Category Archives: New Zealand
ChristChurch Cathedral, two thousand and one days later
2001 days ago, I paid NZD 1.50 to climb 134 steps up the spire of ChristChurch Cathedral in New Zealand with my friend Vania. Now that spire is just a pile of rubble in the centre of the South Island’s most populous city, after an earthquake destroyed buildings and killed dozens of people.
Back when we visited Christchurch, in August 2005, I took a bunch of photos from the Cathedral spire 30 metres above ground:
Vania returning down the spiral staircase back to ground level:
After our visit to the cathedral, we went and enjoyed hot chocolate at Starbucks, appreciated the beautiful weather, and laughed as we watched this seagull eating someone’s unfinished cake.
None of my Kiwi friends were badly hurt in this earthquake, but it’s still pretty sad. Christchurch is a great city, and it’ll take a long time to recover from this.
Toroa House
One year to this day, just before midnight NZ time (which is right now in Vancouver) I walked into the flat that would be my home for the next 9 months in Dunedin, New Zealand.
Time passes pretty quickly sometimes – for a while I thought my time in New Zealand would stretch on forever, then suddenly, as with all good things, it came to an abrupt end and I was back on a plane bound for Asia once more.
The problem with physics is that particles, behaving like waves, can exist in two places at the same time. Unfortunately, people cannot.
Christchurch and beer
Later that afternoon, after finishing our walk, we headed to Christchurch. And there were sheep on the highway.
We stopped at Lake Tekapo for a few minutes for petrol then shortly after at a nice beach spot so I could take some landscape shots. (The pink cloud colour was really white… I just wanted to play with this one)
After arriving in Christchurch in the evening, we went to bed pretty quickly. The next day after eating at our holiday park accommodation, we headed into the city centre to do some walking. First we parked in Hagley Park then took a walk through the Botanic Gardens through which the River Avon winds.
After our stroll through the gardens we stopped for a basket of reeeeally delicious fries and lazed in the sun on the restaurant’s patio, then crossed the street to the Canterbury Museum.
Tired from all the day’s walking, we went to bed. The next morning back into town to check out Cathedral Square. We walked around inside Christchurch Cathedral then paid the $1.50 each to climb the 134 steps, 30m up the spire. Down in the square, people were playing chess. Crazy.
They were also checking out the market, which was being set up as we checked it out.
And this chalice artwork is pretty neat – it’s been there since 2001.
Then we walked back down 134 spiral stairs. I jogged a bit and got kinda dizzy.
We sat outside the Starbucks drinking hot chocolate for some time, enjoying the unbelievably warm and sunny weather we were getting – after all, it’s the end of winter here. This seagull was cool.
And THEN we headed out to do the Canterbury Brewery Heritage Tour at the home of Canterbury Draught. It was a nice tour, and as there were only 5 of us on the tour it was easy to ask questions and get a full response from our cool guide.
One of these storage tanks holds 120,000 litres of beer.
Kegs being filled:
12-packs of Tasman Bitter being boxed.
And of course, what would a brewery tour be without the requisite beer tasting. We tried five of the beers brewed at Canterbury Breweries: Canterbury Draught (their main one), Guinness (under contract), Steinlager, Speights, and Speights Old Dark.
To be continued…
Stewart Island (continued)
Day 4:
We woke up at 6am and left at about 8 that day. This was a very difficult day, and it’s good we started early. At 16 kilometres and just over ten hours, it was an arduous day to say the least. We went up and down and up and down the mountains, along the peaks, and then finally back down to sea level. While I have fairly good endurance and can walk as fast or faster than Andrew and Tom on flat land, the uphills are particularly difficult for me. I fell behind quite often on the uphills but every once in a while Tom and Andrew would stop and wait for me to catch up.
We had some interesting crossings this day as well – in particular one stream about 6 feet wide. About 11am, we found this stream and there was no way across. The water was a solid 3 feet deep and none of us felt like wading through it. Nor did we fancy the 6 foot climb down into the stream and the 6 feet to claw ourselves up the other bank. Both banks were steep muddy slopes and we could see the marks of hikers who had less luck than us navigating this crossing.
Tom jumped first then Andrew threw each of our 3 heavy packs across to Tom who caught and threw each one further up the path in a single fluid motion. It worked nicely and we were on our way, having caught it all on video.
Just after 5pm, we reached the top of the last mountain of the day and stopped for a few minutes and some photos. What a beautiful place it was, looking down towards Doughboy Bay and all around us mountain peaks.
With high spirits, we began the long and mostly extremely steep descent to sea level. An hour later, nearing the bottom, we stopped for a minute to breathe and enjoy the view. Andrew realized at this point that he no longer had his camera – he apparently put it down at the top of the mountain and forgot to pick it up when we began our descent. He and Tom decided to try finding it while I continued on to start the rice cooking. They left their bags in the bushes and I went on alone down the remainder of the trail.
About 10 minutes after I had arrived at Doughboy Bay Hut, Andrew and Tom arrived. I had taken my sweet time once I was alone, stopping to take photos and enjoy the scenery and lack of rush. They had gone full tilt partway up and back down the mountain with no success in locating the camera.
Down at the hut, I walked up to my calves in water and did my best to clean the mud off, without much success. I cleaned my shoes and gaiters and returned to the hut where my legs began to itch crazily. I coated them in Andrew’s anti-itch powder but this didn’t help. About half an hour later they finally returned to normal. We made rice with broccoli and carrots for supper and went to bed after Andrew got ‘attacked’ by a possum. In reality Andrew’s screams sent the possum running, and possums are not dangerous or scary, but Andrew assures us that the possum ran at him. Sure Andrew, sure.
The hut was fairly full, as two people were there from the previous day and two others arrived after dark, making seven of us. The other four were all going the opposite direction on the track.
In the middle of the night I awoke as usual to relieve myself outside and there were two possums there this time. I scared them off just by looking at them :-) It’s nice knowing there are no predators in New Zealand (except the human type of course).
To be continued…
