Spent the ‘Chrissy break’ with Australia’s antipodean cousins in New Zealand.

Aotearoa (indigenous name) is possibly even more isolated from major western societies in a geo political sense, then Oz is.
Really nice place. Bit more like the U.K. in the same way that Australia is a bit more like North America.
Probably why so many movies that are set in European environments are being made over there. That and the value of N.Z. dollar is even crappier then ours.
The accompanying photos were taken in Kaikoura New Zealand   I will write about this place in a later entry.
Bailed out of the last of work’s Christmas celebrations in the pub on Friday afternoon, and got a lift to the airport.
Landed in New Zealand a couple of hours later. It was after ten and the airport was pretty quite. Caught a taxi to the hostel and on the way, and had a nice chat to the Russian driver. I've noticed a lot of Russian types around these days. I guess the walls have fallen down properly and the Russians are stretching their legs.
He pointed out sites of interest such as the big park in the middle of the city, and the strip of road where the prostitutes hang out.


There was an Earthquake a couple of days before my flight. The spine of New Zealand is formed along two tectonic plates, so they get a lot of deep down rumblings happening over there.
There was a quake that night that shook the hostel while I was drifting off to sleep.
First couple o nights I had dreams about work, and didn’t really relax into my holiday till they faded away.
Christchurch has a very English flavour about it.
The thing I found about Christchurch, and New Zealand generally, was how ‘chilled out’ the country is.
Maybe even a little too chilled out. Residents have been leaping the ‘ditch’ (in the U.K. they like to refer to the body of water separating them from the U.S. as ‘the pond.’ New Zealanders refer to Australians as ‘living across the ditch.’)