Twizel finally comes up with a salmon 🐟

At Long Last...Aint that a Beauty 😍

Salmon Farming in the Tekapo Canal.

Lake Pukaki lookling  Good

First lot of fish to be smoked

"Now this is very important - listen carefully!" with Alan

Bill & Alan looking for treasure around the 
old homestead of Tekapo Station on Lake Tekapo

Inside Riverside Market

An old bridge with old Friends 😃 on the Avon

The Christchurch Town Hall is open once again
after a huge rebuild and restoration project.

The poor Cathedral is still waiting.........

Ralph and I just chilling as the enormity
of being little people really hits home. 😄

Bill building a new house
pursuant to all consents blah  blah 🏡

Mid October we headed to Twizel to try and catch a salmon or two in the Canals. Bill's brother Alan had been in touch from Nelson and decided to come and join us for a few days. Alan was always the Tyler Family hunter and gatherer, so always keen on any opportunity to fish.He packed up his small tent and lots of food, just in case we didn't catch anything, in the back of his car and headed down.

We decided it was best for us all to stay at the Twizel Holiday Camp where Bill & I worked 5 years ago when we first went on the road. The Owners still own the camp but have now leased it out with keen new people motivated to improving the place.

The camp is in a good location catching tourists as they travel up from Christchurch or back through from Queenstown - it's certainly a busy wee camp. We are fortunate that the NZMCA have done a deal with a lot of small camps around the country where for $20/night for 2 people, we can park up and use all the facilities in the off peak period. It was good to see a few fellow motor homers all taking advantage and parking up for a few days catching up on washing / shopping/ meals out in Twizel. Hopefully this has been a bonus to the Camps too when visitor numbers were usually pretty low, particularly over the winter season.

Over the next four days the Boys headed out morning and afternoon trying to catch something! Anything!! Well on day 3 Alan managed to catch a small trout just over the size limit, nothing to skite about. But hey! At least he caught a fish

Unfortunately the neighbour returned with a massive Trout - never seen one sooooooo huge! And I think that put a bit of fire under Bill and Alan - as they went out the next day and Bill caught the biggest fish he has caught in his life! What a beautiful salmon it was too. We think about 5 kilos, tho its not about the size😊 That evening Bill did several  smoke ups on the BBQ. Some into the freezer, some fresh and Alan took a couple of feeds home too. 

So although not a great fishing outcome in terms of numbers -  very tasty and plenty to eat with the one fish!

We had to head back to Christchurch for the weekend as Nick was flying in from Nelson after a wedding, so we had our last night with Alan in a rather remote Doc camp in between Fairlie and Geraldine. A bit of a shame it was our only wet night with Alan too. So after an early breakfast (well for us, not so much Alan who is normally at work by 5.30am!) he headed off back to Nelson and we returned to Christchurch to catch up with Helen & Ralph for a few days before picking up Nick.

As the weather was good, we headed into Christchurch central to see the new food market (Riverside Market) that I had read about recently. Great to see so much life returning to this damaged city. The Avon is such a gem, and the new developments are making the most of this where they have access to it. So we had a very pleasant wander around the city central seeing all the other rebuild going on before heading back to the Market for lunch. It had certainly got busy as the morning moved on, into the afternoon. Lovely to see so many families out enjoying the day.