Saying our Goodbyes

After Nelson, we  had just a few days to divest ourselves of our belongings and say our goodbyes to the good friends we'd made in our eight months in New Zealand.   We walked around the harbor, had a last coffee or two and said farewells to neighbors and friends. The flight was predictably long and nightmarish, particularly the ten-hour layover in LA.  We missed our last connection in Philadelphia, and by the time we arrived in Greensboro, we figured we'd been up 36 hours.  Our friend Paul picked us up and delivered us, a bit bleary, at our house on Eagle Nest Ct.  Claire had made strawberry pie, and the animals seemed happy to see us.  Spring in NC is amazingly beautiful, as always.

Since then, we've been working to get back to some sort of normal.  Reconnecting with real life again.  Here's a picture of the homestead and one of John and Fenno, getting started on the weeding.

I keep feeling like I should be summing things up somehow, but I'm not sure I have the perspective to do that yet.  Let's just say that 8 months in New Zealand was a wonderful adventure.  I hope you've enjoyed hearing about it.  Thank you for reading along.

Glaciers, the West Coast, and Nelson

From Queenstown, we set out for the glaciers (in NZ they say "glassy-urs," and I would too if I could get away with it), Fox and Franz Josef.  Because actually hiking on glaciers involves walking on ice and scary words like crevasse (for leaping over) and crampons (which sounds too much like a combination of cramps and tampons), we had decided we wanted to get close but not too close.  Fortunately, we were able to do just that.  We'd read about a forest walk for glacier-viewing, and we did that, but the glaciers were still pretty far away.  Then we turned down another road, which led to a rocky riverbed with a carefully demarcated path leading right to the edge of Fox Glacier.  Along the trail, there were multiple signs warning against stopping or going beyond the barriers with cautionary tales of tourists who'd done those things and not lived to tell the tale.  So this is a picture of me with the cut-out metal ranger set up as a warning.  The other glacier picture doesn't really give you the scale or quite convey the sense of mystery that comes with seeing the blue, blue ice and the markers showing how far the glacier has traveled since 1750  up to the present.  I'm really glad we got to see one before they are all gone due to climate change, which everybody we've met in NZ sees as a major threat.  With the concern for the environment and especially the need to control pests who threaten the native bird population, there seems to be a general sense of urgency about protecting the beauty that is here.

And speaking of birds:  we stayed at the Glacier View motel, a modest little 1950's sort of place within sight of Franz Josef.  It was pretty quiet out there until night-time when the sounds we heard made us wonder about the kea, the NZ parrots who can apparently strip a car of all of its rubber fittings and shiny bits within an hour.  Fortunately, when we woke, the rented Nissan was still intact.

We drove to Hokitika for a little shopping, then up the West Coast through spectacular scenery, up through Haast and the Buller River Valley and nikau (literally "no coconut") palms up to Pancake Rocks, made of layers and layers of limestone that stretch out into and get bashed over and over by the sea.  At high tide, there are blowholes with sea spraying through them. Here's a picture of the rocks.  We didn't get a picture of the weka ( brown hen- like bird who reportedly steals from campers; there's an exhibit in Te Papa showing one running off with a silver spoon) that John saw while I was in the shop buying postcards.

Looking over our shoulders at a vivid sunset, we finally made our way into Nelson.  Nelson is known as a sunny haven in this rainy country, and it is famous for beautiful art deco buildings and chi-chi shops.  For you Carolinians, it's sort of the Asheville of NZ.  It is also known for the fine wines of the Marlborough District.  Some of the best food we've had has been at these wineries, where you can eat tapas out under the trees.

In Nelson, we stayed at a B&B called Warwick House, though locals call it "the Castle" pictured here.  It is the oldest home in Nelson and has been restored by the Ferriers, he the son of a German baroness and she a famous kayaker.  I will not include the picture of our copper toilet tank, though I did take one.  We rambled around the little shops, including Jens Hansen, the jeweler who makes beautiful chunky rings and is probably most famous for fashioning "the one true ring" of the Lord of the Rings movies. We also visited the botanic garden which had some outstanding heritage trees, some museums and the cathedral on the hill.

The second day we drove out past the many orchards of the South Island's "fruit basket", past signs about apples and pears, apricots and plums, to the little village of Mapua.  There we took a ride on the small ferry known as "the flat-bottomed fairy" bedecked with tiny white lights out to Rabbit Island.  There is a spoonbill colony out there, but we didn't see them, though we did see numerous gulls and oyster-catchers, some fantails and a couple of ruddy turnstones.  Afterwards, we visited the craft galleries and saw some lovely and unique items.  We had dinner on the water with the view above, a lovely day all in all.

On the last morning in Nelson, we got up early and made our way to the Matai Valley bush walk trail to hike up a spot billed as 'the centre of New Zealand."  This last picture is a view from the top.

We had planned to go to WOW, the World of Wearable Art museum but found we were short on time.  New Zealand's roads being what they are (winding two lanes pretty much constantly under construction), we had just enough time to get to Picton to catch the ferry home.  There were some serious winds, but our skipper took a route that smoothed the way as much as possible.  We spent most of the trip talking with some farmers who sat at our table.  They were pretty quintessential Kiwis, down-to-earth and practical but interested in everything and in teasing us about all things American.

Even then, our adventures were not quite over.  John had turned in his car, so we took a shuttle towards home.  As it turned out, it was equipped with shag carpet, Christmas lights, and a karaoke machine, and the driver required that all passengers sing along to the 70's mix, accompanied by the beat of his sub-woofers.  No worries though.  We got our revenge when he had to back the van back down our monstrous hill.

Queenstown and Milford Sound

From Dunedin we drove to Queenstown, one of NZ's top vacation spots, and it was just as beautiful as everyone said it would be.  We stayed at a place right on the glacial lake, with mountains all around.  Quite amazingly lovely in the sunshine.  We rode the gondola up to the top of the mountain, and here is the view of the city from inside.  We decided to forego the bungee-jumping, the parasail and the luge but watched as others took the plunge.  Down below, the steamship Earnslaw ferried folks back and forth across the lake.

We took a walk through town with its many tourist shops and then walked around the edge of the lake.  Had dinner at the Coronation Boat House right on the shore and watched the paragliders coming in for the evening.  Here's a picture of one.  They were aiming to land on their feet on the shore or on a small dock just a little ways out.  People would cheer if they made it and groan if they made a big splash and required a pick-up from the rescue boat. All of this with the sun going down over the water.  Quite entertaining.

The second day was a long one.  We took a a coach with a glass top four hours to Milford Sound for a day cruise, then four hours back.  Milford Sound is in Fiordland, and we learned that a fiord is a bay carved out by glaciers.  We traveled through some breathtaking mountain scenery, past clear mountain streams you could drink from untreated.  We saw where rock avalanches and tree avalanches had occurred and squinted at the glacial ice and snow on the mountains.  Dean, our driver, said everyone should see Milford Sound at least three times:  once in the sun (as we did), once in the rain (which is usual; it's a rain forest where it rains 220 days and over 100 inches per year) and once in the snow.  In this part of New Zealand, the alpine environment gives way directly to the rain forest, also true in parts of S. America.  History lesson:  in prehistoric times, there was a super-continent, known as Gondwana-land, which broke apart into most of the land masses of the southern hemisphere, including Australia, NZ, South Africa, South America, and Antarctica; so a number of these places share commonalities.

When we arrived in Milford Sound, we boarded the Milford Monarch in sun and really enjoyed the cruise.  Apparently, when it rains, there are more waterfalls, but we didn't feel we had missed too much. Here are two pictures:  one with tourists, one without.

On the way back, we watched a movie starring Anthony Hopkins, which was the story of Burt Munro, a Kiwi who'd set a speed record on his Indian motorcycle at a pretty advanced age.  I looked over to see if John was contemplating setting a new record for the luge the next day, but, after twelve hours of travel, we were mostly just ready for sleep.

Dunedin and Otago

We've been traveling, and internet has been spotty, so if you've been waiting for us to account for ourselves, here goes.  I was looking at pictures, trying to decide what to post, and realized that we'd had too much fun to cram everything into one entry, so I'll try to break it up a little in case your attention spans are as short as mine.

A week ago Tuesday we flew to Dunedin, near the bottom of the South Island, or "the mainland," as some of the locals call it.  The South Island has fewer people, but it is home to some of the most spectacular scenery on the planet.  Settlers likely felt somewhat at home in the climate and quickly worked towards making it into a sort of mini-Scotland by importing sheep and deer and initiating farming and industry that made it seem even more like home.  Teddy Roosevelt decided the Kiwis needed elk as well and gifted them with the wapiti.  Now there is even a hybrid of elk and deer on grassy slopes and in the forest.  I still regret my failure to take a picture of John with the huge statue of Robert Burns, but someone was filming there at the time.

  Dunedin's original name was New Edinburgh, and its current name is that, translated from the original Celtic.  It was home to the first university in NZ, and our friend Mary's father was dean of the medical school there.  It still feels very much like a university town.  We had a somewhat charming accommodation, close to the Octagon of the central business district, with a lovely courtyard with fountains and lots of flowers.  Unfortunately, there also seemed to be a tap dance convention next door, stocked with early risers, who clattered about at 5 a.m.

We ventured downtown, resisting the delicious smells wafting out of Cadbury World, and made our way towards the Dunedin Public Art Gallery.  It included some interesting art, but the building itself was also lovely in an art deco sort of way.  Afterwards, we visited the botanic gardens, which seemed very manicured, like an English formal garden.  Walked by the water in the sun and admired the big trees and the beds of flowers, more imports than those that flourish in the native bush.  Also a highlight:  an aviary that contained many species of parrots with bright colors and engaging ways.  They seemed to enjoy interacting with humans, and we certainly enjoyed interacting with them.

The next day we began at the Museum of Otago.  The two outstanding features were memorabilia of Sir Edmund Hillary (photos, the cup with his name on it he'd used at the top of Everest, family history, a letter he'd written saying he thought of himself as an "ordinary person") and a wonderful butterfly exhibit.  We'd gotten there just at the time they released the newly- hatched butterflies into the "rain forest" aviary, so we got to help.  There were bright blue morphios, many kinds and colors of swallowtails, a brown moth with tangerine and orchid spots, black and green "jades," and many more. Also two geckos, too lazy to eat butterflies, quail, tarantulas, turtles and some tiny finches. We were invited to put our fingers near the new butterflies' legs, to let them climb on, and then to release them into the air.  Apparently, they like sweat as well as fruit and flower nectar.  One of them stayed on my chin for quite some time.

In the golden afternoon light, we made our way onto the Otago peninsula.  It is rocky and winding, even more so than the Shelly Bay Rd., for those of you who've visited us here in Wellington.  The views were breathtaking.  Sun and boats and blue, blue water.  At the end of the peninsula, we found ourselves at the Royal Albatross Reserve.  The wind had turned cold, and we bundled up a little for the walk out to the edge of the rocky cliffs.  These are magnificent birds, with a wingspan over 10 ft. After visiting the center, we would have loved to see the huge, fuzzy chicks, but we didn't have time for the next tour before our date with the penguins (!).

So, it was back up the curvy roads towards Penguin Place.  We were a few minutes early, so we had time to view the red monarch butterflies and admire the fuchsia and agapanthus on the hillside.  John initiated a relationship with Simba, the long-haired cat, and I got in a little dog time with the 4 springer spaniels while we waited for Rhonda, our guide, and our two other companions to arrive for the tour.  Yellow-eyed penguins (hoihoi) are the second-rarest on earth, with only 1,000 in the world.  At the reserve, they're trying to help them make a comeback by creating a nesting habitat on the coastline, protected on its outskirts by a working farm. First, we visited the penguin hospital, where they had one chick, an adolescent too underweight to molt, and two others.  Then we boarded a shaky school bus and wove towards the nesting grounds.  Tiptoeing along the paths, we followed Rhonda, who shushed us and motioned us to freeze as they approached:  two males, Todd and Flax.  They came quite close.  Here, the limits of our camera and photography skills become clear, but it was really something to see them.

From there, we moved down towards the water and took some pictures of a seal family while scanning the water for penguins who might be coming in the evening after fishing all day.  No go.  So we worked our way back uphill to the cleverly disguised trenches to stealthily view the two mating pairs still "at home" for molting.  Doug and Donna were pretty quiet, but Jim and Jess obliged us by grooming one another and "kissing" in that way you see in nature programs on TV.  Rhonda shared that they'd been together for 9 years, then split up for 3 after losing a chick, then reunited.

Inspired by penguin love, it was time for us to move on.