This video taken by the lovely Dom & Val 2 hours drive north of Christchurch in Kaikoura. Kai meaning “food” and Koura meaning plentiful (I think).

Basically the continental shelf goes from being super deep to super shallow – and this creates a massive upwelling of yummy foody stuff for fishies… it’s the place to do whale watching and dolphin swimming.

Had to be up and out reasonably early this morning as it was the longest day (30km door to door – but mercifully flat)

There were lots of wild horses about this morning and I must say, I was a little scared when they all spread out behind us and followed for a wee way.

The first stop was after 15km, and that was for lunch at Anne’s hut. Or, what’s left. I’m assuming it was simply someone forgetting to properly put out the fire (or something), but the entire hut was burned to the ground. There was a smaller (4 person) biv there, which they really don’t advertise… I suspect because they don’t want two groups getting there at the same time and being caught short.

It really was quite a long day, though for me at least it felt probably easier than the first day. There were a few streams to be crossed, but really, it’s a simple tramp which anyone could do.. perfect if you have the time.

Above we passed the “high point”, Anne’s saddle at 1136m. Last time there was snow.

All the way Maaike brought “Lenny”… Now.. there’s a good story here. Maaike’s sister (Femke) is having a baby. Maaike feels slightly far away and so decided that Lenny the sock bear, would have a chat with the unborn (via email) telling stories of life in NZ etc… and the adventures Lenny has.

Here he is, knackered at the end of the day, and then being slightly terrorised by me. Ah well, all good life lessons I’m sure.

And a picture of our excellent hut for the second night. Had a lovely bay windows to relax in. Really lovely place.

On the Sunday it was up and out.. not too early.. but not too late as the weather was due to change. Unfortunately we didn’t do a car shuttle (as we were on our own) which left us a 15km uphill rainy struggle to get back to the car. I’d brought my bike to commute on, but we tried hitching, and within 10 mins were lucky enough to get a lift with a lovely lady who was back from Show Day in Christchurch (the reason for the long weekend).

All in all an excellent weekend, and the blisters have almost healed.

It was a long weekend in Christchurch, so Maaike and I, not having tramped for a _very_ long time, headed off to do the longish (67k) but flat, St. James walkway.

It was markedly different from the hike we did in for Mike Carrigans stag night, the snow had receded quite a lot in just a few weeks.

One of the huts (Anne hut) had burned down, so we had to structure our tramp with e 22km Day, a 30 km day and a 15km day. The first day certainly felt like the longest – my legs just aren’t used to walking that far at the moment!

Our high point for the day was passed without needing to resort to oxygen.

The walk would actually be quite treacherous in midwinter. There are lots of avalanche paths crossing the track and it would be distinctly uncool to be caught out in one. At this time of year though, the danger has passed (so we were safe mum ;)

The station has had wild horses on it for years. They’re let roam, and then every so often are rounded up and sold. There were horse skulls everywhere, and we caught our first sign of the beasties just before reaching our hut for the night.

All in all, it was an excellent start to the tramp.

Flew up to Nelson for this years backgammon championship. I’ve not been playing quite as much as last year but still loved the trip. Unfortunately quite a number of competitors pulled out at the last minute, so there were only 6 people competing in the end.

Pip (left above) was the winner *again* this year. We had a close match in the round robin (9:8 to me) but she fairly and squarely beat me in the semi’s.

Other than backgammon, life has been quite busy… I’ve been studying Drupal in preparation for my new job (starting Monday 21st). There’s a massive amount to learn (which is why I took the job!).. While I’m sure I should be up to the task – there will no doubt be a huge amount of rapid learning to be done on-the-job. It’s the first job I’ve had which has a three month probation. Mind you, the only reason a probation would be used would be if you weren’t up to the job – in which case, would you want it anyway? (Well, ok, that’s probably not strictly true for all job types – but I think it is true for me!)

Earthquake t-shirt sales tick along. Doing one final order in a couple of weeks time. It has certainly generated enough to pay for the new Snowpool design

Hopefully that will be going live in a week or so. Kinda needs to get up there soon as the Northern Hemisphere is inexorably moving towards winter, while we, are moving happily into longer and longer days ;)

For the last few years a lady (Nora) has been organising evening rogaine series’ in the evenings. A rogaine is orienteering where there’s no set course.

This year Maaike has been doing a kayak (rolling) course on the Wednesday evenings – so I took to the hills with Amy (who is now en route to Antarctica) and Michelle (who isn’t).

These pictures are from the final course – and it also happened to be the actual day of Michelle’s 30th – what an excellent way to spend it.

It was a beautiful day up in the Port Hills.. there was one view (which I didn’t quite make the time to take) of the top of Castle Rock which fell down in the 7.1 earthquake. Quite the scar.