Patrick Lam

Thoughts and travels of Patrick Lam

That Antipodal Life

We’ve been in Wellington for the past year and a half (!). It’s never really cold or hot here. How does that compare to Canada?

Queenstown, Makarora, Wanaka, and not Gillespie

The planned logistics for the Gillespie trip were simple: rent a car, stay at the Wonderland Lodge in Makarora the night before, take a jetboat across the river, walk, and take a jetboat back from Kerin Forks. The jetboat avoids the biggest river crossings. Ironically, the day before we were to go, we got a call saying that there wasn’t enough water to run the jetboat. That’s fine, it should be easy to cross the river in that case.

WLG-NSN

An excellent opportunity to add to the walked-to-airports list! I’d meant to walk to NSN last July, but we actually only flew into that airport after the Heaphy; our flight to the start of the track was replaced by a van ride. Here’s my chance!

2020 Retrospective part 1: travel

I was writing a 2020 retrospective but it was getting too long so I split it up. Here’s a retrospective on the travel that I’ve been privileged to be able to do. Other parts of the retrospective to come. I should say up front that I strongly dis-recommend travel anywhere there is a pandemic. The safest thing to do is to limit contact with other people. Travel is not that. Definitely don’t go to St.

New Zealand Restaurants

I consolidated the list of restaurants we liked in New Zealand from my monthly summaries so far. Considering how few days we spent in Christchurch there are a surprisingly large number of restaurants from there. In general we’ve been doing a lot of cooking at home. Wellington Upesh Kitchen: Our favourite Kelburn take-out place, Malaysian and South Indian Harbourside Market: Sunday market with food trucks Best Ugly Bagels: Montreal-style bagels