Through the Interface

Picton to Christchurch

As much as I hate compressing so much into a single post, I don’t see any other option if I’m to bring you all up-to-date. So please accept my apologies for not doing justice to New Zealand’s absolutely incredible south island. In this post we’ll talk about the first part of the journey through the south island, from Picton to Christchurch. I’ll cover the journey from Christchurch to Queenstown in the next post. Here’s a quick view of our journey southwards, for context. Our adventure on the south island started the Saturday before last. We took the 2.45pm Interislander... Read more →

Wellington

We arrived in Wellington on Friday just in time for lunch. We parked – based on the recommendations on CamperMate, as ever – at the Barnett Street car park. Parking a motorhome for 24 hours down by the wharf in Wellington costs just $30 NZD. I left my family for an hour to meet up with Jason Howden for a quick lunch at Mojo Waterfront, and then met back up with them afterwards to go and visit the Weta Cave. This is a nice tour over at the Weta Workshop that gives a behind-the-scenes look at the company and... Read more →

Rotorua and the road to Wellington

It’s been an exciting week, here in New Zealand. Not only does the country have a new coalition government (which – somewhat controversially – doesn’t include the party who finished in first place in the recent election), but the polls have just closed on the Bird of the Year contest (my vote goes to the Kea, because it has an awesome name). Crazy days. After leaving Auckland and then seeing Waitomo on Monday and Hobbiton on Tuesday of last week, we arrived on Tuesday evening in Rotorua. (I can’t believe I’m somehow now nearly a week behind on posts…... Read more →

Dasher 360 at Autodesk University and the Forge DevCon

If my calculations are correct, I’ll be in Singapore during this year’s Autodesk University in Las Vegas. It’s the first I’ll have missed for many years – and it’s going to feel more than a little strange, when that week comes along – but this trip (and my family) will be taking precedence, for once. While I’m not going to be there myself, my good friend and colleague, Simon Breslav, is stepping in to deliver the class I would be giving if I were there. Although as Simon is the person who developed a great deal of the code... Read more →

Hobbiton

A big thanks to Mike Burke from Aurecon for pointing us at Hobbiton (among other places). I suspect we’d have made it there anyway – it seems somehow inevitable – but it was certainly from Mike that I first heard about this place. It would be a shame to visit New Zealand and not experience something of Middle Earth. I’m not about to spend our brief time here tracking down the various locations that were used to shoot The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit, but for sure we had to do something. After LoTR was filmed, the... Read more →

Waitomo

After a fantastic weekend catching up with The Joneses (Sean, Sharon & their kids) in Auckland, we headed out on our own in the motorhome. We drove south to Waitomo, with the aim of visiting its famous glowworm caves. (We’d seen them featured in the first series of the BBC’s excellent Planet Earth.) It took a touch over 2.5 hours to get there, so we stopped for lunch at a petrol station on the way (ah, life on the open road). On arriving at the caves, we found a few different options for tours. As it was already 3pm,... Read more →

Auckland

On Thursday night we had an fantastic evening with our Tahitian friends (I feel like saying “family” now, we had such a warm welcome and have grown so close). They prepared a lovely, traditional Tahitian dinner. We prepared some of our own Swiss contributions (une tresse – ein Butterzopf in German – and a chocolate mousse), although these we left for our hosts to remember us by. It was with a heavy heart that we headed for the airport. Our flight from Tahiti to New Zealand left at 1:30am on Friday the 13th, but as we crossed the International... Read more →

Diving and Research on Mo’orea

On Tuesday and Wednesday we went scuba diving. Our son, Kalan, went both days: I accompanied him on Tuesday and my wife went on Wednesday. (Kalan is really passionate about diving, which goes along with his desire to become a marine biologist when he’s older.) Kalan has cut his teeth diving in Lake Neuchatel – where visibility on a good day is a few metres – so this was a great opportunity for him. I’m personally not such a huge fan of diving: I do enjoy it, but I’m really a landlubber at heart. This was a really enjoyable... Read more →

Tahiti and Mo’orea

After a slightly crazy week spent exploring the intricacies of the medical system in French Polynesia, we finally managed to relax and kick back for the weekend. On Saturday – after Anokhi was discharged from hospital, albeit with a minor, post-operative fever – we were taken on a drive around the island of Tahiti by our hosts. The weather wasn’t particularly good by Polynesian standards (it was just fine by Swiss standards ;-) but we still got the chance to see a fair amount of the island. We stopped for lunch at a popular surf spot, which also had... Read more →

Polynesian peanuts

We arrived in Tahiti late on Monday night after a very strange flight that left after midnight and arrived at 1:30am (and yet took 6 hours… timezones can be funny things). The kids slept through it all, give or take, which was one good thing. Our hosts – the family of Narii, a good friend back in Neuchatel – came to pick us up at the airport. An incredibly kind gesture, considering the arrival time. We spent much of the first day at their place, relaxing and recovering, although we did head into the centre of Pape’ete in the... Read more →

Easter Island

We flew from Santiago as planned on Saturday morning at 9:30am, arriving at lunchtime (with a couple of hours saving thanks to the timezone change) on Easter Island. Along with Machu Picchu and Iguassu Falls, this was another destination for which we’d prearranged a tour with the travel agency from whom we bought our round-the-world tickets. Which was nice: it meant we had airport transfers, a hotel and a full-day tour of the island all organised. A welcome change after the logistics we constantly battled (through our own choice, admittedly) on the South American mainland. Easter Island is our... Read more →