3. Invercargill – Final Preparations

Monday, February 13: Heavy rain overnight, clearing by morning, with rain again in the afternoon

Walking: 6.0 km

Randa’s

Sleep resembled the real McCoy more closely last night, including a dream or two, and by the time I was up (8:30) nearly everyone else was ready to go. The breakfast toast was improved on no end by the vegemite. I emptied the dishwasher before settling down to work: There was an expression of interest from Bunkers Backpackers about more detail for the kayak trip and an email from JR Duty Free about the missing Bundy. I eventually abandoned the enterprise of getting my duty free delivered as there was no promise of anything arriving anywhere, and even their refunds policy seemed a little iffy. Either I sent the credit card details by unsecured email; or I called them with them, which I decided to do in the course of the afternoon. Read more…

1. Auckland – Christchurch – Invercargill

Saturday, February 11: Sunny in Auckland & Christchurch, variable cloud around and fairly warm, high clouds in Invercargill

Randa’s ($50, airbnb)

For the final couple of hours I managed three episodes of Attenborough’s Planet Earth II. Nice pictures, but apart from the repetitious text to the point of being cliched, there was something worrying about Attenborough’s treatment of competition, which didn’t appear to be conceptually uniform. Nor was his use of contact clauses, by the way, with one or two being quite pithy and the remainder fell into the category of up with which I will not put.

Only really missed out on Mars, but not sure whether that would have been missing out on much. But it did occur to me that the Gemini story had led indirectly to massive improvements in civil aviation, if not civilian space travel or even space tourism. Read more…


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