Wairoa

On to the North Island to visit James Walker (City High Class of '66).


Took ANZ to Napier - the art deco city (nice bay and lots of sailboats). Sting and the NZ symphony were here last night. He (Sting) says "Hi." We hopped a bus to Wairoa and surely will have more pics soon!

north island

Moana Rua

Milo advertised fishing, and Friday morning we set off to Moana Rua to sight fish the wiley brown trout. The drive is through castle rocks (LOR site) to a 300 meter alpine lake. Maybe we should have been less anxious to get there (blue light special). On arrival, Milo's fishing lesson ended with the 3.5 pound brown shown on the album cover. We walked areound the lake and he caught one more 3+ pounder, but we struck out. I can see the fish now and will try again, soon. We had tea at a friends "batch" on the edge of the lake.

Moana Rua

Photos on Picasa

Click on the photos to view Picasa albums.
Well, the best laid plans! I thought we would be able to keep up with blog postings, the the "fast and furious" action of a vacation week has us flitting around with no time to "reflect." Just post and move on! Queenstown is beautiful - way tooo much on the tourist side. The tourist bring a need for great cafes and food, so not to complain as we gobble whitebait cakes and drinking espresso while watching the ever-ever-changing light on the lake.

The road sign to skippers is not kidding! Once you pass this sign there is NO turnaround for 8 km. I would never drive that road. Peter's Toyota did fine, and the mining at Skippers was interesting. We had the place to ourselves since the river was up - no boating. Wink's son was working on the jet boats and showed us his drive units and hemi engines. Maybe next trip.

In the final set of picasa's from Queenstown details our car rental and drive to Glenornky and to the terminus of Bruce and Kiri's Routeburn track. The weather grounded our flight to Milford, so we grabbed a car and went north. IT was one of the "best" days so far. There are some pics of the wetlands at the mouth of the Dart and our discovery of the fern and Beech forrests of the Routeburn. We were aglow in anticipation of Bruce and Kiri's trip. Wow (another maybe next trip).

The Christchurch images are from a weekend day in the city centre with hake, Budda lunch, and Egypt solidarity demonstration. So nice to have a cosmo ciy center and we will visit again next week for the festival of flowers.

queenstown

skippers

routeburn

christchurch

Queenstown

Following a lovely dinner of mussels and steak at the Kral's last night we hopped a Jetstar flight to Queenstown. Unfornatuely, the weather was perfect and we could clearly see the white knuckled pilot flinging the A320 between incredible basalt and granite peaks - directly into a 39knot westerly up the valley to a very short runway in Queenstown. We hopped the bus to town and had an incredible breakfast on the waterfront on a sunny, windy day. We're booked with Bruce and Kiri Richards at a luxury boutique hotel tomorrow, but needed to shop for lodging tonight. We ended up at the backpackers hostel for tonight, and managed to book the backpack penthouse suite for Wednesday. Weather is crystal clear with occasional raindrops appearing from near cloudless skies. It can't last, we are off to the botanical gardens on a peninsula jutting into the lake.

We are certainly, as Milo says, "out of the loop" here, no idea if this post will make it. Internet service is as bad here as Moore county and I can't see the screen for the sun!

University of Canterbury

 Here Milo, Mandy and I are having lunch at the staff club Friday

 an inside view of our apartment
the view - looking southwest - out of my office window on the fifth floor of the engineering building.

Our first Earthquake!

This afternoon we felt our first earthquake. The walls shook and the light fixtures began to sway- a very weird sensation. Earthquakes are a common daily occurrence here as we are finding out. Found this link that keeps up with all the seismic activity.


http://www.geonet.org.nz/index.html

We made it!

We took off from Nashville in the grips of the rainstorm and made it to LAX in four hours. Richard, Karyn, Erich and Charles met us for dinner in the "Encounter Lounge" at LAX - a true blast from the 60's - you have seen the building in all shots of LAX - Naugahyde and Lava Lamps. The flight over was on Air NZ newest plane a Boeing 777-300. A little cramped in economy for my taste, but a great ride.  It's summer here!  Will post some pictures when I get my batteries charged.