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A Short Break

Entry 651, on 2007-12-04 at 19:31:06 (Rating 1, Travel)

My many fans out there (yes, all 2 of you... and one is myself... and so is the other) might have noticed I have gone several days without making a blog entry. This is because for the first time in many years I have been away from access to the Internet. I have been taking a short break at a remote resort in the Marlborough Sounds (at the north end of the South Island of New Zealand) where there was no cell phone access!

At first this was somewhat disconcerting, then very liberating, and finally - after returning to "civilisation" and having to read through a pile of text messages, phone calls, and emails - quite distressing. It was all worth it though because the short holiday was great.

The rest of my brothers, sisters-in-law, and nieces flew in from different parts of the country to meet at Christchurch where we took the Tranz Scenic train along the Kaikoura Coast to Picton. Then we took a water taxi out to Punga Cove, where we stayed for the next few days. So we got different views of the country travelling by road, air, rail and water.

Marlborough has a couple of good things going for it. First, it is New Zealand's biggest and most important wine producing area, something we didn't take advantage of much on this journey, but we have in the past! Second, it has a great climate and will probably have the highest sunshine hours for the country this year (for the last few years this honour has gone to neighbouring Nelson).

While at Punga Cove we did a bit of sea kayaking, mountain bike riding, and generally relaxing. Then we took a day trip on a boat to do some fishing for blue cod which we cooked on the barbecue that night. During that trip we encountered a pod of dolphins which seemed to enjoy playing around the boat and raced ahead of the bow of the boat generally showing off!

The worst part of holidays seems to be returning home, but at least the weather was fairly good (and is again today) so things don't seem quite so bad. And it is only two weeks until we have another holiday in Australia so I'd better get my backup systems, servers, databases, etc all working properly before the Christmas break.

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