Biking the Queen Charlotte Track

Once again, sorry for not posting more often but life in NZ has been rather busy.  Since our trip back to Canada in August, I have traveled to Romania, Vienna and Perth. In November, Ted was in Gisborne for 3 weeks doing fieldwork and then went to a conference in Auckland.  But, we have also managed a few adventures together; a hike in the Tararuas and a bike trip through the Marlborough Sounds.  Not to mention regular working, biking, and gardening at our home; things grow really fast here!

We mountain biked the Queen Charlotte Track in November with a friend from work.  The track is a 71 km trail (track in kiwi speak) that goes along a ridge in the Marlborough Sounds, just across the Cook Straight from Wellington.  To get there we took a Ferry from Wellington to Picton, and then a water taxi to Resolution Bay.  From Resolution Bay we biked ~ 68km to Anikiwa, where the water taxi picked us up to go back to Picton.  We did the trip over two days, 45 km on the Saturday, and then a lighter day on the Sunday.  And the water taxi transported all of our gear so we didn't have to ride with it, choice!  We managed to pick a perfect weekend for weather and didn't get a single flat tire.  Although, Ted finished the ride with only 2 of 4 bolts in his crank! 

Below are some photos...

View of Picton in the Marlborough Sounds from the Ferry, a beautiful part of the world.

It was definitely good that we had a water taxi to transport our gear, it would not have been nice to ride with that pack.

Bikes on the water taxi, ready to leave Picton.

We saw a pod of ~50 dolphins on the way to Resolution Bay. Our boat drove right over to them and a few of them were right beside the boat jumping away. Amazing!

Resolution Bay cabins, we stayed here before starting the ride.

Our lunch stop on Saturday.

One of the many fantastic view points along the ridge.

This is not a Kiwi, it is a Weka, a rather tame bird that appeared out of the bush whenever we stopped. These birds look pretty similar to Kiwi's, but have a much shorter beak.

Another nice view.

 

Almost done, 6 km of downhill left!

4 weeks of Summer and then the biggest snow storm of a generation?

Wow, it has been over 6 months since we last posted something up here, sorry! Lots has happened in that time but I will start with our recent vacation back to Canada. Over 4 weeks we managed to travel to... Vancouver, Squamish, Canmore, Vancouver, Toronto, Temagami, Bracebridge, Ottawa, Temagami, Toronto, Yorkton, Vancouver... phew! Lots of distance covered, but we were thrilled to have good visits with so many of our family and friends. Overall it was a great trip.

In Squamish we stayed with and mountain biked with friends of ours that we met in Edmonton. It was an awesome way to start - I'm still trying to decide which trail I like best, Cheshire Cat or Angry Midget. We will definitely have to go back and ride there again.


Next we drove to Canmore to spend a few days with the Yorkton Paynes. Despite a little rain, we spent a nice day visiting Lake Louise and had a memorable canoe excursion on Moraine Lake.


While in Canmore we also participated in a 24 hr mountain bike race, the same race that we've done in the past. The race went well, we had a sweet set up this year with RVs, a bit of an improvement over the tents we've used in the past. We especially enjoyed the pre-race dinner of steak, sausage and scallops, paired with good wine and lots of beer, perhaps too much beer...


The day after the race we drove back to Vancouver and spent a couple of days with Ted's cousin Shirley (and Ryan) and also saw the Victoria Paynes. Luke enjoyed riding high on Uncle Ted's shoulders.


Our next stop was the Bertrand's cottage in Northern Ontario. The lake was a perfect temperature so we spent most of our time relaxing on the dock, swim, dry off, swim, dry off, beer, water ski, swim, dry off, beer, repeat! While in Ontario we also attended a party for Ted's cousin Jeremy's wedding and the annual Norton family picnic. It was great that we could see so much of our family in such a short time!



Finally, we flew to Yorkton, Saskatchewan along with the Windsor Paynes. It was a good week that included a game of Mission Impossible, multiple trips to the beach, several games of take 2 and ended with a big game of road hockey !

It was a great trip back!

Flying back to Wellington we were hoping that we might have missed the worst of winter... WRONG!


We arrived back to the biggest winter storm in decades. It snowed in downtown Wellington, which is very rare. Up on our hill we had a few centimeters on the ground. In some ways we're glad we got to experience the snow, but we could have easily missed the cold weather that came with it. Fortunately, it was short lived and the weather has returned to normal, 15 C today, leaving us with a nice view of the snow capped Tararua's (mountain range we can see from our place).

Christmas Trees and Coppertone

Happy New Year! I can't believe it is already 2011 and I have been living in New Zealand for 11 months. It seems like yesterday that we were trying to decide whether to make the big move.

Well... Christmas in the summer was a different experience but it was still Christmas. Rather than some of the shortest days in the year, we were having the longest days of the year and temperatures were in the 20s rather than -20s. This means we were less inclined to eat heavy, hearty meals, and we saved money on electricity by not having the Christmas tree lights on all the time and by not putting up any outdoor Christmas lights (not much point since you can only turn them on after 9 pm). The commercial aspects of the holiday are not as in your face down here and overall, the holiday takes a bit more relaxed tone than it did in Canada. Despite these differences, we put up our tree, watched a few Christmas movies, made Christmas cookies and quick chip squares and of course Santa knew we had moved, so it still felt like Christmas, except we definitely missed being with our family and friends.

Christmas morning started as it normally would, waking up early to see what Santa brought. However, the sun was up almost as early as Ted (and stayed out all day to make a great summer day). After opening our presents, and catching up with some of our family on Skype, we went to a collegue's house from my work, and enjoyed a Kiwi Christmas brunch in their backyard. We had cold ham, quiche, baked goods and fresh fruit, oh yeah and beer and champagne. After brunch we headed out on our bikes, Santa had brought Ted a big downhill bike that of course had to be test driven off a few jumps. After that we partook in another Kiwi tradition and went to the beach, we even managed to go swimming. To top the day off we had "Shrimps on the Barbie" along with steak and a few veggies and garlic bread, not quite the turkey feast with all the trimmings; but we didn't have the stomach ache either.

So... all in all a pretty good Christmas Day (other than missing our family that is).

The day after Christmas Ted flew to Christchurch to start the journey to Antarctica. He flew to the ultimate down under the following day and has spent over a week now at McMurdo station in Antarctica, waiting to head to a temporary field camp near the trans Antarctic mountains. He is hopefully heading into the field camp as I write. I won't give away anymore details as I am sure he will tell a better story when he gets back at the end of January.

For New Years I headed to Rotorua with some of our friends to mountain bike. Rotorua truly stinks, it smells like Sulphur due to the number of hot spots in the area, which also means there are lots of hot springs. We spent most of the three days riding our bikes which was awesome. The trails were great, passing amongst huge pine trees and cool fern trees. There was even a shuttle bus to drag our lazy butts up the hill so we could ride back down, we did ride most of the way up a few times though. I don't have any photos but I am heading back in a few weeks and will hopefully remember to bring the camera this time.