Flashback Friday – Aloha Kauai

Welcome to Flashback Friday, where Fandango invites us to take a look back at some of our older posts. This one goes way back to the dark recesses of pre WordPress days.

Travel Journal – Kapaa Hawaii. Departure day – today we bid Aloha to our Kauai paradise and head back to the mainland, back to real life. Insert big sigh here. I don’t cry every time I leave Kauai … oh wait yeah I do. But life goes on, I have work to do and heaven knows my back misses my mattress!

This post inspired by Fandango’s Friday Flashback and originally posted November 11, 2015.

A hui hou kākou (Until we meet again) ~JP

Concrete Design

Concrete Design

The aged white settler
skin dyed rough brown
surviving on earliest farmland
produced his great masterpiece
with ancestral fascination
but today concrete design
built occupation’s cold future

For Found Poetry February day 21, a little poem from a magnetic word board found at the Wellington Museum. The museum is a delightful little trip through space and time. Click here to find out more.

Til next time ~Peace ~JPP

Wide Eyed Wanderings — Queenstown Gardens, New Zealand

Queenstown Garden

Queenstown Garden 2

Queenstown Garden 3

Queenstown Garden 4

Queenstown Garden 5

Queenstown Garden 6

Queenstown Garden 7

Queenstown Garden 8

Queenstown Garden 9

Queenstown Garden 10

Queenstown is the Extreme Sports capital of New Zealand, probably of the world. Name an extreme sport and chances are if it’s not readily available, they can arrange it for you. So what do two, non-sports (much less extreme sports) oriented older people do in Queenstown? We’ve taken the bus into “The Remarkables” shopping area, wandered the town’s back streets and lakeside neighborhoods. We’ve walked along the lake and stopped for tea and scones at a wonderful little coffee shop or two. Been revitalized at the Hilton’s wonderful spa. For our final day of wanderings, we set back across Lake Wakatipu to the Queenstown docks and the Queenstown Gardens.

Lake Wakatipu, Queenstown, NZ

Today we’re off on the “Million Dollar Cruise” of Lake Wakatipu. Our hotel lies across the lake from Queenstown on the Frankton arm, near where the lakes drains into the Kawarau River. We catch the water taxi at the hotel dock to the Queenstown waterfront. There is no market today and with less crowds there is more time to enjoy the waterfront itself. We linger for a bit enjoying the sites and some found poetry.

Wide Eyed Wanderings – Queenstown, NZ

After our day long bus trip from Christchurch, we arrived at our hotel in Queenstown. After a bit of a rest and refresh, we took the water taxi across lake Wakatipu to Queenstown proper. We arrived in time for the weekend outdoor market with it’s vendors and buzz of excitement.

What were you posting a year ago today?

That was the question from Sam over at Living. Here’s a little post from the travel journal (before I actually went on-line) from November 8 from the island of Kauai.

Up before dawn this morning. Sunrise here is not to be missed. The leaden sky above me in intriguing. Magical flits of monochrome, light grey to dark, to dove, to light, to white. The clouds are puffy the stuff of castles and cotton candy skies.

Just as I begin to lose myself in the endless corridors of non-color overhead, there comes a gradual lightening, a spot on the far horizon. I watch and wait with eager anticipation.

I know that time does not vary, yet these moments feel fleeting. Suddenly, the clouds begin to part. Spots of sky emerge and the light blazes through the opening. And I can feel the coming of the day, another day in paradise.

What were you doing this time last year?

Till next time ~Peace ~JPP