8 February

It's Definitely Time to Say Goodbye...

During our last week in New Zealand, a lifeguard at New Brighton Beach recommended we visit Scarborough Beach. We enjoyed a long bus trip to that beach, where I took a quick swim (water temperature of 62 degrees!) and tried some body surfing in the mostly calm Pacific waters. On our final day in Christchurch, we returned to the southern end of New Brighton and walked five miles through a nature preserve and along the shore, watching gulls dropping sea shells to open them and admiring their astonishing acrobatics. A couple we met as we were leaving the beach insisted that we must return again—and I could not agree more!

Our final destination for this grand adventure was to Oahu and the Big Island, Hawaii. In Honolulu we saw Humpback whales spouting and breaching as we watched from the beach. The next day I snorkeled along the shore and saw Convict Tang fish and loads of Sea Urchins and a beautiful Snowflake Moray eel. Glorious! We learned some of the history of the Hawaiian Islands at the Bishop Museum, plus more whale watching during a cruise our final evening. We again used buses to get around Honolulu, for a very modest price of $1.25 per trip.

We went from Honolulu to the Outrigger Resort near Kona, which is our last stop before heading home to North Carolina. We have a rental car here and visited the National Park at Puuhonua O Honaunau, an ancient refuge with reconstructed temples and other native buildings. The weather was warm, the trail of broken lava difficult, but the educational experience was well worth the trip. Today we joined a cultural tour around our resort, which was a fishing village where King Kamehameha III was born. He ruled Hawaii from 1825 to 1854, and helped Hawaii evolve into a constitutional monarchy in 1840. We also visited another National Park at Kaloko Honokohau, where we viewed mysterious petroglyphs in the lava before reaching the sea and watching enormous green sea turtles basking along the rocks at the shore. Fantastic!

Reflecting on the traveling we have done since October, we are pleased to report we met many of our objectives during this trip. One thing we wanted was to stay in places long enough to really get a feel for the culture and the people. We made Porto our home for almost two months and Christchurch for one month, and we were beginning to feel less like tourists in each of those places. What a great experience to live and learn about these different societies.

Another hope was to be able to navigate during our travels with public transportation. Of course we used Uber when we were taking all our luggage to and from airports, but, most other times, we simply waited at bus stops and metro stations for local transportation. We made the time to do that, and it was well worth it. At one point I mentioned to Bill how great it was that we would actually take the time for a long bus trip just to check out a new gelato shop we heard about! I hope I can continue that slower pace in the US.

When we left NC, we hoped to connect with other amateur radio operators (Hams) throughout our travels. While we did not have success making contact in Portugal, we did meet and socialize with a neat group of NZ Hams in Christchurch. It was easy to see how we could expand that hobby if we were living in that area permanently. 

On a personal note, I did manage to make a big dent in my plans to write my memoirs for my grandchildren. In fact, I finished one section that I decided to publish separately, and actually got that done before we left NZ! The Boise Adventure is the story of my year in Idaho as an AmeriCorps Vista volunteer in 2015. It's available in a print version and a Kindle eBook at: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=The+Boise+Adventure (and the eBook version will be free from 14-18 Feb, if you decide to check it out!).

Whew! What a time we have had! And managing to not drive each other crazy was also our hope, which we seem to have accomplished. I did ask Bill what I should call him to let him know when I was annoyed. He said he would answer to anything, but he would not respond well to "Dickhead" (I offered "D.H." as an alternative, but he was not buying that!). At any rate, we have learned to capitalize on each other's strengths. Bill's ability to navigate and get us around all the different countries and cities is simply wonderful. I really would have had an entirely different trip without him making time to do all that—and it would not have been nearly so pleasant. 

We return to NC in two days and this is our "farewell address" from overseas. Thank you Bill, for sharing The Great Escape Adventure with me! It has been so fun!

Lory's last lines and Bill's final photos