Trail tales and more

  We spent much of the day cleaning the flat and packing our bags.   Taking a car means there is a lot of room to take things that you might otherwise leave behind if just travelling with bags.     Finally, I got the bikes onto the back of the car.   I have tried to avoid the occupation of the mandate protesters at Parliament but there was no real option but to go past it.   Since   I last went that way the occupation seems to have thinned a bit.     Being loaded onto the Aratere was   a dream.   While we had to wait a bit for our turn to board the ship, when our turn arrived it was efficient - so much easier than getting on the Kaitaki.   Once on board we found a place to sit that was comfortable and had a good view.   There weren’t many travellers and I suspect most came on board with their cars and utes.     The trip across was very quick - we left 15 minutes early and arrived ha...

Island Bay My contract at Victoria University finished on the 25th of February.  Bev and I decided that a holiday at the end of my contract was a good idea and since she was ready to have a break after a few weeks of working it worked in well.   The only thing to dampen our enthusiasm was that Omicron was spreading like wildfire.  However, we figured that provided we were careful that we would be pretty safe.  Also I wanted to go before tourists started dribbling into the country.  There is something really nice about being able to travel in your own country without the press of humanity in our remote and beautiful places. It is ten years since we did the Central Otago Rail Trail and we had said that we wanted to do it again.  So that became the centrepiece of our proposed trip.  Two weeks before we were due to go a ferry was booked, and we started planning the itinerary.  I discovered that booking at the last minute is often cheaper than get...