This is the first post (really?) of my new blog about New Zealand and what I do in my life here. Let me start off by telling you about myself. I am a 13 year old guy, currently in year 9 at Macleans College (High school in american terms), I moved to NZ about a year ago from America/USA after living there for 6 years. Before that, i lived 6 years in Russia. Living here vs living in America has its pros and cons. Here in New Zealand the neighborhood is a lot better and the beach is literally a block away. The prices here are ridiculous compared to America's prices. For example a non color 2G phone that costs 5$ in america costs anywhere from 35$ to 60$. That's somewhere close to 10 times the price! But New Zealanders have endless supplies of sheep, and an unnecessary amount of road cones :). Here is the Peninsula I live on:
As you can see from the image, there are plenty of boats anchored near the beach, and that is the beach i go swimming everyday in the summer. The boats are not luxurious as if they were, they would be locked up somewhere on a dock, but some of the people who live on the waterfront homes are rich and I have sometimes seen Aston Martins, Dodge Vipers (Luxury Cars), and once I even saw a Lamborghini on these streets near the beach. Up to the north of the peninsula (left hand side in the picture) is a place called Musick Point, with a few houses, a golf course, a radio station (which may be retired), and cliffs on all sides leading down to the sea. During low tide you can walk to the cliffs on foot from the beach, but during high tide you have to go up the road to get to the cliffs. Here is a picture of the west side of Musick Point.
This picture is not mine as i have never been to Musick Point with a camera, but it displays the cliffs quite nicely during high tide. You can actually climb up the less steep cliff on the left of the tree in the center of the image, because there is a ledge there that can take you all the way to the top, but it is quite thin (about 1-2 feet across). The cliffs are made of a very crumbly sedimentary stone that can break off in thin segments, and if you are trying to go up with rock climbing equipment you wont even die, because you wont get past the first hand hold without it crumbling. The only good holds on these cliffs are ledges with living rooted plants in them, as I learned the hard way. 3 days ago i was climbing down from the top to a nice ledge unaccessible from the bottom, when the dead bush i was holding onto got rooted up from the ground and I fell down the cliff. I was very lucky because i landed on a more flat, big section of the ledge with some plants and i didn't fall any further, but still that experience was the scariest in my life, and i got plenty of scratches including one on my cheekbone which still burns time to time.
You may be thinking "why is this kid so stupid he goes climbing on a cliff with no safety gear and no people around." Well I love to climb things, when i was little i always climbed trees and got to places other kids couldn't go. I went rock climbing today in a small indoor place, with some traditional rock climbing walls, and some fancy colored ones. One wall required you to use two sticks that you poked into holes in the wall to climb further. Another wall had holds that were shaped like the bottom of shoes, and were color coded for levels of difficulty,but I got through using the hardest ones with not too much trouble. Hehe this is the end of my first post i will try to post in a day or two with more stuff and pictures (hopefully my own).
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