Saturday was a fully rainy “Southerly” (remember, south is cold here, so a Southerly means windy cold rain from Antarctica). But Sunday dawned beautifully. We packed up our gear and drove an hour northwest of Christchurch to Mt Oxford for the day. As we got a view of the mountains we realized that the cold rain we had yesterday in Christchurch had been cold snow on the high ground….and we hadn’t packed our snowshoes or gaiters. In the end it didn’t matter, as the people in front of us packed down the trail.

It’s actually really wet walking through trees while the sun melts the snow. Unpredictable clumps of slush kept bombing down through the branches. Milo complained, but he had a canopy to keep the snow off, so I think he was really complaining because he was tired. Here I’m trying to get him to sleep, and he’s not buying it.

Give me five, Baby!
Jeremiah was wishing he had brought his binoculars to look for animals to shoot in this bushy terrain. We saw some hoof prints. We weren’t sure whether they were deer or goats, but we’d eat either one!

Here we’re almost at the top of Mt Oxford, with the Canterbury plains spread out below. You can see the big Waimakariri river swollen with rainwater in the background. All this plain was once ocean, but the sediment brought off the mountains and deposited by the river has filled it in. I could actually imagine it happening since we could just see the muddy splotch the river was dropping at its mouth as it dumps into the ocean.

Above the tree line the fresh snow made the tussock grasses look even more humpy lumpy than normal. The sun was melting the snow so fast that the trail turned into a mini stream.

In the lee of this little rock wall the sun felt nice and warm, and we ate our lunch. Couldn’t quite toast the cheese on the sandwiches, I guess we’ll have to wait for the full strength summer sun for that.

Aw! Milo likes the mountain tops. We’re not sure he cares a hoot about the view, but the top is where he gets COOKIES.

Diaper change time! I guess this is Milo’s version of “Take a leak on every peak.” “Diaper change on every range??” It doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, but one of these days diapers will be a thing of the past. Until then….

Yesterday we went to Birdlings Flat, a pebbly beach about 30 minutes south of our house, with 3 other “Mums with kiddies.” Two are British moms and two of us are American, and we’ve all been in NZ less than a year. The beach was shrouded in chilly mist when we arrived, but the stones were still somehow getting some sun warmth so we warmed our buns on them until the breeze shifted the fog away. It was nice to chat, compare notes, and watch our kids squabble over rocks….as if there aren’t enough rocks on the beach!

Poke, poke, poke, driftwood is fun! Everyone came home with two eyes, amazingly enough.

Milo likes to throw rocks, of course, but at the beach he things they all need to get thrown into the waves because we did that one day months ago with Daddy. Mama got her exercise, up and down the beach!

BECA (Jeremiah’s employer) sponsored several teams in a mountain bike race event yesterday (map above). 3-4 people per team took turns riding laps around the trail marked out through the ‘forest’ (planted pines) for 6 hours, or 12 hours for the really rugged. Crazy individuals had the choice of riding the 6 hour or 12 hour stint all by themselves. Teams with the most laps around the course won. The course was mostly through the river flats next to the Waimakariri River, so not a lot of elevation, and bikers of any ability could participate. There were 1600 riders, with teams about 500 on the course at any one time. To see what the start looks like with 500 mountain bike riders, check out the video below. The start was actually a 300 meter run to collect your bike along a long avenue, then squeeze through a livestock fence gate and on to the course. The race magistrate had a typical dry Kiwi sense of humor (reminiscent of the Brits), and on the course review he warned riders of where the initial bottlenecks would be, like underneath a bridge. “It’s steel,” he chided, “just take it easy.” He was really good about keeping the tone of the race good-humored, making sure riders were courteous when out on the course.

The forth member of the bike team had to go home early, so we put Milo is as the fourth rider….in the picture only.

Here’s Jeremiah waiting at the BECA tent for his team member to come in. The course snaked through a big field filled with tents, team riders and support crews. You had to be very careful crossing the course to avoid getting hit by a rider careening around the corner of a tent.

Riders wore a timing gizmo on their ankles, which got transferred whenever team riders switched. It doesn’t do to be lazy about this step–a loop wasn’t counted if the rider wasn’t wearing the anklet.

Take off! Jeremiah will ride the 12 kilometer loop, sweating and breathing dust, after which another team member will take a turn.

We brought Milo’s bike from the toy library and he says he’s going to be racing next year. It got nice and warm during the day (“scorching hot” by Kiwi standards, probably 75 degrees F), so Milo shucked his pants.

Hagley park (like central park) has a lovely botanical garden, and the azalea collection is in peak bloom right now. Forget the pinks and purples we’re used to at home, these are FLAMING azaleas with variety names like “Barbeque,” “Mimosa,” and “Chent Cream.” It makes up in a tiny part for the fall foliage colors we’re missing. I bumbled in circles around the azalea planting for quite some time. Good thing Milo was mellow, pending a nap time.

Milo my Plant Buddy was interested in the azaleas too, but mostly to pick the blossoms off….

Aren’t these delicious?

These buds look like lobster claws, don’t they?

Ummm. The insides of the petals are leopard-spotted. Very sexy I must say, if I can without scandalizing my parents.

We took a walk to the playground the other day, and what usually takes about 5 minutes took more like 40. We stopped at every flower and Milo took great interest in smelling them all, even those without any discernible scent. “Train a child early in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not stray from it.”

Milo actually toppled over smelling these pansies, his head is to heavy and they’re so close to the ground. About 90% of the time he refrains from picking them, which is pretty amazing.

This lovely creeper lost a few flowers to picking, but it shouldn’t be too noticeable to the homeowner.

Gerbera daisies appear to be winter hardy here, and these cheeky red ones got the Milo treatment.

Last weekend was a long weekend here (Labor Day), so we resolved to go out hiking. But then everywhere on the south island showed 3 days of cold rainy westerlies….so we made for the one spot with the reputation of dry sun. Blenheim, in the Marlborough wine region 5 hours north of Christchurch. We chose a hiking spot on the western side of the mountains, hoping that the rain would be spent by the time it reached us. We definitely fared better than the west coast and probably better than the majority of the mountains, though we weren’t exactly dry. Here on the top of Mt Richmond (google map link) we got glimpses of the sunny valley below through the blowing clouds that we could see forming just west of us as the mountains pushed up the air.

Friday night we stayed at a hostel (called a “backpacker” here), and it was seriously the nicest hostel I’ve ever stayed in. No dingy kitchens or mouldering sofas here! It was nicer than the house we’re renting in Halswell, and we figured we could probably get a comparable long-term rate to stay there for a few months….but it would be a heck of a commute for Jeremiah. It’s set smack dab in the middle of the Marlborough wine region, with acres and acres (ok, hectares and hectares) of precision-planted vines and tidy trellis posts surrounding the town. AND the proprietors were friendly and genuinely seemed to like hosting guests. We already booked another stay in early December.

Watson’s Way backpackers had a huge old jasmine plant at the door. I have a silly girlish love of jasmine, with its delicate spiraled buds and it’s wonderful fragrance. For a year or two I had a jasmine plant shaped like a ring on my windowsill back in Schuylerville, I must have been about 15. At night I’d peer at my reflection in the dark window, wreathed in white flowers, like looking into a pond in a Tolkien poem. A whiff of it still takes me back to those days. Anyway, jasmine doesn’t survive outside at home but it sure does here.

Saturday morning we drove something like 30 K out of town through logging country to where the dirt road crossed a river, and decided not to test our little red VW by driving through like the 4×4’s do. Here we are, swatting sandflies (like black flies) and ready to go.

Those who don’t drive through the river must wade through the icy water. Ooh, aahh! At least it was only knee deep. There are plenty of tracks here that require wading through waist or chest deep water several times a day, and apparently Kiwis just walk through, boots, clothes and all. We pansy American’s aren’t too keen on that.

A river and a few miles of hilly logging road behind us, here we are finally at the trail head where the native forest starts. You step from man-made pinyon pine forest covering impossibly steep slopes (they log with cables) into native dense greenery, with mosses and lichens lighting up the trunks and forest floor.

The nice thing about a ridge trail is no more river crossings. It was steep, but supplemented with frequent views, we made it.

Mama carries baby, Sherpa Daddy carries most of the rest of the weight–Brilliant! The trail winds through mossy woods dripping with lichens.

Here’s our hut, a six-bunker but we were the only ones to stay there these two nights. You can see Mt Richmond above the goat-grazed clearing. We glimpsed a couple goats, they looked pretty good to eat….. Actually, they’re just domestic goats that once upon a time got out and are now wild. Jeremiah spent a bit of time thinking about how he’d get a heavy goat carcass out of the woods, but most of the feasible plans involve a 4×4 to drive at least to the trailhead. As Patrick McManus says, the best 4×4 is the one that belongs to your friend….

One time Emily, my college friend from Oregon, sent me a box of west coast greenery that had fallen from the tree tops during a storm. It was still fresh and moist when we opened it 3000 miles later in Schuylerville, NY. It’s amazing that the Marlborough plains below get very little rainfall, but just above in the cloud-catching mountains the greenery is like west coast USA.

After 3 days in the woods the lichens didn’t exactly grow on Jeremiah’s beard, but they did stick to it!

I wish I remembered by plant reproductive cycles better from Botany, but I do remember that lichens are a joint team between a fungus (grips the rock/trunk/growing surface and picks up minerals) and an algae (photosynthesizes). I’m guessing that these mini mushroom structures are making fungus spores. They smother every conceivable surface in this forest.

I guess given the dampness of the woods it should be no surprise that dry firewood was hard to come by. The hut has a tiny wood stove for heating, but fallen branches in the woods seem to be either still green or already rotting wet. But Jeremiah is nothing if not persistent, and with Milo’s help and a lot of smoke (mostly outside the hut) he got the fire going.

Lichens, mosses, miniature ferns….they all compete for a toehold on this tree trunk. No wonder dry firewood is so hard to come by!

Another lush miniature trunk greenery picture, because I can’t resist. In my next life I’m going to be a dryad clothed in this stuff, just residing in a little warmer climate.

Day 2 we hiked up Mt Richmond, it’s about like an Adirondack high peak in size (~1,700 meters) but the rock it’s made from is not like the hard Adirondack granite. It’s more brittle, more like the mountains in Argentina by Bariloche or the shaley rock at Glacier National Park in Montana. We climbed up loose scree that made us worry about coming down, but it didn’t turn out to be a problem.

There’s a baby in that pack, really! It’s not often that you worry about wind upsetting your balance, but we had to be careful of that up here.

The wind was FIERCE up on the mountain top. We swath Milo in multiple sweatshirts, his sleeping bag, and the wind-proof pack cover, which he tolerates best when he’s sleeping. He needs the “chewy concession” to tolerate this treatment when he’s awake. Here Jeremiah still has his hat…it’s moments before he stood up and the wind whisked it off miles down into the valley.

At the mountain top someone had built a stone windbreak where we huddled, ate lunch, and occasionally peeked out at the view when it appeared through the blowing clouds. Sometimes the clouds would envelop the peak and we’d be in a strange smothering mist.

Down we went, scuttling over the loose rocks, pack cover flapping. There seems to be no solid top to the mountain, which must make measuring its height a challenge.

“Where’s Daddy?” We played a little hide-and-seek in the cabin in the evening. Milo doesn’t seem to get spacial relations quite yet. He looked for Daddy in the backpack and under the benches before he found him tucked behind the mattresses.

Imagination games are starting. Milo filled a mug with rocks and asked me to blow on them because they were hot. Then he packed my boots with the rocks.

Toasty little caterpillar in his cocoon! We woke up to spitting snow for our walk down the mountain, but back in Marlborough valley it was sunny and comparatively warm. We made one quick winery visit before our drive home, we’ll have to explore more of them on the next visit.

Driving away from Christchurch in a drizzle Sunday morning felt like an act of faith. We had been invited to a day at the beach 2 hours north and the forecast was for the rain to quit mid-morning, but it sure didn’t look promising as we donned our long underwear and rain gear. But as predicted, the rain lifted and left us with a gorgeous day at Napenape, 20 K down a gravel road to the secluded beach.

Emma and Ian invited us and another American family to join them for the day. They and their 3 kids moved here from England almost a year ago. They found Napenape on an exploring expedition a while back and were giddy over the fact that they could build a fire on the beach without drawing the police (as would have been the case in England). Emma and Ian are fun. They LOVE New Zealand, feel it is worlds better than England in the freedom they enjoy and the hiking/exploring opportunities. I find their enthusiasm refreshing.

The guys tied some driftwood together with flax leaves and it made a nice wind break when covered with a tarp.

We all brought something so scorch over the fire. Jeremiah’s contribution are those red sausages, kind of like fat hotdogs. The unidentifiable pieces of meat on the left are chicken necks, sold here in the store, that Emma and Ian brought to grill (eaten like chicken wings). The coffee percolator is Eric’s–he and Jennifer are pretty serious about their coffee. There ARE vegetables too–my potatoes are underneath the fire wrapped in foil.

Perky coffee! Nice job Eric (and Jeremiah for campfire assistance).

Beach sand, what can be more fun than that? Why, beach sand with a buddy, of course!

This wasn’t exactly a swimming beach! The waves looked super menacing when it was cloudy and somewhat playful when sunny, but they weren’t kind or gentle. Definitely not boogie boarding or surfing material.

BOOM! No wonder the description is “crashing waves.” The wind took the spray and flung it down the beach, making it misty.

The waves provided an interesting challenge when getting water to douse the fire. By the time the dying wave reached the dry part of the beach it was almost all foam. The dad’s dashed into the wave with a bucket and the kids ferried the water to the fire pit.

Seven kids, six adults, zero dogs, tons of stuff, and new friends. It was a fun day.

Cats live in wisteria….or at least that’s what Milo believes, because that’s where we always see the neighbor’s cat. One day during dinner the cat jumped on our window sill and peered into our living room, and Milo was absolutely smitten. He “talked” about it for days afterwards. “Gat!” is one of the few words he says, always pointing up at the vines, always on the lookout for a kitty sighting. This morning Cat happened to be sitting in the wisteria as we were getting into the car, so we got a nice long look at him. By the bye, the wisteria here is just starting to bloom, old venerable specimens that swath porches and trellises with droopy lavender blooms. Each time I see it I resolve to plant it at our house some day….far in the future.

It rained yesterday so we got to wear the gum boots Matt and Jonica gave Milo. He didn’t use to like them but now that he knows what they are for, he’s happy to put them on.

Our original weekend plans were foiled by a “Westerly,” intense wind and rain that moves into the mountains from the west, rises, drops boatloads of water, and roars down into the canterbury plains as a fierce dry wind. So instead of battling swollen river in the high country we headed out to the Banks Penninsula, to Okains bay where a colleague of Jeremiah’s said there were cockles (clams). The hunt begins! In the photo, Okains bay is the far sandy one.

As soon as we got there the weather changed and a Southerly barreled through. It blustered and rained for maybe an hour while we huddled in the campground kitchen eating lunch, then cleared off enough to walk on the beach. Those boiling clouds are the tail end that left over the ocean while Jeremiah was picking mussels below the cliff.

We looked for clams underneath those tiny bubbling holes you see at the beach, even got out my big garden shovel, but only found sea worms.

Good thing the mussels were plentiful instead! Jeremiah had to be quick to avoid being swamped by cold waves but the got a bag full at the low tide.

The mussel picking path was guarded by a bad tempered seal who grouched at us as we sidled past him. You could smell him before you saw him–he smelled just like those sticky soft rabbit poops, oddly enough, but 1000 times stronger than a bunny. We weren’t sure if it was his breath or….something else.

We set up our tent after the rain and Milo circled it, carefully stepping over all the fly lines. We camped in a grove of huge pine trees which turned out to be a good thing, as the weather continued to be “unsettled” through the night. We couldn’t tell whether we were hearing the wind and rain in the trees or on the ocean, but it was fierce out there. Milo actually slept mercifully well, after waking up once in a strange place and just needing to hear Mama’s voice to settle down again. Our two person tent now sleeps three!

In the morning Milo amused himself with the camera. He needs a little help with the composition, but his photography is coming along pretty well.

We played on the campground zip line, or “flying fox” as the sign said. It was fun to ride!

Banks Peninsula is an old extinct volcano, and the variety of rocks and caves are pretty neat. Here the porous rock eroded to make a convenient cave/barn for the local farmer. I used to think that lava rocks were all black and shiny with tiny holes throughout, but how fast the lava cools and the water in the rocks afterwards can make it sparkly and porous with mini geodes or hard and gray like basalt. I did spend some time thinking about what I should do if an earthquake happened while we were walking along the cliff base….and decided that probably I wouldn’t have time to react before falling rocks took over, so it wasn’t worth worrying about.

In the afternoon we took a walk up a farm track that skirts several points and comes out with a great view of the bays. We passed plenty of sheep (“Baahh!” says Milo) and cattle (“Booohh” says Milo), and could always smell the animals as they seemed to use the track as a preferred toilet spot. Not as stinky as the seal though!

These sheep have pretty ritzy accommodations. Their private pond has sweeping ocean views.

I don’t know what it is, but isn’t it wild? We passed this tree humming with bumblebees on our walk.

The waves were higher the second day, but we were determined to get a bag of mussels to take home with us (free food!). Here’s the technique–scout for a good bed of mussels at the trough of the wave, then hustle to pick a handful while keeping a close eye out for the next wave.

Then hustle to get out of the way of the wave….

And if you don’t hustle fast enough, you get wet. Brrrr!

Were they worth it? Mama likes collecting them and Daddy likes both eating and collecting them, so yes, they’re good.

It kind of feels like you’re eating aliens, but they’re good if you just don’t think to hard about exactly what’s getting squished between your teeth.