We spent a couple of days in Cromwell, Central Otago.
It is the time of the year: Christmas with the all those awful songs, present hunting, tree decorating, cookie baking and drinks...but it is still very hard to get in the mood with 25 degrees. No more homemade cookies made by Esther's mum, so she is forced to make them herself. They turned out rather nice :-)
We bought ourselves a nice HUGE Christmas present. It is a great lifestyle plot (no house) just south of the village Cust, about 30 minutes drive from Christchurch. Well, the "huge factor" is of course based on the size of the plot: 4 hectares... can you believe that??
In the first weekend of October, we went for a walk near Castle Hill. It's about 1,5 hours drive from Christchurch. It's a great to wander around the weird rock formations as you can see on the pictures. Looks a bit like Dartmoor in the UK.
14th November is Canterbury day. It' s a public holiday and we were both off work. The biggest A&P Show (for the Swiss: like the OLMA) in NZ is held in Christchurch on this very day. Many farm animals have their own competition: from chickens, sheep, cows to alpacas and even ducks and pigeons. There are also many farm machines...and they are huge! And of course, there is not just one machine, but lots and lots, incredible!! We walked around for about 4 hours and still haven't seen all of it.
Do you know what a Cicada is ? They are about 4cm long and make a hell of a noise!! It's quite a tropical sound and it took us a while to figure out what the source of that noise is. Those little beasts can produce such an amount of decibels that when walking in Hagley Park here in the city, you almost have to cover your ears.
Still amazing how empty beaches are over here. We really appreciate that parking next to beaches is free, space is available and there are no traffic jams to the beaches...and it's just a 20 minutes drive from home :-)
Enjoying the warm and sunny weather on the deck with a game of table tennis and a gorgeous cool beer. That's the life guys!!
Hello people,
We also got our refund from customs (import tax) we initially had to pay, but than later was returned to us. Customs admitted that they were wrong and send us a check. YES!
George joined a group of people for a friendly pick up game of frisbee in Hagley Park. The grass was rather muddy and wet as you can see in the picture. George soon discovered that not doing any sports for a decade seriously impacts his general fitness!
Rural living training :-)
Last weekend, we went on our first ski-trip in New Zealand. Mount Hutt ski-field is only a 2 hours drive from Christchurch, so we got up early on Saturday and together with some other Dutch friends drove up the mountain. We decided to try snowboarding and booked a lesson which taught us the basics in 3 hours. The weather had been excellent all day, so we enjoyed it all immensely. 
Snowboarding is completely different to skiing, hence you fall a lot in the beginning. But at the end of the day, we managed to slide down the practice hill without too many difficulties. This years skiing season is ending soon, but we (especially George) enjoyed snowboarding so much that we will take some more lessons next season.
After a perfect Spring and Summer (lots of sun), we finally have our first Autumn and Winter. The temperatures are dropping steadily towards the 5 degrees celsius (daytime) and 0 degrees nighttime. Although today, as I write this, the temperature is around 18 degrees and we are sitting on the deck in our t-shirts. We experienced our first real "Foehn" (as the Swiss call them); a warm wind coming from a particular direction. Besides changing the weather significantly, as in warming it up, some people get a headache. We also got the first snow here on the Canterbury Plains last weekend; we only got 2 centimeters of "wet" snow in our garden, but other parts of the city got 5 centimeters of "dry" snow.
George's birthday was on the 25th May. To celebrate this we invited some friends and colleges from his work. As it was the first birthday in NZ, someone suggested that George has to drink beer from a yard glass. This is a Kiwi tradition when you turn 21 and officially become an adult. About 6 cans of beer went into the glass to fill it up and then it was George's turn to empty it as fast as he could. It took him about half an hour, but he did finish!!! Although he didn't move or say much for the next hour :-)
The 2nd of June was a Public Holiday (Queen's birthday, even if she is far away in the UK), so we had a long weekend. We decided to spend the weekend at a place called Lake Tekapo; it is about a 3 hour drive from Christchurch and is located in the middle of the South Island. The lake is one of 8 lakes in a chain which is used to generate power using hydro-generators. About 60% of the total NZ energy pool is generated in this way; surely a very nice amount. The Lake has a small settlement with some shops and quite a few rooms to rent. On the weekend we were there, a yearly mountain-bike-race was being held; they had to ride one side of the lake, wade through a 9 degrees celsius river and ride back along the other side of the lake. The fastest ones did it in just under 3 hours; if they didn't finish within 7 hours, a special bus would pick up the rest along the route to prevent them getting stuck in rapidly declining weather. We came there not to ride the bike, but to walk en enjoy nature; we walked up to the Mt John observatory to enjoy the view and to see if we could do some stargazing that night. Unfortunately, the weather prediction was not favorable (cloudy), so we decide to come back another time. We really do would like to see the night-sky here as it is rumored to be one of the best spots on the South Island to do so. We stayed at the Riverside Cottage accommodation which was situated next to the river and only a 3 minute walk from the lake. The rooms were very comfortable (warm) and the views amazing. Needless to say, we will definitely return to Tekapo do some more "tramping" and stargazing.
At the moment, the Kiwi's are concerned about the energy-supplies stored in the "hydro-lakes"; due to the fact that they where not replenished by rainfall, the levels have dropped significally. But because it is election-year, they don't want to scare the voters by saying we have an energy-crises. Everybody knows the recent governments haven't done enough to make sure the rising demand in energy is being met by investing in more energy-production-facilities in the previous years. And now there are already rumors of power cuts in the evenings if the situation gets worse. Meanwhile, the Labour government and the opposition parties are outbidding each other with personal(private) tax cuts; they try to win votes by promising more money per household in tax returns instead of investing it in future like more hydro-schema's or subsiditing home-insulation. This is typical NZ; look for the short-term benefits, don't plan ahead! :-/
There are many fountains in Christchurch, but one of it really stands out. It is situated on Victoria Square and resembles 3 flowers, dandy lions to be specific. The special thing about this is the fact that in a place called Romanshorn (Switzerland) is a similar fountain. That place is about 5 km away from the village where Esther grew up and her family still lives. Quite a coincidence!!
