Spring is here!!

Len Lye's Wind Wand

This is one of Len Lye's best known kinetic sculptures: the Wind Wand. It stands 45 m high on the seafront in New Plymouth, North Island. It can bend at least 20 metres, so sometimes I can be quite scary to see it sway in the wind...


Len Lye was a New Zealand born artist; he had a passion for both cinematography and kinetic sculpture and an obsession (that's what we thought) for making movement something real.
On our recent visit to Melbourne, we visited an exhibition on Lye's work at the Centre of the Moving Image. Some of his sculptures were just mind-blowing, and watching them moving, some of them at the same time, was quite an experience!
His movies were also quite a discovery for us; dancing patterns of colourful lines and prints. Here's a taste of it:

Surf Mission 23/08

Sunset at Waiinu Beach

A Perfect Right Hander

Barefoot

One of the things that surprised me most when I arrived here in New Zealand was seeing people going barefoot everywhere. You see them everyday at uni, in the supermarket, walking the dog in the park and even in pubs (like the one in the picture). It's like they don't remember to put their shoes on before they leave the house!

I heard a kiwi the other day saying one of the things he missed when he went overseas was walking barefoot without fearing hurting his feet. The first thing he did when he came back home was taking off his shoes and walking on the grass. I have to say it's a nice feeling, but I still don't dare going anywhere without my shoes on...and I think it has to do more with my made-in-spain mindset (what would my mother say?!) than with fearing I would hurt my feet...

8th Aug. Wharite Peak

View of the Manawatu from Wharite Peak

A visit to the neighbours

Here is an overall view of our recent trip to Australia. In this second visit, we spent 3 days in Melbourne and a whole week touring around Victoria (mainly along the Great Ocean Road and the Grampians NP). The weather wasn't that nice on most of the days, but we had a lovely time nonetheless and we are already looking forward to our next visit!

View August trip to Oz in a larger map

And here you can see some of the pictures of our trip:

Phil surfing Jan Juc, near Bell's Beach, on the Surf Coast.

Surf Museum, Torquay

One of the numerous cuddle-me-please koalas we saw on the way

Our wicked camper!!

Cape Otway Lightstation

The Twelve Apostles

Another astonishing view on the Great Ocean Road

A real Aussie checking us out

Melbourne on a sunny day

Oh! and next time somebody asks me where New Zealand is, I'll be careful not to say "it's that country close to Australia"...Four hours on a plane, that is more than 2,500km, is not what I would call "close", that's longer than a flight from Barcelona to Istanbul!! ;-)

Tiki Taane

We'll be on holidays for the next ten days (going to Melbourne for a bit of koala spotting and so on), so we thought we should leave you here with some entertaining music made in Aotearoa New Zealand. This is Tiki Taane, a maori artist responsible for one of the most successful singles in New Zealand music, "Always on my mind":

80th Anniversary Muac

The Massey University Alpine Club celebrated its 80th anniversary last Saturday. The club organised an evening of dinner and entertainment with special guest speakers and former club's members.

(Muac's current president, Jackson, giving the first speech of the night)

The Club started running in June 1929, and it only stopped organising activities during World War II. It isthe second oldest club at Massey University (for only half an hour, behind the rugby guys) and still the most popular.
Although it's named "alpine club", nowadays it focuses on many more activities such as kayaking, rock climbing, caving or slacklining. It's a great place for first years and international students to meet people and get into the outdoors of this amazing country.

(Muac members in the Tararua Ranges in 1931)

The Flight of the Conchords

Here's a TV show made by kiwis that everybody should watch before coming to NZ. So funny...this guys are hilarious! Check out their accent, and their outfits (specially Bret's T-shirts). If you've never heard of them, I recommend you watch their HBO one night stand, that's a good start. These are two of our favourite videos- It's business time...

Kiwiana

On our recent visit to Christchurch we spent a rainy afternoon at the Canterbury Museum, a highly recommendable place if you are visiting the city, with lots of information about the first Maori and European settlers, and a pretty cool interactive exhibition about the body (sometimes I wish I was 7 again...).

Well, there we came across a replica of one of New Zealand's most famous houses: Fred and Myrtle's Paua Shell House. There were lots of people in the queue to see the house, and we had no idea what the story behind this place was, so we joined them just in time for the next show to begin. So we entered this small cinema where we learnt about Fred and Myrtle's collection of paua shell and other kiwiana stuff.

Fred and Myrtle Flutey spent their whole life together in their small house in Bluff collecting paua shells from the sea, polishing them and hanging them on the living room walls. Along with the paua, they gathered and displayed all sorts of items and icons from New Zealand's pop culture and heritage (what people here call kiwiana-generally seen as kitsch, but loved by everyone). They opened their house to the public and it became one of the most popular tourist attractions in the area until their recent death some years ago.

The collection has now been brought back to life thanks to the Fluteys' family and the museum, and here you can see Phil with his cheeky smile in the living-room replica we saw:

And...yes, polishing all those shells is a lot of work!

Esterilla's attempt

Up on the board...

and...plaff! :-(

Muac Hut Rules: Stairs-Traverse challenge

Ester

Jackson

Phil

Erich

Another crazy weekend up at mt.Ruapehu saw the establishment of the Muac Hut Rules. Here is the first one: The Stairs Traverse Challenge!

King and Queen of Spain visit New Zealand

Spain and New Zealand have been somehow connected in the past weeks, and not only because we scored 5 goals against the all whites in the confederations cup ;-), but also because the King of Spain has come here to open the Spanish Embassy in Wellington. A new agreement between the two countries will allow young spaniards to benefit from the working holiday visa scheme.