It's been a while now.

So I'd say we're pretty situated. Julie's weeding and ask I try to catch everyone up. It's been 6 weeks in Wellington. A lots happened so I’ll try to keep it a little organized.
Wellington is very lush, we have 6-8ft fern trees in our yard and Tuis which make an amazing set of warbles that sounds a little like R2D2. We're about 1 hour from wine country which is a nice bonus we didn't count on too much. I've been indoor climbing in some of my free time, took Julie on Thursday night and I think we both had a blast. Julie is working a lot and getting into the swing of things, lots of of little differences in the structure of the job. I’ve been playing house husband, lots of cooking and cleaning.
We've had our first guest, thanks Ryan, and took him around a little bit. We tried skiing with Ryan (our first trip to N Island ski fields), but got rained off. Then I got one weekday with Ryan while Julie worked. We visited one of the in city nature preserve with Ryan and saw more birds, giant bugs and dinosaur descendants, the tuarara. All native. We also saw some more seals up close with Ryan along the beach. They stink for the record. We went up to Rotorua(also stinky) too and Taupo . We did see a whale which along the coast, it was quite far away though.
We've made friends! It's cheesy but it's been nice. One of Julie's co-worker recognized how cool Jules is and invited us on the above ski weekend with some other friends. We got rained off the mountain, again. Possibly the worst weather I've skied in. I don't think I've been that wet since my first season in non water proof clothes. Made an excellent roast and played games all day. We lucked out on the second day with them and got light clouds clearing to blue skies for an intense half day of riding. I know we all had the biggest grins after some good exploring. I get along awesome with co-workers' husband so it's been awesome. He's invited me surfing and kite-boarding(I'll have to man up about being such a wuss in cold water). We've also talked about going to the top of our ski field(more on that) and some other hiking or tramping.
So New Zealand geography/geology is a bit crazy. The North Island is very different that the South Island. Very, very volcanic. Our ski field is on an active volcano (Mt Ruapehu), it erupted in 1996(?) and has had lahars (mudflows triggered by volcanic activity) since. There’s a volcanic crater lake that stays unfrozen year round but is surrounded by snow year road, that’s the source of the lahars... There's two ski fields on it that are both at risk technically. North of there is Lake Taupo in a giant volcanic 'super caldera', like Yellowstone valley. Further north is Rotorua(which Ryan and I visited), known as 'sulfur city'. The whole city smells like sulfur, strong. There's boiling pools in the city park. There's boiling puddles right by the lake shore. Between Rotorua and Taupo are a series of volcanic parks, feature geysers, boiling lakes(most small), boiling rivers, hot streams that smell like kerosene, etc. There’s a village buried in ash, a mountain that’s split from volcanic activity, etc. We did visit one of the parks and we can share the pictures if you missed them. Further north is a heated beach and even further North is White Island, pretty much just a volcano in the ocean, which you can visit.
So that’s my attempt at summing up the last few weeks. There have also been cable type ‘swing’ bridges and weird pinnacles, and unsuccessful attempts at spotting penguins. Lots of homemade Mexican and Indian food. Even some good Mexican food out with margaritas. So much cool stuff, but it is feeling like normal life too. Pretty awesome stuff.

Wellington summed up

"Well, it's windy. But it's actually a lovely place, where you're pretty much surrounded by water and the bay. The city itself is quite small, but the surrounding areas are very reminiscent of the hills up in northern California, like Marin County near San Francisco and the Bay Area climate and some of the architecture. Kind of a cross between that and Hawaii."
From Peter Jackson i guess he directed some movie?
Since I'm house husband it's probably one of my responsibilities to communicate more. I'll try to start providing more regular updates. Suffice to say we're both pretty busy and having fun. We had a blast with Ryan visiting, lots of huge home cooked meals and wine to be enjoyed. Even got some skiing in.

In the swing of things

We've now been in Wellington for about 5 days, still waiting for our internet hook-up.
Here's a little recap.

• The ferry ride over was nice. The ship was large which made it pretty smooth(couldn't even feel it pull away from docks). It was sunny and we were able to see dolphins which of course made our day. However we saw evidence for why a 18 y/o drinking age is a bit too young.
• Our place is quite nice. It doesn't however have baseboards, I guess they didn't quite get that done.
• Wellington is smaller looking that I expected. The CBD(downtown) is wedged between steep hills and the harbor and most the housing is hidding in the hills and valleys around the city. It's very green everywhere. Very different than flat Christchurch.
• It is cloudier here, and the windiness, while exaggerated, is still constant.
• I rode the bus and then the train into the city with Julie Monday. A nice efficient system. Hardly any waiting and the walks weren't too far either. It was fun to go with her.
• Tuesday Julie felt very cosmopolitan taking the bus and train herself. She got her pass and was able to assure the agent she didn't mind missing the next train because she knew another was coming in just a few minutes. She really likes her 5th floor view of part of the harbor and the river valley that lies below our home. We both think it's pretty cool to set down in a new place. It's a different feel than our first month(which was felt a bit more like a vacation)
  
• I've taken to lots of walking/driving around being not really lost but not really on task. We'll call it unguided exploration. It feels unproductive, but I totally know my way around now.
• I've found the internet cafe system to use, and I've found that they cluster their stores by type. Outdoors stores, check! Snowboard shops, check!
  
• I'm looking to join a climbing gym shortly to stay in shape and improve my climbing. There's not much traditional climbing here or long hikes. However there are many day hikes and bouldering (unroped, low altitude climbing with a pad for any small falls). The deep outdoors is mostly a day drive away, which works. I think I do miss the south island, but this place could definitely be fun place to call home for 6-9 months.

Well that's my summation, hopefully we'll have home internet soon so we can more easily post pictures and Julie can post as well. Tonight I'm making our tacos. You wouldn't beleive how hard it is to find uncooked black beans. I've been to 4 grocery stores and 4 Asian/Indian markets to find them, success!

Winter spirits are high

Today marked our 9 and 8th days and our return to back to back days at Mt Hutt. My has the weather changed. Where as our arrival was cold with fresh snow it's about the groomers the last two days. Off-piste is a moonscape of wind swept ice with sun cups, sastrugi(wierd ice hooks formed by wind) and other snow-sliding atrocities of ice. Meanwhile the groomers are firm, but with good dust on top from scrapings and groomer chewings. We've been kicking a bit free-style lately with some friend jaunts into the terrrain park. Julies been cleaning up her big air on the park feathures while I've been cleaning up those grabs(still can't nail the tail grab, argh!) and a couple Front-side 180s on the bigger features. Yesterday was a sleep in kind of day and for our mid-afternoon relaxation we finally made it inside the lodge at our home mountain after 5 days there. We enjoyed a couple light flavored Export 33 (I think I need a beer blog), and some onion rings.
Today was all about early starts as we finally got out of the house before 8. Made the ski field by a hair past 9 but decided we had skippped breakfast! That would not stand! So we made a bee-line for our new favorite mtn place, which also served a mean breakfast. We enjoyed our cappuccino and mochaccino(eveything is a damn ccino, and good luck getting normal brewed coffee), with a delicious apple & cinnamon porridge and a ham and cheese croissant. We finally made it on snow at 10(no worse than a morning back home I suppose). There was a warm breeze on the slopes but the snow was similar to yesterday. Fast break-away groomers and moonscape elsewhere. We did explore to find a high angle hard-pack/ice slope which my single edge tool(snowboard) didn't adhere to as well as Julie's Skis(excuses, excuses, it was also some balance issues). Don't report me, but we did some freestyle even though I forgot my helmet. No spins on the big stuff today, but I busted a big Method Grab off a park feature. We left early for lunch a pretty resort place called Terrace Downs. Apparently they were having a private party so all us lowly guests were forced to eat outside in 55 degree weather(no prob) with 30-40Mph winds(problem). We scarfed our garlic bread while trying to keep everything from blowing away. We couldn't help but laugh. the garlic was blowing off the pizza, my wine glass started sliding, my dinner plate even lifted up a little. After that we skedaddled home to a pleasant Christchurch early evening.

1st day Skiing, Southern Hemi style!

So on Sunday, our second full day, we got up to the mountains.
Quick geography, Christchurch is ~60 miles east of a North-South range called the Southern Alps. The prevailing wind pattern is from the West. So all in all it's alot like being in a pattern like Cle Elum, though less winds because there's no low pass like Snoqualmie.
Mt Hutt is our new Home mountain, roughly 90 minutes through some of the flattest country staring right out a huge range of moutains that continually grow as you get closer. The fold of the landscape are very different from the Cascades, I'd liken them to what little I know about the Rockies.
This view is to the Northwest and the only operations in this direction are Heli Skiing.









As we neared the resort there's a parking lot for the shutte where the road conditions are posted. As we passed we saw two girls raise their arms. We hadn't noticed the thumbs. Ok, we're picking up hitchhikers in a foreign country, awesome. Turns out the two gals(lasses?) are Irish, both ski a little, and one is a PT(Physical therapist) who's lived in NZ for 8 months, the other training to be a teacher who's been around less. It was pretty funny to listen to the conversation on the way up.
Let's cover the road real quick, definitely not an American road. 14Km of no asphalt, just gravel, and ice, oh and a little bit of sluah. If clings to mountain sides, avalanche valleys(I'm not exagerating) and gains the occasional ridge top with out a second thought of guard rail. Meanwhie our 4wd(awd) Mazda Wagon has 1/2 bald tires. All while listening to the Irish girls chat with Julie about their relocation and Grey's anatomy(they love that Patrick Dempsey). Oh and driving on the other side of the road. And it's sunny. Not my Northwest ski commute to be sure.
The Mountain was stunning. It's based in one large folded valley with lots of stream valleys forming amazing contours and tons of natural half pipes. It shone in the cloudless sky. Both Julie and were instantly enamored with the mountain. Ironically the one song we heard playing in the base was American Pie by Don Mclean. It almost felt like just another day of spring skiing at a New American resort.
After a couple warm up runs we decided it was time for lunch. As we walked to the car, we noticed a metal walk-way that extended some 50 ft out from a cliff band that was the parking lot(no guardrail). Oh yeah, bungee jumping from the middle of the resort. I did not partake(too cold), but was impressed by the Kiwi's persistence in the pursuit of all that is extreme. As we walked between the other cars, I noticed a large green bird. I'd heard of the Kea, it's a mountain parrot that resides in the Southern Alps. Somehow I thought it might go lower in the winter and that it was like a parakeet in size. This thing is big enough to eat! Apparently they'll chew on anything. Their known to drive motorcyclists nuts as they'll chew the seats, the grips, etc.. Eitherway, the bird and the bungees jumping was enough to thoroughly remind us that this wasn't back home!

We packed in some great laps after lunch and called it an early day as my quads were starting to burn already from all the jumping around.
It felt great to regain our skiing legs so fast and to do it in such a cool place.
Today it's back to a few chores and tomorrow will hopefully be skiing again(weather dependant).












Conditions/terrain:
The snow was about 1 week old. Groomers were firm and fast with smoke type spray rising off. Off-piste had a break-away styrofoam texture(soft crust) 1 cm of snow-dust on top with loose dry underneath (10 cm?) that was rarely reached through riding. Aspects that received sun slightly softened, but low temps keep event the solar melting to a minimum. Terrain is a great mix of complex fall lines caused by a very folded rock. Stream cuts have further refined the contours creating constantly changing steepness and contours. Summit was wind swept. Clear, reported -2 at base at 1PM.

Grocery store, Akaroa

This has been the longest day ever, because we were wide awake at 2am. However, there's no negative connotation meant to saying it's been the longest day; it's been a fabulous day. This morning we took advantage of the empty early Saturday morning streets by driving on the left hand side of the road (we're careful not to say the "wrong" side) to the grocery store. The meat section was my personal favorite-- so many different types of sausages! The weird flat fish! I picked up a huge bag of "savories" (meat filled pastries); I devoured 1 or 2 as soon as I got home. Afterwards I decided to check to make sure that the meat was cooked (it was). Lunch: kiwi, nutella and jam sandwich. Ryan, Roy, and Tammie all skyped with us-- that really helped to make us feel that we're not alone out here.

Then off we drove to Akaroa, an area that was a sunken volcano that is now a gorgeous bay. It looks like Napa. I am in heaven here. I can honestly say that this place is more beautiful than wine country; can you believe that? Oh and it's wayyyy less expensive. The drive out and back to Akaroa was worth the stress of driving on the wrong, errr, left side of the road. Bryce did all the driving but I can tell you that it's a bit scary sitting up front on the left hand side of the car with no steering wheel-- at one point I had such an adrenaline rush of fear (no fault of Bryce's, the car just went a different way than I thought it should) that my fingers hurt for minutes afterwards as if I had been electrocuted.



After almost a year of living with the bare necessities, it feels so luxurious to have furniture. We don't really mind too much that we don't have a spaghetti spoon to stir our noodles, that there's no plug in the bathroom, that the fridge is 1/3 of the size we're used to, and that there's no clothes dryer. It's like we've been training for this. :-) We're happy with the luxurious: heated towel rack, coffee press, internet, and heated mattress pad. The cold is something that we've been fighting here-- I can't understand why home owners here don't all replace their drafty windows with more energy efficient ones; all the heat pumped into a room lurks away the second the radiator's turned off. There's 2 extra doors in this house to help divide up the cottage so that part of it can be heated at a time. Oh, and speaking of doors,the handles are so high! Not good for hobbits.

Arrival

Wow, so much to say!
First, we made it with all luggage, no customs problems, no car issues.
Second this place is amazing, even flying around on a partly cloudy day you could see that.
Third, the books didn't exaggerate how nice the people are. We already got one invite to stay at person's house and our car rental offered to help me buy a car from the local dealerships(not from his fleet).
Fourth, the summer to winter thing is a bit brutal. It felt amazing to walk out of the hot airport, but walking into the cold cottage is another story. I'll have to document the fireplace that functions for looks only.
Fifth, it's just amazing so far. It's starting to sink in how long I'll be here now that all the travel worries are done. I can't wait to go skiing. Well off to unpack some more