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Tag Archives: Museums

Indoors in Charleston

23 Monday Sep 2019

Posted by winifredcreamer in Charleston, SC

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Museums

We wanted to avoid the heat of a late summer day and find something interesting to do in an indoor, air-conditioned place that was not a shopping mall. The Charleston Museum seemed to fill the bill. We could have walked, but with high humidity and the temperature hovering around 90 (F.) we decided to save our energy for visiting the museum, and took The Dash, Charleston’s free bus. There are three overlapping routes around the downtown area, and in September it still runs four times each hour from early morning until about 8 pm.

The Charleston Museum has a little of everything. Fossils, animals, history and culture. I saw some of my favorite extinct birds, carefully mounted and displayed together.

There were artifacts from everyday life long ago recovered during local excavations. Every time construction begins in Charleston, material used to fill in the coast or level building lots reveals what people threw away, lost, or that blew away in past hurricanes.

In front of the museum is a full size replica of the H. L. Hunley, a Confederate submarine used in the Civil War. The sub disappeared after it sank one of the Union ships blockading Charleston Harbor in 1864. A search for the Hunley was spearheaded by author Clive Cussler, who used the sub in one of his novels. His group was successful in finding the Hunley in 1995, over 100 years after it disappeared.

The museum collection of this and that made an interesting visit on a day that was too hot outdoors for most humans.

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Auckland in Three Meals

06 Saturday Jul 2019

Posted by winifredcreamer in New Zealand

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Food, Museums, Restaurants

We stopped in Auckland on our way back to the US. We didn’t need to, there are direct flights from Brisbane to the US, but we saved a mint, so decided to do it. We arrived on Monday afternoon and left on Wednesday morning, deciding to take a brief culinary tour during our stay.

We began with dinner at Masu, a Japanese restaurant in the downtown area (Federal St.). The decor is comfortable, with wooden tables. Diagonal beams hung overhead suggest the roof of a house. The menu includes sushi, kitchen specialties, and a robata grill. We chose items from each section, with black cod cooked on the grill as our main dish. It was all delicious. As I am a dessert lover, I don’t mean to diminish the buttery sushi, the crsipy, spicy calamari, or clams steamed in buttery broth, but what really stood out was dessert. When is the last time you had a truly delicious dessert at an Asian restaurant? Masu really delivered in this category. The chocolate hazelnut pudding arrived in a small wooden box, with umeshu ice cream (made with Japanese plum liqueur). A server sprinkled green tea powder on top of the baked pudding at the table. Spoon out hot pudding with a crispy bit of topping, followed by a bite of ice cream–what flavor! I scraped out the corners of my little box, glad there wasn’t more, because I would have eaten it.

We took Uber back and forth from the city to our hotel by the airport, and the process went smoothly once I learned not to order a ride until I was in an easy-to-find location.

On Tuesday, we began with lunch at the Depot Eatery and Oyster Bar, once again arriving in the downtown area via Uber. There are no reservations at the Depot, but we were seated immediately, right around noon. Taking advantage of our location, we ordered a dozen raw tuatua clams, followed by a small plate of charcuterie, then venison cheek on creamy polenta. The charcuterie was both delicious and a bit unusual, including rabbit rillettes, cherry relish, wild pork salami, and locally made bresaola, served with fig and fennel seed toast. Best of all were little batons of head cheese that were rolled in crumbs and deep-fried; hot and crispy on the outside with melting meaty flavor on the inside.

The day was overcast, and we opted for a walk to the Auckland Art Gallery. There was Maori art, art of the western canon, and a surprisingly engaging exhibit, “Guerrilla Girls: Reinventing the ‘F’ Word – Feminism!.” The Guerrilla Girls are a collective of artists who point out inequality where they see it. They make posters to plaster in public places with titles like “Do Women Have to Be Naked to Get Into the Met. Museum?” The poster lists statistics about the representation of women in the Met’s collection, where it turns out there are far more female nudes on the walls than work of any kind by female artists.

By this time, we were getting museum fatigue and took a break for tea. Refreshed enough to continue, we headed for the harbor, strolling the pedestrian shopping precinct in central Auckland. These few blocks are full of international brands, with the occasional tourist souvenir shop butting in. We window shopped our way to the water. Two huge wharves have been converted to hotel and restaurant venues. We found our dinner spot, Euro, out on Princes Wharf. Our reservation was early, since we’d be getting up at 4 am to head for the airport. Our third restaurant meal was as interesting and as delicious as the previous ones. Jonathan couldn’t resist a few local oysters, and the two first courses were excellent. We started with “scorched” steak tartare, a delicious nearly raw chopped beef covered in a cloud of tiny kumara (yam) chips. Next came duck ham, slivers of ham draped over a pastry tube of delicate duck liver mousse. We cleaned up every bit of it. Jonathan went on to a main dish of crispy beef cheek while I held out for dessert. When I asked our waiter what to choose, he suggested he bring me something, which turned out to be half portions of two different desserts, cheesecake cigars with ginger ice cream followed by tapioca with pineapple curd, panna cotta cream and so that it wouldn’t resemble pudding, shards of white chocolate and dried pineapple fanning out of the top like the sails of a ship.

Our culinary visit to Auckland showed there is lots of fresh shellfish and well prepared seafood. There is also excellent meat and specialty products from local producers. Add some New Zealand wine and you have menus that focus on New Zealand products with delicious results. We don’t usually eat out, so this visit was a real treat, and we were more than satisfied with each of our stops.

7.2.19 Auckland towersm
7.2.19 Albert Park-002sm

 

 

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Dodging Showers at Tweed Regional Gallery

01 Monday Jul 2019

Posted by winifredcreamer in Australia, Brisbane

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Art, Museums

The recent rains are supposedly abating and we planned an indoor/outdoor day to hedge our bets. First stop was the Tweed Regional Gallery and Margaret Olley Art Centre in Murwillumbah, a 25 minute drive from our house. Not large, but very lively, this young institution aims to be a hub for cultural activity and seems to be succeeding. There were three rotating exhibits that included intriguing work by a still life artist, Dean Home, and paintings by an Aboriginal artist based in this region, Digby Moran.

The main event is the studio and works of Margaret Olley, an Australian artist known for her still life paintings.

There was also a group of works that show a regional landmark, Mt. Warning, painted by several different people over a span of about 100 years. (The banner painting is yet another view of Mt. Warning by Thomas Dean).

George Wishart
George Wishart
Guy Maestri
Guy Maestri

The permanent exhibit includes Margaret Olley’s studio, brought lock, stock, and paintbrushes from her home in Sydney. All the materials were photographed in place, catalogued, measured, described, assessed from a conservation standpoint, moved hundreds of kilometers from Sydney to Murwillumbah, stored until the building that is now the gallery was completed, and then reinstalled. I would have loved to be a volunteer helping with that project!

There’s also an artist in residence, and contributions by former artists-in-residence to current exhibits. A good cafe, gift shop, and engaged docents that we observed in action guiding a tour, the Tweed Regional Gallery was impressive as an organization. We had our picnic at one of the outdoor tables looking over the rolling landscape of greater Murwillumbah. I did say this was only the first stop. The weather stayed bright and sunny so we stopped at the Moobal National Park along the road home and went for a walk in the rainforest. There are only a few remnants of coastal rainforest in northern New South Wales and southern Queensland. If you find a patch, the walking is lovely and cool, and there are a few birds. We had our moment in nature before heading home, without a drop falling on us.

6.27.19 Moobal NP-005sm
6.27.19 Moobal NP-015sm

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Sydney through the eyes of painters

19 Tuesday Mar 2019

Posted by winifredcreamer in Australia, Sydney

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Landscape, Museums

The forecast was rain, putting museum visits at the top of the day’s activities. We have visited both the northern and southern extremities of Botany Bay and Sydney Harbor, so when I read that a painting of the view from the North Head was newly installed in the National Library of New South Wales, it became a must-see. We had visited the North Heads on a perfect day.It was also a beautiful a day when Arthur Streeton painted the view in 1894.Panoramic View of Sydney Harbour and the City Skyline, depicts the complex entrance to Sydney Harbor. Streeton is one of the best known of late 19th-early 20th century Australian painters. I found other views of the same vista by painters of the previous generation, equally lovely.

I get great pleasure from seeing a painting of a landscape I have visited. On the left is the North Heads by Eugene von Guerard in 1856, on the right by Conrad Martens in 1866. The landscape didn’t change much until the 20th century, yet each artist shows the bay in a slightly different way. Between the National Library and the Art Gallery of New South Wales, we had a tour of the history of Australian art 1850-1960.

There were other places we’ve seen that look different today than they did when painted. Fairy Bower is still a lively spot between Shelly and Manly beaches.

3.8.19 Fairy Bower pool-001sm
3.15.19 Library of NSW.19 Library of NSW-Fairy Bower Grievesm

This is the Fairy Bower pool today (left) and when painted in 1956.

3.15.19 Library of NSW.19 Art Gallery of NSW Sydney-Afternoon at Bondi Grunersm
3.9.19 WC in Bondi rock poolsm

Romantic paintings of the beaches are often so much lovelier than the reality. Both the above are from Bondi Beach, and the ones below show beachcombing.

3.15.19 Art Gallery of NSW Sydney-001sm
3.1.19 Maroubra Beach-012sm

One last painting caught my eye because it depicts countryside that we have seen in the parts of rural Australia we’ve visited so far. Morning Light, by Elioth Gruner, painted in 1916. Few of the Australian artists are well known outside these borders, though their common themes of natural beauty and tranquility are universal. It makes me happy just to look at them.

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Movies in Melbourne

20 Wednesday Feb 2019

Posted by winifredcreamer in Australia

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Attractions, Museums

The Australian Centre for the Moving Image is right in the middle of Melbourne, on Federation Square across the street from the main train station. This vast center(re) offers a schedule of movie screenings every day, along with permanent galleries, and temporary exhibits. We spent all day there and ended up with visual overeload while completely running out of steam. It was great.

The temporary installation is a piece of performance art in which snippets of films have been spliced together to span twenty-four hours of real time, using images of clocks from movies showing the time. Do we really see that many clocks in the background of movies? And so many pocketwatches! The artist is making a commentary on time and other themes, but the clips are so short it could be an all day vimeo contest: Can you identify these movies/actors/places? The clip from The Third Man was so short that I only recognized it from the music. There’s Meryl Streep and Alec Baldwin, Mata Hari, everyone. We sat for forty minutes and could easily have stopped in for another hour. Just think, it goes for 24 hours like this! There are all night showings!

It’s wondrous for non-movie fanatics, I wonder what movie fans think? I’d guess they love it, so much trivia, so many details. Here’s what the Centre says about it:

The Clock is a 24-hour video installation created from thousands of clips of clocks, watches and other references to time from film and television. These are masterfully edited together and synced to the present moment in one mesmerising collage. The result is an epic journey through cinematic history as well as a functioning timepiece.

Minute by minute, hour by hour, hundreds of characters are jolted awake by alarms, run for trains, wait for lovers, or dream strange dreams. Stitched together from hours of cinematic history, The Clock gifts audiences the addictive joy of recognising favourite actors or scenes from beloved films, as well as being wildly compelling and dream-like itself.

Here’s a review by someone who watched the entire twenty-four hours.

Review of “The Clock” installation

Can you see us projected on the side of the building?

The permanent exhibit focuses on the history of the film industry emphasizing Australia when possible. There are views from old devices and lots of movie clips, lots. Silent movies, Marx Brothers, Clark Gable and Katherine Hepburn (Bringing Up Baby), but the Australians, Moulin Rouge, Cate Blanchett, producers, directors. By the time I’d looked at clips from the first silent films to the advent of sound, color, and television, I was up to my eyeballs in movie scenes. From there, the exhibit branches off into Australian TV, movies, costumes, special effects, animation, video games, and digital media. The only game I could manage was Pong–slow motion ping pong. We took a break for lunch and returned for another round. The gallery is arranged around their two big pieces, a vehicle from Mad Max, and the piano from “The Piano.” There are some places to sit when your feet start to give out, as well as a cafe and lots of outdoor seating for resting or picnicing. Amazingly, all this is free. The only charge is for screenings of full-length movies. You could spend all day looking at the exhibits and then take in a film that starts at 6:45pm. There’s even a series called prosecco + film. The ACMI is a place that really does have something for every taste and level of enthusiasm.

 

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MONA: The Museum of Old and New Art

15 Tuesday Jan 2019

Posted by winifredcreamer in Australia

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Attractions, Museums

MONA is a new phenomenon just outside Hobart, a huge museum meandering up and down over three floors built into the side of a hill. Visitors arrive via ferry from the city, getting a great view of the Derwent River and the MONA facade as they arrive. Drivers walk down a path beside a band shell and lawn, past a barbecue restaurant and bar, the entrance to the Moorilla winery that is part of the property, and if they’re not lost yet, descend a zig-zag set of stairs and ramps to arrive at the front door of the museum. Clad in mirror-finish brass, it’s a bit disorienting, but that seems to be the point.

I started our visit by sitting on a stool held up by a gloved “Mickey Mouse” hand.

We rambled along the suggested route, from the lowest level upward, then took a break to go off-site for a picnic lunch break. Tickets are good for multiple entries on a single day, and no one paid much attention to our in and out. Musicians were playing in the band shell from around noon until after we left. We didn’t like the music much, but it was entertainment, and people were sitting on the lawn listening.

I enjoyed the moments of participation. We arrived in one room during the period when visitors are allowed to add to a pile of broken glass piled against a section of white wall within the dark room. If you hit the wall with the bottle given to you, a bright light goes off.

Another installation is a recreated studio of Vermeer with a discussion of whether artists of his period used lenses to project images to enhance the accuracy of their painting. I sat before a blank page with an inverted image pasted on the wall and a lens angled in such a way that I could draw the image on the blank page as if I was tracing it. I did a pretty good job if I do say so.

An ingenious piece emits water droplets in patterns that create words out of the falling water. I listened to an interview with the artist who revealed that as soon as he presented his piece he was besieged with requests to use it for advertising. He refused, and someone promptly worked out how he did it, creating a similar device to be used for advertising. It is already in use, with the artist gaining neither credit or money for it.

There was one piece that impressed me as a work of art and a commentary on life and art. This machine was created by Jean Tinguely  (1925-1991) as a commentary on the machine age as it runs constantly and does nothing but wear down. The intent was that eventually it would destroy itself. It was created long before Steampunk–I consider Tinguely the grandfather of Steampunk. Watch a very short video of the contraption working:

Jean Tinguely metamechanics sculpture at MONA

Outdoors was a life-size sculpture of a semi trailer carrying a cement mixer. The strange difference was the fact the entire piece was created from gothic style arches cut into steel.

Whether or not visitors like the art is beside the point. MONA provides all visitors with an “O” device that works easily and well, providing text about all the pieces. Press the button and O reveals what is nearest to you, click on the photo to read a basic description, then on other icons for more extensive comments. Sometimes there is a music or video link, though these are underutilized. The device was an excellent way for the museum to avoid labels and allows them to move things around at any time. The device elicits a “love”, “hate” reaction to each piece, and allows viewers to comment. I liked it better than an audio guide.

With the O device in hand, a visitor could easily spend many hours viewing and commenting on the pieces. But why? The pieces are sometimes boring, like the white table filled with random bits, or the Porsche covered with fiberglass, aka, the “Fat Car.”

Later, I looked at the MONA web page that shows some of the items in the collection. Most of them were items that I did not see during our visit. It looks like they do rotate material frequently. The web page doesn’t exactly keep up. That is probably intentional. MONA intends to do everything differently, for good or bad. Museum staff are numerous, friendly, and helpful. For example, they ask you not to take in water bottles, and provide water at all the bars/restaurants. There are many opportunities to purchase food and drink, souvenirs or “enhanced visits.” I opted not pay extra to go inside the white sphere. For another opinion of MONA, here is Jonathan’s review of MONA from TripAdvisor:

MONA is a difficult institution to review.  Is it a museum, as implied by the name?  Not really.  It is mostly a money-making entertainment venue.  The next big question is: is it art?  Well, kind of.  It is a bizarre collection made by the wealthy owner with no real focus except “sex and death”.  Much of it seems deliberately designed to shock or stymy the visitor and it does succeed at both of those.  Does it inspire a greater understanding of anything?  Not that I can see.  We spent four hours wandering around the dark tunnels and “exhibit” spaces.  It’s hard to get really lost, but you do wind up backtracking a lot.  My wife and I were reminded of the Dali Theatre-Museum in Spain, where the visitor is invited to put aside traditional pathways and explore the Museum as you wish. The difference is that Dali was a creative genius and the curators of his museum do a stunning job of displaying Dali’s art (and related artists).  Mona on the other hand has depressingly little of creative genius and the curators do a particularly bad job of presenting mediocre fare.  Go, have a good time, but don’t expect to be enlightened.

 

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Visiting Christchurch and the Banks Peninsula

05 Saturday Jan 2019

Posted by winifredcreamer in New Zealand

≈ 2 Comments

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Beaches, Coast, Museums, Wine

My mental map of Christchurch is a triangle. The city center is near the top. The lower right corner is the Banks Peninsula, an ancient volcano that on the map looks like a huge pinwheel. The lower left corner is Lake Ellesmere, a very large, shallow lagoon that is barely connected to the sea through a gap in the dunes. The Pacific Ocean borders two sides of the triangle with one side (left) firmly part of the mainland.

My favorite place in central Christchurch was the Canterbury Museum. It has skeletons of extinct moas, and lots of maori artifacts. The museum is located on the corner of the Botanical Gardens, too, making it possible to visit to both places in one day.

12.22.18 canterbury museum-017sm
12.22.18 canterbury museum-062sm

Just outside the city center, right at the airport, is the International Antarctic Centre. I wasn’t sure it would be worth the price of admission, yet we had a great time and were there for at least two hours. There are excellent exhibits on what its like to spend a research season in Antarctica, the clothing, the housing, even an Arctic storm room that simulates a whiteout. The snow and ice covered room not really as cold as the Antarctic, but it’s very cold. You wear an extra expedition jacket over what you are already wearing, and boot covers. Later, we went for a ride in the tank-like vehicles they drive on the snow in Antarctica, including demonstrations of going up and down steep hills and leaning way over to one side. There are penguins, too, blue penguins swimming in a pool with an underwater window. It was a great visit, and I really liked seeing the US National Science Foundation Antarctic Center right across the street, even if there wasn’t an exhibit there. Christchurch is the departure point for all US researchers going to the US Antarctic base at McMurdo Sound, including some of my colleagues from Northern Illinois University. What an adventure that must be!

Out on the Banks Peninsula, Akaroa is a small town known for its brief reign as the French outpost in New Zealand. From Christchurch the drive is at least an hour and a half across two old volcanoes. You see the edge of the crater as you go over the hills to Little River, then across the crater to Akaroa. The town offers beaches, lunch, and shopping, an excellent vacation stop. We were there on a day with a cruise ship visit (!), which has the benefit that all the stores and restaurants are open, but the disadvantage that they are all full. We left town to look for a place to have a picnic, and ended up in a cove across from the moored cruise ship, watching tenders carry passengers back and forth, while people paddleboarded, jet skied, and kayaked around the bay. The water is cloudy in other parts of New Zealand from glacial dust and runoff that gives it a bright turquoise color. Akaroa is nowhere near the glaciers but the water has the same slightly cloudy bright blue color.

We explored the north edge of the Banks Peninsula in a separate trip around Governors Bay where the only person we met was a young woman at a family reunion nearby. She told us the name of this mountain in Maori.

Our visits to the third corner, Lake Ellesmere began coincidentally when we turned off the highway to look at shore birds. We ended up at Birdling’s Flat, a long pebbly stretch of beach. On our way out we stopped at a quirky rock shop and museum and found that many of the pebbles at Birdling’s Flat are agates. Once polished, there are all colors, and the shop/museum displayed thousands of polished stones.

12.21.18 rock shop birdlings flatcrsm
12.21.18 rock from birdlings flatcrsm

On our final trip to Lake Ellesmere to look at birds, we ended up laughing and taking a selfie while slogging around in a muddy tidal flat. The promised birds…..they were all black swans, hundreds of them. (We’d already seen hundreds of black swans.)

12.20.18 muddy lake ellesmere jarvis rd.-004sm
12.20.18 muddy lake ellesmere jarvis rd.-003sm

The weather has been unusually rainy and cool, we hear, though since we didn’t know any better, we went out almost every day to visit a beach, or a winery. You could spend a lot of time touring the Marlborough wine region north of Christchurch, but we decided to leave that for another time. We had delicious wine at the wineries we did visit. In New Zealand, a tasting room is a “cellar door.”

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Wonders in Wellington

21 Wednesday Nov 2018

Posted by winifredcreamer in New Zealand

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Animals, Museums, Restaurants

Wellington is not a large city and though it is hilly, the downtown is along the water and easy to walk. Even driving on the left it wasn’t too difficult to navigate. We’ve always been able to find parking and figure out how to pay for it. There are about three coffee shops on each block and not a Starbucks among them (There are only two or three in all of New Zealand). Coffee is served strong, no need to ask for extra shots!

We’ve now been to Wellington twice–both great days. We had to begin with a day of doctor visits. Fortunately, the morning visit was shorter than expected (!) and we had time to visit the Zealandia nature park. It’s a green fold in the land just above Wellington center. I don’t know why it wasn’t developed, as there are suburbs all around. It’s about the size of Central Park in Manhattan and a section of the park is walled and fenced to keep out non-native species. In New Zealand, there are no native mammals, so everything from cats and dogs to opossums and stoats are predators. Native New Zealand animals, including kiwis, never learned to hide from ground predators. There’s even a ground-dwelling parrot in New Zealand. They’re all endangered. We saw tuataras sitting at mouth of their burrows. They look ordinary but are the only surviving descendant of an ancient line of reptiles. For an animal-centric view of this country, read “Notes from New Zealand: A Book of Travel and Natural History,” by Ed Kanze.

There are bird feeders at Zealandia, where we saw Kaka, one of the native parrots. These clever birds have to operate a handle to open their food dish, both to keep them engaged and to keep the other birds from stealing their food pellets.

The walk was lovely and not difficult. One area was closed off to protect the nest of a Takahe, an oversized purple gallinule that is only found in New Zealand (endemic). I overheard a staff member excitedly chatting with a visitor–the egg is due to hatch in a week! We get so excited about the little things.

Our second trip to Wellington was entirely by choice, focusing on the Maori collection at the Museum of New Zealand Te Papa Tongarewa, called Te Papa. The Maori exhibit was fascinating. The sculpture is highly detailed, it is a shame that photos aren’t permitted beyond the entrance. There were some massive canoes, all highly decorated, along with sculpture, clubs, and tools.

From the museum, we crossed the Sea to City Bridge, an art piece on its own, and window-shopped on Cuba St. This is a lively neighborhood of restaurants and shops. Around the corner, we bought a loaf of multi-grain sourdough bread at Leeds St. Bakery just before it closed, and finished with lunch at Florinda’s where Jonathan’s tuatua pasta (pasta with clams) was so delicious that we decided to go clamming the next day.

Our final stop on both trips was Evans Beach. I found a web site that shares places around the world where you can look for beach glass, and I looked up Wellington. Our beach in Te Horo has lots of driftwood but not much glass. Evans Beach in Wellington was said to have beach glass, so we made our way there. We didn’t find a beach, just a few rocky stretches connected by cement walls holding up the highway. We found a less-developed stretch where we could pull over, but most of the shore was rock. The tide was low, so I went down to look at a gravelly spot–and there I found a great spread of beach glass! Jonathan was surprised that I found anything. It was such a surprise that we made a return trip the second time we were in Wellington to return the larger pieces and pick up smaller ones that I can use in my jewelry-making. Wellington is truly a something-for-everyone place.The Wellington waterfront from Te Papa.

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Northland, New Zealand

14 Wednesday Nov 2018

Posted by winifredcreamer in New Zealand

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Animals, Architecture, Beaches, Coast, Museums

We wanted to see the far north of New Zealand. We didn’t get to Cape Reinga, the tip of a long finger of land that points north from the rest of the island, but we got to the knuckles, around Doubtless Bay. One long sandy bay after another stretches along the north end of New Zealand’s north island. We left our spot on the beach near the town of Mangonui to see Tokerau Bay farther along. When we got there, it was the same gorgeous sand beach stretching for miles.

11.10.18 Doubtless Bay-028sm
11.10.18 Doubtless Bay-030sm

Beachcombing turned up lot of interesting shells, though only a couple of pieces of beach glass. Fragments of mussels and pen shells have iridescent interiors that reflect the sun in stripes of blue, green, and purple. Jonathan found the live oysters growing on the rocks irresistible.

We stayed at the Old Oak hotel, built in 1861 as the Mangonui hotel, renovated many times, and lovely. The small downtown area of Mangonui has photos showing buildings that have been in place since the 1890s. The only difference between then and now is that the buggies have changed to cars.

One of our goals in Northland was to see Ninety-Mile Beach. It spans the entire west side of that northern finger of New Zealand. Vehicles can drive the length of the beach at low tide and it’s a popular tour. We didn’t really want to drive for two hours up and then back, so we went for a look, and saw marks of the wheelies on the sand–at the end of the tour? Jonathan found people clamming along the shore and wanted a bucket so he could take home his own clams, but we’re not going to be home to the stove for two days and that might not be good for either the clams or for us after eating them, so we watched enviously while they worked. I admired the work of the woman who was clamming with a bucket in one hand and her cane in the other. That’s spirit for you.

Our chief souvenir from 90 mile beach was a flat tire. We changed the tire in record time and when we stopped at a wood carving shop just down the road, a woman directed us a few hundred yards to Awanui Tires. According to the young man fixing tires (tyres), the Monday morning rush had just ended and we chatted while he fixed the hole. He held up a strange piece of metal, neither bolt nor screw, that made the hole. We shook our heads and thanked the two men. The entire process from flat to fix had cost us less than an hour. We understood most of what they said…..New Zealanders can speak their own language when they want to and tourists–we’re on our own.

Last stop in the north was Whangarei (Fhan-gar-ey) the only city north of Auckland. Highlights included the Town Basin area where there is a sculpture walk along the water and shops and galleries selling beautiful local crafts. Polished and carved wood and resin from the kauri tree, distinctive and now rare, was one of the highlights.

11.11.18 Whangarei-004cr
11.11.18 Whangarei-003cr
11.11.18 Whangarei-005cr

Among the sculptures in the downtown area of Whangarei is an unusual small building covered with colored tiles and mirror. This turns out to be a prototype of materials and forms to be used in the Hundertwasser Museum. Hundertwasser was an Austrian artist and architect who was captivated by New Zealand and moved here in 1975 and spent the rest of his life near Kawakawa, outside Whangarei. I became aware of Hundertwasser’s imaginative paintings when I was in college. He drew floating cities with forests for roofs, presaging green roofs by quite a few years. He turned to fanciful architecture, building structures in Europe that resemble the work of Antoni Gaudi. He designed public toilets for the town of Kawakawa, a project that proved to be his last. Now, after years of public debate and fundraising, the Hundertwasser museum is under construction in Whangarei, to open in 2020.

On our way out of town we visited the Quarry Arts Center where a number of artists have studios in a delightful tiny neighborhood filled with sculptures of all kinds..

We ended up at Kiwi North, SW of Whangarei, to see the kiwi. They live in a controlled environment that leads them to believe day is night so they will come out to eat. What funny birds! They look like the back half of a cat with a long beak in the front that they use to snuffle about in fallen leaves. When startled, they zip back into their cave-like nest. We watched them in the dark until a keeper brought out food. That drew them out into what little light there was. After eating, the pair scuttled back into their burrow and we went on.

Kiwi North is a central place for culture in Northland, including historic structures moved from elsewhere, a small museum, rotating exhibits, the kiwi, and a series of regional museum/clubs including medical equipment, old cars, rocks and minerals, and others. These are not open on any particular schedule, but the campus-style setting provides a place for aficionados of different things to have a clubhouse/museum. It looks like a good arrangement for all.

Church made from a single tree's lumber
Church made from a single tree’s lumber
Looking through a hollow log.
Looking through a hollow log.
The tardis?
The tardis?

By this time, we had to make our way back to Piha. We packed a lot of looking around into a few days in Northland. There’s lots more to see–we missed the Hundertwasser toilets in Kawakawa! That will have to wait for another time.

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The Spondylus Route to archaeology, Ecuador

24 Friday Aug 2018

Posted by winifredcreamer in Ecuador

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Archaeological sites, Museums

Romantically named, the Ruta del Spondylus highway borders the the ocean in places, then dips inland around high hills, making its way from northern Peru to northern Ecuador. It is named after the spondylus shell, brilliant orange or deep purple species that were used to make beads and jewelry by the ancient people of both Ecuador and Peru. These mollusks are only found in warmer waters–no spondylus were harvested in the waters off Peru, but the bright colored shell was traded south from Ecuador into Peru by 3000 BC, or perhaps even earlier.

Over-harvesting resulted in a crash of spondylus and today it is in danger of extinction. The Ecuadorian government is supporting experiments in repopulating these species. We found no trace of spondylus in the many tourist souvenir stands along the roadway, though we found a local monument to these lovely shells. Jewelry made from spondylus shells is very popular among tourists visiting Peru, though the shell comes from all over the world. The romance of having something made from shell that was valuable to the Inca and their even earlier ancestors still captivates visitors.

In Ecuador, however, the greatest enchantment is in the beaches that line the route. There are well-known stops such as Playa Los Frailes or Playa Rosada (pinkish sand), and lesser known beaches that lack umbrellas and chairs for rent, but provide long stretches for a walk or a swim. We are visiting during the off season, the dark of winter to many Ecuadoreans because of the cloudy weather. It has not rained, but the sun has been out only two days of our first seven here. The Santa Elena peninsula, where we are located, is one of the driest places on the Ecuadorian coast. In GoogleEarth, it shows up as a grayish brown finger of land pointing out into the Pacific.

Part of the attraction to us is the deep history of the area. Ecuador was home to very early villages that formed by 3800 BC in places like Real Alto. We visited the museum at that site on one of our first days in the area and walked around. It’s a difficult sell for tourism, however, because there is nothing to see on the surface. The raised area where people built their houses is barely distinguishable from the surroundings, and even when the excavations were first being carried out, the astonishingly early remains consisted of the stones that formed the base of clusters of houses. There was never anything on the surface. You need a good imagination to  build a circle of oval thatched houses in the brush that covers the area today. We enjoyed chatting with the young woman excavating some test units as part of a thesis project at ESPOL (Escuela Superior Politecnica del Litoral).

Our next archaeology stop was the Museo des Amantes de Sumpa, just down the street from our house, in the town of Santa Elena. We wanted to see the famous skeletons of a young couple buried together in an embrace. What we found was an excellent local museum with information on the ancient people of the region that was never boring or preachy (as a lot of museum text seems to be). In addition to the archaeological exhibits there was a recreation of a local house from a century ago that showed the very simple possessions people are likely to have had. Having heard a lot about hat-making in Ecuador (home of “real” Panama hats), we were interested to see that the equipment for making straw hats is unchanged between today and the 19th century. It was a lovely visit–I only wished they had a gift shop! We were impressed by the entire museum, which is carefully tended. The exhibits are not complex or high tech, yet they are absorbing. The meeting room of the museum was in use during our visit with a training program (according to the guard). It is nice to see the public spaces of a museum in use.

Our next stop was the museum at Valdivia, site of the oldest pottery in the New World when it was originally reported in the 1970s. Jonathan and I studied archaeology when this site was the next big thing, and Betty and Clifford Meggers and their Ecuadorean colleague Emilio Estrada, proposed that Validivia showed a connection between Japan’s ancient Jomon culture and the earliest ceramic-makers, as early as 4000 BC. Today this seems like an unlikely proposal. The similarities between Jomon and Valdivia pottery are related to the fact that there are only so many ways you can decorate pottery that is made and decorated by hand with no tool more complex than a pointed stick.

The Valdivia Museum is run by the community and has almost no budget. There are volunteer docents who were pleasant and knowledgeable, but there was almost no labeling and many of their photographs had disappeared or disintegrated. We enjoyed our visit. I was astonished to hear that the museum is built right on the middle of the excavated site. The town has grown up on and around it, covering up the site entirely. We stared at a low dirt embankment in the parking lot as though potsherds would be lying there waiting for us. Since none appeared, we asked whether anyone sold replicas of ancient pottery and were referred to a house around the corner, the home and studio of Juan Orrala, master replica-maker. We chatted and looked at his work, all the copies stamped with “Replica-Juan Orrala” in the clay of the base. His contemporary work inspired by ancient designs is beautifully made, so we took home some of each. What you see below is the replica figurine we purchased (8 in long), a whalebone figurine in the museum (about 24 in long) and a monument outside the town of Valdivia (about 6 ft. high). The museum holds hundreds of fragments of smaller clay versions of the “goddess.”


We also bought a matching plate and bowl set that we are already using as serving ware.We are happy to have met the talented Sr. Orrala.

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