New Years Greetings

Owen, Mark and Dorthe with "our" helicopter.

Hello and Happy New Year from New Zealand everyone!

Dorthe and I have been having a nice relaxing break down here away from the Northern Hemisphere winter... (not that the weather has been all that summery though, but that's another story). It seems that the Xmas and New Years break has been very busy, with lots of people to meet, and lots of things to do.

The highlight of our trip so far, however, was today. Owen (Mark's brother) works as a hydrological officer for the local regional council. He spends most of his days up in the backcountry standing in the middle of rivers measuring their flows, and how much it has been raining. It's a pretty cool job - I'm very jealous of it. Some of the monitoring stations that they have are very remote, waaaay up in the backcountry, and the only way to access them (apart from a three day hike) is via helicopter. Today, he did the run around the most remote stations, and, as there were two spare seats in the helicopter, we got to go with him.

The flight started in Christchurch, and initally headed out over the Canterbury plains, covered with seemingly endless fields of sheep (and cattle too!). Then it headed up through the narrow Waimakariri gorge, past the filmset for the new movie "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrode", and then deep into the backcountry, flying down narrow river valleys covered in thick native bush, with imposing walls on either side being capped only by the low cloud layer. Very few people ever see some of those areas, and we were very lucky to be able to get up there today. Dorthe was especially excited about spending five hours buzzing around in a Helicopter - she certaintly didn't want to go to sleep last night, I can assure you! We had lunch at one of the gauging stations in the middle of a river gorge, just the three of us, the pilot, a dozen wild pigs, and of course, the sandflies (Nz's native mosquito). Very nice. Then it was on to a couple more stations, before heading back to Christchurch. And of course, there were lots of photos, the best of which can be found here.

Dorthe descends after pioneering the first ascent of "Dorthesberg" on New Years day.

We spent two days either side of New Years eve having what is a semi-traditional NZ New Years - camping beside a lake somewhere, with lots of toys to play with - kayaks, climbing gear, mountain bikes, cars, that sort of thing... Unfortunately, the weather wasn't completely perfect, and a couple of evenings were spent in the tent sheltering from the rain, rather than out sitting around a campfire. Still, it was a nice relaxing new years - no snow, or crazy danes running around with fireworks like last year.

We have spent the last couple of days since New Years in Christchurch with Owen and his fiancee Tracey - one day was spent in Hanmer Springs mountain biking and then soaking in the thermal pools there. Very nice. And Dorthe has also got to look around Christchurch a bit as well - I'm sure I remember it being bigger than this though....

Tomorrow we start our North Island tour i.e. we become serious tourists, rather than locals... Oh well, it'll be good to see that part of the country anyway.

Dorthe gets to meet some of the locals....

We have posted some of the best photos from the trip in our photo album hosted by flickr.com. You can always get to it by clicking at the top right (where it says photo album), or alternatively, using the following links below to see those albums. We'll be updating the album as we go (internet service permitting, of course), so keep an eye on them.

New Years trips
Helicopter Flight in Canterbury Backcountry
All Photo Albums

And happy new year everyone!

Dorthe and Mark