Big City!

I've hit the North Island. Oh yes. And suddenly there's all these people and tall buildings and buzzes and hums and beeps and honks and wooooo, what a difference it feels like from the South Island where cities are really towns, towns really just villages with a few extra shops and a garage, and villages... well.

So I'm staying in Wellington at the moment, which is a cool city. It has a population of under 200,000 but feels very busy compared to what I'm used to. I've been soaking up the culture at the brilliant Te Papa museum, which is just huge (not quite Tate Modern size, but you could spend a good day in there wondering and wandering round all the exhibits) and some cool cinemas. I caught the end of a Latin American film festival last night where I saw a film called Paper Dove, about the Marxist/Maoist uprisings in Peru in the 80s. It followed the life of a young boy who was kidnapped by the "New Peru" group and then given militia type training. You follow him as he makes friendships, confronts enemies, and makes the most amazingly difficult decisions for a child his age. It was all quite shocking and gut wrenching and made all the more so by the stunning backdrop of Peruvian Glaciers and mountain ranges. Definitely worth watching.


Wellington is also a city of trees. Now that Autumn is coming along it is the perfect time to be here. There are parks just everywhere, from highly manicured Botanic Gardens with beautiful rose gardens... This is a Claude Monet -


...to native wildlife parks that stretch up onto the hillside, covering acres upon acres of land. Walking into these native bush areas makes it incredibly hard to imagine that you are just a mile or two away from the centre of the capital city. Yesterday I did the Hilltop walk, which takes you along the skyline of the mountains that encircle the city and harbour, and eventually take you down into the city at the south end. Unfortunately it was a wee bit cloudy yesterday, but apparently on a good day you can see right across to Marlborough and Kaikoura on the South Island, and up to Taranaki on the North Island. Here's to imagination. It was a pretty neat view down into the city though -


While in Wellington I've been working for Dave who is Ecoseeds, an organic seed supplier to all round New Zealand. He's one of those very practical handy guys that can turn just about anything into anything. Think crazy inventor dude from Back to the Future living Scrap heap challenge as his everyday life. I helped him rig up a sprinkler system for his polytunnel the other day out of pretty much nothing, which was cool. Mainly my work is packing seeds, which is fairly repetitive, but has lead me to wonder at the amazingness of seeds, and also makes me think that, when I have my city farm I might sell seeds from it as a wee extra little thing.

Off up to Taranaki next... Please be warmer there!

Marvelous Marlborough Sounds

Here I am at Ngaio Bay, a peaceful paradise. It is a guesthouse settled down in the nook of a valley nestled amongst roses and ferns. I've been here for the past fortnight enjoying my little wwoofa accomodation which is a little hut right on the beach. The sound of the sea sends me into deep and happy sleep.

Day times have been spent digging in the garden, where a cheeky little weka has helped me pick out weeds. Jude then uses heaps of the salads, herbs, veges and citrus fruits in her daily delicious delights that she serves up at the evening meal which we share with the guests...

Here's some of the vege garden with the house - which Jude and Roger designed and built (with a little help) about 15 years ago -

And here's the compost toilet snook away behind a giant fijoa in the garden -

I also had a great time fishing - the day we went out Jude and me caught 15blue cod (I also caught 3 blue cod that were a bit wee and so got set back to the sea, one parrot fish, one spotty, and I nearly caught a baracuda (incredibly fast big shiny thing) that had off with half of one of my cods). The fish was served up for dinner that night, and it was the meltiest in your mouth fish I've ever tasted!

One blue cod harvested from the "water garden" -

When I am not digging, or helping with the running of the guesthouse I've been able to have some great times sinking into the rythm of the tides, swimming, kayaking and watching some sublime sunsets and moonrises.

Just one of many marvelous skies of gold looking back towards the Kahurangi and Golden Bay -

Experiments with the various buttons and bits on my camera lead me to discovering the self timer -

And exciting pictures with sssllllloooowwww shutter speed -

The wildlife here is really brilliant - because there are so few people that live here the wildlife really thrives. I've spent hours upon hours wathcing ganets plummet from 20m into the ocean and come up swallowing down a beakful of fish, and, on flat calm days, listening to the sound of little herrings hopping out of the water away from the grasp of bigger shadows beneath. Here is my first siting of a bright bright turquiose kiwi kingfisher, which seemed much less timid than the UK kingfisher -

And here's shebaa my guide for the day when I walked round to French Pass -

French Pass itself is a really amazing place - it's (wait for it, another NZ biggest/fastest/steepest claim) one of the narrowest passages of sea in the world, separating D'Urville Island from the mainland. The water here roars through and can reach up to 8 knots, the surface is covered in whirlpools and white water. Not a clever place to kayak, but fun to watch the sheerwaters try to swoop down and fly through against the rushing wind -

I've had a truly magical time here in Marlborough. Fantastic.

Nelson's column

I've been hanging around Nelson area for the past few weeks. It's a pretty lovely area - so much sunshine! And also the best curry I've ever had at Little India. Nelson itself is quite a nice town with a great market on Saturdays selling alsorts of arts and crafts and yummy chutneys. I spent a bit of time wwoofing with a family that has a 5ha farm just on the outskirts of the city, with 2 cows, 2 goats, heaps of hens, turkeys and ducks. It's great to see something like this working so close to the city (below is the view into town from the small vege garden) - though I think some of the neighbours think differently following the escape of the pigs, who are now wild...

Here's a funky little Chinese Silky Bantum hen. Useless for anything except looking kind of funky -

I've been doing alsorts of work here - It's been great to have a variety of stuff to do, and I've picked up lots of little bits of info on the way. I've been clipping wings, potting on PawPaws (amazing that they grow here!), feeding flax to the cows (a good natural antibiotic type thing for their digestive system aparently), some seed saving -

And plenty of opportunities to explore the are. Here's Cable Bay (not much like the Colonsay version... named because a telecommunications cable between North and South Island was buried here), just North of Nelson...


where I saw the loneliest cow in the world -

I also went on a mini 3 day adventure into the Kahurangi National Park, which was brilliant. The walk started at the Flora carpark, which kindly starts you off at nearly 1000m above sea level (although poor old Pat didn't quite manage it all the way, getting quite overheated and steamy (oh er!) at about 750m, where I decided to leave it and hike up the rest of the track). I then trundled along an old path along the valley passing some great old shelters and relics of the gold mining in the area. Here's GridIron Gulch, which used to be a village about 100 years ago or so -

... and is host to some brilliant shelters. This one is just a wee platform under a giant rock, with a nice little fire pit down below (sorry the picture isn't very sharp, but you get the idea...) -

The tramp carried on up through the valley until I eventually arrived at the Salisbury Lodge, a very well equiped hut with awesome views, just in time for sunset -


The next morning was brought in by some beautiful mist -



and I decided to do a walk up to Lake Peel and back -



This is the view on the way back looking over the Tablelands (the plateau) towards Mt Arthure (which is just in cloud) and Gordon's Pyramid (the smaller peak in the centre of the picture), and right over the bay to Nelson in the far distance (left of the picture) -

Then the final day was back to the flora car park via Gordon's Pyramid and Mt Arthur (flora is nestled just in between the two small peaks in the far left of the picture). This was a bit of a slog, but worth it for the fantastic views, although cloud again at the top of Mt Arthur. Typical! Here's some more morning mist from Gordon's Pyramid looking over to The Twins (centre frame) and further into the Kahurangi -

For Easter weekend the walk was pretty quiet suprisingly. And the weather was fine, although definitely getting colder with hats and thermals needed at night. Brrrr! Making me think of British Spring and daffodils!

And a wee bit of walking around Abel Tasman on a wet day - but the weather served it quite well. Some dark and pretty tree ferns soaking up the rain -

Aroroa Bay as the tide is coming in -

Where - continuing on with NZ's claims to the "world's biggest/bestest/tastiest/steepest" - I discovered the world's most lopsided beach.