A Brief Call into Dubai

To get between New Zealand and Durban, South Africa, we flew a slightly convuluted route via Sydney, Bangkok and Dubai, breaking the trip up with a couple of nights in Dubai.

Now Dubai really is everything you think it might be - huge construction projects, weird roads to nowhere with grand plans for future development, the desert sitting just beyond the narrow developed coastal strip ready to blow back in again, a mix of people from all over the world.

The Burj al Arab at Jumeira Beach

We ended up staying in the older area of Dubai down by The Creek, the important vein of water around which Bur Dubai and Deira City were developed around over the centuries. We loved the perspective of the place seen while cruising up the Creek - a mix of old and modern architecture. And we were grateful for the cool breeze out on the water - it reached 44 degrees while we were there!!

Looking up the Creek with the local water taxis

Whether tourists or on business, its a pretty good way to get around :-)

And when it all gets too hot, you can always simply have a siesta on the back deck of your boat

Our visit to Dubai coincided with the first day of Ramadan. Walking past road construction crews, working with their pick axes in the 44 degree heat, you suddenly realise that until the sun goes down they are not drinking any water let alone eating!

We spent quite a bit of time exploring the old souks - the gold souk, the textile souk and the spice souk:

These guys sold some yummy roasted cashews :-)

Dubai really is a narrow coastal strip of development, and it doesn't take long heading inland before you find yourself in desert........................

Winter Scenes

Give it six days or so and we should be in ~35 degrees heat in Dubai as we make our way to Durban.

But for now we have this at home - isn't it beautiful?!

Awakening to snow

Out by the Avon River - there was snow on Brighton Beach too ;-)

Coming to a blog near you........

Call this a bookmark.

We're well aware that we have been off the blog scene for quite some time. We are intending to remedy this in a very short while, with plenty of tall tales and photos of our exploring. You see, while the past few months have not been anything I would wish anyone to experience, we are set for a battery-recharging adventure in a week's time.

We're heading for South Africa and Swaziland for the month of August - plans are to hire a car from Durban and explore the Drakensburg, Kruger National Park, a couple of Swaziland reserves and the Elephant Coast area, with a fair few places in between.

Stay tuned for the trip reports :-)

Holiday Snaps

We had a lovely break over Xmas/New Year, catching up with friends and family in various places and spending a good amount of time in the hills :-)

This blog post is largely a series of photos, but I guess there’s a bit of a story to be gleaned from the captions! Essentially, our holiday went like this:

• Xmas in Christchurch with family and friends – Neil’s parents came up from Dunedin and we stayed at the home of Frances’ workmate’s for the three days Gill and Dave were with us. Annette and David, F’s aunt and uncle from Australia, were over as well, and we kind of ran out of room to fit everyone in at F’s parent’s place :-) So, thanks to Christine and Kevin for being so easy in letting us stay at their place while they were away!!
• After Boxing Day, we headed for the Seaward Kaikouras for a four day tramp with our friends Mark and Sylvia. Sorry, no photos as yet, but see their blog link on the left with some photos and tales. All in all, a really cool trip in different country, and most of all, a great 4 days of catch up with Mark and Sylvia.
• Passing through Christchurch for a comfy night’s sleep and hot shower, we continued south to Dunedin for a New Year’s Eve sushi party. We had a day around Dunedin, F biking out on the peninsula and N helping the boys out kitesurfing in a good strong nor-easter. Then a day mountain biking at Naseby.
• We caught up with Neil’s parents and his bro, Paul, over from Melbourne for a couple of days – including a lovely afternoon in the sunshine at the beach! We had a beautiful turkey dinner all together :-)

• Next, we headed for Mackenzie Country and met up with F’s dad, Pat in Omarama with the intention of heading up the Ahuriri Valley and Canyon Creek, towards Mt Barth. This is where the photos cut in:

Waiting for the weather to clear in the hills, we spent a couple of nights camping near Twizel - drying gear out ready for the next trip

We went out for a bike from the camp and ended up at the Pukaki spillway, which was in impressive flow!

Time to head into the hills - lunch stop overlooking the canyon of Canyon Creek

About to cut up past the bluffs and into the upper valley

Beautiful blue water fed from snow and ice on Mt BarthAbove the bluffs, with Mt Barth beginning to peek out around the corner

Our home for the next couple of nights - a fantastic rock biv in the upper valley

Summer wildflowers beneath Mt Barth
There is some amazing slabs of rock in the valley - out for an evening explore from the biv

Morning light on Mt Barth as we head towards to snow col off the east ridge of Mt Barth (to the right of the skyline ridge)

Nope, that way just ain't going to work! Neil downclimbs back to the snow.

Heading back down to the col - we then crossed the glacier beneath Mt Barth looking for other routes up

Now on the west side of Mt Barth, but to no avail - turns out the schrunds had cut off access to the peak, but the views are amazing and where else would you rather have spent the day?? :-)
The view from the glacier back into the upper valley - there was hardly a breath of wind and we were roasting at times on the glacierPat at a tarn (apline lake), looking back up at the glacier that we had spent the day crossing back and forth!!

The next morning, we headed up to this ice covered tarn for a look-see before walking back out the valley

Us and the morning mist in Canyon Creek

Walking out Canyon Creek - a typical NZ mountain valley

Neil amongst the native beech forest

Driving back to Christchurch, we had a gorgeous view of Mt Cook (NZ's highest mountain) above the glacial blue of Lake Pukaki

Making Windows

So I (Frances) have recently been taking a course in Stained Glass. I guess the idea was possibly something like 'well, if we are going to need to rebuild our house, then we need windows for it, and what a good excuse for another art project!'. The idea really started as we left Canada, as the quip was made by Karen, one of my co-workers at Connect, that I might need a new window or two, so here we go.......

My first Stained Glass window

Catching the light
The basic steps to stained glass/lead-lighting are:

1. Creating a suitable design on paper and finding the glass you want to use

2. Cutting out the glass pieces - yes, this does involve a lot of sticky plasters and blood (well it does when I do this anyway!)
3. Moulding lead came around the pieces and fitting it all together
4. Soldering the joins
5. Cement and polish - the cement fills in any gaps and seals the piece so it is weathertight.
6. Take photos of your piece in kind lighting that doesn't show the mistakes and gaps in the glass work!!

Next project is a big round piece that I am making for my sister in celebration of her recent graduation with her PhD (well done Kate! :-)

Then maybe as we find out more about what's going on with our house I can start to dream up more designs to go in the house - I was thinking a good start would be one of the evening skyline along Okanagan Lake (as viewed from our beach at our old apartment). Will keep you posted on how it all goes.......

Living with 'The Earthquake'

First and foremost, hello and love to you all out there! :-) We've been quiet on the blog front for nearly three months – sorry to everyone far and wide about dropping off the radar. Our hometown of Christchurch had a 7.1 earthquake on 4th September, and really this earthquake has a lot to answer for!

While it was completely incredible that no one died in the event (which fortunately, if it's going to happen, occurred at 4.35am on a Saturday morning) and family and friends in Christchurch were all okay, our home in Christchurch (which we have been renting out while over in

Canada) was rendered uninhabitable - due to issues such as the chimney falling off, the

plumbing being ripped out in the wall, cracking in literally every single panel of gib in the house, walls no longer vertical, floors no longer horizontal and the house generally moving

eastwards on its foundations! So we found ourselves having to make the decision to head

straight for New Zealand and put off our travelling plans - apologies to all of you along the way in the US and UK that we were planning to visit, we'll get back your way, promise!

Once back in Christchurch, Frances's sister Kate, a geologist at the local University, took us out to see the fault rupture zone on the Canterbury Plains – the fault rupture extends 22km across

the plains, approx. 30km out of Chch and is the surface expression of the earthquake rupture – in other words, you can see where and how the earth moved, with cracks in the ground showing areas moving up to 4 m sideways, as well as vertical change. You stand in the fields looking at

the cracks displacing a road by 4 m, then think of the energy and sheer mass of earth that has moved in the area – phenomenal!

Line of fault rupture through paddock

This fence was straight - now it is off-set by ~4m. Headaches for the surveyors and property boundary definitions!

This road was dead straight - now the centre line lines up with the left edge markings, as the ground moved ~4 m north-east (right). You can also see some

vertical change in the trees on the left (higher to lower in the distance).

There are some pretty funny stories to come out of all this (we have to find humour in it all, right?) – like the homeowner near the fault rupture site who found the contents of their fridge in the oven when they got up in the morning after the earthquake. So during an earthquake, the strong motion is sideways shaking – you lurch one way, then back the other. During the earthquake, SLAM, the fridge door swings open, SLAM, as everything moves back the other way, the door of the oven opposite the fridge falls open, SLAM, back again and everything in the fridge falls across into the oven, BANG, the oven door jolts shut, BANG, the fridge door slams itself shut. Voila!

Some farmers woke up in the morning to find their nice flat paddock a mess of cracking and wonky fences and shelterbelts. It was a race for the scientists (such as the geologists from the University) to get measurements and information from the rupture zone, before farmers needed to plow the fields as the cracked ground caused a hazard to their animals who might trap a leg in the cracks.

Since the earthquake we have had over 2000 aftershocks. At my parents house, you can hear them coming – a low rumble starts a couple of seconds before it hits – just enough time to think - “oh here we go again, hope this one ain't too bad....". The sizes of the aftershock vary, but because the main event was a big event at magnitude 7.1, we have the occasional 5.something aftershocks, which are pretty decent. After these 5.something aftershocks, we have to go round to our house and shut it back up again, because most of the windows and doors fall open. We have aluminium framed windows with the usual handle latches, but the house is moving and twisting so much that the latches pop on the windows and the doors pops out of its lock. Everyone feels more aftershocks at night, largely because that's when you're lying still – you're not going to feel the small ones when you are moving round, cycling or driving. They have definitely become less frequent these last couple of weeks, but then we were woken yet again by one last night......

At our place, the front end of the lounge (to the right) has moved north from the main part of the house (this is the small end of the crack)

Typical cracking damage around doorways that many people have in their homes - however, our levels are all out and usually you don't have bits of plasterboard falling out!

Less visually obvious, but more significant in terms of structural integrity, we have fresh cracks through our foundation wall that have spat out concrete

The view under the floor - those concrete piles should be vertical!

While our house is uninhabitable, we are living between Frances's parent's house and her sister's house. Both their houses are fine, with Kate and Dave's property unscathed, while her parents had some significant liquefaction. It took them five days to clear their section of sand that was ejected from the ground during the earthquake. they have a lump in their driveway that grew for four weeks but seems to have settled down now, and their street was growing new lumps and potholes daily as the ground settled and moved after the quake. The land on our

section is undamaged, just soft and peaty as always, but we are looking at rebuilding on our section (as its not likely worth trying to repair our existing house) and this will give us the chance to get the foundations right for being on soft ground. The timeframe for all of this is a complete unknown – our insurance company has entered into a contract with a construction company and an engineering consultancy (which just so happens to be the company Frances works for!) to manage the process of repairing and rebuilding houses for their clients. From the earthquake, there have been over 120,000 claims made for either house or contents damage. In the big picture, for such an event, the way in which houses have come through the earthquake is actually quite incredible – so our house is one of the ones in the worst case basket, but it didn't collapse (other than the chimney falling off). The earthquake itself was of similar magnitude to Haiti's 7.0. There is a lot of learning and research going on from the effects of the quake and understanding how we can design and prepare for such events.

Since some suburbs of the city had significant liquefaction and laterally spreading (around river and estuary areas), the Earthquake Commission (our national earthquake and landslide insurance agency (government funded)) is looking at suburb-wide land remediation for those areas, to help prevent such extensive land damage happening in future big earthquake events. Therefore, for people whose houses are damaged in these areas, they will be waiting for this suburb-wide remediation to be decided on and done, before they can start to address their house repairs or rebuilds, so it is going to be a long-haul for many people. Some people will not be able to rebuild on their land because the ground condition is so poor in terms of liquefaction and spreading risk, and will be paid out for their house and land. There's a lot of high-pressure decision-making going on while trying to get this remediation done as effectively and efficiently as possible, and this also applies to other services such as water and sewer.

Both of us are working back in engineering now, and both working on some earthquake-related projects (assessing damage to land and water services). At times it feels a bit like we're living and breathing earthquake stuff at work and at home, but it is very good to be busy and useful! We have been house-sitting for Kate and Dave while they have been away overseas for the month (well, we say house-sitting, but actually it's cat-sitting their two cats, Sinbad and Apollo), then when they come back next week, we'll go stay back with Frances's parents for a while........

Meet the boys - Sinbad and Apollo - two of the biggest softies you've ever come across!

Apollo in a typical sleeping pose

Sinbad trying to sleep and hide from the world at the same time!

At Kate and Dave's the day our shipping arrived! Not that we could really unpack it anywhere - we've just shifted stuff around so we have essentials in a backpack and everything else is packed away either at Kate and Dave's place or parents' houses........

So there's a bit of a long post about the current legacy of this earthquake and the experiences around it. We'll try to get some more NZ photos up soon for those overseas – we have been away a few weekends to catch up with family and friends and also reacquaint ourselves with some favourite local places.

Take care

xxx

Neil and Frances

Mt Begbie

Last weekend we decided the summer sunshine and heat were really all too much and we went and found ourselves some snow and ice pellets! Well, it wasn’t exactly intentional, but we certainly found them :-)

But that belies what was actually a really great trip - up Mt Begbie, just out of Revelstoke, at the northern end of the Monashee Mountains. After a rather leisurely departure from Kelowna on Saturday morning, we walked up that afternoon to a lovely camp spot at the edge of the alpine (~2000m asl), looking down over Revelstoke and the Columbia River.

Neil coming into the alpine zone near our camping spot for the night

Home Sweet Home for a night

That night we were both woken by bouts of heavy rain, but fortunately the morning dawned relatively calm and we headed up from camp towards the glacier. The glacially carved rock terrain above the campsite was fascinating, with its bands of quartz and linear scour marks. We skirted the old glacial ice and headed up across the snow to the start of a ledge that cut its way across the rock buttress to the prow of the ridge. The schrund at the edge of the rock was pretty deep and wide, with a very convenient tongue remaining across to the ledge.

Scoured rock, overlooking the Columbia River and Revelstoke township

Looking up at Mt Begbie - our route skirted the glacier on the right to the obvious ledge that cuts from left to right, then up the skyline ridge

Frances makes the first foray onto the snow

Once on the ledge, there were a couple of exposed, narrow sections where we belayed each other through, before the ledge widened.

Checking out the way ahead - ok, time to rope up, we say

The scrambling up the ridge was wonderful – lovely solid rock. The mist had really come in by that stage but we were following cairns (plus adding a couple more), and it seemed before we knew it there was nowhere further upwards to go.

Hmm, you get to use your imagination to fill in the view....

We could only imagine how beautiful the views are from the ridge on a sunny day, but the enveloping mist lent a peaceful air to the place and it was wonderful to be up there. Unfortunately, once on top, the mist started throwing ice pellets at us and the pause there was brief before we headed back down.

Working our way down the ridge in the mist

Once the sky had run out ice pellets, we started to get big fluffy snowflakes instead, but the downwards route was good fun and we were back to the ledge soon enough. We had tossed up the idea of abseiling off the ledge before the narrow section, however with the way the schrund looked we ultimately decided to repeat the belay back across the narrows and retrace our steps off the end of the ledge onto the glacier.

So, ah, not much beneath your feet then?! Having fun though :-)

Enjoying the big fluffy snowflakes, about to leave the ledge for the glacier snow

We wandered back to camp as the sun came out (of course!) and enjoyed a leisurely second, or was it third?, lunch, before decamping and pounding our way down 1300 m to the car.