Okay I have way to many pictures from my weekend away in Christchurch to post online but here are the quick highlights.

At 9am on Saturday I flew to Christchurch with my mum for the weekend.

Upon ariving the first thing we did was go to a wildlife reserve.

It was kinda like a zoo but only featured New Zealand animals.

It had three sections: Wild New Zealand, Agricultural New Zealand and Bird New Zealand or something like that:

Wild NZ was the best of the three sections.

First I made friends with a very friendly wallaby. I don’t normally call things cute. But this guy was very cute.

In the Wild New Zealand section they had an old remote tramping hut. So just to show you how cool NZ tramping is here it is from the outside, and below from the inside:

And most importantly the out house:

The Agricultural New Zealand section was cool with lots of farm yard animals. I mistook a donkey for a large sheep. A black goat tried to make friends with my camera and a very friendly clydesdale horse also tried to eat me and my camera.

In the birds section I got to see up close a number of Kiwi, and other NZ birds including our famous Kea or Green Parrot:

And a Morepork:

After the adventures at the wildlife reserve we went and looked at the centre of Christchurch including the Square, Lincoln University, and New Brighton beach.

On Sunday we headed to Lyttelton through an awesome tunnel and then back over the Port Hills. After that we decided to head out to Mt Hutt for a look. Little did I know that the access road to Mt Hutt was a 20km dirt mountain road, and I only had a 1000cc rental car. Fun!

This is coming down the road. It was plenty wide. But really rough and bumpy.

Mt Hutt Ski Field

The Snow Bunny in his natural habitat.

I just found out that Parachute Festival will remain at Mystery Creek Events Centre for another five years! Yeah!

Like the election date, the announcment of artists performing at P09 should be announced anyday now. So far David Crowder Band and Family Force Five have been confirmed. I also know of a strong rumour that Casting Crowns are playing. And most importantly The Lads have no concerts booked between the end of October and March next year. Are they planing a summer break, in NZ?

From the parachute website:

It is finally a fine weekend. I finally got some fresh air. And a walk. And time with family.

The start of the short Auckland City Walk (1 hour), a must for anyone wanting a mini adventure.

A large-ish waterfall between two rock walls. It made a lot of noise. But finding it was hard. This is the closest I could get and it involved climbing up some very slimy and slippery rocks to get to.

The largest Silver Fern I have ever seen. See how silver it is in comparison to the green fern on the left. Unique to God’s Zone.

A magnificent Kauri tree. One of the biggest in Auckland.

A happy mum also enjoying the sunny day!

Yesterday the Green Party launched its billboards for the upcoming election. I particularly like this one:

The problem however is that New Zealand is not on the centre of the earth. It must be!

So in setting out on resolving this problem I decided to be inclusive of all and therefore put the entire globe, spinning behind it. And viola!

Okay, I have had a few friends ask me about my goggle image. Well this is what I saw. It is the reflection which has be reflected back to how I would have seen it with the Pinnacles on the right and the top of the Waterfall Express chair on the left, with the Moro Terrain Park in front of me, and the Valley T-Bar off to my right (out of shot).

Okay, if this picture is anything to go by I am dead and writing this from the depths of hell.

Now, that isn’t quite the case. I am actually back safely in Auckland after nine days away.

On the way back to Auckland yesterday I passed through Rotorua and went to Hell’s Gate, Rotorua’s most active geothermal reserve. Hell’s Gate is different from other thermal reserves in the Rotorua/Taupo area, as its heat source is only 1.5 - 2km below the surface whereas the other thermal reserves’ heat source is approximately 10+ km under the surface.

The following photos of hell are only a small selection of what you see as you pass through the Gate. Who knew the Hell would be so beautiful.

The Inferno is made up of three major pools with an average temperature of between 105C and 110C. The depth range from 8 to 20m with an average pH of 3.5. Water in the pools exceed the boiling point of 100C due to naturally occurring minerals in the water, which elevates the boiling point.

Sodom and Gomorrah have temperatures in excess of 100C with water erupting out of the pools at up to two meters in height.

The Kakahi Falls is the largest hot water fall in the Southern Hemisphere. Its temperature is approximately 40C, which is that of a nice hot shower.

Devil’s Cauldron. This black mud has a temperature of 120C.

Mud Volcano. This is the only example of a large mud volcano in a geothermal reserve in New Zealand. Currently the volcano is 2.4m high and growing. The mud volcano regularly discharges mud lahars of ejects mud.

Lahar on mud volcano.

The steaming cliffs pool is the hottest in the reserve. At the surface the temperature is 122C and 145C one metre below the surface. The boiling activity of the pool constantly changes with waters sometimes reaching heights of more then three meters above the pool.

The large hot lake discharges over the Kakahi Falls. Water is actively heated in the lakes in some areas reaching in excess of 90C.

The Cooking Pool is where the Maori traditionally cooked Asian tourists who walked off the track. These days it can cook a pig in two hours. The Cooking Pool has a temperature of 98C which remains constant throughout the year. Although smelling of sulphur and containing black water, there is no tainting to the food cooked in the pool.

Sulphur laden steam. What more could you want?

Because of some changes in plans I got to go skiing for a second time!

Don’t be fooled by the nice photos below the day started in much worse weather.

I left Wanganui at 6.30am to drive to Ruapehu and I arrived just before 8.30am. The weather was average to terrible driving up to the mountain. Snow in lots of places (not as bad as a week ago though) and lots of rain.

When I got to the base of mountain the upper mountain lift facilities were on hold. Because of this I decided to wait at the bottom of the mountain for an update on their opening status. This wait lasted almost a whole hour before I decided to head up the road at 9.20am.

In my hour of agony and dilemma I came very close to heading around to Turoa as it had more facilities open then Wakapapa. I was lucky that I didn’t though because it was only open for two hours before the weather packed in and closed the ski field.

Anyway back to the story. Like last week the road up to the ski field was closed unless you hired chains for your car. Chain hire costs $25 and there was quite a queue of cars waiting for chains to be fitted. I paid for my chains at 9.20am and then waited until 9.40am for them to be fitted. At 9.30am while I was waiting, and after I had paid, they decided to open the road up until Day Park 10. But no because I had already paid for chains I still had to get them fitted and go up the now open road on them.

This was a minor pain in itself but never mind chains are very helpful on mountain roads and because I was on chains I would be able to go to one of the higher and closer car parks when I got up the mountain. Sweet! However, when I got up the mountain I was directed to park at Day Park 10 despite having chains and arguing with the parking attendant. (I was told later he was wrong and I was right.) I was not happy about this for two reasons. The first is that I was made to hire chains that I did not need, and secondly I was forced to park low down on the mountain just because I was 2WD and the parking attendant was blind to the fact I had chains on!

Anyway. I couldn’t be bothered waiting for a bus so I walked the kilometer or so up the road to the Top of the Bruce. Here I hired gear and passes. The upper mountain was still on hold so they were only selling lower mountain passes. GRRRR I thought. By this time the weather had cleared a lot. After getting my gear sorted I headed out to head up to the top of the lower mountain. Well I ended up in a queue for this chairlift for close to 45mins! By this time it was approaching 11am! Yes I had been on the mountain for over two and a half hours and I hadn’t even got to go skiing yet.

When I finally got onto the chairlift they decided to open the Upper Mountain. When I had purchased the lift passes they had told everyone if the upper mountain opened everyone would have to go back and pay more. However, everyone on the mountain, including myself just headed for the upper mountain lifts without the extra passes. We had had enough waiting! There were at least 100 of us wanting to go higher up the mountain and it was not our fault they hadn’t sold us the right passes so thankfully the ski field operators saw the sense in letting us go higher!

After all this the weather cleared and the skiing was great. I skiied for just under five hours and now two days later I am still paying the pain for it. Sore legs, knees, bruised side and motion sickness is still mucking about with my sleep. But it was great. And fully worth it. Except for the chains!

Check out the reflection in the goggles. Nothing but snow and sky!

Note to self: When taking photos remember to smile!

To go off the edge or not. That is thy question.

Snow. Snow and more Snow!