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Archive for March, 2009

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House of Pain

Sunday, March 8th, 2009

We arrived in Dunedin to some nicer weather and spent a few days taking in the local sights.  The Otago peninsula provided a nice walk and good views, but the big atttraction for me in the city was Cadbury World.  Some of you may know about my addiction to Crunchies.  They are generally not available in the US, so whenever I’m in a “Commonwealth country,” I stock up on bags of them.  Here I visited the mothership and took a tour of the factory, complete with lots of free samples.  My chocolate cravings are satisfied for a while at least.

On another note, we’ve tried to attend a sporting event in each country.  The obvious choice for NZ is rugby, and the Super 14 season is happening now.  We got tickets to the Highlanders (Dunedin) vs. Crusaders (Christchurch) match on Saturday night.  I can’t say that I understood everything that was happening, but it’s pretty easy to just follow the ball.  The game was good, but the activities before were even more entertaining.  This picture is not a Braveheart re-enactment – it’s the Highlander mascot doing his best to intimidate the opposing team. (Would have scared me.)

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Posted in New Zealand, Travel | 2 Comments »

Lady and the Tramp(er)

Wednesday, March 4th, 2009

The activity otherwise known as hiking or trekking elsewhere in the world is called tramping here in NZ. We’ve been doing our fair share of it too, although technically anything less than a full day is not really considered a tramp, just a walk.

After being foiled by the weather again (apparently you can’t kayak in gale force winds), we went south to Christchurch and spent a nice evening wandering around the city. The sunshine here cooperated with us, so we took the Tranzalpine train to Arthur’s Pass National Park and tramped to some lovely lookouts and waterfalls under blue skies.

Here’s the mountain town of Arthur’s Pass Village:

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PS – I also learned that I’m not allergic to bee stings, but they are very irritating.

Posted in New Zealand, Travel | 3 Comments »

Amateur Meteorology

Monday, March 2nd, 2009

After hours spent pouring over guidebooks, brochures, and maps, we finally put together a plan that would fit our schedule for the South Island and enable us to see most of what we wanted.  With the plan in hand, we drove the campervan off the ferry at Picton and stopped by the information center to check the weather forecast.

Seeing a large front moving in, we had to ask ourselves “Is it better to hike in the rain or kayak in the rain?”  Instead, we threw out the plan and went wine tasting in the rain.  This has been our backup activity for bad weather and the good news is that we’ve really been enjoying some excellent wines.  The bad news is that we’ve run out of wine regions in NZ.  Malborough was very nice, so maybe we can come back if necessary.

Unlike SoCal where you can predict partly sunny and 70 deg to be right 90% of the time, the weather here is very complicated and constantly changing.  The winds blow across the ocean until the bump into the mountains on the west coast creating all sorts of micro climates and storm systems.  Everyone you ask seems to have an opinion about what will happen tomorrow and the TV weather even shows the isobar maps so you can draw your own conclusions and plan accordingly.

We actually did get a few nice days and managed to get in that hiking and kayaking in Abel Tasman National Park.  The temperature was perfect and the skies blue, but I keep hearing that conditions are “changing.”  Not sure what that means, but we’ll find out in the morning.

blog-tasman.JPG

Posted in New Zealand, Travel | 2 Comments »

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