Out to Red Rocks to see the Seals

For some time now we have been meaning to walk beyond the city outskirts and along the rocky south-coast. Wellington's last bay before wilderness sets in, is Ohiro Bay. A few eccentrics live out here and they don’t seem to mind the constant wild winds and salt water which eats away at their funny looking houses. One guy has built his house in the shape of a light-house, another has an up-turned boat as his balcony.

The Red Rocks Coastal walk takes you from Ohiro Bay car park along the rocky shore line where the edge of Wellington meets the Cook Strait. On a good day you can clearly see the Kaikoura mountain ranges of the South Island. Today was not a good day! We pushed ourselves against the wind and cold, plus occasional icy shower. The destination was the seal colony, about 1.5 hours walk.

We thought we had missed it entirely, until we noticed one seal fast asleep only metres from us – its oily grey and brown skin was the colour of the rocks. In fact it was using a spiky rock as a pillow. Looking around, we suddenly realised there were dozens of seals everywhere – they were all lying on rocks, all well hidden because they were motionless and the same colour as rock. Each seal looked like it had just finished a hard night on the drink and wanted nothing else to do apart from recline on a nice wet rock! Luckily, some of them started to wake up and move around a bit shortly after we arrived. I captured a few lazing around and a couple even made a vague attempt at fighting! Have a look below.

R2D2 bird

Hello all

my first attempted vid clip on the blog! I have just filmed a Tui bird that always wakes us up each morning with its crazy bird song. It is a New Zealand native, and has a bizzare looking pair of fluffy ping pong balls attached to its throat!

It is the only bird that can continually talk to itself all day, whats more it does it in an R2 D2 crazy-talk manner. See the clip!

Ian

TURN UP THE VOLUME ON YOUR COMPUTER TO HEAR IT PROPERLY!

New Megalithic car

Dear all

With tidings of great joy, and a little bit of materialistic glee, I can tell you we are now the proud owners of a Nissan Cefiro grey station wagon (ok don’t all jump and down with excitement!). This is actually the first car I have ever bought and so I am totally excited, and currently giggling like a little boy!

The car was bought from Turner's car auctions (everyone from our taxi driver, to our church elder had recommended this as the place to get great discounts).

So with great trepidation I ventured to Turners. I was overwhelmed with the large number of cars, mainly all Japanese imports. With Karen staying at home and praying for me, I did my ‘Binnie basics’ mechanical inspection and test drive. You can only test drive it around the car park, so that meant getting up to around 35-40 mph in a space of about 60 metres. Just as well the brakes worked!

I then started bidding with a racing heart, I managed to hold off against an evil car dealer guy who went up to around 1800 quid. He couldn’t reach my bid and the car was mine!


Becuase it was a Japanese import, we found some weird Japanese videos and a pair of chopsticks in the car.

Only thing is I realise that I have bought a megalithic car. It’s a huge – between 2.5-3 metres long – a massive American style size wagon. Driving this huge chunk of metal will be a real challenge around the tiny streets of Wellington. I’ve worked out it will take around a nine point turn to get the thing into our garage!

Still it will be great for getting out and seeing some of the NZ countryside (we've used it for a trip to the Rimutuka forest park already!)

Here are a couple of pictures – one shows you the size of an adult male in comparison with the car.

Photos around our town

Hi all - want to see some photos of where we live? READ BELOW!

I have created photo albumns on Flikr (thanks for your suggestion Simon!). The first photos set are from around Wellington.

Karen took some of these to show:
her walk to work
the Botanic Gardens
the Harbour front of Wellington
our house and around it.



The second set of photos are of our trip to Napier - sun, sea, sand and lots of 1930s art deco buildings!! (described in our previous post).


Happy Flikering. Please see the link (either on the side bar to the right, or right below this).

Wellington photos

Trip to Napier

We recently took a trip up the East Coast to a town called Napier. The town was completely destroyed in an earthquake in 1930 and so they had to rebuild it quickly. Because the trend at the time, all the architecture is art-deco = lots of pastel colour, sun-bursts, and go-faster stripes!

Although it was quite cold, we headed to the beach. The beaches on the East Coast are beautiful - miles and miles of yellow sand, very wild looking becuase there is not much civilisation. ALso wild because it faces the Southern Ocean so the winds get quite fierce and its sometimes dangerous to go swimming. So I headed down the beach with my full artic gear on!

You can see photos but you have to sign up to Bebo (dont worry Bebo is not a dodgey web page, its a really useful way of keeping in touch with folk! I have lots of Bebo friends!)

http://www.bebo.com/invite/2056647a8607986b229