Day 162: A Ride Into Town

Today I rode my friend Jenna's bike up the road and into the town of Amberley.  It is only about 5 km which is a good distance to ride a bike for the purpose of errands, and also if you haven't ridden a bike in a while.  My only errand was to visit the library.  I got a library card last weekend (thanks to a piece of mail with my new address on it!) and have been enjoying visiting there immensely.  I am actually really thankful that there is a library in Amberley because they have free internet and interesting books.

One thing that I have realized about bikes in New Zealand (and, I suspect, anywhere where people drive on the left) is that the brakes are opposite from what I'm used to at home.  The rear brake is on the left side here, not the right.  Which takes a little getting used to.  I've concluded that this is so you still have access to your rear brake for stopping while you are using your other hand to signal a turn. In the states you'd use your left hand to do this, because you'd be riding on the right, whereas here on the left hand side of the road, you'd want to signal with your right hand.  Crazy.  It actually took me about three times of riding a bike before I realized that using my right hand to brake was having some unexpected effects!  

On my way back home today I timed myself: 18 minutes to bike the 5 km, including putting the bike away and hanging up my jacket.  Not too shabby!

Day 157: Akaroa

I met up with my old friend Matt today (I met him in Auckland on the free city tour) and headed out to Akaroa on the Banks Pennisula.  The Banks Penninsula is a little south of Christchurch city and Akaroa is the principle town on the penninsula.  We grabbed some food for a picnic lunch (in the rain!) and made the windy, hilly drive in about an hour and a half.  It's very beautiful; lots of high hills and deep valleys.  Akaroa's main feature is that it was oringinally a French settlement, and many of the streets bear roadsigns in French and with very French sounding names.  Matt and I ran around to see how many French things we could photograph in 30 minutes of trying.  We found a lot!  (I think the town is trying to capitalize on its French heritage because there were things like Le Bon Email (online cafe) and L'Essence (the local Shell station.)  Fun nonetheless.

A bit outside of Akaroa we also found a cool pa site. Pa were the Maori defensive works - usually with an earth wall or fence around them.  This one was on a little spit of land sticking into the ocean (we think the access was only tidal) formed in high humps of hills.  We took a little hike out to the end and enjoyed the surrounding view.  It would be a good defensive position - you could only access it by land from one direction, and that only when the tide was low, and you have a great view of the surrounding water so you could spot a potential enemy approaching by water, and have the advantage of being above them (up the hill) as they tried to attack.  Good choice, Maori tribe of old.

While we're on the subject of Maori and their traditions, it's Maori New Years here.  The new year is marked when the constellation Pleiades (The Seven Sisters) appears again in the sky after having disappeared a few months ago.  In Te Reo Maori the Pleiades are called Matariki.  So that is what they call New Years as well.

Days 150 - 152: Exploring Christchurch

The past couple of days I have been staying with friends of Jenna's: Emma, Heidi and Melissa, while Jenna and Rob are in Auckland.  Jenna decided that her house was too damp, boring and cold so she asked them if I could stay at their place for the weekend.  I have pretty much been taking it easy and exploring Christchurch.  I've visited the Botanic Gardens (and been running there a couple of times), the Arts Centre (a bunch of galleries and shops in a very cool old gothic building), and the Canterbury Museum, which was really interesting and very well done (plus it was free admission!)  Canterbury is the name of the region of New Zealand that Christchurch is located in.  The museum focused on the early Maori of the area and had lots of cool old artifacts, as well as information about local plants and animals, early settlers and how the town developed, Antartic exploration and Kiwi children's literature.  There was also a section called Fred & Myrtle's Paua Shell House.  This was an attraction that used to be located in the town of Bluff, the southernmost town in New Zealand.  Fred & Myrtle polished up over 1100 paua shells and attached them to the walls of their living room.  Their home was basically a display of Kiwiana - icons of kiwi culture, and kitschy knickknacks, but it became a popular tourist attraction that put Bluff on the map, and Fred and Myrtle loved all the visitors that they got.  After their deaths their "collection" was removed to the Canterbury Museum and the display space was reconstructed to look just like their house in Bluff.  Fred & Myrtle seem like they were really friendly, nice people.  I'm sad that I can't go to Bluff and meet them.

I also walked downtown to Cathedral Square and saw the cathedral.  This is the "Christ's church" for which the city is named.  It's beautiful and looks like a European gothic cathedral, although it's much newer than many of those.  Christchurch is said to be New Zealand's most English town, and many of the road and place names sound very English: Glocester St., Oxford Terrace, Worcester St., the Avon River, etc.  It was settled by many people from England and they wanted their new city to seem like what they were leaving behind.  

On weeknds there are markets around the Arts Centre, and that was fun to explore.  There were also lots of buskers and street performers out, one of which I stopped to watch because he was really funny.  Enjoy the photos of my explorations!

Here are also some photos of Jenna and Rob's place, including my room and the nifty surprise that Jenna had left in my drawer!

There's also a photo of me on the beach just behind their house.  They live in a small Kiwi cottage, called a bach (pronounced batch) that are popular to rent for holidays by the sea in the summertime.  They are like having a camp on the beach or a summer cottage, but they're not fancy, they're fairly plain and functional.  Their house is cozy, although cold at night without the fire going.  We have lots of pork to eat 'cause Rob works on a pig farm.  Mmmm...

Day 149: South Island!

Hey everybody who happens to be reading this blog.  I haven't updated it in a while, so I am going to skip ahead a bit to the present time and go back and fill in in between soon, I hope.  I am also going to try and be more succinct, although this is difficult for me, since I had a reader request to make the entries shorter so it's not so much of a time commitment to keep up (or to post, for that matter!) I will do my best.  So, here goes!

Today I took the Bluebridge Ferry with Miniwati and my car Nugget from Wellington at the bottom of the north island, across the Cook Strait to Picton at the top of the south island.  The voyage was a bit longer than 3 hours and although the waves did not look that large (hard to judge when you're on a huge ferry 3 or 4 stories above the water, though) the boat was rocking so it must have been a bit choppy.  Actually, the Cook Strait is known for being windy not nice weather so it's choppy most of the time.

After disembarking the boat, I drove south for about 4 1/2 hours to Christchurch.  The drive down was amazing, with mountains and beaches and beautiful bays hiding around every windy, curvy, hilly corner.  In Christchurch (or Chch) I met up with Jenna, who some of you might know as Pip from camp 2007.  We went to a really great Bible Study at her friend Emma's house and then stayed the night there because Jenna's place is 40 minutes outside of the city and she has to work in town tomorrow.  It's obvious that I am way farther south than I was in Auckland because it's a bit chilly down here closer to the South Pole.  It's still not as cold as it would be in Maine in the middle of the winter but it's definitely cold but warms up a bit during the day. At the start of the day I was thinking it felt like November, maybe Thanksgiving time, but then by midday it was much too warm to be November anymore.  And that's the best temperature approximation I can provide right now.  

Here are some captions for the photos:
1. Sun rising at the ferry wharf in Welly
2. Miniwati on the ferry - we were crusing through the straits that stick up from the top of the south island before we got to Picton, called the Marlborough Sounds

3. SH 1 heading south with beach on the left and a mountain shrouded in cloud straight ahead
4. Mountains!
5. Seals on a rock at Ohau Point
6. Me on a rock, with seals

Days 147 & 148: Wellington

On Sunday night I drove down from New Plymouth to windy Wellington, at the bottom of the north island.  The drove took about 4 1/2 hours.  I didn't get there before dark, and also it was raining off and on which made it challenging to see at times but I asked God if he could stop the rain before I had to navigate in the city and he graciously obliged.  As soon as I drove into the city I liked its vibe.  Wellington reminds me very much of Seattle.  It's hip and down to earth trendy in its own way, with plenty of independent type stores and coffee houses.  I found my way through the city to my hosts' flat.  I stayed with Sue, who is John's sister, and studies teaching in the city, and her flatmates Matt, Nga, Halina and Alice at their flat which they call The Love Shack.  I really appreciate their willingness to host me.  It was great to have a place to stay in the city that was easy to find and easy to get to.  Thanks so much, guys!

On Monday I headed out to explore.  I visited Te Papa, the national museum of New Zealand, and was quite impressed.  They have floors and floors of displays but I only got to see floors 1 and 2.  There were exhibits on natural forces like earthquakes and volcanoes (Wellington is built on a fault line so they have to earthquake proof their buildings) and a display of native New Zealand birds and plants.  There was also a really cool exhibit about New Zealand as a place in the hearts and minds of Kiwis.  My favorite part was a film where 10 people shared their special places in New Zealand.  You could really feel their passion and love for the places that were special to them.  I felt like it was something I could relate to and understand, since special areas of the land are pretty important to me.

Here is an image of New Zealand's north island, from the Te Papa exhibit.

After Te Papa I met up with Alana and her cousin Caroline.  Alana was down visiting for her birthday.  We had afternoon tea out in the suburb of Petone, which is right on the beach.  The weather was really good, sunny and no wind, so we ate outside and then went for a walk on the pier.  (The picture is me and Alana on the Petone pier.)  Afterwards Alana and I drove up Mt. Victoria to see a view of the city at night (photo below) and then I took her to the airport to head home to Auckland. 

The next day I went shopping on Cuba Street, which is a pedestrian street with really cool stores. I visited one the Nga had suggested and found some good souvenirs for people.  The photo shows the Cuba Street bucket fountain. Water falls into the buckets and when they get heavy enough they tip over and slop the water into the buckets beneath them.


Next I headed over to the government buildings: The Beehive and the Parliament (Wellington is the capital of New Zealand).  I had a tour and then sat in on part of a parliamentary session.  It was hilarious!  The ministers were cheeky and cutting toward one another from different parties and muttered loudly while others were talking.  Good times.  It seemed much less formal than what I know of the US Congress.  John Key, the prime minister of New Zealand, was sitting at his bench just like everyone else and asked to answer questions just like the rest of the ministers.  It was great.

From Parliament I went to the Wellington Museum of Land & Sea, which tells the story of Wellington's development as a city through the years.  I enjoyed the film about the wreck of the Wahine in which 51 people died.  It was sobering and sad.  Next I took a trip on the cable car that runs from Lamington Quay up the steep hill to the Botanic Garden.  I would have liked to have a walk in the gardens but it was getting dark, so I headed back to the Love Shack, stopping on the way to get some Indian butter chicken takeaway for dinner.  Yum!

Day 134: Errands

Today I went out in the DOWNPOURING rain to run some errands.  This included going to the grocery store to get some food for my tramping trip tomorrow, going to the map center to get a map for the aforementioned trip; going to the mall and buying a caribiner and an ATC to add to my ever-growing climbing gear and stopping in at a woman's house to get some quickdraws which I won in an auction on TradeMe.  Those will also be added to the climbing gear collection.

After all of those things were done, I drove out to the Waitakere ranges to check out the Waipu Caves.  But I couldn't actually get there because the road was flooded!  The farther out I went, the more narrow the road got, and I passed a couple of places where my car got a free car wash from water pouring down off the roadside cliff in a little waterfall.  There has been so much rain lately!  I could also see little mini mud slides / rock slides.  Finally I got to a spot in the road where the amount of water pouring across it caused me to ponder whether my little car could make it through.  I watched a couple of other bigger cars go across, but I didn't want to risk it because the water was fairly deep and moving pretty fast, and if it had picked up my car it would have washed me straight into the ocean!

Have a look at the exciting pictures below:

Day 134: Winter begins

Over here, the seasons start on the first of the month.  No one waits for the solstice on the 21st or 22nd.  So today is the first day of winter.  Not that there's much of a change from previous weather.  It is generally rainy and damp and about 19 C (close to 50F) for the high.  When the sun is out, it's nice, but when it rains I am usually cold.  Because most houses do not have any heating.  So it just gets a bit damp.  Anyway, welcome winter!