Kansas, we didn’t stick around to find out what their dining plans were.

There were three distinct parts to our adventure:

1. January 10–13: A Great Ocean Road trip in Australia with Bob and Claudette

2. January 14–30: A Lands Down Under group tour of Australia and New Zealand with Bob, Claudette, twelve other tourists, and a tour guide

3. January 31–February 7: A North Island road trip in New Zealand with Bob and Claudette

Bob added quite a few kilometers to his previous United Kingdom driving experience, as none of the rest of us was particularly interested in the associated left lane/right lane, left turn/right turn challenge. But as our group tour guide explained, in Tomorrowland people drive on the correct side of the road while in the US, people drive on the right side of the road. So, nobody drives on the wrong side of the road, including, thankfully, Bob.

Claudette, Google Maps, and Waze provided just-in-time, competent navigation services in the Lands Down Under, which in some circles are known as the Lands of the Roundabouts. Outside of Melbourne, Sydney, and maybe Auckland, we got to drive through lots and lots of roundabouts. Maybe they save electricity and maintenance costs, I don’t know. Meanwhile, Denise and I enjoyed the scenery and provided some occasional color commentary.

On our Great Ocean Road trip from Adelaide to Melbourne, we enjoyed overnight stops in places named Penola, Warrnambool, and Apollo Bay. We spent an afternoon touring wineries in the Coonawarra region, saw our first kangaroo (or wallaby) in the wild on one of our short hikes, and stopped to enjoy the unique scenery along Australia’s southern coast. London Bridge and The Twelve Apostles proved to be unique rock formations in the ocean, carved by years of natural forces. While we expected Australia to be hot and humid, our summer season visit to this coast was cool and sometimes cold.    

Having looked at maps in advance, I knew we were going to pass some plantations along the way. However, I did not anticipate that the plantation crop would be the pine tree. On our drive through the states of South Australia and Victoria, we saw vast swaths of pine forests, planted in exactly spaced segments of four rows, then a little wider space, then four more rows, and so on. In some places, thousands of acres of mature, fifty-plus-foot pine trees sat interspersed with sections of land that had been harvested for as far as we could see to the horizon. I had not previously seen anything quite like that and realized that one probably has to think about forestry management on an island, even if it’s a big island.

Our initial encounters with restaurant protocols and foods in the Lands Down Under occurred during these days. The procedure at most establishments was to order and pay for food and drinks at the bar. Sometimes we had some long waits for food delivery, and the less patient members of our quartet got testy. But Bob and I didn’t hold that against them, and our charming conversations served to calm everyone.

On our last night on this section of the trip, we decided to have some beverages and play cards at a local restaurant. At the time I stepped up to the bar, the server asked the apparently younger person in front of me for identification. So, when I ordered a beer, I asked if he wanted to see my identification. The bartender laughed so heartily and for so long that I was beginning to think he might need medical attention. Recovering, he said he would look at my ID if it would make me feel better. At that point, I didn’t think it would. But such was the nature of the vast majority of Australians and Kiwis that we encountered during our adventure. Friendly and hospitable!  

Our Lands Down Under group tour kicked off at two p.m. on Monday afternoon January 14 in Melbourne. We were blessed to have an Australian-born guide for ten exhilarating days in his home country followed by seven similarly spectacular days in New Zealand.

In addition to the four of us from Arizona, the sixteen-member cast of characters included Bob and Claudette’s friends Doug and Kathy plus ten others from various US states and Canada. While Bob and Claudette had done a number of international trips with Doug and Kathy, it was our first meeting with them, and speaking of the entire ensemble, we were clearly the least experienced travelers in the group.     

It took most of us a few days to correctly associate names and faces, and by the end of the tour most of us could identify most of the other people if we had to. Thankfully, none of us were called upon to do so for law enforcement, or other, purposes.

Following two nights in Melbourne, the Australian portion of our group tour involved plane flights to Yulara in the central Australian outback, Port Douglas on the northeastern Australian coast, and Sydney on the southeastern coast. For those of you who may not be familiar with Australian geography, these were not short New York to Boston or LA to San Diego hops. In total, our air time consumed about eight hours and covered approximately 3,500 miles. 

Our excursions included an expedition to Ayers Rock, a walk through the Daintree Rainforest with an Aboriginal guide, a luncheon visit with two rainforest preservationists at their botanical ark, a snorkel cruise to a section of the Great Barrier Reef, a Sydney Harbor cruise, a Sydney Zoo tour, and a Sydney Opera House tour. We also visited botanical gardens in both Melbourne and Sydney.

In the native aboriginal language, Ayers Rock is known as Uluru, which, if I remember correctly when translated, means “a seriously big rock.” During our visit, we also got to see nearby Kata Tjuta, the translation of which might be “another seriously big rock.” These places were near the settlement of Yulara, which translates to “revolving door for tourists.” Perhaps my recollection of translations is slightly off. Who knows? It was a zesty 46.8º C on the day of our visit (116º F), and neither the air conditioning on our tour bus nor the air conditioning in the hotel’s main areas (lobby, restaurant, gift shop) was up to the task. Hey, we’re from Phoenix. We know air conditioning. So, like the numerous other tour groups that were doing the same thing, we were happy to depart after our one-night stay.

I’m not ashamed to admit that I’m a landlubber. I’ve never been particularly comfortable out on the ocean, even when I was on a 3,000-person inside-passage Alaska cruise ship. Perhaps I’ve seen too many disaster movies. So, snorkeling the Great Barrier Reef was never on a bucket list for me, or for that matter, Denise. Further, when I realized that the Great Barrier Reef is, on average, twenty to thirty miles away from the Australian coast and that we were not taking a 3,000-passenger catamaran, the adventure lost what little glamor it had for me.

Neither Denise nor I will ever be mistaken for people who swim regularly for exercise purposes, much less Olympic champion Michael Phelps. So when we are in the ocean, we are basically floating chunks of food. This is not good when you’re visiting a nation that likes to challenge its wildlife (think crocodile hunters). That flowerbed sign in Sydney harbor that says “Bite Me” is a clear affront to the great white shark community. But it was rainy and overcast that day, and visibility in the water was poor, so maybe the diners couldn’t see much either. Our pathetic swimming skills notwithstanding, we survived to tell the tale and can now boast that we have snorkeled the Great Barrier Reef. Woo hoo.

Our favorite Australian excursion was a visit to a family’s sheep station near Melbourne. The dad was a big guy with a bigger-than-life personality. His numerous stories and jokes kept things lively.

For example, near the beginning of the sheep shearing exhibition, after getting the sheep “in position” for shearing, the sheep rancher asked Bob if he wanted to touch the sheep. As soon as Bob did, the big sheep rancher made a loud, awful, sheep-in-pain sound, at which Bob jumped. I don’t know that he’s had that much air under his feet since high school basketball. The big guy, of course, immediately began cracking up, and we all realized that Bob wasn’t going to be incarcerated for damaging livestock.  

Australia is the number one producer/exporter of wool and lamb in the world, and we obtained a glimpse of the industry through the lens of this one family’s perspective. We saw several dozen wild kangaroos that live on the family’s 6,500 acres and watched one of their dogs round up a group of sheep and bring them in. They served a wonderful multi-course lunch in their home, which was originally built in 1868, and treated us like royalty. Both of the family’s teenagers and the two younger kids were involved, and we did not see an electronic device in the hands of any family member during the hours we were there. For us, the experience was quite memorable.

Our guide shared many interesting things about Australia during our visit. The things that stood out to me represent just a fraction of the things he shared.

In Melbourne we learned that at the time of our visit, about forty percent of the nation’s 24-25 million people lived in its two largest cities, Sydney (5.5 million) and Melbourne (4.5 million). They were certainly bustling. We also heard that the Melbourne Cricket Ground, home to the 1956 Summer Olympics, is the largest stadium in the southern hemisphere and tenth largest in the world, with a seating capacity of 100,024. The largest-ever crowd was about 130,000 for the Billy Graham crusade on March 15, 1959.

During our time in Yulara, we learned that camels were imported to Australia in the 1800s to assist colonization, and today the largest herds of wild camels in the world are thriving in the Australian outback.

In northeastern Australia, we were told that when visiting Queensland beaches, you go in the ocean only in clearly designated, protected areas to avoid saltwater crocodiles, which thrive in both fresh and saltwater there. Maybe that distance to the Great Barrier Reef was worth it, after all.

In Sydney, we discovered that if we had been shopping for a $20-50 million home on Sydney harbor, there were plenty to choose from. We also heard that voting is mandatory for all Australian citizens aged eighteen and older. You don’t have to vote for any candidates, but you must formally acknowledge the ballot or face an economic penalty ($55 Australian). And somewhere along the way, I learned that Quantas stands for Queensland and Northern Territories Aerial Service, one of the oldest commercial airlines in the world.

Our Australian farewell dinner was held in a restaurant on the thirty-sixth floor of the Shangri-La Hotel in Sydney. Our private room featured floor to ceiling windows, which might have offered a more spectacular view of the harbor and town if it had not been seriously overcast that evening.

In preparation for the upcoming Australia Day celebration on January 26, a large airplane made a number of practice runs in the airspace over the bay, at elevations eerily below us much of the time. Nonetheless, the wine, food, and service were outstanding, and everyone seemed to have a good time.   

On January 24, our time in Australia came to an end, and we boarded the largest airplane Denise or l had ever been on, headed for New Zealand. We were in row seventy with eight other passengers, nowhere near the back of the Emirates aircraft.

The New Zealand segment of our group tour began in Christchurch, which is located on the east coast of New Zealand’s South Island. Christchurch competes with the North Island’s Wellington for the title of New Zealand’s second largest city (about 400,000). After depositing our luggage at the hotel, we were ushered by motor coach to our Avon River punting experience. No, these were not NFL tryouts. Instead, for perhaps forty-five to sixty minutes, we enjoyed a leisurely glide in a flat-bottomed boat on a shallow, tranquil river propelled by an expert punter (think Venice). I thought that this was one of the tour group’s more triumphant itinerary scheduling moments—a truly unique way to unwind following an early morning and hectic day of international travel.

That evening, we enjoyed perhaps the best single meal of the entire tour, if not the entire month-long trip, at the Curator’s House, a restaurant situated (where else?) in the ambience of the city’s botanical gardens. Courageous Denise opted for Cordero Asado (slow roasted lamb shoulder) and risk-averse Dave sought refuge in a ribeye. The Spanish-themed eatery served sangria, the official national beverage of everyone named Claudette who was in our group. So, some of us were happy, and some of us were really happy about the whole thing. 

The following day, we boarded Kiwi Rail’s TranzAlpine Express. Our visually pleasing journey through farmland and over mountains to the west coast took about four hours. Then it was back on the bus and on to the village of Franz Josef.

The next day, we enjoyed a guided walk to view the nearby Franz Josef glacier, one of the few places in the world where one can see serious chunks of ice and a rainforest in relatively close proximity to one another. And even better, it didn’t rain that day.

Denise’s enjoyment, however, was short-lived. After deeming our footwear inadequate, the glacier walk tour company equipped each of us with boots and socks. Both of Denise’s legs turned bright red as a result of her wool allergy, and she was uncomfortable for a number of subsequent days.   

Then we were off to the adventure capital of the world, Queenstown, and our last multi-night stay on the tour. While no one in our party elected to take the leap at Kawarau, the world’s original, still-thriving, bungee jumping site, we did enjoy a shopping trip to a nearby gold mining settlement, a wine tasting experience coupled with an invigorating lunch at a local winery, a trip up the Queenstown gondola for a view of the lake and surrounding area, plus some additional shopping and dining.

From our perspective, the highlight of the New Zealand visit occurred the next day, when our sixteen-member tour group boarded two Cessnas and flew from Queenstown to Milford Sound and back. One of our companions opined a preference for viewing 10,000 to 12,000-foot mountains from the vantage point of a 30,000-foot jumbo jet. But on that day, our view took place from a 9,000 to 11,000-foot Cessna, which provided a somewhat up-close-and-personal alpine experience. At Milford Sound, we boarded a boat and enjoyed about two hours cruising that body of water in the company of numerous other boats, kayaks, helicopters, and airplanes coming and going. From the aerial glimpse, New Zealand’s mountainous national parks on the southwest coast seemed vast, and undisturbed by development.  

On the final day with the tour group, we flew from Queenstown to Auckland. Differing estimates suggest that 1.5-2.0 million of New Zealand’s 4.5–4.9 million residents live in Auckland, so perhaps thirty to forty percent of the citizens live in the nation’s largest city. We were ushered from the airport to the Auckland Museum, where we enjoyed a performance by a Maori cultural group, plus a blistering pace, no-nonsense guided tour of a multi-faceted museum that covered New Zealand’s people, plants, animals, and military experiences.   

Among many things, we heard that as a result of New Zealand’s high per capita World War I casualty rate, equality for women came much faster here than it did in other parts of the world, perhaps because there simply weren’t men available to do various jobs. We also learned that there are no land predators in New Zealand (snakes, bears, mountain lions, and so on).

Our group’s farewell dinner was held that night at the Sugar Club restaurant, located a mere fifty-three death-defying stories above ground in Auckland’s Skytower, a building reminiscent of the Seattle Space Needle and clearly the tallest structure in the city. Being New Zealand, of course, we could have opted to either bungee jump off the top or just walk around tethered to a rail on the outside on a steel grate Perhaps because we weren’t dressed for it, neither Denise nor I opted for these privileges.

On the eve of long flights for most members of our group, one much-discussed dinner topic was the weather back home, with people using scary, alien phrases like “polar vortex” and “arctic blast.” For someone from Phoenix, this means temperatures in the high fifties, but I think they were talking about something else.

Anyhow, throughout the tour, a couple from Michigan were relentlessly teased for hauling around their gigantic, puffy, down-material, winter jackets through our various, generally warm or hot tropical locations. Those particular wardrobe choices apparently did not fit in their checked baggage or carry-ons. Nevertheless, among those heading home to the east or north, they may have had the last laugh. Although I’ve found that when temps get way down in the high fifties, usually nobody in Arizona is laughing.

To the extent people had not already discerned it, my ability to escape detection as one of the planet’s least adventurous diners came to an end during one of the courses at this meal. Something they described as fish looked like Mucous-on-a-Pringle to me, and I suspect that people may have noticed the volume of liquid that coincidentally disappeared from my vicinity shortly thereafter as I repeatedly washed down questionable offerings with water.

The otherwise fine meal and spectacular view provided a fitting backdrop to the conclusion of our group tour, and even better, after saying our goodbyes to everyone, no one lost his or her dinner on the elevator journey back to earth.  

On Thursday morning January 31, we bid adieu to the group tour companions we saw in the hotel breakfast area, acquired our Avis chariot, and obtained some special products that we were going to need the next day as Bob, Claudette, Denise and I began our road trip on New Zealand’s north Island.

It took the better part of a day on the North Island’s various two-lane farm-country roads to reach our accommodations in the small town of Keri Keri. And it was on this stretch of the trip that I became seriously impressed by New Zealand’s cows.

Upon learning that relatively tiny New Zealand (about the size of Colorado) is the number one exporter of milk in the world, perhaps the number of cows we saw (hundreds, thousands, who knows) should not have surprised me. Nevertheless, it did.

Moreover, New Zealand’s cows were often on the move. With no people in sight, some herds were marching in lines of ones and twos, while others in pastures were moving around eating and frolicking, or whatever it is that cows do when they’re walking around talking about cow stuff. This is considerably different than cows in Arizona. Almost all of the animals in the herds we see at home are laying down, with looks on their faces that say “What’s up?”, and other clear non-verbal expressions of “I’m not moving.” It might just be the Arizona heat, or one could conclude that bovine exercise programs in New Zealand are considerably more advanced than similar efforts in our home state. Or maybe it’s just the proximity of all that ocean air.

The next day, we headed to Kauri Cliffs Golf Course, sometimes listed among the top 100 courses in the world. The arrival that day of one of the other foursomes by helicopter underscored the remote location and exclusive nature of the facility. We saw very few other golfers that day and felt like we had the place to ourselves. While 60 or 70 foursomes might occupy a popular course in Arizona on a busy high season day, a staff member told us that only 20 foursomes might play at Kauri Cliffs on a busy high season day.

Of the helicopter Bob observed that “we just didn’t think big enough,” and he was right. Next time we will head directly from our overseas flight to Avis Helicopter and avoid all of that pesky left lane/right lane, left turn/right turn stuff. The minor nuisance associated with obtaining one or more helicopter pilot licenses and flying throughout Australia and New Zealand is something we’ll just add to our preparation list two weeks in advance of the next trip.

The special products we acquired the prior day were distributed according to familiarity with the golf skill and tendencies of the plyers in our foursome. Denise received one golf ball, Claudette got three, Bob had four, and I was allocated the remaining sixteen. Each player made judicious, if not full, use of his or her rations.

While Bob recorded the low score in our group, Denise probably scored best relative to her index, as her low trajectory ball flight got lots of roll on the windswept ocean-side course. We all enjoyed the experience and concluded the day by heading south to our lodging in Whangarei.      

Sometime during our visit, we learned that the native Maori language is unwritten. So, I found it interesting that some significant debate over the pronunciation of places such as Whangarei had been occurring. Local shopkeepers told us that they had lived there all of their lives, that they pronounced it “wong-ga-ray” and would continue to do so.

Others advised us that “Wh” in Maori is pronounced “F,” so the town should be pronounced, “fahng-ga-ray”. I think this gets people into trouble when the letters that follow Wh have an “ack,” “ock,” or “uck” sound, such as Whakapapa, a major ski area. Besides, my grandkids call me Poppa. 

Observing some significant local signage in Whangarei, after checking with our bank back home, for the next day, I offered to pay for everyone’s golf at the Mount Denby Golf Course, which proudly advertised all the golf you could play in a week for $8.08 NZ. At that time, that could have been pronounced “five dollars and sixty-nine cents US.” Instead, we traveled on to Rotorua. They should have taken me up on the golf.  

Lifting at an average of about 0.4 inches year, New Zealand’s peaks are among the most rapidly rising mountains in the world. And with all of that tectonic plate stuff going on, there are various places where Yellowstone-like geologic activity occurs. On the North Island, Rotorua is apparently ground zero for this, and the rotten egg smell of sulfur inside our hotel room was so bad that I could not sleep. Apparently, the 69,000 people who live there do not have the same nasal sensitivity that I do. God bless them.

The next day, we enjoyed a mostly breathable walk among redwoods as our farewell activity before mercifully heading to Lake Taupo, the largest freshwater lake in the southern hemisphere. During this time, we enjoyed various walks, boat rides, waterfalls, restaurants, and sightseeing.

One day, we decided to do some mountain biking, though Denise opted out. It had been a number of years since I had been on anything but the stationary bike at our gym, for upwards of five, or when I really pushed it, ten minutes at a time. So, when the bike rental application form asked if I had previously ridden a mountain bike, I, of course, said yes.

The description of the trail from the website read:

The Tongariro River track is a great trail for beginners or children. It follows this world-famous trout river past rolling farmland, beach forests, and fern glades with spectacular views at almost every bend. En route is the National Trout Centre, tours of this facility are included with a guided trip or can be included with a bike hire.

Neither Claudette nor I had much mountain biking experience, but we thought, “Hey, a great trail for beginners or children? We can do this.”

One problem was that although they gave me a helmet, I couldn’t find the “protective airbag release” button anywhere on the bike. With all of the advancements that have been made in the sport, surely all bikes in the US have this. I concluded maybe not so much in New Zealand.

Another problem was that the “great trail for beginners or children” proved to be a fairly technical, narrow, one-lane path that featured two-way traffic (bikes, walkers, dogs, toddlers) and lots of sharp, blind, uphill and downhill turns in relatively dense rainforest terrain with little advance visibility as to what was coming (terrain or traffic). I didn’t fall but had several close calls, and learned that, for me, the downhill segments were much more challenging than any of the uphill climbs.

By the end of two-plus hours, all body parts that had been in the vicinity of my bike seat had tweeted, texted, emailed, Facebooked (or would it be Rearbooked?) complaints and reports of swollen colleagues to my brain. I guess it had been a long time since I had ridden a bike for that length of time, if I ever had. I appreciated that evening’s usual festivities on a pillow.

After dinner, most days, we enjoyed playing some cards, and in our group it’s often boys versus girls. Bob, Claudette, and Denise have played a lot more bridge in their lives than I have. Consequently, I have needed to adopt other strategies in order to get along with these more savvy card players, and thus have “elected” to be lucky at times.

During one evening session, I opened four of a suit on two different occasions. For the non-bridge players among you, that means you have eight or more cards in the same suit, a rare but often good thing. While there may be some other technical bridge nonsense that goes with such hands, I won’t bore you with the details.

But that was nothing compared to a subsequent evening. I mean, who gets dealt twelve spades, including the ace and king? After spending a few minutes trying to divine whether or not Bob had the ace of diamonds (my thirteenth card was the deuce), I concluded that it was not possible, and “settled” for opening six spades. Denise, who had nine hearts and all three of the other aces, doubled. After Bob and Claudette passed, eighteen hours of college-level calculus credits prompted me to redouble. In bridge, doubling and redoubling have to do with point scoring.

With an almost-knowing smile, Denise, of course, annoyingly led the ace of diamonds. At that point, the remainder was academic, and I laid down my hand. For those of you who are not bridge players, Bob and I scored about a million points. And, for those of you who are bridge players, Bob and I scored about a million points.

Although we went on to win the Lands Down Under series, our triumph only served to even the score on international soil to 1-1, as the girls had kicked our butts a few years earlier in western Canada.   

On our last full day in New Zealand, we spent a couple of hours in line for the privilege of seeing about ten minutes worth of glowworms (not worth it) and visited a really well-orchestrated botanical garden in Hamilton (definitely worth it).

Looking back, I found Australia’s vast landscapes, unique environments, distinctive wildlife, and great cities to be extraordinary. The people we encountered were enormously friendly. We only saw a fraction of that remarkable country, and I’m sure there is much, much more to enjoy.

On the other hand, New Zealand reminded me of growing up in the US in the 1950s and 60s. Maybe it was the preponderance of two-lane country roads or all of the one-lane bridges we encountered. Or perhaps it was the small towns we visited that featured main street shops, open nine to five, Monday through Friday only. The highways that went right down those main streets certainly brought back memories, as did the courteous drivers who stopped every time we were at a crosswalk. A rarity in my recent US travels, I saw lots of clotheslines with actual clothes on them in New Zealand, and many of our hotel rooms were accessed using genuine keys. During our evening downtimes in some parts of the country, we could find as many as seven TV channels, discovered that some of them signed off at night, and observed that Christian programming was predominant on Sunday mornings.

As we drove those wonderful Kiwi roads, perhaps the steady diet of Neil Diamond, Mamas & Papas, Bob Dylan, Beatles, and others that we heard on Claudette’s iPhone playlist had something to do with my nostalgic experience. Whatever it was, overall, New Zealand seemed to trigger some long-dormant senses of wonder, safety, and innocence.

The question I am most often asked about our trip to Australia and New Zealand is, “Which one did you like better?”
Invariably, my response is, “Both.”   

Finally, it was Groundhog Day for us. If we didn’t like the way February 7 turned out in New Zealand, we could try again at home in Arizona. We left Auckland at around three p.m. local time and arrived in Phoenix around noon local time the same day. Although an eleven-hour trans-Pacific flight is long, our trip home seemed much easier than the outbound segment a month earlier, probably because Auckland to LA was almost four hours shorter than LA to Sydney.

All our luggage made it, and our Uber ride from the airport was both pleasant and efficient. Of course, upon arriving home, there was still nothing in the house to eat. So, I asked Denise if she thought that KFC was still in business. Sadly, it was. Original recipe, of course. Goes without saying.

In 1973, American soft rock duo Seals & Crofts had a hit song in which they repeatedly talked about never passing the same way again. While Denise and I think it’s unlikely that we’ll ever get back to the Lands Down Under, we cherish the memories we have from our visit to those wonderful countries.