tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-29374917926243966712024-02-06T20:21:47.137-08:00Carolyn in AotearoaCarolynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18393970339280366748noreply@blogger.comBlogger169125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2937491792624396671.post-73034700119838254322012-02-21T12:51:00.000-08:002012-02-21T12:51:04.892-08:00Christchurch, One Year LaterI haven't written in my blog since I arrived home in Canada last March; after all, it is titled "Carolyn in Aotearoa", not "Carolyn in Canada". But I feel compelled to write today, as it is February 22nd in New Zealand: the one-year anniversary of the Christchurch Earthquake.<br />
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It seems like a bit of a misnomer, as in reality there have been thousands of earthquakes in the Christchurch Canterbury region since September 2010, but say the phrase "Christchurch Earthquake" and everyone immediately knows you are referring to the magnitude 6.3 on February 22nd at 12:51pm. It's just past 9:15am in New Zealand right now - here in Canada it's 12:16pm on February 21st - but having just had my lunch here I feel eerily anxious and scared, almost as if there wasn't a 21-hour time difference, and the moment when my parents and I found ourselves in the midst of New Zealand's second-deadliest national disaster is rapidly approaching. This time (NZ time) last year I was at the airport meeting my parents, the latter having just flown Vancouver - Auckland - Christchurch to visit for three weeks. What a welcoming they ended up receiving!<br />
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Since returning to Canada I have been asked to give multiple presentations on my experiences in the earthquake, and share my pictures and story with the world. I don't enjoy reliving that day in vivid detail, but I do so because I hope my personal narrative is able to help individuals understand what it is like to be in the midst of such an event, and to spur them into action to better prepare themselves and their families.<br />
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I still experience a rapid bottoming out in my stomach each time I hear a low rumble or feel a building shake slightly. I don't think it will ever go away; it's a survival mechanism now, built into my brain and exacerbated by the fact that I live in an active earthquake zone. I won't go into parkades anymore, and when I walk around downtown Victoria, along storefronts and down narrow alleys, I look up uncomfortably at all the brickwork and mouldings and try to plan an escape from falling masonry should the ground suddenly start to warp and rumble. <br />
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I've been watching some of the footage of the memorial services in Christchurch today over a live streaming feed from the internet; I hope to be home in time enough today to watch the official remembrance ceremony from 12-1:30 (3-4:30 Canadian time). Even though I have two midterms this week and certainly don't have much time to spare, I feel the need to be connected to New Zealand and Christchurch today. I can't be there in person, but I can be there in spirit.<br />
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It's hard to forget. I don't want to forget... and yet, at the same time, I don't want to relive the earthquake, the event I now think about every day of my life. Perhaps by not being in Christchurch, it is harder for me to move on, as I haven't been there to see the rebuild effort, to see the city recovering and its citizens going on with their lives. Yet I am still in touch with the family I stayed with in Heathcote, and they have certainly picked up their lives and moved forward. Perhaps I should be taking my cues from them.<br />
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It's 12:51pm here in Canada. <i>Kia ora</i>, Christchurch. Be well! You are in my thoughts today. I am there with you.<br />
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~Carolyn~Carolynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18393970339280366748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2937491792624396671.post-32650705064035466882011-03-13T19:30:00.000-07:002011-03-13T22:17:41.562-07:00Piha Beach, and Haere ra, Aotearoa. For Now. :-)Well, this is likely my last blog post from New Zealand. In fact, I'm kind of in the no-man's-land of the International Departures shopping mecca of the Auckland Airport as I type this, so I'm not sure if this can still technically be classified as New Zealand Soil.<br />
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I'll just start typing about today, and we'll see how far I get before my parents and I get called for our final boarding call.<br />
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My mum had her sights set on going to the <a href="http://www.kellytarltons.co.nz/">Kelly Tarlton's Antarctic Encounter</a> museum in Auckland this morning, to the point where she had me book our admission passes online so we could get at 10% discount. What she didn't count on the 70 000 runners participating in the 39th annual Round the Bays run down on the same street the museum was located on! Actually, it was something of a perfect storm; the Antarctic centre could only be reached by Tamaki Drive, which was blocked off for the run, and the surrounding area had no roads whatsoever, as it was a scenic mountain reserve connected with a Maori Marae. Despite being armed with my computer accessing Googlemaps, and my dad's generally highly accurate sense of direction, we were unable to find a way down and around Auckland's twisty streets. We parked on top of the mountain, walked down over the grass, and tried for several fruitless minutes to wade through the tide of humanity walking/jogging/running down the road. By this point my dad was starting to say things like "We likely won't make it to Piha Beach now", and I was getting closer and closer to screaming in frustration and anger. I didn't want to go to this Antarctic thing anyway, and if it meant I was going to miss Piha, where I had wanted to go to since I first arrived in New Zealand... aaaagh!<br />
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We eventually gave up, hiked back up the hill, and using my computer once again plotted a route to Piha Beach. And thank goodness we had my computer, because without the route it plotted there is no way my dad and I would have figured out how to get there; the signage was all but non-existent, and one intersection wasn't even marked from the angle from which we approached it! Add on top of that your typical windy, narrow, densely-forested New Zealand highway, combined with my dad's slightly-too-fast and not-quite-mastering-lane-tracking-for-being-on-the-left driving, and we had a highly interesting ride.<br />
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The plane is boarding now, so I will write more later.<br />
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...<br />
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[Update: now typing to you live from the BC Ferry!]<br />
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But finally, an hour and twelve minutes after we left, we had crossed the Waitakere Ranges and were walking barefoot across the volcanic black sands of <a href="http://www.piha.co.nz/">Piha Beach</a>. The beach itself is majestic; smooth black sand, rolling surf, and dominated by a massive volcanic rock mountain called Lion Rock (or <i>Te </i><i>Piha</i><i> </i>in Maori, which means "bow wave", the waves hitting the front of a <i>waka</i> [canoe]). We climbed up the side of Lion Rock (as far as we were allowed!) for the magnificent view... and then as we came down observed a group of French people climbing up past the barrier and beyond to the very top of the rock. I certainly hope they got down safely, as the sign warned of loose and falling debris (and indeed we observed a large slip on the other side).<br />
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Piha Beach, while beautiful, is also deadly; there are many dangerous rips, and swimming is only permitted in a narrow strip of beach between two flags where the lifeguards are on duty. The danger doesn't stop it from being a popular surfing hangout however; there was a crowd of surfers out catchin' the waves, and noobies coming out for a lesson from the Piha Surf School. There was a sizeable crowd of families down at the water as well; I figured any Auckland family that wasn't participating in the Round the Bays run had escaped town and come out to the beach for the day!<br />
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Even though our cat is named after Piha beach (her former owners being from Auckland, and obviously enchanted with the beach's beauty), I don't think Piha herself would be very happy there; she wouldn't like the salt water, the noise of pounding surf, or the many eager dogs running down the sand with their owners! After a semi-nutritious lunch of chips, crackers, cheese, and veggies (we were trying to eat through the remainder of our food supply), we made a brief stop to take a picture in front of the Piha Beach Fire Brigade Station, bought a souvenir window decoration (to commemorate our visit) from the local <s>tourist trap</s> art gallery, and then started making our way back to Auckland and to the airport.<br />
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Navigating back to the airport was easier than navigating to Piha - airports tend to be a <i>little</i> bit better marked than remote beaches - but my computer and Googlemaps still came in handy. Once at the airport, we managed to return our rental car and check in with minimal fuss: interestingly, the flight we were on (NZ84) was overbooked by the airline, and as such they were offering incentives to switch to an alternate flight: $500NZ off to fly instead to L.A. with a four-hour layover, and then connecting up to Vancouver. We turned them down; you could not pay me enough money to make me go through US Customs, particularly after a 13-hour flight.<br />
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While we were waiting upstairs in the terminal, eating our way through the last of the food we couldn't take through security, we started talking to the couple sitting across from us; turns out they live in Napier (near Maraenui, where Frank lives) and their daughter (whom they were seeing off today) lives and works in Nanaimo! Sometimes it's crazy how small the world can be.<br />
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Going through security we had a minor hiccough (we had forgotten to fill out departure cards), and I had a slightly more major one: I forgot that I had a water bottle in my backpack half full of water! The security guard was merciful, however, and said I could keep the bottle if I drank the contents of it in front of him as there was nowhere to dump it out. So there I was, by the x-ray machine, chugging my way through half of my stainless-steel water bottle's H2O. After carting it all around New Zealand, I wasn't about to loose it!<br />
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I'm not sure what was particularly exciting that I can say about the flight... the plane went up at 8:15pm, came back down at 1:15pm (so thanks to the International Date Line, we got back before we left; that always amuses me), and it didn't experience any problems in the middle. I got my typical upset stomach about eight hours in, and spent the last five hours trying not to hurl up dinner while choking down a little juice and tea for breakfast (more like brunch, I guess... it was breakfast time back in New Zealand, but brunch time in Canada). My parents were seated together about five rows back from me, and I was by myself next to a nice Kiwi couple who now live in Vancouver. I didn't watch any movies, but listened to music on my iPod, and enjoyed glancing around seeing what everyone else had chosen to watch (<i>The King's Speech</i>, <i>Black Swan</i>, and episodes of <i>Glee</i> and <i>Two and a Half Men</i> were all popular).<br />
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So now I am back in Canada... in some ways it feels like I never left, and in others things are weirding me out. The weather wasn't that much of a shock - the air quality is just as good in New Zealand, so I wasn't taking huge gulps of the Vancouver air like I did when I got off the plane from Hong Kong in May 2009. What I did do was change out of my capri shorts and into a pair of pants (slightly more suited to Vancouver's 8°C as opposed to Auckand's 26°C). It's the little things that are getting to me: seeing traffic driving on the right, sitting in my uncle's left-hand-drive car when he picked us up from the airport; walking on the right-hand side of the foot path (pardon me, sidewalk); hearing the Canadian accent in all the conversations going on around me; and knowing that my accent doesn't stick out here. It's a reverse culture shock of sorts. Nevertheless, I definitely do still have a place in Canada; here on the ferry, my grade eight science teacher Mr Drew just walked by, and when I called out to him he came over and gave me a hug, said, "Carolyn! How are you? What have you been up to?" and sat down to have a conversation with me and my parents. Yes, Vancouver Island is still a place to call home.<br />
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Alas, I imagine this brings an end to my daily blog posts on <i>Carolyn in Aotearoa</i>, as Carolyn is no longer in Aotearoa, but Vancouver Island, British Columbia. It's going to be very strange not to be blogging every night; forgoing food, relaxation, and very often sleep just to make sure I got everything from the day down on (digital) paper to share and reflect on later. The next few days will be spent unpacking and readjusting to life in a place where I have a permanent bed and room (such a concept!). I have several books, some cast-off clothes I collected from fellow backpackers and op shops (thrift stores), and some CDs to add to my collection here. Despite being away for so long I brought back very little from New Zealand, mainly due to subscribing to the Backpacker Philosophy: if I bought it, I'd have to carry it!<br />
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I'm going to add pictures to almost all of my blog posts, as I'm going to leave the blog up as something of a digital photo album and memoir of my travels for myself and my friends to view (if I flatter myself to think that they would be so interested to do so). As such, I leave you with this, a traditional Maori goodbye: <i>haere ra, kia ora</i>. Farewell, and good health.<br />
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~Carolyn~Carolynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18393970339280366748noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2937491792624396671.post-50001502013993033122011-03-12T03:21:00.000-08:002011-03-12T03:21:59.712-08:00Parnell: The Funky Part of Auckland!After dinner last night we went for a walk around Tauranga, and saw a group of people clustered around a television screen; when we got back to the motel we found out it was likely due to the devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan. New Zealand had been issued a marine warning, but we (the country) were very fortunate as nothing significant came of it. I had a moment of horror when I went to contact one of my friends who is currently living in Japan, but she is thankfully okay, aside from being terrified by the experience. I can't say that I blame her; I know exactly what it's like to live through an earthquake.<br />
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This morning we drove from Tauranga to Auckland without stopping; it took us about two and a half hours, and then another half hour to get from Customs St in downtown Auckland up to the hotel in Parnell! Ah, city driving, I definitely do not miss thee. To be fair, however, a lot of the delay was due to construction work, not heavy weekend traffic.<br />
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Once checked into the Kingsgate Hotel, and finished snacking on our lunch of cheese, crackers, fruit, and leftovers from last night's dinner, I phoned Michael from Mainline Steam and confirmed that yes, indeed, we had made it to Auckland and would be walking over to the depot in a few minutes. He asked if I remembered how to get there, and I said, "Oh, yes, and anyway, I'll just follow my nose!" to which he responded (quite brilliantly, as he knows about my cold) "Well, your nose is running, so you'll be here quickly!" Bada-bing.<br />
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As it turned out, Michael was all by himself at the depot waiting for us to arrive; I felt badly, as I had assumed more volunteers would be around, but it turns out they all went home just after lunch. Nevertheless, Michael was very gracious, welcoming my parents and I, and gave us a little tour around the depot, showing us the different locies. Ja 1240 has come a long way since I took photos of her back in October! It's thrilling to see such care and attention being paid to the engines. I know my dad was impressed with the scale of the operation, and particularly with the huge engines from South Africa (the "giant beasties" as I refer to them); I think the firebox on one of them could have easily fit my Honda Civic inside. It's so large that there is a direct feed from the coal box into the firebox; one wouldn't be able to keep up with it stoking by hand.<br />
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It was good to spend time with Michael at the depot; Mainline Steam was how I started my time in New Zealand, and it was nice to have it as an ending as well. Incidentally, interest in the Mainline Steam Tour 2011 has already been registered, and there are some repeat guests from last year's trip! Sigh, I wish I could go again... but I'm afraid that (aside from the small problem of not being in the country) I broke the bank the first time around and it has never recovered.<br />
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After leaving the depot we walked back up (and then down... and then up again... the streets here are very hilly!) to Parnell and found a post box so my mum could mail a postcard, and then back to the hotel, where my parents went across the street to explore the rose gardens and I stayed in the room, nursing my cold to get up enough energy to go out again for dinner. We ended up walking back to Parnell Street in search of a good restaurant, and settled on Nori, a Japanese one on the corner of Parnell and Garfield Streets. I had a wonderful meal; my first good sushi in months! I think even my mom, who doesn't like sushi, enjoyed her dinner: she had salmon teriyaki, and the two of us both had crème brûlée for dessert (yes, I know, such a traditional Japanese dessert. Oh, well).<br />
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Leaving the restaurant, we started walking up the street to wander around before heading back to the hotel. I must say, although I'm not a fan of Auckland, I like the funky vibe of Parnell; it's definitely a major improvement to the impersonal, big-buisness feel of downtown Queens Street. As it happened, we found ourselves smack in the middle of White Night, a celebration of "great art, great culture and great fun in a great city". Part of the Auckland Arts Festival 2011, "over 50 public and private art galleries, museums and cultural centres across Auckland [threw] open their doors to let the light out and the public in". The first activity we came across was a colouring one, aimed mostly at kids: we were invited to draw a picture on paper using pastels in exchange for a cupcake or lolly, and then the drawings were taken and posted in a local art gallery for the evening. I'm not much of an artist, so I simply drew a bunch of coloured ribbons weaving and intersecting one another; I suppose in a way it can be seen as representative of my life, and how I have woven and intersected with so many others over these past few months.<br />
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Our next stop was across the street; we found ourselves in a greenstone carving store, where my mom ended up buying a beautiful wooden bowl carved with a traditional Maori motif. Then we went next door to a contemporary art gallery, and I was dazzled by several paintings where the artist demonstrated a remarkable ability to blend colour and create the illusion of light. If I had $12 000 burning a hole in my pocket, I may very well have walked out of there with one of her paintings!<br />
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As we were walking back down the street toward the hotel we got sucked into visiting Elephant House by a rep woman standing on the street... it's one of the classier souveinr shops, focusing on crafts and gifts rather than cheap crap mass-produced in China. My mom got a shirt, my dad a hat, and I got some yarn to knit into something (with my current skill-set, likely a scarf), and a possum fur wrap. I am not a pro-fur individual, but considering the possums here are an invasive introduced species, and knowing the havoc they have wreaked on the native birdlife, I feel fine supporting their eradiation.<br />
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Back at the hotel at last, my mum and I then spent over an hour trying to pack our bags; thankfully, I've gotten pretty good at it after over five months on the road, but it's still a pain to try to squish everything in neatly. I've really been quite good about limiting the things that I buy over here, but somehow I've managed to amass half a dozen books or so (who's surprised? Likely no one), so I'm not so much concerned about running out of space as being over weight.<br />
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Tomorrow promises to be an eventful day; my mum wants to go visit an aquarium, and then we're heading out to Piha Beach for the afternoon, provided by dad and I can figure out how to navigate there(!). Goodnight!<br />
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~Carolyn~Carolynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18393970339280366748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2937491792624396671.post-83364861881146591892011-03-11T20:13:00.000-08:002011-03-10T23:18:33.037-08:00"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit."Today was our first (and thankfully, only) fly-by-the-seat-of-our-pants day; we had no set plans, and no pre-booked place to stay for the night. All that was predetermined was that we were heading in a roughly northerly direction. In the end, my parents both got their ways (sort of): we ended up going to Matamata, home of Hobbiton, and for the evening are now situated in Tauranga, a seaside city on the East Coast. Initially my father wanted to go to Mt Maunganui, where my aunt and uncle had stayed and loved when they vacationed here in 2005, but after calling around to a few places we quickly discovered that things book up quickly for a Friday night. I could have told my parents that, having gone through the long and arduous process of selecting and booking accommodation for the rest of this trip, but I did get some satisfaction out of watching my dad call a series of places before finally finding one that had room: see, dad, it takes a bit of work!<br />
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Matamata is a small town of 7800 about an hour’s drive northeast of Rotorua; before Sir Peter Jackson selected a nearby farm as the setting for Tolkien’s Hobbiton, its two main industries were thoroughbred horse training and dairy farming; now a substantial amount of tourism can be added to the list. We booked our tour of Hobbiton through the local iSite, and were bussed to and from the farm (on a glorious old white bus named “Gandalf”), located about 10km out of town.<br />
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The farm property is owned and run by the Alexander family; Ian Alexander, the father, and three sons, Craig, Russell, and Dean. Peter Jackson originally chose the location in September 1998 after an aerial search of the countryside because of its isolated location (the rolling hills block out any sights or sounds of the 20th century, and the nearest road is 2km away), and because it contained three elements critical to Hobbiton: a lake, a dance field, and a large tree (the “party tree”, for those who know the movies well). To access the site, the New Zealand Army was contracted to build a road around behind the hills (hidden from view), and also built graded spaces for the filmmaker’s technical equipment and the cast & crew’s caravans, make-up trailers, and catering. Site construction started in March 1999, and filming for all three movies took place at Hobbiton from December 1999 to May 2000.<br />
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After filming was complete the original contract stipulated the sets had to be completely destroyed, and the land returned to its original state. Demolition of Hobbiton proceeded, with the mill, pub, market, and bridge razed to the ground, and about half the hobbit holes destroyed before inclement weather forced the crews to stop because the work became too dangerous. In the meantime, <i>The Fellowship of the Ring</i> had been released to theatres, and locals had figured out that the Alexander’s isolated farm was where filming had taken place. Soon visitors began to trickle in to see what was left of the sets, and the Alexanders, likely realising the tourist industry could bring in some extra cash to supplement their sheep and dairy farming, spent two years in negotiation with New Line Cinema to keep the remaining hobbit holes (albeit without their decorative exteriors), and developed a tour company to bring the eager crowds of <i>Lord of the Rings</i> devotees through.<br />
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Fortunately for us, however, the farm is once again an active film set: Peter Jackson is now directing<i> The Hobbit</i>, and Hobbiton has been resurrected, or more accurately, almost completely rebuilt; a Hobbiton 2.0, if you will. Reconstruction began in December 2009, and filming was scheduled to begin in December 2010. However, Peter Jackson suffered a perforated stomach lining, and filming at Hobbiton was suspended as a result. His loss was our gain: while I am genuinely sorry for Sir Jackson, and wish him nothing but a speedy recovery, I am grateful for his illness, as it allowed for us to have a tour of a reconstructed Hobbiton, looking almost identical to how it appears in the original <i>Lord of the Rings </i>trilogy (actually, it has been expanded for <i>The Hobbit</i>).<br />
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Unfortunately, that’s about all I can say about Hobbiton: while we were allowed to take pictures onset, everyone had to sign a confidentiality agreement before beginning the tour, which I will reproduce here:<br />
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<div><br />
<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">The property you are about to enter is a working film production location. Everything here is the confidential trade secret and proprietary information of the film production company, 3 Foot 7 Limited.</span><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">You must keep what you see and hear strictly confidential. </span></b></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><br />
Information acquired by you here </span><u><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">must not be disclosed</span></b></u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> by any means </span><b><u><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">to anyone</span></u></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> (including your family and friends).<br />
</span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">These disclosure restrictions also apply to Twitter, </span></b><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">Facebook</span></b><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">, You-tube, My-space or any other social networks, blogs, websites or the I</span></b><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">nternet</span></b><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"> generally. </span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><br />
<br />
You are permitted to bring cameras and recording devices but only on the condition that any photography or recording is to be used for your personal, private and non-commercial uses ONLY.<br />
</span><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">By signing below you are confirming you understand that: </span></b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;"><br />
</span><br />
<ul><li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">As a condition of your access you are bound by a legal obligation of confidentiality; </span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">If you breach your obligation of confidentiality you may be sued; and </span></li>
<li><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Courier New', Courier, monospace;">All rights to (including copyright in) any recordings or photographs used for any unauthorized purpose will immediately vest in the film production company upon such breach. </span></li>
</ul><br />
Serious stuff. I’ll be happy to talk about what I heard and saw and experienced after the<i> The Hobbit</i> movies come out, but until that point I’m going to keep quiet. :-) Nevertheless, walking around the set, I couldn’t help but wonder what J. R. R. Tolkien would have thought to see his beloved Hobbiton coming to life; I think he would have been immensely pleased.<br />
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After the farm set tour we were bussed back to the main road, and over to The Wool Shed, where we were treated to a sheep-shearing demonstration, and got to feed pet lambs with with bottles of milk (it’s amazing how affectionate animals can get when one offers food; then again, my brother were the same way when promised a lick of the beaters when my mum was making cookies).<br />
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Once back in Matamata, we had a mid-afternoon tea of smoothies (coffee for dad), and then drove the fifty or so kilometres to Tauranga, where we are currently situated at the quiet but centrally-located Roselands Motel. Right now my mum and dad are cooking up a feast of chicken, steak, beans, corn, and pasta in our little kitchenette; I’ve been prohibited from participating because of my cold, but I’ve been informed the dishes will be my sole responsibility. It’s a beautiful late summer/early fall evening, and the wind is rustling the curatins as it blows through the sliding glass door of our unit. The timer just dinged, so I guess I had better be off. Goodnight!</div>Carolynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18393970339280366748noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2937491792624396671.post-70534730739607867992011-03-10T01:53:00.000-08:002011-03-10T01:55:48.313-08:00"Some say the world will end in fire..."I wonder if Robert Frost saw the irony in beginning a poem with the above words, considering the connotations of his last name (likely. He was an ironic kind of guy).<br />
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Last night my parents were treated to one of the joys of hostel living: the incessant music from the bar on the ground floor filling the room until all hours of the morning, playing such appealing tunes (to their ears) as Katy Perry’s “Firework”, Duck Sauce’s “Barbra Streisand”, and Flo Rida’s “Club Can’t Handle Me”. I just smiled and popped in my earplugs, which evidently also enabled me to sleep through the drunken swearing brawl on the street at 3am.<br />
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After a brief look around the beautiful Napier Cathedral we were once again on the road, this time heading Northeast to Rotorua, the smelly geothermal capital of New Zealand. The highway was littered with sealcoating operations, so we were constantly stopping and starting, surrounded more often than not by tree plantations of pine and Douglas fir (planted in their straight rows, marching up and down the mountainsides; it unnerves me). We made it to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Taupo">Lake Taupo</a> (and the town of the same name) around noon, and stopped for lunch at the side of the largest freshwater lake (by area) in New Zealand, where we ended up feeding a feral cat morsels of cheese from our sandwiches.<br />
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As we drove highway #5 up toward Rotorua, my mother became increasingly agitated about how we just “drive all day and then never see anything”, causing my dad to pull off the road while she consulted the Lonely Planet and tried to figure out what activities we could do for the later afternoon and evening. We ended up driving down the road to Waimangu Volcanic Valley, the only hydrothermal system in the world where the exact date of its commencement is known: June 10th, 1886, with the eruption of Tarawera Volcano.<br />
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Waimangu Volcanic Valley is a Scenic Reserve and its geothermal features are classified as Category A (of international significance); as such, it is administered by the Department of Conservation. However, part of the reserve is leased by the Crown to a New Zealand-owned private company that charges a fee for admission to the site, but in return provides a café, gift shop, boat tours on Lake Rotomahana, and a shuttle service from the end of the walking track back to the main parking lot. We opted to do the 4.4km walk through the valley without the boat tour, as my mum had booked she and my dad into a Maori cultural experience dinner and show in Rotorua that evening starting at 6:30pm, and we needed to be on the road by 5:30pm.<br />
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The eruption on June 10th, 1886, radically altered the landscape: what was once rolling, scrub-covered hills with no evident hydrothermal activity became overnight a series of craters, and completely destroyed all plant and animal life in the surrounding area. Before the eruption, the area was the most famous tourist destination in New Zealand due to the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pink_And_White_Terraces">Pink and White Terraces</a>, silica deposits on the shores of Lake Rotomahana, formed by geothermal heated water (high in siliceous sinter) flowing down the hillside, leaving pink and white silica deposits behind in a terrace shape, and thermal pools that people came to bathe in. <a href="http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/historic-volcanic-activity/2">The eruption of Mount Tarawera</a> destroyed the terraces, burying everything under hot mud, boulders, and ash. Tragically, the volcano aslo buried the nearby Maori and English settlement of Te Wairoa, killing over 120 people.<br />
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The eruption created a huge crater, which eventually filled in with water, creating a new Lake Rotomahana, considerably larger and deeper than its predecessor. Today, the lake is a peaceful bird sanctuary, and we observed black swans, little shags, and New Zealand scaups all happily swimming around its banks. Amazingly, it turns out the terraces may not be completely destroyed as was previously thought: scientists working in January this year <a href="http://www.nzherald.co.nz/travel/news/article.cfm?c_id=7&objectid=10703655">discovered the lower tiers of the Pink Terraces</a> intact at the bottom of the lake, at a depth of 60m!<br />
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Having experienced some of New Zealand’s geothermal activity <a href="http://carolyninaotearoa.blogspot.com/2010/11/white-water-rafting-and-skydiving-or.html">before when I was traveling on the Stray Bus</a> I was well-acquainted with the sulphur smell permeating the air, but I still find it a surreal experience to see hot water bubbling out of pools, and steam rising directly from the sides of a cliff. As we walked down the pathway beside Frying Pan Lake we could hear the mud burbling away; the CO2 and H2S gases bubbling up give the lake the appearance that it is boiling, and also give it an acidic pH of 3.5. In fact, parts of the lake underwater are boiling, but the average temperature of the lake is around 55°C, due to cooling from evaporation, convection, and radiation of heat. Frying Pan Lake itself was the site of an eruption in 1917, which sent steam and debris surging up the hill and destroyed the accommodation house.<br />
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Another famous feature of the valley was the Waimangu Geyser, which although only active from 1900-1904, was the world’s largest geyser, hurling black sand, mud, and rocks 400m into the air every 36 hours. Now the basin has been mostly filled in with native bush, and the only sign of the geyser’s presence is a white cross erected on the lowest part of the crater rim, marking where three tourists (who had been warned where they were was unsafe) were swept to their deaths on August 30th, 1903, when Waimangu erupted unexpectedly.<br />
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creekside). Also fascinating to see was the colourful algae that could survive and grow in such hot water, creating blooms of dark green, orange, and yellow. The most surreal feature for me, however, was Inferno Crater Lake, which lies in an 1886 crater blown in the side of Mt Haszard. The lake has a complicated rhythmic rise/fall cycle, where the water level rises to around 30m, overflows into Frying Pan Lake (at a temperature of 80°C!), and then recedes to a minimum of about 8m. The lake has a very low pH of 2.1, and is the largest geyser-like feature in the world, even though the geyser cannot be seen (as it’s at the bottom of the lake). What I found surreal was the beautifully intense sky-blue colour of the water, seen under ideal conditions a few days after its overflow has stopped (we were lucky and caught it at just the right time). The colour is caused by the fine silica particles in suspension in the water. It was quite difficult for my glacier-trained brain to accept that this bright blue water was not freezing cold, but nearly boiling hot!<br />
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By the time we got down to Lake Rotomahana at the end of the 4.4km walk and took in the giant red crater (Tarawera Chasm) in the side of the volcano on the opposite side of the lake, it was time to catch the last shuttle bus of the day back up to the gift shop and café. I was more than ready to go, as my sore throat/cold/stomachache/headache-suffering body was ready for respite from the intense sunshine we had been walking in for the past two and a half hours.<br />
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The drive into Rotorua took only twenty minutes or so, and about half an hour after checking into our motel my parents took off on the shuttle bus to go to their Maori cultural experience (a traditional meal and concert, hosted at the somewhat less-than-traditional location of the Holiday Inn). I think my mum was happy in the end, however; she got to see geothermal activity, and she got to see something of the Maori, culture, all in one day. I was left to fend for myself, which was just fine, as there was a Countdown across the street, and food in our chilly bin that needed to be eaten up.<br />
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Now it is 10:30pm, and I promised myself that I would be in bed by now, so I must be off. We still aren’t sure what we’re doing tomorrow; my mom wants to go to Matamata and see Hobbiton, but my dad is angling for heading of to Maunganui and to the beach. We shall see! Goodnight.<br />
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~Carolyn~Carolynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18393970339280366748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2937491792624396671.post-65183022010327062882011-03-09T02:20:00.000-08:002011-03-09T02:20:43.814-08:00Trainworld, Art Deco, and Hanging with FrankI love my canalphones. My dad can snore as loud as he wants (he’s been remarkably quiet this trip, actually), and all I can hear is the beautiful sounds of Goldfrapp’s <i>Felt Mountain</i>.<br />
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This morning started with several different activities; my mum went off to the Napier iSite to find out about the best places to buy souvenirs, and my dad and I went to Trainworld (at last!), a 2,109 square foot 00-scale model railway located on the 1st floor of a building on Dickens Street (what back in Canada would be called the 2nd floor). Run by Anne and Michael Deitz since 2004, Trainworld actually consists of five different layouts. Besides the main 87 x 27 feet 00 layout, there is an American O-gauge railway running about six feet up in the air along the back wall in a circuit (a work in progress, but it was nice to see a “CP Rail” boxcar); a Thomas the Tank Engine layout with four different trains (Thomas, Percy, James, and Doc) that one could control by pressing buttons on the side of the layout case); the Marklin Layout created by the late Francis Marsden of Napier in his basement; and Lilliput, a 60-year-old automated layout that took twenty-five years to build, and contains several animations, such as a loader digging a hole, a steam boat rocking gently at the dock, and a tractor ploughing a field.<br />
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Some of the scenes modeled in Trainworld’s main layout made me smile; it’s always interesting to see what little details and scenes model railroaders choose to build. These included:<br />
<ul><li>a battalion of Beef-Eaters marching back up the hill to their medieval castle </li>
<li>a house fire being fought by the fire brigade, and a crowd being kept back from the flames by the police</li>
<li>a cricket match in full swing </li>
<li>a train wreck strewn about a gully below a viaduct </li>
<li>a <a href="http://www.blogger.com/goog_80468446">Wiltshire</a><a href="http://www.wiltshirewhitehorses.org.uk/"> white horse</a> cut into the pasture on the side of a hill </li>
<li>a wedding at the church </li>
<li>advertisements on the side of the rail line’s wall proclaiming “Yorkshire Relish” (Yum?)</li>
</ul>Also highly hilarious was a sign posted on the wall by the control booth. While it applies to model railroading, I think it also translates over to those of us who enjoy playing trains with life-size models...<br />
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<div style="text-align: center;"><b>WARNING! </b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>CONTAGIOUS </b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b><br />
</b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Model Railway Disease </b></div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>Adult Males Very Susceptible</b> </div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><u>Symptoms</u>: Continual compliant as to need for a constructive hobby. Patient has blank expression, sometimes deaf to children and wife. Always haunts basement, attic, or garage. Won’t do work around house. Has nose in model railway catalogues and magazines. Often found wandering around railway shops with camera. Mumbles numbers such as 4-6-2, 0-4-0, 2-6-4T. </div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><b>No Known Cure - Disease Not Fatal</b>. </div><br />
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<div>We met up with my mum back at the hostel, and she filled us in on her morning: she ended up doing an Art Deco tour of Napier’s downtown core, and then went shopping for a nice merino and possum wool sweater, and a souvenir for my brother, Arthur. She took the two of us down to the <a href="http://www.artdeconapier.com/">Art Deco Trust’s</a> headquarters on Tennyson Street, where we watched a short twenty-minute documentary on the history of Napier’s terrible 1931 earthquake, then subsequent rebuilding in the Art Deco style of the day. I was always mindful of Napier’s history and its characteristic buildings, but after watching that video I found myself paying even more attention to the ziggurat constructions, sunburst motifs, and intricate carvings found all over the city.<br />
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After lunch at Jester’s Pies (so good that dad had two), we got in the car and headed up the hill to Napier Bluff lookout, where we took in the splendid view of the Port of Napier and Hawkes Bay. The last time I was up there was with Stefan and Harrison, and it was so cloudy we could hardly see a thing! That certainly wasn’t the case today, as we watched the huge cranes unloading a container ship, and graders and loaders scurrying back and forth grading a new section of the breakwater to hold even more logs waiting for export.<br />
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At 2:30pm we headed out to Maraenui visit Frank; I had a little bit of a shock when we got there, as the City of Napier is digging up the old creekbed beside the house to create a more “meandering stream” out of the currently straight concrete viaduct: the result is two huge piles of sand, which the neighbourhood kids took great delight in sliding up and down after the machine operators had gone home for the say.<br />
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Frank was in good spirits, and greatly enjoyed showing my mum around his garden as the two of them talked plants. I did a load of laundry for the three of us, and of course the moment I hung it out on the line it started to cloud over (mercifully, it didn’t rain). I was also able to socalise with Tiger again, who despite running away at the first sight of the three of us coming up the back walk, reappeared when I was out in the garden and then wouldn’t leave us alone (although that may have had more to do with the fact that it was close to suppertime). Poor Frank got to listen to our earthquake story, complete with visual aids in the form of pictures from my laptop... every time I look at those photos, the more amazing I am that we walked away relatively unscathed as we did.<br />
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Waiting for me at the house was some mail that didn’t make it to me before I left on New Year’s Day; I finally got to open my mum and dad’s Christmas card, and my copy of <i>Australian Railway Enthusiast</i>locie J 1275 at the Hoteo Quarry on the front cover! It was fantastic to finally see it in print. :-)<br />
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For supper we went to the Frying Dutchman and picked up an order of snapper and chips, and then sat in Frank’s kitchen, enjoying our “fush and chups” with Tuimato sauce, a couple of good beers (ginger for me, regular for dad and Frank), topped off with some <a href="http://www.rushmunro.co.nz/">Rush Munro’s</a> ice cream for dessert (passionfruit, so delicious!).<br />
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Around 9:30pm we said our goodbyes; we loaded my suitcase that has been under Stefan’s old bed for the past two months into the car, so I now have all my belongings with me again. I wore jeans for the first time in two months today! It was a slightly odd feeling.<br />
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I am now off to bed... this entry has been a bit more terse and less descriptive than previous ones because I have been feeling progressively worse all day, and I’m coming down with something (lucky me). I simply don’t have the energy in me to write any more... goodnight!<br />
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~Carolyn~</div>Carolynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18393970339280366748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2937491792624396671.post-91309903216996403292011-03-08T02:19:00.000-08:002011-03-08T02:22:25.488-08:00Te Papa, Featherston, Waipawa, and Napier (and Motion Sickness).Last night at 12:30am, just as I was drifting off to sleep, Wellington had a minor earthquake... likely no more than a two-point-something on the Richter scale, but I felt it as my bed rocking back and forth. Wellington regularly experiences minor tremors - the city is built on an active fault line - but you can imagine what it did to my blood adrenaline levels. I didn’t fall asleep for a long time.<br />
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When I woke up this morning I didn’t feel very well, which was exacerbated by the sore neck and shoulders I got from sleeping on my pillow wrong. I made my omelette for breakfast, and about halfway through got a very queasy stomach. Lying down on the floor helped to abate it, but I wasn’t keen to be starting the day nauseated, as I knew we had at least a four-hour drive ahead of us to get to Napier.<br />
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After checking out of the motel we went and visited <a href="http://www.tepapa.govt.nz/pages/default.aspx">Te Papa</a>, the National Museum of New Zealand. It was my second time going there, and as such I knew what we were getting into; Te Papa is fantastic, and it was unfortunate that we had only a few hours to spend there, as one can easily get lost and spend the whole day wandering around and looking at all the fascinating exhibits. Some of the interactive displays are so engrossing and well-designed that one can lose all track of time. We limited ourselves to the third and fourth levels, and took in the <a href="http://squid.tepapa.govt.nz/">Colossal Squid</a>, <a href="http://www.tepapa.govt.nz/WhatsOn/exhibitions/Pages/AwesomeForces.aspx">Awesome Forces</a>, and <a href="http://www.tepapa.govt.nz/WhatsOn/exhibitions/Pages/BloodEarthFire.aspx">Blood, Earth, Fire</a>. Even though <a href="http://carolyninaotearoa.blogspot.com/2010/11/te-papa.html">I had seen all three exhibits before</a> I found them interesting the second time around, and learned a few new things.<br />
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The most poignant additions to the museum were a model survival kit illustrating the supplies every household should have in the event of an earthquake, and a small poem, donation box, and comment book for visitors to leave messages for the residents of Christchurch. The survival kit exhibit was illustrated with pictures of Manchester Street after the earthquake, and I could see the restaurant we were eating at in the background; it was a sad reminder of the devastation from which we escaped, while so many others did not. I also steered well clear of the interactive walk-in exhibit featuring a house going through an earthquake; I didn’t feel the need to relive that experience.<br />
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We finally set out for Napier around 1pm, and since we were taking SH2 we found ourselves on the very windy, very steep pass up, over, and down the Rimutaka Ranges. Unlike the train trip through the Rimutaka Gorge, which I thoroughly enjoyed, this trip, courtesy of my dad’s just-a-little-too-fast driving, gave me a severe case of motion sickness. I didn’t actually throw up, but just thinking about it now makes my stomach queasy.<br />
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We stopped for a picnic lunch at 2pm just outside of Featherston at the site of the <a href="http://www.library.mstn.govt.nz/history/FeatherstonMilitaryTrainingCamp.html">Featherston Military Camp</a>, which in 1916 was the largest camp in New Zealand (4500 men in huts, and another 3000 in tents). Here soldiers received the last of their training before marching over the Rimutaka Ranges to Wellington and the ships that would take them overseas to fight. In 1942, the camp was restarted to hold Japanese prisoners-of-war, and on February 25th, 1943, forty-eight POWs and one on-duty solider were killed in a riot. Today, the site is a memorial to peace; there are forty-eight ornamental cherry trees planted in memory of the dead Japanese, and a cross for Private Walter Pelvin, as well as a camphor tree sapling grafted from a tree which survived the atomic bombing of Nagasaki. The message of peace, however, wasn’t shared by the four chickens who came over to us and fought over the apple cores we threw on the ground for them. They also fought over the remains of my sandwich that my dad fed to them, which was technically cannibalism, as it contained chicken...!<br />
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Piling back into the car (my stomach somewhat more at ease, even though I ate little lunch), it was drive drive drive... thankfully the highway between Featherston and Napier is nowhere near as windy, as it mainly passes through rolling hills and farmland. When we entered Waipawa I took my parents up for a little detour to pass by Skye’s house, and as luck would have it she was out in the garden! I definitely surprised her, but she was delighted to see me again and meet my parents, and invited us all into the yard where she showered my parents with praise about how wonderful I was (they were skeptical) and pointed out all the things I had done in the garden for her. Several beds needed weeding... I was instinctively bending down and wanting to get to work putting things in order again.<br />
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When we finally bid adieu to Skye (and Finn, sitting on the back porch, quietly knitting), it was 6:30pm, which put us into Napier here at 7:30pm or so. We checked into the Criterion Art Deco Backpackers, and while I’m content to be staying in a room with a bunk bed and single bed, my parents are lamenting for the lovely two-bedroom apartment we had in Wellington. I’m just trying to help the budget, mum and dad... and besides, here we get a free continental breakfast!<br />
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Tomorrow we are going to wander around downtown in the morning, taking in the Art Deco buildings, and then in the afternoon we’ll head out to Frank’s, where we’ll socialise, pick up my mail, and take him out to dinner. I can’t wait to see him again, although the excitement is bittersweet, as this is the first time I’ve been back in Napier since Fay died in January. Nevertheless, Frank seemed quite excited about our visit when I spoke to him on the phone this evening, so perhaps things will go well. Goodnight!<br />
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~Carolyn~Carolynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18393970339280366748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2937491792624396671.post-74163743278284440632011-03-07T02:39:00.000-08:002011-03-07T02:40:49.260-08:00Meet the FlossersToday’s blog post title refers to my parents, who are both standing directly behind me as I type, flossing their teeth. They’re doing it now just to annoy me.<br />
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Last night was the best sleep I have had in over a week... I had no one else in my own private bedroom (simply glorious). We also didn’t have to get up early today, as my parents’ <i>Lord of the Rings</i> tour didn’t start until 10:10am, and as such we enjoyed a leisurely breakfast of bacon and eggs. (Somehow we have to get rid of that dozen eggs... I’m thinking omelettes for breakfast tomorrow!).<br />
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When my parents left the motel at 9:45am, I was officially by myself for another free day in Windy Welly. Oh, how glorious it was to have the day to myself! I’m sorry to say I didn’t go out and do anything wild and crazy, but it was wonderful to only have to worry about coordinating myself and my own likes and dislikes. It is nice to have company whilst traveling, but it’s quite another to be stuck with that company 24/7; this gave me a chance to breathe.<br />
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I headed downtown to the post office, where I bought some postcard stamps for the postcards I know my mum is going to want to send, and then wandered down Willis Street into a Borders bookstore outlet. Books are normally highly expensive here in New Zealand ($25 for a trade paperback), so I felt like it was a steal to buy Dan Brown’s <i>Angels and Demons</i> for $5 (about $3.50 CDN). I also went into Unity Books farther down the street, but the front of the building was covered in scaffolding, and after a few minutes inside I found myself unable to relax; I had to leave. My experience in the Christchurch earthquake has left me fearful of buildings showing any signs of weakness or fragility, even though my rational mind knew this building was in all likelihood simply getting a cosmetic upgrade, not a structural one.<br />
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After leaving the bookstore I went to the BNZ Centre, where I at last found somewhere I have not been in a long time: the record section of JB Hi-Fi. The name of the store is irrelevant; what I had been missing was being surrounded by CDs, and actually being able to purchase a few! I bought Brooke Fraser’s album <i>Flags</i>, as well as Vertical Horizon’s latest album (which isn’t exactly new; it came out in 2009). I also bought a package of blank CD-Rs so I can burn some CDs for the rental car’s stereo; I figure we could use some road music to help ease tensions as we navigate the North Island.<br />
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I bought some sushi at the food court in the mall and brought it back to the motel to eat (surprisingly, it wasn’t that bad). Walking down the street, my shoulder bag slung over my arm and carrying my sushi, it suddenly struck me how much I probably looked like a resident of Wellington rather than a tourist. It’s a nice feeling to blend in, as I’ve been here in New Zealand for so long now that I no longer feel like a tourist (even though I don’t claim to know Wellington very well). Then again, not dressing in head-to-toe nylon and fleece, and not carrying around a map with a camera hung over my neck probably also helps.<br />
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After lunch I tried out the spa tub here in the bathroom; very relaxing, if not for the smell of chlorine. It was nice to have a bath again! The afternoon I spent out on the town again; I went out to the Wellington iSite to purchase some postcards (looking very much like a tourist, ha) and then went to the Wellington Public Library, where I sat and read and listened to music to my heart’s content. Sometimes it’s nice to just have a slow day, and not try to cram in any more touristy sight-seeing.<br />
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I walked back to the motel around 6pm right in the middle of rush hour, and got to experience for myself some Wellington gridlock. Apparently it affected my parents, too, as they didn’t get back to the motel until after 7:15pm, albeit carrying grocery bags full of dinner (steak and potatoes and corn on the cob). I’m not sure about my dad, buy my mum definitely enjoyed the tour, nattering on and on about the tour guide, Ted, all the places they visited, and the different film clips and poses they struck (I wrote all about my own experiences on the same tour <a href="http://carolyninaotearoa.blogspot.com/2010/11/falling-into-middle-earth.html">here</a>).<br />
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After dinner, we watched two episodes of the <i>Big Bang Theory</i> on my computer (while my dad nursed his fourth beer, much to my mother’s delight; the man keeps buying big cases of the stuff, and then having to drink all of it himself, a burden he seems to eagerly shoulder). Tomorrow morning my mum wants to go to Te Papa, the National Museum of New Zealand, so I imagine we’ll be spending four or so hours in there before heading up to Napier later tomorrow afternoon. I better get burning one of those CD-Rs for the 4.5 hour car ride... night!<br />
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~Carolyn~Carolynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18393970339280366748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2937491792624396671.post-37632123402431530772011-03-06T03:45:00.001-08:002011-03-06T03:45:44.762-08:00Windy Welly CallingLast night I was treated to the sounds of the cover band of the wedding in the restaurant next door running their way through some of the standard wedding fare, some more successfully than others; "Mustang Sally" came off quite well, but the final selection of "Dancing Queen" was decidedly painful, mostly due to it not being well-suited for a male rock voice. I don't suppose it mattered very much; the lead singer was all but drowned out by female voices shrieking along in the crowd of dancers.<br />
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This morning we made our way from Kaiteriteri to Picton, retracing our steps along highways 60, 6, and 62. Watching the countryside zip by outside my window, I was struck with the fact that today I was leaving the South Island, and I have no idea when I will next return. The South Island is my second Vancouver Island... and despite my harrowing experience in Christchurch, it feels like home. I have so many wonderful memories of life on the South Island, and it saddens me to think that is all I am going to have until the next time I return. That is, unless someone from the South Island comes up to Canada to visit me.... :-)<br />
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We arrived in Picton at 11:30am for the 1:10pm sailing, returned our rental car, and in the process of emptying all our belongings from the vehicle I slammed the car door into my left hip. In a word, OUCH. (The actual word I said was a wee bit stronger...) I now have a lovely purple bruise forming to compliment the slowly-healing ones I received during the earthquake.<br />
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After collecting our boarding passes and checking our baggage, we nipped up to the bakery for some pastries and treats, and then ate leftover pizza for lunch (my mom's dinner from the night before) in the warterfront park in Picton, taking in the sights of the miniature electric train traipsing merrily around the grounds, carrying three or four children behind it at a time, and the musical stylings of a poor fiddler in the bandshell playing a cover of The Corrs' "Toss the Feathers", who was actually quite good, but unfortunately falling victim to a rather poor microphone set-up (high amounts of buzzing and static). The last time I had wandered around Picton was with Gary and Jean and Al, when we were all on the Mainline Steam tour; we ate at The Flying Haggis and caught the 10:30pm sailing back to Wellington, arriving at 1:30am. The advantage of sailing that late at night is it is far less busy, as my parents and I discovered when we found ourselves riding a nearly full-to-capacity sailing of the Interislander's <i>Kaitaki</i> to the North Island.<br />
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Having seen the current conditions posted as "moderate", and having observed the moving clouds out above the Queen Charlottes, I was apprehensive for our journey across the "roaring 40s". My parents seemed blithely unconcerned, and lightly made fun of my predictions of a stormy crossing. They went out on deck as we threaded our way through the beautiful coastline, making our way out to the open ocean; I sat inside, knitting, preparing myself mentally for what I knew was coming. Sure enough, when we hit the open water, I could see the whitecaps on the waves, and two recorded announcements came over the PA system, informing us that the conditions in the Cook Strait were "less than favourable" and could we please remain seated and use the motion sickness bags if necessary. How reassuring! I put my knitting away, put my head down on the table, and happily enough, I was able to survive the crossing without throwing up. It wasn't as bad as that awful first crossing I had with Mainline Steam, but it definitely wasn't one of the better ones, either. My parents came back and sat down, and although they said they were feeling fine, my mom closed her eyes and lost her appetite for a couple hours, and my dad remarked at dinner tonight that he still felt like he was on a boat going up and down and up and down and up and down....<br />
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We arrived safely into Wellington Harbour, and my parents got their first glimpses of "Windy Welly" as we cruised around town in our new rental car, trying to locate tonight's accommodation. While I had a vague idea of where it was, I hadn't taken into account all of the one-way streets that limited our options in the way we could approach things. After five minutes of getting ourselves turned around the right way, we made it to Victoria Court Motor Lodge, where we have a "freakin' palace", to quote my rather unpoetic description upon crossing the threshold. It's not fancy, but we have a kitchen/dining/lounge area, a bathroom with a huge spa tub, and two bedrooms! Believe me, in backpacker travelling terms, it's a palace.<br />
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For dinner tonight we walked down to the New World Metro Supermarket on Willis St, and picked up supplies to make pasta, salad, and omelettes (for some reason I felt like an omelette), which means we have a dozen eggs to eat our way through in two days (my dad is gleefully looking forward to making bacon and eggs for breakfast tomorrow). On the agenda for tomorrow is a <i>Lord of the Rings</i> tour for my parents (I already did it back in November), and a day of lazing and relaxing for me, all by myself. Peace and quiet and solitude... it will be a nice change. ;-) Goodnight!<br />
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~Carolyn~Carolynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18393970339280366748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2937491792624396671.post-17449556390257677392011-03-05T00:10:00.000-08:002011-03-05T00:10:09.103-08:00Sailing and Walking in Abel Tasman (For the second time)Apparently Nelson has a deal with mother nature: torrential rain downpours are allowed between the hours of 3am and 7am, but after that the weather has to slowly clear into a gorgeous sunny day. We woke up this morning at 6:30am rather disheartened at the prospect of sailing in the wind and cold, but as we ate breakfast (this time Dave expressed his opinions on WWOOFing and how he thinks WWOOFers are abused by a lot of hosts making them work too much) the skies started to lighten. By the time we were once again on the highway (and AGAIN my dad managed to turn the wrong way when we hit the roundabout for Richmond, which exasperated me to no end), I could see hints of blue sky off to the west in the direction of Motueka.<div><br />
</div><div>We arrived in Kaiteriteri at 9:10am in plenty of time for our 9:30am checkin with Abel Tasman Sailing Adventures. Using the BoD ("Bank of Dad", as the sales rep called it) to pay for our reservation, we then parked the car over at the Kaiteri Lodge, where we would be spending the night, and then liberally doused ourselves with sunscreen... coming from a family with boating experience, we all know too well what can happen on the water without sun protection.</div><div><br />
</div><div>Our boat today was called <i>Jamarah</i>, and it was a much larger catamaran than the one I was on when I sailed the Abel Tasman with Stray back in November; it's the boat the company normally uses for the overnight cruises, but because of the forecasted rain (which mercifully did not arrive), it was decided we would likely be happier off in a boat with a covered back deck and a cabin. As it was, we were even happier to have beautiful sunny weather, and to be enjoying it on a big boat with a large trampoline area in front, and plenty of seating for everyone without having to worry about being hit by the boom or tangled up in the jib sheets. </div><div><br />
</div><div>Our sail pretty much <a href="http://carolyninaotearoa.blogspot.com/2010/11/wandering-around-abel-tasman-national.html">followed the same itinerary</a> as my trip back in November: a two and a half hour sail around the shores of Abel Tasman National Park, followed by a 12.4km hike back from The Anchorage to Marahau. It was wonderful to experience the sailing on a warm and sunny day, however, and to not sit huddled together, freezing cold, in the biting wind on the decks of the boat. We were even able to enter into an estuary today that isn't normally accessible to <i>Jamarah</i>, as the rainfall last night had been significant enough to raise high tide to 4.5m (maximum high tide is 4.6m!). My mom especially loved it when we sailed up along the shoreline of Adele Island, which has been pest-free (free of stoats, ferrets, possums, rats, and mice) for two years now, and as a result contains a thriving population of bell birds; the bird song could be heard sweetly and clearly from the boat.</div><div><br />
</div><div>If anything, the one disappointment of the sail was that we couldn't, well, <i>sail</i> that much; the winds were quite small, and seeing as we were sailing in the bigger catamaran going under sail-power would have meant our 2.5 hour sail would have taken 5 hours. We managed to sail under our own power briefly several times, but for the rest of it were using the motor lightly to keep us around 5 knots an hour.</div><div><br />
</div><div>One interesting thing our skipper told us about Abel Tasman National Park is that it is the only National Park in New Zealand to consist of entirely regenerated forest, as well as contain private residences. When the Golden Bay area was first settled, the mountainside was completely logged for timber, and after all the salvageable wood had been recovered was torched to create pasture for sheep farming. After about twenty years of trying to encourage grass to grow on the rocky, granite and quartz-covered slopes, the farming initiative was abandoned, and the land has slowly regenerated to its native bush. However, because parcels of land were sold off privately, and here in New Zealand there is no way for the government to usurp that land (short of paying the owners for it on the open market), there are still many beach and summer homes scattered throughout the park, and these are only accessible from the water (as road access cannot be built through the National Park). It's kind of odd to see beach houses in the middle of an otherwise public place, but combined with the knowledge that the entire park is the result of mother nature naturally regenerating the native bush, it seems fitting.</div><div><br />
</div><div>When we arrived at The Anchorage, we sought out a picnic table and treated ourselves to an oh-so-nutritious lunch: seeing as we hadn't had time to buy supplies on the way up to Kaiteriteri, and seeing as our food supplies were a bit of a hodge-podge, lunch ended up being a very nutritious mix of potato chips, cookies, trail mix, apples, and granola chocolate bars. Oh, well, we likely burned most of it off anyway hiking the trail!</div><div><br />
</div><div>The hike back along the shoreline seemed longer than the first time I did it; perhaps that's because we were going slower, as my mom's pace is slower than my own, but I think my feet were still sore from the 10km trek out of Christchurch on February 22nd, and as such were not happy about being treated to 12.4km of sandy, rocky path. Nevertheless, my mom and dad seemed to really enjoy it, particularly all the spectacular views of the coastline near The Anchorage, and on the tidal flats at the end when we arrived in Marahau.</div><div><br />
</div><div>We had dinner together at the Shoreline Restaurant, and it was the best meal I have had out since starting to travel with my parents; a relief, because after our pseudo-lunch I was definitely in need of some real, nutritious food. Now we are situated in our room at Kaiteri Lodge, and wedding is raging full swing next door (they've rented the entire bar/restaurant), so we'll see how much sleep we get tonight... wish us luck!</div><div><br />
</div><div>~Carolyn~</div>Carolynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18393970339280366748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2937491792624396671.post-32302853514406527302011-03-04T02:10:00.000-08:002011-03-04T02:10:10.601-08:00Tea with Howard and Rosemarie (hey, that rhymes!)Calling yesterday's blog post "once again in sunny Nelson" inspired mother nature to heights of irony last night... we woke up this morning to pounding rain on the roof, which abated slightly but continued on into midmorning. I certainly hope it's not like that tomorrow when we go sailing in Abel Tasman!<div><br />
</div><div>This morning we were treated to a lovely continental breakfast in the dining room downstairs, served by our charming (if highly opinionated) host, David (for an interesting conversation, ask him for his thoughts on the state of Israel), and chatted with several of the other bed and breakfast guests, including the couple from New Hampshire and a woman from Scotland. After breakfast I had a shower, and then performed various trip housekeeping tasks (budgeting, managing our itinerary) while my mom did two loads of laundry and then because of her hatred of dryers proceeded to hang the wet laundry all over the room, such as from the wardrobe door, balcony doors, and bed posts. Mercifully, she hung the towels and several other big-ticket items outside on the actual clothesline, as the rain had stopped and the sky was starting to lighten.</div><div><br />
</div><div>For the rest of the morning we headed downtown and wandered along the streets of Nelson, ultimately ending up in the MacPac store, where my dad bought a raincoat, and my mom bought two shirts and a nice blue coat. She's still getting used to the sizing down here, and I don't blame her; with all the media focus on thinness, and being so used to North American sizings, it is a bit of a shock to be buying clothes that say "Size 10" (the average sizes here are 12-16). I ended up getting a pretty merino zip-up hoodie, which I likely didn't really need, but it's a nice colour and warm yet light, so I'll get a lot of use out of it in the fall weather here and the spring weather back home.</div><div><br />
</div><div>Back at the bed and breakfast we had a lunch of meat and cheese sandwiches on the balcony outside our room, marvelling in the rapid upswing in the weather, which had gone from cold and drizzly to warm and sunny; perfect weather for our planned visit to Howard and Rosemarie's this afternoon. Getting there, however... that's a story in itself.</div><div><br />
</div><div>My mom and dad are getting increasingly frustrated with the traffic signage here in New Zealand, or lack thereof. I suppose I didn't think much of it, as I know the way to Howard and Rosemarie's without relying on arrows and placards to direct me there. Unfortunately, the multiple ways to get to Richmond, so helpfully pointed out by a multitude of signs along the highway, ended up causing major headaches for my dad. We ended up at the Countdown in Stoke so I could buy some pavlova and cream for tea, and I called Howard to apologize for our tardiness, saying, "Well, no, we're not lost, but <b>I</b> should be driving!"</div><div><br />
</div><div>At last we made it to their beautiful house in Hope, and after greeting Howard and Rosmarie with a big hug and making introductions, I excitedly showed my parents around the garden, pointing out all the places I had worked and they had read about in my blog. My vegetable patch was a half success; the radishes had definitely sprouted and were doing quite well, but the lettuces were very small, and only growing in the back corner near the fence; I have a feeling the centre patch was just too dry for them (either that, or I didn't sow the seeds to the correct depth). My flower garden looked much as I had left it (to me, at least), but the plants all looked healthy, and even sported a previously feared-lost plant (a lily? I think it was a lily) growing on the very edge of the garden with beautiful white flowers. The vineyard was still mostly weed-free, thanks to the efforts of four Malaysian and two Thai WWOOFers that came after me, and two more sections of the concrete garden path had been poured and set with cobblestones. It was delightful to see all these little changes, even after just one month away; as Rosemarie said, "Well, you'll have to come back next year, just think, everything will be twice as big then!"</div><div><br />
</div><div>We showed my parents around the kiwifruit orchard, and then while Rosemarie took them around the front of the house and discussed topping and taking out the gum tree by the garage Howard and I went inside and got tea ready. He had already laid out melon, strawberries, and a slice of feijoa chocolate cake for each of us, and I added to the afternoon tea feast by setting out the mini-pavlova cakes and whipping up some cream for their tops. Howard was even nice enough to let me use some of their strawberries to garnish them (as is traditional; the Countdown didn't have any strawberries, so we had bought peaches to use instead, but it really wouldn't have been true pavlova without strawberries).</div><div><br />
</div><div>The teatime conversations ranged from the inevitable (the Christchurch earthquake) to the technical (my dad asking about insurance and coverage of WWOOFers working on the property) to the slightly humourous (my mom asking, "How do you get WWOOFers to leave that you don't like?" and Rosemarie answering back, "Well, first the wine stops getting served with dinner, and then the food stops being as good, and then the tasks get even harder..."). It was so nice to be back in Howard and Rosemarie's house again, sitting around the table where I have so many good memories. It was slightly odd to have my parents there - kind of a mash-up of situations in my head - but they seemed to get on well with my gracious Pom-cum-New Zealand hosts.</div><div><br />
</div><div>After tea I took my mom and dad into the rec room to see Howard's train layout, and Howard explained a little bit about how it works (I love that thing. I think it's such a cool idea and a technological marvel; and doubly more impressive because he wrote the code and designed it all himself). I also showed them the model trees I attempted to make for the layout; glorified toilet brushes would be a better description. Perhaps I would have more luck if I tried my hand at programming or model building assembly!</div><div><br />
</div><div>Just before we left the five of us posed in front of Howard and Rosemarie's house for photos, including several in front of the reflective window in the breakfast room, so you can see all of us in the frame (albeit with my dad holding the camera up to his face). I'm sorry for Howard and Rosemarie's sake that I think they haven't seen the last of me; a little part of my heart now belongs to New Zealand, and I know I am going to have to come back here. I would love to come WWOOF again at their house... and the second time around, I will be sure to refrain from purchasing and eating sketchy chocolate bars!</div><div><br />
</div><div>For dinner tonight my parents went for a walk through the gardens and into downtown Nelson, where they picked up some chicken kabobs from a take-out joint; I stayed back the B&B, once again doing more trip planning and enjoying the beautiful sunset from the balcony. I also got to hear the roars and cheers coming from Nelson's stadium; I believe the Crusaders rugby team must have had a game tonight, as there were all sorts of people streaming toward the studio this afternoon, clad in red and black and sporting face paint of the same colour. </div><div><br />
</div><div>Tomorrow morning we leave for Abel Tasman National Park to do a half day sail and then a half day walk, so I had best be off to bed. I've been writing this blog entry while sipping the feijoa wine Rosemarie and Howard gave to us when we left (simply delicious, and reminds me of all the evenings I spent there) as well as finishing the complimentary port left here in the room with my dad, so if this blog entry is a little convoluted or disjointed that would be the reason why: I've had a little too much fruit ambrosia. :-) Goodnight!</div><div><br />
</div><div>~Carolyn~</div>Carolynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18393970339280366748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2937491792624396671.post-42993795427383718522011-03-03T03:20:00.000-08:002011-03-03T03:20:57.627-08:00Once Again in Sunny NelsonHa, well, going to bed early last night didn't happen... I was banished to the lounge to write my blog entry, and just as I had finished writing the entry the hotel manager came upstairs and joined me, and she ended up talking to me for 1 1/2 hours until 1am. It sounded like she'd had an exhausting day, and needed someone to listen (I guess I was filling in the role of her spouse, who works out of Christchurch, so they don't see each other for four nights of the week). She told me that the tourism industry has really died down in Kaikoura; it used to be a popular stopping point for tourists making their way down to Christchurch, but now everyone is avoiding Christchurch like the plague and travelling down the West Coast of the South Island instead. Case in point: we were the only guests in the (albeit small) hotel that night.<br />
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And just as an aside -<br />
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I HATE the sound of my mom flossing her teeth across the room. It drives me insane. I'm not sure why; it's one of those things that I can't stand, like the feel of cotton squeaking between my teeth. Maybe it's because she flosses for about five minutes until I'm sure she's trying to rip her teeth clean out of her mouth. Then again, she likely HATES the sound of my fingers clickety-clacking away on the keyboard when she's trying to sleep, so maybe she's just trying to get her own back.<br />
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Anyway...<br />
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We left Kaikoura around 10am this morning and drove up the highway toward Blenheim, stopping briefly so dad could take a picture of the beautiful Pacific Ocean. I was scrambling down to the beach to take a closer look at one of the rocks when I almost stumbled over a New Zealand fur seal! Thankfully it was feeling more sleepy than angry, and simply gave me a look of annoyance before turning away and hopping down off the rock into a nice cushy pile of drying seaweed. We took a few pictures of him hopping and sunning himself, and then got back into the car and drove on.<br />
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In Blenheim we stopped briefly at the New World grocery store (this particular New World can probably claim the title of "worst-designed car park and traffic flow corridors in all of New Zealand") to pick up some luncheon meat and such for a picnic lunch, and then continued on SH6, heading for Nelson. We traversed our way across the Marlborough region's "Golden Mile" of vineyards, and once in the hills stopped at Pelorus Bridge for sandwiches, hokey pokey cookies, and a little L&P to drink. I'm slowly introducing my parents to classic Kiwi foodstuffs, although I've yet to have them try Marmite or pavlova... I'm thinking the latter might go down better than the former. :-P<br />
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After a long and windy descent over the mountains (much loved by my mom.... I put my head down and had a nap) we arrived in beautiful, sunny Nelson; it was just as beautiful as I remember it being when I was here just over a month ago. We checked into our B&B, a grand old heritage conversion called Sussex House, where each of the five guest rooms is named after a composer; we're in the Beethoven room. My mom and dad went out shopping this afternoon for a new suitcase so they don't have to keep hauling everything in plastic bags, and also bought new slip-on sandals apparently make right here in Nelson, which have been giving them blisters for the rest of the evening (my mom said they'll break in... I hope she's right). I stayed behind here in the room to work on my blog; I finally have the post up about the Taieri Gorge Railway from two days ago.<br />
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For dinner we wandered downtown to Café Affair, which wasn't actually all that great in my mind, but proved to be an interesting meal as my mom ordered a steak cooked on a stone slab: they bring out a square piece of stone, about 15 x 15 cm, heated up super-hot, and then one cooks one's own steak or kebabs on the stone at the table! It certainly was more tasty than my lifeless Thai beef salad.<br />
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After dinner we went to see <i>The King's Speech</i>, as my mom wanted to see it in Dunedin but there just wasn't enough time. Armed with a small package of Jaffas, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie; I can't believe it was almost two hours long... the time just flew by, I was so engrossed! Granted, I don't see many movies, but I thought this one was beautifully written and acted and certainly deserved the Academy Award for Best Picture. Colin Firth was simply stunning in the role of Prince Albert, and Geoffrey Rush's performance as Lionel Logue was perfect as well. The art of elocution is <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCNIBV87wV4">something sadly lacking in modern speech</a>, and for that (and because I am a linguistic English nerd) I certainly enjoyed an entire film devoted to curing a stammer.<br />
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Anyway, it is past midnight now, and tonight I'm really going to try to go to bed before 12:30am. Really. Goodnight!<br />
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~Carolyn~Carolynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18393970339280366748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2937491792624396671.post-32268877891819794112011-03-02T03:31:00.000-08:002011-08-18T14:28:01.804-07:00Cadbury World and the Day of DrivingWe started today with a little bit of fun: a visit to the Cadbury Chocolate Factory here in Dunedin! Well, to clarify, my mom and I went to <a href="http://www.cadburyworld.co.nz/home.html">Cadbury World</a>, while my poor dad went downtown, signed the agreement for our new rental car, drove it back to the hostel, took the old rental car down to the petrol station to fill up, and then drove it back to the hostel as well. I certainly didn't realise cars were going to be such a headache on this trip.<br />
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The Cadbury Chocolate Factory is located at 280 Cumberland Street, almost right in downtown Dunedin, across the from the train station, and just a block down and over from the Octagon. The factory stands on the site of the first chocolate and coca manufacturing plant in the Southern hemisphere, started in 1884 by a man named Richard Hudson. The present factory became affiliated with Cadbury in 1930, and in 1991 became known as Cadbury Confectionery Limited. Today they <a href="http://www.cadbury.co.nz/About-Cadbury/Cadbury-New-Zealand.aspx">manufacture all sorts of chocolates and goodies</a>, from Cadbury chocolate bars to Roses and Jaffas and Buttons and huge amounts of chocolate crumb, shipped overseas and used in the chocolate manufacturing process in other Cadbury factories.<br />
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Chocolate crumb is a vacuum-dried mixture of cocoa solids, milk, and sugar; at most chocolate factories in the world, it is the base product for making various chocolate products. However, because the Cadbury factory in Dunedin is located so close the dairy cows of Otago, which produce all the milk for the factory, the Dunedin operation does not use chocolate crumb in its chocolate manufacturing process: instead, they use fresh milk (one of the reasons, they claim, their chocolate tastes so good!). Nevertheless, they continue to manufacture and ship chocolate crumb to other factories in Asia, as New Zealand has a plentiful supply of milk and milk powder.<br />
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As a result of no longer needing to stockpile chocolate crumb for production, the large silos at the factory have been given other duties: one has been demolished, one is being turned into a water recycling facility for the factory, and the third has been turned into a giant chocolate waterfall. Yes, a waterfall! Apparently, one of the board members is fond of the book <i>Charlie and the Chocolate Factory</i>, and after reading how Willy Wonka mixed his chocolate by waterfall, decided Cadbury needed to have one, too. This one is strictly for show, but what a show it is: standing at the very top of the silo, we chanted, "One, two, three, chocolate!", the tour guide pushed a button, and one tonne of chocolate poured down from a storage container in the ceiling, splashing with a deafening roar into a vat below. It took the tonne twenty-three seconds to fall, during which those of us standing too close to the railings were splattered with warm, gooey chocolate. That being said, we didn't exactly want to lick it off; the same chocolate is pumped back up to the storage container, and falls again and again for every tour group. Once a year, the whole thing is drained, cleaned, and a new tonne of chocolate made by the factory to service the waterfall for the next twelve months.<br />
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Cadbury World consists of several rooms of displays detailing the ingredients, origins, and some of the lore surrounding chocolate (i.e. that it is an aphrodisiac). In a mock jungle set-up room they had roasted cocoa beans for us to try cracking open and tasting; I definitely wouldn't eat one of those and think that it could be turned into delicious chocolate, as I found it very waxy and bitter. We were a little rushed through the display rooms, as our tour started just after 9am, but my favourite part was the animatronic puppet displays, which made me think of Tim Burton's movie adaptation of Roald Dahl's books.<br />
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For the tour itself we had to don very attractive hairnets, and remove all of our jewelery and watches (no explanation was given; I'm assuming it's just standard practise for a food manufacturing plant). We were also forbidden to take pictures inside the factory itself, which didn't surprise me. What did surprise me was how warm it was on the operating floors; to keep the chocolate in a liquid form, steam heat is used, and the room temperature was around 35°C, with a high humidity. I also liked seeing the maze of pipes that send different types of chocolate all over the factory; each type is colour-coded into its own pipe, be it white chocolate, dark chocolate, milk chocolate, etc. It was fun to think that flowing over our heads was rich, creamy deliciousness! I also liked how so many of the machines were labeled (sometimes it seemed almost to the point of redundancy); it reminded me of the batcave circa the 1960's TV show.<br />
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I didn't realise how much of the factory would still involve human assembly; while the Dunedin factory <a href="http://www.cadbury.co.nz/About-Cadbury/Cadbury-New-Zealand/Dunedin-Update.aspx">did fully automate a few assembly lines</a> two years ago, we witnessed some of their Easter candy production that was being done by hand: workers were hand-gluing chocolate buttons (using chocolate glue, of course) to the fronts of chocolate bunnies, and packaging them with easter eggs before sending them on down the conveyor belt.<br />
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In the end, the tour was a lot of fun; we got to see several floors of the factory, watch several short DVD presentations on how the chocolate was manufactured and assembled into different products, and got a bunch of free samples from our tour guide ("Trick or Treat!" I called out every time she dropped something into my goody bag).<br />
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My other main excitement today was driving the Nissan rental car by myself from Dunedin to Ashburton; my mom and dad took the new Toyota Camry that we rented here in Dunedin, and then I drove the Nissan so we could return it to the rental dealership in Ashburton before continuing on to Kaikoura. My mom was pretty nervous about me driving by myself, but I had a great time; I put on the radio, turned on the A/C (there's a lot of dust blowing around, so opening the windows wasn't really feasible), and enjoyed the three hours or so of solitude. Driving on the left doesn't bother me; what did bother me was the very strong westerly winds plaguing the Otago and South Canterbury regions today... I was nearly blown into opposing traffic several times.<br />
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Tensions were running high in the car by later this afternoon; all three of us now in the Toyota, we were slowly crawling our way through the outskirts of Christchurch, which (understandably) are still congested and generally not a very fun place to be. I can tell my mom is getting tired of being away from home already; she gets cranky, and when my dad and I are tired from driving our fuses are fairly short (not to mention my mom and dad have been having trouble adjusting to the traffic flow and signage around here; I'm used to the traffic flow and think the signage is more than adequate, but they've been getting confused). My mom also hates two-lane roundabouts, finding them horribly confusing.<br />
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By the time we got into Kaikoura at 7:30pm, we were all tired and hungry. We checked into the Pier Hotel (which is quite a funky old building; all accommodation is above the restaurant and bar), my mom went to have a shower, and my dad and I went in search of fish and chips. Unfortunately, Cooper's Catch closed just as we pulled up in the car, but we ended up eating at the hotel restaurant instead, which was tasty and delicious, so everything worked out (my mom even perked up after eating a green salad... I think she was missing fresh vegetables).<br />
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Tomorrow we are driving from Kaikoura to Nelson... I'm getting tired of driving, but at least after this we will have several days to relax in the beautiful northern end of the South Island. Goodnight!<br />
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~Carolyn~Carolynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18393970339280366748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2937491792624396671.post-63894411243591492322011-03-01T04:32:00.000-08:002011-03-02T21:08:05.868-08:00The Taieri Gorge Railway and Railroad to Gold<div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">A Taylor family vacation wouldn't be complete without at least one train ride. Seeing as neither the TranzCostal or TranzAlpine are running until at least March 4th (to keep the railway free for shipping of supplies and goods to and from Christchurch), I'm glad we were able to experience the Taieri Gorge railway.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">I booked my parents and I on what is called the "Railroad to Gold" tour: unlike the Taieri Gorge Railway excursion, which runs every day, the Railroad to Gold runs on Tuesdays and Saturdays only, and incorporates a train trip from Dunedin to Palmerston, a gold mine tour, and then another train trip back from Pukerangi to Dunedin. The trip from Dunedin to Palmerston is called "The Seasider", and was a considerably smaller train than the Taieri Gorge train: four passenger cars as opposed to eight or nine. The seating was assigned, and my mom and dad were across the aisle from me at a two-person booth, and I was seated at a four-person booth with a middle-aged man and his (very) old parents, all from Australia, and all off a ginormous cruise ship that had docked in Dunedin last evening.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">The Seasider train is a 66km journey from Dunedin to Palmerston on the Main Trunk Line of the South Island. The trip takes about two hours, cruising at a nice easy speed of 40 km/hr or so. The track from Dunedin to Palmerson was completed in 1879, but it wasn't until 1945(!) that the Main Trunk Line was completed to allow rail transportation all the way from Picton to Bluff (top to bottom). We started at sea level and reached a maximum altitude of 120 metres, with a maximum gradient of 1:50 (2%), which for early steam engines would have been hard work, but for the (relatively) modern diesel pulling us was a piece of cake.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Thankfully, the awful rainy, windy weather that was supposed to materialise did not, and we had instead a lightly cloudy (if slightly muggy) morning, which provided beautiful views out and over the Otago Harbour and up the coastline. We passed through what is called the "lifestyle block" in the outskirts of Dunedin (what we would call "hobby farms" in Canada), and through four tunnels, including the Mihiwaka, which at 1323m is the tenth-longest tunnel in New Zealand. The guard provided commentary on the PA along the way, pointing out places such as Blueskin Bay (named by the Europeans in the 1830s in reference to the Maori chief Te Hikutu, whose tattoo covered his face and made his skin blue), and Seacliff, once home of the Seacliff Mental Asylum, largest sanatorium in New Zealand (amazingly, no jokes were made that I should have been sent there).</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Once arriving in Palmerston (which wasn't much of anything special; a farming community and highway town), a small tour van from Oceana Gold Tours picked up my parents and I and four other people participating in the Railroad to Gold tour. The tour guide's name was Graham, and he introduced himself as being from the public relations department of OceanaGold. Combined with the fact that he was carting around a psychology textbook, I found myself having a hard time trusting what came out of his mouth (although to his credit, he seems like a very kind, level-headed, down-to-earth person).</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Our first stop was Dunback, where we enjoyed a roast beef lunch with kumara and roast potatoes, and chocolate mud cake with berries and whipped cream for dessert (yummy). Then it was back in the tour van, and on to the town of Macraes, where after the DVD player in the welcome centre crapped out we moved across the street to Graham's office, and I saved him from further embarrassment by getting the DVD to run on his office mate's 24" iMac. Suitably indoctrinated with Oecana Gold's corporate welcome video, which included and overview of the mine and extraction process, it was back on the bus and on to the Macraes Flat Mine itself, which is the largest gold mine in New Zealand. It's primarily an open-cast mine, with a network of 28km of underground tunnels as well. The size of the mine is almost awe-inspiring; looking north, all the hills we could see were actually piles of waste rock from the mine, trucked over and now re-shaped and planted with grass to look like rest of the surrounding hills. The land around the mine is leased as farms, and sheep and cows could be seen munching away on what was essentially a man-made mountain.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">The equipment used to extract the gold is also impressive: a collection of hauling trucks, backhoes (with buckets large enough to fit a small family car), and blasting equipment, it really does look like they are trying to dig a massive hole to China. What is even more incredible (or appalling) is for every payload carted by one 789C haul truck, which have a carrying capacity of 191 tonnes, consume 372L of diesel fuel per hour, have a 1900hp engine, and giant pneumatic tyres that cost $35 000 NZ each, only 2 teaspoons of gold will be contained in and recovered from the mined ore. And that's not even taking into account all the tonnes and tonnes of waste rock (non gold-bearing ore) that have to be carted out of the way first!</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">The immense size of the operation seemed even more ridiculous when we learned that all this land, ginormous equipment, and high-tech extraction technology produces just one bar of gold a day from all the mined low-grade ore. Amazingly, all this is still profitable, as gold is worth $1430 an ounce, and the bars are 400 oz, or about $570 000 US each! It just seems so incredible that we humans put so much time and effort to recovering gold, even when it is present in such tiny quantities. However, I know gold has important roles to play in medicine and technology because it doesn't oxidise; it's not just all for banks and jewellery.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">At the end of the tour Graham took us to see the Golden Point reserve, in the river valley where the original gold rush gold mines were situated; the site still contains several of the sod houses (the area has very little timber) the miners lived in, as well as a working turn-of-the-century quartz stamper and a gold mineshaft we were able to walk into. Unfortunately, the area is still contaminated with high levels of mercury and other chemicals the miners used to separate the gold from the quartz; in the present day, Oceana Gold is legally bound to follow strict environmental laws set down by the New Zealand government, and must render inert the cyanide and arsenic used in the chemical extraction processes before they can bury them in the ground.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">Back on the bus, it was an hour's ride to Pukerangi, a tiny train station quite literally in the middle of nowhere, where the Taieri Gorge Railway train came and picked us up at 4:30pm. I watched as the diesel uncoupled and then recoupled to the front of the train for the return journey; I was tempted to go up and try and weevil my way into a cab ride, but figured there were so many tourists (and extremely pushy old men!) I would have little chance of succeeding. Oh, well, it was just a diesel... for a steam train you can bet I would have been more bold.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">The trip back along the Taieri Gorge definitely earned its moniker as "one of the world's great train trips": we were hugging the side of the gorge, a "rugged canyon of sheer schist rock cliffs and overhangs, dark peaty pools, wild whitewater and many tributary streams". <a href="http://www.taieri.co.nz/history.htm">Constructed</a> from 1879 to 1891, the Taieri Gorge Railway's route was chosen because of the seven proposed routes considered in 1877, it offered the fewest engineering difficulties and was the most direct route to Dunedin. With the gold rush in the Otago area slowly abating, the railway was seen as an excellent way to improve access to crown land (and therefore, expand farming), as the roads were notoriously poor. The railway was integral to the development of Central Otago, shipping goods, produce, building supplies, and providing passenger service to and from Dunedin. </div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">I wish I had been able to get better shots of the gorge than I did; unfortunately, I felt like I would have needed a police riot baton to secure myself a place on the viewing platform at the back of the carriage, as it was stuffed with fat, grumpy, retired men with huge cameras. As it was I settled for simply admiring the scenery from inside the carriage, including the incredible Wingatui Viaduct, which at 197m long and 50 metres tall, is the Southern hemisphere's largest wrought iron structure. Sadly, because we were only doing the return trip down the gorge, and the commentary was only spoken on the first half of the journey, we were left to <a href="http://www.taieri.co.nz/places.htm">read our pamphlets</a> and wonder where things were. One that was obvious was the brief photo stop we made at a bluff called "Arthur's Knob", which as I'm sure you can imagine had us all snickering. We took a photo for my brother.</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">After waiting for a track warrant to rejoin the main line, we arrived back in Dunedin at 6:30pm, and went for a short walk to a Vietnamese restaurant for dinner at my mother's suggestion (which I thought was very adventurous of her; good for you, mom!), so now I am well and truly stuffed with the deliciousness of ginger chicken, beef soup, and jasmine tea. Off to bed for me... goodnight!</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"><br />
</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">~Carolyn~</div>Carolynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18393970339280366748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2937491792624396671.post-47578036409965640642011-02-28T02:49:00.000-08:002011-03-18T01:00:50.199-07:00Te Anau to DunedinAfter the flurry of activity yesterday, I don't have any great tales of adventure to report upon today; the main event was driving from Te Anau to Dunedin, a trip of almost 300km, which took us about four and a half hours. The highways took us through the rolling hills of the somewhat confusingly-named Northern Southland, past endless pastures of sheep and dairy cows, small homesteads, and tiny townships that one would blink and miss if one didn't have to slow down to the requisite 50km/h whilst passing through them. I passed the time listening to my iPod and enjoying the musical stylings of Tori Amos and Brooke Fraser.<br />
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Now, however, we are situated within the city of Dunedin, which with a population of roughly 125 000 is the second-largest city on the South Island (behind Christchurch). Dunedin was actually the largest city by population in all of New Zealand before 1900; it is also one of the oldest, being founded in 1848. The name<i> Dunedin</i> comes from the Scottish Gaelic name for Edinburgh, <i>Dùn Èideann</i>, and the city was founded by the Lay Association of the Free Church of Scotland with the intent of reproducing the characteristics of Edinburgh... even today, the Kiwi accent from Dunedin and the surrounding area has a Scottish-brogue flavour to it. Probably one of the more famous features of the city's layout is the Octagon, a octogonally-shaped (no, really?) road and plaza where the main streets of George, Princes, and Stuart meet.<br />
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Our hostel is called Hogwartz (I'm assuming the ending "z" keeps J. K. Rowling's people from suing their pants off), and is located in the old Catholic Bishop's residence for St. Joseph's Cathedral on Rattray St. It's a delightful old bluestone building built in the late nineteenth century, and while the rooms are fairly plain, the kitchen is bright and modern, the bathrooms are clean, and our fellow hostel mates are kind and friendly. The Harry Potter touches are all over the grounds; while they don't actually run us through the sorting hat to place us into dorms (why do I have the feeling I'd end up in Ravenclaw?), there is a "Hagrid's Cabin" out back, a laundry facility called "Dobby's Room", and a storage room (vault?) called "Gringott's".<br />
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The only downside to being in this grand old building is I find myself unable to relax fully... all I can see when I look at these majestic buildings of stonework and brick is the piles of rubble and clouds of dust that I know now litter Chistchurch's streets. I'm not sure I'll ever be able to enter an old brick building or stone church again without a sense of fear, or at the very least a terrible sadness for the beautiful architecture that was destroyed, and the innocent lives lost as mortar, metal, and glass came crashing down. I find it difficult to follow the news accounts continuing to pour out of Christchurch; I know too many of the locations, can remember all-too-vividly walking through those streets of chaos, surrounded by injury and death. I realise this earthquake is now old news in Canada, and that the rest of the world has moved on, but the harsh reality is even though the camera crews have left, the headlines have stopped screaming their proclamations of disaster, and the perfectly-groomed news anchors now fill the television screens talking about other juicy stories of violence or scandal, the aftermath of the earthquake is still real, still heartbreaking, still terrifying in its aftershocks, and has changed the face of Christchurch forever.<br />
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The earthquake also has many unintended consequences, which admittedly compared to collapsed buildings are decidedly minor, but still cause headaches. We ran into one today when we tried to rent a car for the second half of our journey here on the South Island; my dad spent almost an hour on the phone this afternoon, trying to find a rental car here in Dunedin. He was ultimately successful, but the supply of rental cars is incredibly depleted, and the price has been jacked through the ceiling. It reminds me of a line from the documentary <i>The Corporation</i>: "In devastation there is opportunity". Earthquakes are good money if one is a car rental agency.<br />
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While my dad was on the phone I spent the afternoon on my computer researching places for us to stay (we were originally supposed to stay in Christchurch Wednesday night, but that's no longer going to be the case, obviously), and generally fighting with the world's worst cell phone internet connection (it must just be my location inside this old stone building; Dunedin itself has decent cell phone reception). In the late afternoon, my mom and dad and I went out and did a little bit of sight-seeing down at the Dunedin train station, where we'll be catching the "Railroad to Gold" train tomorrow morning, and then headed over to the Countdown supermarket, where we bought chicken and vegetables for dinner (my mom got her favourite corn-on-the-cob again). My parents have just watched two <i>Big Bang Theory </i>videos on my computer, and are now in bed, and I should follow them shortly... I am exhausted.<br />
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I watched some footage of the recovery efforts in Christchurch this evening, and I'm really in no mood to type anymore. It's all so overwhelming and saddening, and my brain can't understand why I (and my parents) escaped relatively unscathed from all the destruction. Perhaps I have a minor form of survivor's guilt, and while I don't want to forget what I went through, as I know it's important to process things, I do wish I could turn off the images and sensations from that fateful day replaying over and over in my head. To bed I go now, hopefully to dream of happier things. Goodnight.<br />
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~Carolyn~Carolynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18393970339280366748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2937491792624396671.post-83679675018617419942011-02-27T03:20:00.001-08:002011-02-27T03:20:05.891-08:00A Day on the Water: Milford Sound and Te Anau Glowworm CavesFor three people that just survived a devastating magnitude 6.3 earthquake, my parents and I certainly seem to be trying to tempt fate: today we went through the 1.2km Homer Tunnel twice (passing under the Southern Alps) travelling to and from Milford Sound, and then spent 45 minutes underground on the western shore of Lake Te Anau, exploring the renowned glowworm caves. That's a lot of underground activity in a area that is essentially a <a href="http://www.suite101.com/content/new-zealands-next-big-earthquake-a203688">geological earthquake time bomb just waiting to go off</a>. Thankfully, we are all safe and sound and back in our beds at the Cosy Kiwi B&B. My parents just told me a rather pointed "goodnight", but too bad for them, as I want to take the time to write about the glowworm caves, and I need my bedside light on to do so.<br />
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Milford Sound was overcast today, but thankfully today wasn't one of their 200 days of rain that they get each year (and when it rains, it <i>rains</i>; the average rainfall is around seven metres a year). Happily, when we stopped at Mirror Lakes on the way up Highway 94, the water was clear and still, and I was able to get a nice picture of the backward-lettered sign propped against the far bank (is reflection reads "Mirror Lakes"). When I came through on the Stray bus it was raining, so my pictures didn't capture the mirror-like qualities of the lakes at all.<br />
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I won't blather on endlessly about Milford Sound, as I already did that in <a href="http://carolyninaotearoa.blogspot.com/2010/11/milford-sound.html">this post</a> from November, but suffice it to say my parents had a great time on the <a href="http://realjourneys.co.nz/Main/MilfordSoundNatureCruises/">2 1/2 hour nature cruise</a>. This was slightly different from the earlier Milford Sound scenic cruise I did with Stray, which was focused at catering to the big crowds on tourist buses; this nature cruise was on a smaller boat, the <i>MV</i> <i>Sinbad</i>, and featured English-only commentary from a knowledgable guide named Dave. As my dad said, he had "just the right amount of information without overwhelming you", and he felt that even as a native costal British Columbian he had been impressed with the beauty of Milford Sound. (We're so spoiled, we really are.)<br />
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We booked ourselves on the 10:40am cruise, so when we left Milford Sound at 1:10pm the hordes were flocking to board the boats for the peak time (and therefore more expensive) midday cruises; it felt nice to leave them behind and head back for the open road. Well, slightly open; it's pretty windy, and my dad takes great delight in whizzing around the corners as fast as he can. We stopped at The Chasm to watch the Cleddau river thunder away below the footbridge, and in the parking lot my mom was delighted to see a kea parrot in the wild; I was a little concerned the thing was going to start pecking at our car, as they haven been known to strip car windshield wipers just for fun.<br />
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Safely through the Homer Tunnel once more, we stopped to explore the old makeshift workshop and camp site where workers and sometimes their families lived while the tunnel was under construction. A cold wind was blowing in the valley today, and with the overhanging clouds and knowledge that this area receives no direct sunlight from May to September, I could envision life in this majestic but foreboding valley to be very inhospitable indeed. How fortunate we are to be able to hop back into our rental car and drive back down the road to the much more hospitable township of Te Anau!<br />
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For dinner tonight we went to The Moose Bar and Restaurant (this one's for you, Bruce. 'Today is Pig Day!'), which of course brought a smile to my dad's face. It brought more of a grimace to mine, however, between my parents' inability to make decisions over where to eat, which very quickly shorts out my patience, and the fact that my sandwich was swimming in mayonnaise and something trying to pass for avocado sauce and failing miserably (yuck). At least my apple cider was tasty, and my parents seemed to enjoy their fish and chips ('fush and chups').<br />
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Our evening adventure today found us once again patronizing the Real Journeys adventure company, exploring the Te Anau Glowworm Caves. Once only present in Maori legends (the lake takes its name from <i>Te Ana-au</i>, which is Maori for "cave filled with swirling water"), the caves were rediscovered in 1948 by a local tour operator, Lawson Burrows, after three years of searching.<br />
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At 250m long, the Glowworm Caves are just part of a huge 6.7km labyrinth known as the Aurora caves system, cutting though limestone up to 35 million years old. Unlike other caves that I have explored, the water runs out of these caves, not into them: that is to say, the farther one penetrates into the cave, the higher up one goes in the mountain, not lower into the ground! This is due to the nature of the caves' creation: the caves themselves are about 200 000 years old, and shaped by periods of glacial advances and retreats. The origin of the cave's stream, called Tunnel Burn, is Lake Orbell, high up in the Murchison Mountains. At the end of each ice age, the retreating ice in the valley would create a new lake level, and the Tunnel Burn would carve a new exit into the lake. The continual dropping of the lake level after a glacier's retreat has resulted in a vast network of caves, with multiple entrances (old exits) along the mountainside. While the upper passages of the cave are dry and no longer have water passing through them, the Glowworm Caves are very young by geological standards - only 12 000 years old - and are still being formed. As such, stalactites and stalagmites are just beginning to form in the Glowworm Caves, but are common in the older and drier passages of the Aurora Caves.<br />
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Our journey began with a 25-minute boat ride across Lake Te Anau, culminating at a wharf where we were split into five groups of eleven or so, and assigned to a guide to introduce us to the landscape and take us through the caves. After my adventure <a href="http://carolyninaotearoa.blogspot.com/2010/11/spelunking-down-under-yes-that-can-be.html">spelunking in Waitomo</a>, this was ridiculously easy; there was dim yet appropriately theatrical lighting throughout the first part of the cave, and a well-constructed and maintained system of boardwalks and ladders to assure that all we had to do was duck and stoop to avoid hitting our heads in low tunnels and outcroppings. Indeed, for a cave, things were incredibly spacious; the first part of the cave is called the Cathedral, and has ceilings up to 20m high!<br />
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At the end of the Cathedral, past a thundering waterfall and up a set of stairs, we were greeted with a large pool; after being instructed to remain silent (glowworms apparently don't like noise), we clambered aboard a small punting boat, and were carried gently away down a narrow corridor into the Glowworm Grotto, a magical place where hundreds (if not thousands) of glow worms dotted the ceiling and walls, sending out their bioluminescent rays to attract hapless insects searching for a way out of the cave, and filling the grotto with an eerie (but magical) blue-green light. Here, deep under the mountain, and drifting silently on a pool of smooth black water surrounded by tiny pinpricks of light, it is hard to believe the beautiful glow is caused by the larval stage of what will after nine months become the humble fungus gnat.<br />
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Leaving the boat, we were once again escorted out of the caves, and seated in the Cavern Hut, a complimentary cup of tea in our hands, we were treated to an informative presentation on the life cycle and feeding habits of the <i>titiwae</i> (glowworm; the Maori name refers to the lights reflected on the water). Rather than have me blather on, you can read all about glowworms <a href="http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/glow-worms/1">here</a> (I especially like the part about how they spend nine months as a larvae, and then as adults have no mouths, and so only live for three days!).<br />
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Once again picked up by our tour boat, we were safely ferried back across the lake, and are now in our beds here at the Cosy Kiwi, where it is after midnight and my mother has once again (somewhat warningly this time) asked me to put the lights out, so I had better be a good little threatened <i>titiwae</i> and extinguish the bluish-tinged light emanating from my screen. :-) Goodnight!<br />
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~Carolyn~Carolynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18393970339280366748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2937491792624396671.post-48126472459878133432011-02-26T02:51:00.000-08:002011-02-26T02:51:53.949-08:00Steamboats, Kiwis, and Fergburgers (Sounds like Queenstown to me)One thing I am definitely noticing about travelling with three people as opposed to solo: it takes a lot longer to get organized. Or maybe that's just the problem of travelling as a family; we seem to take forever to get all three of us on the same page.<br />
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Regardless, we all managed to load up the car this morning, find a decent parking spot on the street (no easy feat in Queenstown, I assure you), and headed down to the shores of Lake Wakatipu to catch the <i>TSS Earnslaw</i>, a 99-year-old twin screw steamer passenger vessel. I briefly alluded to the<i> Earnslaw</i> in <a href="http://carolyninaotearoa.blogspot.com/2010/11/free-day-in-queenstown.html">this post</a> back in November, but this time I was actually able to sail aboard her on a 3 1/2 hour excursion up to Walter Peak High Country Farm.<br />
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The <i>TSS Earnslaw </i>is named after the highest point in the Queenstown region, Mt. Earnslaw. Built in 1912, she was constructed in Dunedin by J. McGregor & Co., and when completed was then disassembled and sent in pieces by rail to Kingston at the south end of Lake Wakatipu. Each piece of the quarter-inch steel hull plates was numbered, making putting the <i>Earnslaw</i> back together kind of like completing a giant jigsaw puzzle. Known as "The Lady of the Lake", the <i>Earnslaw</i> is 51m long, 7.3m across, and weighs 330 tonnes. Having spent her entire working life on Lake Wakatipu, she has at various times been a cargo ship, livestock carrier, passenger transporter, and pleasure steamer.<br />
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Until the 1960s when a road was finally completed, the farming homesteads on the western shores of the lake were only accessible by ships such as the <i>Earnslaw</i>; the voyage we took today took us to Walter Peak High Country Farm, which in its heyday had 170 000 acres, 40 000 sheep, and fifty full-time employees. As it stands today, the farm operates with 20 000 sheep and 850 cattle, and a hefty dose of tourism courtesy of the <i>TSS Earnslaw</i> bringing in passengers five times a day.<br />
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A neat feature of the <i>Earnslaw</i> is the way they have made the engine room accessible (or at least viewable) to passengers via an overhead metal catwalk; we were able to walk over the heads of the stokers constantly shovelling coal into one of the hungry <i>Earnslaw</i>'s four fire doors (she can consume a tonne of coal an hour when doing twelve knots [22km/hr]), and see the two triple-expansion steam engines that drive each of the screws hard at work spinning their drive shafts. I especially liked the ship's telegraph, which allows the captain up the bridge to communicate with the engine room and let them know what needs to be done ("Full", "Half", "Slow", "Finished with Engines", or "Stop" for both ahead and astern directions).<br />
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At Walter Peak High Country Farm, we were treated to a brief tour/demonstration of sheep farming. Having some experience working with sheep while I was staying with Glen in Little River, I was immediately suspicious the moment I saw the sheep approaching the paddock gate as soon as they saw people arriving off the boat. My suspicions were confirmed when I saw how we interacted with the sheep: by feeding them handfuls of pellets. No wonder the sheep came running; they've learned visitors mean food! The "normal" sheep I mustered ran away from me, rather than toward me. Nevertheless, it was fun, and gave us all a chance to touch and be up close and personal with the animals.<br />
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After we were all back in an enclosed paddock, the tour guide demonstrated the heading and pulling capabilities of Bess, the extremely well-trained short-hair border collie sheep dog. She has been trained to respond to a series of differing whistles (which saves the sheep farmer from screaming him or herself hoarse across huge paddocks), and it was fascinating to watch her leap gracefully over the fence, race up the paddock, and bring the sheep down the other side in a herd ahead of her. Oh, how I wished we had had a dog like that when I was mustering sheep up those huge, steep paddocks in Little River!<br />
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Finally, our tour guide gave us a sheep shearing demonstration, taking ten pounds of wool off a ewe (who had taken a year to grow it) in about three minutes. When he was finished (and the now decidedly less bulky, pink-tinged sheep was back in the race), we were able to walk up and take a piece of wool as a souvenir. The wool was covered in lanolin, a natural oil secreted by the sheep to protect itself from sunburn and to act as a moisturizing and waterproofing agent (just imagine being a sheep, getting wet, and having to lug around a waterlogged wool coat. No fun!). The lanolin is extracted from the wool when it is washed and dried, and turned into many products, such as the hand creme my mom bought later in the day from the gift shop.<br />
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At 11:45am we were escorted over to the Colonel's Homestead, where those of us who had paid for a bbq lunch were seated on the terrace overlooking the house's beautiful gardens and stunning view of Lake Wakatipu, and treated to a delicious buffet-style barbecue featuring lamb, beef, chicken, pork, salads, corn on the cob, potatoes, rice, vegetables, a cheese platter, and fruit salad for desert. The weather was sunny and gorgeous today, and aside from a few annoying wasps, the setting was perfect.<br />
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Our cruise back across the lake aboard the <i>Earnslaw</i> was as enjoyable as the trip there, and I left the vessel half wishing I could stay on it and have another go around; I think I'm missing my steam trains, and the <i>Earnslaw</i> was a good substitute, at least for a day.<br />
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The next few hours were spent wandering around Queenstown, watching my parents perform an elaborate dance of trying to find shorts that fit, while at the same time constantly running out of shops and moving the car from one 30min parking space to the next. By 3pm my dad was getting somewhat antsy and wanted to get on the road to Te Anau, but my mom had her heart set on visiting the <a href="http://www.kiwibird.co.nz/">Kiwi Birdlife Park</a>, so we parked the car on the hill and then walked down and over to the Park, situated at the base of the Skyline Gondola.<br />
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The main highlight of the park is their kiwi birds, which live in two special huts. The birds, being nocturnal, are kept on a reverse schedule (i.e. our daytime is their nighttime), so the kiwis were up and about, busily foraging for food when we entered the huts. One hut had a special "kiwi feeding" at 4:30pm, and the guide present told us that to the kiwis, the room is indeed totally dark; although it is lit by several red lightbulbs (giving it a similar appearance to a darkroom), kiwis are unable to see the colour red, so to them it really is pitch-black.<br />
<br />
A neat feature of the Birdlife Park is the portable mp3 players and headphones they give you; each stop in the park features a sign with a number, and keying in the corresponding number on the mp3 player's keypad plays back an audio clip detailing the birds in that particular enclosure, interesting ecological facts, Maori historical uses of the birds, etc. Some of my favourites were the kiwis (of course), the tuatara lizard, and the kea - those cheeky and highly intelligent parrots would have happily shredded our hiking boots had we not brought them inside each night when I was hiking the Heaphy and Milford Tracks.<br />
<br />
Leaving the Birdlife Park, we headed down to Fergburger, and my parents experienced the magic that is the gourmet hamburger the size of one's head (my mom and I split one). We also bought gelato at Lick, the desert place two doors down, leading my mom to comment that she will have to begin dieting when she gets home (really, mom, you don't have much to worry about). Then we were off to Te Anau, arriving here at the Cosy Kiwi B&B around 8:30pm. Now it is 11:40pm, and we have to be up and out the door by 8am to make it to Milford Sound for 10am, so I had best be off this thing (I'm sure my parents are tired of listening to me type... although the heavy dance music throbbing from down the street is likely annoying them even more).<br />
<br />
Oh, and say a little prayer for my parents and I; we have to cross through the Homer Tunnel under the Southern Alps tomorrow twice when we go to and from Milford Sound, and after the earthquake activity in Christchurch I really don't want to think any more about earthquakes or the Alpine Fault line. Goodnight!<br />
<br />
~Carolyn~Carolynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18393970339280366748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2937491792624396671.post-78413855003993381342011-02-25T02:08:00.000-08:002011-02-25T03:00:00.927-08:00A Whirlwind West Coast TourAl's efforts in sending my blog post to the <i>Vancouver Sun</i> were successful; after seeking my permission, they <a href="http://communities.canada.com/vancouversun/blogs/communityofinterest/archive/2011/02/25/as-it-happened-a-victoria-woman-s-on-the-ground-account-of-the-christchurch-earthquake.aspx">published an edited version to their website</a>, and also linked back to the original <a href="http://carolyninaotearoa.blogspot.com/2011/02/earthquake-saga.html">here</a> on blogger.<br />
<br />
Well, we didn't leave Greymouth at 8am as planned (ha, no one who knows my family will be surprised at that one). It was closer to 9am by the time we finally got everything loaded into the car (how the heck did we manage to amass so much stuff already? My parents don't even have the luggage they brought here, and already they are carrying around a bunch of shopping bags!) and headed south.<br />
<br />
Today's ultimate destination was Queenstown, some 535km from Greymouth. It was quite the trek to make in one day, but we broke it up with several stops along the way; not to mention, of course, being treated to the beautiful West Coast scenery of towering mountains and lush green forest.<br />
<br />
Around 11am we stopped at <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fox_Glacier">Fox Glacier</a> to hike up to the glacier face; from the car park, it was about a half hour walk to the yellow rope barriers 80m from the ice (and signs that strictly intoned us not to go any further due to risk of ice fall, rock fall, surge waves, and any other number of scary-sounding hazards). Having already hiked the Franz Josef Glacier, and having parents who had already walked across a glacier in the Rockies back home, we were quite content to just stand and look at Fox Glacier. Although it is slightly longer than Franz Josef (12km as opposed to Franz Josef's 13km), both have the distinction of being some of the few glaciers in the world to end in a temperate rainforest, only 300m above sea level. The glacier takes its name from Sir William Fox, former Prime Minister of New Zealand, who first visited the glacier in 1872. Fox Glacier also has the distinction of moving ten times faster than other valley glaciers of similar size around the world; it has been advancing since 1985, and in 2006 was advancing at rate of a metre a week!<br />
<br />
Back in the car, we continued driving up to Lake Paringa, where we stopped for a brief lunch of ham and cheese sandwiches, eaten on a very windy picnic bench beside the lake. While we were eating, my dad made the mistake of leaving the car windows down, and about fifty sandflies were lying in wait for us when we returned... I was squishing and swatting them for the next half hour as we drove toward Haast. My dad got bites all up and down his arm; he won't make that mistake with the car windows again!<br />
<br />
Driving through Haast Pass was stunning; it was just as beautiful as I remembered it being when I travelled down SH6 with the Stray Bus in November. I forced my dad to stop at Blue Pools, which regretfully due to the later afternoon sun being in the wrong position weren't as blue as I remembered them being when I saw then with Stray, but still proved to be a nice walk through the beech forest and down to the Makarora River.<br />
<br />
What was a stunning blue colour, however, was Lake Wanaka; the day I passed through it had been cloudy, but today we were able to get some beautiful shots of the bright blue sky and towering mountains, and after travelling through "The Neck" we also marvelled at the jewel-tones of Lake Hawea.<br />
<br />
I think my dad really got into the driving today; open road (highway) here in New Zealand has a speed limit of 100km/h, but the narrowness and windy nature of SH6 really requires that one drive far slower and with extreme caution. Well, my dad drives with caution, but the slower part kind of got thrown out the window... we were racing around some of those corners!<br />
<br />
We made it to Queenstown around 6:45pm this evening; the hostess here at Butterfli Lodge knew of our experience in Christchurch and was extra welcoming to me, commenting on how we likely just wanted to have a nice relaxing evening free from stress or travel. We walked down the hill into the hubbub of Queenstown's nightlife (just rolling out of bed at 8pm), and after a little wandering (including a look at the <i>TSS Earnslaw</i>, which we will be sailing on tomorrow) settled for dinner at an Italian restaurant called Avanti, where my dad ordered a bottle of red merlot, and I had two glasses, and am now very sleepy and in need of bed. As such, I will end this here, have a shower, and then hit the sack. Goodnight!<br />
<br />
~Carolyn~Carolynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18393970339280366748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2937491792624396671.post-56578105441081472642011-02-24T02:56:00.000-08:002011-03-18T01:01:20.673-07:00Trying to Recover in GreymouthThe more coverage of the earthquake I review, the more sick to my stomach I feel. Being part of the incident gave me a very different - very scary, very intense, but very narrow - perspective of the event than that of someone watching the news reports, which have a much broader focus. It wasn't until today that I saw my first close-up pictures of the collapsed CTV and Pyne Gould Guinness Buildings, and with a horrible jolt I realised I had commented on the beautiful coloured glass that once adorned the top of the CTV building as I drove past it with Malcolm and Illy on the way out to play field hockey on Valentine's Day. Knowing what it looked like before, and knowing that only a twisted pile of wreckage is left, now a mass grave for the one hundred bodies believed to still be trapped inside... I turn my eyes away. It is just too much to take in, and reminds me of how narrowly my parents and I escaped with our own lives. When I hear stories of emergency workers having to perform amputations to extract victims, of the sombre declaration that no one could have survived under the rubble in the cathedral, even my faith in the law of large numbers and random chance is of little comfort in helping me accept that I should not feel guilty for being unharmed when so many others are suffering horribly.<br />
<br />
As a foreigner in New Zealand, I had the advantage of being able to leave the city of Christchurch: in two weeks I will board a plane and return home to Canada. I could close my eyes and try to forget Christchurch and its citizens, now trying to pick up the shattered pieces of their lives. Yet the reality is Christchurch has provided me with a violent wake-up call: Vancouver Island is also located along the same geological fault line known as the Pacific Ring of Fire, and it is only a matter of time before our region is also rocked by a powerful earthquake. I have no desire to live my life in fear, but neither do I want to relive the horror I experienced and saw experienced by those around me. If any good can come out of the tragedy of the Christchurch earthquake, let it be the chance for the citizens of other communities such as Victoria to acknowledge and better prepare themselves for the unpredictable forces of nature.<br />
<br />
One of my friends in Australia, Al, was floored by my blog entry about the earthquake, and showed it several of his colleagues at work and e-mailed it to several other people on the Mainline Steam tour with us this year... as such, my e-mail inbox has been busy today with people letting me know they are glad my parents and I are okay. Al was so impressed by my narrative he asked my permission to e-mail it to the <i>Vancouver Sun</i>, which he did, and I later replied to an e-mail from a <i>Vancouver Sun</i> editor seeking permission to publish portions of the blog entry online or in print.<br />
<br />
When Al called to ask permission to e-mail my blog entry my mom and dad and I were inside The Warehouse (the NZ Wal-Mart) here in Greymouth buying a few articles of clothes for my parents, who have nothing other than their daybags, seeing as their luggage is still trapped on the third floor of the Copthorne Hotel in Christchurch. We had previously gone to the Countdown to buy food for lunch on the road today, and after receiving Al's phone call I went back and sat in the car and quickly uploaded photos to my blog of the earthquake using my vodafone mobile internet key; I knew we would likely be heading down the West Coast of the South Island today, which has notoriously spotty cell phone reception, and that I wouldn't get another chance to update the blog until this evening.<br />
<br />
As it turns out, I was half-right; I didn't get a chance to update the blog, but not because we were driving down the West Coast; we were just leaving town when I mentioned we were passing by the turn-off to Shantytown, and my dad suddenly made the decision that he would rather take today and relax in Greymouth than try and drive all the way down to Queenstown. As such, we ended up spending the afternoon in Shantytown (which ultimately ended in me calling the hostel in Queenstown and thankfully getting out of paying for tonight, and also calling Noah's Ark Backpackers and getting us another night's accommodation here, despite a minor hiccough when we were originally booked into a dorm room with two other girls; now, to my mom's relief, the three of us are in the Penguin Room all by ourselves).<br />
<br />
An afternoon in Shantytown was likely one of the best things we could have done; we were able to relax, walk through the woods, and keep our bodies in one place rather than frantically rushing down the coast. I was also able to catch up with Jeffrey, the engineer (who not only remembered my name, but also where I was from and where I work - good job, Jeffrey!) who gave my parents and I a cab ride back to the lower station in the locie Katie. I also got to introduce my parents to Ian Tibbles, who was glad I was able to make it out to Shantytown again, and when I thanked him again for letting me buy his Steam School Books, said, "Oh, I know, you raved about them for several days on your blog!" I think he took my enthusiasm as a compliment. :-)<br />
<br />
It only took three visits, but now I feel I have seen all of Shantytown; today filled in the missing pieces of the gold mining set-up, particularly the sluicing nozzle demonstration. The same apparatus was used in Barkerville: a high-pressure jet of water is shot at the earth (on a slope, such as the sides of a river or hill), and the silt and water is directed into a sluicebox whose bottom is covered by a washboard-like surface that collects the heavier gold as it sinks. At the base of their sluicebox from their sluicing nozzle set-up Shantytown allows visitors to pan for gold in the sediment for $5. After the nozzle was turned off, I picked my way up the section of hillside that had been blasted by the jet of water, using my eyes to search carefully through the freshly-exposed silt. I spotted something bright gold and glittering out of the corner of my eye; I had found a small flake of gold! I put it carefully into the palm of my hand and carried it down the hill to show the gold panning operator; he was most impressed with my find (considering I had just used my naked eyes), and put the flake into a glass vial for me to take home. I guess it was somewhat cheating, because I didn't pay my $5 (my dad jokingly accused me of "claim jumping"), but the operator didn't seem to mind at all.<br />
<br />
The rest of our time in Shantytown we spent wandering around the township (mom and dad licking kiwifruit-flavoured ice cream from the general store), including requisite stops at the schoolhouse and fire station, as well as the hospital, butcher, and church. On our way out my mom and I bought a t-shirt and a souvenir guide to Shantytown; part of me wishes I could stay in New Zealand longer and volunteer there for a week or two as both Ian and Jeffrey kindly offered (Jeffrey even said he could put me up at his house if I wanted). I do have a feeling, however, that NZ's Shantytown has not seen the last of me yet, especially seeing as I am learning from Ian's textbooks.<br />
<br />
For dinner tonight my mom and I made chicken stir-fry with coconut curry sauce, and sweet corn as a side dish (my mom was quite delighted to see sweet corn on sale in the supermarket; it's her favourite vegetable). Our evening has not been terribly exciting (not that we're looking for excitement, believe you me!): we got ready for bed, my parents read my blog entry from last night (ironic, when you consider how many other people read it before they themselves had even seen it), and now they're both trying to sleep while I click-clack away here sitting on the floor, so I should likely stop typing. We're leaving early tomorrow morning to head down to Queenstown, and I had best go to sleep, too, as I'll likely be doing some of the driving tomorrow on those windy NZ West Coast highways, and will need to be awake and alert. Goodnight!<br />
<br />
~Carolyn~Carolynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18393970339280366748noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2937491792624396671.post-62307810505737427322011-02-23T05:13:00.000-08:002011-03-18T00:54:10.081-07:00The Earthquake Saga.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Where do I even begin. At the beginning, I guess. "A beginning is a very delicate time." Know then, that it is February 23rd, 2011, one day after a 6.3 magnitude earthquake devastated the New Zealand city of Christchurch. Know that as of 10pm tonight, 75 are confirmed dead, 600 are missing, and the number of unidentified (and therefore unconfirmed dead) bodies is growing, and that rescuers are starting to lose hope of pulling more survivors from the rubble. Know that the persistent aftershocks are constantly shaking the city, sending my blood adrenaline levels skyrocketing and making it impossible for me to sleep last night, as I spent the whole night in a heightened "fight or flight" response mode. Know that 40% of the city is without power, 80% without water, and while most of the major roads are passable, liquefaction has resulted in huge mounds of silt and rivers of water appearing where once stood fields, front gardens, and footpaths.</div><br />
Know that my mom and dad and I are now out of Christchurch and on the opposite side of the island in the town of Greymouth, but that my thoughts are constantly with our friends the Snowdon family and wishing we could do something to help them, especially after they were so hospitable to us.<br />
<br />
~~<br />
<br />
Yesterday morning I got up at 7:20am, and woke Malcolm up at 7:30am (and again at 7:45am, when he mumbled something like, "Come back in 15 minutes!", and after a rather unsuccessful attempt to warm up some of my scones from the night before in the oven we got into his car and headed off for the airport. I brought with me my backpack and my sleeping bag, and left the rest of my belongings (in something of a state of disarray, I must admit) scattered on the bed, in the dresser, and on the desk... I figured I would come back this afternoon while my parents were sight-seeing and pack up my things.<br />
<br />
The traffic was a little heavy, but Malcolm had me at the airport for 8:35am, and after thanking him and wishing him well I then spent the next half an hour trying to figure out where the heck my parents were; I knew they had come in on a domestic flight (Auckland to Christchurch), but that their luggage had likely been checked all the way from Vancouver, so they were going to have to pick it up from the international baggage collection. After wandering back and forth between the two terminals (thankfully, it's not a very big airport), I finally spotted them in the International Meeting Area. I gave them my "Kia ora! Welcome to Aotearoa!" greeting, and we set off to find a shuttle to take us downtown to the Copthorne Christchurch Central, where we were staying.<br />
<br />
Along the way my mom marveled at how much it reminded her of Victoria ("All the trees!") and how the weather was similar to home (it was overcast and a little rainy today, hardly summery), while my dad's eyes took in the phenomenon of traffic driving on the left, and started scanning makes of cars as they drove past, (I'm sure) creating a mental shortlist of the sort of car he would like to rent.<br />
<br />
Arriving at the Copthorne, we checked in my parents' bags plus my sleeping bag, and then after phone calls to Grandma Wright and Grandma Taylor to let them know my parents had arrived safely, we headed out into downtown Christchurch to explore the square and find an ATM. One of our first stops after the bank was the Festival of Flowers display outside the cathedral, where my dad and I posed with a topiary moose (how fitting).<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1w9n7A9Rh3O5c9ZVYcvFOZJs1wp3Nzj_1SuA2vdrA7lba31DGpZffvgfgzOnMbhsDfVMB3CLsI8uaVDMHYAAxru9tUrubZnXLo2SfKRnyLFNjOH-_14yUucQINlN6xkabASDiOw8wU9BA/s1600/MomandIinfrontofCathedral.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj1w9n7A9Rh3O5c9ZVYcvFOZJs1wp3Nzj_1SuA2vdrA7lba31DGpZffvgfgzOnMbhsDfVMB3CLsI8uaVDMHYAAxru9tUrubZnXLo2SfKRnyLFNjOH-_14yUucQINlN6xkabASDiOw8wU9BA/s320/MomandIinfrontofCathedral.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Mom and I in front of Christchurch Cathedral</td></tr>
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We ended up wandering into the cathedral, as I had never been in before, and was curious about the inside after being in the beautiful cathedral in Nelson. I was not disappointed; inside were majestic pillars designed in the Gothic revival style, an ornately carved wooden altar frame at the back of the knave, and beautiful mosaics on the floor of ships, representing the four ships of the first English settlers to Christchurch. After looking around by ourselves for a bit, we decided to participate in the free tour, led by a kindly old retired English doctor, whose dry wit yet endearing and friendly personality made all the dates and names he was spouting come to life for us.<br />
<br />
My dad wanted to climb the cathedral spire ($15 for a family), but because of the rain and low cloud today I dissuaded him from it, as I figured we wouldn't be able to see much anyway. We left a donation in the church's collection box of $20, and as we made our way out I could hear the bell across the square start to ring noon; inside the church, the midday mass commenced, and we decided to go in search of some lunch.<br />
<br />
My mom's first words about lunch were, "I don't want to eat sushi!" (ha), so I took her and dad across the square and down Worchester St., as I knew a few restaurants existed around the corner of Worschester and Manchester Sts. We looked at a Spanish restaurant in an old brick building, but deciding the prices on the menu posted by the door were too expensive, headed back across the intersection to The Raj Mahal, an Indian restaurant I had walked by many times in my travels between the YHA and the bus stop, and figured it looked like a good place to try, as it wasn't busy, but I knew in the evenings I had seen it packed, so the food was likely good. We entered and had our pick of seats; we chose one in the corner with windows on both sides.<br />
<br />
It's scary when I look back at it now, but the choices we made in deciding all these little, seemingly inconsequential decisions (when to eat lunch, and where to eat it) likely saved our lives.<br />
<br />
We dug into our appetizer platter and drinks (coke for me, water for mom, a Kingfisher for dad), and sat and discussed our plans for the afternoon; my parents wanted to go have a ride on the city tram, and I decided I would head back up to Heathcote and pack up my belongings, and then meet them back at the hotel, as by then it would likely be 2pm and we could check into our room. My dad was once again starting to scan cars passing outside, commenting on the different makes and models, when things started to go horribly wrong.<br />
<br />
I heard the earthquake coming before I felt it, and likely felt it a little bit before my parents did, as I knew what to expect... it started with a dull low rumble, and then a few slight vibrations, before turning into a roar; I looked up (I was facing the window), and saw the asphalt and gravel outside on the street rippling. My first thought was, "Oh, hmm, yes, another aftershock; well, my parents are certainly going to get the authentic Christchurch experience!" Then suddenly, I was jolted sideways in my chair, and I watched as the brick building across the street (the one housing the spanish restaurant) suddenly had is wall fold and crumble to the ground... I realized at that instant that this was no piddly little aftershock.<br />
<br />
My memories of the earthquake itself are somewhat disjointed; I remember the shouting, the shattering of glass, and the roar of tumbling masonry and stone; my mother says it was deafening to her, but I don't remember the overall cacophony; I remember distinct sounds. The glass windows surrounding us shattered outward, causing my mom to dive under the table, and my dad fell out of his chair onto the floor. I looked up, still trying to sit in my chair and hold onto the table, and saw the decorative plaster moulding of the building above the sidewalk outside buckle and fall down toward me; I remember thinking, "The building is falling down on top of us," and then suddenly being thrown from my chair by an upward thrust, and then falling down hard onto the floor, striking something on the way down, and having my knees cut by the broken glass and grit rolling around on the floor. My mom grabbed my hand and screamed at me, "Get under the table!", and I thought, "Well, the table is pretty small, and if the whole building comes down it's not going to protect us", but I allowed her to pull me under, and I started to count like I had been instructed in school earthquake drills: "One one thousand, two one thousand, three one thousand..."<br />
<br />
When I got to "seven one thousand" the earth stopped moving; we were in near total darkness, and choking on a thick white dust that filled the air, coating everything it touched. The restaurant staff started calling, "Are you alright? Are you alright?" to their patrons. I answered in the affirmative, and then they started calling, "Get out, get out!" I scrambled to find my backpack, which had shifted several feet away from where I left it, and grabbed my mom and I's coats from the floor. My mom was scrambling around, trying to find her purse, which she found after about five seconds, as we could hardly see, and it too had been thrown several feet away. We got up and picked our way across the floor, keeping our heads low; the entire front of the building had collapsed, and there was no longer a door; a window frame was preserved enough that we were able to climb up over the sill, shimmy sideways between the half-empty pane and some iron rods, and then stumble over the fallen bricks and mortar from the upper storeys.<br />
<br />
Do you remember footage from 9/11? That's what I felt like I had stepped in to. I had grit in my mouth and was coughing up dust, and all three of us were covered in a white chalky powder. Outside, the church across the street had collapsed, sending its makeshift scaffolding from the first September earthquake tumbling into the street, along with its stonework and mortar. I turned around, and took my first good look at the building we had just crawled out of... and found myself almost disbelieving that we had just emerged from that pile of rubble. As we left my mom pressed at $20 bill into the waiter's hand; she didn't feel it was right to leave without paying for our appetizer.<br />
<br />
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrPFHCFVh2a4zzFznipBkmTHRy8ryDXfsbxeMF9ZrF2m_OUMSU4SkBNpt8YPYF6-kjjc6N8qbaDYrlS9cjyvZ6DUA-cwXTty8CqZnvSzGIVaKe7KMKJrlMlVemzOyyAoy1v78ixMdoCnTO/s1600/RestaurantEscape.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrPFHCFVh2a4zzFznipBkmTHRy8ryDXfsbxeMF9ZrF2m_OUMSU4SkBNpt8YPYF6-kjjc6N8qbaDYrlS9cjyvZ6DUA-cwXTty8CqZnvSzGIVaKe7KMKJrlMlVemzOyyAoy1v78ixMdoCnTO/s320/RestaurantEscape.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The restaurant we were in. We crawled out the broken<br />
window in the centre left of the picture.</td></tr>
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<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA5Gi3r29aJeg65wC08pSv9zVhcr9IDnstsNM1mV77pMI7MMhte4bnYrHeG1mMEJLHM4Pqhf2VI44GunTwK-G_axFWnCyO7YHf-OKKfJ1Jlo6dRLj0wy4Ol4Yq0Q1manves80NjtZ41KOe/s1600/RestaurantWeWereIn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhA5Gi3r29aJeg65wC08pSv9zVhcr9IDnstsNM1mV77pMI7MMhte4bnYrHeG1mMEJLHM4Pqhf2VI44GunTwK-G_axFWnCyO7YHf-OKKfJ1Jlo6dRLj0wy4Ol4Yq0Q1manves80NjtZ41KOe/s320/RestaurantWeWereIn.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The restaurant we were in. We were sitting approximately<br />
behind where the tree is.</td></tr>
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<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqv1zf5fj4u0gjg_UdJ5jz16w3mne2GY3z7n_k3NgfKGXrQLgdL5KCLsbTfXDI1OwOcJSyiJLEsqx8F_bWRD-3p1xxQqFh9XwlRVxC4WBgNoaAqmJlXarGBGKSdBxsSzfx86JRKX_LeILG/s1600/BuildingBesideRestaurant.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqv1zf5fj4u0gjg_UdJ5jz16w3mne2GY3z7n_k3NgfKGXrQLgdL5KCLsbTfXDI1OwOcJSyiJLEsqx8F_bWRD-3p1xxQqFh9XwlRVxC4WBgNoaAqmJlXarGBGKSdBxsSzfx86JRKX_LeILG/s320/BuildingBesideRestaurant.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The annex attached to the restaurant.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTsc1CyAOiYnGc2fMno_Bjayg8USybUNwKHhlfjMeiHIQj7mfsZ664Rlu7yXDcvmNeB3j428IBAhegc9qAZ-KSA6JC4W2hgH2Q5bZI-j-zVGAPGiUIsOngusMgff5IxnshMJ00hl8zdLQ0/s1600/ChurchOppositeRestaurant.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiTsc1CyAOiYnGc2fMno_Bjayg8USybUNwKHhlfjMeiHIQj7mfsZ664Rlu7yXDcvmNeB3j428IBAhegc9qAZ-KSA6JC4W2hgH2Q5bZI-j-zVGAPGiUIsOngusMgff5IxnshMJ00hl8zdLQ0/s320/ChurchOppositeRestaurant.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The church across the street from the restaurant</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdxdIk61AGhDaU8wbUROOKZolRFS3qqIiHbUB9pEV8TiEpvGv5Md7oMqFmJw2JxmZ1E-yLsvEwK5NMTVRfTFgqYy-Oh5aTQX61Md9Wp23w354_qX-AofjJ8L-qMs7Qa63oOaty1Uom5tFR/s1600/RestaurantWeWouldHaveEatenIn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgdxdIk61AGhDaU8wbUROOKZolRFS3qqIiHbUB9pEV8TiEpvGv5Md7oMqFmJw2JxmZ1E-yLsvEwK5NMTVRfTFgqYy-Oh5aTQX61Md9Wp23w354_qX-AofjJ8L-qMs7Qa63oOaty1Uom5tFR/s320/RestaurantWeWouldHaveEatenIn.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The building (or what's left of it) housing the Spanish<br />
restaurant we originally considered eating at. I'm glad<br />
we chose the Indian one instead!</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
Here our senses were assaulted with the sensations of a war zone; hundreds of alarms, sirens, and buzzers going off, the muted sounds of glass and brick and mortar continuing to fall, and the dazed and shocked looks on people around us, as they milled in the street. I saw tears and hysterical cries, and fought the urge to panic or fall victim to emotion; I forced myself to make sure we had all our belongings, and then decided our best course of action would be to walk in the middle of the street back up Manchester St., and then make our way over to the hotel, as I figured a) it was a modern building and may have survived, and b) Victoria Park across the street was likely a safe place to be when the inevitable aftershocks started to arrive. The first one arrived just as we set out, causing more shouting and falling of mortar and bricks from the buildings around us.<br />
<br />
I tried to focus on the task at hand as we picked our way down the street, but there are images here in my mind I know I will never be able to erase. We saw people working frantically to remove stones and mortar from the tops of cars that had been crushed by falling buildings, and I knew simply from glancing at some of them that the people inside those cars were unlikely to be alive. We saw one woman being helped away from a car, blood streaming down her head and coating her arms and legs, mixing with dust to create a dull red-brown stain. A man staggered in front of me, his eyes glazed over in shock; I asked him if he was okay, and he told me he worked in an office building just down the street: when the quake started, he ran for the door, and a woman in front of him made it out, but her brother, who was running out behind him, did not, as the building collapsed on top of him, and the man could do nothing but watch helplessly. I asked him if he wanted a sip of water, and I dug my metal waterbottle out of my backpack, and also gave him a piece of candied ginger, as I figured the sugar would do him some good. He thanked me, then abruptly got to his feet and walked in a daze back the way he had come, toward his office building.<br />
<br />
We kept going, turning left up Armage St, and witnessing more physical signs of the quake; huge cracks had appeared in the road, tram lines had been sheared in half as if cut with a giant butter knife, curbs had pulled away from the asphalt, and entire sections of the road were buckled up or depressed under. We could smell and hear a leaking natural gas pipeline, and this, coupled with another severe aftershock (and the testament of a resident, holding a bandage to his bloody head and saying that this was definitely a more severe earthquake than the one in September) only caused us to hasten our pace to Victoria Park. Once arriving there, we were greeted to the site of several hundred people milling around in shock and confusion, and an ever-growing river of cloudy, greyish-brown water; the water mains had ruptured, and their contents were now spilling into the street. Liquefaction was also occurring, as sediment underneath the ground was forced upward with the fresh water, creating mini volcano-shaped cones of sand with water pouring down their sides.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRQdhyphenhyphen8Flq2GubKnUtb7zFPR9PYbSATv3DhAa0NpqExQ6JSj4_f6zADihKaywDR7UWYzkXa0ZIBkkqYA9_LEaDq7YATi8pBgkcNnJ4DJYE8fS9LCWIGB3ulJYFqNbslBUD4D8-ufFnvtd-/s1600/CracksinSidewalk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRQdhyphenhyphen8Flq2GubKnUtb7zFPR9PYbSATv3DhAa0NpqExQ6JSj4_f6zADihKaywDR7UWYzkXa0ZIBkkqYA9_LEaDq7YATi8pBgkcNnJ4DJYE8fS9LCWIGB3ulJYFqNbslBUD4D8-ufFnvtd-/s320/CracksinSidewalk.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A (relatively small) crack in the road</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj06yaF72CTKNvrvGiI5f8sAcY_Pa6iSSQ1mdrrjaiLb6WWAQ_gaP4ZcsqDqdhC1C6e1cRSb43A-Wi9RJTMWTsnerBpbds7Y2ASn22IudZO0orXzSrhOteC3zfsGV-ckC9vNYjZQliq1GUV/s1600/FootpathBucklingUp.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj06yaF72CTKNvrvGiI5f8sAcY_Pa6iSSQ1mdrrjaiLb6WWAQ_gaP4ZcsqDqdhC1C6e1cRSb43A-Wi9RJTMWTsnerBpbds7Y2ASn22IudZO0orXzSrhOteC3zfsGV-ckC9vNYjZQliq1GUV/s320/FootpathBucklingUp.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Buckling of a footpath</td></tr>
</tbody></table><div style="text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: auto;"><br />
</div><table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlw18rowDk71EPw9ZcElOQ0MCEp0lrUKN681L3DVQ3PGilmlz6MLt1-ZxDU3kmkoG5vJT0Rl48zPFSSF_bwl3k6Y2abW8IC7OpJ8UCUlC9xUTE33PDCX-wBWPOVKHRvlFjrjqetRWz8pOF/s1600/FloodingLiquefactionatVictoriaPark.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlw18rowDk71EPw9ZcElOQ0MCEp0lrUKN681L3DVQ3PGilmlz6MLt1-ZxDU3kmkoG5vJT0Rl48zPFSSF_bwl3k6Y2abW8IC7OpJ8UCUlC9xUTE33PDCX-wBWPOVKHRvlFjrjqetRWz8pOF/s320/FloodingLiquefactionatVictoriaPark.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Broken water mains flooding Victoria Park</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
The hotel staff was having everyone congregate in one corner of the garden, and when my dad went over to ask about collecting our bags from the luggage room right inside the front door, we discovered the hotel (apparently a model of efficiency) had already moved them up to our room on the third floor, and clearly no one was going back into the building for the moment. The staff advised us to stay put in the park until they could further advise us on what to do.<br />
<br />
An office building on the corner of Armage and Columbo Street had people trapped inside on the upper storeys; my guess is the stairwells had collapsed or were impassable. They had hung fluorescent vests on the balcony to attract the attention of disaster relief teams, and a group on the fourth floor affixed paper reading "HELP" to the windows. A young woman approached my dad and asked him if he could take a picture using his camera of the sign and then e-mail it to her; it turned out she was a reporter from <i>The Press</i>, Christchurch's newspaper, and I got talking to her about what we had just been through in the restaurant and what we had seen and experienced on the street.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4Jx80E6hk7doY9GUTPbGE6uel0n_wOtmdh5802EQ7OpbRYmdCqHlkDmjzqWUC90eEsfHadDtYaAZTx_J7_JZZ-oZ7f-DDKQjpjcA8oLmFqIAdhKexvTK98xC2Q26o9MDL51ydaKin8kws/s1600/CordoningOffCBD.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4Jx80E6hk7doY9GUTPbGE6uel0n_wOtmdh5802EQ7OpbRYmdCqHlkDmjzqWUC90eEsfHadDtYaAZTx_J7_JZZ-oZ7f-DDKQjpjcA8oLmFqIAdhKexvTK98xC2Q26o9MDL51ydaKin8kws/s320/CordoningOffCBD.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cordoning off the CBD</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqnBbrKZ4PvY6HEMGcuidF9EUwYssuNPAF40PXxK9llwVgTHY1BToY9SezyNVkuf4Mb2I-vIbdmPigz5eIegK_9sRObTpzKjF5L90JwmfxHQvymskRR9vuf0W-QY9bIScWINyCaIqGS8zt/s1600/HELPSigninWindow.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqnBbrKZ4PvY6HEMGcuidF9EUwYssuNPAF40PXxK9llwVgTHY1BToY9SezyNVkuf4Mb2I-vIbdmPigz5eIegK_9sRObTpzKjF5L90JwmfxHQvymskRR9vuf0W-QY9bIScWINyCaIqGS8zt/s320/HELPSigninWindow.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;">The same building as above, showing the messages</div><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"> taped to the windows saying "HELP".</div></td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
The cellular phone networks were swamped as everyone attempted to call everyone else and see if they were okay; after several attempts I managed to get through to Arthur, and instructed him that while we were all okay, we needed him to call everyone in the family and let them know we were okay. Sitting on the cold metal wrought-ironwork surrounding a few trees in the park, I was super-sensitive to the tremors from the ground, and becoming increasingly cold; I wished I had worn pants instead of capris.<br />
<br />
Looking down Columbo Street, I could see the spire of the cathedral lying broken and twisted in a pile of rubble; it made me sick to my stomach to think people may have been in the spire when it crashed to the ground. Suddenly, the ground began to shake violently again; we watched as the building next to our hotel shook precariously, developed a huge crack, and its entire corner fall off onto the street with a deafening crash. My dad looked up Columbo Street, and couldn't believe his eyes; either the entire Christchurch Central Business District sank, or the uptown section rose, as there was now a twelve-foot difference between one half of Columbo Street and the other.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5Fs2iWzWA2WxZh2up-X_eOHJ4haFlcsiDTN7QvV2YyYfWvCQtg9IWRAJoISfar_e4qtZXSbQfFA4deMiwQ-nKm3IHk5-UgMXVTI0WdFCfNM-CbJxbTxbg1WnaW2tXGP8xbgiYy-uiQOk2/s1600/CathedralToppledSpire.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5Fs2iWzWA2WxZh2up-X_eOHJ4haFlcsiDTN7QvV2YyYfWvCQtg9IWRAJoISfar_e4qtZXSbQfFA4deMiwQ-nKm3IHk5-UgMXVTI0WdFCfNM-CbJxbTxbg1WnaW2tXGP8xbgiYy-uiQOk2/s320/CathedralToppledSpire.jpg" style="cursor: move;" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Looking down Columbo St. The broken base<br />
of the spire of the cathedral is visible just<br />
left of the centre of the picture.</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7k0_byDXctSrwKMOIJuSCUImhz32NGEoXyIZRouj5Qrx0dR5ieIPTuVOBWlni7DpizdWDl1b-pAqyT3iAoQqr2S2_aVgU9FBr_QWi7TXrUzsu6P8XPU8ZsPLIp867HjcxC7iOIrTX5OAP/s1600/HotelBuildingBeforeCornerFellDown.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg7k0_byDXctSrwKMOIJuSCUImhz32NGEoXyIZRouj5Qrx0dR5ieIPTuVOBWlni7DpizdWDl1b-pAqyT3iAoQqr2S2_aVgU9FBr_QWi7TXrUzsu6P8XPU8ZsPLIp867HjcxC7iOIrTX5OAP/s320/HotelBuildingBeforeCornerFellDown.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The building beside the hotel before it lost its corner...</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhftfiaR7NHHloBKfxiOx7tm30FabEFxzAgJEvfn6AjSq9zOvAkuFAphtI8F3X2Bt8tEt2WcuJOrfl46BpujGyTbzylrp3JO3u3R4ArlZRvgroxot1ZUYKS5ztRuwZQ9QteFT7L_kc7larw/s1600/CornerFallingOffBuilding.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhftfiaR7NHHloBKfxiOx7tm30FabEFxzAgJEvfn6AjSq9zOvAkuFAphtI8F3X2Bt8tEt2WcuJOrfl46BpujGyTbzylrp3JO3u3R4ArlZRvgroxot1ZUYKS5ztRuwZQ9QteFT7L_kc7larw/s320/CornerFallingOffBuilding.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 13px;">... and after.</span></span></span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>We were told to back further away into the park, and when it became clear that there was no way we would be getting our bags back with aftershocks like that occurring, we took heed to the instructions of the hotel staff and started making our way to Hagley Park, where we were told emergency shelters would be erected. As we walked away, I could see the disaster response team cordoning off the central business district with a thick band of police tape. Along the way to Hagley Park, we passed more liquefaction, more damaged buildings, and paused to listen to the first details of the earthquake from a car stereo playing on the side of the street. In crossing over the Avon River I noticed with a jolt it was flowing the wrong way, and full of the same muddy brownish-grey water.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK0nUr6GDK1kaWP0c0SId_56ApBh26dF_Z1cC9SnxDdPyJgX7IdV67-POox2i34r9pWWgktvxf6Pt73UXj1mFILtEHG2PdMrdK7W5JkvzaBMIOnToc1kIADxgKuxKCh8ygsPHt-8QUCamh/s1600/RoadBuckling.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjK0nUr6GDK1kaWP0c0SId_56ApBh26dF_Z1cC9SnxDdPyJgX7IdV67-POox2i34r9pWWgktvxf6Pt73UXj1mFILtEHG2PdMrdK7W5JkvzaBMIOnToc1kIADxgKuxKCh8ygsPHt-8QUCamh/s320/RoadBuckling.jpg" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Buckling of a road near Hagley Park</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjR_H6teDY8ywhheGcLz-K2C5Y8fmUOqlmzW9b809r7EMmShyphenhyphene22T7RS482FYeRI1l-qQbfMrQp6xDhQWAh8-kWaXrn4I_FKa0XeP_9J94mnTtrVh34c391IgtPJqwFZZWl9X_BC2R-N_vg/s1600/TreeinHeadlyPark.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjR_H6teDY8ywhheGcLz-K2C5Y8fmUOqlmzW9b809r7EMmShyphenhyphene22T7RS482FYeRI1l-qQbfMrQp6xDhQWAh8-kWaXrn4I_FKa0XeP_9J94mnTtrVh34c391IgtPJqwFZZWl9X_BC2R-N_vg/s320/TreeinHeadlyPark.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A tree that fell victim to liquefaction in Hagley Park</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVvToeXov_n3Ks7MVDMs4vwyCn5AAX6Z6UI4sQYo7SR4MOPNUHTDKzh5KHFRWTOVkAfz0E_RL3bjNYUz-L6GJwEUsSwvbEeW_p5rnu7OP2-zS4zqRXxfbQ681qmOK_aelBB257BHf-27V7/s1600/FloodedAvonRiver.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVvToeXov_n3Ks7MVDMs4vwyCn5AAX6Z6UI4sQYo7SR4MOPNUHTDKzh5KHFRWTOVkAfz0E_RL3bjNYUz-L6GJwEUsSwvbEeW_p5rnu7OP2-zS4zqRXxfbQ681qmOK_aelBB257BHf-27V7/s320/FloodedAvonRiver.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The flooded Avon River</td></tr>
</tbody></table><br />
After staying in Hagley Park for an hour, it became apparent that this might very well be where we would be expected to spend the night; in a place with no sanitation facilities, no shelter, and no chance of hearing anything more about getting my parents' belongings back. At this point, I took charge, and suggested we walk to Heathcote, as I had managed to get through to Ilya (thank god he was okay), and he said that while the chimney had come down into the house, we could likely stay in the sleep-out out back, which hadn't suffered any damage. Our decision made, we consulted our maps of Christchurch to determine we were walking in the right direction, and headed off.<br />
<br />
The ten kilometres between downtown Christchurch and Heathcote seemed endless; partly because we were all in shock, not really knowing what to do, and partly because of the huge amount of damage and constant tremors of the ground around us. As we walked we saw more shattered buildings, more belongings and sales goods scattered about, more bends and belts and buckles and dips in the pavement, and more liquefaction water/silt volcanoes spilling out everywhere. With no power, traffic lights were out, and some corners were already manned by police officers directing traffic.<br />
<br />
Once we crossed over and started heading down Ferry Rd toward Sumner, however, things became very quiet on the road; the bridge had been blocked off to vehicular traffic, and for the last three kilometres we were the only passengers on the road, save for two motorbikes and one cyclist. As we got closer to Heathcote, I began to see that the damage was not abating, but growing; entire houses had collapsed, brick façades littered the ground, and clay ceilings had fallen through. One of the most harrowing was the KiwiRail coal train which had been going through the Lyttelton tunnel when the earthquake struck, causing the engineer to throw his train into full emergency to avoid crossing over the road on the overpass that he was sure would have collapsed, therefore sending him careening over the side into traffic. As it was, he didn't stop in time, but amazingly, the overpass held; the engine is on one side, and several coal cars are resting on top. We had to walk under this overpass to reach Illy's house, and my mom made us run, as the side wall of the overpass had cracked and it could have possibly fallen at any time.<br />
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I held my breath as we approached 24A Flavell St; Illy had said the house was still standing, but I was afraid the aftershocks in the time since would have taken it down. However, it was still there, and I found Illy in the back garden sleep-out, sweeping the floor to get ready for us, having salvaged the canned food drawers and cutlery drawer from the kitchen. I introduced him to my mom and dad, and then I cautiously entered the house to see about retrieving my belongings.<br />
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It was so sad (and scary) to step into that house. Here was a place I had felt so at home, so comfortable, and to see it completely destroyed was heartbreaking. Everything had fallen off the shelves in the kitchen, leaving a mass of broken glass and jam on the floor almost half a foot thick. (I especially regretted this as mixed into that carnage was the peaches I had spent yesterday canning.) The living room was covered with dust and littered with bricks; Penelope's office was inaccessible due to a fallen bookcase blocking the door; the master bedroom was a jumble of clothes, furniture, and bedding; the bathroom in a similar state of chaos, with everything from the cabinets thrown across the floor, and the remaining bricks from the chimney threatening to fall down into the bathtub. My room was total chaos: the ladder to the loft was now bearing a significant amount of the bed's weight, and two dressers and a bookcase had fallen over, spilling their contents everywhere. Oh, how regretted not packing up my things beforehand!<br />
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With the help of my dad, we carefully began to salvage my things from the bedroom, a task made all the more dangerous by the tremors that kept rocking the house and forcing us to run outside as fast as we could. In the end, I think we got most of my things; I was unable to find my razor or two DVDs lent to me by Craig, but it was simply not feasible or safe to continue searching.<br />
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We had salvaged bedding and pillows for the sleep-out, and Illy was just boiling water on the camp gas range to make us all cups of tea when Vaughn, Kat, and Malcolm showed up; after all the introductions were made and we had convened in the sleep-out for a cup of tea, it was decided that everyone would come up and spend the night at Vaughn and Kat's, whose house in the hillside suburb of Cashmere was three years old, likely has its picture in the dictionary next to the definition "earthquake-proof", and had rooms for us all to sleep in.<br />
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We loaded up Penelope's car and Malcolm's car, and with Vaguhn and Kat riding Vaughn's motorbike, Ily, Malcolm, and my mom in Penelope's car, and my dad in I in Malcolm's car (poor dad, he had to drive on his first day here!), we carefully made our way down the dark streets in the rain toward the hills.<br />
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<div>If anyone is wondering about Kismet, she survived the earthquake with Illy in the lounge of the house, but ran off as soon as the shaking had stopped; Illy let the neighbours go before we left to keep an eye out for her, and left some crunchies out for her in his sleep-out.<br />
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Up at Vaughn and Kat's house, we divvied up bedding and rooms, and cooked a passable meal of pasta and sausage using their gas range (after thoroughly inspecting it for leaks). My parents were humbled by the Snowdon family's hospitality; I suppose I should have been, too, but I simply knew being with them would be an exercise in us all pulling together to help each other, and it was far better than being down in the park.<br />
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We sat huddled in the living room until 11:20pm or so, bracing ourselves for the aftershocks that kept shaking the house, and marvelling the number of places in Christrchuch below that still had power (we didn't). We also pooled our information: apparently the earthquake was a magnitude 6.3, less than September's 7.4, but this one was far shallower, at a depth of only 5km. The epicentre was placed at somewhere just below Lyttelton Harbour, which explains why the Snowdon house experienced such violent shaking; it was just on the other side of the mountain range. Reports of deaths were already coming in, including those of two transit busses crushed by falling debris from buildings, and the 22 worshippers at the midday mass at the Cathedral, crushed under falling pillars and limestone.<br />
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At 11:30pm we all said goodnight; my parents went to sleep on an air mattress in another room, with Illy in the room below them; Kat and Vaughn went to their bed in the room below the living room, and Malcolm and I bedded down in the lounge, I on a extremely comfy bed-chair contraption, and he on a mattress on the floor. I hardly slept all night, however... each aftershock brought a jolt of adrenaline surging through my veins, and I lay there tense and in a permanent "fight-or-flight" response mode, ready to jump and run for it should another violent earthquake erupt.<br />
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In the morning we all decided on our courses of action: Vaughn went to work (he works in construction); Kat went to see a friend; Malcolm went downtown to see if he could help with moving liquefacted soil; and Illy, my mom, my dad, and I drove in Malcolm's car to Ashburton, a community about 80km south of Christchurch, to see if we could rent a car (we knew there was no chance of getting anything open in Christchuch). Along the way we passed petrol stations with queues 30 cars long; there was a huge run on petrol.<br />
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When we got to Ashburton and to the rental place I had been able to look up on my computer using my vodafone wireless key (which was also how I was able to update my facebook status to let people know I was okay), we found the agency only had one car left; people from Christchurch had been calling down to purvey a rental themselves. The deal done, we took Illy out for lunch to a Robbie's (the same restaurant chain I went to with Craig, how ironic), and enjoyed the luxury of a warm meal, electricity, and running water.<br />
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The exciting part of today for me was having to drive Malcolm's car back to Christchurch while my dad drove the rental; I wasn't expecting my first real right-hand-drive experience to be turning onto and navigating a busy highway into an earthquake-damaged city! With Illy as my co-navigator, however, we made it back to Cashmere and to the house safely (with a few minor issues of riding the rumble strip - my lane tracking isn't used to driving on the left - and reaching for the window wiper control instead of the signal switch). I can't say the same for my parents; they got a little lost, and ended up back at the house twenty minutes after us.<br />
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By 5:20pm, and after another big aftershock, the three of us had said our goodbyes and thank-yous, and were loaded up in our rental car, heading out of town for the town of Greymouth... "Getting the hell out of Dodge" as I called it. Due to my frazzled nerves, however, I screwed up and neglected to see that we were heading for Lewis Pass over the alps instead of Arthur's Pass, as we had originally intended to go, upsetting my parents as they were really looking forward to seeing it. Sigh, I'm sorry... this vacation is really not woking out well for them, now is it?! However, we may go see Arthur's Pass tomorrow as a side-trip.<br />
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Halfway through the drive my dad pulled over and let me drive the rest of the way to Greymouth while he rested in the back seat; now we are situated at Noah's Ark Backpackers in the Leopard room, and I am down here in the dining room typing this, where I have been for the last three hours (it is now 2:15am). I think I'm finally allowing my nervous system to come to terms with what it has been put through these past 36 hours. I'm completely on edge; every time I hear a low rumble, every time I feel the floor shake from someone walking by, I'm convinced it is an earthquake and my heart leaps into my throat in fear. I hope I am able to relax enough to sleep tonight, because god knows I am exhausted and need it.<br />
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I'm very grateful to be out of Christchurch, but I know my nervous system is still there, and my heart is there, too, with Malcolm and Vaughn and Kat and Illy (and Edward and Penelope, who found out what happened only this morning and are flying back from their vacation to see what can be salvaged from their ruined home). I hope I can think of something, no matter how small, that we can do for them.<br />
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I am off now, to try and sleep and not dream of earthquakes. Goodnight.<br />
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~Carolyn~</div>Carolynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18393970339280366748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2937491792624396671.post-44119655636707724622011-02-22T00:58:00.000-08:002011-02-22T00:58:06.518-08:00We're Okay. We've Survived Christchurch Earthquake, Vol. II.Christchurch. It rocks.<br />
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My mom and dad and I are all okay. We were sitting in a restaurant at the corner of Worchester and Manchester Streets when all of a sudden the ground began to heave and buckle... the glass windows shattered, the awning outside collapsed, and we were thrown to the ground. Twelve seconds of horrific shaking later, the brick building had collapsed around us.<br />
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We got out safely.<br />
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We made our way (walking 10km) to Heathcote, and now we are staying with Vaughn and Kat at their house in Cashmere, with Illy and Malcolm. We aren't sure what we're going to do tomorrow... somehow we need to get out of here.<br />
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We're just going to wait for daylight, but I'm not sure how much sleep we are going to get... aftershocks keep shaking the earth, and some are quite large and violent.<br />
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I feel so guilty for bringing my parents into a war zone.<br />
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I'm just grateful that we are okay... 65 were confirmed dead at 5pm. I'm sure the toll is only going to rise. We were in the Cathedral for a tour forty-five minutes before the earthquake struck... now the interior concrete pillars are collapsed, the pews are crushed, and those who were participating in the midday mass are buried under two metres of rubble and likely dead.<br />
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I think I'm in shock.<br />
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Hold on tight, everyone. I'll try to keep you posted as long as the cell phone towers keep broadcasting a signal I can connect to, and my battery holds out on my laptop.<br />
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Goodnight... I hope it is. I really do!<br />
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~Carolyn~Carolynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18393970339280366748noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2937491792624396671.post-48855712535133140312011-02-21T05:02:00.000-08:002011-02-21T05:02:29.233-08:00Peaches and Beans and Scones, Oh My!My last day WWOOFing at Château Snowdon today... and boy, was I busy! Even though Penelope and Edward are on vacation, I still managed to occupy myself with a full day of work.<br />
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I started in the morning with making pancakes for breakfast, and then doing all the breakfast and leftover dinner dishes. Then I wrote my blog entry about Ferrymead, brought in a load of laundry, hung up a load of laundry, and put my own things in the washer. By then it was noon, and Ilya made the two of us a nice salad (it was really good; he's quite the chef!) before he headed off downtown. My next challenge (after hanging out my own laundry, of course): canning peaches.<br />
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I've never canned by myself before, but Penelope's method is slightly unconventional, so it didn't involve as much specialized equipment as my mom's canning set-up. I sliced peaches and placed them into jars, and poured a hot syrup of sugar water into the jars until the peaches were just covered. Then it was into the oven with the pop-tops lightly affixed to the jars, and I heated the jars until the liquid inside them started to bubble. Out of the oven they came (a very delicate operation involving a thick tea towel; there aren't any oven mitts here), and I placed them on the counter before screwing down the rings and leaving them to cool. I made eight jars, and all eight seals took, yea! Not bad for my first time.<br />
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Not content with canning peaches, my next task was to blanch some beans from the garden; I went out and picked a whole stainless-steel bowl full, and then washed and topped and tailed and sliced them before immersing them in boiling water for three minutes, then plunging them into a cold water bath before drying them and placing them in ziploc bags to be frozen. I even picked enough to have some for dinner... sigh. Beans... I've had about enough of them.<br />
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By this point the sun was getting low on the horizon, and I decided my last exploit in the kitchen would be to make cheese scones for tea and breakfast tomorrow morning; while they were in the oven baking, I slipped in a few sausage rolls from the freezer to eat for dinner. I certainly felt like a good little domestic girl today... I spent the entire day in the kitchen!<br />
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After dinner I had a shower, and then sat down to type up a letter from a handwritten copy (my contribution to Edward's Hurunui Water Project fight). That went along just fine until I came to a table full of 49 Latin plant classification names that had to be typed up as well... it almost made me wish I had studied biology at university so I would have a better idea of what I was transcribing.<br />
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Malcolm and Ilya came home from field hockey (Monday night intramurals), and the three of us relaxed in the living room, sampling various types of alcohol the two brothers had in their possession. We started with a port of Ilya's, then to a lemon liqueur of Malcolm's, then a cherry brandy, then straight vodka (you can see we're degenerating here), before culminating in glasses of absinthe. Well, having opened my mouth and saying absinthe can be served lit on fire, and having Malcolm the rocket scientist / pyro in the house, we promptly found ourselves in the kitchen, with shotglasses and a lighter! We used the "bohemian method"; first we poured a shot of absinthe into a glass, then soaked a sugar cube in absinthe and balanced it on top of the glass, resting on two chopsticks. Then we lit the sugarcube on fire, waited until it started to melt slightly, then removed one of the chopsticks to send it tumbling into the glass of absinthe, which then itself lit on fire. A quick addition of another shotglass full of water puts out the fire and completes the mixing of the drink (save for a little twist of lemon which we added later). I'm not a fan (I think absinthe tastes like the fluoride mouthwash they give you at the dentist), but it was great fun to soak sugar cubes in 60% alcohol and see them burn with a bright blue flame.<br />
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Now it is almost 2am, and I have to be up and out of the house by 8am at the latest. Why? Because MY PARENTS ARE COMING! As I type these words they are on a plane flying here to New Zealand; they left at 4pm my time (7pm their time) from Vancouver, and get into Auckland at 6am before hopping onto a domestic flight down to Christchurch at 7am, putting them into Christchurch Airport around 8:30am. It's funny... I always thought my parents were going to be the ones welcoming me back to Canada at the arrivals gate in Vancouver, but instead it's going to be me standing on the other side of the barrier here in Christchurch, saying, "Kia ora! Welcome to Aotearoa!" Goodnight. :-)<br />
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~Carolyn~Carolynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18393970339280366748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2937491792624396671.post-1935490612104863482011-02-20T03:08:00.000-08:002011-02-20T22:15:27.651-08:00Ferrymead!Today was something of a disjointed day... I say that because in amidst of everything that I was up to, Penelope and Edward were trying to coordinate finally leaving on their much-needed and much-deserved annual vacation. They had originally hoped to leave on Friday, which turned into Saturday, then Sunday morning, and then finally Sunday night. It reminded me of my house before we leave on a big camping trip; bags and containers everywhere, people racing back and forth, and a car with all its doors open being systematically stuffed with goodies. (The main difference being here our car usually had a storage clamshell on the roof full of deck chairs and camping gear, not matching kayaks.)<br />
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This morning Penelope insisted I take it easy; she said I had earned a day off. Nevertheless, I did all the breakfast dishes and dinner dishes from the night before, and then sat in my room feeling guilty as Ilya moved mulch from the front yard to the back in the wheelbarrow. I spent the time going through my photos of the Milford Track; I'm hoping to get those up on the blog in the next day or two.<br />
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Around 12pm Ilya and I were finally out the door and walking down the street to <a href="http://www.ferrymead.org.nz/">Ferrymead Historic Park</a>, which I can describe loosely as a BC Forest Discovery Centre on steroids, if one took out the forestry emphasis and replaced it with an Edwardian township. (Maybe the comparison of Barkerville, minus the gold mining and plus a steam train would be a more accurate comparison.) In addition to the steam train, there's a running tram system clanging along the township's main street, and a tiny two-foot gauge salt-mining train that runs in a big loop around several buildings.<br />
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Ferrymead is located on the site of the original <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferrymead_Railway">Ferrymead Railway</a>, which was built in 1863 to service ships docked at the Ferrymead Wharf while the rail tunnel to Lyttelton was under construction. Once the tunnel was finished in 1867, the Ferrymead Railway became the Ferrymead Branch, and was closed shortly thereafter. This gives Ferrymead Railway he dubious distinction of being both the first public railway to be built and the first railway to be closed in New Zealand. In 1964, local rail enthusiasts began restoring the site and laying track for the creation of a heritage railway park; trains began running in 1972, and Ferrymead itself opened in 1977.<br />
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On event days (such as today, a Sunday where the steam train was running) adult admission is $20; however, because Ilya volunteers at Ferrymead, the woman in admissions just waved us through when Ilya went to pay for me. We put the money to good use, buying ourselves lunch at the bakery onsite; meat pies, cookies, and I tried a bottle of Ilya's Smoky Thunder ginger beer (it was quite tasty). We took our purchases and went and sat on a luggage cart at the Moorhouse Station and watched the steam train arrive and then depart again. The train runs back and forth on approximately 1km of track between the Moorhouse Station and the Ferrymead Station, near the old wharf pilings. The train pulls the three carriages up the tracks, decouples, switches onto the passing loop beside them, and then recouples (backward) to the end of the train to pull the three cars back to the Moorhouse Station. Once there, it again decouples, switches onto the passing track, and recouples to the front of the carriages, ready for the next journey. Seeing set-ups like this (or Shantytown, where the train pushes the carriages up and then pulls them back down) made me appreciate the beauty of our figure eight at the BCFDC; the train is always pulling the carriages from the front of the train, and we don't have to bother with constant coupling and decoupling!<br />
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Nevertheless, the volunteers working on the train seemed not to mind all the constant shunting. Ilya introduced me to the three young people working on the train that day: Deen, the guard (dressed snazzily in a cap, blazer, and collared shirt and tie), Andrew, the railhand (helping couple and decouple the engine), and Alex(andra), dressed in a white blouse and long skirt who I assume was playing the role of a passenger, but really just wanted to hang out with the guys in the guard's carriage.<br />
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We hopped on the train and rode out in the open with the guard (where we weren't supposed to; sometimes it's fun to have friends who work at such places!), and then when we got back to Moorehouse Station Ilya got permission for me to ride in the cab for the next trip. The engine running today was W192, a very significant locie in that it was the first-ever locomotive built in New Zealand: it was built in Addington by the New Zealand Government Railway in 1889. It is one of only two W-class locies ever built (later modifications earned the Wa classification). For the first two decades of its life it worked between Upper Hutt and Summit on the North Island, and then for the rest of its working days was based out of Greymouth, hauling coal trains to the Greymouth harbour here on the west coast of the South Island. In 1959 it was withdrawn from service, but spared the scrap heap, and ended up featuring in a static exhibit in 1963, before being more fully restored in the 1980s for the 125th anniversary of NZR in 1988.<br />
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The driver and fireman were quite happy to chat with me about W192, and the fireman, upon learning where I work in Canada, said, "Well, now, you can't go home without saying you fired the very first locomotive built in New Zealand, now can you? Pick up that shovel!" So yes, I actually shovelled coal into the firebox as we puffed back down the line to the Moorhouse Station. "Shovel all the coal in, gotta keep 'er rollin'"...<br />
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Thanking the driver and fireman, Ilya and I then started wandering around the township of Ferrymead; or to put things more accurately, Ilya eagerly showed me around his favourite buildings. Our first stop was the general store, which featured a player piano and organ; naturally, I had a go at playing a few tunes. Our second stop was the post office, which was decidedly more exciting than the post office at the BCFDC: this one featured an exhibit of telegraph and teletype machinery, several antique automated telephone exchanges, and a working operator exchange!<br />
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When we first entered the room housing the manual telephone exchange, I squealed, "Oh, click and bang!", as I had heard the system called on a <i>Secret Life of Machines</i> programme. The volunteer (an older man) working in the area whirled around to see who had spoken, and then spent the next twenty minutes showing me around the exhibit. The machine I had first seen was actually not the Strowger "click-and-bang" I remembered from the TV show, but a slightly older version that was first adopted in New Zealand. He took Ilya and I into another room, where there was setup of Strowger selectors from the 1960s that looked exactly like the ones explained to me by Tim Hunkin. Ilya and I had a blast, calling each other from the several operating rotary phones on the counter, watching the selectors whirl and grind about, and then causing the other person's phone to ring.<br />
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In the far back room was an exhibit that proved to be even more fun: a working operator telephone exchange! Complete with four panels of inputs and 1/4-inch phone jacks in holders (kept neatly in place by a series of pulleys and bungy cords), many buildings at Ferrymead are wired into the main telephone exchange, allowing calls between buildings to be placed by ringing the operator and asking to be patched through the switchboard to the correct extension. When Ilya and I arrived three adolescents (dressed in period garb; their parents work at Ferrymead and as such they, too, volunteer here on the weekends) were engrossed in operating the exchange, taking turns calling the switchboard and routing calls through to other phones. Ilya even went running over to the general store to try and place a call through the switchboard back to the main room of the post office. I played along, too, and got a nasty loud popping sound in my ear when the line connected between me in the post master's office and one of the kids in the exchange room next door.<br />
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Finally, we left the fun of the telephone exchange behind, and went up to the signal box to watch the signal man throwing the points for the steam train. None of the points are thrown manually during all that shunting I witnessed the train crew doing; instead, they communicate with the signalman via a combination of bells and buzzers, and the signal man sets the points via a set of levers from high up in the signal box, recording every single change in a log book. Fortunately, the switches were behaving themselves today; the operator told me that since the earthquake in September, the contacts haven't been meeting properly and things can get a bit dodgy.<br />
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The next hour or so was spent exploring the various rail sheds and workshops of Ferrymead; several different groups and organizations are based there, including the Tramway Historical Society, The Canterbury Railway Society, and the Ferrymead Museum of Road Transport, so there was all sorts of machinery and equipment housed in sheds and buildings, or lying disassembled in the yards, some being worked over by volunteers, others which I'm sure have been sitting in their exact locations for years. Walking into the Rail Shop reminded me of a slightly larger version of the BCFDC's own rail shop; an HO scale model as opposed to an N scale, if you will. And believe it or not, it was approaching the same level of messiness as our own shop!<br />
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By the time we left Ferrymead it was almost 5pm; the gates had closed at 4:30pm, so we made our way out the back street, walking underneath the metal latticework erected to allow passage of the electric trolley down the street (it reminded me of sections of downtown Vancouver). When we arrived back at home we discovered Penelope and Edward had not left yet, but were getting ever-closer to their goal (this relieved me somewhat; I was afraid I wasn't going to get to say goodbye).<br />
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This evening I went out to dinner with Craig, the fireman I met at Shantytown last month. He lives in Christchurch, so it seemed only fitting (and polite) that we got together for dinner. It meant that I missed actually seeing Penelope and Edward off (which I regret), but I did give her a big hug before I left; Penelope told me I should come back, and that the door is always open: "You fit quite well into our odd little family!" she said.<br />
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Craig picked me up at the corner, and then we went out for dinner to a bar and grill called Robbie's up in New Brighton... I had a light dinner, as I had already eaten when I got back to Penelope's when Ilya and I returned from Ferrymead. Craig lent me two DVDs of train salvaging operations from the Greymouth River created by friends of his; they are footage of the recovery mission to rescue the trains dumped into the Greymouth river that he took me out to see when I was last in Greymouth. I'll give them a watch, and then I'll give them to Ian Tibbles at Shantytown so he can return them to Craig the next time he goes out there to work.<br />
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I got home around 9:45pm, and then after a shower, Ilya, Malcolm, and I watched several episodes of <i>Big Bang Theory</i>; Malcolm in particular seems to find it hilarious (likely because he's a graduate student in engineering at the University of Canterbury)! The two of them also laugh at me because I have so much of it memorized... but I can't help that my brain seemingly effortlessly remembers humorous snippets of dialogue. Ah, yes, we were three slightly silly adolescents, and didn't get to bed until after 2am (and only after Malcolm's setting off of a small container of rocket fuel on the back lawn, all the while claiming not to be addicted or a pyro. Riiight... ;-) Night!<br />
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~Carolyn~Carolynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18393970339280366748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2937491792624396671.post-89836908966590177902011-02-19T02:40:00.000-08:002011-02-19T02:40:26.406-08:00Compost (and the actual "Taming of the Shrew")Oh, compost. My old friend, we meet again... who would have guessed (certainly not I) that I would become an expert in compost construction during my time in New Zealand? This morning's (and afternoon's) five-hour marathon task involved spreading old compost, then creating a bedding of sticks and leaves, a wall of bricks (oh yes, I'm a stonemason again!) to separate the new compost from the old cabbage leaf compost, and crafting alternating layers of compost ingredients. I could hear Rosemarie in my head as Penelope instructed me on how to alternate the compost layers; her system was very similar to Rosemarie's, with a few minor adjustments (a variation on a theme). After the initial layers of sticks, we laid down a layer of leaves and pea-straw ("dry") and then watered that down and sprinkled on "cow pooh water" (the yummy concoction was exactly what the name describes it to be). On top of that went the "green stuff", which was the huge pile of weeds I had managed to amass after four days of ravaging the garden. On top of that went a sprinkling of hydrated lime, and then another layer of dry pea-straw, starting the whole cycle again. Interspersed into the "green stuff" layers I added the seaweed I collected from the beach two days ago, and wheelbarrow loads of mulching chips that Malcolm (and later Ilya) generated by running branches and sticks through the gas-powered mulcher in the front yard. I also turned the existing "old" compost into the new compost, helping to aid its decomposition, and spreading the desired bugs and bacteria into the new compost pile.<br />
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Finally, by 2pm, I had a compost pile four metres by one and a half, and about three-quarters of a metre tall, or about 4.5 cubic metres of compost... that's a lot of compost, and boy, did my back and hands feel it! (I imagine I also looked and smelled like a compost by the end of it, either).<br />
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Thankfully, Penelope had created a delicious lunch for me and Ilya (rice, millet, and stewed veggies), and a slice of my banana cake for dessert. After lunch I sat around like a vegetative blob... I was exhausted from all my carting and shovelling and raking and spreading. As a thank-you for all my hard work, Penelope asked if I would like to go see an outdoor production of <i>The Taming of the Shrew</i> this evening with her oldest son, Vaughn, and his girlfriend, Kristin.<br />
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The production was put on by <a href="http://www.topdogtheatre.com/">Top Dog Theatre</a>, a local amateur theatre company, and on the Mound Lawn at <a href="http://www.monavale.co.nz/">Mona Vale</a>, a historic farm estate on the Avon River. The picturesque setting was perfectly fitting for a Shakespearian production, and the three hundred or so audience members were crowded on the gently sloping lawn, sitting on blankets and in deck chairs, dining on picnic dinners and enjoying glasses of wine (there was even a draw at intermission for a bottle of wine, te he).<br />
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After a bit of an embarrassing moment at the gate (where Kristin made a big fuss about the tickets costing $12; she's American, and I hate to confess that I found her reaction and general temperament to be that of a typical American), we found a space to sit, and sat back to be entertained. And entertained we were! I had never seen <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Taming_of_the_Shrew">The Taming of the Shrew</a> (I've seen <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiss_Me,_Kate">Kiss Me, Kate!</a>), and this was a delightful way to experience it for the first time. Shakespeare is really meant to be heard and seen, not read... even though I didn't understand the usage of an occasional word or phrase, the spirit of the story easily shone through. As for the misogynistic-untertone-debate, I didn't pay it too much attention; I didn't feel like getting bent and twisted over something written over four hundred years ago, and intended as a comedy to boot. (But believe you me, I'll be doing a bunch of literary criticism reading on the play over the next few days!). I can't lavish enough praise upon the actors; they made Shakespeare come alive, and their flawless memorization was no small feat, I am sure!<br />
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After the play ended Vaughn and Kristin drove me back to Penelope's, where Ily and I got into a debate about the amount of corn-derived products in the food system, culminating in he, Edward, and I watching an iTunes U podcast on my computer of a lecture by Michael Pollan (drawn primarily from his book, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Omnivore's_Dilemma">The Omnivore's Dilemma</a>). Now I am in the living room, Malcolm and Ilya and I are all on our computers (two MacBooks and a Dell), and Penelope and Edward are behind us, talking about Edward's trip to the lake, and the data he was able to gather to further the fight against the Hurunui Water Project.<br />
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Now it is 11:40pm, and I'm yawning like crazy... I think it is bedtime for Shakespearian compost-wenches. :-P Night!<br />
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~Carolyn~Carolynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18393970339280366748noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2937491792624396671.post-59351525333014425532011-02-18T02:29:00.000-08:002011-02-18T02:29:35.031-08:00The Domesticating of the ShrewToday I got my authentic Christchurch earthquake experience; at 7:43am this morning, I was sitting at my desk in my room, and suddenly the bookcase began to shake, along with the desk surface, my chair, and the loft bed. I had just enough time to think, "Oh, my, we're having an earthquake! I hope it's just an aftershock... let's see if it gets any bigger", and then it was over... I figure it lasted about three seconds at the most. According to the <a href="http://www.geonet.org.nz/earthquake/quakes/recent_quakes.html">GeoNet website</a>, it was a 3.8 magnitude, at a depth of 8km, occurred 10 km southwest of Christchurch, and has been assigned reference number 3466477. I imagine for some people this morning the earthquake gave new meaning to the phrase "being shaken awake!"<br />
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Out in the garden this morning, my first task was to spread pea-hay over some newly sprouted seedlings, and then weed another patch directly adjacent to the seedlings so Penelope could plant lettuce, carrots, and radishes. I turned the soil and trucked over several buckets of compost... one thing's for sure, it's a lot easier to work the soil here than it was up at Howard and Rosemarie's in Nelson; this garden is far, far less stony!<br />
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After a little bit of time spent weeding the garden pathway, I turned my attention to the herb garden; more specifically, to the sage, rosemary, and mint plants, that were running wild all over the zucchini and bean plants. Armed with clippers and lopers, I pruned the dead branches out from underneath the sage, attacked the rosemary and brought it back under control (there was a whole dead section under one side that wasn't even visible under all the new growth!), and showed no mercy when it came to removing the mint plant; I pulled up runner after runner, root clump after root clump. Now all that remains is a small mint patch about a sixth of the plant's original area coverage; all of the herbs I pruned back have now been bunched and strung up in the rafters of the living/dining room here in the house by Ilya to dry.<br />
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After lunch an increasingly irate Penelope took an increasingly-lazy Ilya downtown (he needed to run some errands for his ginger beer business; the problem was, he slept away most of the morning, despite Penelope's repeated requests for him to get up and make himself useful in the garden), and I stayed at home and made a banana cake from six mushy bananas that were threatening to turn into a putrid goo on the fruit plate. I'm not much of an innate baker (too little practise), but I can follow a recipe reasonably well, and the cake was a success. My one mistake was in not letting the cake cool down enough; I iced it with lemon icing (made using freshly-squeezed lemon juice from a lemon growing on the tree outside!) when it was still slightly warm, causing some of the icing to drip down the sides. Edward looked at it and said dryly, "Ah, a global warming cake!"<br />
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Edward is actually one to know about such environmental issues; he is currently leading a crusade to halt the proposed damning project on the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurunui_River">Hurunui River</a>, which seeks to damn the river, raise the water levels in Lake Sumner, and use the excess water for irrigation. Like all controversial projects, the amount of misinformation flying around from corporations and politicians with vested interests is significant, and Edward has been working tirelessly to beat them at their own game, exposing the flaws and blatant lies in the "official" analyses. Tonight he has headed up to stay at his and Penelope's cabin at Loch Katrina, near Lake Sumner, and tomorrow with a colleague will be collecting data using a GPS system to refute the claims of minimal ecological damage the Hurunui Water Project pundits claim will occur if the dam is built. I have my own small part to play in this environmental crusade, but for reasons of privacy I'll keep it off the internet. Suffice it to say I'm trying to do something to help him fight this fight.<br />
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While my cake was in the oven I called my mom to discuss some final details about accommodation here in New Zealand, and had her give me her pancake recipe so I could try again to make her pancakes. Owing to a combination of having the correct proportions of ingredients, and lightly greasing the frying pan, I succeeded this time in crafting perfectly acceptable pancakes. I must say, with so much time spent in the kitchen today, I was almost domesticated.<br />
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I had just finished flipping the last two pancakes in the pan when Penelope came home, hiding a frustrated foul mood; she had dropped Ilya off downtown, and he had instructed her he would just be "two minutes"... she waited for fifteen before driving off, and by then one of the stores she wanted to visit had closed, and as such she now has to make a special trip in tomorrow to purchase lime for the new compost she and I are going to make tomorrow morning. Things were a little hectic and tense around here this evening, as Edward got ready to go to the lake, Penelope stewed about Ilya's laziness and inconsiderate nature while making dinner, and I tried to both stay out of the way and help at the same time.<br />
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After dinner Penelope finally got Ilya to do something; he put bread dough into bread tins and then put them in the oven to bake (and then conveniently forgotten they were in there; thankfully, Penelope caught them before they burned). Malcolm came home, and he, Ilya, and I enjoyed a few laughs over clips from <i>Big Bang Theory</i> and <i>Corner Gas</i> (it was amusing when Malcolm thought Saskatchewan and Saskatoon were the same thing, just pronounced differently. I learned him!).<br />
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It's 11:30pm, and I'm going to head to bed now. I believe I have a date with the mulcher and compost in the morning. Goodnight!<br />
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~Carolyn~Carolynhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18393970339280366748noreply@blogger.com0