Meera and Tim's Wedding

In July I went to Canada for Meera and Tim's wedding. I am so glad that I went and so grateful that I actually got to spend quite a bit of time with Meera, Tim and their families before and after the wedding. Big thanks to Meera and Tim for such an amazing experience.

I arrived in Calgary the evening of Meera's bachelorette party. Unfortunately my flight was delayed leaving Auckland and I missed my connection in Vancouver and also missed the pole dancing lesson. But I caught up with everyone for dinner that evening.

The next day it was time for pedicures. I've never had such a great pedicure in my entire life. Look how pretty my toes are.

That evening was the Mehdni party and look how pretty my hand is.

The next evening was the rehearsal party with lots of dancing.

The wedding itself was a joint Anglican/Hindu wedding held at an Anglican church. Although my Sanskrit isn't great, I really enjoyed the beautiful ceremony.

The time for the reception held in a beautiful location in the foothills of the Rockies in Cochrane.

My hair straightener didn't work in Canada.

To my surprise, there were Kiwi style toilets.

Meera's sister Neeta.

It was also great to catch up with some old Calgary friends like Katherine, and some new ones like Isobel.

FIFA U-17 Women's World Cup

Canada 1, New Zealand 0

Paihia - Bay of Islands

Last weekend I took the dogs camping up North at Paihia (B) which is about 3.5 hours drive North of Auckland (A). This was my first visit to Bay of Islands and I picked a great weekend for it.





















We stayed at a campground just steps away from Waitangi, the site of the signing of the treaty of Waitangi .
This is NZ's founding document allowing for the white folk to take the land from the not so white folk (sound familiar?) which is still quite controversial. This means that NZ's national day "Waitangi Day" is not really a celebration like Canada Day.




















Unfortunately because there are Kiwi (birds) in the area, dogs are not allowed in many places. As much as Howie had been looking forward to hunting flightless birds, we didn't actually see any Kiwis. In fact very few Kiwi (people) have ever seen Kiwi (birds) in the wild. They are shy, nocturnal and scarce.



























Howie and Tui book their first boat trip on the ferry over to Russel. Howie thought it was great. Tui really didn't like the noise of the engine and spent the whole trip shaking and trying to hide under the seats.



















Tui Bird






































Tui Dog

Quirky NZ

Why is this being advertised?

I live on a small island out in the middle of nowhere

Sometimes I get a good reminder that I live on a small island out in the middle of nowhere. I've found a good dog food that I really like called Nutra Gold. It costs about $120 for a 15kg bag, but that's pretty normal for a premium food here. The dogs are on the Salmon and Potato at the moment and are doing well on it. However, I've run out and I usually order it online, but that supplier is out of stock. So I've been looking around and it turns out that there is none to be found in the whole country and no one knows when some might be arriving. I guess I need to start stock piling.

Otago Rail Trail

In July I had my first visitor in NZ. Hang came for two weeks and we headed down to the South Island to ride the Otago Rail Trail.
This former rail line is now a beautiful 150km bike trail located in Central Otago near the south end of the South Island. We started in Clyde "A" (not too far from Queenstown) and rode to Middlemarch "B" (not too far from Dunedin).

Riding 150km along a rail line doesn't sound very difficult. But the trail is NOT FLAT (see the elevation map below) and half thawed gravel is pretty slow going and we averaged about 10km/hour.

Ranfurly bike hire were wonderful at making all of our accommodation bookings and arranging our luggage transfer.

It turns out that the middle of winter is not really peak time on the rail trail. We saw 5 people in 4 days, but I think we were the only ones doing the full trail. But the weather was nice. A little frosty in the mornings, but nice and sunny during the day. The area is quite dry and doesn't get a lot of rain. However the winds can be quite strong during the summer and many people need to be rescued from the winds. So we figured we actually picked the best time to do it.

Quirky NZ

I'm going to add a new segment to my blog. Sometimes you come across something in NZ that just seems odd, strange or funny as (I'll have to start a Kiwispeak section to explain that expression).





















This is not a joke. This is for real.

35 is the new 29

I decided to have a huge birtheday celebration this year.

Starting with dinner at the sky tower.

An afternoon kayaking at Okahu Bay.

And a party at my place that included wine tasting, Wii and Singstar.

Christchurch Visit

In December I went to Christchurch (green arrow) on a school trip. But I went down a bit early and had a bit of a holiday.

Christchurch is a beautiful small city on the East coast of the South Island. It's the largest city on the South island (pop 400,000). Some say it's New Zealand's most English city, with it's beautiful Cathedral Square and the lovely Avon River running through the centre of town.

The mighty Avon river.

Cathedral Square.

Santa in the summer.

Hanging the Christmas lights in Cathedral Square.

Let me know if you figure out what this sign is for.

The trolley that runs through the town centre.

I travelled to Kaikoura (red circle North of Christchurch) by bus.

Sheep on the way to Kaikoura.

Kaikoura is a beautiful little town. I went there to swim with the dolphins. Dusky dolphins are found off shore year round. They are very playful, accrobatic and curious. We took a boat to find the dolphins. We found a pod of probably over 100 dolphins and snorkelled with them. The dolphins are curious and come up to you and swim around you. They like it when you make funny noises and swim around with them. But of course these


are wild dolphins and they are free to swim away if you're not entertaining enough to them. Although the sea was very rough, it was a thoroughly amazing experience. Everyone was sick on the boat trip back to shore and unfortunately I didn't get any dolphin pics. But trust me, it was amazing and something that I would do again.







Back in Christchurch, I took the Trans Alpine train to Greymouth (blue circle West of Christchurch). This is a beautiful train ride that runs through the Southern Alps.


















The mountains around Arthur's pass.






















































I had lunch and time for a quick walk around Greymouth before hopping back on the train to return to Christchurch.
















Greymouth.