Kaikoura Coast

I was out walking with a friend this morning and dogs and I didn't have my fishing rod! 

Angela's Paleo Kitchen

What did you have for breakfast this morning. 

Today's menu - 

Breakfast - spinach, mushrooms, red onion pan cooked with a little coconut oil, bacon, 2 just laid little eggs and freshly made guacamole. 

Lunch - broccoli soup. 

Dinner with friends, I'm cooking - roast chicken rubbed with Moroccan spices, lots of roasted veges. 

I'm house sitting in Kaikoura. The sheep and chooks have been fed. So I can sit in the sun and enjoy the view.

And The Conservatories...

The Christchurch Botanical Gardens has six conservatories each totally different. Hot days or cold days there is always one to retreat to. 

This is inside Cunningham House originally called  the Winter Garden, opened in 1923. It's a two level tropical house. 

Townend House. Built 1956, a flowering conservatory where a regular succession of flowering hot house plants are grown. 

Another of my favourites is Garrick House. It contains the most extensive publicly owned collection of cacti and succulents in New Zealand and also contains a diorama depicting a desert scene representing from South Africa to South America painted by Gordon Lee the sign and label writer for the Botanical Gardens from 1956 to 1974.

If you're in Christchurch do take time out to wander and enjoy this wonderful space. 

Christchurch...

I go to Christchurch quite often. One of my favourite places to walk, all seasons, is the Botanical  Gardens. What foresight the early Canterbury pioneers had to create this space in the centre of the city. 

My last walk through there was during the autumn. It is so beautiful. 

It's a big area with the Avon river looping through it. After many years I don't know if I've seen it all. 

More of my Travels

I've been gone from my blog for a while but here I am again... Still travelling and exploring New Zealand. 

The following posts are from a trip I did from Christchurch to... Well follow along and see! 

The road to. Ashburton... Long and straight. The last week I've been at Hakatere, a little camping area by the Ashburton river mouth, which is blocked by a shingle bank so has formed a lagoon. Very peaceful spot.

While I was there it rained enough to push the river mouth open again. 

If you want somewhere cheap to buy a house, I met a man who six months ago bought a little house here for $45,000! 

The End of the Road... To Jackson Bay

I spend two nights at the Haast Beach camping ground. I felt so grubby, dusty and lots of sandfly bites. I had four showers in thirty six hours, washed my hair twice... And did all my laundry and line dried it... Then time to be on my way again.
The West Coast had had a lot of rain, everything was sodden, but this is what grows all the wonderful and amazing green bush. The rain had caused ten slips at Jackson Bay, one of them huge which closed the road and isolated the people at Jackson Bay - 1st named Open Bay by Captain Cook, the origins of the Name Jackson Bay is unknown.
I thought I would go as far as I could, which was to Neils Beach.

This is at Waiatoto, a tiny place as the road leaves the coast, crosses the Waiatoto River then travels inland to the Arawhata River then out to the coast again at Neils Beach.

I stopped here just to have a look and saw all these deer antlers on the fence.  Somebody likes hunting!

Also this stunning green wet bush. Imagine having this for your back yard.

Something grows on every available surface - look at the tree fern trunk !

The road continued...

Through this lush dense bush which both grows prolifically and rots from all the rain. 

I got to Neils Beach, a few houses there and a back-packers but it was raining hard so I didn't stop.

Turned around at the road block and went back.

Coffee time... So I parked here at the Arawhata River.

This path down towards the river goes to a memorial...

Tribute to a West Coaster - Dan Greaney 1900-1972 - Jackson Bay Roadman - Widely respected for his love of native and care for the environment... 

Surprising what you find in the most unexpected places!

The Arawhata bridge and river.

This was my last stopping place on the west coast, next through the Haast Pass. I was reluctant to leave. My whole time on the coast had been magical, so much history and information about the early years and pioneers.

In December 1990, Mount Aspiring National Park accepted a new status - World Heritage. It became a part of the newly created Te Wahi Pounamu (South-West New Zealand) World Heritage Area, taking in a vast region of 2.6 million hectares from Mount Cook to southern Fiordland - a tenth of the land area of New Zealand. Four years earlier Fiordland, Westland and Mount Cook National Parks had been declared UNESCO World Heritage Areas.

This internationally recognised area, 450km long, ranges from Okarito on the West Coast to the Waitutu forests of the great southern lakes, including the country's last big stands of kahikatea forest. Te Wahi Pounamu is the remotest, wildest region of mainland New Zealand, a place crammed with natural features of world significance.