New Zealand: The Land of Mountains, Kiwis and Rain

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On arrival in New Zealand I was met by a huge weather shock, instead of the usual wall of warmth that hits you as you step off the plane it was the iciest wind in I have ever felt. It's safe to say that it didn't feel so nice after spending six weeks in Australia. The flight to New Zealand was so amazing, as we flew in I glanced out of the window thinking that the clouds looked reasonably odd and rather pointy, only to realise that the clouds were actually the New Zealand Alps which run down the centre of the South Island and take up most of it. It's hardly surprising that there are so few people here and so many sheep!
On arrival in Christchurch I headed to my hostel expecting to see the destruction left by the earthquake, but there just wasn't any. That is until I headed towards where the city centre used to be, it is now totally shut off and has huge empty spaces where buildings used to be. What makes it ten times worse is the fact that there weren't any people just wandering around so the place had an slightly creepy feeling about it; this was only made worse by the fact that they are currently rebuilding most of the city centre so there are cranes everywhere and buildings being torn down, it's not really possible to see what has fallen and what has been pulled down. Unsurprisingly I wasn't sad to be leaving after just one day; plus there is absolutely nothing to do there besides shop for warm clothing. I got a bus from Christchurch over to Greymouth along the most amazing road in the world, it went straight through the middle of the mountains which such good views. The only downer on the whole experience was that the bus had the least amount of power ever and had to go up the hills in first gear at 10km an hour, you would really thing that a bus that makes the trip twice a day would be able to cope with a few hills. On arrival in Greymouth I was met by the volunteer team leader for Conservation New Zealand whose name is Bruce (there really is no escaping them down here!!), he then dropped me off in Punakaiki where the volunteer project is based for most of the time.
For the first week I was living with Shay and Phuong both of whom are lovely and I had a massive laugh with, mainly by constantly making fun of Shay's American accent and sayings (she is American though so it's hardly surprising :P). The volunteering here is usually based in Punakaiki but spends some time on other sites for a week at a time. My first week was spent in Okarito, about a three hour drive south and very close to Franz Josef, there is a huge glacier there. We spent the majority of the week planting grass-type-plant-thingys next to a lake which was boggy and wet but had the most amazing view of the Alps on the clear days which made it totally worth it.
The week passed with no great incident, we just planted most days with the guys from the Department of Conservation who were a good laugh and really cool. We spent the evening mainly watching films due to the epic rain that there was some nights; we did head up to look at the glacier though which was cool, it wasn't a very clear day so we couldn't see too high up, even so we got a pretty good idea of the scale of it. I will most likely be heading there when I travel on my own after volunteering. On our last morning of the week we went out to watch the DOC rangers weighing some kiwis that were in a pen on the edge of the bush. They were soooo cute, only five months old and just the most awesome balls of fluff ever! We were reliably informed that there are very few people who live in New Zealand who have ever seen a kiwi in the up close and that we are very lucky, so that's always good. And I am definitely hoping to be doing some more stuff like that while I'm here.
For the coming week we are staying in Punakaiki and helping with the project here and then heading somewhere south next week. I have also been told that there are penguins around here somewhere so I shall definitely be hunting some of them out (not literally hunting, I think that might be frowned upon).

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