Our trip to New Zealand and Australia was fantastic, we had a really great time.

On the way out we stopped for a couple of days in Los Angeles to see our friends Lisa and Michael. They live on the east side of the city between Pasadena and the Hollywood hills. We hung out by the pool and had barbeques, drank countless botttles of wine and caught up the last couple of years. One day we walked up to the observatory in Griffith Park and looked down on the film studios in Glendale to the north and the Hollywood mansions nestled in hills to the west, how the other half live!

The flight to New Zealand was long and tedious, somewhere over the Pacific time travelled a day forward while we slept and watched movies. Maya met us at the airport in Wellington and took us to our AirBnB – yay we had arrived! We spent ten days in Welly and saw Maya as often as we could, usually after work we’d cook up a meal or grab fish ‘n chips from the celebrated “Chippery”. It was great to see Maya enjoying her “new life” in Welly; thriving in her job at the Wellington Museum and loving her house share with old friends from Nelson.

Wellington is known as windy Welly but the weather was kind to us, we had plenty of sunshine and only a few gales. It is an interesting city with densely wooded valleys squeezed between steep hills tightly packed with houses and craggy, windswept hilltops. Maya took us for a walk to a native forest reserve where we saw kea and kereru (New Zealand’s parrot and pidgeon) and tree ferns, and stumbled upon an old cemetery hidden in the woods.

One weekend we drove over to Pauatahanui to visit my cousin Sally, Pete and their girls Lauren and Erina. We walked the dogs and inspected the horses and caught up with all their goings on. In the evening we watched England beat the All Blacks (yay!) only to be defeated in the final by the Springboks. The next day we had lunch in a pub with my aunt and uncle Julie and Peter, a family gathering is a rare and real treat.

Before leaving New Zealand we spent a couple of days in Nelson, at the top of the South Island. We packed in lunches, teas and dinners with many old friends and enjoyed reconnecting and hearing their news. People had moved house, kids had grown up, a few bars had opened and closed but we were glad to see that not much had really changed in Nelson since we lived there ten years ago, still a friendly, funky little town.

Our first stop in Australia was with Neil’s sister Heather and her husband Anthoy who live on a farm north of Melbourne. We stayed on their property and enjoyed lazing in the garden, walking through the paddocks spotting kangeroos and making ourselves useful when we could. Most days we would go out to a nearby town, Kyneton or Castlemaine, to have a look around and maybe stop for lunch. Anthony drove us up to Echuca, his hometown on the Murray River and we saw the riverboats and the famous quay and visited many of his old haunts.

After a week in Victoria we flew with Heather and Anthony to Hobart, Tasmania. Our main mission was to visit the Mona Gallery, an eclectic collection of old and modern art gathered together by David Walsh, a local man who made a fortune through gambling. The museum is mostly underground and the feeling of disorientation is intended to remove you from reality to open your mind to some of the whacky exhibits. It is completely unconventional and was a lot of fun.

When Heather and Anthony returned to Melbourne we took a bus to the northern side of the island to visit friends Barbara and Udo who settled near Launceston about four years ago. They renovated their cottage which has a superb view over the River Tamar, cultivated a wondrous veggie garden and are loving life in their small tightly-knit community. Barbara is a wildlife carer and is training as a veterinary nurse. In the evenings the back garden is often crowded with wallabies; some are wild, others are joeys Barbara has nursed and relesaed after being rescued from car accidents where the mother was killed.

We were surprisingly charmed by Tasmania, although the weather was windy it was also bright and sunny and even warm. Udo and Neil played golf a couple of times and we went for walks on the wild, windswept northern beaches. I went to a Platypus sanctuary and loved seeing those crazy looking creatures diving and fossicking around in the water, they were much smaller than I expected but very cute.

Now we are back in Panama and are finally getting over the jetlag and managing to crawl out of bed before 10am.

Suzy