Edoras

A few weeks ago, my friend Gerke approached me with the idea of renting a 4x4 and driving out to the Alps to the location of Edoras from the Lord of the Rings movies. Edoras is the fortress of the Horsemen of Rohan that can be seen in the Twin Towers. In the film, the Golden Hall is perched on a hill with stables and houses extending down the hill to a fortified wall which rings the hill. The film crew actually did build the Golden Hall and the nearby stables, but the rest of the buildings were added later by computer. The Golden Hall was used as a mess hall by the film crew during filming. The hill is located on public land and the film crew had to agree to remove all traces of the buildings after filming was concluded.

We rented a Rav 4 which was smaller than Gerke had expected and a little tight since we were five people. We were Darragh from South Africa and Gerke, Steff and Judy from Germany. Judy was a late addition and she almost lost her space in the car when she asked if Edoras was where the Hobbits lived. There was much grumbling, but we decided that we needed the fifth person to make the car rental economical.

It took us about two hours of driving to reach Edoras from Christchurch, including a long stretch on dirt roads (hence the 4x4). Even if it had not been the location of Edoras, the valley where we found ourselves was absolutely spectacular. To the west lay the snow covered Alps. A westerly was blowing that day, causing it to rain on the west coast of the island. Although we could see it pouring buckets on the Alps, the mountains were breaking up the clouds, preventing the rain from reaching us. Mountains also ringed the valley where Edoras is located and a river runs nearby. When we arrived, it was quite cloudy, but by lunchtime, the sky had cleared and everything was beautiful.

Just seeing Edoras was not enough, we needed to tramp over to climb it. During our walk, we ran into another group returning to their car, but otherwise we saw very few people. Our route required us to cross several streams, all flowing with glacial fed water which was freezing. Fortunately, the water only came up to our knees and so other than loosing feeling in our feet, the crossings were easy.

The ascent up Edoras was quite steep and the wind was tearing through the valley by the time we reached the top. There is one scene in the Lord of the Rings where a flag is torn from its mount on Edoras and is blown away. Standing on the hill with the wind blowing through, it was very easy to picture that scene.

We returned by another route that was not as steep a climb, but unfortunately which required far more time in the rivers. We had lunch by our car and then set out to find where the long shots of Helm’s Deep were shot. We figured out where Helm’s Deep was located, but we would have needed to tram about 10 km to get to it and we just did not have the time since we had to get the car back that night.

During lunch, we wondered if we would be spoiled by living in such an absolutely gorgeous place. Would the rest of the world look boring after we left New Zealand? Did Kiwis become numb to the beauty around them after a while?

We got our car back in good time and even ran it through a car wash to remove the evidence that we had taken it off the paved road (doing so was forbidden, but what then is the point of renting a 4x4?).

The past few weeks have been busy with my studies, moving to a new flat (my old lease was up) and spending time with friends. I am now living in a rented room in a house near uni. It is a really nice house and I pay half the rent that I paid in the student housing, but I miss the social aspect of the student housing which is a bit of a surprise. However, last Friday, I hosted Thanksgiving in one of the flats in the housing where I used to live. Everyone was excited about it because of course, they had seen Thanksgiving dinners on shows such as Friends, Gilmore Girls or the Simpsons, but they had never actually been to one. I was able to find a turkey and cranberries and I made stuffing as well. Everyone else supplied the rest of the feast. It was a lot of fun and we had people from every continent but South America and Antarctica, although one of the people in attendance is about to go to Antarctica for her summer course work (pretty cool sounding class).

I am heading off to an international conference next week which happens to be in Hawaii. The funny thing is that I leave on Saturday 2 December and I arrive in Honolulu on Friday 1 December. Air New Zealand uses some pretty fast jets.


Edoras as it appeared in the film.

Getting ready to tramp to Edoras














Edoras













The first river crossing













A scene from the film. Compare this with the photo below which was taken from where the Golden Hall was located

061022 Labor Day Part 2

We spent the night of Saturday, October 21 in the city of Blenheim, a small city on the northeast side of the South Island. We only saw the city center at night but it appeared to be nice. It wasn’t quaint like a European city center, but it was well laid out with pedestrian malls, shops along well planned out streets and squares. It was very unlike the sprawl of Ilam where I live or Cockeysville where I lived in Baltimore.

But, people don’t come to Blenheim for the city center. They come to this region because the town is conveniently located in the midst of New Zealand’s largest wine producing region. There are more than fifty wineries and acres of vineyards dotted around Blenheim. With so many wineries located close to town and literally next door to each other, it is easy to cycle from one to another.

On Sunday morning, after checking the weather and deciding to head west, Nils and I opted to stop by the Saint Clair winery which was conveniently situated near the highway. The winery claims to be one of the last of the privately owned family wineries in the area and they export to the US. After a quick sampling and the purchase of a few bottles, we headed west through the drizzle.

The goal of our drive was the Nelson Lakes region which offers numerous tramps of varying lengths. We arrived at the information office at Lake as the drizzle was letting up and after speaking with the woman at the office, decided on a 1 1/2 hour tramp along the lake and up one of the hills. We chose this one because it was under trees for most of the way which would offer some protection from the rain. The tramp was really nice and we kept our eyes out for Kiwi birds which live in the area, but didn’t see any. What we did see was a lot of a black fungus that grew on everything. After doing some reading, it appears that the trees may have been beech trees which attract insects that produce honeydew. The black fungus was (Capnodium fungus) which grows on the surplus nectar exuding over the plant and sometimes even the ground.

Our tramp ended near the lake and by walking through some trees we came to a beach with offered views of the surrounding mountains, with only their bases visible in a grey mist which shrouded everything. Fortunately, we chose our walk wisely because soon after we finished, the rain started again. We continued to drive west and came to more portions of the highway which were only one lane wide. I recognized one of them from the bus trip that I had made in the area when I visited in 2004. The road clings to the side of a steep hill with a river on one side and a shear, rock wall on the other. The road goes around a series of bends and you have to hope that nothing is coming from the other direction. We just followed another car into this portion of the road and hoped for the best.

Our westward travel brought us out to Westport on the west coast of the island. We didn’t go into town but headed south and into the Paparoa National Park. The road winds and along the hills and cliffs on the coastline and we knew that we were in for a treat when we saw signs on the side of the road warning of penguin crossings! Paparoa National Park is gorgeous with pounding surf crashing on jagged rock formations, long beaches and vegetation that would look at home in South East Asia. The lush vegetation is not actually much of a surprise considering that it always rains on the west coast.

We continued our slow, winding journey along the road until we came to the Pancake Rocks. I had been here once before while on a break during my bus ride. The rocks are so named because they were formed in layers like stacks of flapjacks on a plate. Waves crash against the rocks and if the tide is right, the water will cause water and spray to gush out of “blow holes” in the rocks. It is a spectacular place on a sunny day, but the grey clouds during our visit were a bit disheartening.

We continued along the road until we came to the city of Greymouth. Greymouth is spoken about in the guidebook as kind of a dreary town that is a launching off point for adventure travel and I am not ready to dispute the dreary part. We checked in at the information office to look at the weather. If it would rain in the mountains the next day, then we would spend the morning tramping around Greymouth before driving through Arthur’s Pass. If it was nice, we would go straight to Arthur’s Pass. The debate was whether to stay in Greymouth for the night or to go on to Arthur’s Pass. During dinner, we decided to stay in Greymouth and I am glad that we did because we discovered what has to be one of the nicest hostels I have ever stayed in (yes, even nicer than the Dr. Seuss hostel in Bratislava or even the hostel with the amazing breakfast in Oslo (which still stands as the most amazing breakfast at a hostel / hotel ever)).

I think that it is one of those things. If you enter into a hostel (or any building) that is a bit drab or not so well taken care of, you tend not to treat it very well. However, the Global Village hostel was nothing like that. First of all, it has an African theme and there is African artwork all over the walls including statues, wooden carvings and paintings. The main lounge had nice sofas to sit on, sofas that you would want in your house. There was a wood burning stove keeping you warm and new age music playing in the background. The kitchen was immaculate, well stocked with dishes, and large. The dining area was nice and there was seating outside. There was a separate TV room with DVDs which is really good so that the noise does not disturb others. The bathrooms had nice, wooden floors and were clean. Our room came with sheets (some places charge extra), was nicely decorated and had heat! There were even hot water bottles set aside in the hall if you wanted to take one to bed. And get this, we were sitting in the common room, writing and talking when the owner came up and offered everyone freshly baked muffins! You could pretty much take the “s” out of hostel. Nils and I spoke reverently about the hostel once we got back into Christchurch and everyone was eager to check it out, especially since such a novel hostel is hard to find.

In the morning, we checked the weather again and unfortunately the predictions were still uncertain for the mountains. We decided to take a risk and started east towards Arthur’s Pass. We passed several signs that gave the status of the highway through the pass. The highway must be prone to deep snow cover and the signs warn if the way is blocked. After driving for some time, the road began a steep ascent up through the mountains. We climbed to the top of the pass and soon came to the town of Arthur’s Pass around 10AM where we hoped to tramp. We visited the information office and were told that snow was on the way. Stations at Mt Cook which is south of Arthur’s Pass were reporting snow which would be arriving around 1PM. The man in the information booth suggested that we hike up the Avalanche Route to the tree line and back which would get us back down before the snow started.

We parked our car near the trailhead and began our climb. It was pretty cold at the bottom and so we both dressed in layers. It wasn’t a particularly steep climb, but the trail started over loose rock and large rocks to climb over. Most of the way was along a single path that made its way through the trees. Soon after starting we had shed our jackets because the side of the mountain that we were climbing was getting the morning sun so that plus the exertion of climbing was enough to keep us warm. It was a great walk that took us higher than the snow that covered the sides of the mountain. We didn’t make it to the tree line, but had to stop just before to have our lunch. We had to have our car back in Christchurch at a certain time and that dictated how much time we had to walk. On our way down, we ran into a lot of people just walking to the tree line. Chances are the man in the information office told everyone to go up the same route so that if the snow came quicker, it would be easier for rescue to find everyone.

From Arthur’s Pass, we continued east towards Christchurch. The road winds through the mountains and offers amazing views. I had been this way once before when I took the train from Christchurch to Arthur’s Pass and that route is actually better. However, frequent stops were made along the road for photographs.

We got the car back to Christchurch in good time and after a short walk to find a bus, managed to get ourselves back to university.

061020 Labor Day Part 1

Monday, October 23 was Labor Day in New Zealand and my friend Nils and I had high hopes of spending the long weekend tramping in the Alps and exploring the glaciers on the west coast of the South Island. Nils is a physics student from Germany and we had each been planning on traveling independently over the weekend, but we decided to travel together once we realized that the other was planning on traveling as well. However, our plans were hampered by what looked like a weekend of rain across the entire island. New Zealand lies in the “Roaring Forties” (Christchurch is approximately 43.5 latitude) and weather can change quite quickly. Weather reports for the mountains can only forecast out one day due to the speed that weather can change. Winds from the south can bring rain to the east coast of the island, but the west coast can be dry. Winds from the west will dump rain along the coast, but Canterbury will be dry. Or the entire north can be sheltered from the rain by the mountains. So, we decided to be flexible and to decide where we would go just before we departed, based on the most recent weather reports.

As neither of us owns a car, we rented one from one of the many car rental agencies by the airport. For $33 a day, we had a brand new Daihatsu which was boxy and lacked the power to make bold passes on the highway, but which worked out well. The steering wheel was located on the right side of the car and I kept catching myself reaching to my left to grasp the seatbelt which was of course foolish since it was on the right. The car was a manual and so the gearshift was on the left. Fortunately, the order of the gears is the same as a car in the US with the first and second gears being on the left and fifth and reverse gears being on the right. The really annoying thing is that the levers for the directional signals and the windshield wipers are swapped. Whenever you try to signal that you are turning, you wind up turning on the windshield wipers instead of the directional. This is funny for the first half dozen times, but then becomes very, very annoying not to mention dangerous since other drivers may not be able to interpret the windshield wipers tearing across the windshield on as an indication that your car is turning.

This was my first experience driving on the left side of the road in a car and there were several important things to remember. There is the essential rule of looking right for incoming traffic before pulling out, rather than looking left as one would in the US. New Zealand also has a crazy left turn rule where basically, cars turning left must yield to all other traffic. For example, at an intersection, cars turning left have to wait for cars coming from the opposite direction which are turning right, even though the cars turning right must wait for gaps in the oncoming traffic. Rotaries (or roundabouts) are everywhere and of course, you must circle clockwise. According to our AA guide (Automotive Association) cars should have their signals on the whole time that they are in the rotary, but we never saw other cars doing it, but we did see cars pull out in front of us when we did not have our signal on (but our windshield wipers were flying across our windshield like no-ones business).

We picked up our car from the airport and went back to Ilam Village where we both live to check the weather and to consult our maps. We saw that the ONLY sunny place on the whole island that would be sunny was the town of Kaikoura which lies north of Christchurch and so we decided to head there.

To use the word highway to describe the roads that we traveled is deceptive because it conjures images of wide, multilane roads with gentle grades. Not so on the South Island. The “highways” that we drove all had single lanes in each direction. The speed limit was generally 100 km/h (60mph), but this speed was not obtainable when climbing or descending in the mountains where hairpin turns or steep grades made it impossible to go the speed limit, especially for two drivers who had not had a lot of experience driving on the left and were driving a rental car with a high center of gravity. Passing of other cars is common, but tricky on the winding roads. Passing lanes are occasionally offered or slow cars would sometimes pull over to allow the others to pass.

It seems that Kiwis don’t like to spend a lot of money on bridges and why build a two lane bridge when you can get away with a single lane bridge. We would encounter a lot of these, especially on our second day of driving in the north. Signs would warn that you were approaching a single lane bridge and a sign would indicate which direction had the right of way. Sometimes our direction had the right of way, other times it was the opposing direction. The problem was that often you could not see if there were cars on the other side of the bridge due to hills or turns and so you always had to approach the one lane bridges with caution. We got so used to the single lane bridges, that two lane bridges with a lane for each direction of traffic would amaze us. We figured that areas with the two lane bridges were more wealthy communities that could afford the extra lane.

Our route to Kaikoura took us along the east coast and up into the Alps as the mountain range cut across the island towards the ocean. Although we hit “rush hour” leaving Christchurch, by the time we neared Kaikoura and were in the mountains, it was getting dark and there were fewer cars on the road. Kaikoura lies on a peninsula that juts into the Pacific Ocean. At the land end of the peninsula lie the end of the Alps where they meet the ocean. Upon arrival, we followed the signs for the city center and stopped our car at a cluster of buildings. The road paralleled the beach and the air was much colder than it had been in Christchurch. We pulled on jackets and walked along the buildings in search of a restaurant. However, after walking but 100 ft we came to the end of the buildings without much luck. What a small “city center”! This did not look good. Fortunately, my guidebook had a map of the town and we realized that the true city center was a 1/2 mile down the road. The town center was still just a one lane street with most of the restaurants closed, but we were able to find dinner and then a nondescript hostel where we stayed the night.

The town of Kaikoura may be small, but it is a huge draw to tourists due to the depth of the ocean just off the shore. (http://www.kaikoura.co.nz/) Here cold ocean currents from Antarctica meet warm water from the north creating very good conditions for krill to grow, thus attracting sperm whales, Orcas and other whales. The area was heavily settled by Moari in 1000 BC and signs of the settlements can be seen in the surrounding hills. The first European to arrive was Robert Fyffe who set up a whaling station in 1857. More recently, a whale watch company began taking people out to see the whales a few years ago and Kaikoura has been a tourist destination ever since. However, you need not be limited just to boats. There are several companies which will also take people up in small planes to see the whales from above.

We awoke early on Saturday morning because Nils was quite keen on booking a spot on a whale watch. His grandfather had been an ocean explorer and had discovered several new species in the depths of the ocean, but Nils had never been on a whale watch before. The first order of business was finding a bakery or store to buy coffee and bread for breakfast. Once back at our hostel, we called the whale watch offices at 7AM to inquire about the 7:45AM sailing. They told me that the 7:45 was fully booked but that the 10:30AM had space. During the time that Nils and I were conferring, the 10:30 filled up and so we booked spaces on the 3:30.

Since we now had several hours on our hands before the cruise, we decided to drive down to the end of the peninsula to see the place where a colony of seals had taken up residence. The area by the sea was very rocky and cliffs rose up above the sea. There were more tourists wandering about than seals, but we did see an amazing site. We were standing over one of the tidal pools when Nils spied an octopus making its way amongst the seaweed and rocks. The octopus was brownish / redish in color and about two feet long. I have never seen an octopus in the wild before, let alone in a tidal pool. We walked up the cliffs and were rewarded with views of the Alps meeting the ocean. Unfortunately, bad weather was coming and so a haze lay along the ocean and gray clouds were in the sky, but it was a neat view nonetheless.

We decided to head out to Mt Fyffe to walk up to a lookout which was supposed to be a 1 hour tramp each way. Mt Fyffe is about 1600m high and we saw other tramper with big packs who were planning on going to the top and spending the night. The way up was a wide trail that started climbing right away and never stopped climbing. In the forty-five minutes that we walked, with breaks for photos and for shedding jackets or zipping off pant legs, we climbed a little more than 600m, or better than 1/3 of the way up the mountain. It was a bit more of a workout than we were expecting. The views were nice and we could see the plains descending from the mountains to the ocean below us as we sat on a bench and ate our lunch.

We walked back down (such a steep walk burns the knees) and made our way to the southern side of the peninsula. Her we found outcroppings of layers of rock, jutting from the ocean. It was as if someone had sandwiched several layers of rock, each a few inches thick and then bent then smashed the sandwiches together, causing the sandwiches to break and to jut out at strange angles. Clinging to the rocks were shellfish with round, dark shells that were about an inch in diameter. These creatures were everywhere, but I have not been able to find out what they were. We went up a nearby walk that offered great views of the coast. The mountains ran along the coast and the lush, green hills were all about us. The ocean water was turquoise which made everything quite lovely.

We returned to town to the whale watch company’s offices which are conveniently located next to the train station for the tourist train from Christchurch to Blenheim. Upon arrival, we saw waves crashing on the nearby beach that were over 2m high. Great for surfing, bad for being out in a boat. We discovered that all of the whale watch cruises for the day had been canceled due to rough seas. So, when we had been told over the phone that the earlier cruises were full, what had really happened was that the earlier cruises had been canceled, but they didn’t want us to know that in hopes that later cruises would be able to sail.

After taking some photos on the beach of the massive clouds crowning the nearby mountain peaks, we hopped in the car and drove along the coast to the town of Blenheim, about 2 hours north of Kaikoura. There are only three highways that make the east-west crossing across the South Island and so we had to plan ahead as to where we would go next. Spending the night in Blenheim would put us in a good place to drive west the next day since the weather forecasts showed sun on the west coast.

The drive to Blenheim was along the coast with jagged rock formations on our left, and the ocean below us on the right. The rail tracks followed the road and we could see that the train plunged in and out of tunnels as it made its way. The drive was really nice and we soon were in Blenhiem in search of a hostel. We decided on one called Grapes that was in a building that had once been a maternity house. Canoes were available for free to go along the river out back and there was a kitchen for us to make our breakfast.

061014 Port Hills

For the past two weekends, I have been taking my bicycle up the Port Hills which lie just to the south of Christchurch. The hills are 1300 feet high and the climb up the hills has been either up a steep, winding road that goes to the top or up a dirt trail that is a little further east of the road. From the top, the plain in which Christchurch sits spreads out before you as it climbs to meet the line of snow-covered mountains 30 miles distance. To the east lies the Pacific Ocean. To the South is Lyttleton Harbor, the primary port of the Canterbury region. On the other side of the harbor is the Banks Peninsula which is basically a sunken volcano. Along the top of the hills is a road called Scenic Drive that allows people to check out the sites from their cars. There are also lots of walking trails, cycling trails and multi use trials all through the area which is mostly parkland. It is amazing to see how many people are out walking, running or cycling in the hills on a Saturday morning.

A few weeks ago, I went up to the summit with German friends from Ilam Village where I live. One of the Germans had just bought a car for $700 (US $420) and we took it up the hill to celebrate. We planned to do a bit of tramping (Kiwi for hiking), but first we stopped for coffee and cake at a café on the top of the hill. We set out for a short tramp with great views of the harbor and finished with another visit to a café at the end and ice cream. I like tramping with Germans.

On the trips up the hills on my bicycle, I have ridden along the trails that parallel the road on the top of the hills. It is so beautiful up in the hills with the blue skies, fluffy clouds, the cool breeze, the friendly people all of who say hi as you pass and the mountains in the distance. (who wouldn’t be in a friendly mood in such a fantastic place?) The hills are mostly covered with grass with trees lower down. The grass is tussock which tends to grow in large clumps. Sheep graze the hills and wire fences line the road to keep the sheep in their area. To access the hiking or biking trails, you have to either climb up steps over the fence or ride over a metal grate over a pit. The sheep cant cross the grate because their legs get stuck between the bars.

The clumps of grass are actually a pain while biking. I will be going along and one of my pedals will hit a clump, causing my bike to stop. (An example of the tussok is in the photo to the right). The problem is that even though the bike has stopped, my body keeps going and it is all that I can do to stay on the bike as both my feet launch off the pedals and my stomach heads for the handlebar stem as I am lifted off the seat. Needless to say, I am a bit wary of riding fast when I come to such dreadful stops with some regularity, but seeing as the other cyclists cruise along, there must be a trick to avoiding the hazards that I have yet to learn.

There are several downhill mountain bike tracks from the top of the hills. I took a look at one of these in expectation that I could ride it and instead kept going past. It was called the Lava Flow and it was insanely steep and with rocks all over. There is another part of the reserve called Victoria Park and it is home to crisscrossing trails which I decided to try. The trails are dirt and plunge into the tree line below the summit. Straightaway, I came to a part of the trail that was beyond my current level. A jogger was coming and so I pulled over to let him past. He called out that the trail looked a lot worse than it was. Sure, I thought. I realized that I was in trouble when everyone else on the trail that I saw had BMX helmets, knee pads and specially designed downhill bikes that looked like tanks with full suspension. I made it down with some hesitations and a lot of braking to a clearing in the woods. Here I found jumps for BMX or mountain bikes. There were a lot of trails departing from the clearing and as it was my first time on the trails, I did not realize that the trails were marked by difficulty. I inadvertently chose a black diamond which is the hardest. The most insane thing about it was that on the really steep parts, the trees are covered with carpet. Not that the carpet will help stop the rider who hits the tree, but I suppose that it is a lot nicer to get rug burns than to be torn apart by the bark. As I made my way down, I came upon warning signs that a 40 ft jump was coming up. Sure enough, there was a ramp going up and 40 feet away there was a ramp going down. I couldn’t imagine such jumps in a US park because it would be a lawsuit waiting to happen.

Anyway, I made it down in one piece. I tried the trails again the following week with a friend from Christchurch who rides the hills every week. He was a lot better than I am but fortunately we stayed on the blue trails which were less crazy. I really like biking up the hills and once I master the pedal obstacles, I think it will be a lot of fun.

One thing about Christchurch that catches me off guard when I see it is bare feet. Mind you, most people that I meet wear shoes, but every now and then you see people at the grocery store, at school or at church wandering about in bare feet. A lot of other people wear Jandals which is a Kiwi word for flip-flops (New Zealanders are called Kiwis). Jandals, Flip Flops, thongs or whatever you call them are rumored to have actually been first created by a kiwi in New Zealand in the early 1930s. However, that is the rubber version that can be seen all over. The true origin of the sandal was Japan where they have been wearing different versions for thousands of years. Hence, the Kiwi word Jandals is derived from Japanese Sandals.

This past Sunday, I went to my friend Titus’s house for lunch. After lunch, we were cleaning up the dishes when I discovered the neatest dishwasher that I have ever seen. Actually, it was a dishdrawer, not a dishwasher. It is the same height as a traditional dishwasher in the US, but it is split into two halves along its height. Each half of the dishwasher, is actually a separate dishwasher itself. Titus told me that these are now quite popular in New Zealand and have accounted for the bulk of dishwasher sales over the past five years. The popularity is due to the fact that you don’t need a huge amount of dishes to run the dishwasher. I rarely ran my dishwasher in Baltimore because I had to plan to fill it. But with the Fisher & Paykel Dishdrawer, you can easily run a small load. You only need half the dishes to fill a drawer as it would take a full size dishwasher. Or, if you have a lot of dishes, you can fill the top and bottom drawers. Or, if you have people over for a meal and you are ready to serve dessert, you can be taking clean dishes right out of the top portion to use for dessert while putting the dirty dishes into the bottom section. My friend told me that you can buy one drawer if you don’t need two halves of a dishwasher. Pretty ingenious idea. Check out the one photo of the dishdrawers where they look like they are identical to the drawers in the cabinet. Pretty slick. Oddly enough, the company that makes the dishdrawer is also a healthcare company.

I have seen other neat appliances here as well. One is the WhisperGen which is a combined boiler / generator and is the size of a dishwasher (or two dishdrawers!). Running on natural gas, the WhisperGen provides the hot water for the house and any excess electricity that is produced can be fed back into the electricity grid or used in the home, reducing electricity costs. In addition to the home version, there is also a marine version that can be used to provide hot water and electricity on a boat.

The one appliance you don’t see too often in a house is a furnace. I am learning that a lot of houses in Christchurch don’t have central heating. Friends of mine who live in flats off campus keep electric space heaters running during the winter to stay warm. Other people use wood fires to keep warm. The lack of heat and the cost of running space heaters is why a lot of students like to move on campus during the winter where heat and electricity is included in the cost of the room. However, that can make living on campus far more expensive (double the cost in some cases) than living in a flat off campus. For what I pay per week (all rents here are per week, not per month) for my room in a five person flat, I could rent an entire, unfurnished house in the suburbs. That is not to say that the houses in Christchurch are inexpensive. On the contrary, the city has experienced the same soaring real estate prices as elsewhere and small homes can cost over $200,000. And when I say small, I mean square, one story houses with two bedrooms and small gardens (yards).

One location that can really use a furnace are the vineyards to the north of Christchurch. New Zealand has a wine industry with vineyards on the South Island that tend to grow Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay and Pinot Noir grapes. To be honest, I never saw a bottle of New Zealand wine in the US (but I wasn’t looking) and I have yet to try it here in the country because the Australian wines are less expensive. The problem that the vineyard owners face right now is frost. One night of frost will damage the harvest for not one, but two seasons which is a blow to profits. Tens of millions of dollars in lost production was attributed to frost burn in 2004. To prevent this, the vineyard owners hire fleets of helicopters from all over the country to hover over their vineyards. There are thermometers throughout the vineyard and when the temperature in one are drops too low, a light on a pole above the vines turns on, alerting the helicopter pilots to the dangerously low temperatures in the area. The helicopter pilot then swoops in and hovers about 20 feet off the ground to mix the air with the rotor blades which effectively raises the temperature on the ground. On a given night, you can have over 80 helicopters flying over the winery region at a cost between $650 to $2000 per hour. But compared to the loss of two seasons harvest, this cost is small. What is amazing is that with so many helicopters in the area over a small area, all of them swooping to the ground as the lights turn on, there have not been any collisions. I think that it would be really neat to sit and watch this all happening one night.

Købe's Adventures Week 2

Købe posing in front of some of the houses in the Christchurch area.

Woolworths is the name of a chain of grocery stores in New Zealand. Not the same as the Woolworths in Massachusetts!

Købe posing in front of the traffic. The cars are driving on the wrong side of the road! It took Købe a little bit of time to get used to the cars driving on the left instead of the right as they do back home. He had to keep reminding himself to look right first and then left before crossing a street.

You can see the city of Christchurch behind Købe. In the distance you can see the Pacific Ocean.

Købe crashing a wedding.

060923 Week Three

It is hard to believe that I will soon start my third week here in Christchurch. It does not feel like I have been here long, but nor does it seem like I have been here for three weeks. Adjustment has been easy, probably because I have moved to new countries twice before and because the language is English. Actually, that English is so widely spoken kind of freaks me out sometimes because I grew used to not being able to understand or to easily communicate when living in a foreign country. It is almost too easy, but I am not complaining.

I have not had any really big adventures yet, so I have decided to compile an email of random observations about Christchurch so far.

Last weekend, I decided to point my bike towards the tall hills to the south of the city which separate Christchurch from the Lyttelton Harbour to the south. There is a tunnel under the hills which is some sort of engineering marvel, but I went over the hill. I mapped out my route on my GPS and just followed the route up the hill. However, the maps that I have seem to think that very steep staircases are roads which was not a problem on a bike, but would have been problematic in a car. Judging by the number of other cyclists climbing the stairs while carrying their bikes, I was not the only one to get caught by the dead end streets that ended in staircases. I was amazed by the number of people out walking and biking along the roads and trails up the hills. It was the first nice Saturday after I very cold winter (so I am told) and Kiwis love their tramiping (hiking). The parks at the top of the hills offered great views of the city below and the Alps in the distance. Definitely a great place to come if you are new to Christchurch and want to see the whole city at once.

Last week I set up a bank account so that my scholarship money could be directly deposited once a month. I have set up accounts in other countries and usually it takes a few minutes. So I was very surprised when I walked into the ANZ branch at the university to inquire about an account and was asked to wait until the teller could check if the bank representative had time in her schedule to see me. The appointment was necessary because the process took about 45 minutes and I only opened a student savings account. All of the banks offer students great deals with penalty free accounts. However, once you stop being a student, watch out! It appears that there are all sorts of charges on accounts just to put your money in the bank. In addition to the account, I got a ATM / Debit card so that I don’t have to carry lots of cash with me to the grocery story any longer. Nor do I have that harrowing few minutes at the register when I am hoping that the total value that I had calculated is correct so that I don’t wind up with too little cash to pay my bill.

I also applied for a credit card to establish a credit history in NZ. Offering credit cards to foreigners with no credit rating is something new for the bank and I was happy to take advantage of it. However, as I had my letter showing of offer showing my annual income from my scholarship, they knew that I had some sort of steady income. The paperwork for the credit card required the bank representative to determine my disposable income. She had to enter in my rent, spending on food, etc. As I had not been here long, I had not yet calculated what I was spending on food so I told her that. She estimated that I was going to spend $50 a week on food. There was another field for how much I was spending at bars or entertainment. She estimated that I was spending $200 a month on beer which is pretty funny considering that is the same as what I spend on food, but as her final numbers showed that I had enough of an income left after expenses to qualify for a credit card, I did not complain.

Købe the cat has been making his way into photographs around the city. For those of you who don’t know Købe, he is a Beanie Baby cat who I have been carrying with me while traveling. I write postcards to my mother’s second grade class and send them photos of the cat posing in different places. That is one well traveled cat. Last weekend, Købe even made it to a wedding, much to the amusement of the students.

You would be very hard pressed to find paper towels in bathrooms here. Instead of paper towels, bathrooms are equipped with those air bowers under which you hold your hands before wiping them on your pants. Throughout the university bathrooms are signs reminding people to wash their hands to avoid spreading infection. It was not until I saw one sign that mentioned avoid spreading infections like SARs that the other signs made sense.

People here take pride in their gardens (lawns to those of you in the US) and the little houses in this area have nice gardens. The grass is kept really short, about the height of the putting greens on a golf course.

Last week, I attended a meeting of the Acoustical Society of New Zealand branch here in Christchurch. The meeting was a tour of a glass plant here in the city which didn’t have much to do with acoustics, but was pretty neat. There isn’t a single glass producer in New Zealand and so all glass is imported. The source of the glass depends on the color desired and the properties such as glass that is self cleaning. A lot of the glass is imported from Indonesia and it is transported in open top, metal containers similar to the ones that you see trucks hauling the world over. Inside of the container are special rigs that hold 8 bundles of glass with ten sheets in each bundle. These sheets are each massive, some of which looked like they were 30 feet x 30 feet. Such large sheets stick out the top of the metal container and therefore when they are transported by ship, the glass containers are put at the top of the stack of containers. This can be a problem if the ship passes under a low bridge in a harbor and there have been cases when whole shipments are shattered when the ship passed under a low bridge.

The glass plant is basically a big distribution center for South Island. Glass is cut by robots into the shapes needed by the customers. They will grind the edges, temper glass (to make it safety glass that shatters if broken) and even make double paned windows. Double paned windows are something new here in New Zealand, but based on the number of double paned windows we saw being loaded onto trucks for shipment, they have taken off. Kiwis tell me that most of the houses here in Christchurch are poorly insulated with only single pane windows. My flat, for instance was only built a few years ago and is cold even now in the spring due to the drafts coming through the large, single pane windows. The theory was that it did not get cold enough to justify the extra cost of building better insulated houses. I wonder too if the idea of inexpensive, plentiful energy from the hydroelectric plants on South Island contributed to this mentality as well. In any case, energy is no longer cheap and renovated houses and new constructions are being built with more efficient materials.

The people in the Acoustical Society are all acousticians working in the Christchurch area. There used to only be one company here, but now there are a lot of one person shops competing for the growing number of projects. I hitched a ride to the meeting with some people who work not too far from the university. On the way back, we dropped off one of the people at his house in the suburbs because he had taken the bus to work which is easy to do here in Christchurch. There are ample city busses that ply the streets of Christchurch and my flat is on a major bus route. At the bus stop down the street, there are digital displays showing when the next bus is coming. I don’t know how common the digital displays are or if they are something special due to the number of students who use the stop. There are even monitors in the library that show when the next bus is due, maybe so that students can study till the last possible moment before they run to catch the bus. There are frequent busses which is quite a departure from Baltimore where you never knew when the bus was coming if it was coming at all (I was bitten by busses that never showed up a few times in Baltimore).

I am usually the first person to be wearing shorts in the spring and the last to be wearing them in the autumn. It is spring here now and I see people wearing short sleeves and shorts, but I am still wearing long pants and jackets when I am not riding. I think that others are experiencing the 70 degree days and relishing the change from winter whereas I am coming from a very hot summer. Either that or people here are like those fabled people in Minnesota who wear shorts in the winter.

Things are still going well here, although I am a bit disappointed to be in town this weekend. The last time that I was in NZ, I had taken the Tranzalpine train up through the Alps. The train stopped at a little town called Arthur’s Pass which is said to offer spectacular hikes. I had hoped to head up there on Saturday morning via the bus. However, the weather in the mountains is unpredictable this time of year with a lot of rain at the low levels and snow up high. The web site for weather only projects the weather out one day which makes planning difficult. So on Friday morning when I saw that the weather was to be nice in the mountains, I tried to book my trip on the buses that cross the Alps to the western side of the island. However, what I had not realized was that this weekend marks the start of vacation for secondary school students and the busses were full. Bummer. I will have to wait till another weekend or until I get a car.

Second hand cars can generally be had here for less than US $1000. The glut of cars is unbelievable and NZ is only second to the US for the number of cars per person. Some days I feel like I am the only person here without a car which I am happy to be except when I can make trips like the one to Arthur’s Pass. I am keeping my eye out and hopefully that will change soon because it will make exploring more fun since I can broaden my range.

I started writing these emails when I was in China over six years ago. A lot of the emails from China and Denmark are archived online on my various websites. One would almost call the sites blogs so I have decided to make it official. I will continue to send out the emails, but you can also find the New Zealand emails posted on my blog at jeffreymahn.blogspot.com. The advantage of the blog is that I also post photographs to match what I am writing.

Cheers,

Jeff

060909 Arrival

In case you missed my last email or are new to the list, I am now a PhD student at the University of Canterbury in Christchurch, New Zealand.

My flights to New Zealand went off without a hitch despite my prior stress over the weight of my bags and the packaging of my bicycle. Security in Boston removed enough of my careful packaging of my bicycle that the frame was pretty badly scratched up with some deep gouges in the frame, but I would not find that out until later. They were strict about that, but amazingly people brought drinks onto the plane out of Boston. They had bought them in the terminal and the crew had missed them bringing them onto the plane.

I had a really long layover of 7 hours in San Francisco, but it passed by quickly and before I knew it, I was on a half empty plane on the way to Auckland. Everyone on the plane who wanted a row to themselves to stretch out had one and I slept well despite Air New Zealand’s attempts to prevent people from sleeping across three seats. The armrests only raised to forty-five degrees which meant that you had to slide under the armrests and deal with them digging into your side if you wanted to lie down. I was glad for the extra space to sleep and to spread out my meals. Although I was ecstatic at the size of breakfast, it was served at 3AM so that we could eat before our 5AM arrival and so the meal did not keep me filled until lunch.

Once in Auckland, I was pleased to pass customs in only fifteen minutes, which was much better than the hour and a half wait that I had faced a few years ago. New Zealand takes the threat of the introduction of foreign species very seriously and last time that I was here, I had to have my boots disinfected because there was a patch of mud on them. My dread about biosecurity wanting to take my bicycle out of the box despite my careful cleaning of the bike proved baseless and I actually wound up chatting with biosecurity for a while before exiting and checking my bags for my flight to Christchurch. It was at this point that things went awry with a flight that might or might not be canceled and with having to collect my oversized luggage along with others who were also bringing skis and bicycles to Christchurch, but it all worked itself out in the end.

As my friend Jessica (formerly of Ecuador, now in NYC, but currently living in Brazil) once wrote, it is one of the best feelings to arrive at an international destination knowing that you have someone waiting to meet you. In this case, Dr. Pearse, my advisor at Canterbury University was there to collect me and my bags to take me to the flat that I had rented till the end of the semester in October. I am currently living at housing just off campus made up of several four story buildings, each with eight suites. Each suite has six bedrooms with a shared kitchen and bathroom. I am going to be honest and write that the idea of this living arrangement scared the pants off of me. I have been living on my own for years now and I dreaded the idea of the loss of privacy and the sharing of bath and kitchen (the later because I am meticulous about my kitchen, something I learned in China where one had to be to prevent contamination from unpurified water for example).

I chose to live in the student housing, called Ilam<> Village after it had been highly recommended to me by an associate professor at Washington University who had just recently graduated with his PhD from the University of Canterbury. I had tracked him down using google and he had been nice enough to answer the myriad of questions that I had about Canterbury University. He told me that Ilam Village was the best place to meet other New Zealand and international students. I saw the wisdom of his advice because if I lived in my own flat off campus, I would know no one but the people in my department. Therefore, I took the plunge and got a room in the suite which has worked out well so far. My flatmates are from China, Korea, the US, Singapore and Germany. They are a mix of final year undergrads, masters students and PhD students. There are two women and four men. I am glad that I am living in the village and I will get over whatever concerns that I may have had.

On my first day, after dropping my bags off at my flat, Dr Pearse took me around the department to introduce me to the people who I will be working with for the next two and a half years. The mechanical engineering department in which I am studying has offices on the fifth floor of a massive, concrete building near where I live. All of the buildings on campus are massive, concrete structures, but they are not as boring as the construction sounds. The campus was built in the 60’s and the architects tried to make unique looking buildings with lots of glass, skywalks and interesting touches.

I share an office on the third floor of my building with one other student. He just recently earned his PhD and is currently doing some consulting work and publishing papers that grew from his research. There are two of us in our corner office as opposed to the eight or more students in the other graduate offices. I suspect that I have a strong advisor to get us so much space. From my desk, I can see the snow covered Alps beckoning from the distance. I suspect that they will be a distraction unless the call to travel there is heeded at some point.

The only problem that I have run into at the university is enrolling. At every other university that I have attended, I arrive, smile, and have a student ID. Here, I need a dozen forms signed. No one seems sure which form I need next and so Thursday was spent running from one office to the next to collect signatures. Key people are on holiday which is delaying my quest for signatures which is problematic. I can not get email access in my office or my flat without a student ID. I can not open a bank account without the ID or get access to my scholarship funds. Pretty much, I am stuck. I have been warned by other students that it took them up to two weeks to finally get enrolled.

My enrollment was completed on Monday, the email was activated on Tuesday and I got email in my flat on Wednesday. I had to wait for enrollment to access the internet because students here must pay for their internet usage by the megabyte transferred and for printing by the sheet. Fast, free internet and the ability to print are supposed to be the perks of being a poor university student and I was shocked to learn that this was not the case at Canterbury. Granted it definitely cuts down on downloading and wasted printing, but it seems drastic.

Other than fighting the desire to go to bed at 6PM, things have been going well. I have found grocery stores close to where I live and pretty much everything else that I need within walking distance. There is even a Kmart nearby, but it is as bad as the ones in the US. I found a Borders for books which is a luxury after having lived in countries where finding books in English was more difficult. However, they paperbacks are expensive! They are easily NZ $20 - $30 each. Even with the exchange rate, that is pricey and far too much for a university student on a budget.

Every time, I approach a street to cross, I repeat to myself, “right then left”. If I do as we do in the US and look left first, I will miss the cars coming at me as they drive on the left side of the road. I waited to painfully reconstruct my bicycle until Friday night and Saturday morning because I did not want to go into traffic until I was used to everyone driving on the wrong side of the road. There is some weird rule in New Zealand about left turns that I will have to look up once I have web access. This whole thing about making right turns from the left lane freaks me out a bit. At least on a bike, if I freak out, I can just hop off and walk my bike across the street. I am learning from other cyclists of which there are many. Apparently, cycling has just taken off here recently and is being well embraced, especially by students. Helmets are mandatory and there are now even bike lanes showing up on some of the streets. Regardless of the laws, I would wear a helmet as I am learning the new traffic patterns.

I have been spending the weekend cycling about and learning the city. A lot of the downtown is familiar to me from the last time that I was here about two and a half years ago. The actual downtown area is not very large and in fact, I suspect the massive park downtown is larger than the main commercial area. Most of the city extends outwards from Cathedral Square which is the focal point and the area with the tallest buildings. The Avon river ambles its way through the city and punting (boating) is commonly seen on the river. The sprawl around the city center is made up mostly of one to two story houses that are rather small in size compared to the US. The older houses around the city center are made of brick and wood and are better built that the newer houses in the outlying suburbs which are said to be very cheaply made. Each house has a small lot with fenced gardens. Trees are everywhere and the mix of palm trees, evergreens and deciduous trees is interesting to see.

Finding my way about the city has been a breeze thanks to the GPS unit mounted to my handlebars onto which I downloaded every street in New Zealand. I can just check out my position on the map and even create routes to follow with turn by turn directions. Thanks to Jeff and Jen for getting me into geocaching and GPS units.

The winter in Christchurch is said to have been particularly hash this year and it even snowed three times in the city. The Alps in the distance (the peaks are about 40 miles away) are covered with snow. The weather is only now beginning to get nice with warm days, but cool nights. People remind me that New Zealand is a small island in a big ocean and the temperature depends heavily on the direction of the wind. Winds from the west have come across the Alps and are usually warm. Winds from the south are coming from Antarctica and needless to say, bring cool temperatures.

One last thing to mention is the drinking water in Christchurch. It is fantastic. I was surprised to hear that it comes directly out of the ground without any sort of treatment. There is no chlorine taste or smell. People tell me that it is a joy to come back to Christchurch to drink the water after traveling to other parts of the island where the water has the chlorine taste. There is a beautiful botanical garden outside of my flat and the Avon River runs about 100 feet from my front door. It is amazing to walk along the river because although it is quickly flowing, it is absolutely crystal clear. You can see straight to the bottom where the plants are waving in the strong current.

Cheers,

Jeff