Life is taking on a rhythm… hectic stressful mornings getting work done, and then lazy chilled afternoons when Flo has finished work…could be worse!

Moved house: Check. Business picking up: Check. Summer arrived?: Check.

Flo finished 9 days of 5am work in a row: Check.

Massive end of year trip pretty much organised: Check.

Take a breath.

Right lets go have some fun….over to Queenstown for Flo’s birthday weekend.

It was the final day of the season at The Remarkables, and then we went Jet boating…

Lake Wanaka is a bit of a small town bubble sometimes so we went to Lake Hawea for a change which is another huge lake covering 141 km² and is about 20 minutes away from Wanaka.

I find the textures on beaches amazingly hypnotic, (mainly cos I want to know how the hell the patterns formed like that?) to the point where I wasted long periods of time crawling around in the sand taking macro photos of different textures, with Flo getting very bored.

I then tried to wake her up by taking her biking in the woods. She is pretty accomplished on the roads after years of cycling in London, but her offroad skills still need a little bit of work…

I spent ages explaining how to lean back and ride around a banked corner and then got her to try. She got a little heavy on the front brake and nose wheelied out of the corner towards where I was waiting, at which point she tried to grab me to slow down. Instead of actually slowing down she closelined me around the neck, lifting me off my feet, and I went off the side of the trail backwards in to the woods with her and both bikes on top of me…

Other than me destroying yet another phone, we both survived with only a few cuts and bruises, so now we have a new challenge for the summer… Next time we will have padding, full face helmets and I will be standing much further back though.

No photos of the biking for obvious reasons, but here are lots of beach/texture photos to bore people with…

Queenstown birthday road trip…5 star hotel pressie from Flo…epic scenery…great food…perfect weather…happy days…

“The world is not a static thing, we all know it grows and contracts as the flow of life meanders.

The media hologram shows countries in recession or achieving positive growth, depending on how the data has been massaged. Consumer confidence is often closely related to the particular position of any given state. As a result all governments claim their economies will return to positive growth in the “near” future. None would dare state that in fact the economies of the world have over extended themselves and the debt fueled growth of past decades will never been seen again, despite the likelihood of this as a stark reality of our future due to debt, Peak Oil and over population.”

This September/October is setting up to be a very interesting period for the worlds economy.

Meanwhile, we should take faith from the fact that in the real world growth of some kind or other can always exist, even in the most improbable places…

Economic growth can either be positive or negative. Negative growth can also be referred to by saying that the economy is shrinking. Negative growth is associated with economic recession and economic depression.

Five major critical arguments raised against economic growth include:

(continue reading…)

We had a break from Wanaka and took a trip down to the Catlins Coast which is at the southern most tip of New Zealand…there is nothing after that until you hit Antarctica…

The place is full of wildlife…I finally got to see some Penguins (they are tiny and well clumsy) and Seals (lazy – just sleep on the beach all day) and Sea Lions (big mean dog/bear like brutes but this didnt stop some stupid tourists going way too close) and the end of the rainbow (no treasure sadly)

We went on some great and relaxing long walks on the beaches and around the coastline. It kind off reminded me of Wales or Cornwall until I noticed the many palm trees dotted around and the 2.5m long 300kg Sea Lions…

Lake Wakatipu

We went over the mountains to Haast on the west coast to try to find some penguins…

After trekking around loads of beaches and through the rainforests, we saw a bunch of penguin signposts and info boards but not a single damn penguin, but it was good fun anyway…

The west coast of the south island has this incredible ancient weathered feel, with massive lush rain forests catching all the rain that falls as snow on our side of the mountains, and miles and miles of empty beaches with huge pounding surf and far too many sand flys.

I’m on a proper mission to see penguins now…stay tuned.

Wanaka Beach at sunset

The South Pacific is a part of the world I have always wanted to visit, and will definitely be doing so in the not too distant future. Before leaving the UK, I watched the first 2 episodes of a great series on the whole South Pacific region, and through the luxury of torrents have been catching up on the rest of the episodes here (BBC Iplayer still hasnt gone international and I havent yet found a way to fool the site in to thinking I am in the UK)
The narrator went to my school too…(yea I know, typical middle England accent…)

Below is an incredible clip from episode 1, well worth downloading the whole thing if you like the look of it…

Another great bit of filming from an earlier BBC documentary: