Magnetic Travelling Socks

I took these magnetic socks with me on holiday to Japan this November as well as a longer knee high pair.

They were great. They looked smart ( as you must in Japan where women are always well dressed!) , could be worn for a couple of days before they needed washing, and as they were light they were easily washed and dried in our guesthouse and hotel rooms.

When visiting temples in Japan you are usually asked to remove your shoes so a good pair of socks is essential. And due to the magnetic dots  these ones have non slip bottoms . This was an added advantage on the sometimes slippery wooden temple steps and floors.

We did lots of walking and here the longer socks with their light compression were especially comfortable.

Using the patented SPM™ magnetic technology these socks have apparently been magnetically charged in a specific way to  help blood and  lymph  circulation  and to stimulate your leg muscles. I am not a medical person so I don't know exactly how this works. What I can say is that they were great travelling socks !

To find out more go to

www.magneticsocks.co.nz

The Field Guide to the Birds of New Zealand

 Starting a new hobby is a great way to keep your mind sharp or your body active. The art of recreational birdwatching (of the feathered kind) is perfect on both counts. You can even start small by exploring your own garden to find out who comes to visit.

In our garden there are sparrows foraging for insects and blackbirds cheekily taking a peck out of our almost ripe apples. Handsome tui with lacy collars swoop over from the adjacent bush. Occasionally a fantail flits around or there’s a flash of reds and yellows as a small group of brightly coloured eastern rosella make a fleeting visit. Last summer, when the nikau berries had ripened, a fat woodpigeon came to gorge itself on them.

 

When we travel around New Zealand, we often stop for a bushwalk to enjoy being surrounded by birdsong and catching sight of different birds. Our beach walks have led to some magical moments. Once we saw a little yellow eyed penguin waddling out of the ocean onto the beach in the Catlins.

 

Bird watching is inexpensive, although a pair of binoculars (or bins as serious birdwatchers call them) is useful to catch a clearer view of a distant bird. A camera also comes in handy, especially if it has a decent zoom. But a bird identification book is indispensable to identify the many different kinds of birds you are likely to meet. Steve Braunias recommends The Field Guide to the Birds of New Zealand (2015 edition) by Barrie Heather and Hugh Robertson. This is also the only New Zealand birdwatching guide endorsed by the Ornithological Society of NZ.

 

'You can put your hand on this book and swear by it, because it's the bible. Every bird of town, bush, swamp, island, beach, river and the sea is here – accurately, intricately, and beautifully observed.'

— Steve Braunias: author of How to Watch a Bird

 

The Field Guide to the Birds of New Zealand is in three parts. Part One contains all the essentials a bird watcher needs to identify each bird: its weight, appearance, flight pattern and call. It also describes its habitat and how it breeds. Beside each bird there is a tiny map that shows where in New Zealand (on shore and/off) it can be found. There are 85 colour paintings of birds grouped in families, painstakingly done by Derek Olney, representing every bird species in New Zealand. Many birdwatchers prefer paintings to photographs of birds. An artist can compose a painting to show every detail and body part realistically and accurately. This is more difficult to achieve with a camera.

 

Curiously eight extinct birds have been included in the resource. It’s a great shame there are far less birds to be seen in New Zealand today than before human settlement. Humans destroyed much of the birds’ habitats, hunted some species to extinction, and introduced mammalian bird predators like rats and dogs.  More than 50 birds became extinct, eight after 1900 (including the huia).  Those eight are included in the book to drive home a conservation message: we need to take care that no more species are driven to extinction. 

 

Some old-school birdwatchers may argue that The Field Guide to the Birds of New Zealand should have stopped at Part One as there is sufficient information here to allow you to accurately identify a bird. And it would certainly have made this book lighter. But as someone who is new to birdwatching  and is keen to find out more I found the second part, the Handbook which tells you much more about each bird including information about its behaviour and  conservation status especially valuable and interesting.

 

Part Three describes 12 special bird-watching sites. These are the only kinds of places where you will see some of our rare and endangered species and where some great work is being done to preserve and breed them. 

One small quibble I do have with this book is that because it is so jam-packed with information I would find it too heavy to take along on a birdwalk. But it can easily be left in the pocket of your car to be referred to at the end of your walk or read at home later. 

 

It’s a book well worth having, especially if it encourages you to go exploring and to enjoy seeing birds in their natural surroundings. Once you have started you will never look back!

 

Name: The Field Guide to the Birds of New Zealand (2015 edition)

Authors: Barrie Heather & Hugh Robertson

Illustrated by: Derek Onley

Publisher: Penguin NZ

Price: $55

Lyn is a volunteer at Tiri Tiri Matangi Island. 

My review of this book first appeared on the GrownUps website on May 5

http://www.grownups.co.nz/read/living/our_people/lyn-potter

 

Canada and Skagway Photos, Alaska 2014

 Vancouver rhododendron garden

 Seawall walk, Stanley Park, Vancouver

 Yukon River, Whitehorse

 Moose in wildlife park, near Whitehorse

Mountain Goats

 Downtown Whitehorse

 Carcross, Yukon, on the way to Skagway.

 Tourist train to Skagway

Valley down to Skagway

 Sojourn Hostel, Skagway

 Skagway Main Street

Cruiseships at Skagway

Farewell Skagway, night ferry to Sitka

Wrangell and Ketchikan Photos, Alaska 2014

 Humpbacks breaching close to the ferry

 Am I having fun or what?

 More marine mammals having a rest on a buoy at Petersburg

 Petersburg from the ferry on the way to Wrangell

 Wrangell from the ferry

 Ancient petroglyph at Wrangell

 Wrangell main street

 Wrangell from Mt Dewey lookout 400 metres up.

 One of the few times we had a shower of rain.

 Breakfast time at Wrangell B n B

 Inside Clan House at Ketchikan

 Outside the Clan House

 From a walk around Ward Lake, Ketchikan

 Evening view from our Ketchikan House 

 It's 11pm and still light 

 Creek Street, Ketchikan, part of the old town

 Cruise ship at Ketchikan

 There were five of these huge ships on one day. 

Nice to be staying 25 minutes out of town!

Last minute shopping

Each place has a very short roading system, and this is the sign seen at each end.

Sitka and Juneau Photos, Alaska 2014

 Bald eagles at the Raptor Centre, Sitka

 Totem Pole, Sitka.
This is the site of the battle between the Tlingit and the Russians in  1804

 Totem Pole, Sitka

 Library Window, Sitka

 Free kid's lifejackets, Juneau

 Downtown Juneau

 Bears next to the car, Juneau

 Mum and cubs enjoying fresh dandelions and grass

 A "brown" black bear cub

 Humpback whale from the balcony of our Juneau house

 Neil, Margreet and Lyn at the Mendenhall Glacier, Juneau

 John and Lyn at the Glacier

Alaskan ferry at Juneau

Guide to booking the Alaskan Ferries

Travelling the Alaskan Ferries

 

Most of the coast of South East Alaska is not connected by any road network to the rest of North America, so it’s only by ship or air you can get there and travel around. Nearly all the people who visit south east Alaska (that’s the narrow strip of coast-line pointing down to B.C., Canada) do so on a cruise-ship, but the alternative is to travel on the Alaskan ferries. The advantage of travel by ferry is that you can spend more time in each port to have a good look around, and decide where and when you want to travel. (Most cruise-ships visit each port for just a few hours).  Planning a ferry trip does need a bit more work before you go, as ferries travel in an intermittent fashion and you will need to find accommodation in each port.

 

Alaska is a U.S. state, so while Vancouver is physically closer, it is easiest to get to S.E. Alaska from San Francisco or even Los Angeles. There are regular flights to several towns in south east Alaska, although we actually travelled through Vancouver, and then to Whitehorse in Canada’s Yukon province so we could take the tourist bus and train from Whitehorse to Skagway over the White Pass. http://www.wpyr.com/skagwaywhitehorsetrainbusviafraser.html. This is a great half day trip and runs from mid-May to September. We then travelled the ferries over the following fortnight.

 

While we travelled together as two couples, which lowered some accommodation and rental car costs, it’s just as easy to travel as a twosome or even a single. Probably if there had just been two of us, we would have stayed more in hotels than rental places, but the independence and location of the rentals was really worthwhile. It is possible to travel without any pre-bookings but be aware that the tourist season in Alaska is relatively short, so demand for accommodation may be high when you want to travel, and that some ferry terminals are several kilometres from the towns. It does pay to have some action plan in advance of your arrival.

 

Reading about the area before we started booking included the usual travel guides from the local library and the internet. If you intend to travel up to Anchorage and beyond, it’s worthwhile getting a copy of “Milepost” which is a large travel book published each year and is available from the Amazon website.

 

We decided to travel in late May and early June. S.E. Alaska is a wet place (a bit like our South Island west coast but even wetter!), and the northern spring and early summer is the drier period, especially when compared with the usually wetter autumn months. We actually had great weather, with most daily temperatures hitting the high teens with little rain. Large cruise-ships also go to many of the ferry ports from May to September and can increase the population of small towns like Skagway from its resident 800 to over 9000 while they are in port. Skagway, Juneau and Ketchikan attract most of the cruise-ships, and their schedules are available on line at http://www.claalaska.com/schedules.html. We wanted to avoid the crowds if possible, and our out of town accommodation in Juneau and Ketchikan helped us to do that. Many shops and tourist enterprises close down outside the cruise-ship season, so if you want to do the occasional day trip you really have to visit in the cruise-ship season.

 

The Alaskan ferries are small ships about the size of the Cook Strait ferries in New Zealand, although there are some large and fast catamarans. You can check them all out on the Alaskan ferry website,

http://www.dot.state.ak.us/amhs. This is the website where you can check timetables, and make your bookings, and it is very user friendly. The following could be of some help:

 

• Ferry schedules are compiled for either summer or winter. The summer schedules (May to September, the times when you are most likely to want to visit) are released the previous November. The schedule does  seem to closely follow that of the previous year, with the ferries still departing a port on the same day of the particular week in the following year.
• If you are visiting the inside passage in S.E. Alaska, download a PDF copy of the SE General schedule to plan your trip. (Schedules to other Alaskan ports are also available on this website). Travel times between ports vary from a few hours, to overnight trips or even longer if travelling through several potential stops.
• We booked in advance (once they receive payment, they email forms to print which are then exchanged for proper tickets at any port station) but all of our voyages in May or early June had plenty of room.  The travel tickets allow you to travel inside on comfortable recliner seats, or outside in an open solarium under roof heaters on plastic seats. All the ships have comfortable cabins, which can also be pre-booked, and we booked one for an overnight trip so we could sleep in comfort, and also for a long day trip in case we needed it.
• The cabins have private facilities, but there are also plenty of showers available on board if you want them. Some passengers travel all the way to and from Bellingham, near Seattle, to get up to Alaska, and not all of them book a cabin. Some even travel on the rear deck, sleeping inside their own tents. Because it’s a sheltered inland waterway, you can leave your seasick pills at home.
• All the ferries, including the catamarans, carry cars, RVs and trucks so you can take your transport with you. However we decided to hire rental cars in Juneau and Ketchikan, particularly as our accommodation in those places was well out of town, and just walk or hire bikes in the other smaller towns. Rental car prices are similar to those in New Zealand. Juneau has the largest roading network, but even there you can travel from one road end to the other within an hour. The rental car companies we used were:  http://juneaucarrentals.com/ and http://www.akcarrental.com/ in Ketchikan.
• Cheap food is available in on all the ferries (and as the servers are government employees there is no tipping!), but apart from the occasional salad most of the food is fairly greasy. We took our own lunches on the day trips.
• The ferries travel all day and night, with just an hour or so in each port, so it’s hard to avoid early morning starts. Our ferry from Juneau to Wrangell left at 5am, and we arranged with the rental car company to leave their car at the ferry wharf. With good planning you should be able to avoid night travel, unless you have longer voyages. Day travel (and there are 19 hours of daylight in this part of the world during summer) allows you to see both the passing scenery, as the ferries frequently pass through narrow passages that are too small for the larger cruise-ships, and also the many marine mammals such as humpback whales, orca, sealions and seals, all of which we saw close-up from the ferries.
• Useful fare reductions are available to the over 65s, and you don’t need to be a US citizen to get the discount. (Many other places also have prices cheaper for seniors).  Just apply when you buy your tickets on-line, or even at the port ticket offices.
• We initially wanted to travel from south to north, but the schedules worked best for us in the opposite direction. It doesn’t really matter, just make sure that you start and end in a port with either an airport or with land access to the outside world. Air fares are cheapest when booked early.
   

We stayed in a variety of accommodation; the Sojourn Hostel in Skagway, Trierschield Apartments in the centre of Sitka, seaside houses in Juneau and Ketchikan and Zimovia BnB in Wrangell. We enjoyed them all and often had first choice of accommodation by trying to book five months in advance, although some accommodation providers were slow to reply to emails. (That was probably a reflection of the somewhat laid-back attitude to living in Alaska). We used a variety of internet sources to find accommodation. Each town has several internet sites to assist with accommodation, which were more useful this time than the Trip Advisor or Airbnb sites we usually use. The short term rental accommodation that we booked seemed particularly limited in some towns.

 

Prices in Alaska, for both food and accommodation, are higher than other places in the States as most of the food, apart from fish and a few vegetables, is imported from the more southern states. The fish, especially halibut and salmon, is excellent, but like New Zealand fish isn’t particularly cheap. Good supermarkets in the larger towns were out of the centre of town, so having a car was useful, but convenience stores could be found in most places. Like elsewhere in the world, ATM machines are plentiful in all the towns. All towns have restaurants and take away places (fancy a moose hotdog?).

 

Some photos from our trip are available elsewhere on our blog: http://twoandasuitcase.blogspot.co.nz

 

 

John Potter

23 June 2014

 

 

Vanuatu Photos March 2014

 View from our apartment

 Resort Swimming Pool

 Delicious snack

 Lyn with her new friend

 Morning chores

 Dinner tables at Brekas

 WWII Museum

 At school

 Still at school

 Kava making

 Market vegetables

 The Blue Pool

Village Band

Village Women