Things to Remember- Surfing

There have been so many moments here that I've thought 'don't forget this Laura...don't forget what this feels like, smells like, sounds like...', and I've had no way to capture it except with my memory. I'm hoping that I'll be able to pull these memories up later in life. Writing about them here does help conjure up the old stories, as I've read through posts from our Aussie days.

Edie and I got in for a surf at Sumner Beach this past Saturday morning. We hadn't been out for a few weeks, and the water temperature has definitely dropped. We've been using full body 3-5mm wetsuits and booties since the beginning of April, but Saturday was the first time that I really felt like I needed them. Even with a hood (I've also been wearing a hooded suit since April) I was frozen. Up until this past weekend it was the temperature of the air that made surfing cold- especially after getting out and peeling off the wetsuit. This time it was the temperature of the water that made it uncomfortable. It took some body numbing and some good waves before you could really get into what you were doing and forget about the temperature.

Surfing lifehack that we've picked up: If you're surfing in cooler air temperatures, fill up a 2L milk jug with a 1/2 and 1/2 mix of boiling water and hot tap water, and leave it in your car while surfing (we surf for about 2 hours at at time, you'd have to take the time into consideration). When you are out and ready to peel off that wetsuit, get someone to pour that 2L jug of warm water down the inside of your wetsuit. It makes that awful job of peeling a neoprene suit off of your wet and freezing body, that much more bearable. It's a welcome thing when you come in from the water frozen.

We have been lucky, in that the last 2 times we've surfed we've had great conditions for beginners like us. The waves were probably 1-2 feet nearshore and 2-3 feet 'out the back'.

Sidenote #1: Out the back is the area behind the waves, further off shore where you can catch a wave before it breaks. Out there you can surf down over the wave and onto the wave face while it's breaking, if you're good. It's where you see more seasoned surfers hanging out on their boards waiting for the right wave. In our early lessons we learned how to stand up and catch a wave nearshore. Edie and I go out the back if conditions are such that we can get there- to get out the back, you have to get through the waves that are breaking onshore, and that can be tough. There have been days where I've worked for most of an hour to get out the back and still not made it. On these days, because the difficulty getting out the back actually means pretty great surfing if you can get there, surfers in Sumner will get out the back either by taking a path through the water near the rocky point, where the current is less forceful (so close to the rocks that I find it a terrifying option), or they will catch a rip-tide current. Rip-tides are breaks in the surf running perpendicular to the wave fronts, that pull out to sea. You can spot them as calm areas between wave fronts, and if you happen to be in one, it will pull you out to sea. If you've got something to hang on to, rip-tides are navigable- it will take you out to sea, and then spit you off to one side or the other, where you can then paddle or surf back in on either side. If you have nothing to hang on to, the idea is to stay calm, and let the rip take you out (fighting it will just wear you out), where it will spit you out so you can make it back in outside of the rip-tide area. They can be terrifying, and everyone should have a healthy fear of rip-tides. Well seasoned surfers will use rip-tides to take them beyond the choppy wave-fronts inshore, and peel-off the rip-tide out the back. I'm not ready to do that, but I find the physics behind it compelling.

Back to my original story- the last 2 surfs for Edie and I were such that we could get out the back easily. We were technically in lessons, but Donna, our instructor, lets us go and do our thing while she focuses on surfers needing more help. She'll yell out encouragement and tips to us as we make our way past. She is awesome.

Sidenote #2: If you're ever in Christchurch and you want to surf, Donna owns 'Stoked' surf school in Sumner and her goal is to get people up and going on their boards. She's especially excited about getting more girls surfing.

To get out the back, you throw yourself onto your board, lay face-down and paddle like a demon. I have longer arms than Edie, so I'd paddle a bit, she'd yell at me to wait up, and we'd get out to the calmer area behind the waves, rest a bit and wait for a good one to roll in. Sitting or laying down on our boards out there was so magical. Talking about the last wave we caught, assessing the next one to catch, and taking in the beauty of the surroundings. We happened to be there late in the day one of these days and sitting out there watching the sun go down against the backdrop of the mountain range that runs all the way up to Kaikoura, was incredible. On Saturday past, it was harder work getting out the back, so once we got there we both laid face-down on our boards looking at that mountain range, and just floated. The sky was so blue that from my vantage point, it was hard to tell where the water ended and sky began. Oh man was it good. It must be the combination of physical exertion and the natural surroundings that do it for most surfers, it's incredibly calming. The combination of that plus doing it with Edie, is a feeling and a memory I want to hold on to forever.

Sidenote #3: Celia isn't comfortable out the back. I may have helped perpetuate a bit of fear about larger waves in a boogie boarding session gone wrong. I love getting tumbled by big waves- she does not. She got tumbled one too many times, and has never really trusted the big surf (or me in the ocean) since. She loves surfing with her friends in the smaller stuff nearshore, but her friends haven't been surfing since their afterschool lessons ended in early April. Celia hasn't been surfing since her friends stopped, which I can appreciate. And she's very happy to scavenge the beach while Edie and I have been surfing. She's a real natural, so I hope that she's had a taste for it that gets her back in the water with some surfing pals later in life. I love how well she can hold her ground on such things. No friends, no surf, mom. You are not the surfing pal I'm looking for.

I love all of it.

The 'shark bell' in Dunedin.

Evening friends,

10 more days and counting until we leave NZ. We are a mixed bag about leaving, but will be glad to get back home. It feels like we've been living in a dream world since we arrived, but we always knew we'd have to leave, and we miss our dog Charlie. We've been getting pictures from our tenant at 234 Western Crescent, and Charlie has had it gooooood. He's looking like a brand new man- sleek and shiny. He's on a new diet, gets a bath regularly and there are rumors that he even has a girlfriend. Abby has set the bar quite high.

We have been trying to squeeze out every last ounce of fun that we can from this place in the last days that we have here. We've been keeping our geo-caching streak alive (40 days so far), re-visiting the places that we love and took a week to explore the area around Dunedin.

Dunedin is located inland of the Otago Peninsula, It's on the East coast of the South Island, about 3/4 of the way down the island. It's always about 5 degrees colder in Dunedin than Christchurch, due to the influence of the Antarctic. Because it's a bit colder, and less populated, there are species on the Otago peninsula that are hard to find anywhere else on the South Island. It's a bit of a wilder kind of place, and the surfing is epic. The area is much more exposed than Christchurch, and the waves are huge. A lot of people choose to live in Dunedin solely based on the surfing. With a university nearby, I could see Edie working out her life plan- If I came here for university, I could go to class, study and surf during my lunch break...

Sand Fly Bay, Otago Peninsula.

From our travels there, we discovered a Podcast called Wild Dunedin, and it explores the wildlife in Dunedin. We highly recommend it. We really liked the episode about sharks.

On the Otago Peninsula, we stayed in a place called Portobello. It was pretty central, and gave a great home-base from which to explore. One night, while hunting for a geo-cache at sundown, Edie described Portobello as the 'Weymouth of New Zealand' (Weymouth, NS was where we hid away for the first part of our Sabbatical year), I think it's fitting. It's the kind of place where you can't really be sure how people are making a living, and it kind of shows. An unpretentious, rough around the edges kind of town set against an incredibly beautiful backdrop. Our kind of place.

If you look closely, you can see the girls with the bird book trying to identify the birds in Portobello Bay, just across the road.

Heading from Portobello to the tip of the peninsula, we were able to hit the Royal Albatross Centre. This is a research centre dedicated to protecting the only remaining mainland Royal Albatross colony in the world. There is a larger colony of Royal Albatross on the Chatham Islands (400km east of the South Island) which is about 4 times the size of the Otago colony and the populations do mix. At the Royal Albatross Centre, there are 29 fledglings that are currently being taken care of in a protected area by Albatross parents who fly in with food every couple of days. A grown Royal Albatross can have a wingspan of 3m, and the chicks we saw were are about the size of turkeys- huge! At this point they are about 4 months old and are able to be left unattended in their nests without being preyed upon. Once the juveniles fledge in September, these birds will leave the nest and live mostly at sea for the next 4-6 years, and then will return to the colony for pairing up and mating. Incredible stuff. We loved this place.

'chicks' in the nest.

A closer view.

The red bird is the Royal Albatross wingspan.

Most of the rest of our time was spent exploring the peninsula, which pretty much always included a beach walk. One great feature of the peninsula is the abundance of New Zealand Sea Lions. This species is actually critically endangered, so getting rare, but you would never know it on the peninsula. We had to avoid them many times. They haul out during the day and take refuge in the most amazing places- like up in the sand dunes. Looking at them you'd think they could never make it across a beach, no less up a sandy slope, but they do it! The tracks across the beach tell the stories! All the beaches have signs warning people to stay well away from sleeping sea lions, and further from active ones. We were pleasantly surprised one day when driving to a remote beach, to find a family of sea lions resting in a salt marsh on the side of the road. It was an amazing thing to witness, there were young pups nursing from the mother, a big old dad bossing everyone around, and all right in front of us on the side of the road. At another location Tim was walking ahead of us out to a point of land when we noticed there were Sea Lions all over the grass. We went no further. These guys had to climb a 20 ft grass/gravel slope to get up to where we were! I have no idea how they do it, but man was it ever cool to be in a place where humans were so obviously outnumbered by Sea Lions being Sea Lions.

Big Poppa and the rowdy kids.

Sea Lion tracks on the right hand side.

Sea Lions by the cliffs.

Sea Lion sleeping in the background.

Sea Lion colony near Omaru. Look closely, there are heaps of them down there.

On the drive down to Dunedin, we stopped for a hike (tramp) at the Orokonui Ecosanctuary. This is 307 Hectare area of coastal forest that has been fenced off, rid of predators and invasive species, and re-introduced with native species of plants animals and birds. It's a sanctuary! It is awesome! We met really lovely and knowledgeable people who gave us great tips about where to spend time and what we might see. We learned a lot and saw a lot. Loved this place.

The endangered Takahe.

A very cheeky robin. Not to be confused with our European version. They are not related.

As we were leaving for the Ecosanctuary that morning, we stopped for a quick peek at the Moeraki Boulders. These are spherical boulders lying strewn in a cluster on Koekohe beach on the Otago coast. I admit, I wasn't sure what the fuss was all about, but when we did get there it happened to be sunrise, and we were pretty much by ourselves, and we couldn't believe how amazing that place was. Pictures do not do it justice, but, that's all I've got.

Another very cool adventure of the trip was in Oamaru, and involved a lesson in patience. We were waiting to witness very rare yellow-eyed penguins exiting the ocean to nest in the bush/cliffs for the night. Yellow-eyed penguin are endangered in NZ, and populations are in serious decline. I guess we expected to see a mass movement of birds waddling across the beach at sundown, but in over an hour of watching, we'd seen no sign. We were getting ready to leave, when someone spotted one tiny bird working its way on to the beach using the waves to get it there. Once free of the water, it toddled up to the edge of the beach and disappeared into the bush. We were really far away, these penguins are pretty small, and it was only a few minutes of action, but it was incredible to witness, and totally worth the wait. Points go to Edie who urged us to wait just a little bit longer, even though we were all ready to quit. We witnessed such a rare thing. Ahhh. New Zealand.

Today, we took a day trip to a place called Washpen Falls. It was a lovely bush walk, another gem of a place. If you've taken in "Our Planet" at all, you may be familiar with an episode that looked at the relationship between aphids, and honeydew secretions on trees. We witnessed this at Washpen Falls. Super cool.

Honeydew secretions on Beech trees.

The black fungus on these Beech trees gives the appearance of a burnt forest.

Our car is being handed over to its new owner tomorrow, and our remaining week and a half will be adventure on foot/or rental car if we get really antsy. We'll likely have one last post before we're back on native soil. Until then, stay well. Love to all.

Hello friends!

The feijoa have ripened, and they are amazing! One fun thing that we've been able to do living with an amazing garden, is to collect fruit and share our excess through connections with the Salvation Army here in NZ. The girls and I have taken a few large bushels of apples and plums to a food kitchen not far from our house. It's been a fun way to learn about caring for a garden and harvest, and meeting the needs of those less fortunate in our community. That being said, there is no guarantee that the feijoa will make it to the less fortunate- these are disappearing fast.

We have been taking in all kinds of sights in NZ. Some close to home, and some not so close. There is a lot to discover in a pretty reasonable amount of driving time, so we've been able to take lots of day trips, like the Rakaia Gorge, Southwest of Christchurch. We took a 10ish Km hike along the gorge, and while there were complaints along the way, I think we all appreciated the view. The pictures really say it all. There are some days in NZ when we forget that the rest of the world isn't like this, and aren't awed by what we see. Isn't that crazy?

In Mid-March we drove to Nelson (North part of the South Island of NZ) to visit our amazing friends, the Davis family. They were over for a short trip from their home in Bowling Green, Ohio, on a work trip for Tim (the Davis Tim). It is always a good time when our families get together, and this trip was no exception. Heaps of hiking and general roughhousing for a few days with these guys does our family good. Brings a bit of chaos into our quiet and fairly predictable lives. Somehow, we always end up finding great playgrounds together. Our kids 'get' each other.

Amity, Joel and Celia.

Edie and Lachlan.

NZ Stick Bug.

More playground fun for this crowd.

Jardine and Davis kids at the geographical centre of NZ.

In early April, we took a trip to Kaikoura so that I could participate in a half-marathon run that took in the Kaikoura peninsula, and ended in the foothills of the nearby mountains. We were so excited to see Kaikoura- the mountains are spectacular, and the wildlife there is second to none, we were told. Unfortunately for us, it rained for most of the time we were there. The only time the rain let up was actually during the race, I had 2 hours of sunshine and Tim and the girls got a chance to find 8 geocaches. We call that a win. While I was running I got to glimpse the mountain peaks, which made things so pleasant. The first half of the race was up and over the peninsula, which was a whole lot of uphill running, which I love, and will miss back in Saskatoon. It wound through a reserve and through sheep pastures, and ended up back at the raceway where we started. The second half of the race took us through a pine forest on a mountain bike track- it was spectacular running. The half-marathon runners doubled back on this track and I'm embarrassed to say that I ended up crashing in to both the first and second place runners on their way back through. My default is to go to the right side of the path when meeting an on-coming runner, it is not the right way in NZ. Lesson learned. All told I came in 13th, with a time of 2h05. I am pretty happy with that. The same day of the race we took a drive north of Kaikoura to visit a very gregarious fur-seal colony. It was really raining at that point, so it was difficult to take it all in without freezing- it was pretty miserable out, the seals didn't seem to mind.

Kaikoura range in the background.

Freezing, and trying to enjoy watching the seals.

Look closely, there are hundreds of seals down there.

Closer to home we have been busy enjoying all that NZ has to offer. The girls finished up their 9 week surfing lessons, and did so well. They are both super confident on their boards and are able to catch their own waves. We're so proud. For the past 2 weeks the NZ kids have been on school holidays, so we have taken advantage of a 2 week holiday surf camp, and have been going out almost every day for 2 hours. I joined the kids for this and we've all been having fun. The 3 of us caught a 'party wave' together (which is surf talk for all of us catching the same wave at the same time). It was amazing. It's getting rather cold for surfing now, so this week will wrap it up for us. It's been fun.

We've been on a 20 day caching streak where we've found at least 1 geo-cache a day, with 14 caches being our biggest day. #sabbatical goals. It's been great for getting us to places around the city that we wouldn't explore otherwise. We have a few favorites- one requiring Tim to climb up a tree to retrieve a nano-cache from a tiny bird nest, and another requiring us to figure out a passcode to a birdhouse with a series of switches that needed to be flipped in a specific order in order to get to the log-book (a Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy themed cache). Edie got in to some tree nettle at one site, which turns out to be a very nasty plant, even a brush with it causes a stinging, itching reaction, and in at least 1 extreme case, death. Edie required a few days of anti-histamine. Never again will we go crashing through the bush without looking hard for tree nettle in the area.

Example of a nano-cache.

Over the few months that we've been here and home schooling, we've been looking at local insects and critters in NZ, studying life-cycles and learning about their habitats. We learned a lot about cicadas, and in the last days of the summer, we actually caught one. We built a little habitat for the guy (we could identify it as male from its tymbal covers) and when we went to look at it the next morning, it was dead. We felt kind of bad about that, but since it was the end of the season, he was bird-food anyway. He has made a fine specimen in the 'museum of death' at the School of Hard Knocks.

Once it started getting colder, we discovered that Bradford Park, which we visit practically every day, is one of the parks in the city where Monarch Butterflies overwinter. Apparently Christchurch is one of the only places where Monarchs do overwinter (in NZ, anyway), due to the temperate climate. They hang in clusters off of trees, and if it gets warm enough in the day they'll leave the trees to eat, and return at the end of the day. I have never seen so many Monarchs in one place, every night we can find their clusters. We truly live in an amazing place. One night the girls came home frantic that they had killed a Monarch when they found one under Edie's scooter helmet. I went over to check it out, and the Monarch was on the ground, alive, but not very active. Having heard that rats are a predator to these Monarch clusters, we decided to bring it home and leave it in a leaf-lined box with a cover over the top. The butterfly never really recovered. He'd (again, we could identify it as a male- two little raised bumps on their lower wings, close to the body) get a little more active in the warm sunshine, but not active enough to fly away. After 3 days, he too joined our museum.

Close up with a Monarch.

Monarch clusters.

Around the same time, the girls and I were parking the car in front of the house after a day of exploring and Celia yelled out "Stop! What's that?", looking over to where she was pointing we spotted a little hedgehog on our neighbour's driveway. We've seen these over in the park, and have even been shown how to handle them, so we carefully picked this guy up and brought him over to our yard (yes- our third male specimen). They are not very aggressive, and Celia's been itching to get closer to one, so this was our opportunity to watch one find its way around our backyard. After a few minutes of bumbling and snuffling around I noticed a few bad signs- fly larvae behind its ears, and a rank smell coming off of him. Shortly after, we noticed that he was bleeding. So, we got in touch with a hedgehog rescue group in the city and took him over. It turns out he was badly wounded by a cat (most likely), and while they treated him and cleaned him up, he didn't survive the night. So, we're 0 for 3 on keeping the critters we're observing alive. We've been so grateful to have such access to nature, but we've had some hard lessons learned.But it was cool.

Celia and 'Merle'.

Celia turned 8 in March. She, Edie and their friend Savreet spent a session at our city library learning stop-motion animation with lego. It was a truly Jardine party compete with fake moustaches. The libraries in this city are a real treat, and we have used them extremely well. We are going to miss them.

Having fun building sets for stop motion animation.

Celia turns 8.

We have taken in a Crusaders game and will be partaking again tomorrow night. This is Christchurch's pro Rugby Union team, and while we don't know all the rules, it's so much fun to be in a crowd that big and watch really good rugby. Fun happening the first night- Col. Sanders arrived at half time in a helicopter, and a bucket of chicken the size of a house was wheeled out on to the field. The Col. saluted us, and heaps of decked out KFC employees ran around passing out buckets of chicken. It was pretty weird. Made me feel like maybe KFC is a bigger deal here than it is in Canada? Not sure, but it was memorable. They actually used footage from the game to make this commercial. So very strange to have been part of that.

Go the Crusaders!

Big bucket of KFC on the field.

Last week we hosted my travelling cousin Lesley, who's been backpacking through Thailand and Southeast Asia since December. It's been nice to have another Sweeney in the house, and she'll be dropping back in mid-May before she flies back to Canada after exploring the south island of NZ. It's nice to have visitors, and we're looking forward to being back home.

Enjoy the pictures- Love to all!

Laura

The girls in Diamond Harbour.

Having fun with math.

Problem of the week from University of Waterloo.