Patrick Curtis has managed to dodge winter for a decade.
Every autumn for the past 10 years, the 81-year-old Englishman has left his home in London just in time to miss the northern winter and catch the tail end of summer in Rotorua. He stays at the samemotel, the Pineland Motor Lodge in Fenton St, every time.
Three months later he returns home, just in time for summer.
The Sulphur City is a second home to the Englishman.
"It's great. I miss winter all together and get to have two summers every year. The people are very friendly here. I've made a lot of friends. The rum is good too," he said.
He first visited our fair shores working on a ship in 1947 and then in 1951, his brother Edward, who was in the airforce introduced him to Rotorua.
They stayed with the Green family on a Tikitere farm.
Making great friends with the family, Mr Curtis said he visits them and George Bennett's family every time he comes to New Zealand.
He is godfather to one of the Green family grandchildren who lives in England.
"I lay a wreath every year in England on Anzac Day for Rotorua. I love Rotorua, it's my home away from home," he said.
Mr Curtis' brother died in 1954 but that hasn't put him off trekking from the other side of the world to holiday in Rotorua.
"Lots of people know me now. They say I'm a Green."
With many of the older members of the Green family now dead also, he has adopted the owners of Pineland Motor Lodge as extended family.
Every day he waltzes from there down to the Rotorua RSA for a "small tipple' or two. "It's handy to everything. The surgery [RSA] is just down the road and the supermarket is just across the road."
Pineland owners Yvonne and Mark Waldron love their elderly visitor. "He's a bad influence but he's so much fun," Mrs Waldron said. It takes a bit to get use to his rhyming slang though. Uncle Ned is bed, a pig's ear McGandy is a shandy and a tin lid is a kid.
