It has been a while since our last post, we had some bad weather that meant we did not have a lot to write about or show you, followed by three days that were beautiful, which we did our best to take advantage of by being outside at all times :->. The rain has started up again though, so we are spending a morning catching up on the blog while waiting to find out if they open up the road to Milford Sound (closed yesterday and this morning due to avalanche danger).

A bit over a week ago we were in the Marlborough region, known for its wines. Here is a shot of one of the wineries that we visited, it was quite windy, but rather nice overall, and we had a great lunch at one of the wineries.

From there we headed over to the coast at Kaikoura. The view from our hotel room looked out over a bay to the mountains. California has lots of the same types of terrain as New Zealand, in fact the drive to Kaikoura could have been over on the coast in Northern California. As you can see here though it at times looks like someone took the Sierra Nevada mountain range and shoved it over to the coast.

Kaikoura also had a nice winery that had me wandering around and taking pictures of nearby farm animals and grape vines while Lisa did a tasting. Still can't get used to the color of the water, so many great shades of blue, green, and everything in between...

We tried to do a boat trip to swim with dolphins while we were in Kaikoura, but the wind was too strong for us to go out in the boat. It was a large boat and they must have had 40 people waiting, so we figured it must have been a pretty bad forecast for them to cancel the trip and give everyone their money back... We left Kaikoura and headed for Arthur's Pass, the highest point on a drive across the south island. During the drive we had the most wind that either of us had ever felt while driving. It turns out that a truck had blown over in 100km/hr plus winds near Kaikoura. I guess it might not have been fun out on the water.

The shot below is on the trip to Arthur's Pass. More photogenic sheep and mountains. :)

There is an amazing collection of rock outcroppings just before you get to Arthur's Pass. We were pretty sure we recognized some of the landscape from the movies of "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" and "The Lord of the Rings". I'm quite afraid of heights, so although it looks like I'm right near the edge of a cliff I can report that it was in fact quite safe (as was Lisa in the second shot). Definitely not as many warning signs as you would get in the US though.


On the way from the rocks to Arthur's Pass we came across the very beautiful Lake Pearson. Lake Hamre was nowhere to be found (might need to go to Norway).

In Arthur's Pass it was raining and clouds were down low enough that we could not appreciate the scenery, so after checking into our rented hiker's cabin we turned around and headed back the way we had come for half an hour or so to where we had last seen some blue sky. On our way back we were rewarded with a rainbow.

We did a pair of hikes, the first one through dense beech forest, and the second climbing an open hill for a nice view of the surrounding areas. You can see the road where we started to the left of Lisa's cap.
At the very top there were great views in all directions, and we came across a sheep that had not made it. (Not sure how it died, as far as I know there are no predators on the island that are large enough to take on a sheep, so possibly just old age.)

A road shot heading back towards Arthur's Pass...

In Arthur's Pass we picked up some supplies for dinner and were greeted outside by a Kea bird, the world's only alpine parrot. There are signs all over about not feeding them, but based on his behavior I'd say not everyone follows those requests. In some areas they have become quite the pests, biting at any part of the car that they can get their beak around.

From Arthur's Pass we finished the drive over to the west coast of the south island. It was raining and cloudy for nearly all of the trip, so we took in a local museum that had displays about the local history of gold and coal mining. In the evening we made it down to Fox Glacier where we were staying in the Mountain View B&B, and it definitely lived up to its name. It only cleared for about half an hour in the evening, but it was enough to get a nice shot over their pond.

The next morning we went over to Fox Glacier, but decided to just do a couple of shorter hikes rather than a long one onto the glacier (you had to be guided if you wanted to go onto the glacier). Here we are posing in front of the glacier which is one of those things that it is tough to get a picture of that captures just how huge it appears in person.

After the morning at the glacier we headed over to the beach which had an old mining site and a "Miner's Tunnel". I was pretty excited about the tunnel, since it appeared that you had free access to it and I figured we could wander around the front edge and look at all the old mining equipment. In fact we should have taken the name literally, it was a tunnel that had been carved not to do any mining, but to let miners get through a hill over by the coast. So it was a drippy 30 foot tunnel with a view of the coast from the other end. The highlight wound up being the old mining equipment that we had passed a mile or two before, which is seen below...

The next day we headed over to Franz Joseph glacier, which was just a bit north of Fox. Did another couple of day hikes out to the glacier, but the weather did not tempt us into heading out onto the ice.


It was still cloudy when we headed to bed that night, but cleared up during the night. I woke up at 2am or so (not sure why) and looked outside. By the light of the full moon I could clearly see the mountains, so I decided that I should head back out to the lake and take a couple of pictures. The shot below is at 2am, lit only by the moon.

The next morning it was clouding up again as we headed further south and back across the mountains to Wanaka and Queenstown. But it did clear up for a few days while we were there, so we'll post those photos soon!

Down to Wellington, then across to the South Island

Hello everyone! How are you? We are still doing well, though continuing to hope for a sudden switch to spring weather here. We seem to be traveling south faster than spring is coming so far... Good thing Lisa brought her hat & scarf! Matt, of course, is still in shorts most days. :)

Anyway, we're now in Blenheim, the main city in Malborough, one of New Zealand's main wine-making areas. Matt's watching the rugby World Cup championship game and I'm half paying attention while I give you the update. England's holding up against South Africa pretty well so far.

So, we left you in Rotorua. From there we drove down to Wellington, making a few stops along the way. One was at a waterfall that was billed in the tour book as "the Niagara of New Zealand." Given that New Zealand is only about as big as California, I guess that accounts for the relative disparity in size of this "Niagara." :)

Then we made our way down to Tongariro National Park, home of three volcanoes which had been relatively dormant until one of them had a small eruption on September 25th (we found that out when we got there). Also, Mt. Tongariro was apparently used as Mt. Doom in Lord of the Rings. Unfortunately, the clouds started moving in, so we didn't get a view of any of the mountains. We did take a hike out to a waterfall. Here's Lisa standing above the waterfall.

Then a self-portrait of both of us in front of the falls.

We didn't have time to do much in Wellington (have to leave something for the next trip!), but we did go to their shiny new national museum, Te Papa. Then we caught the Interislander ferry to the South Island. Turns out it's a giant ferry and carries a bunch of cargo as well. Here you can see trucks and a tourist bus being loaded on the middle level and the lower level has tracks going to it so they can load on containers. The ride over was pretty nice. They even have a little movie theater & a cafe & bar.

We reached the top of the south island at Picton and then drove over to Nelson. Here's a view of the countryside during our drive.
We had booked 3 nights at a cottage up on a family's sheep & cattle farm that was still pretty close to the city. The cottage was nice & cosy after they got the bird's nest out of the chimney and we were able to light a fire. :) And we had sheep grazing right next to the cottage that would definitely watch you as you moved around.
The next morning we took a walk around the farm and enjoyed their great views.
We also visited the museum for the World of Wearable Art festival. It's a design competition that started in Nelson, but got so popular that it moved to Wellington a few years ago, but the museum remains in Nelson. They had a lot of the creations on display, but we couldn't take pictures. They did have a few out in another part of the museum that had a classic car collection where we could take pics. The dress, hat, scarf, & shoes below are made with Q-tips!

The next day we woke up to an actual blue sky! A great day for us to go do a day hike at Abel Tasman National Park. It's right along the coast and you can get a water taxi to the different parts of the trail. It was sunny, but there was still a chilly wind, so here's Lisa showing off the Hamre form of sunbathing. :P
The park has a lot of native New Zealand forest which includes a lot of ferns (apparently there are 80 different varieties in NZ).
There was also a swingbridge across a river that Lisa enjoyed & Matt got across as quickly as possible.
And here we are at the end of the trail!
Yesterday we left Nelson and drove to Blenheim via the Nelson Lakes National Park. When we got there, the view looked like this:
At one lake they had had so much rain recently that it was a bit flooded (look for the pier in the background).

But it did a clear a bit and Matt was able to get a lovely pier picture at another part of the lake.
Finally, we thought we'd leave you today with an homage to sheep. New Zealand is, of course, covered with sheep, but they've been a bit hard to capture on film since they're a bit skittish and since the weather hasn't been cooperating. But here are a few that we've liked. More to come, I'm sure!
See you in awhile!

North Island, New Zealand

Greetings again! We're back to report on our travels through the lovely north island of New Zealand.

Here's another shot of the islands of Tonga taken from our connector flight to the capital.

We then flew to Auckland and got in in the middle of the night. Auckland is the biggest city in New Zealand, but not the capital. People generally use it as a jumping-off point on the start of their trip as there's not too much of interest to do unless you want to do some sailing. We'd had enough time on the water lately, so we mostly used our time there to rest, relax, do some laundry, see a movie, etc.

One activity we decided to do was Kelly Tarlton's Antarctic Adventure. It sounded good when Lisa read about it, but we should have known by the cheesy shuttle that it wasn't going to be that great. :)

But they did have some penguins!
After Auckland we drove up to the Northland area of the island and stayed at the Bay of Islands. We visited the Treaty of Waitangi lands which is where the British government signed their first treaty with the Maori people.

We also went on a dolphin watching/swimming trip. We did find a large pod of bottlenose dolphins, but they had some juveniles with them so we couldn't swim. They were fun to watch though!

They also took us to the "Hole in the Rock" which was (just) large enough for our boat to pass through and turn around in.

We drove over to the west coast (it's pretty narrow up there) to visit a national preserve of kauri trees. There aren't many left because of logging, but now they're protected. The few old ones that remain are very impressive, but hard to capture in a picture (much like sequoias).

The next day we drove down to Rotorua. Along the way we stopped at Sheepworld which has a show on sheepherding and shearing. Here are the sheep being brought in by the "eye dog" who rounds them up without any barking or anything (they have another dog, the "huntaway" for that).
And Lisa got to feed some lambs. Aaah...
We also stopped in Hamilton at their lovely botanical gardens. They have several gardens designed to reflect different eras or landscapes. This was the Italian garden.

On our first day in Rotorua we went to a town nearby called MataMata which has the farm that they used for the set of Hobbiton for the Lord of the Rings movies (you know we had to go find something LOTR-related! :P ). The producers had looked all over the country, but loved this spot because it had a little lake with a big tree, just as described in the books. And it had enough land and rolling hills to block out any signs of modern civilization. Apparently the movie company meant to tear down all the hobbit holes after production, but there were weather delays. By the time they could get back to it, the farm was already getting requests for visits, so they asked the company if they could keep what remained of the sets.

So here we are at Hobbiton!


Looking out across towards the lake and party tree (for Bilbo's birthday).

Hugging the party tree at our tour guides insistence (he seemed a little disappointed that we weren't in costume or anything, I must say). Apparently there have been several proposals made under this tree now that they're doing tours.


Lisa holding some of the styrofoam rock used to make a bridge. Ah, movie magic!

Escaping out of the rain into Bag End.
After Hobbiton we drove back to Rotorua for some Zorbing for Lisa. Rotorua has a bunch of adventure activities such as bungie jumping and Zorbing. Going down in a giant plastic ball seemed the most fun and safe to Lisa. That day was pretty windy, so they were only doing the Hydro-Zorb where you also get a bunch of water put in with you. Here's a view of the track. You could go straight down or do a more zigzag route. Lisa went for the zigzag.

She tried to stay upright, but by the first turn was getting tossed around pretty well.
Soaking wet, but lots of fun!

The next day we went and explored the thermal parks for which Rotorua was originally famous. There are geothermal mudpools all over the city. We visited Te Whakarewarewatangaoteopetauaawahiao (which means "the gather together of the war party of Wahiao) which is still owned and run by the Maori tribe. Here are some good mud bubbles and sulphuric colors.
Also, they have a geyser that goes off about once per hour.

At the same park they had a Maori concert and two schools, one for weaving and one for carving, that take students from all over the country.

We are currently in Wellington, about to head to the South Island. We have a few more pictures of the North Island from a very rainy walk that we took, those will be up in the next post.