Category: New Zealand

This morning I went whalewatching – and this time, I even got to see two actual whales from up close (as opposed to last time in Cape Cod)! We saw two sperm whales (“Pottwale” in German), one of them for quite a long time, breathing on the surface before diving, giving us a lovely view of his tail. I asked a German girl with a good camera if she can send me her photos, so there might even be photographic evidence that’s actually recognizable… 🙂

Not so good was that I was horribly seasick, worse than ever before. Seriously, despite being very happy about seeing whales, I was even more happy when it was over and I was back on firm land! I wasn’t the worst off, however – a German guy puked pretty much right through the whole trip. We all felt very bad for him. I must admit, this is probably the last time I’ll do something like that – apparently my motion sickness is getting worse as I get older. Ah well, it was still cool, and I met a nice British woman who works here in NZ.

The afternoon I spent happily lazing about on the beach. Absolutely wonderful – I just lay down on my jacket, looked up into the bright blue sky and at the turquoise ocean while listening to an audiobook (‘Stardust’ by Neil Gaiman, one of my all-time favorite novels). The beaches here are either pebbles or black sand, but that didn’t take away from the relaxation factor at all.

Tomorrow I’m off to Christchurch, but I’ll only spend an afternoon there, as the bus to Mt. Cook will leave insanely early on Saturday. But it should give me enough time to have a wander around the supposedly very pretty town.

Arrived at the youth hostel in the whalewatching town Kaikoura. The trip was lovely, especially the crossing to Picton on the Interislander ferry, with the sun shining beautifully as we left Wellington, crossed the open water between the islands and passed through the beautiful Charlotte and Marlborough Sounds. In Picton the weather changed – it rained and even hailed, a sign of the nearby Southern Alps, invisible in the clouds.

I just enjoyed a lovely break here in the hostel, having a tea and some of the chocolate I got for Christmas while a Maori lady showed a little girl how to use the poi (cotton balls the Maori use to tell stories/accompany songs). Now it’s dry again and I might head out for a stroll along the coast. Tomorrow morning I’ve booked a whalewatching tour, a very exciting prospect. If only the weather holds…

The plan to have a beach barbecue failed spectacularly this morning, as not only did we miss the bus (it was 15 minutes early) but also the weather didn’t look very promising. So we ended up barbecuing on Kathrin’s front porch, which turned out quite nice, as it meant that Silva and Kathrin’s flatmate Kim could join us. We shared food (my noodle salad was a hit!), small gifts and memories of holidays back home…

Then I went back to my place, after agreeing to meet Kathrin and Janne for church tomorrow morning. However, when I tried to open my door, the key wouldn’t turn. I tried several times, then I knocked on a couple of neighbours’ doors, unsuccessfully. However, lucky for me, someone turned out to be home – and Tony works in the office, so he was able to really help me out! We went to reception, where he called someone with a masterkey – and gave me a package from K. in Hamburg that had arrived today but which otherwise I wouldn’t have gotten until after my trip.

I left my stuff in Tony’s room and went for a walk to the waterfront and shopping for the journey (as tomorrow is almost the only day in the year when most stores will be closed), before meeting Liz who got the door to open with my masterkey, after which my key suddenly started working again. So what could have been a big disaster ended up being a minor inconvenience, and I might even have gotten a friend out of it…

It’s been a very good day today – the first time it really felt like summer for me, maybe because I ended up going to the beach at Oriental Parade with Kathrin and Janne (who’s staying with Kathrin after we met in the hostel in Rotorua). First we cooked together, then we walked to the waterfront, where we had icecream and planned what we need to shop for our Christmas orphan beach barbecue on Monday. I’ll be contributing a noodle salad and my last box of Läckerli.

Then we walked along the water to Oriental Parade and its (artificial but still very nice) beach. A lot of young folk outside, as always, and families with small children. I do wonder where the older people go on a sunny Saturday afternoon, however… Anyway, we only bathed our feet, as the sea felt quite cold, although there were people swimming, then we sat down in the sand. I perused Janne’s Lonely Planet guidebook and got myself all excited about my upcoming trip to the South Island. However, the sun was quite strong, despite sunscreen, so after a couple of hours we walked back, stopping only to pick up a yummy banana/berry smoothie from ‘Doctor Juice’.

As a result of it all I’m completely knackered. I did my laundry – it’s quite frustrating to pay $4 each time for washer and dryer and then to end up with half the laundry still damp. I’ve hung the wet stuff up to dry as well as possible – it’s everywhere, on every available surface, even the stove… 🙂 Now I think I’ll make myself comfy on my bed and watch a DVD. A guy from my floor said something about having a question, but he then disappeared without a trace, so I might end my night undisturbed after all…

It’s almost Christmas, how strange is that? I hope all of you reading this are doing fine and enjoying the season – if you feel like it, do comment on one of my posts, so I know I’m not just talking to myself and to my parents. 🙂

I’ve gotten a couple of emails from people worried about me – however, while I know I felt shaking last night and was probably woken by slight tremors this morning, I’m completely okay. Here in Wellington it really was no big deal. The earthquake was most felt in Gisborne, which is several hundred kilometres away. But thank you for thinking of me!

Edit: But isn’t it amazing that I heard about it from someone in Germany first? Globalization in action! 🙂

I had my exam for the HR course yesterday. Not sure how it went – I have a not-so-good feeling, but I often have problems evaluating how well I’ve done, so I try not to worry. Also, there’s nothing I can do about it now, is there? So instead I’m writing the final assignment, 1500 words using the previous one-page assignments as template. I’m at about 1000 words now and think I’ll take a break and eat something before starting on the last bit.

Once that’s done I’ll be free. There’s a couple of things I want to do before Christmas, like make reservations at ‘Southern Cross’, a bar/restaurant that Kathrin recommended to me for my birthday, but mostly I’ll just hang out until the Big Christmas Orphan Beach Barbecue of 2007 on the 25th. I want to meet up with some friends (heh, that sounds as if I have so many of them, but it’s barely a handful) and enjoy the summer (if it stops raining, that is *g*). In other news, hopefully they’ll finish construction soon – tomorrow we won’t have power on this floor during the whole day and no one seems able to tell me when the hole in my ceiling will be gone. But I’ll be gone for 10 days after Christmas, luckily, so I just hope there won’t be many more disruptions until then.

When I came home after the last lecture (next week we “only” have to do a final exam and a 1500 word essay), there were still construction workers in my room. So I decided to head for friendlier shores and went to the youth hostel to finally get my Christmas break organized. Because it’s the main tourist season (I’m not the only one who has time off then), I had to make a couple of compromises (mainly I’m not going to Queenstown/Milford Sound because it was completely booked), but after a good 2 hours, David, the friendly YHA guy, and I had a 9-day-vacation on the South Island all planned out. Whee!

I’m leaving on the day after Christmas (Dec 26) and will return on January 4. In between I’ll go whale watching in Kaikoura, see NZ’s highest mountain, Mt. Cook, go skydiving in Wanaka (the alternative to Queenstown) and then head up the west coast, from Franz Joseph to Nelson (same trip I did last time I was on the South Island, but it’s a stunning stretch, so I don’t mind). It’s going to be 9 days of awesome scenery and a couple of exciting highlights!

Other than that things have been mostly quiet. On Saturday I went to the famous Chocolate Fish Café with Kathrin and Masumi. It’s a really cool place, right at the beach, but unfortunately they’re closing at the end of the month. On Sunday there was the earthquake that I posted about, and the main highlight of the week (other than the fact that I was drawn into the beginning Christmas shopping madness and ended up buying jeans, t-shirts and shoes – for myself, as all my holiday mail was sent two weeks ago) is Swiss politics: Federal councillor Christoph Blocher (who I like to call ‘our George W’) was unexpectedly not re-elected by parliament (Swissinfo). Even if nothing comes of it (or if Blocher’s party really decides to go ahead and destroy our whole political system by going into opposition), this just makes me feel so much better about the political situation back home…

Annoyance of the week: The construction that will not end. They started last week and it’ll last at least another week. Not only do they at times work in my room (the hole in my wall is gone, but the one in my ceiling is still there), there’s also power outages, loud hammering at 7am and other unpleasantness. Seriously, I think we should get a discount on our rent or something – not only is there construction, but there’s not much information. Plus, because it’s summer we don’t have access to the gym and there are no RAs (Resident Advisors), so that we have to go to reception (in a different building) for everything. But at least I met my next-door neighbour Helen, a girl from China, who got kicked out of bed this morning by the construction crew and then discovered that she didn’t have electricity to make breakfast or turn on the light in the shower. Nice, hm?

The ground just shook ever so slightly. I mean, I knew that New Zealand is earthquake territory (I can’t seem to get away from those these days – Basel, then California, now Wellington), but it’s still kind of disconcerting when everything starts to tremble. It really was nothing, but it did last for a good 30 seconds, I’d say.

It’s not on GeoNet yet, but I think I’ll bookmark the website for future reference…

Edit: Still no report on the site, but it seems to have been captured by seismographs all over the country.

Edit 2: Now it was captured – a 7.6 several hundred kilometres away, in the ocean.