One Month In

It's not big moments but the country is slowly getting under my skin. I'm pretty sure I really like it here. Everyone is kind and very chill. Views are idyllic and it's just been peaceful. Life wise, it's certainly been a juxtaposition of super busy and also umm what am I doing? Sean's had a nasty cold and has been out for a bit so we've been less social than usual. We've still managed a board game meetup, Parkruns, and I've climbed a little of the local crag with my coworkers. Sean and I are finally biked up so I'm excited to check out the famous mountain bike scene. Hopefully I don't completely eat it on my new enduro bike. 

The only not-peaceful thing is the natural disaster potential. Geologically, New Zealand is a playground for geotechs with its earthquakes, volcanoes, rockfall, landslides and typhoons. I guess I have to counter that Colorado wasn't immune to these things and we had our fair share of wildfires, floods, debris flows, landslides and rockfall too.

I am finding some parallels to my old life in Colorado. I've been working in the North Island looking at bridges that were damaged or completely washed out (not surprising since they're super old) by the most recent tropical storm. The Boulder Flood damage and the Typhoon Gabrielle damage have similarities: washed out roads, rockfall. There might be more landslides here including this hill with so many small slips it looked like it was camouflage patterned in beige, green and brown. 

Around Queenstown is a very similar story of a goldrush and frantic road building and blasting with disregard to rock orientations and overall road sketchiness. The road to Wanaka is essentially an old mule road with bitumen (asphalt) laid on top of it- no subgrade whatsoever. Public funding- or lack thereof- for infrastructure is also the same old story. The road has countless landslides that keep getting paved over and there are plenty of boulders with string gauges (literally a piece of stretchy string in this case) holding onto the slope by the sheer fact they're being monitored. 

We don't particularly miss Colorado but we do miss all our friends who live there. Maybe we can convince everyone to move here or at least come for a long work sabbatical. We do have a spare room. 

I've already told lots of my friends but it still tickles me a little. 
This older woman sat at my table at the Napier airport and told me her opinions on Australians. 
"Kiwis and Australians are like their birds. New Zealand birds sing beautifully and Australian birds just 'talk'". 

Pic of some typhoon damage, the ocean, climbing, and the Wellington Airport












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