June30, Thursday.  In front of the hotel in Chch before 7 am,waiting suitcases and all,  for the bus to go to Mt. Cook, NZ tallest mountain.  By 1:30 pm I arrived at the Hermitage, the national park resort.  Approaching my destination, I was awe struck by the scenery.  These are called the alps of the southern hemisphere, and are aptly named.  Everyone has mentioned that they are having an unusually warm winter, no snow, snow on the mountain tops, but none at the mountains base.  My room faces Mt. cook thru a huge picture window.  Ate lunch in the sunshine thru the glass wall of the dinning room.  What a change, warm sunshine, after all of the rain in Sydney, melbourne, Hobart, Adelaide, Auckland, Rotorua and Wellington. and I was tired of being wet every time I went out to see the sights.  It's  in the lower 50's, but sunny, nice.  Went for a long walk to the base of a mountain on a well graveled trail, an hour later I was ate the trails end, at the mountains base, with glaciers almost down to the brock strewn base.  In the quiet, several times I heard the rumblings of avalanches from just around the corner of a foothill adjacent to the mountain.  Sounds like a train without any of the metal wheel or rail components, just a rumble, rumble down the mountain side. And I get four meals like that: lunch thru lunch for the 26 hours I am here.   My meals are pre-paid, and they are really something, delicious, linen tablecloths, ordering from a menu, classy.  Well that's about it for today!

Akaroa NZ and harbor!

I lost several posts, something was wrong, but what????  Can't remember those two posts contents, so as I remember them I'll stick those reflections in when I do.  Today I was on a bus tour to Akaroa, a French founded town, but they didn't know that the Brits had beat them to NZ by a month or two, so after they discovered they had a French town in a British colony, they remained, and the Brits allowed them to exist like they did in Quebec Canada, so there is a French town in English speaking NZ.  The streets are Rue, the police station is Gerdairams (French word for police).  It is quaint, sea port, tiny village, now a resort destination for NZ folks and tourists alike.  Had a harbor boat tour, cliffs really remarkable, penguins, dolphans, other sea birds...  and white specks high up on the grass cliffs with sheer drops a thousand feet to the rocks or sea below, between the rocks and trees, these were grazing sheep.  The captain of the tour boat explained that the NZ sheep farmers are breeding their sheep with the left front and rear legs shorter than the right legs, so the sheep can stand level on the 45 degree or steeper pastures.  A side effect is that the sheep can't double back to get away from the farmers on the steep slopes, when they are rounding them up at sheering time, saves a lot of time.  But when the farmers put those sheep on flat land he gets lean mutton!

Having problems with internet, this is a test blog to see if it records this entry, after two previous blogs failed to post, and totally disappeared.  Here goes!

Christchurch

Damn!  Lost a two screen blog??????
Kiwi's abbreviate this town name as Chch.  Much shorter.  Five years ago there was a severe earthquake here, and an equally bad aftershock some time later.  The 150 year old cathedral was severely damaged and in danger of collapsing so they quickly put up massive steel bracing to hold the front wall and bell tower in place.  Then that bad aftershock came, and they both fell so the steel is bent but still standing holding up air, cause the front wall and bell tower are rubble about fifteen feet deep n the church's front steps.  I was told by the shuttle driver that thousands of buildings were destroyed or severely damaged, so as to need almost complete rebuilding.  There is rebuilding everywhere in the greater downtown area, except for the cathedral which is the subject of a huge debate whether to tear down and rebuild, which is probably cheaper, or to restore the historic building... no decision yet, the same scenariois going on for a number of historic buildings, including the oldest building in Chch.  There are fenced off buildings everywhere downtown, they are bordered up, and standing there, or under construction with cranes hovering above them.  The big department store here has been in business for well over a hundred years and part of it fell in the earthquake, the part of the building that remained standing has been repaired, except for the back part which fell, where they have attached a barn like pole building to the restored part of the building and the two inside are a glamorous whole, now.  Even the outside has been doctored up to look glamorous.  This store is like Marshall Fields and Younkers looked like, and had better merchandise before being bought out and cheapened.  Really classey, even with the pole building's east end.  So many stores were out of business that they came up with an ingenious solution, they used shipping crates, fixed them up, with store display windows, some are one crate big, some are double deckers, some are connected in an "L" or ,"U", shape or other configeretions.  Where they had to tear down a couple of square blocks of destroyed buildings, they built this mall with the shipping  crates.  There are comic art works, plantings... many of them, benches, out door meeting areas.  This new mall looks great, it is do innovative.  I would think it should be a permanent fixture of the new downtown area.  There are square blocks, in a few places multi-square blocks of grass fields where buildings have been removed, one huge multi-block area is across the street from this hotel.  One square block has been converted from destroyed buildings to a great children's playground with a large number of playground structures... really nice.  Talked to a lady from the next hotel down the road, and she just gushed about the playground her kids played in much of the afternoon.  Her hotel seems to have been remodeled since the earthquake and had a three or four story half arch leaning against the whole side of the building and has small shops on both sides of the arch and a nice pedestrian mall, with the tram track down the middle.  The tram is a hop on/,off tourist vehicle running around the downtown in the repaired and boarded up sections as well as the under construction areas.  They have (present tense) a huge ww1 memorial arch in a big open area next to the shipping crate mall, on closer observation there is a picture taken maybe in the forties or fifty's with large buildings, stores and office buildings all around the arch.  All those buildings are gone, but the memorial to the doughboys is still standing all by itself in a big open area.  This was/is a beautiful city with mall's, plazas, streets intersecting at unusual angles, curvy streets, narrow alleys with store fronts and the single tram track down the middle of the pedestrian alleyway.  Really pretty.  The major Plaza in a sort of capital T shape in front of the cathedral with dramatic art works, seating areas, trees and a large "temporary" "tent" structure in front of the fence surrounding the almost destroyed cathedral's front wall with plants covering it and signs begging to save the historical cathedral, and to not tear it down and replace it with a new building.  Chch is a livable city, and even with all the damage, is still a vibrant, peopled city, not crowded, but far from vacant city, it's on the mend!  I happened to be walking down a street about five pm which has many buildings under repair, and the workers from three or four buildings were leaving work for the day and both sides of the street was a sea of yellow construction helmets and vests.  Even with all the non-functioning buildings, I've been on the streets two nites and there are people everywhere, not an abandoned city at all, far from it!

Hobbiton