Travel update
These few days are about covering the ground, as we head for Wellington and the return ferry to South Island on Wednesday morning. So we're motoring south, this time keeping to the western part of the island (having come up the eastern side).
Waitomo and its caves are about halfway up North Island. Today's journey has taken us south-west, almost to New Plymouth before turning south and finishing in Wanganui.
A rainy day was no problem for the driving, but meant we again missed seeing a major mountain. In South Island we were thwarted by the weather from seeing the glaciers and Mount Cook; this time it's Mount Taranaki that was lost in the clouds. Oh, well..
By the way, an interesting part of yesterday's trip was seeing some skeletons of animals that died in the caves - including a moa. A large flightless bird, the moa became extinct around 500 years ago; in its day, though, there were several different types. I'm sure there was a grass-eating one, which we could call ... the lawn moa.
On that note I should probably finish.
Decided against throwing myself into the freezer, the barbecue sounded more appealing. So I turned in desperation to Delia’s “One is fun” – I don’t think so Delia, not when you’ve been jilted!
ReplyDeleteI looked for barbecue of chump and found just what I wanted on page 95. It sounded like an exotic way to go – Oriental lamb. Take one chump lamb chop and rub in olive oil and mixed spice – including curry powder. Feeling cold after all that snow I chose the hottest variety available – Madras. Well I can tell you that my eyes were watering plenty– those chilli spices sure find all the cracks in your armour so to speak – my mascara has run everywhere - and I’m not sure I put the cinnamon stick in the right place. To cut a long recipe short, I couldn’t find the matches through my tears to set the fire going, so consoled myself with eating the final ingredients of banana and sultanas.
Thank you at least for that Delia, they gave me the energy and resolve to carry on with life, a quick roll in the snow to cool my ardour and wash my wool, - all is not lost, and I take hope from Sunday’s blog.
The mobile library comes past the field later in the week and I will research the recommended book, but meanwhile Baa Baa has emailed me to say “forget Agnes and Steve and l’ambour, it could just be a short ramshackle affair”.
Baa Baa seems a wise old chop – I mean chap, - and well travelled. He tells me that the Maori word for sheep is “hipi” – (sounds like my sort of country), and “mate” is to be deeply in love or sick, that makes me a hipi mate.