Bone Carving...

So bone carving is a must for everyone in NZ, much better than buying one from a shop! It took about two and a half hours of filing and sanding to get to the finished product - but how good do they look?! Rob and I were both very impressed with ourselves!


First you pick a design and it gets stuck onto a piece of bone. You have to file it flat as close to the edges as you can....


Then make the edges rounded on both sides....


Cut the middle bit out and spend about 30 minutes sanding it smooth...


Get it polished up on the machine by the dude and ta-da! Our very own bone carvings!

TranzAlpine...

So - in the end last weekend we decided to do the TranzAlpine trip - which is a train that goes from Christchurch over to Greymouth and back. Greymouth is on the West coast and therefore you have to go up/over/through the mountains to get there.

We were super lucky with the weather - it was PERFECT winter conditions, blue sunny skies and lovely white snow on the mountains. When we got to Arthurs Pass it was actually snowing a little bit - but by the time we were back at sea level in Greymouth it was sunny again!

The train left Christchurch and wound it's way through the Canterbury Plains, we saw lots of farms, cows and sheep, it then follows this really cool river (Waimakariri) - lots of gorges and viaducts and tunnels. Then after going through the mountains you pop out on the other side and it's totally different flora and fauna - almost rainforest like in places.


Canterbury Plains with Southern Alps in the background...



A very good day out and i can recommend it to anyone who is in this area - we might do it again in summer to see the difference but everyone has said how it's much better in the winter. Enjoy the photos, it was total torture getting them as you had to go out to the viewing carriage, which had no windows, to get good ones. This of course meant being outside and it was winter and we were going about 60mph at least. Windy, windy, windy - but worth it, and somehow very amusing!


Little bit of the Wairmakariri in the moutains...


Snow at Arthurs Pass...


River again on the way back to CC...

And i know everyone is dying to know what we are up to this weekend... well in about an hour we are off to go bone carving. Yes, bone carving. Sit on the edge of your seats and wait for that one!!

Still in Christchurch...

Wow - 30th June was the last time i update this. That's pretty bad! Well, in my defense not an awful lot has happened really. Within a month of landing in NZ we both had jobs and somewhere to live, which pretty much took up all of the month to get sorted. But now we have both started the jobs and we live somewhere proper (we even got broadband installed!!) we've been off doing a few things so i have some stuff to say to update!!

Where to start, where to start?! Well one of the first interesting things we did was get tickets for the NZ All Blacks vs. Australia. Very cool game, but not nearly as noisy as you would expect from a big game like that. Compared to the English both side's supporters were fairly quiet! Maybe it had something to do with the fact it was FREEZING COLD!!!!





The next thing we did was explore around Christchurch a bit more, this made much easier by the fact we bought a car (yes another one). So one of the most touristy things you can do in Christchurch after seeing the cathedral is the GONDOLA! Excellent fun. Christchurch is on the Canterbury plains, which generally means you can see all the really cool mountains with snow on them in the background because all around us is flat. Apart from the hills that are by where i work which separate Lyttleton harbor from the rest. You can walk up them or you can go up on the gondola like a pair of lazy tourists.




Christchurch & mountains in the far distance...


Lyttleton Habour..

From here we went back down (in the gondola) and drove through the tunnel under the hill we had just been on to get to Lyttleton and from Lyttleton we went round the hill we had just been on and through, to get to Sumner. Sumner is lovely; we even got a bit of beach time. In our coats and stuff. No, I’m lying a bit, Rob took his coat of and our friend Shiv actually had shorts on. Though he is a bit silly. No photos of that, i wouldn't want to frighten anyone. Haha.


Sumner Beach...

Last weekend we went to Hanmer Springs to visit the hot pools and see the lovely alpine village. Visit the hot springs we did and lovely the alpine village was! The drive there was also very cool as we actually go into some of the mountains that we had seen. We of course clocked more sheep than we could count and i saw a deer and a donkey (not doing anything dodgy, i saw them separately), there's all sorts of wildlife in New Zealand!









This weekend we aren’t up to much. We were going to go to Akaroa which is near here and really nice but the weather is super super cold and the people at work said we might get stuck there if it snows, so we've scrapped that. We might go to the mountains or we might go up the coast and see some seals or something. Roll on the summer. :)