We got a little fed up with the cold and total lack of insulation in our house so we drove a couple of hours over the mountains to Haast. As you come down out of the mountains it’s like coming in to a new country, with palm trees and a tropical feel to it (including a temperature about 20 degrees warmer than Wanaka) We came out on a huge beach about 15 miles long, with absolutely no one on it at all…epic. There was massive rolling surf, huge oldgrowth trees with the beach covered in knarled piles of bleached drift wood…It was sooo good to wander down the warm beach in bare feet after the freezing temperatures in Wanaka…

I feel very humbled in this place. It has an ancient and weathered feel that I’ve not come across anywhere else, and with all the turmoil going on in the world, it feels a very long way away from it all.

However, with many, many different problems clearly on the horizon I have to doubt that anywhere is really safe from it all…..