We’ve just felt our first earthquake in Wellington! It was just a small one so hardly noticeable..in fact it just felt like a bus driving past the window.
Don’t worry though mums…..there has been several since we’ve been here and we’ve not even felt the others.
Archive for September, 2010
First earthquake in Wellington
Wednesday, September 29th, 2010Napier road trip and city living
Wednesday, September 29th, 2010This weekend we headed up to Napier as it was…..windy in Wellington! It apparently turned out not too bad in the city, but we headed away anyway. The drive was a bit of a nightmare as it felt like I was driving a mini metro, with a 12 metre kite on top, in a hurricane. Ciara said I looked like I was playing a game as I could never really relax totally. We decided to keep going anyway, and it was all good once we arrived just before dark and parked up by the beach.
Napier is very famous for it’s art deco buildings as the whole place was rebuilt after a devastating earthquake in 1931. Saturday was brilliant though as we managed to get our shorts and tshirts on, with our ‘jandals’ (flip flops) and have a game of mini golf. Unfortunately I couldn’t resist the MacPac outdoor’s sale either…
Unfortunately there’s a few places we’d like to go to that are around the same distance away but we reckoned it was just too far for a normal weekend. 300km takes a bit longer in the van, although you can’t drive that fast in NZ anyway.
Sometimes in NZ though it feels like you just can’t get away from the roots of some of the people that have emigrated out here :
This week we’ve moved to another house for the week as one of the girl’s sisters and nieces are up to stay. Its a nice change, and yet again someone we don’t know has been very accommodating. We can walk to the city within minutes, and have Mount Victoria literally on our doorstep so can go for some walks in the forest there, yet we’re right in the city centre. I’ve been a bit of a slacker though as Monday was great weather so I was bouldering on the beach with a friend, then went and found a cheap bike for me. We’re going to pick up the bikes at the weekend when we move back to the house, and we’re kicking off the wild weekend (!) by looking at glowworms in the Botanical Gardens. I may also go to a Laphroig whisky tasting on Thursday…
A ‘Stormy’ Wellington Weekend
Tuesday, September 28th, 2010It suddenly dawned on me how long its been since my last post, and I know you’ll all be waiting in anticipation…. 😉
So the last post was about storms, so we decided to wait that weekend out in Wellington as the weather didn’t look too hot….but it was! So we had a walk out to the seal colony a few kilometres from where we stay, and went hunting for some bikes to buy. Walking to the colony just past red rocks is a great way to see how some things in NZ are so different – people were walking, cycling, driving (it’s a 4×4 track) and running along the coastal track, others were surfing, I was bouldering on the way, and others were snorkelling on the coast to collect crayfish and paua. Everyone seems to get along and manages to share the space. The great thing is that once we get bikes we would be able to do this from our doorstep as its about 8km away. We also visited another couple of beaches on both the west and east of Wellington which were stormy as on the west, and quite calm on the east. They don’t call it Windy Wellington for nothing – it’s crazy!
The coast around Wellington is pretty neat though but it takes you an hour to get round the bay that’s only a few kilometres across the sea, but we can walk to the beach in ten minutes too. Hopefully some of the pics will show you the coastline.
On the west coast we have Makara beach (top left), and on the east of Wellington we have Baring Head (right) which has a lot of bouldering and climbing. Makara is just past a mountain bike park which we hope to check out over the next couple of weeks as we both have bikes now…or at least we will once we pick them up at the weekend! We managed to pick up some quite cheap bikes, with Ciara using her birthday cash towards it, but unfortunately we have to pick up a bike rack, helmets and other odds ‘n’ sods to go along with them but they should give us loads of fun when we hit the road, and even around Wellington. I’ve even managed to be sensible and get a cheap one rather than the one I really wanted!
Here are some pics of the walk to ‘Red Rocks’ (they really are red) and Sinclair Head. Hopefully the water will warm up a bit by summer so we can get in!
The Storms are hitting us in Wellington
Friday, September 17th, 2010
We’ve decided to hang around the city this weekend as there are large storms forecast to hit this weekend……it could be exciting as I sit here with thunderstorms and the odd bit of lightning as I prepare to catch the bus into town. Here’s a shot of one of the storm fronts coming through a couple of weeks ago…
Castle Point, Wairapapa and the Waiohine Gorge
Tuesday, September 14th, 2010
This weekend saw us take our second outing in the van to Castle Point, on the east coast of the North Island, 67km from Masterton. The van’s working name is now kiaoma – which we think more or less translates to ‘Escape’ in Maori – it’ll stick if we can actually remember it!
The weather treated us nicely which was a bit unexpected but it saw us base ourselves in the same bay for 2 nights which was great. We managed to go for short walks, fly my kite (for at least 10 minutes – I was being worked out!), explore the rock pools, but unfortunately we never managed to explore the cave at low tide due to seals blocking our pathway. Luckily there was a local surfing competition on as well which me managed to watch as we walked up to the headland as well.
On Friday night we managed to park up right next to the beach, but had to move to the campsite (urg!) on Saturday to avoid the partying surfers….but that was ok as we managed to chill out and watch a movie on the laptop and were still within 10m of the sea. They gave us a good demo of beach ‘boy racing’ before we left when the beach was emptied!
Kiaoma got a good outing as he managed to get a drive on the beach and along a gravel road on the way home as we managed to check out the swing bridge in the Waiohine Gorge in the Tararua Forest Park. This bridge is about 40m above the river below so we were fortunate it wasn’t very windy. We checked out a couple of tracks which we hope to walk in a few weeks to take us to a Department of Conservation hut overnight.
It’s a shame that work gets in the way (erm, for Ciara anyway!) as we reckon we just love travelling in the van. It’s the closest we get to a typical family setup – Ciara, me and our 2.4(x4) children – us and our two 4×4 vans…..one in Scotland, and one in New Zealand! Ciara wasn’t being the most responsible parent though as she got her hands on some gluten free beer which she is starting to appreciate!
There’s a couple of things going on in Wellington just now (well there are loads but we’re trying to minimise our socialising) – the main one we want to see is the World Press Photo exhibition which has stopped here for a month.
Birthday HeliPro flight over Wellington
Monday, September 13th, 2010I’m lagging behind on blog posts again but last weekend we managed to get up for a short scenic HeliPro flight over Wellington for Ciara’s birthday. We had to cancel on the big day due to the typical last minute windy Wellington weather but on the Saturday the weather was superb. We departed from the waterfront in the heart of Wellington city and flew around above the city for a mere 10 minutes but it was great all the same. I love seeing things from above so it would never be a bad trip. We managed to get indoor climbing again the following day.
Unfortunately I don’t think the birthday meal was totally gluten free so the day before the flight wasn’t so great, but the upside was that we stayed in Wellington rather than going away, and managed to get the flight in. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves (almost). Unfortunately some of them are blurred as I was too busy looking rather than thinking….arg – I’ll need to go up again! Hopefully it will give some of you at home a better idea of Wellington as well.
These are a downtown area called Oriental Bay – only 15 minutes walk from the main shopping street, if that. This is where we thought we’d like to stay initially but wanted to be further out of town.
This first image is for us, probably one of the biggest frustrations of living in Wellington…. in the foreground are the hills around Wellington, and the background is the South Island. It’s probably a 20 minute drive. If you could drive on water….erm, due to that you have to take the expensive ferry which doesn’t really make it feasible for a normal weekend if you take a van with you. There’s a lot of stuff in the North of the South Island that we’d like to do in preference to heading north at weekends. As the crow flies they’re about the same distance, just more costly due to the ferry….arg…. If you had 130 mile visibility you’d pretty much see Christchurch.
This is erm…an aerial view of Wellington. We live next to the little inlet by the green peninsula at the top right of the picture….in fact I went running along there the other morning!
As I’m talking about where we stay, we’re staying put in our friends house as they’ve been kind enough to let us stay longer term. If you want to see the general area we’re staying in, you can check out this Google satellite view below. The general area we stay around is close by the ‘A’ marker, the city centre is just off the top of the map, our favourite cafe is in Lyall Bay on the South (about 10 mins walk from us), and just off the bottom left of the image you can walk along the coast on a 4×4 track to see the seal colony. Have a scroll around or click the map to see it within Google. The photo above is pretty much taken from outside the top left of the map, looking towards the right of it, if you really want to start getting complicated!
Earthquake in Christchurch, New Zealand
Friday, September 3rd, 2010Just incase you are worried we are unaffected by the earthquake that hit Christchurch last night. It’s about 190 miles away as the crow flies but it’s in the South Island. Our housemate felt the quake during the night but the rest of us in the house slept through it.
Unfortunately Christchurch has been a bit devastated by it as it was a big quake, and not far underground. Here’s a few links :
Christchurch earthquake report on Stuff.co.nz
TVNZ Christchurch Earthquake reports
Wellington does have a fault line running right underneath it and every building here has evacuation boards outside them so it’s not like they don’t try and plan for these events as we are on the fault called the ‘Pacific Ring of Fire’.
Fingers crossed Chirstchurch recovers soon!
