The last few days have been about aviation, a topic near and dear to our (temporarily) grounded hearts. We are both at a point in our 22 months off where we're really missing flying, and just as we need a dose of it most, along comes the Omaka Aviation Heritage Museum, just outside Blenheim in the NE corner of the South Island. We were in Blenheim about 3 weeks earlier, and did a wine tour on bicycles, but as we left town the next day we saw signs for the museum, and vowed to come back. Recommendations from friends who'd recently been strengthened our resolve, and when we read that the Sydney Morning Herald has decried the museum "The best museum in the world" (not just the best aviation museum, the best any kind of museum) we knew we couldn't miss it.

So Thursday saw us pulling onto a familiar spot of grass beside the babbling brook in the Top 10 Holiday Park in Blenheim for two nights, making Blenheim our most-visited spot in New Zealand, after Auckland. We said hello to our ducks, who expressed joy at our return and graciously accepted handfuls of muesli, caught up with a couple we'd met in the Te Anau Top 10 a week or so earlier, did some laundry, and had a nice meal by the brook.

The next day we headed off to the museum. And it was wonderful, although I don't know about the very best in the whole wide world. I mean, it's hard to beat the Louvre in Paris, the Getty in Santa Monica, or the MOMA in New York, but it was great fun. Peter Jackson, film director, most notable of late for directing the Lord of the Rings trilogy, is on the Board of Directors of the museum, and is a passionate WWI aviation enthusiast. His theatrical influence is evident in the way each aircraft is displayed in a huge, life-sized diorama of a wartime event, replete with wax pilots and soldiers in actual garb of the day, smooshing around in very realistic French countryside mud and German snow. It's quite impressive to see the aircraft, rare and beautifully restored (or in some cases recreated in faithful replica) up close in a rather dark and moody environment.

I have to admit, due to a congenital birth defect that added an additional vertebrae to the lowest part of my spine, it's quite painful for me to stand for long periods of time. And so I have always disliked museums. After an hour of slow meandering through a museum, no matter how interesting, I am on the verge of suicide. But we managed to stay almost until closing, and I found myself with a new-found interest in really vintage aircraft, and a curiosity about WWI, the war that happened 44 years or so before my arrival on this odd warlike planet.

We crossed the Tasman Straight yesterday on the 1pm ferry, saying farewell to the South Island, and headed directly for Masterton, a town on the southern end of the North Island that is also known, although not quite as well, for it's aviation history. Allan was hoping for a ride in a Tiger Moth, an old bi-wing plane, at the Masterton airport, and we'd heard a rumor that it was one of the few places he might make that happen. We'd also heard there was a good little museum there. We arrived this morning at the airport, a small field with just a few buildings and hangars and very few signs. It took awhile to find a small, unimposing sign on a dull, unimpressive hangar that included the word "museum" in it's name, but at last we did, and wandered in for confirmation about the rumors we'd heard about the Tiger Moth and the museum. Yes, there is a woman who gives 30-minute instructional flights in a Tiger Moth, but she hadn't come in, the weather was abysmal, and the forecast held no promise of improvement. And the museum, we were told, wasn't exactly a museum but rather a private collection of aircraft that was available for viewing. So we happily made the $12 donation and Sarah, our guide, took us on a tour of the fantastic hangar, crammed with many rare, original and beautifully restored WWI aircraft, as well as some faithful reproductions, sitting wingtip over wingtip, tail to cowling. The collection included a Sopwith Camel ("Curse you, Red Baron!" cries Snoopy -- my only conscious awareness of WWI prior to a few days ago) as well as a reproduction Fokker Tri-plane, which the Red Baron himself made notorious (and with which he shot all those holes in Snoopy's doghouse.)

Sarah was fantastic, and we learned so much we'd never known about that era, and about the designs of the aircraft. A pilot herself, it was evident she knew her stuff, and in fact one of the airplanes in the hangar is her post-WWII de Havilland Chipmunk. Turns out this collection is only a fraction of the actual collection being restored or replicated by Vintage Aviator Ltd. The rest are squirreled away here and there, waiting for their day, or a bigger hangar, I guess. I might suggest the following website for those of you who are interested, although I haven't checked it out yet: www.thevintageaviator.co.nz

We left the fabulous and freezing hangar with some WWI calendars slung under our arms and walked through the drizzle to our camper, our faithful HQ, and now here we are in Napier, the Art Deco center of NZ, which we'll explore tomorrow.

Oh, we also had a fun evening last night as we pulled into Masterton looking for the i-Site, the tourist and camping information site located in every NZ town: we discovered that the National Golden Shears competition was on, the battle for sheep-shearing supremacy in New Zealand. We had a chance to watch the first round on wide-screen TV's set up in a tent across the street from the actual (sold-out) event. 78 sheep were sheared in about 15 minutes by 6 burly shearers, a back-breaking job, it would appear. The action was announced by a man who gave a blow-by-blow account of the events, sounding much like an auctioneer-turned-horse-race announcer: "And he's going for the neck now Number 6 the reigning champion on his 3rd long-hair Number 3 close behind and going for the belly remember it's quality not just speed that counts in this competition ..." After that first round we took our leave and went in search of dinner, and as we passed the back side of the arena we spied the newly-sheared sheep coming out of the building into the holding pen, sporting some pretty raw and bleeding spots on their now-bare skin (points off), and looking a bit dazed. But it was fun -- the wool industry in NZ is a big thing, and we hadn't really seen much shearing go on since we arrived. By the way, make your reservations now for the World Championship Competition next year, right here in Masterton!

But -- after all this cool aviation stuff, the wonderful ferry across the Tasman Straight, the good food, the sheep-shearing excitement, and all the usual fantastic "Stop It, New Zealand" scenery, the most moving event of this week was the little critter in the picture above. Driving north this afternoon, passing the usual rolling green hills dotted with tranquil sheep, peaceful cows and picturesque farmhouses, me in a mild doze in the passenger seat, Allan suddenly pulled the car over and started backing up. Returned sleepily to the present moment, I asked what was up. "I think I saw a Kiwi in the road" he said, and I perked up fully. We've been trying to spot a Kiwi bird since we arrived almost 6 weeks ago, still no joy on that effort. Maybe this was it? I turned around and spied a furry blob in the road, and my heart sunk -- maybe it was a dead Kiwi? Well, dead is still better than none, I reasoned, and we hopped out onto the wet road and ran over to see it. Turned out to be a small hedgehog, we think, that had been hit by a car although it had no obvious signs of injury. As we looked, we noticed it was breathing. We ducked out of the way of an oncoming motorcycle, who drove around the furry heap, then ran back, and Allan picked it up -- spiny as a tiny porcupine -- and gingerly carried it off the road. It was so cute, it's tiny black feet were freezing cold, and it had tucked itself into a ball, a typical defensive move. But he was so weak he'd lost his ability to stay balled up, and would quickly relax in Allan's hand, giving us a good look at his little black face, which is when we got the picture above. We don't know much more about him, or even if it was a him. We laid him under a thick protective branch well clear of the road and wished him well.

And that little spiky hedgehog was the highlight of our week. It doesn't seem to matter how much money goes into something, how fantastic is is, how lauded, how rare, how expensive: the real things in life for us, the things that make our day and our week are the impromptu meetings with unexpected little critters, the close encounters and simple moments of connection. In our minds that hedgehog will sleep tonight, protected by the big leaves on the huge tree, nestled into a warm bed of grass. Tomorrow he'll stretch out of his sleepy ball and go for a stroll, hopefully in a direction away from the road. That's our happy ending for this week.