New ZealandDateline January 26, 2015, Panorama Heights, Western Auckland
About an hour from Gulf Harbour, up into the Waitakere Range in West Auckland, to Panorama Heights, our bed and breakfast for the night. Our hosts Allison and Paul had been running the place for sixteen years and had it set up beautifully. The B&B was the upper of two houses on the property, perched high on a steep hillside, with a porch looking straight out across the bay to downtown Auckland and the Harbour Bridge. The sun went down, the city lights came up, and we stood out there for a while. A country breakfast in the morning that we ate with Allison and Paul at the table, along with a short history of the Waitakere preserve below and the kauri trees that once covered it. Then came the small mystery: did we know what a panel beater was? We did not. With some hints, we figured out it was the Kiwi term for an auto body repair person. Then Paul took us outside to show us his cars, a brand-new red Jaguar F-Type and a fully restored 1967 E-Type, both done by the resident panel beater himself.
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