Hello blog fans (all seven oreight of you!), sorry it's been a while since we've updated our ongoing travel story, we've been bogged down in the mundane chore of looking for work and lodgings in what is now an increasingly wintery Christchurch.
So what have we been up to since Charlotte's last post ? It's probably best to go back to Dunedin, which seems like another decade to us now but is probably only a few weeks for people living in normal time!
I have to say we really liked Dunedin, we ended up spending five or six days enjoying both the city and the more natural environment of the Otago peninsula, which is practically part of the city grounds anyway. Dunedin has a particuarly British feel to it, the architecture and temperature contributing heavily to this. It's supposedly based on Edinburgh but, for some reason, reminded us heavily of Bristol. Dunedin University has a good reputation, and a large student population means the city is lively in the evenings, we even popped out to sample some of the after dark atmosphere ourselves (although we did end up in Piquinne- Lonely Planet description: "sophisticated wine bar with an older crowd who stand around looking pleased with themselves for making it out to such a trendy venue" , yes that's us now!)
Scene of Dunedin's Harbour, taken from the Otago Peninsula
If you want some fresh air the Peninsula is a short hop out the city, offering walking tracks and the chance of seeing Blue Penguins, Seals / Seal Lions and the Royal Albatross. We were lucky enough to see all of them, the Sea Lions at particuarly close quarters.
We did have have half a thought that maybe we should stay and look for work in Dunedin, it's the kind of place that will have opportunities available as they stuggle to attract people down there and lose a lot of the younger workforce to the slightly brighter lights of Christchurch or the much brighter lights of Auckland and the North. Dunedin has got a surf beach (requiring high levels of motivation in Winter!), good surrouding countryside and property is still dirt cheap down there. In the end though the extra potential options of, and proximity of skifields to Christchurch won through, and we continued our journey north up the Coast.
By this stage money was running short, and the weather was closing in, so we decided to make a break for Christchurch as quickly as possible. We stopped only for the mandatory photo opportunity at the Mouraki Boulders, and to pass through Methven, in order for me to stop into the Mt Hutt Snow School to enquire about snowboard instructors courses (still under consideration).
The Mouraki Boulders - formed from calcite deposits (I think!)
In practice we were to find the Christchurch job market a harder nut to crack. We'd be warned that it can be a tricky place to pick up work, it's not the world's biggest commercial centre and known as being a bit parochial. In addition the economy here is still recovering from it's recession, even so after three or four weeks of scratching about with little success in the job market frustrations did start to creep in. For all our adventures of the past few years we are still successful professionals, used to having mutiple options when it come to looking for work. It's hard not to take it a bit personally, Charl missed out on one contract opportunity as she "didn't have enough experience", absolute nonsense of course. She was more than capable of doing the job but the old shcool mindset obviously in place at the company was "We need someone with fifteen years industry experience", so when the CV of a thirty year old lady was put in front of them they probably didn't even read through to se that she'd be perfectly capable of doing the work.
Can I remember how to do up a tie ?
The weather was also contributing detrimentally to our mind states, for two weeks in rained almost solid, whilst turning increasingly cold at the same time. This was unusual weather for Christchurch, normally a front will come in and blow through in a couple of days but for whatever reason it got stuck this year, resulting in record floods along the east. Pretty horrible weather to endure when you're stuck living in a 6' by 10' box on wheels. For the first time since we left the UK life felt a little bit challenging (appreciate this will invoke no sympathy from those slogging out forty hour weeks back home)
The great thing about Christchurch though is it's location as a hub for activities and trips away and we managed to dispell some of our job-hunting induced gloom by getting away on three consecutive weekends to explore the Port Hills just outside the city, back over to Punakaiki to see Sam & El, and north up the coast to the seaside town of Kaikoura.
Christchurch City, Southern alps in background. View from the Gondola, Port Hills.
The Port Hills border the city around the suburbs of Sumner, Mt Pleasant and South Eastern area's. On the other side of the hills lies Lyttleton Harbour and the Banks Peninsula. On the weekend the hills are teeming with Kiwi's running, cycling and generally being ridiculously active, from the youngsters right up to older types, lycra reigns supreme and there's barely space for your car on the road (you feel guilty for driving!).There's a lot of walking tracks and the touristy "Gondola" station where less active sorts take a cable car up to the top to enjoy an expresso whilst looking out over the city, the sea and the mountains beyond. Christchurch isn't a classically beautiful city to walk around, but from up on the hills the view is spectacular.
After enduring two weeks of terrible, terrible weather in Christchurch we took the opportunity to go back over to Punakaiki to see Sam and El. For once the sun was shining on the West Coast and the rain was elsewhere! It was also good to see a couple of friendly faces again after a couple of months worth of transitory acquaintances on the road. The West Coast is beautiful in the crisp, clear winter weather. Walking on the beach near to Sams we could see Mt Cook in the background, over 200km's away, something that's only possible with a clarity of atmosphere found in one or two locations on earth (according to some local walking their dog on the beach that is)
The Southern Alps loom in the distance.
We took the opportunity to go walking wtih Sam up the soon-to-be-flooded-for-hydro Mokihuni Valley, and Charl took another yoga class for the locals on the Monday night (she is fast becoming a Punakaiki favourite by all accounts!). The nice weather kept up for our drive back through Arthur's Pass, and although we had been concerned the pass might be snow covered on the eastern side we were back in Christchurch in four and a half hours without any problems.
The following weekend MJ (our self-propelled caravan if we haven't used her honorifc before) got another outing, this time up to Kaikoura. At Kaikoura the mountains drop down almost into the sea itself, and driving up in winter with the snow-capped peaks on your left and a turquoise sea on your right is a pleasure all by itself. It's about three hours drive to the north of Christchurch and has a chilled out, beach town atmosphere. It's well known for it's wildlife watching tours and is probably the best place to come to spot Sperm Whales in New Zealand, there's also dolpins, seals, penguins and albatross in the area so plenty for wildlife enthusiasts. Ten km north of Kaikoura a point break throws out a clean 500m right hander when the conditions are right, and an hour in land you can ride the snow instead at the Mt Lyford skifield. As you can probably guess this gives it top marks in my book.
A Seal chills out on the Kaikoura Peninsula
As luck would have it our trip to Kaikoura aslo coincided with the surf competition - "Kaikoura cold water classic" - so as a bonus we got to watch some decent surfing action. There's a great free camping spot close to the surf so we saved a few bucks at the same time. The following day I braved the cold water fora (quick) surf myself, catching what was probably the best wave of my life out by the point. Unfortunately by the time I caught it Charl had got bored and starting taking photos of shells on the beach so there's no photographic evidence, you'll just have to take my word for it!
So that's a few examples of what you can achieve in the weekends from Christchurch, and a good part of why we're considering the location as a longer-term home. It has been a bit frustrating living out of the van, and trying to find the work we were looking for, but things have just started to come togethor a month down the line. We are now sharing a little house in a suburb called Redcliffs with Paul, an english guy who has been here for three years. Paul's a mountaneer by background and typically of the expat crowd out here seems to have gone for the life full on - he's always out cycling, running, kayaking, surfing, climbing or skiing. It's this sort of common interest that we imagine we'll find prevalent among the people we meet here. It is simply that sort of thing that draws people here, I'm sure there's a good night out in Christchurch if you go looking for it but if you're more into partying than the outdoors stuff there's better places to base yourself I'm sure.
The area we have moved into, Redcliffs, sits on the estuary and is just five minutes walk away from the open surf beaches at Sumner. As it's getting colder the temptation to get suited up and hit the waves is certainly a bit less frequent then it used to be, but I've made it out a couple of times and it's great to have it on your doorstep, although it's not quite as immediatly convinient as living in Freshie!
That's me. Surf is two foot, not a massive paddle out and I was sharing it with one other bloke. Perfect.
It's only a tweny minute jump into the city centre but has a nice small community feel to it, if you're walking out to grab a paper from the local in the morning most people will say g'day as they walk past, it's nice. From the bottom of the road you can look out over the estuary, with the tall buildings of the city in the background and behind them the snow capped southern alps.
Our new residence in Redcliffs
I am shortly due to start a three month contract at a contact centre, making outbound calls to existing customers regarding their wills, home loans etc. Not something that will set the world on fire but regular work that will pay for our rent and ski-passes over the season. Charl has just taught the first week of a four week introduction to Yoga course at a local gym in Sumner. She also is just about to start a six week temp job with a legal company. It's an administrative post and 930-1430, tue - fri, so it's not going to cause too much stress, and does leave her some spare time to try and pick up some more yoga teacher.
It's small steps towards our end goals at the moment, but at least we have some work and the opportunity to test out life in Christchurch and get some snowboarding in over the winter. We recently got our first days riding of the season at Mt Hutt and have spent the last few days in pain as muscles we haven't used for a while have taken a good pounding. The snow is here though and there's been a real buzz around the city as everybody skis or rides and people are looking forward to weekends out on the snow.The main commercial field, Mt Hutt, is an hour and half out the city but there are several club fields also within easy reach. Club fields are a classic bit of Kiwi community co-operation. They are small fields, run by groups of locals and volunteers, than are normally serviced by rope tows and T-bars. They'll often have a lodge, not to dissimilar to some of the DOC huts we've stayed at, that you can book into for the weekend.
New Brighton Pier with a funky sunet
Life here would be about getting out at the weekends and doing all the cool stuff that I've just been talking about. I could easily see us ending up with bikes and kayaks in addition to the surf and snowboards. What's cool is that for the most part a lot of the expat crowd have come here for the same reason, so you'll never be short of contacts with similar interests. Hopefully we'll start to meet a few people through Paul and our work now so after a six month timeout can start to have something of a social life again!
It's not a done deal that we'll stay. Corporate jobs of significance, or suitability for us, are tricky to come by down here, most bigger companies will have their head office in Welly or Auckland. The work to live culture means people stay in the positions they've got, picking up a salary and making the most of life outside of work, which is cool, but does mean positions don't come up all that regurarly. In order to pick up the points for permanent residency one of us would have to get a position roughly similar to what we were doing before so work remains a key factor in our increasingly drawn out decision making process.
It seems like a socially stable place. Crime is low but the social decay which characterises urban settlements in the west is creeping in according to the local press The kids are really into dickhead boy racer culture, and there parents don't always set them the best example! The city is a lot quieter in winter than summer, and if we last through the winter and find we've not been too put off by the cold and inadequately heated houses then maybe that's a good sign. So early days yet but we'll let you know our thoughts again in a couple of months time.
Finally: I would just like to use this public, if admittedly not massively so, forum to express my utter disgust at the perfomance of the national football team yesterday. Quarter to six in the morning I got up, Charl dropped me into town and I wasted twenty bucks on food and drink whilst watching the complete drivel that was England Vs. Algeria. What has happened Fabio? did you get Shaun WP mixed up with Theo Walcott and send the wrong player back by mistake? have you simply forgotten that you brought Joe Cole with you ? Have you taken Rooney's favourite toys away leading him to drop into the footballing depression he's found himself in ? Did it not occur to you that if King got injured (and what are the chances of that happening with his record?) we'd be left without any sort of pace at centre back - knock a ball over the top and I'd have the beating of Terry and Carrager ? Why why why why why why ?
Enough of that, more blog in a couple of months ! Full photos at: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=230062&id=681815399&l=271bdb10cb
Cheers M'Dears
Si & Charlotte
