This weekend was our first major holiday in New Zealand: Easter and they really know how to celebrate a
long weekend holiday! But we couldn't just celebrate this weekend, we also had to move.
We reserved Saturday for moving into an actual house. That's right-no more living in a half a garage! We will not miss our landlord constantly working (and painting!) his crappy old cars in the other half of the garage. Of course moving has to have a hitch or two and for us in came in getting locked out our new place (after we moved everything in!), so after a little breaking and entering we could finally settle in-it took about an hour to break in but at least no one called the cops on us!
As far and Keith and I knew all the Easter festivities were going on Sunday, so we figured we wouldn't miss much moving on Saturday. While we were driving across town we saw what looked like a bigger version of the usual farmers market in downtown Alex. The market seemed like a perfect place to stop for lunch in between trips from the old place to the new one.
While we were driving around trying to find a parking place to grab a bite, we saw it! Oh my goodness we were SO unprepared! There lying in the grass were over 20,000 dead rabbits. It was part of the 19th annual
Great Easter Bunny Massacre Hunt. For pictures please click on this
link or
this one! And I didn't even have a spare camera in my purse! The bunnies were all shot in a 24 hour hunt by teams of hunters that each get a specific block of farm land to kill as many bunnies as possible. The goal is to eradicate rabbits and other pests on rural farming properties in the district. I was also really not prepared for the smell of over 24,000 bead bunnies, some dead for about 24 hours, it was so incredibly disgusting! We've seen lots of redneck things in our day (standing in line for the Ted Nugent concert watching amateur WWF wrestling at the Oregon State fair comes to mind) but I think this tradition kind of takes the cake!
For as gross as Saturday was, Sunday was delicious! We spent all day at the Clyde Food and Wine Festival. And did we eat and drink! The lovely wrap from my splint doesn't keep secrets very well, since it is stained with wine, strawberry, onions and french fry grease and more. Almost all the wineries were from the Alex/Clyde area and they do not have tasting rooms, so we really had to get busy and blaze through them, so quite honestly I can't say what was a favorite-I think they all were!
They had some pretty great live music. The day started with laid back jazz and ended (at 5 pm) with everyone dancing and rocking out to music from the 60's and 70's.(check out the old guy in the gray sweater-he was getting pretty frisky with the old ladies :)
Easter Monday we took a drive to Skippers, the remnants of Skippers Township, once the largest gold settlement on the Shotover River. All that's left are a few bits of and pieces hotels and an area with a refurbished schoolhouse and residence.
Driving along a road carved into the side of the canyon, it was hard not to imagine how hard getting there with horse drawn carriages and how absolutely isolating it would be to live there! But there was big news there in 1901 when the Skippers suspension bridge opened, at the time it was the most spectacular of its kind in New Zealand and you still drive across it!
Well there ya go, breaking and entering, massacring bunnies, and drinking all day-sounds like just about the best Easter weekend yet!
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