Cape Palliser

Last Wednesday we shifted (aka moved) out of our housesitting accommodation and into The White House. Sadly, it's not quite as exciting as it sounds. It's a guesthouse on the grounds of Steve's workplace, and they were kind enough to let us stay there for the week before we're able to move into our new place.
It is meeting our needs for the week, but we are really looking forward to being in our own place and staying in one place for awhile. We counted up all the places we have stayed over the past year and this next house will be our 10th place! So if you've felt confused about where we've been living at any given time, you have a good excuse!
I've been fighting an unrelenting cold the last few weeks, but this past weekend was my first full weekend off and we wanted to make the most of it. We drove to Cape Palliser, which is about 2.5 hours away, near the southern coast but across the Rimutaka mountain range. The road over the Rimutakas is notoriously twisty and long; locals get frustrated with people who don’t brave the turns at high speeds, so we pull over as much as possible to let them pass by. They always say ‘thank you’ with a little ‘honk-honk’.
The weekend was quite low-key and relaxed. We stayed at a campsite near the Pinnacles, which are some impressive rock/gravel formations along a riverbed.
On Saturday morning we explored the clay and gravel riverbed and marveled at the remnants of shells embedded in the rocks.

We then drove on to see Cape Palliser, where a lighthouse is perched on a cliff and a seal colony lives on the rocks below. The seals were lazily sleeping along the roadside and as much as I would love to sit and watch them, they stink like a mixture of skunk and rotten seafood and it's tough to linger near them!
We reached the lighthouse by climbing 227 wooden steps and enjoyed our chips and chocolate snack while taking in the beautiful views.
On the way back to the Pinnacles, we stopped at a beach to watch the waves crashing...
explored the rocky shores...
paid tribute to the local Tucka stand...

and found a flat spot to make our own coffee.
By the time we got back to the Pinnacles, it was still early afternoon and we hiked along the riverbed to the base of the Pinnacles. It was definitely worth the 1.5 hour walk - the formations were very impressive up close and the weather was beautiful.
We watched a lovely sunset by the seaside that evening, and on Sunday we explored the country roads and towns. A few of the seaside towns are very small and mostly cater to people wanting to go surf fishing. There is also a large lake - Lake Wairarapa - but it is surrounded by farms and the waters are drinking/wading grounds for livestock.
Martinborough is the largest town in the area and well-known for wineries and classy cafes. It has lots of cute old buildings restored to be overpriced antique stores or cafes.
We will be moving into our new house on Saturday, and will try to post some pictures of it... but keep in mind that we will have no furnishings for it yet! We are counting down the weeks until we leave for Canada, and are very excited to spend 2 weeks in Ontario and then 2 weeks in BC.

A Belated Happy Thanksgiving

Our friends from Ottawa, Jenny and Ross, came over for our NZ version of a Thanksgiving dinner last week. There is no Thanksgiving holiday here, and I think turkeys are only available if you order ahead from a butcher. We weren't planning ahead that much, so had to make do with a little chicken instead. Thankfully, Jenny has much more culinary wisdom and experience than me, and everything turned out to be delicious!

The flowers in the middle are Columbines, which are growing next to the driveway, along with some Calla lilies and red geraniums. The colours are welcome amidst all the gray days we've had lately. October has definitely been the worst month for weather - rain, wind, hail, and cold temperatures. We are looking forward to summer!

Next week we move out of this house as the owner will return from the UK, and after spending a week in temporary accommodation, we will move into our new house on 14 Mawson St. We have signed a one-year lease there, so hopefully it will feel more like home. It comes unfurnished though, so we will be scouring "TradeMe" and second-hand shops for everything we need. The first item on our list will be a fridge!

Spring?!?

We recently changed our clocks for daylight savings, and we had to remind ourselves to "spring forward" even though it was September. Not only does the name of the month make us think it should be fall, but the weather lately has been grey, rainy, windy, and incredibly chilly. There have been enough sunny days for the flowers and trees to bloom, but I think it will still be awhile before we put the electric blanket away.

We haven't had much time for adventures lately, as we've been settling into work routines and are busy searching for our next home. I continue to learn a lot on the paediatric ward, and am finding the variety of cases quite interesting. Unfortunately though, I've had to work most weekends. Steve is still enjoying his PhD project and spent a day in Christchurch last week meeting with one of his supervisors.

Our second stint of housesitting will finish at the end of October, so we've been busy looking into our options. Although it hasn't exactly been our style of place, we've been thankful to have an affordable place to stay while we search for a more permanent home.

Most of our time has been spent looking at the listings on trademe.co.nz, the NZ equivalent of eBay. It's an incredibly popular site, and is definitely the best place for people to advertise anything they want to sell. Kiwis sell everything on trademe - in fact, it's so popular that the hospital has blocked access to it from every hospital computer.

We finally had our first Canadian guests! Jenny and Ross are friends from Ottawa - I worked with Jenny on the oncology unit and she and her husband have just finished a year of working and traveling around Australia. Now they plan to do the same here in NZ and are kicking off the adventure with a few months in Wellington. It's been fun to have them around and hear their stories from Australia.

And one last picture - although it's not exactly from New Zealand. Steve's birthday was a couple weeks ago, so I can't resist posting this picture of him when he was just a wee boy already tinkering with bikes and tools...

Castlepoint

This past Saturday we took advantage of the sunny Spring weather and did a day trip to Castlepoint, about a 3 hour drive from here. It is on the eastern coastline and features a beautiful old lighthouse, a unique reef, long beaches, and a tall grassy cliff.

It was a beautiful sunny day, and we had brought along our hiking boots, not knowing what kind of trails there might be. It turns out that there is a track up the tall cliff, so we climbed up to the top.

One side of the cliff is completely covered in wild grasses, and the other side is formed by jagged sand and rock that has eroded away over the years. At the top, we basked in the sun while eating some lunch, and soaked in the spectacular 360 degree views. Looking towards the land, there was nothing but farms and fields of sheep covering rolling green hills. The farms went right up to the edge of the coast which give way to dramatic cliffs and long beaches for as far as the eye can see.

Looking towards the ocean, there is absolutely openness, all the way to Antarctica!

On the way home, we stopped for dinner in one of the cute small towns in the Wairarapa region, near Masterton. There are antique shops, and cafes, and markets galore and we agreed that one could easily spend longer exploring this area. For now though, it made a perfect day trip, and made me feel like I got some good weekend fun even though I had to work on Sunday.

Wool for the Lambs

A couple of weeks ago we went for a drive through some of the nearby valleys and farmland. In one field, we saw this lamb wearing a little wool jacket! Apparently it is just to keep the little guy warm on these chilly spring days.

New Zealand is definitely full of sheep, but it is also full of many unique native birds. One of the most common is the Tui; it is a dark-coloured bird with a tuft of white feather at the base of its neck. It has a very distinctive song because it has two voiceboxes and can make a huge variety of sounds. At the flat where we were staying, there were lots of Tui in the surrounding trees, and we took this video to give you an idea of the songs we hear (click on the triangle in the bottom left of the picture below to play the video).

Earlier this week, we moved from the flat with the ocean view to a townhouse a few kilometers closer to town. The first flat was a short-term sublet and the couple who live there have returned, so we said our goodbyes to the cat Falafel and moved on to our next sublet. Through someone at Steve's work, we found out about this townhouse, owned by a woman who spends part of the year in the UK. So we will stay here until we find somewhere more permanent... hopefully that will be soon!

Mt. John Observatory

Hello all - Steve here. Thought I'd give AK a break and give a quick update on my trip to Mt. John Observatory at Tekapo on the South Island. We'd been to Tekapo on the Easter weekend, but it's such an amazing area I was happy to return. One of my advisors was there for two weeks using one of the telescopes, so I joined him for a week to learn how to drive a big telescope and run a spectrograph.

My flight out of Wellington left just before 7am. The flight followed the east coast of the South Island down to Christchurch, so I had a great view of the Southern Alps out my window at sunrise.

Going to Mt. John in the middle of winter, I was hoping to find the summit covered in several feet of snow, and experience something akin to a Canadian winter. But the summit was completely bare - the mountains surrounding it were covered in snow, but none was to be found at the observatory. I stayed at the closest building, and used the telescope in the attached dome.

This is the telescope we were using - it has a main mirror 1 metre across. The green part is the mount that moves it around the sky, and the white disk on the right contains the many weights needed to counterbalance the telescope on the mount.

Here I am next to the telescope at the start of a night, moving it to the first star. The telescope is all computer controlled, but it's more fun to move it with the hand paddle.

These days professional astronomers can spend a whole night observing and never have to look at the sky because everything is controlled by computers. Mt. John was no different; these are the computers that run the telescope and the spectrograph. Luckily though, a lot of it was automated, which meant I could sneak outside now and then and take a look at the stars. And I'm glad I could - Tekapo has been in the news for being an International Dark Sky reserve, and I can see why. The Milky Way arching overhead, from one side of the sky to the other, was a spectacular sight.

This was the view outside during the day - the distant mountain ranges surrounding Mt. John and the brilliant blue colour of Lake Tekapo.

And one last picture from town, of the famous little church on the edge of Lake Tekapo.

Maple Syrup!!

There aren't too many food items we haven't been able to find over here, but pure maple syrup is one. There are a lot of "flavoured" maple syrups, but the pure stuff was harder to track down. In Ottawa, we regularly had pancakes on a weekend, but this was the first time in NZ that we've been able to re-live our tasty tradition. Sadly, the bottle is now more than half empty.

Our first Kiwi pancake breakfast.... yummy!

Steve continues to enjoy his work and even brings home some of his favourite books, like the one pictured above. He is flying to Christchurch this Friday, where he will take a bus to Lake Tekapo to spend 5 days at the Mt John Observatory. One of his advisors will be there and this will give them a chance to discuss the project in more detail, and also for Steve to use and examine a working spectrograph. It's a bit strange to think of us being in different parts of NZ, but it is great that he will have this chance to be down there again. It will probably be all covered in snow, so he will even get a taste of real winter!

Today was my first day of work on the Pediatric Ward at the Hutt Hospital. They are giving me a full six weeks of orientation since I have no nursing experience in pediatrics. I am really looking forward to learning about a completely new area, and I think I will enjoy working with families. I'll be on a full time schedule, working a variety of 8 hour day, evening, and night shifts.

I went to the Wellington Botanic Gardens last week and enjoyed seeing a surprising number of flowers in bloom. These snow drops were definitely my favourite.