I cant believe its not better

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I’ve been slaving away at work for months now (two and a half if you exclude Christmas and New Year) and reckon that it’s time for a break, so we’re heading south for a few days to Otago. First stop was Timaru, a place in transition from “deprived cess pit” to “nice place to live”. There was a nice park that is being given a facelift leading to the beach with a backdrop of a commercial port. I’m sure it will be a really nice place soon but we won’t be hurrying back there, especially since the drive there is bloody boring.

Omaru on the other hand was really nice. There are two major attractions there – penguins in their natural habitat and the Moeraki boulders. The penguins were great, especially when we saw one emerging from the sea, but since we did not have our binoculars (not unpacked yet), it was difficult to see them. They’re redeveloping the waterfront there too, but I think that it will be much nicer than Timaru when finished. They have a bunch of old buildings there that are looking a bit forlorn and in need of a bit of TLC to bring them back to their former glory. We also managed to visit the Whitestone cheese factory to pick up some very smelly goats cheese and an asbestos (well, Tupperware) container to keep it in.

On Friday, we set off from Omaru at the crack of 10 AM and headed up towards Tekapo and had a very pleasant journey. We went past the Elephant rocks (they filmed some of the Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe there) and a few nice sleepy towns (where we visited a geology museum to see if there were any old fossils in there that we knew) and the further we travelled, the drier it became. After visiting a couple of impressive dams (Aviemore and Benmore) and a brief pause to take some photos of Mount Cook over Lake Pukaki , we arrived in lovely Tekapo.

The choice of accommodation came down to basic or top luxury so we decided to slum it at the luxurious end of the market at “The Residence” (www.theresidence.co.nz) for a couple of nights. The next day we trekked up the impressive Mount John to the observatory and booked ourselves onto the night tour to see the wonderfully clear skies that night. Clear skies, my arse! We were disappointed by the cloud cover but we will be back, that’s for sure, armed with mountain bikes and binoculars.

Sunday we headed home to Lincoln , happy to be back, despite enjoying the break.

Back to work tomorrow and no more holidays planned until Easter.

Probably.

We’ve started the process of getting a house built. The design is going well – we’ve decided on the number of walls (four) and a roof and even some of the internal stuff too, but we don’t have anywhere to build the damn thing. We have agreed where we’d like to live – around Tai Tapu or Lincoln – but have not managed to agree a price on the section of land that we decided we wanted.

I’m sure that the price is a fair one and as the Kiwi housing market slides into the toilet, perhaps we will finally get something at a realistic price. The problem with Tai Tapu is that it is, in theory, upmarket, if a bunch of fields can be upmarket. Perhaps the grass really is greener there? Anyway, as a result of being an upmarket field, it has an upmarket price and the exchange rate is eye-wateringly bad at the moment. If we pay that, we won’t be living like kings any more, it will be like just one king and not a very wealthy one.

One of the things that you need consider when you build a new home with a decent amount of land is the cost of running the electricity and phone cables from the section boundary to the house site. As a result, we have observed that most people have positioned their home quite close to the boundary and hence the road. You’ve made the effort to move away from town to a rural setting, bought yourself 10 acres and then you plonk your house about 5 metres from the road where it’s nice and noisy like it was in town.

Hmmm, the Christmas rush gave way to the holiday lull. I thought it was only third world countries like France and Belgium that closed up the country during the summer jut as all the tourists arrived, but unlike those other countries, Kiwis don’t halve their public transport system just because the workers are on holiday – partially because they don’t have one to halve. It’s like the old British Leyland Waltz – slow, slow, stop-stop, slow.

It’s just not right, the temperature being mid to high twenties, blue skies and Christmas tunes on the radio. Observing the usual scrum to buy anything and people buying enough food for a month even though the shops are only closed for about 10 minutes these days, it seems that Christmas traditions are the same here as back in the UK. We had a turkey roast, with a sage and orange stuffing, pigs in blankets, great gravy and a selection of veggies – you need the oven on and three of the four burners when it’s almost 30 degrees outside, eh?

New Year was a little cooler but no less exciting. Oh yes. But that’s for another time.