February 25 - Napier, New Zealand
Today's tour was led by a delightful young woman who clearly loves her hometown area. As we left the port area I got one picture of the Monterey Pine logs that are grown here and exported, mostly to Chine of course. They grow very fast here - ready to harvest in 25 years as opposed to 80 years at home - so they are everywhere. The market for the logs is slowly drying up, so they often now turn the logs into pulp, dry it to fiber and ship that to China. Also, China is buying up a lot of the Australian trees that burned in the recent big fires because they can get it on the cheap. Good for Australia, not so good for New Zealand. Monterey Pine logs ready for China We learned about the major even here that shaped the city. In February 1931 there was a 7.8 point earthquake that lasted for 2 minutes. Besides knocking down most of the brick buildings, it caused a fire that burned most of the buildings left standing in downtown. But more su...