Northern South Island...familiar but DIFFERENT!

Dear Family and Friends,

Chuck and I have been almost all the way around the south island of New Zealand.  Right now we are at the top of the island.  We are amazed at how familiar this part of the island looks to us.

We moved to Ecuador from Washington state.  We lived in the eastern side of Washington.

The terrain and the crops reminded us so much of the Yakima Valley.

This valley is much narrower than the Yakima valley

but it is amazing how similar they are.  Like the Yakima Valley, they grow apples here.

They grow them differently in NZ than in Washington.

Here is a familiar sight to us.  Apple boxes waiting to be filled with the harvested apples.

All around were vineyards and wineries.  This is very common near where we lived.

We really hooted when we saw the hops growing.  It is harvesting time down here.

It appeared to us that Yakima Valley Washington and the north part of the South Island of New Zealand are exactly alike, except for one thing....

Nude bicycling.....

We have never seen this in the Yakima valley.

What a hoot!!

We thought they were bringing awareness to sharing the road with cyclists.  We found out the purpose of the annual ride in the local newspaper.  Here's the link.

I really hate to see the Yakima Valley being behind the times and letting their southern counterpart, New Zealand get ahead of them.

Maybe it will be up to our old scooter club friends to get the trend going in our neck of the woods.