Surfin' NZ

We are living here on a nice quiet spot near the river, but we also live only a 5 minutes drive from the beach. We didn’t make use of that yet (I think it still has to sink in), but today we finally went to the beach to have a stroll.

In NZ you don’t go to the beach to bake in the sun all day. The hole in the ozone layer makes that impossible. Unlike in Holland everybody here is aware of the dangers of sunbathing, and they comply with the rule to stay out of the sun. You don’t see Kiwis sitting in the sun that much, and when they do, they never sit there for long. The sun is really burning on your skin here so you really notice when it is time to go sit in the shade.

As a result the beach is not filled with sunbathers. There are people swimming, surfing, kartsailing, kitesurfing, etc. Enough activity going on, although you cannot say it is crowded on the beach: there is at least 20m/65ft of space between you and the next stroller, if not more. And compared to other beaches of NZ the Christchurch beach is already a busy beach; if you’d take a walk on the beach of Ashburton you would be hard pressed to spot anybody at all.

Christchurch has a real pier too, and below it a local artist was busy creating a work of art in the sand. Looked nice for as long as it lasted, because before long the high tide finished off the artwork before it was even finished :-)

I think we can be found chilling here more often in the near future.