March 3, 2026 Last Walk on the NZ Coast
We woke up on Sunday, March 1 to a fresh blueberry pancake breakfast at Sam’s, but also with the news that a war was started between the US and Iran yesterday. We have airline tickets for March 4 to fly from Auckland to Dubai, United Arab Emirates, for a 24 hour layover, then continuing on to Istanbul, Türkiye (now the official name for Turkey, pronounced tur-KEE-yeh). News later in the day showed Iran’s retaliation of bombing several Middle Eastern countries including Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and UAE, including the airport in Dubai! So we spent the day changing all our near future plans of 24 hours in Dubai and 5 weeks of travel through Türkiye as well as flights from Istanbul to Geneva, Switzerland and a week in Geneva, then flights from Geneva back to Bend. What a disappointment. We had the whole trip around Türkiye planned with accommodations and historical sites we wanted to visit. We had to contact them all and cancel and hope to get a refund! Then rearrange flights or cancel and rebook, to get flights back home. We ended up spending several days on the task, as well as preparing to leave NZ, store the car and the accumulation of clothes, shoes and sundry items we are storing in the car! Finally we had some free time on Tuesday, March 3, a beautiful sunny day, to walk the Waipu Coastal Walkway one more time!
Bream Bay in the South Pacific!