Inside the Long White Cloud

Take My Breath Away

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(But please leave the pilot with his as his lungs sound like they need all the oxygen they can get and I'm afraid his heart isn't going to hold out anyway.)

Harwoods Hole - 176m vertical drop

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I love sinkholes. Which is odd given how much I hate sinks. But here I am getting ever closer to the edge of the largest hole in the Abel Tasman park - much to Vik's distress. If ever there's a place crying out for a bungy - this is it. I'll be surprised if it doesn't happen soon. Actually - having said that there isn't much room for horizontal swing so I can see why it's not been done so I'll just shut up...

Nelsons Column

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OK, so it's not really a column - its the spire on Nelsons cathederal looking grey and... some more grey against the autumnal foliage. We didn't stay in Nelson. It looked great and had a pretty good kebab shop (which is usually enough to keep us in a place) but time was against us - winter was on the way and we had other things to see. Sorry Nelson.

The Longest Anus in the World!

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As you can imagine, this is one caption I've been waiting my whole life to write. The Sooty Beech scale is a wasp larve thingy which feeds on the... whatever's in a tree... and then excrete's (that's posh for poo's) it out through what is the longest anal passage (in relation to it's size) in the animal kingdom. However, this bugs poop smells damn good and is primarliy honeydew which is also pretty tasty. Now that's the kind of ass you want. When God was handing out butt's this bug got the top prize - though if I had an ass that produced honey we'd get through an awful lot of toast and I'd never need to spend money on skipping ropes (which obviously I do all the time). By the way - in the photo all those white thread like things are assholes. The droplets are sweet, sweet bug poop.

Gnarly Dude etc, etc.

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Clearly the surf lingo is not happening for me. This is Lyall Bay just down the hill from our hoose in Wellington. It's where all the surfer's hangout and where the planes land - what with it also being the location of Wellington airport. One of my favourite Welington things to do was the Wayne's World style lying down just infront of the runway directly under the landing planes flight path. Great fun.

Vik in a Spin, Houghton Bay

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Any opportunity to mess around in a play park and Vik jumps at it. Honestly, sometimes I'll just sit on the benches with the other Mum's and watch as Vik swings on monkey bars, crawls through hoops and wizzes down slides with all the other kids. It can sometimes get embarrasing - for example, in McDonalds when she ignores the height limitations and jumps in their ball-pit thing with all the toddlers.

Lighthouse House, Island Bay, Wellington

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Wellington has some really cool houses - especially around some of the bays. Many of them include personal cable car things to get the occupants up to their cliff-top abode. I love that. Cable cars on a fault line! You Kiwi's are nuts.

Our Place

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This is where we lived - just above the zoo. If I'd panned the camera down just a few inches you'd be able to see the lions getting jiggy. Honestly, if you believe Vik, those big cats were at it constantly.

Into the City, Wellington

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Looking towards the heart of Wellington from a street near Brooklyn.

The Rimutaka Range

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I'll probably get lots of tutting from my Kiwi friends for getting this wrong but across the hilltops from our place was the Rimutaka range of mountains (I think). As you can see, Wellington isn't the most heavily built up or developed of cities and the countryside is never too far away. I like that.

5 Days in a Van

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Having booked the wrong flight we found ourselves with 5 days in Christchurch before we left so we did something Vik has been dying to do since we got here: hired a camper. Obviously we went for looks over functionality and hired one without an electric hook-up so we couldn't refridgerate food or heat the van but it came in black so we didn't care. Here we are parked up at the campground overlooking Akaroa.

The Beehive, Wellington

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This is the hub or power in New Zealand - the place where they pick the all blacks team and chocolate coat pineapple chunks. It also doubles as Parliament.

The Hanmer Basin

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SNOW! We had the opportunity to throw some (one) snowball in Hanmer Springs. What a great place. The town itself is a bit of a tourist trap but the surrounding area is stunning.

Letting it all hang out in the sunrise on Oriental Parade, Wellington

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You do see some unusual people doing some unusual things in Wellington.