A drive up the coast north of Christ Church - November 9

It has been over two years since I was last here and the town doesn’t look like it has changed that much.  There are only more vacant spots where buildings have been torn down, but it still has a lot of construction to go before you notice a change.

On Sunday I wake at 2am and after tossing and turning for a while, I give up and leave at 4:45am and drive north up the coast.  The drive turns out to be very nice and the scenery very beautiful (much nicer than the drive south to Omarau.  I stop at Kaikoura and have a nice breakfast at 7am and two flat white coffees (yum). 

The beach at Kaikoura

On the drive back inland

Beach near Christchurch

Sail car? near Christchurch

On one of the beaches they had a Tsunami warning sign which was interesting. 

On my last day, I flew up to Auckland and got the chance to tour around a bit before my flight out in the evening.  Auckland the largest city in NZL also has half the population of the country.

 View of Rangitoto volcano in the distance - just one of 53 in the area

 One tree hill - without a tree

And it seems that Rob Ford even made the news in NZL

Bad Art - a new low for hotels

Sydney November 6

This trip to Australia I flew with Emirates and the 13 hr flight from Dubai to Sydney was extremely long and tedious.  The plane is an A380 and has a very nice business class seat.  It even had a bar area at the back if you can believe it.  It was nice to stand for a bit there and they would serve you drinks and snacks. 

An anti-jet lag plan was needed, as I would be landing at 11pm and I needed to drive 1.5 hrs that evening, I had to arrive sober and awake just enough that I could go to sleep when I reached the hotel. So after the first leg of the trip to Dubai, I had to stay awake as long as possible. This turned out to be quite difficult and boring. I was so tired I could only watch movies and tv shows. Everyone around me was sleeping and they were not going to feed us until 2 hrs before landing. In the end it worked out okay and I was wide awake for the drive, but tired enough that I feel asleep quickly. But I did wake up after only 5hrs sleep which turned out to be perfect from my 6:30 am breakfast meeting.

The hotel I stay at in Wollongong is a little dumpy and they always put me in the same room. There is a painting on the wall of my room that is so bad it must be done by one owner’s (or they picked it up cheap at a garage sale). It is a good thing it is in the small outer room so I don’t have those eyes looking at me the whole time.

On my last evening in Sydney I am staying at an Airport hotel and as the wind is blowing very hard I go to watch the kite surfers that sail nearby. The windsurfers all sail in the area right next to the airport runways, but the kite surfers are not allowed in that area and have to sail a few kilometers further down the beach. Most likely due to the fear (unreasonable?) that they might get sucked into a jet engine if they jump too high. When I get there it looks quite busy, but after counting all the kites there are less than 20 sailers.

Afterwards I check out the windsurfers only to find they are packing up by the time I get there. From the age of the guys it seems that this is a dying sport (they are my age!). Not the cool sport for the kids I guess.