#174 Nomad Diary. 17-23 February 2024. Road Trip North Island, NZ. Napier. Te Awanga. Tokomaru Bay. Hicks Bay. Opotiki. 2 Years Living on Retirement Income. Less Taxes.
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| Darrell on the Way to The Fruit Shop |
Saturday. 17. Morning Routines: Workout together; Make Breakfast; Read, etc. We stayed in for the morning. Darrell does a Saturday email to his Bible study group in Kenya plus others who want to be on his list. He also fixed and ate his lunch while I was just wanting to go for a ‘real fruit’ ice cream for my lunch. We drove over to a fruit stand in Hastings and found out that it’s a tour bus stop. Napier has cruise ship passengers who stop here and this is one of the excursions. We got Real Fruit Ice Cream here and a big box of assorted plums, apricots and peaches along with a large box of strawberries. And then headed back to our apartment in Te Awanga. We changed into swimsuits and walked to the beach. The tide was high and the beach is rocky, not sandy here. Neither of us wanted to go into the water. We got a good walk and then went back to our place. I made a nice and delicious dinner of stuffed mushrooms and salad.
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| Church in Napier |
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| Sunset at Te Awanga |
Sunday. 18. After morning routines, we left for church around 9:15. It’s about 25 minute drive to the place in Napier. We met people there and I kept track of first names as I like to do. We worshiped together with singing, communion and preaching. We exchanged some personal info with a couple of people there and then left for lunch. We went to a Thai Restaurant in Hastings. We enjoyed the food and the quiet of the place. At our place in the afternoon, I’m working on the computer. Darrell is reading. We also do daily DuoLingo Spanish lessons and I have added Portuguese. I am going very slowly on language learning, but I am learning and retaining some since I began. I am encouraged that I understand more than I used to!
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| Driving Out of Napier Toward Gisborne |
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| North of Gisborne Driving the Coast to Tokomaru Bay |
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| Sunrise at Tokomaru Bay |
Tuesday. 20. At 4am the air raid siren went off. Darrell woke me up as I was sleeping through it! Lol. We grabbed our stuff as though we would have to head for higher ground. I realized how unprepared I am for a true emergency here. The siren stopped after a minute or two and we went back to sleep. Before I did go back to sleep I looked online for more information. Seems that we just got lucky today for a test run for the local emergency people. I also found a web page that tracks the earthquakes, mostly undetected ones all over New Zealand. I went back to sleep and woke up at our normalish time of 6:40 am. The sunrise was soon beginning to come over the horizon. Darrell went out to the beach to get some photos. I went to the road and got my sunrise pictures. This eastern part of NZ gets the sunrise first for the country. It was especially beautiful today. We did our morning exercise routine and then made breakfast. We are hanging out at our house. The sun is coming up and is intense through the day. We have the deck doors open on two sides of our house with the cross breeze and some shade in our yard.  |
| Our Long Drive for The Day. The First Half to Hick's Bay was Rough with Gravel and Partly Rebuilt Roads since the Hurricane 1 year ago. The Second Half to Opotiki was Good Roads and Exceptional Scenery. |
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| The Nut House on the Way to Opotiki. 300 Macadamia Tree Farm. |
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| Resting at Our Luxury Studio Opotiki Airbnb |
Wednesday. 21.
Today's roadtrip: An incredibly beautiful coastal scenic drive for the second half Hick's Bay to Opitiki. Stopped at an Anglican church building still in use over 100 years, and a small 300 tree Macadamia Farm "The Nut Shop" happens to be for sale. Arrived to our luxurious studio airbnb after going grocery shopping in town and taking a stop at the beach.
First part of drive from Tokomaru Bay to Hick's Bay was cloudy, rained lightly, and even though the road is open since last year's hurricane devastated this area, there are many gravel sections and quick repairs for the obvious big washouts. There were very few cars and trucks. Hick's Bay to Opitiki is a better road with little to no storm damage. There were no trucks and very few cars.
Darrell cooked some chicken soup for our dinner. One of our favorite quick and easy dinners. We use chicken bouillon and water to boil cut up chicken, sliced mushrooms, carrot, turnip, and garlic. Add salt and pepper to taste. Sometimes we use swede or other veggies that we enjoy.
Thursday. 22.
Today we went and got into the ocean. It was very sunny and the beach is considered safe with a broad shallow entry. I only got up to my thighs. We couldn’t find a restaurant that we wanted to eat at so we cooked all our meals while here. We went and looked at a 2000+ year old tree called the Burial Tree. There was a 30 minute walk through the woods where there were several old trees of different varieties. Over 100 years ago a man planted this bit of forest and collected native plants and trees.
Friday. 23.
Today we went into Opotiki and went to their museum. It was done pretty well. They have a lot of stuff and are in a constant job of trying to show their town history and preserve the stories that they have.
Nomad Notes:
March 6, 2024 marks Darrell’s 2 year anniversary being retired. I stopped working 4 months before him. The year 2023 is our first full year of retirement and filing taxes fully retired(since he worked January and February 2022). Our income is a mix of savings withdrawal; Darrell’s government pension; and savings and investment gains which get reinvested. In mid February Darrell took a day and accomplished our tax return. He finished it in one day and electronically filed our federal return. Getting taxes done this quickly is amazing to me. I remember one of our working years when our taxes took a full 40 hours to complete! Last year we switched our state residency from Alabama to South Dakota. This switch of state taxes is saving us time and money. 2024 will be a full year of residency in South Dakota. South Dakota has no income tax and that means no paperwork to file. While not working at jobs there is no more social security tax for us to pay, and our taxable income is way smaller. It’s amazing to me that a huge chunk of our income was taxes and savings for our future. Now we are coloring outside the lines as it were. Living on savings rather than putting into savings. It has felt odd to shift my thinking (for Darrell too) as we are living on a pre-arranged fixed income now. We are understanding more about living on our retirement savings as we experience it for another year.
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