Northern Loop of South Island

After a flurry of stories about our adventures, the recent vacuum of entries has been called to my attention. Since work has ended at Christchurch Hospital, I would have thought that I would be better at regularly sitting down to blog, but the change in schedule, the irregularity of the schedules of wee ones, and the traveling that we have finally gotten to do has made it more difficult, not easier. When I came home at a regular time, the evening was pretty well timed. I reckon that the loooong daylight hours have made it more difficult as well. I have also been trying to reemphasize my studies and to catalog photos of our time here. The time just seems to drift away in large plumes.

We got home a couple of days ago from our first adventure longer than a weekend. We circumnavigated the northern half of the south island over a four-day period (hemicircumnavigation?). Being off work made it great; we got to travel during the less busy, less costly weekdays and still missed none of the weekend activities, such as dining with friends, duathlons, mountain biking adventures.

Ryan delighted by the purple flowers on Arthur's Pass

The first day was a chance to see the west coast. Opinions are fairly unanimous about the place. It is the most beautiful part of the country, it is very sparsely populated, and there is little to do but gawk at the scenery. That is fairly true, but I should mention some outlier comments, including that it often is sunny there while rainy over here on the east coast, and vice versa. This also may be true, but weigh in that it stays sunny here a lot, and you have to reckon that west coast sunniness doesn’t measure up to elsewhere. =The average annual rainfall also tells a tale. It comes to about five meters per year (You do the conversion. It is time we switch over anyway.), and that comes at a rate rivaling Seattle’s. It tends to just hang there until you run into it or a breeze blows it onto a hillside. Collecting five meters at that rate means a lot of cloudy days.

The Pancake Rocks of Punakaiki

We had delayed our trip by a day to improve the chances of catching sunny days, but to no avail. Photos might have been better, but otherwise there was no point in waiting. The scenery wa still great and the rain wasn’t a soaker. And for us there was not a lot of time that we needed to spend there. We just needed to lay our eyes on it. So we cruised the west coast in no particular hurry, making it to Westport a little after eight o’clock, a good hour before sundown. This is the second largest town on the west coast, weighing in at a population of 4000. It had its heydays in the late 1800’s, as the gold rush here was a couple of decades behind California’s. Later it became a home for many coal miners, but now it seems that tourism keeps it afloat. Mind you the water level seems pretty close to deck level, but it is afloat. “Half eight”, as they say, is late enough to miss out on the cookings from any of the restaurants in that town, and forget about a Denny’s or McDonald’s. We subsisted on a couple of plates of munchies that the kitchen fried up to accompany the drinks at a restaurant/bar just off the main street. I even passed on that, preferring a PBJ when we got to the motel.

We had to stop the car when we got this view.

The bustle the next day was much more like what you would expect, but after stop at a café, we were on our way to Nelson. Now this was a town that you could fall in love with; Ana and I both remarked on it. Our skin wasn’t pruning on the west coast long enough to skew our judgment; it was just that great. Situated on the north coast, it boasts the most sunny days of all New Zealand. The cloud fronts literally blow around the alcove provided by the hills to the south. We rolled into the motel and immediately spread out our wet clothes to save them from impending mildew. It seemed a world away from Westport, defying the short distance, some 150 km.

Great climate makes for an appealing population, which opens great shops and restaurants, makes more art, stays very active. It is an infectious atmosphere. Everyone seems to smile more, move about with more vigor though maybe less directness. More seemed to stop on the sidewalk, chat it up with acquaintances. We decided to bask in the atmosphere, spending the entire next day milling about the downtown area, basing our sorties out of a coffee shop at the base of the cathedral that sat on the hilltop corralling the central city from the south. The shop sat just above the sidewalk crowd, with some more tables out under parasols roadside. The storefront windows were actually retractable glass doors, so we essentially sat on a small balcony on a perfect day, people watching, chit-chatting. Later Ana took Ry to bounce around the shops, looking at sunglasses and checking out the toystore, while Trey and I kicked back, reading Shantaram while sipping on seconds of the mochaccino (I did.) and napping the siesta hours away in their entirety (Trey did.).

The return to Christchurch the next day was mainly road I had covered on the Queen Charlotte Track expedition a couple of months ago, so the final six-hour leg was a bit of a slag for all of us but Ana. It took us past Kaikoura, photos from which you may recall from one of our first trips and blogs here, pictures with the seals, ocean surf, and snow-covered mountaintops in the same view. Ana took some summertime photos which will be great for comparison now that we approach the summer solstice.

We will stay around Christchurch for the holidays, graciously joining Walter’s family for holiday celebrations and hopefully finalizing the paperwork to get our visas for Australia. Then we are off again to take in more of the south of the island. Ah, sweet summer.

Just an additional shot of our girl showing off her Christmas dress.

-or-

The destruction of the lowlying flowers. The culprit remains at the scene.