Canterbury tales

Arrived in the Canterbury high country this afternoon and am camped out in a small town called Methven. I decided when leaving Nelson, that instead of doing the sensible thing and nipping up to the Marlborough Sound while I was there, I would head back down country to Greymouth. I wanted to travel over the southern alps via Arthurs Pass and get back into the mountains.
Well, the best laid plans of mice and men, etc etc - If only I had done some planning in fact. As it turns out, the weather in Greymouth was appaling. Raining cats and dogs? More like raining sheep and cattle. You know that Hollywood rain which appears in films, when the weather goes from bone dry to tropical rainstorm in a split second? Well, that's what it was like, for a day and a half (the tropical rainstorm bit). Glad I got a decent tent!
So this morning the skys cleared and I made a run for it, up and over Arthurs Pass and down into Canterbury. The trip over the Pass was beautiful, big mountains with snow capped peaks, but warm and sunny down in the pass. The weather on the eastern side of the mountains is appreciably warmer and I feel much more relaxed now!
Tomorrow I am planning to go off for a trip out to Mt. Sunday. For those people already bored with the Lord of the Rings stuff, sorry, but this is far too good an opportunity to miss. Mt. Sunday was the location for Edoras and one of the most spectacular pieces of scenery in the films. I hope it lives up to expectations! I know that quite alot of the road out to the location is gravel back road, so it's going to take a while to get there, even before the one hour walk from the road to the location itself. Might be a packed lunch day!
Apart from that, not too much to tell, although I feel I should tell you about the cricket match that was on tv last night (it was raining in Greymouth remember!). Now I'm not usually one for cricket, but this was entertaining. Australia and NZ were playing their first ever game of a format called twenty20, which is played in England. NZ decided to play in a beige outfit which had not been used since the 1980's. As a tribute, many of the NZ players also grew ridiculous facial hair (moustaches and side burns) and wore 1980 towelling hats or John McEnroe headbands to complete the look. This is a professional team, one of the best in the world, playing an important international and they turned out looking like they were going to a fancy dress party, just for the fun of it. They didn't win the match, but they and the crowd of 29,500 obviously had such a good laugh that in these days of over paid and over serious professional sports, the whole episode just has to be applauded. I can't imagine many (if any) other international sports teams taking a similar approach, which is a great shame. May be sport would be better off if more professionals could have a laugh once in a while.
Ok, well that's enough for now. I'll be back in a couple of days and will try to get more photos up at the same time. Take care everyone.