We have now settled in Dunsandal, 30min south of Christchurch, for the winter. I have a mixed job in a large cattle practice where the average herd size is 1000 cows! Paul is labouring, helping with the earthquake clear up in Christchurch. Being out of the city we are feeling very few quakes, Paul is sleeping through most and our house is an old style wooden 'NZ icebox'! so it seems to cope well with the shaking, and the open fire keeps the chill of the autumn nights at bay. The pace of life is much slower here, even noticably slower than in the north island, which can be frustrating. Everyone is incredibly friendly and we have both made some good friends through work and have now joined the local climbing club as the indoor wall in the city is amazingly undamaged, so its great for dark evenings. It feels strange to be going into winter again after a brief summer, but we're really looking forward to the ski season. We are only 40 min form the ski fields so have got season passes for the weekends and have started collecting some gear! Even more stuff!!
During the week i get to drive around the Canterbury planes staring longily at the mountains on the horizon, and every weekend we are up there exploring.
View from one of my farms!
And looking back down over the plains from Mt Hutt ski field.
Lots of bouldering to do! Castle Hill in Arthurs pass.
Yes, this was our mountain bike track! Just never look down!!
View down the valley of Arthurs pass
View over Banks penninsular
Further up the coast we went whale watching in Kaikora. lucky enough to see two large male sperm whales and a huge pod of dusky dolphins, with a few albatrosses thrown in for good measure!
A wet Easter weekend on the west coast, there are supposed to be some mountains up there! We were able to see the Franz Joseph glacier and all the ice boulders flowing down the river.
Ice cave at base of glacier
Reflection of glacier in kettle lake, formed as glacier melted
Ice boulders the size of cars!
