Christchurch (part I)

For the Labour Weekend (Oct 19-22) we ventured down to Christchurch to visit Erik's family. It was great to finally meet Jorgen & Mona, especially after hearing all about them from Erik and Carsten.

We were able to do a lot while we were down there, so I have split this trip up into two posts...

Jorgen is also the Danish Consulate for the South Island. From talking with him, this means that he helps Danish citizens living or visiting NZ, entertains/hosts important visitors, and a variety of other things. It's not a full-time position like the ambassador, but it seems to keep him busy when he is not tied up at his real job. It also means that they have this awesome seal outside their house .
We arrived rather late on Friday night, but on Saturday we had a reasonably early start to check out the Craigieburn Range (which we could see from the Schousboe's porch!). Jorgen drove us out on some of the backroads, and on our way we passed through the Rakaia Gorge.

This is looking to the left (from the bridge)
And this one is looking straight-ahead / to the right

At this point we turned off of the paved road and spent the rest of our time on gravel/dirt roads. It was so nice of Jorgen to take us out, plus he knew exactly where is was going, well most of the time :) , so there wasn't anything for me and Erik to do except take in the sights and listen to some of Jorgen's stories. I really enjoyed hearing about when Erik's family used to live here or hearing about all the trouble that Carsten used to get into!

By the way, this area was about an hour outside of Christchurch.

The weather looked a little dicey as we were approaching the mountains, (notice the shift from blue sky to clouds in this picture) - but that didn't stop us!
Sure enough, not long after we pulled away from the Rakaia Gorge is started to rain. But neither rain nor fence held us back -

I am pretty sure he was thinking, "This rain is cold, and you two are just sitting there, warm and dry inside the car, laughing at me, and now I see you are taking my picture. Awesome." Ha!

We drove a little further to check out Lake Coleridge. Even though the weather wasn't cooperating, you can still see that the lake is this amazing blue... if it had been a clear day, you would be able to see snow-capped mountains on the other side of the lake.
Then we took a break and had lunch at the Schousboe's cabin in Castle Hill. Our lunch was delicious - real apple juice, pate, pastrami & Danish cheese. Yum!

Within minutes of finishing lunch, the sky cleared. I was really excited about this and proceeded to take an obscene number of photos.

This one was just behind the cabin -
And here's another one I took from inside the car -

And then we arrived at our next destination, the Cave Stream Scenic Reserve - a 596m long limestone cave. This is Erik and Jorgen walking down towards the river basin. If you look at the bottom right you can see where the underwater river comes out of the cave (it's a little hard to see because it is shaded). We did not go into the cave - it sounded a little too cold for our taste.
This picture was taken looking in the other direction, but halfway down the slope to the creek -

And this one was taken at the park entrance (there's a tiny sign in there at the bottom) -

Then we headed over to Kura Tawhiti Conservation Area. All of these limestone boulders used to be on the bottom of the ocean, and now here they are - that's me trying to climb up. In case you were wondering, that is about as far as I got...
But these people were far more successful (see some people walking with a big red things strapped on the one guy's back? The red thing is a mat they put down on the ground wherever they are rock climbing.) Climbers are not permitted to use any equipment in order to preserve the area - not even cleats on their shoes.
And I took this picture because I would like to live on this farm - looks like a sweet gig to me!

No clouds near the top this time, so, guess what I did? I took yet another picture.
After the limestone boulders at Kura Tawhiti we headed back to Christchurch. This is the main road heading back to Christchurch (instead of the gravel ones we took on our way up) - it was amazing how quickly we were out of the mountains and back on flat land. (Christchurch is flat as a pancake - with the exception of a few spots which will be in my next post.)
Once back in town we had a lovely meal at home with Mona, then the four of us went to see Tennessee Williams' Glass Menagerie at the local theater. It was a lot of fun, and we were very, very impressed by the Southern accents. It felt like I was watching the play in Missouri!

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Hope all is well with everyone - I hope to post about the second half of our trip soon!

Taranaki

Weekend of October 13-14

Sarah, Carsten, Erik and I took a weekend trip up to New Plymouth/Taranaki a couple weekends ago. We skipped out of work a little bit early on Friday to try to beat some of the traffic... (Taranaki is a 4-5 hour drive northwest of Wellington, on the west coast)

On the way up, we stopped for dinner in Wanganui (pop. 43,000). There weren't many restaurants near the highway, so we opted for one of the first places we saw - the local RSA (Royal New Zealand Returned and Services' Association), which is very much like our VFW. It was a huge open hall with lots of tables, average food, and cheap beer! I don't have any pictures of our dinner or the place (didn't feel right), but it was a good dose of rural NZ. I ordered steak and potatoes. It was a great change up from city life in Wellington and the more touristy areas we've seen.

We arrived relatively late on Friday, so the evening was pretty low key.

Saturday started with Erik and Carsten getting up early to watch rugby, but discovering it wasn't on until the next morning (bummer, huh guys?). After breakfast we took a trip through "downtown" New Plymouth. We spent a couple hours at Pukekura Park and Brooklands Park. Pukekura is regarded as the best urban park in New Zealand. It definitely felt like we were far from civilization. This park also hosts the annual rhododendron festival in late October. We just missed the festival (which was nice since the hotels in the area are booked while it is happening), but we did get to see lots of plants in bloom. Unfortunately it rained a bit while we were walking around, but it wasn't too bad.

A picture from Pukekura Park -
My favorite part of the park was the children's zoo. It was free and they had all kinds of animals wandering around in their pens.

No, this is not a very exciting picture, but these little chicks were darling, so I included the photo...

We spent the day driving around Taranaki (its Maori name) aka Mt Egmont (its English name) - both are official names. We used the vaguest map possible (the one from the Lonely Planet guide book), but we managed just fine. It was pretty entertaining to try to figure out where we were on a map that was lacking things such as road names, and roads for that matter. It was nice to just drive with no real destination and take in the scenery.

Unlike the other areas of NZ we have been too, Taranaki is extremely green farmland, with just a few rolling hills. It is also the dairy capital of NZ - there were black & white cows everywhere! I swear no matter what time of day it was, they were always lining up to be milked.

Once the morning rain moved out, the sky was quite clear everywhere except at the mountain top... fortunately the clouds parted just long enough for me to take this picture. We had literally 2 minutes of clarity at the mountain top during the entire day!
During our drive around we stopped in Egmont Nat'l Park for a brief visit to Dawson's Falls, which was about a 5 minute walk from where we parked. It was kind of strange to be rewarded with a beautiful sight after such little effort on our part...

On Saturday night we checked out New Plymouth and its culinary offerings. We settled on El Condor, which billed itself as an Argentinian restaurant, however they served entrees such as blue cheese ravioli and a meat lover's pizza... but it was BYO wine, so we let that go! The food was delicious - especially the empanadas we had for an appetizer (pretty much the only Argentinian item on the entire menu).

After dinner we went to a couple bars, and ended up spending most of our time at a Celtic pub... they had a ton of Guinness coasters on hand, and one way or another, we ended up playing Guinness coaster memory... random, I know, but we weren't about to give up our seats on GUINNESS couches, by the fire mind you. It was very, very entertaining.

Here is a picture of Sarah taking a picture of Carsten with a pair of seals he had just matched - laughable!
On Sunday morning we went to KFC for breakfast - it's not as good as KFC back home though - and then were more or less on our way back to Wellington. However before we left, Erik and I decided that we wanted to check out Paritutu, which means 'rising precipice' - see below (154 meters tall) - and is just outside of New Plymouth on the waterfront:


I am not sure that the picture above does the "hill" justice, but it was incredibly steep and a lot of fun scrambling to the top. We happened to time it just right - a few minutes before we began it was raining, and a few minutes after we finished, it started to rain again...

Here is a picture of the path - again, it was incredibly steep... naturally this was fine on the way up, but when we were coming down I was getting quite nervous - it completely drops off over the edge to the right - add in the wind and you have quite the adrenaline rush...
[The cable in this picture is to help you pull your way up - it was quite vertical at this part]

The views from the top were magnificent. Looking out over the ocean we could see the Sugar Loaf Islands, which are eroded volcanic remnants (which is also what Paritutu is). Here is a picture of where I should have been able to see Mt. Taranaki in the distance. As you can see from this picture, the volcano is in the middle of nowhere. It's amazing how flat the area is, and then all of the sudden, there it is...
This is a picture looking South from the top. As you can tell from the water, it was a really, really windy day. It was actually a bit scary up there because if you weren't paying attention, the wind could really blow you around. We took some video while we were up there as well - hopefully I will be able to post that some time soon.

That's about it from Taranaki - it was a fun-filled weekend. It's amazing how much the landscape changes here from place to place...

Next post - my first visit to the South Island - Christchurch to be specific.

Keep in touch everyone!