A Day in the Clouds

It's been pretty miserable weather here the last week or so.  Rainy, cloudy and on Sunday, the day of our latest hike up to Mt. Oxford, it was also cold.  We are nearing the start of summer and I'm ready for a bit of sun.  But, given our impending Great Walk, we needed another ambitious hike to whip ourselves into shape.  So off to Cooper's Creek car park we went.  We had a brief stop at the Oxford farmer's market to pick up our eggs and to feed the teenagers.  This is the last of the Oxford foothill hikes and also the highest peak at just over 1300 metres.  It's also rated the most difficult of the three.  

It started quite leisurely, with a gradual climb to about 700 metres but after that it was pretty steep.  Couple that with a near constant blanket of drizzle and overall it was pretty wet.  Great hiking weather in the bush but once you got above the bush line and into the exposed slopes of Mt. Oxford, it was mildly nasty.  We actually didn't make it to the top because visibility was maybe 30 metres and it was very wet.  It was also about 8 degrees as we worked our way above the tree line which was markedly cooler than amongst the trees.  So no pictures from the top half of the hike.

The trail was a slow trickle the entire way

New Zealand earthworm

On our way down, a slight clearing of the fog

Cooper's Creek was high

Down near the start of the track

A Warm, Familiar Place

Each weekend for the past few months we have endeavoured to get out and hike.  This is mainly to work ourselves into shape for our upcoming Christmas hike along the Heaphy Track.  This will be an eighty kilometre hike across an incredibly beautiful and diverse landscape and is considered one of the Great Walks of New Zealand, which is saying something because most of the hikes here are already pretty great.    Originally, we had intended to go back up into the high country and do another peak hike but, at the last minute, we found out we had to head into town to get our son his vaccine passport.  Now, being a fan of government overreach and being more than willing to sacrifice all of my freedoms to support a tyrannical regime, we rushed off to our local pharmacy and GP to do our bit to oppress the masses.  

After our brief detour, we decided to do one of our favourite "in town" walks, Godley Head.  We started off at Taylor's Mistake and headed along the coast.  It was an incredibly pleasant, if slightly warm day, so the surfers were out in force and we enjoyed watching them bobbing and weaving through the waves down below.  This is a fairly easy walk with minimal elevation gain so the going was easy.  The turquoise water always astounds.  We look forward to our next visit.
 

Fishing, but not really

I've been an avid fly fisher for over two decades.  I've been to a lot of beautiful areas with the purported excuse of "going fishing".  Most of the times, I catch some fish but it's always just part of the package of taking a slightly more complicated walk.  Today, I didn't catch any fish.  As a matter of fact, I only saw one fish, which for New Zealand can sometimes be considered a respectable fishing day.  Today's highlight was inadvertently stumbling upon a colony of black-fronted terns.  This bird is endemic to New Zealand and is considered a rarer cousin to the white-fronted tern.  They had a number of nests scattered across the river bed where I was prowling and they got justifiably agitated as I got closer and closer to the individual nests.   I quickly snapped a picture and continued on my way.  It was a great day, even without the fish.

The weather was perfect.  The water was high.  That's my excuse for not catching any fish.

The reason for all the distress.

They did not want me getting any closer.

A Day Out: Mount Richardson

As promised, I'm back with more pictures of beautiful places.  This weekend's venture was a wonderful wander up the be-beeched slopes of Mount Richardson just down the road from our new plot in North Canterbury.  It was a bit overcast and windy, especially as we ascended towards our ultimate destination.  But the temperature was ideal for a twelve kilometre hike that covered nearly eight hundred metres of vertical climbing.  Slowly, we are getting ourselves ready for our epic Great Walk in one short month.  Enjoy the pictures of our tiring but rewarding day out. 

The sweeping view of Lee's Valley to the Canterbury Plains from the peak

Tussock and low scrub

The grasses had a wonderful orange colour

Trying out the new walking poles

Lee's Valley below the summit 

The view through the bush on the way up to Mt. Richardson

Kiwakiwa (a type of fern)

Be Warned: This post is about politics and the pandemic

I'd like to talk about stuff that I don't like to talk about anymore.  It's not good for my blood pressure and my general outlook but nonetheless it's good to vent every once in a while.  The world's kind of a steaming mess of unforeseen consequences and sadly predictable reactionary behaviour at the moment.  Of course I'm talking about the Covid-19 global pandemic and all the political and sociological sausage making that is taking place as a result.

There is, however slim and not so bright, a bit of a silver lining to all of this.  Not everywhere is as bad as the United States in this regard.  There are lunatics everywhere of course.  The stark difference is that in the United States the lunatics run things.  Lunatics get elected to very powerful positions and implement incredibly damaging public policy.  Think Florida and DeSantis.  Think Trump during the last presidential administration.  Think of an entire political establishment embracing or, at the very least, holding their collective noses as a psychopathic narcissist holds court via Twitter and shits himself on the public stage week in and week out.  When he loses the election, a full seventy percent of Republicans still think the election was rigged.  This translates into tens of millions of voting citizens believing a demonstrable lie.  That does not bode well at all for future elections.  

One of the most disturbing offshoots of this is how politics has affected vaccination rates during the pandemic.  NOT getting the vaccine corresponds to how people feel politically.  It is a badge of honour to oppose "tyranny" and "mandates" and all other sorts of nonsense that is divorced from sensible public health policy.  Public health should not be political.  Yet, here we are.  Where my brother and mother live, in the US state of Georgia, the double vaccination rate is less than fifty percent.  LESS THAN FIFTY PERCENT!  It's free and it's been available for over six months.  People are still catching, spreading, getting sick from and dying from this virus.  That doesn't matter as long as you are sticking it to the libs. 

I'd encourage you to read The New Zealand View of Freedumb.  It's funny and accurate and also paints a more refreshing view of anti-vax loons and their associates in the cavalcade of stupid that is the modern political climate.  But, importantly, it shows them as they SHOULD be seen:  marginalised crackpots.  They are loud, persistent and "committed" but they hold little to no political sway in New Zealand.  New Zealand was late to the vaccination party but the rates of vaccination here are higher than most anywhere in the United States.  In New Zealand, the rates of vaccination are ninety percent for first dose and eighty-one percent fully vaccinated.  This is for the eligible population so the overall rate is lower but when kids are okayed, the numbers should level out into the eightieth and ninetieth percentiles.  The linkage between politics and public health has not taken hold nearly as much.  Let's hope it stays that way.  I'll post pretty pictures in my next post.  I promise.

A few days out: Castle Hill and the Canterbury High Country

We live about thirty minutes outside of Christchurch in a little Canterbury Plains farm town on the way to Arthur's Pass.  To get up into the High Country takes us about thirty five minutes and in that thirty five minutes, the landscape changes drastically.  You drive up over Porter's Pass through the clouds and most of the trees are gone.  The landscape is rockier, more exposed and dryer.  It's a different world.  

Thinking back to before I ever came to New Zealand, the Canterbury High Country is what New Zealand looked like in my imagination.  The epic, snow-capped ranges.  Small, braided streams rush down from the exposed, scree-ridden peaks.  Sheep and cows munch away obliviously in the green valleys.  It's not too bad.  If I ever get to the point where cynicism overrides the joy of being alive in this landscape then shake me vigorously.  We are very lucky.  Here are a few snippets of our long weekend with friends.

It was a tad rainy over the weekend.  From the top of our mountain hike we were above a rainbow.  I think this was a first.

The rainbow sneaks through

On the way up

Fishing for the first time of the year.

A bit windy.  A few clouds and a passing shower or two.

The river bed was noticeably changed after this year's flooding

This was new water for me.  A never before seen side tributary

The view up from the river

The always breathtaking Kura Tawhiti / Castle Hill 

One of the many secret crevices of Kura Tawhiti / Castle Hill

Early season pond at Kura Tawhiti/Castle Hill

A limestone crevice provides shelter

A Day Out: Rakaia Gorge

 In our ongoing effort to physically prepare for our 80 km tramp on the Heaphy Track in December, we are hiking every weekend.  This weekend's endeavour was a quick jaunt along the Rakaia River gorge in central Canterbury.  It's about a 40 minute drive from our house and affords you some amazing views.  New Zealand is one of the few countries in the world that has not dammed their major waterways so these braided river basins are a national treasure.  Let's hope things stay this way.  It was a wonderful day.  Not too hot, not too cool, breezy but not a howling nor'wester.  Here's a few snaps from our day.

The water level is coming down.  The turquoise blue is now on full display

Mt. Hutt ranges in the background

From my drive into town earlier this week

A Day Out: Mt. Thomas

Today we went for a walk.  It was up through a gully, a wooded gully in fact that was conveniently named  the "wooded gully track".  Then along a ridge line, also conveniently named the Ridge Track.  From there we summited Mt. Thomas and descended via the Summit Track.  It was a day of obvious routes and wonderful weather as we are trying to work ourselves into shape for the Heaphy Track over Christmas.  Although this track was a modest 11 kilometres long, it gained nearly 800 meters during that relatively short amount of time.  We treated ourselves to Indian take out and a lazy night watching a movie.  Here you go with the pictures.

A Year In...

I am not a very reliable blogger.  Sorry about that but as I get older I prioritise things a little differently and things just go by the wayside.  So it has been a little over a year since our touchdown in New Zealand in August of 2020 and I thought it might be time to take stock and share a few insights and observations.

First off, it's been a hell of a year for everyone.  I'm not going to talk too much about the pandemic because we all know that it's kind of a disaster and I'm sick of it.  That being said, I will say that New Zealand has now lost the battle and Covid is here and it's here to stay.  We had a few weeks of lockdown as the government tried to continue the zero cases policy but Delta is a bitch and despite a valiant effort, it's all about the vaccine now.  Here's hoping...

Now on to other things.  We are building a house.  It will be outside of Christchurch about 40 minutes or so and it is on an absolutely sublime ten acre plot on the fringes of the Canterbury Plains right up against the foothills of the Southern Alps .  We haven't started the building process yet but hopefully we will break ground before the new year.  Land is getting more expensive by the day and we were very lucky to find such a beautiful spot before things got truly out of hand.  Here's a picture of our plot:

Wish us luck because every process imaginable has been slowed by the events of the last eighteen months.  Construction is no exception.  In the meantime, we still are in our rental in Kirwee and life is pretty good.  Cara and I have jobs we like, that pay reasonably well and the kids continue on at Darfield High School.  It's a different educational system that has been frustrating for them but they are good kids and are adapting well, all things considered.  I don't think of things in terms of "this is better and this is worse".  We are here now and we are here for good.  This is our life.  As far as I am concerned, I feel incredibly happy and fortunate to live in New Zealand.  

The baseline level of anxiety I felt in the US is dissipating.  US politics is background noise.  The New Zealand headlines are refreshingly low key (excepting of course, all this pandemic shit).  Things are more expensive.  Lots more expensive.  But outside of that, I can't think of anything else to moan about.  We go hiking with almost zero crowds on a weekly basis.  There are multitudes of breathtaking places to visit with one tenth the visitor numbers so we don't worry about "getting there early" or traffic or any other worry we might have had back in the US.  It's just a smaller country.  It's not perfect and, in many ways across many issues, things are starting to mirror the US.  The economic divide between rich and poor is widening.  Wacky conspiracy cults are more prevalent (but still confined to the political margins) and the money grubbing policies of short sighted politicians have way more sway than they should.  

We live in the countryside of Canterbury and I love it.  Walking around the neighbourhood with carrots in my pockets to feed the sheep and horses and riding my bike against the backdrop of the Southern Alps are a couple of nice vignettes to put things in perspective.  I still don't have a studio but hopefully that will be remedied by the new year as well.  Fingers crossed.  

Thanks for reading, now here's some pictures of our new neighbourhood:

Abel Tasman National Park.  The kids and I hiked (most of) it in December 2020.

Up in the Canterbury High Country

Punakaki (Pancake Rocks)

Kaikoura

Mt Sunday (Edoras in Lord of the Rings)

Castle Hill, about 40 minutes from our house in Kirwee

On the Abel Tasman Track

Abel Tasman

New Zealand Silver Fern, Abel Tasman

Seal coming ashore on the Abel Tasman

Kaikoura Ranges

Cara and I before our dolphin swim in Kaikoura