Meander: New Zealand

I know you are all dying to hear about the next instalment of my adventure, so I will see what I can tell you! The flights all worked smoothly and I got lots of sleep, and sort of understand the mind boggling loosing a day of my life when crossing the date line! I was really lucky and got a swim in the sea at Los Angeles in between flights which was super!

Although I have now been in New Zealand several days I feel like it is far too early to begin describing the country. I arrived and was met by Christof (who has been here cycling about 1800 kilometres since arriving in October, and whom I met on the west coast of the USA) we put my bike back together, as it has to be dismantled to fly in a smallish box, and then cycled into Christchurch. I really didn't see very much of Christchurch, but there were many earthquake damaged buildings and building sites. The next day we left, cycling south towards Dunedin. Most of the cycling has been on a main road - however this seems to be like a fairly wide and very straight A road with about a third of the traffic you would get in the UK. There are a lot of trucks though, mostly triple decker two carriage long sheep trucks which smell, or two carriage milk trucks; mostly they don't give you much space, but mostly there has been a comfortable shoulder to ride in. The towns so far, and I have got as far as Oamaru, seem small, and remarkably similar to some of the coastal towns in the UK. In fact, the everything I have seen so far is very similar to the UK, certainly much more British than any of America - I can now buy crumpets and a huge variety of sweet biscuits all of which were unavailable in the USA. Many of the houses look similar to British coastal places built in the middle of the century, and everything is on a smaller - more British scale. Christof, who is Austrian says it is exactly like Britain - but I can see a lot of differences, and also think that it would feel less British if I had not been in America for six months.
It is full summer here although not very hot, the air is full of pollen and the birds are singing everywhere - I can't get over the birds they are so noisy all the time, and some really odd noises too (one sounds a bit like dial up Internet, another like a darlek!) It is super, and feels so nice being able to hear so many - where are all the birds in America or the UK? There are wildflowers in the banks, the farm land - pretty much everything I have seen so far is farm land, is fertile and lush and filled with crops or calves. Does New Zealand really produce all the lamb and beef and milk for the whole world - it feels like it here.

In the Park

The last two days have been super as we have left the main road, yesterday to camp in a small town inland, which was really pretty, and we bought some of the best strawberries ever from a farm shop. Today we followed the coast and have found sandy beaches, and turquoise waters, with skylarks singing on the other side.

I now have so many exciting plans, am looking forward to all of them - Naomi is flying out for three weeks of hopefully blissful hiking with me around Milford Sound, then in January, maybe cycling up the west coast of the south island, we shall see.