Caveat: It Floats

This blog is live, online, on a ferry boat, in the Cook Straight, New Zealand. And there's a cricket match on the television. I'm going from Wellington, at the bottom end of the North Island, to Picton, at the top of the South Island. I'd provide a picture, but bandwidth is limited.

I stayed in Palmerston North, last night. That's an oddly named town – I mean… where's Palmerston South? I can't find one. The town reminds me of Eureka, California. Or Temuco, Chile. A small town but too big to be a small town in its region, maybe. And the city geography is relatively flat and the streets are a dull, treeless grid. Wellington, on the other hand, is a beautiful city. It's one of those cities, like Duluth or Nagasaki, that I knew I would love before ever visiting there. Just that I have a sort of instinct for what places I will like, based on looking at things like maps and encyclopedias.

Caveat: Taumata-whakatangihanga-koauau-o-tamatea-turi-pukakapiki-maunga-horo-nuku-pokai-whenua-kitanatahu

I drove to Taumata-whakatangihanga-koauau-o-tamatea-turi-pukakapiki-maunga-horo-nuku-pokai-whenua-kitanatahu. It was very beautiful. Onomastics aside, New Zealand is a lot like California or western Oregon.

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Here are some other pictures. I saw a chicken at dawn (at roadside rest area where I slept a few hours).

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I saw some redwood trees (they’re not native to NZ, but they do quite well here – another reason why it reminds me of California).

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I saw some lakes.

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I saw the Hawkes Bay region, which reminds me of Monterey or San Luis Obisbo Counties, and the town of Hastings, which might as well be a funny-talking Salinas. The hills were golden.

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I saw the beach, on the east coast. It was very, very, very, very, very, very windy. I waved across the vast Pacific to Validivia, Chile, where I lived in 1994 – same latitude. I watched the Antarctic clouds glowering.

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