The Western coastline
Vicky…..
Missing pictures
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Author Archives: Vicky
Train, rubble and containers
As promised, once the train had gone over the highest point on its journey through the Southern Alps, (there are no Northern Alps here, they, of course are in Switzerland) the weather changed and the sky became bluer and bluer as we travelled east. The scenery was certainly stunning, and I am glad it was part of my travels.
Even though it was after 6.00 p.m. when we arrived in Christchurch it was in the 30s. It is not just a Kiwi myth that the sun is hotter here, it really is, it sears you, it’s like being under a grill. Something to do with a hole in the ozone layer….
The devastation caused by the earthquakes, 2 years ago and prior to that only 6 months before, is seen all over the City, not just around the Cathedral. One building may be fine, its neighbour empty as it’s not safe. The outer walls of a church or just a heap of rubble. I started taking pictures if these as I walked into the centre of the City, but felt more voyeuristic than when photographing snotty-nosed kids in Burma, living very poorly and in hand- me- down clothes. Perhaps because it’s easier to be sympathetic to a way of life one knows.
So I looked on the bright side and kept my eyes open for the new things. There are what are truly “pop-up” restaurants and bars, using brightly painted buses or an area built with wooden pallets that can be used for theatre and concerts, bar cafe, dinners and even banqueting events! These are Re:START, the biggest of which has, to quote the brochure, “quality retailers located in a cool funky city environment” shops, cafes and banks entirely created from brightly coloured shipping containers.” Kiwi ingenuity at its best”.
The City is not big, and many of the museums and galleries are shut, so still having half a day to fill I took a trip on a bus that goes into the ” red zone” . So much for looking for the new! It was very interesting, not just because of being closer than on foot to many buildings, but so much was explained.
I finished the day with a relaxing walk along the Avon, which meanders between Oxford and Cambridge Terraces, and enjoyed taking pics of the busy bees in the Botanic Gardens.
p.s. read on, I have posted three blogs at once. Soreee
Dow Nunder
Dow Nunder
Glad to know that the signs are written so the train drivers can read them … Down Under.
Greymouth
Greymouth
I don’t really need a great big glass of hot chocolate, but there’s nothing else to do in Greymouth (other than eat a breakfast fit for a King, which everyone else in this Cafe is doing on this wet, thundery Sunday morning). I think the only excitement here is the train from Christchurch coming in at 12.30 and departing at 1.30. The train is actually the reason I’m here at all, and had hoped to fill in my 24 hours and 30 minutes by visiting the museum and a few other places of interest, but that shut at 4.00 on Friday afternoon, and the shops all closed at noon yesterday.
Back in Picton, following my tramp, I had an excellent Wine Tour with gourmet lunch, extra, in the Marlborough Vineyards, then onto Nelson. You won’t be surprised to hear that the coach drivers here are better than in Vietnam. Not only do you know you’re not going to die imminently but the driver gives a very good commentary of the countryside, towns and history of settlements.
Nelson is a City with smart shops, good restaurants and cafes. The Cathedral was started as Gothic and was completed in the 60s, trying to be more modern. A grey marble mish-mash. There is a beautiful sheltered beach and the Abel Tasman National Park is on the doorstep. The first day I took a trip up the coast, with a 4 hour tramp back to the boat pick-up. It rained. The sea was rough. The second day I had designated for museums, it was scorching hot.
The coach drive to Greymouth was stunning. We drove down the Buller Gorge for an hour and a half, and later along the Coast road, listed by Lonely Planet as amongst one of the ten top coastal drives in the world.
The locals have kindly said that on a cloudy day like this, once you cross the mountains in the train, the weather changes. It’s certainly very dry over in Christchurch and they have had four days of bad fires.
I might see some mountains on one of “the world’s most scenic train routes”, but may not.
Happy New Year
Happy 2013.
Between Christmas and New Year I did next to nothing, on Boxing Day Jenny and I went into Wellington and went on a tourist trip one afternoon, and another day went into the fabulous museum Te Papa, which was brilliant but so huge we only touched the surface. Another day I went in, had an interesting tour of the Parliament and browsed the Sales. All but the last day of that week the weather was vile.
On 2nd January, I took the ferry to South Island. The night before had been blowing and raining like billio, but it had calmed down a little when I crossed. Everyone on the boat obviously had hangovers as they were clinging to rails or furniture when they stumbled about the boat, till I stood and tried walk too! then realised how choppy it was. I went out on deck, got soaked from the spray and had to hang onto the rail not to get blown away, but very exhilarating.
Only half the journey is through the Cook Straight, then into the Marlborough Sound where the water is sheltered. More stunning landscape, not unlike Scotland, with layer after layer of mountains in the near and far distance. Picton, where the ferry comes in, is much buzzier than anywhere else I’ve been, but maybe because it is now the summer holidays and it’s very dependant on tourists, doing sea activities, cycling and walking, which is why I’ve come here. That evening it bucketed down which didn’t auger well for a five day holiday.
The weather had blown itself out by morning and the day was clear. In fact we had five fine days, about as unusual as a glorious week in the Lake District. We walked through very varied terrain, mostly rain forrest, with different sorts of flora and fauna, lots of Punga trees (fern trees) . Sometimes you could have been walking in the Cotswolds or Devon, through beech woods (though a different sort of beech tree), then come out along a path looking out at crystal clear green sea below and have been in the Mediterranean, then up and down and up again along the ridge, similar but with bigger ups and downs ,to the Malvern Hills. Or looking down a valley with fields of sheep and another inlet, I thought I was looking down at the head of Derwent Water or Buttermere.
In New Zealand you tramp, not hike or walk. We were “glamping”, different from English glamping, glamorous/ camping. This was glamorous/tramping. There were ten of us and we all got on very well, on the fourth day, after a 24.5 km walk the previous day, six of us stayed at the resort and enjoyed sea kayaking and lounging around. Myself and Aussie room mate shared a kayak, neither of us having done it before. All well until the wind came up and it was suddenly not so easy, but a great sense of achievement when we got back to the beach.
The hotels were definitely on the luxurious side, and now I have to re-educate my tummy that eggs Benedict with smoked salmon, a good packed lunch with homemade cake then a three course dinner is not really my New Year’s resolution.
Happy Christmas and New Year from New Zealand
Sitting in the garden, under a nearly full moon on Christmas night, having had a swim in the sea earlier in the day, is what it’s all about in New Zealand.
The day before yesterday I should have been awarded with a DoE medal for orienteering, as I found my friend’s house, and she truly lives in the middle of nowhere. I wiggled for miles down a tiny valley as instructed, and eventually came to a plain metal farm gate with 238 on the post. I didn’t dare drive in. What if Jenny really lived in a housing estate in Wellington with the same street name, and I was about to let myself onto a complete stranger’s property? So I phoned , and equally to her amazement , I was in the right place. The only signage in towns and main roads is to other MAJOR destinations, no local settlements or streets are ever mentioned. Very difficult.
On the way south I stopped off for a few minutes at a beach that goes further than the eye can see in each direction. Everyone drives right down to the sea with all the paraphernalia, and the swimming is limited to a very small area between the safety flags, while all the lifeguards are hanging around their tents, looking tanned and beautiful, and hoping there will be no call for their services.
The nearest sea to Jenny’s is a cove about half an hour’s drive away, and very rocky. I have never seen such clear water in my life. The sea was quite chilly, as it is still early in the summer, despite being the hottest Christmas Day in Wellington since 1934, 29c.. But I was determined to go in anyway.
It did seem strange watching the Queen’s speech, something I haven’t done for about 10 years. Makes you realise that some of New Zealand is more English than the English.
Still travelling
On a balmy evening, the day after mid- summer day, I went into town , population 40,700, at 6.30p.m. to look for dinner ( I’m learning , they eat early here, probably why there’s not many Spanish tourists). I think I really ought to keep up with the World News, obviously the Bomb has been dropped, Anthrax alert, H.M. died unexpectedly, there’s no one else about. After a few minutes of wandering around admiring the Art Deco Cinema and “Anderson’s, for men”‘, a fine 1930s emporium, clothes probably to match, though I didn’t check…. I find a restaurant that is open. Sitting outside having dinner the only sign of life are guys in Subarus with spoilers, cruising up and down Victoria Avenue, with it’s many zebra crossings and frequent speed bumps. You’ve guessed , I am exaggerating, and being unkind to my host country. The good thing is that the restaurant has delicious food, and plays great jazz and 40 year old music!
I have driven through the most amazing country side over the last two days, every time there is a pull-off on the left hand side, and sometimes even on the right, if not on a hairpin bend, I stop to take in the view. Today I also went on a road that runs parallel to the main road, but not all of it is sealed, quite usual here. The scenery on the main road was a series of mini volcanic bumps for 90 kilometres. Then I double backed on the other road,( which runs along the River Whanganui, NZ’s longest river), for as far as it was made up.
After about 45km, I was craving caffeine, and was pleasantly surprised to find the unlikely combination of gallery and coffee shop, no wonder a lot of people here are on the large size, their cakes beat the National Trust Tea Rooms hands down. I can’t see how she makes a living, only about four other people there, on a lovely Saturday lunch time, including a couple from Malvern!
Any way the cake-making lady came and sat with me, a good chance to find out how places like this exist. I asked about school… Some children do it by correspondence, but as she said, if their parents aren’t that interested they get no education nor contact with other children. There is a school at Jerusalem, 11km up the road which covers the valley, but that’s only up to about 14 years old, then they have to go to Whanganui, about 50km away, so stay with family or friends in the town or board, only to have social problems when they leave the valley. A community seems to consist of about ten households and be about 20km apart. The other thing that interested m , is where the income for these communities comes from? Sheep and honey seemed to be the answer, really I don’t know why Manuka honey is so expensive, there are as many Manuka trees here as there are heather moors in Scotland. It’ s a very isolated life, the nearest in the U.K would be living in the Hebrides!
I have decided that these cars going past aren’t all Subarus, but have just knocked their silencers off , after years of nothing better to do than cruising over speed bumps……
Happy Christmas
To you all.
With love Vicky
40 Years behind the times…..
………Then where’s the sex, drugs and rock and roll. I’m in a major tourist resort and it’s like heaven on a Saturday night, (Sorry, Mr Cohen), I struggled to find a bar, and saw only a couple restaurants, no wonder the motel room is fitted with a good kitchen. However they’ve almost exonerated themselves…the picture below.
Looking at the little timber frame houses it’s easy to see that people built what they had left behind. I can remember houses like that when I was a kid, but we’ve knocked ours all down while it seems to have become the style of building here.
My first day of driving was like going through Scotland in the rain, but with Agapanthus and tree ferns growing at the side of the road. But today the weather has been fine and the views wonderful, and I have come down from the Bay of Islands, north of Auckland, to Rotorua, famed for its smelly sulphurous water.
When I get wi-fi again, I will post three blogs at once, so you’ll have to scroll back to find out about my visit to Singapore and Auckland. Still, something to read on Boxing Day between the cold turkey, cold turkey sandwiches and oh-no-not-turkey-curry-again.
I keep filling up basins just to see the water go down the plug in the opposite direction, and have worked out why our clocks go clockwise……any other anorak come up with the answer?…….
And onto New Zealand
Really I ought to write down first impressions while they are fresh, not wait till I’ve been in a place 5 days and getting used to the way things work.
The first evening I was wandering through Auckland I was struck by how dirty the pavements are compared to Vietnam, leaves, cigarette butts, chewing gum all sorts of litter, and just heaps of dust and muck in corners. In SE Asia every one is sweeping outside their houses, shops and stalls all the time, and someone is always going round picking all the rubbish bags up. And something that made me laugh, the huge wide, four-or-five-lane streets with a couple of cars (and no cycles or motos) with people waiting for the green man at traffic lights and no traffic approaching. The thing that really bugs me, is that wi-fi is NOT free in Hotels !! And you can’t get a meal after 7.30. So I’ m in danger of going hungry every evening.
Sorry, that was a lot of moaning. Good things…… There are plenty, it doesn’t get dark till about 9.00p.m.. You can have a shower, move an inch and still feel fresh and cool. I can, sometimes, understand the natives, though when I declared I had walking boots at Customs, I couldn’t understand why he asked my about a tint, does my hair need the roots doing that badly?? Of course he was referring to camping and talking about a T E N T. The lack of traffic has become a plus as I have now become a driver, though I’ m sure coach drivers here would be boringly safe.
Auckland is a great city, with the Sky Tower, the tallest building in the Southern Hemisphere, and a sailors paradise, I would have loved to take a day out on an America Cup type yatch, but had neither the time nor the money, so I settled for a trip to a volcanic island, where they have maintained the original balance of nature, and there is an amazing museum, recommend if you’re coming here.
