Auckland to Tiramu

We got to the airport in plenty of time, with no snafus this time. Sat in the general eating and reading area and had a delicious bagel with melted cheese for breakfast while I typed. Felt like home, almost.

A few more New Zealand observations:
It is a treat to be in a place where we get to calculate how much everything costs by multiplying by 0.7. This means that every purchase feels like a discounted item, no matter the price.
Since it is summer, the fruits and vegetables are locally grown and in excellent condition.
The voice on the navigation system has a NZ accent -- we wonder if we can get one of those at home.
Every single meal we have eaten has been off of real dishes with real silverware, whether it is a fast casual place or a cafe. They don't use plastic, they don't give away bags, they have really nifty paper-based packaging when packaging is required. It is hard to get a paper napkin.

We arrived in Christchurch and spent about an hour getting ourselves organized, plowing through email, getting our bags and our car. We were not in a hurry and the airport was extremely comfortable with nice furniture and useful wifi and electrical outlets.

Any guesses on what a "trundler" is?

Then we set out, heading south.  After a while I didn't want to be on a big highway anymore and I requested a different view. Right about then we saw a sign for Rakaia Gorge, so without any more information than that, we went that way, fighting with the navigation system until we just turned it off. There were plenty of good signs. We found ourselves in extremely flat cow and sheep country -- huge farms with big herds, lots of irrigation running, and these immense, manicured hedges between the fields. These hedges were not on a scale that we have ever seen before -- they are more than twenty feet tall, solid, and about four feet wide. Then there were fields and fields of some sort of brassica -- Jon pulled over to climb over a fence and pick a leaf so we could try to identify it. It didn't taste like a strong mustard, it was milder than kale.  We decided it was a cover crop because there was just so MUCH of it everywhere.

Coming over the ridge just before the gorge. You can see some of the hedges, although these are not fully grown together.
They are a solid 20 ft high and 4-6 ft wide when mature.

When we finally got to the parking lot that seemed to be where the gorge was, we had lunch at a picnic table and then I read the detailed sign.

The gorge was a 1- 4 hour hike away, round trip.  Well that wasn't going to work. But it seemed likely that we would be able to see something if we just kept driving on the same road. Once over the river and about 500 meters up on the other side there was a scenic overlook and then 200 more meters up on foot there was a real view.  A striking blue color in the river, lots of glacial till, and big mountains to the west. This explained why all those farms were on such perfectly flat ground -- a glacier had retreated, leaving this vast open Canterbury Plain.

View from the bridge over the river looking downriver. The color of the water is an amazing light blue.

Not such a precipitous gorge but very scenic.

We headed back toward the southbound highway, seeing many more farms and cows and sheep and mountains. The cows were sorted by size and function -- big herds of beef cattle, then herds of young cows, then herds of dairy cows, then baby cows.  The animals were all sleek and shiny, eating miles and miles of grass. We saw lots of equipment dealerships with humongous tractors made by companies we have never heard of.  Dual-wheeled tractors with attachments that were mysterious. We don't know anything about large scale cow and sheep farming.

When we got to Tiramu, our next home base, we had to find a wifi connection to contact our host.  We found a shopping center that had everything we could ever want: a cafe, a large and very satisfying supermarket, a post office, a stationery store. While I sat at a table and drank a civilized pot of tea and wrote more emails (mostly to Becky who is handling all the details of setting up the CSA while we are gallivanting), Jon wandered around and shopped for dinner.

Our new host is yet another single man with a house. This house is right on a bay with a magnificent view. He grew up in this town and moved to Australia for a few years and came back home and found this house for sale. I think he could be about 30 years old, he has been working in earth moving for half his life and now he is a project manager.  A very nice person. We all ate dinner at the same table while Jon and I asked lots of questions. (We had been unable to resist some amazing looking sweet corn at the store, and it ended up being really delicious. Who ever buys corn at a supermarket? We could tell this was going to be good and it was -- giant ears with perfect kernels, yellow corn.)

View from the back of the house.