Twelve Feet, Six Continents, One Year

Saying goodbye to Hoi An and our guide, Luong The last post described the first half of our time in Hoi An. The two themes of the second half of the week are beach and clothes. Hoi An is famous for its custom clothing industry. We learned from our guide that many aspects of Hoi An's development are attributed to its role as a significant port for hundreds of years. Food and other aspects have been heavily influenced by the interactions that have stemmed from this. Today, many tourists come to Hoi An to have handmade clothes produced at a fraction of retail. Our guide told us about one of the stores ("the best one!") and we followed her instructions. Step 1 in the process is to have your measurements taken, to pick out fabric and to provide a picture or model of the garment you want. Roughly 24 hours (or more) later, you return for step 2. Here, you try on the first iteration of your clothes and identify any needed adjustments. Afterall, if you produce a full sui...

Elise inherited a love of sailing from her father, who got it from his dad (aka "Big Papa") When our host greeted us on arrival in Whitianga, she mentioned, "if you guys want to go for a sail, and you definitely should, let me know and I'll call my friend Mat who owns Boom Sailing. He'll take good care of you." We did and here's how it went. Nana and Papa enjoying an afternoon with Boom Sailing Pura Vida! Still smilin' after all these days May the sun shine and the wind always be at your back Our sailors in their natural element  Ali was also all smiles Cate was splainin somethin Serious pura vida Mother and daughter living their best life Cathedral Cove Cathedral Cove

Our last stop in New Zealand was meant to be our most relaxing. The Coromandel Pensinsula is apparently the posh weekend getaway for the 40% of NZ's population that lives in Auckland. There's a ferry from the Big City to Coromandel town and plenty of evidence all around that these folk have second homes on the hillsides all around. And for good reason: it's beautiful here. For example, this is the view from our rental just north of Whitianga (pronounced, "Fiddy-ang-uh" with the first syllable rhyming with the artist 50¢). Our first outing was to a place called Hot Water Beach, where we were told you can dig down in the sand and create a natural hot tub for yourself. This is sufficiently true that the cafe next to the carpark rents shovels for a $10 deposit and $10 for up to three hours. Here's Cate at the bottom of the hole that we inherited and then expanded. Indeed, the water at the bottom was quite hot But it never filled up in a way to make it appeali...

Probably the southernmost site on our trip: Slope Point, New Zealand Everybody was right: the distances in New Zealand are very deceiving. It takes a really long time to go anywhere. I'd guess our typical travel speed has been 45 miles per hour. One funny thing about this is that the national default speed limit is 100 kph (62 mph), which our navigation displays no matter where we are, including this gravel road. Going 42kph in a 100 zone; out the windshield you can see the gravel and in the nav you can see the curves! Anyway, we left Dunedin mid-morning on Wednesday and took about an hour to reach Balclutha on the motorway. We found a lovely municipal park with a picnic table, a great playground and a weird, small zoo. Then it was on to the Nugget Point Lighthouse, where we enjoyed a short hike hoping to see Penguins (no) but got rewarded with some baby sparrows in their nest (in the blind from which we hoped to spot the penguins!) Hoping to see some Yellow-Eyed Pengu...