We’ve arrived in Christchurch with only one more flight to go. When we reach Dunedin at 5:00pm, we shall have logged over 27 hours of travel time today. (Can we say that: "27 hours of travel time today"?) It feels like one wretched, horribly long day, but two days have passed on the calendar, and we’re almost finished with the second one. I’m terribly glad we’re getting ten weeks of travel out of these flights!
We took off from Auckland for our one-hour flight to Christchurch, the Sea of Tasman on our right and the flat bright green of the Northland on our left. That green gave way rather quickly to the wide blue Pacific. Soon we were over the Southland, the sky thick with Colorado clouds flying high in the bright blue. The terrain below is unique to my eyes: a carpet of various and melding blues covering the sea and the 10,000 foot peaks still capped in white, both visible in one turn of the head. The foothills north of Christchurch remind me of the Rocky Mountains. They have the sharp contours of etched stone at the base of pyramidal greying peaks. But the nature of the fabric is subtly different. The soft deciduous felt of the New Zealand mountains differs from the napped coniferous velvet of the Rockies.
They like hedges here. Bright green pieces of property—or perhaps parcels separated for different uses—are marked off on the landscape by dark green lines that, as the aircraft descends, resolve into tightly cropped bushes, high proud hedges, and neat rows of trees. The layout reminds me of the perfect square stone hedges of Scotland. And I’m not so sure the resemblance is coincidental. To hear tell of the heritage of the Southland, the similarity may be familial.
~emrys
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