Over and Under

I’d like this photo to serve as a metaphor for the transformations happening in the city right now (you can see a larger version in the gallery below). Yes, it is easing into spring, so there is new growth on plants, new leaves and blooms, fresh shoots of grass and weeds. The birds are twitterpated, the lambs are frolicking, and the produce should slowly start to creep down in price and explode with variety.

But there is also the city itself, and its gradual rebirth after the quakes. We’ve had very few aftershocks lately – at least, very few that you actually feel – and with recent announcements of plans for the new downtown and zoning of damaged houses, the city is very much starting to move into the rebuild phase. While some areas of the city are absolutely heartbreaking to experience – the deserted neighborhoods, completely black at night, the piles of rubble next to lovely old city blocks, the view points into the old downtown – on the whole the atmosphere is actually rather hopeful. People have banded together and survived the worst. Those who couldn’t take it left, and those who left have an amazing neighborliness and hope. Yes, there is a lot of rubble to clear, a lot of work to be done, but there are signs of new life and growth.

I’m not sure that photos like the one above can really stand up to the weight of all that meaning, but it and those below may at least give you an idea of what spring can mean in an entirely urban setting.

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The city is slowly putting itself together again after the quakes. In the meantime, businesses are getting creative with where they set up shop. A really great bar near our house is in a small industrial warehouse sort of place, in the back of an alley between a gym and a sushi joint. Other places are opening in parts of town never before known for their evening life. But the most creative and interesting new spots are those set up in shipping containers. The containers are refurbished with bright paint and big glass windows and doors, stacked like legos or huddled together around an open square. There is a nice bar in Lyttleton made of a couple containers, and heaps of little restaurants and take-aways sprinkled throughout Chch housed in single or paired containers. But the most impressive is the new mall downtown, which is made exclusively of containers. There are cafes and cute boutiques, as well as some well known anchor shops, and it is handily located next to the main (and fancy) department store, which survived the quakes. I’ve only poked my nose around briefly, as I am a bit scared of NZ prices at clothing shops, (the one pair of shoes I dared to covet was a mere $240…  ugh), but am looking forward to spending some more time hunting for a good deal.

Just some images from various parts of Chch, mostly from my phone.

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I could complain at length about the terrible Olympic coverage in the US, but I won’t. Instead, I’ll simply say that if you haven’t ever gotten to watch the Olympics from abroad, I recommend it highly, because I’m having a blast!

The coverage in New Zealand is AWESOME. We only have free tv and one of the channels (and we only have a few) stops normal programming and shows 23 hours of coverage a day. Needless to say, we’ve been watching a lot of sport in our house. If you have Sky, you can have up to 8 channels of pure, solid Oly goodness (though that does seem a bit excessive). I’ve seen so many sports I’ve never seen before, and great footage of some of the usual big draw events. All this in a country that is basically in the opposite timezone from the actual events, so all the good stuff happens in the middle of the night (not that that stops any one – we’ve all been laughing about having to get up wicked early or stay up late to see our favorite event…) But I’ve also seen so many different athletes and countries. This is probably the best thing about watching the Olympics from a small country with great athletes in only a small scattering of sports. Unlike the US, they can’t devote all coverage to national athletes, because they would run out of footage. So while the Kiwi athletes do get great coverage, we also get to see some amazing people from all over the globe.

There are other perks of watching the coverage from NZ. The main sports show covering the Olys spends as much time making jokes as covering the sports news. The reporters are visibly star struck by the great athletes or are simply interviewing all the hot lady athletes and blatantly hitting on them on national telly. One reporter actually called Zara Philips “her royal hotness” to her face, after making jokes about how hot she is with her fellow Olympian hubby. I love Kiwis.

There is also the joy of cheering for an underdog. Watching the Kiwis win gold in their rowing events was utterly thrilling. Even the athletes who win silver or bronze, or simply do well, maybe do a personal best, watching them is so much fun because they are absolutely giddy with it. I mean, can you imagine being good enough at a sport to make it to the Olympics? What a fun, amazing, glorious experience! And then, when there, to do well enough to even be in the top ten in the world? Well, how simply fantastic. But in the States, if you don’t win gold then it’s a tragedy. I can see wanting to win, to be the best, but still isn’t it wonderful to simply be in the 10 best, the 20 best, the top 3? The below image has been floating around down here, and it captures what I think should be the true spirit of the Olympics.

Of course, you’ll also note that this compares NZ and Aus, which has a great sibling-esque rivalry. NZ was beating Aus in the medal race for a time, and the Kiwis were boisterous, while the Aussies just kept calling it the Aus-Zealand metal total and making jokes about how they should just adopt NZ as a state. This rivalry is highly entertaining to us outsiders who can hardly tell the difference in the accents (sorry, kiwis, I know that is a terrible offense).

Thanks, London, for putting on a great show. And thank you, Kiwis, for being such good sports.

We are fortunate in that B’s family and friends are scattered around the islands. Though, yes, this means it is hard to visit these lovely people regularly, it also means we have places to stay and people to visit on our many weekends out of town. We took advantage of this recently for a mini break down to Mt Cook National Park, where we camped out in his uncle’s flat and ogled the amazing mountains.

As soon as you break out of the foothills and into the mountains it is clear why they call these the Southern Alps. They are quintessentially alpine – rugged and sharp, raw mountains that cut the sky wide open. You can hear the creaks of ice, the rumble of falling ice and rock, and it seems that if you can just look hard enough you can watch them getting taller. Mt Cook is the tallest peak in the range, but its Maori name, Aoraki, is my favorite. It roughly translates to Cloud Piercer, which is nearly bad ass enough for this sexy mountain. Oh yes, I just called that mountain sexy. When you visit this park you’ll understand.

As beautiful as the glacial lakes were, especially Tasman lake, studded with blue-gray icebergs, it was sad to see just how much the glaciers have retreated of late. B was here about 10 years before and pointed out where the glaciers reached the last time he was here. The amount of snow calving off the hills, despite it being mid-winter, rumbled an agreement with how fragile this alpine world is. I happen to be learning rather a lot about climate change these days, as working to slow/prevent it currently pays the bills, and NZ is in a part of the world that is warming more slowly than the rest of the world. If the glaciers are in such bad shape here, it must just be heartbreaking elsewhere. So turn down your heater/air con and lets get back to the beauty.

In addition to the alpine vistas, you get an entirely different sort of spectacular view in this part of NZ – the night sky. Nearby Lake Tekapo houses a fantastic observatory and is home to the first world dark sky reserve, which is basically a national park for the sky. The darkness is protected and preserved so that this wonderful stargazing spot stays that way. The sun is hardly down before stars begin to twinkle, and the elusive sheen of the Milky Way is obvious shortly after dark. I wish I could have captured the stars for you as well (maybe next time I’ll give night photography a go), but for now you’ll have to make do with this, and ogling my sexy mountains below.

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Moeraki is not too far south of Oamaru, on a lovely meandering stretch of coastline, with gentle hills filled with farms and the occassional long stretch of beach. Moeraki beach is famous, however, not for the beach but for the boulders that puncutate the sand. These boulders are huge, spherical, and scattered along a stretch of coast, some half eroded, others just popping out of the cliff. There used to be many many more, but people managed to take them home (how, I have no idea). The exposed centers on the older, cracked samples are riddled with golden crystal veins. They resemble the eggs of a mythical beast more than anything, a beast of stone and sharp angles and great age.

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Oamaru is a charming Victorian city between Christchurch and Dunedin. The strip along the waterfront consists of intricately carved white marble buildings and the people of Oamaru have been working to revamp this part of town. They also, as part of their Victoriana, have embraced steampunk and have proclaimed themselves as the steampunk capital of the world. As they have a giant rocket-powered pennyfarthing as a swing set, I am not inclined to argue the point.

Oamaru also has penguin colonies, interesting geology, tasty food. And not very far south of the city is Moeraki, home to the world famous Moeraki boulders and the arguably more famous Fleur’s place. Fleur uses locally caught seafood, generally caught the day before, and local organic produce and meat. It is food at its best, simple delicious wholesome ingredients allowed to shine together.

We rented a bach* with some fellow ex-pats for the weekend, and we enjoyed pizza and mexican at our home away from home, we also star gazed, snuck up on penguins to watch them come in from the sea for the night, and explored some of the sights. I would definitely go back to Oamaru for a closer look and maybe even try to ride a p-farth.

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*Bach: (Pronounced batch, as in bachelor pad) Basically, a vacation house/cottage/shack.

In New Zealand, tramping means hiking. They also refer to the dense forest on the hills as bush. So when I say that we went tramping in the bush, there is no need to get offended.

These are from my birthday celebratory hike up Woolshed Hill, in the foothills of the Southern Alps.

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I won’t horrify you with the prices in the produce department, but I thought you might like to see some of the more unusual items available at your local Christchurch grocery. Look closely and try to decide which you would least like to try.

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