diggin' our digs

We have an apartment/flat rented just a couple kilometers from the city center of Nelson. Nelson is a city surrounded by hills and looking out to the Tasman Sea. Our place is small but lovely and has everything we need (except a phone). In any event, it is half way up one of the hills with a beautiful vista over the town and out to sea. The recent rainfalls have caused horrendous damage to many of the hillside homes. Landslides, or slips as the kiwis call them, have made many, many homes uninhabitable. As I mentioned in a previous post, they received nearly triple their previous December rainfall record and nearly half their normal annual rainfall total during December. This absoulutely wreaked havoc with the hills that surround this area. Many roads were closed with dirt and debris spilling across them. Many homes were ruined. Fortunately our location is okay for now. More rain is predicted for tomorrow so I think everyone has their collective fingers crossed. New Zealand seems to have had more than their share of natural disasters with the Christchurch earthquakes and now the slips and flooding. There is discussion that the country won't be able to afford to rebuild everything. This is really a small country and they cannot possibly have the resources that a larger nation might have.

I've attached a few photos of our place. I tried to upload a video but it simply takes too long.