Christmas 07

Christmas was spent up at the batch in Horopito near Ohakune.


Uncle Blaine Jo, Isabella & Oscar
The Bairns

The small house did very well to cope, with 8 people of all ages staying. In no particular order they were me, Kat, Blaine, jo, Walti, Jennifer, Oscar and Isabella.

The weather leading upto Christmas was great, it was lovely warm and sunny. On Christmas Day it was pretty awful and we even had some snow with Ruapaehu being covered in snow. So white Christmas's do occur in the summer !! Unfortunately a ski up the mountain was out of the question because the temperature soon picked up and the snow melted.

Double rainbow !! Ruapaehu covered in winter snow.

Due to the weather not being the best, one day trip was managed to Tokaanu Hotsprings. Compared to Rotorua and Hamner Springs, these springs weren't really upto much, but everyone went in for a swim. Following that a picnic was held in the reception area of the DOC hut due to heavy rain outside. Following the rain we went for a walk round the hot springs themselves. They were very pretty (see photos below) !!

Hawkes Bay

I visited Napier which is a small coastal town in Hawkes Bay (East Coast of the North Island).

Napier beach

Napier sells itself as the Art Deco capital of NZ. It has a few Art Deco buildings which were built after an earthquake destroyed the town in 1931. I'm not sure if the house can be classified as Art Deco but I liked the look of it.

The town itself is very much like many other NZ towns of this size. The town itself probably has about a couple of days worth of entertainment. Hawkes Bay is known as the 'Fruit Bowl of NZ' and also has many vineyards and winerys too.

Town centre of Napier, felt like a seaside town in France/Spain.

Lake Coleridge, Canterbury NZ. The braided Rakaia River






In the middle of nowhere ?? Lake Coleridge, yet another pristine NZ lake.

Thought I'd add a few more photos. Haven't really worked on my blog recently, mainly because I haven't done a lot of travelling within NZ so nothing to report.

Off to Hawkes Bay soon, so hopefully looking forward to a nice weekend by the beach in Napier.

Easter Weekend - Queen Charlotte Sound

For Easter, I headed upto Queen Charlotte Sound. Left Christchurch on Thursday afternoon, spent the night in Picton before meeting Jackie, Derek and others off the Wellington Ferry. We were then staying at Lochmara Lodge, which we got too buy water taxi.



Lochmara Lodge Queen Charlotte Sound

Once at the lodge, the weekend was spent kayaking, reading, doing a few walks and playing petanque as well as the obligatory drinking, eating well and spending time chatting with the locals (the Punga People)



Queen Charlotte Sound, Punga Family and person.






Boat trip and drunken capers. These included looking at phosphorus in the water, when the water was disturbed it glowed like radioactive waste !!!

Dinner time and Full moon over the lodge

On the journey home I caught the train from Picton back to Christchurch. It was probably the slowest train I have ever been on. On the way it passed a large salt mining area which looked like a lunar landscape.

Next trip is back to Scotland, so looking forward to that and catching up with family and friends :).

HOKATIKA WILD FOOD FESTIVAL

Went over to the wild food festival at Hokatika. Last time I was there it just rained non stop and it seemed a really depressing town. This time however the sun was out and it was a great weekend. Though having spent 2 days in a tent I think I'll be booking a B&B or something in the future. There was a group of about 8 of us and ran into a few random people to so all in all an excellent weekend.

We arrived on the Friday, and took these shots ofd the sun going down over the Pacific and from the beach looking back to the mountains over Hokatika.

On the Saturday was the day of the food festival, tried various stuff including kangaroo, crepes, elderflower champagne, hedgehog, shark and snails and other meats that I can't remember (too much alcohol). However, decided against trying lambs cheek, vodka jelly caterpillars and mountain oysters (sheep/cow testacles).

From left to right, Hokitika on a sunny day !!, the Wildfood Festival & Escargort (snail), not as tasty as they are in France !

We headed back to the east coast on the Sunday, but before we left we visited Hokatika Gorge. A fantastic place, crystal blue water amongst spectacular scenery.

More photos

Just thought I'd put some more photos on here from my time in NZ so far. They start off from my time in Wellington to moving down here to the south island.

I think weekend trips back home are for the time being unlikely:

First few are from when I went to see the All Blacks play the Springbox in Wellington. Here are a couple of the ABs doing the Haka. The atmosphere at the game was strange, no chanting or singing. The crowd are very boring when compared to football spectators.

Also visited Kapiti island which is to the north of Wellington, here they are trying to recreate how NZ (Aotearoa) used to be before it was settled by Europeans. It is basically a wildlife reserve primarily set up to give the native birds of NZ a habitat away from any predators.