Blogs from New Zealand, Oceania - page 2380

I spent a wonderful New Year's Day at this place: Karori Bird Sanctuary The website does a thorough job of describing the programmes and the bird species. The Karori Sanctuary is only a 15 minute walk from Erin's flat. It was opened to the public in 2001, and covers 252 hectares. It is now a safe haven for rare native birds such as the kiwi. That and other species were reintroduced after all pests and predators had been removed from the valley. The entire area is surrounded by a copyrighted fence, researched to keep predators such as possums and stoats (a weasel-like animal) out. I had anticipated that it would be a quiet place on New Year's Day. Wrong!!! The main paved paths were crowded with families and strollers and senior citizens and teenagers and folks ... read more

Bonnie Tyler is singing 'Total Eclipse of the heart' - just a point of trivia, no hidden meaning... Christchurch. Very nice. What I have seen. Comfortable and relaxed city, nice city spaces, one way streets to confuse you, arcades and malls abound and a crew of people from India filming for a movie or advert in the spacious, lazy, Cathedral Square, not far from where people are playing chess with oversized pieces, a small audience gathered, a 50 something guy with white shirt and panama hat playing a Maori guy in tracksuit pants and oversized jacket. Travellers abound. Europeans, English, Japanese, Korean and American/Canadians - apologies especially to the Canadians, because I don't know how to differentiate the accents. The only Australian I can be sure of was a Graphic Designer from Melbourne, in Wellington, whom ... read more

We are in Wellington at the moment and it SO windy. We arrived on Monday by ferry and the crossing was very smooth which was surprising as when we left Kaikoura it was raining and very windy and the car was buffeted the whole way. We did read in the paper on Tuesday that there had been hurricane winds all over NZ with lots of forest fires is some regions and over 170mm of rain in 24hrs in others. For once it was not raining on us! Yesterday we explored the city. It is a great city and we both really liked it although it was very quiet. There was hardly any traffic at all. We started out our tour by getting the cable car (it is really a funicular) to the botanical gardens. We walked ... read more

We get up and it is overcast but not raining. Michael is excited that we are about a block away from the Starbucks and throws on some clothes to go get his coffee. I get on the Internet in our room and look at accommodations for the remainder of the trip. When Michael comes back I get in the shower and he gets on the Internet to check and send some e-mails. When we both get cleaned up we go out for lunch and to the bus station to make arrangements for the balance of our trip. As we leave to walk back to our room it is sprinkling. Back in our room we get on the Internet to make the rest of our accommodations and transport for the trip. Finally, we make all of the ... read more

today is the best day ever!! (melissa's already gone and i'm catching up on blogs....so today isn't really the best day ever but i'm going to pretend she's still here) today we arrived in windy welly via the 3 hour ferry ride. it was uneventful (I WAS BORED AND BOTHERING CAITLIN THE WHOLE TIME) but beautiful. we arrived in wellington and decided that it was too much of a hassle to figure out which bus to take to our hostel....so we walked. (IT DIDN'T LOOK TO FAR ON THE MAP....) it was hot and long and very uphill, but i'm no rower so i wouldn't know what real hard work is (HEY NOW!!). WE WERE SWEATY ANYWAY SO WE DECIDED TO VENTURE BACK INTO THE CITY TO FERG'S KAYAKS (aislyn's lovely suggestion) TO RENT ROLLERBLADES. as ... read more