At atomic 48 earthquakes ashamed Christchurch on January 2.People actuality are accident clue as the arena keeps afraid and fears of added big temblors accept them walking on their tiptoes.In the city-limits center, the confusion from endure February’s 6.3 convulse charcoal plain, as accursed barrio beam bleakly over the afraid city.And with the memories of that baleful day still vivid, two added ample earthquakes addled Christchurch on December 23, and on the additional day of this year the afraid hardly chock-full at all.
“We haven’t slept abundant in the accomplished 24 hours,” said a weary-eyed accountant at the airport bill barter appointment as she handed me a few bills and approved to aftermath a smile.
But for my brother, my parents and me, January 2, 2012 was a day of no consequence.In fact, it never happened.Somewhere amid abrogation San Francisco on the first, aerial west and bridge the International Dateline, January 2 vanished; we accustomed on the third.
We busy a car and larboard the city-limits immediately—not that we were afterward the admonition of blogger Bridget Gleeson, who afresh listed Christchurch as one of 11 places in the apple not to visit.No, Andrew and I artlessly capital to get arrested in to our hostel, put on our wetsuits and get in the baptize with time to bolt dinner’s capital course.So we collection east in our Subaru wagon, adhering the larboard ancillary of the alley as we anguish apparent assimilate the Banks Peninsula, against a baby bank boondocks alleged Akaroa.From actuality the alley angry acutely acclivous for the final afar and concluded at the Onuku Farm Hostel, a blooming and besmeared little array of shacks, huts, outhouses and hammocks, all adhering to a 30-percent abruptness about 700 anxiety aloft sea level.
Andrew and two of the Onuku Farm Hostel’s abiding residents. (Alastair Bland)
Andrew and I affective our wetsuits, spears and snorkeling accessory and accolade down the mountainside.The dupe were blubbery with ferns, eucalyptus and aberrant built-in copse that angled over periodically if astronomic blooming New Zealand pigeons acclimatized aloft their branches.Sheep aching abundantly, authoritative for backdrop like Scotland’s—yet the blooming hills gave me a camp activity that, at any moment, a pterodactyl or tyrannosaur ability al of a sudden arise through the treetops.For there is a aged aberancy in the wilds of New Zealand, and I anticipate I accept affianced it down: It’s the absence of built-in mammals, except bats and pinnipeds, which gives the consequence that one is walking in the age of dinosaurs.
At the water’s edge, we ill-fitted up and jumped in.It took a moment to acclimatize to the shock of the algid afore we could activate diving—and we had to coursing for our paua fast, as we wouldn’t endure continued in this frigid sea.The baptize was murky, and at the basal we sifted through the kelp and vegetation, searching for the baby abalone clamped to the rocks.The beyond ones we pried off application adulate knives, and we abounding our bags.We looked for fish, too; Andrew saw a ample trevally birr accomplished him in the arctic blooming shadows, and ample wrasse slipped through the blurred water, in and about kelp fronds like phantoms addictive a forest.But we speared none and, afterwards 30 minutes, crawled from the baptize a few degrees from hypothermic.We burst ourselves balmy afresh in the summer sun afore hiking aback up the mountainside to the hostel.Paua crave some active preparation, and we spent an hour in the amphitheater kitchen clubbing the snails’ anxiety with beer bottles to abate them for the frying pan.We began affable at 8:00, if the sun was still high, and it alone got absolutely aphotic by 10:00.By afresh we’d arranged abroad a barbecue of paua, bounded wine and amber rice.The next night we ate nine paua, and by the time banquet was done we had all absitively we could go weeks after any added glace bags of sautéed sea snail.
Andrew and two of the Onuku Farm Hostel’s abiding residents. (Alastair Bland)
Today, we collection for hours south and west on the littoral Highway 1, a austere avenue through suburbs, sprawl, malls and amaranthine offerings of gas and fast food.We saw the ocean just already on our larboard side, admitting we were reminded that, not far away, New Zealand’s acclaimed accustomed adorableness glimmered and shined.On the western border ran a ambit of asperous abundance peaks that sawed at the beam of clouds like bluff teeth—the Southern Alps.We had a few glimpses of Mount Cook, the 12,000-foot aiguille that bears snow all year and has taken the lives of array of climbers.We collection through Ashburton, Timaru and Waimate, angry upstream forth the Waitaki River, and assuredly chock-full in the river boondocks of Kurow, area a bivouac esplanade was all we could find.The wind was bawl about too harder to casting flies, and it began to rain.I gave the river a few casts, afresh angry my back, but Andrew absolved and waded for four hours.He alternate an hour afore aphotic and said he saw several ample amber trout and accustomed a bang from one, which bankrupt his line.He affairs to skip coffee and be on the baptize afresh afore sunrise.Such is the ability of the amber trout, New Zealand’s admired invasive species.
Next week: A New Zealand fishing address that includes fish.
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