They gave us the rental car keys and assumed we could navigate the world backwards, driving on the left with the steering wheel on the right. Lots of traffic circles, and they’re all clockwise. doing all this in a standard transmission while shifting with your left hand! It startles me when I see a car seat or a dog in the left front seat–where I’m used to seeing a driver. Pedestrians walk on the left of the sidewalk. Speed limit signs are simply numbers in circles, kilometers per hour (we assume). The directionals are on the right side of the steering wheel. There are white diamonds painted on the roads that still mystify us. At least a green light still means go.

Christchurch is like a ghost town. Not in the deserted old westerner sense, but in the memory of our host, Andrew from BECA Engineers (Jeremiah’s employer). He pointed to empty lot after empty lot as he toured us through the city center, remembering that this one was a 10 story office building, or that his friend used to work in that 8 story building but it’s gone now, pancaked in the earthquake, February 2011. The epicenter was directly below the city center. Several cranes are at work eating away at the tall buildings, taking them down piece by piece. Almost none remain, and Andrew says he looses his bearings because all the old landmarks are gone. Buildings that remain often have bracings holding their facades on, or empty windows blinds fluttering in the wind, ready to be torn down. Fencing companies and cone companies have done well–lots of territory to block off. It’s not been easy on the residents. Most people know someone who died in collapsed buildings, and they’re on pins and needles, wary for the next one but without any way to predict if it’ll be tomorrow or when their grandkids are grown.

Look closely. What doesn’t belong here? The baby chair of course! It seems out of place is this sleek modern apartment. We’re enjoying this two day home before we move on to the next place. It’s very nice, and the fridge even had breakfast items.

We took full advantage of the bath tub this morning!

This 3400 acre estate has a great tasting room and a well-produced video on coffee growing and processing where we got our coffee fix (for free!). It takes quite the processing to clean, sort and roast the stuff. I guess the pest control is minimal, and it makes up for the trouble in processing hassle. Milo’s page has an absolutely adorable picture of him in the tasting room.

The plantation was converted from sugar to coffee in 1987, and they grow 5 main varieties of coffee. These ones have yellow cherries when ripe, instead of red. Every 4-7 years the plants are cut back severely, but no pruning besides that. They’re harvested with a mechanical blueberry harvester. They’re all drip irrigated. Very impressive. It’d be fun to be part of an estate team like that.

The temperature dropped at least ten degrees from the sunny ocean front as we drove up into the tropical rainforest. Philodendron crawl up smooth tree trunks, ferns smother the steepest slopes, and trees produce fruit all year round.

We got to experience the real deal, the RAIN in rainforest. I thought tropical rainforests were hot and muggy, but this one was cool….and muggy. Milo, as usual, was a good sport.

We drove back down to the coast to warm up and dry out, and Milo got another chance to play in the waves. I don’t imagine the water will be as warm in Christchurch.

We checked out a garden/arboretum on the south shore of Kauai, but lucky for Jeremiah their main area cost $45 per person to enter, so cheap Molly contented herself with the impressive plantings around the gift shop. This is plumeria, whose name I know from Bath and Bodyworks lotions, but whose real scent is beyond description sweet.

These Heliconia aren’t native to Hawaii–none of them are–but they’re naturalized now, and quite impressive. Instead of disparaging non-native plants, the Hawaiians seem to appreciate their beauty.

Ach, they’re eating me alive! These palm roots look kind of like gigantic versions of the extra prop roots that corn grows at the base.

Everywhere we go, I’m obsessed with the geological history. These low beach cliffs are “calcified sand dunes,” dunes that got rained on, cemented together, and are now being eroded again. I picked up a neat petrified sand tunnel of some ancient ocean creature and the customs officials in NZ let me keep it.

The post there declares that the life guard is on duty. “On Duty” is taken much more lightly here than in NY! Hey, it’s island life, people aren’t so up tight as at home.

Jeremiah had as much fun as Milo, throwing sticks into the water for the waves to fetch up back on shore. I think Jeremiah succeeded in teaching Milo to wait until the wave came close before pitching the stick.

Milo was a good sport about the occasional wave knocking him over, but Mommy and Daddy don’t like it when baby gets a face full of water, so we kept moving a bit higher up on the beach as the tide came in.

We crashed at a hotel in Honolulu the first night in Hawaii, then took an early flight to Kauai, rented a car, and drove to up the edge of the Wimea valley. We had booked two nights at a hostel, “Camp Slogget,” a YWCA camp, and when we arrived it was completely deserted. A note on the door urged us to call the caretaker, but the pay phone was out of order and there’s not cell reception (no wifi either). So us three had a 50 person bunk house all to ourselves….and the Hawaiian roosters who thought 3 a.m. was sunrise.

The mountains here are sharp, steep, and volcanic, a contrast to the glacier-carved steep ones in Alaska that were based on slate rock that was formed under a tropical ocean eons ago. It’s fascinating to think about how the molecular structure of the rock determines, along with erosion, how our world looks.

Entropy, entropy. The whole world is constantly getting worn down, eroded, and less orderly. I don’t notice it so much in NY, where our soils and rocks are slathered in vegetation. Hawaii is surprisingly dry in August, at least in the lowlands, and the red volcanic rock of the Wimea canyon is starkly exposed, dribbling down into the valley.

Good thing for Hawaii that the mountains push up air, creating clouds and rain on the mountains. Up high is thick tangled rainforest, enjoying the highest average annual rainfall on earth.

Check out those ferns! The ocean is straight behind, 5,000 feet below.

Hurray for sherpa daddy! These ridges feel razor thin, you can walk a “goat track” along the top and see down to the ocean on both sides of the island. Milo doesn’t seem to be afraid of heights.

Perhaps my favorite flower in my Owego garden is crocosmia, a gift of one of the expert master gardeners. Here they grow like our tiger lilies, weeds along the roadside.

Like father, like son. Milo loves electronics. While Jeremiah hogs the computer and IPod (using both simultaneously), Milo takes over the cell phone.

Mark and Maria’s friend Dale has survived a genuine grizzly bear attack and has lived in Alaska all his life, so they enlisted him to take us on a hike of “Slaughter Gulch,” a nice trail which is not mentioned in any of the hiking guides. The path, which is not in a gulch at all, quickly climbs to above the treeline with almost continuous views of the Kenai River at Cooper Landing. Dale didn’t know what gave the trail such a morbid name….but it’s Alaska, we could let our imaginations run wild.

Here’s what these mountains look like from the top—like the path could wander over one peak, then the next, then the next, meandering over the soft low vegetation, inviting you to explore the next mountain.

Milo was here at the top of Slaughter Gulch too, sleeping in the warmth of the backpack. We asked Dale, the friend who hiked with us, what happened to give the mountain such a morbid name, but he didn’t know the history.

What a view these flowers have! And what a chilly wind!

I wish I knew the names of all these short little alpine plants. You don’t notice their intricacy until you take the time to kneel down and stick your face up close to them.

Mark and Maria sweated their way down Slaughter Gulch. Both are afraid of heights and this path skittered along the steep edge of the mountain.