Just some photos of buildings,

We had a great trip to visit Vaughn, the lead doctor at the clinic where we work, at his home in Christchurch. We had a chance to see the devastation to the city center from the earthquakes of 2010-2011. The damage is quite dramatic, and despite the understandable delays in redeveloping the infrastructure of a city built 150 years ago, you can get a sense of the pride the residents have in their city and their chance to create something really special with the redevelopment.

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This is an area that has been razed and now home to shops and places to eat housed in brightly colored shipping containers, ReStart.

We  had a great visit.

Along our travels in New Zealand, I have taken some photos of unique but also typical buildings we find in the small towns  on the South Island. I am particularly fond of the brightly colored Dairies, their answer to our  7/11s . Also  the older taverns, part hotel, part bar and part restaurant, are great places and bring a sense of community to some of the very little towns.We have stayed in several excellent bed and breakfasts that are housed in beautiful Victorian homes. Among my favorite structures are the Four Square markets, which I have to photograph away from Westport. Though we do not have a traffic light here, we are big enough that the larger two grocery chains have displaced the Four Square.

Warwick House Nelson

 New,above, and Old, below, Westport city Buildings.

And of course my favorites:

Queen Charlotte Track, Part One

We have a hard time understanding how holidays work but we certainly are not going to let that disrupt an opportunity to take one. New Zealand Has a couple more national holidays than we do in the states and fortunately they seem to be clustered when we are here. The government also requires 4 weeks of vacation time for employees, considerably more than in the states. Anyways, despite being a much less "religious" country than the states, both Good Friday and Easter Monday are national holidays and we took that four day weekend and ran with it out to the Marlborough Sounds. The Queen Charlotte Track is one of the great walks in New Zealand that has a very important advantage over the others, you can do the multiday walk and have your gear transported by water taxi from one location to the other. That was perfect for us, a 25 kilometer walk is quite enough without a heavy pack on our back. In addition, our lodging is not in a tent but in a charming lodge that is perhaps accessible only by water and can still serve up wonderful accommodations and meals.------------------------------ We began our adventure from Picton, a wonderful small port town on that serves as the southern Island port for the InterIsland Ferry between the North and South Islands. We stayed at a great B and B just above the port where we left early Friday morning on a sea taxi to Motuara Island, one of the predator free islands in New Zealand that serves as a bird refuge. It took decades to eradicate the mammals, mainly possums and stoats, that have devastated the New Zealand bird populations. We did get the chance to see the New Zealand Saddleback, that has recovered from near extinction with only 37 individuals to a population of several thousands now, as well as Little Blue Penguins in their nesting boxes,_______ ______ From Motuara we caught another ferry to Resolution Bay where we began our track. The first day was a beautiful short hike over to Endeavor inlet where we caught yet another water taxi over to Ponga Cove and walked to our destination at Mahana Lodge. Mahana had three other couples doing the track staying at their fabulous retreat. An international group we were, with Americans, New Zealanders, Australians, and a fellow from London. Many walk the track but cycling is equally as popular as the route, though quite hilly, is well maintained and suitable for mountain bikes, with a fair amount of pushing to be expected. We had a wonderful dinner together with great conversation and Marlborough wines. It was quite a pleasure to run into all these new found friends as we all wound are way around the track over the next couple of days.