See ya Nelson

After 2 weeks in Nel-sun i've returned to Welly. The weather really put it on for me!
Yeah, yeap, ok, this is a real deep post...

Maybe some photos will help...

The bus ride out super calm in Nelson

Exiting the channel into Cook Strait

G.ma

Hanging with Grandma on the old swing seat. Plenty of memories on that seat.

Class act

Last time I visited my sisters' year one's at Nayland Primary I was greeted with...
"My brother is faster than you!"
"My dad had a beard like that when he was old...."

I dropped in yesterday, they remembered me, and greeted me with:

"My dad's older than you!"
"My dad's 44 and my mums 42!"
Ha!

On top of Nelson

I went for a walk with the folks the other day. Behind Stoke, up to Barnicoat range where the paragliders launch.

Due to their pace... (the folks that is) I left them further back and headed on to Jenkins Hill for some great views of Nelson.

A recently launched paraglider

View over Stoke to Tasman Bay

Hitching a ride

So, I had a $2 bus trip all lined up from Chch to Nelson but I decided to stay on a bit longer. As it turned out, a friend from Welly just happened to be heading to Nelson on the same day (only reason I knew was because of a chance email to a community group I'm apart of in Newtown) Crazy NZ! So we decided to hitch a ride.

We leave late (10am) due to bad weather and manage some seriously bad waiting times (about an hour per ride). First ride gets us 2kms further out of town. Second ride is with a Kiwi girl and a Canadian guy, this gets us to Kaikoura. Third ride is with an old codger from Blenheim who has just been south of Chch for the first time... ahh!

He drops us in Blenheim where we have zero success in getting another ride! Admittedly it was 4.30pm, not a great time to hitch. Blenheim also has this annoying split highway so you can only catch half the traffic. So by 6pm, with a freezing hitchers thumb and the light dying we decided to go for plan B. Sent out a text looking for friends of friends and head back to town to get food. As it turned out, one of my texts struck gold! A semi-retired friend of a friends family (you know, the whole 2 degrees thing...) was fine with us staying at his place close to town. Excellent! He came and picked us up and we ended up with a cosy warm sleep and a ride out to a good hitching spot the next day!

Day 2 saw avg waiting times (across two rides) drop from 1 hour to about 10 mins! Thats more like it. And got us to Nelson by 9.30am! Very nice.

Our 2nd hitching spot in Havelock

Addington

Just been checking out a community group in Addington. They've started a cafe called the Addington Coffee Co-Op. Its a very cool, for profit company that is intending to return that profit to the community via projects such as the "Freeset community in Kolkata and to the coffee growing communities we purchase our green beans from."


The company is owned by a group of shareholder's who mainly live in the community. They sell fair trade organic coffee, Freeset bags and organic cotton shirts. There's a meeting room, a Laundromat and 80-100 seat cafe. Most of the staff live in the area and "contribute their thoughts on where the money is sent." Excellent! I want some of this in Newtown!