Kaitoke

June 28th, 2009 § 0

Saturday evening we went for a drive and ended up at the entrance to Kaitoke Regional Park, north of Upper Hutt. The plan had been to go for a walk but we left it too late so we had revised to checking out the place in preparation for a visit Sunday morning. The park turned out to be closed anyway and on the other side of the road barrier there was a car with four woman inside, stuck on the wrong side of the barrier and apparently locked in. Keryn got out and established the barrier was locked with a padlock while I parked the car. When I checked the padlock I found it unlocked so it was a simple matter to unhitch the barrier and let the stuck people out. Good deed for the day I guess.

Keryn did some baking Saturday night and the trail slice was iced before we set out Sunday morning. The weather wasn’t the best, a misty rain coming down and cooling the already not warm air. Still, a walk would soon warm us up. We were only heading on a short walk anyway, and hour and half or so.

We started walking the Swingbridge Track but it was only a couple of minutes before we diverted to have a look at the spot where Rivendell was filmed in the Lord of the Rings movies. There were a few signs explaining what was here during filming and a platform set up for people to stand on and recreate the Legolas hero shot (see an example about a third of the way down on this page). The glade looked nice for a picnic but the passing of LOTR tourists was obviously having an effect as parts of the path were fenced off so the ground and plants could recover.

Back on the main path we walked a short way further before taking another diversion down to the river. We took a few photos at the riverside and by the track on the way back to the main path.

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Beside the Hutt River

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Greenery

We took more photos, well I did and Keryn had to retire her camera as it has started playing up with the screen covered in purple lines that also appear on the shots. The path took us past an old water filtration building, over a tall concrete bridge and then back towards the car park following the river again.

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The Hutt River enters a gorge

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Fungi beside the path

We finished at the swing bridge, crossing over past a group of woman making very tentative steps as the bridge moved. We’ll definitely be back for longer walks and this will be a good place for picnics as well when the weather improves.

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Keryn on the swing bridge

At the Weta Cave

June 20th, 2009 § 2

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Dragons on the gate

This last week we’ve twice been out to the Weta Cave in Miramar. On Wednesday evening the director Guillermo del Toro was signing his new novel (written with Chuck Hogan) The Strain and we took along our copy of The Devils Backbone to get that signed as well. We queued outside in the cold (thankfully not cold, wet and windy) for an hour or so and the queue slowly moved. While signing our things I asked Guillermo a few questions about The Hobbit and also if there would be another movie in the Devils Backbone/Pan’s Labyrinth sequence. The answer is no, Pan’s Labyrinth took so much out of Guillermo that he doesn’t think he could manage another one any time soon (Guillermo lost a lot of weight and struggled to get the movie made at all). Guillermo was as friendly and open as when I last met him back in London at Forbidden Planet. We got some photos taken but the camera hadn’t been set up correctly by yours truly so the there is quite a bit of shake in evidence. Do not adjust your set and contrary to the obvious you do not need 3D glasses to view this image.

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Keryn and I with Guillermo del Toro at the Weta Cave

Today we returned to the Weta Cave for another signing. Alan Lee is an artist and is best known for his work based on books by J R R Tolkien. Guillermo and Alan are in Wellington working on the forthcoming movie The Hobbit. Alan actually remembered me (again it was a Forbidden Planet signing in London that we last met) and I again asked a few questions about the Hobbit and working in New Zealand (”Wouldn’t you rather be back in England where it’s summer?”, “It’s not that bad here really”). We got some photos taken and I was better prepared this time so the photo isn’t quite so shaky this time.

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Keryn and I with Alan Lee at the Weta Cave

A month around Wellington

June 15th, 2009 § 0

So, we’ve been in Wellington a while now and we’ve been checking out our new home region. We’ve been up to Otaki for some Icebreaker factory shop loving and along the way took a few back roads. We found a view along the Kapiti coast so took a few photos:

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Looking towards Kapiti Island

Keryn’s parents flew down from Whangarei and bought two of our cats down with them. Cadbury, Earl and Penny have been up near Whangarei for 8 years and we’ve pinched back Cadbury and Earl to come live with us in Epuni. They’re taking the relocation cautiously so far, Earl having what seemed to be a few panic attacks yesterday but they’re acting better today.

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Cadbury

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Earl

My parents were also here for the weekend and on Saturday we went to Catherine’s place for a pancake lunch. Afterwards we went for a drive down past Seatoun (well not really, actually it was more like Lyall Bay, at least I didn’t call Petone Porirua this time) and I got to take some photos. On Sunday I went with Keryn and her parents for a walk and we ended up driving up the hill that leads to Wainuiomata. At the lookout we could see mountains of the South island so I convinced everyone that we needed to get a closer look and we drove again to the south coast of Wellington and I took more photos. The sea was very calm and the sunset muted but still pretty.

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Pink light on distant peaks

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Interesting underwater landscape

Today I suggested another late afternoon drive and this saw Keryn and I drive past Wainuiomata along the Coast Road to the beach where the Wainuiomata River meets the sea. It was windier today but the sky was almost perfectly clear and the view to the South island was unimpeded. We had a good walk along the beach, giving the leg muscles a good work out traipsing over the stones and sand.

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Movement in the sea

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The sun sets over the hill

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The water rushes back to the sea

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Looking towards the mountains near Kaikoura

On the return I also took some photos of the lights of Wellington and Petone.

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Wellington and Matiu (Somes) Island

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Seaview and Petone

Changes

May 25th, 2009 § 0

Changes are occurring
Changes are occurring

If you’re reading this on the website directly you’ll notice things have changed somewhat. I’ve decided that the time has again come for a redesign and here you have it. There are two major changes to be aware of.

Firstly the guestbook is now no longer. It doesn’t get used that much and what with email, facebook and twitter I think there are better means of leaving a message. Also, it gets tiresome clearing out spam comments. So, bye bye guestbook.

Secondly, we’re in the process of changing how photos are displayed and held on the site. The old gallery is currently still here but no longer directly linked from the site navigation. I’m going to be doing some research, maybe even reading some online manuals, and at this stage it looks like I’ll use a service such as flickr to host photos and some sort of wordpress plug-in to display them on the 2kiwis site. In the meantime there are photos from the various facebook albums available via the link over to the left.

Oh, and I will be doing more updates in regard to the final few weeks in South America. Soon.

An interruption

April 28th, 2009 § 0

I know the blog is ages behind, arriving back in NZ has put big brakes on my travelling catchup. I’ll get there in the end. Here’s a brief rundown of what we’ve done since coming back to NZ in late February.

We went up to Whangarei and stayed with Keryn’s parents while we started looking for work. Keryn got an interview down in Wellington so we hired a car and drove down (in one day, a long day) and stayed with my sister Catherine. Keryn was interviewed and was offered the job so we organised to move down to Wellington. Keryn is now working at Victoria Univeristy doing programming and support work on the student addmissions system.

Catherine and Paul were heading overseas for a few weeks so we were able to stay in their place while we figured out where we would live and I found work. We found a few nice places in Johnsonville but missed out due to excessive competition, it seems that there are plenty of people looking to rent and not so many nice places. We expanded our scope when I got offered a job at EDS in a server support role up in Upper Hutt. We checked out Eastbourne but there was too much compromise with sun, space and transport, even though some of the houses were stunning.

Then we found a place in Epuni and managed to beat the rush to sign up first. This place is about half way between both our places of work and is close to all the ammenities we could need. We moved in last Friday and have been unpacking over the weekend, the unboxing continues.

My job involves looking after servers for a number of different EDS clients as part of a rostered team. We work 12 hour shifts, 7am-7pm or 7pm to 7am, and this week is my first experience at the night shift. It’ll take some getting used to but I work only 14 shifts every 28 days (7 days, 7 nights), meaning I have 14 days off, so hopefully I’ll be able to make use of the spare time.

Anyway, the reason I decided to write this entry was not so much to go over recent events but more to mention that I felt my first earthquake today (that I can recall anyway). It felt like a strong gust of wind buffetted the building, except this place is too large to be moved by the wind in such a way. A quick search on Google bought up this informative website which confirmed the earthquake:

http://www.geonet.org.nz/earthquake/quakes/3082943g-maps.html

So, there you go, more earthquake statistics than you could shake a stick at (origins of that phrase here: http://stason.org/TULARC/languages/english-usage/160-more-than-you-can-shake-a-stick-at-Phrase-origins-a.html)

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