Thursday, March 03, 2005
Where did the week go?
It's hard to believe that it's been a week since I updated this log. Oh well, I guess that means I'm having fun. What I'm not having fun with is the computer I'm using. It’s crashed once and logged me off the network once. Each time I lost my updates to this blog. So far I’ve wasted about an hour and a bit. The computer’s free (a laptop on loan from the hotel owner), so I can’t complain too much. It’s a great suite we have here too, so overall, a very nice spot.
The place we’re at is the same one we were at when I posted to the blog a week ago. We’re in Blenheim, near the top of the South island of NZ. We’ve been as far south as we are going to get and are now heading back north, eventually to Auckland and our flight to Sydney, Australia in 10 days time.
I should tell you about our adventures of the past week – that after all, is what this blog is for, so here goes.
We left Blenheim a week ago for Christchurch, which is about 1/3 of the way down the south island on the east coast. At the start we drove through the a wine growing region of nZ called (in the guide) Marlborough wine country. It seemed to be very dry, yet there were many vineyards, olive groves and crops of other types, so the dryness must either have been temporary or there must be wonderful irrigation. In the distance we could see massive mountains. The mountains got gradually closer and eventually we were travelling through spectacular arid mountain scenery with windy narrow mountain roads. Like many other areas we have visited, it would be great to spend more time stopping or exploring. There were several times I would have stopped (sometimes just to take a photograph) if I had been alone. Travelling in a group is different, even with just 3. You have to consider what other people want to do and we had our objective – getting to Christchurch.
It took most of the day, but we did reach Christchurch (Cc) in time to do some walking around. Since I’m getting up early to go kayaking tomorrow, I’ll stop here. Hopefully I’ll get this clunker laptop again tomorrow and can catch up with the blog.
The place we’re at is the same one we were at when I posted to the blog a week ago. We’re in Blenheim, near the top of the South island of NZ. We’ve been as far south as we are going to get and are now heading back north, eventually to Auckland and our flight to Sydney, Australia in 10 days time.
I should tell you about our adventures of the past week – that after all, is what this blog is for, so here goes.
We left Blenheim a week ago for Christchurch, which is about 1/3 of the way down the south island on the east coast. At the start we drove through the a wine growing region of nZ called (in the guide) Marlborough wine country. It seemed to be very dry, yet there were many vineyards, olive groves and crops of other types, so the dryness must either have been temporary or there must be wonderful irrigation. In the distance we could see massive mountains. The mountains got gradually closer and eventually we were travelling through spectacular arid mountain scenery with windy narrow mountain roads. Like many other areas we have visited, it would be great to spend more time stopping or exploring. There were several times I would have stopped (sometimes just to take a photograph) if I had been alone. Travelling in a group is different, even with just 3. You have to consider what other people want to do and we had our objective – getting to Christchurch.
It took most of the day, but we did reach Christchurch (Cc) in time to do some walking around. Since I’m getting up early to go kayaking tomorrow, I’ll stop here. Hopefully I’ll get this clunker laptop again tomorrow and can catch up with the blog.