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!