April 17, 2006
At the edge of the World
So thats it. We like it here. Its absolutely beautiful, magnificent and breathtaking.
We saw very little - just drove out from Christchurch to Banks Peninsula, just to have a look, so we thought.
But it was so beautiful and peaceful that we decided to stay overnight in Onuku sheep farm.
We're quickly getting used to a lot of empty space and few people around after the initial culture shock. This place is empty, right at the end of the world (this is the Pacific Ocean that you can see in the picture below) and so extremely spectacular.
I wonder a little bit - why the rest of the world doesn't rush down to live here?
In fact I hope the world doesn't rush down here. We were talking with Kaj, that it feels that we came back in time, to the days when everything was better: when people were still kind, when there was time for a chat and a coffee, when you could have the Good Friday and next Monday off, when you didn't have to care about appearances and when everything was so much more humane.
We walked on the hills around the farm and watched the sunset. We couldn't stop grinning stupidly.
During the day we have T-shirt weather and at night, it comes close to freezing. Its Autumn here with the smell of rotting leaves and crispy air. I quite like it after steamy Leijonakaupunki, but considering that mid-April corresponds to mid-October in Europe, the climate is pretty good!
We kind of had to humble down about our cooking capabilities. The food is just unbelievably great in here, extremely fresh, hearty and tasty, plus relatively cheap (our initial fears that traveling here would be very expensive is not exactly true, compared with Europe or the US, excellent!). We'll have to do a lot of hiking to burn our lunches!
For example, today we did our first 3hour hike up Cargill mountain from Dunedin. Once again we were stunned by the unbearable beauty - you can get above the clouds in only some 2 hours walks from the city!
Kiwis seem to be super-fit and sporty. Because of Easter, all the shops are closed (the shops also close at 6pm on a normal day!, can you imagine this happening in Leijonakaupunki?!?! except, of course, Chinese New Year, when you see these crowds looking lost and wandering aimlessly - no shopping!!!), so a lot of Kiwis go out to nature. As you drive the car up the mountain, you may see a bunch of 12 year olds pumping up the hill on their bicycles or then some elderly couple jogging up and down the steep slopes. Just looking at them may cause you a heart attack.
This is a part of panorama. Imagine that this image continues on the right side with the image below. This is Dunedin, a 100 000 town with the oldest university in the country.
Imagining how geographically remote place it is, it is exceptionally civilized with a lively city culture, theater and arts scene (not that we experienced any of that, at least yet - most of the places are closed because of the Easter)
Once again, I don't know how they made it so far here and how they managed to establish and build everything here. There's nothing that people wouldn't have here (except central heating or hot-cold water mixer - this place is not enlightened about this, all the sinks have 2 taps of water - one scalding hot, the other deeply freezing).
And of course they have lots of sheep here (they say more than people)! There's a funny story from my childhood, I'm sure my sister won't remember it anymore, but in this place it becomes amazingly acute. Here it is: my sister has been into horses all her life. She loved them so much as a child: she drew horses, she talked about horses, she had horse toys, she had a friend who was as crazy about horses and they talked about horses all the time. Then one day my sister managed to convince our parents to bring her to a horse riding school. The night before, as we were lying in our bed, she talked how she's excited about going to the horse riding school next day. My sister asked, what was my favorite animal. As the horse was already taken, I didn't know what to choose, I was just staring at the curtain in our bedroom that had drawings of horses, cows, dogs and some other domestic animals. I didn't have a clue, I didn't have a favorite animal. But to answer something I said...
...sheep. Sheep are my favorite animals. They were kind of cute on that curtain. For many months after my sister would bring the sheep to illustrate the point about horses. But in fact I didn't really care about sheep.. Just couldn't take my words back. So I had to continue pretending that I liked sheep. :) And look at me now! Finally I'm in a place full of sheep and I'm finally completely happy!!! :)
There may be more interesting things happening as there are some further developments regarding my job here.. Ahem... Don't want to write about it until its finally clear, its difficult to think about work, when I'm in such a good holiday mood! We'll be doing much more of hiking here, hopefully the weather remains the same. And hopefully I'll be reaching Internet once in a while.
