Catching Up (Lake Tekapo)

We spent last weekend touring in the central part of Canterbury, driving near one of the shooting sites for the Lord of The Rings.  A little while after leaving Christchurch, heading inland, you enter the MacKenzie Country of NZ.  The terrain features lot of windy roads, pretty farmland, and some views of the Southern Alps that give a glimpse of what's to see there.

We drove to Lake Tekapo on Friday, a small town on the shores of...Lake Tekapo--imagine that.  The town is noted for three special things--a tourquoise-colored lake, the Chapel of the Good Shepard (above, right on the shore), and world-class night skies.  The first thing we saw as the road descended into town was a great vista of the lake below us, and the Southern Alps in the background.  This was only a hint of things to come that weekend.

We had arranged to stay in a small modern cottage that sits on a hill above the lake.  While it wasn't really our style, the location could not have been better.

The deck on the front was just what we wanted--an unobstructed view of the lake during the day and a nearly 360-degree view of the dark sky at night.  Our anticipation was heightened even more when the property managers told us that they has seen the Aurora Australis (Southern Lights) the night before--very rare for that time of year.  We just couldn't wait for it to get dark!  After dinner we went down to the lake and took some pictures of the Chapel (top picture) and other features on the lakeshore.

We caught a nice sunset over our backs, making the lake sparkle in front of us and the distant mountains turn a nice shade of magenta.  Once it got dark enough, the skies did not disappoint.  Very early on we saw Jupiter and Saturn as big and bright as we've ever known them.  As it got increasingly darker, more planets and more stars came out, filling the sky across the whole horizon.

Then, we saw a few pulses of light flash over us to the south--sure enough, the Southern Lights!  Not very bright, and not many of them, but pretty cool to see, just the same.

Mike was tired from the driving, so he took an evening nap--telling Terry to wake him up later.  When she did wake him, he came out to see a whole sky full of planets, stars, and a great view of the Milky Way!  Neither of us could remember the last time we got a good look at the Milky Way, so it was very special.

Knowing we had a long day ahead of more touring, hiking, and another night of sky-watching, we finally called it a night.  We'll report on the next day's drive up Lake Pukaki, our hiking near Aoraki Mount Cook, some great views of the mountain, and more in the next blog.

Mike and Terry

Catching Up (Auckland)

We had about 5 days in Christchurch before heading to Auckland on the North Island for a conference that Mike was attending and presenting at.  Auckland is the largest city in NZ with about a quarter of the entire country's 4 million population.  It is a pretty city, with water everywhere around it, and harbors in two different oceans.  On the East is the Pacific Ocean, and on the West is the Tasman Sea.  There is an Ocean-to-Ocean walking path that is about 8 miles long.  We managed to do most of it one day but never did get all the way to the Tasman side.

The picture above is the view from our hotel, looking at the Pacific harbor area.  We saw a constant stream of sailboats, ferrys, and large cruise ships every day during Happy Hour in the room.

Auckland has a lot of green spaces in it, with lots of interesting trees in them.  This is in a small park near our hotel.

Out  hotel was also located near a park that had a great Chinese Lantern Festival.  The festival is held every year on the first full moon following Chinese New Year.  On display were about 1000 lanterns of all sizes and in all images: people, animals, tea pots, etc.  We took a lot of pictures that night--here's two of them.

The conference kept Mike busy, and Terry attended a bit to see old friends, so we didn't get too far from the hotel, except for one excursion to Devonshire, an island in Auckland Harbor that has some nice Victorian homes and some of the biggest trees we saw in the whole city.

We have been back in Christchurch for about 10 days, and will catch up on the blog since we have now figured out the picture uploading process.  Look for more soon.

Mike & Terry

Kia Ora!

After so many months of anticipation, we are well and truly in Christchurch, New Zealand, as of Sunday, Feb. 2 (Feb 1 in the US).  Whatever.

The flights were mostly on time, and better yet--uneventful.  We were delayed about an hour in ATL--yes, they will really hold up a plane full of 250 passengers while one (of 6) flight attendants is trying to get there.  She sheepishly boarded the plane to some strong applause and muffled boos--sort of like President Obama being announced for his latest State of The Union Address.

Our layover time in Los Angeles was cut that much short, so we had to hustle-walk past three terminals before getting to our outbound gate--all the time hearing "Please excuse our mess while we make LAX the airport of the future."  Well, guess what?  I went to NZ in 2000 and had to take a shuttle bus that same distance to make my connection in the International Terminal back then.  Apparently, the future is getting further and further behind in LAX. 

But, we made the flight out of LAX on Air NZ, got settled into our seats, had a great meal with unlimited NZ wine, and then let the Attavin do its job to get us to Auckland in what seemed like a 3-hour flight (12, actually).  Once in Auckland we made our connection to Christchurch, and were met by our host Ian Culpan at 9am local time.  We were still excited about arriving and managed to stay awake for a few more hours.  A short nap, a couple more hours awake, and it was time to give in to the jetlag for the next 15+ hours.

We did discover that it was Sunday in NZ when we arrived, not Monday--as we thought all along.  The good news is that we did not miss the Super Bowl on TV here.  The bad news?  You guessed it--we got to see enough of the Super Bowl to wish we hadn't seen any of it.  Adding to our disappointment was that they did not play US commercials during the game here--they played a lot of very lame Kiwi commercials, and even had some dead air when spots were not sold.  The dead air beat the ads, hands down.

Ian has been great to get us situated and officially signed in at the University of Canterbury.  We did a lot of walking around the UC area the last two days, and then were given a car tour of the city and parts of the Banks Peninsula (much more on that in later posts).  Christchurch was hit by a 7.1 earthquake in 2010, which leveled nearly all of the City Centre area and many of the near suburbs, including the UC campus area.  We saw the UC devastation yesterday, but it paled by what happened to the City Centre in about 12 seconds three years ago.  Several dozen people were killed, two beautiful cathedrals were nearly totally leveled, the main rugby stadium has been condemned, and very few buildings over 3 stories are still standing (but not usable).  Some progress towards reconstruction has been made, but the city will never be the same again that I saw in 2000.  The people we have talked with are very thankful that more lives were not lost, and they seem to have accepted that much of their beautiful city will not return in their lifetimes.

We will send some pictures from the Banks Peninsula, once we can get the blog site to upload them for us.

More soon.

Mike and Terry