A happy-go-lucky English rambler dude goes to New Zealand for a year. Here he interfaces with some of those he left behind and details his nefarious activities. Or summat.
Recently clicked on MP3s - 7th June 2005 The Lucksmiths - Warmer Corners
Jens Lekman - When i said i wanted to be your dog
The Trashcan Sinatras - Weightlifting
Teenage Fanclub - Man Made
Laura Veirs - Carbon Glacier
The Decemberists - Picaresque
The Eels - Blinking Lights
Monday, January 14, 2002 Well, i'm back in rainy Christchurch after 4 days of being on the road with 'The family unit' (That's my parents and sister, rather than a little known NZ Jazz/Funk combo)
We arranged to meet up in Kaikoura, soon after arriving Alison and I spotted Mum & Dad walking down the street towards us. Worringly, our first instinct was to scream "Shit! It's Mum & Dad!", and then hide behind a nearby wall, giggling. But, after 5 mins of spying on them, and commenting on how they looked slightly fatter and greyer, we sprang from our hiding place, pursued them down the street and then pounced on them with delight when they were in range.
It was great to see the old duffers again, and they haven't changed a bit, which is both good and bad - at times leaving Alison and me feeling like 10 year olds on a family holiday again, scowling and rolling our eyes, while Mum and Dad went about creating yet another scene.
Sadly the itinerary was messed up a little by the currently crap NZ weather. All whale watching, and Dolphin swimming boats in Kaikoura were cancelled because of rough seas, so we left early to go to north to Nelson, the sunniest place in NZ. It lived up to it's reputation for a while, but irritatingly it seemed we had brought the weather with us, and that night a massive thunder storm unloaded on Motueka. Our motel started springing leaks all over the place, so we abandoned it in favour of the highly groovy "Hot Mama's Cafe", for a slap up feed, and Mac's gold all round - hurrah!
Things looked a bit brighter the next day though, and we caught the aqua taxi from the idyllic Marahau beach, round to the even idyllic-er Anchorage beach, on the Abel Tasman coastal track. A leisurely 5 hour wander through the rainforest-like bush took us back to Marahau, naturally via as many beaches as possible, in absolutely gorgeous weather.
The next day we were on the road again, driving down the west coast to the rather dull sounding Greymouth. But there was more than enough good stuff along the way, starting with the Buller Gorge. NZ's biggest swingbridge goes across it, and I thought this would be more than exciting enough for everybody, but bizarrely Mum insisted on doing the 'Superman' wire slide across the gorge. To keep face I persuaded Alison that we should do the tandem wire slide, but to be honest this was far wussier than Mum's. If I remember nothing else about their visit, the mental image of my mother, in a full body harness and red helemt flying across the Buller gorge is one that will remain with me for some time.
The next stop was the 'Pancake rocks', at Punakaiki. These, as you may have guessed are some rocks that are shaped almost exactly like, yawn - Pancakes. Sounds dull, but they're not at all, honestly. For starters, they face west, so by the time we arrived there the sun was starting to set into the Tasman sea, sihillouetted dolphins were jumping around in the sea in front of the rocks, all sorts of exotic birds & insects were making all sorts of noises in the bush and the rocks themselves, were well, extremely pancake shaped :oD
After a night in Greymouth and a quick visit to Hokatika on Sunday, I left Mum, Dad and Alison, as i had a new job starting today.
BREAKING NEWS... Text's from received from Alison today reveal that Mum has been bitten by the EXTREME sports bug in Queenstown (The home of EXTREME), and irritatingly is planning to do a paraglide jump. So to keep any EXTREME cred I had after my paraglide, i'll now have to up the ante, and go more EXTREME than my mother - damn! Hmm, I think doing a nude paraglide, whilst drinking Pepsi Max should do the trick, although may lead to my arrest upon landing.....
6:42 am
