New Years Day

We have arrived on the West Coast, and on New Year's Day we took a peek at the Fox Glacier. Against all predictions the sky was clear and so we we left the hotel at 8 AM (glad we had not partied till midnight the night before). We walked to the bottom of the left side of the glacier, then went to the other side (there is a river running out of the ice) where we got our best view after a pretty steep trek. (See above- you can barely make out Mt Cook in the background.) We had to ford a couple streams to get to this outlook point: the worse was 5 minutes before we reached the view at the end of the hour hike. It was touch and go whether we actually crossed, but we did it - an adventure!


On the way we got a peek at the full extent of this glacier. It is unusual in that it flows below tree line! In this one you cannot see Mt Cook because of the clouds. Hard to show the full scale in a photo.


Happy New Year to you all - it's old hat to us, been 2010 here for 17 hours. . . .We were just watching the live fireworks in Paris. :-D

Highlights of the last 10 days

In Dunedin, we went on a fantastic nature trip with Chris from Back to Nature Tours. Bill and Jackie recommended him, and we really enjoyed this trip. He drove us around the peninsula, where we saw many many water birds, and up to the Albatross Center, where we got a good look at a large white albatross. No photo, though: we were looking into the sun, so they didn't work out.
Then we climbed down a huge sand dune to a beach where yellow eyed penguins nest. Here we are part way down, where there was still a path!

These crazy birds nest at the top of the dunes, and, as you know, cannot fly, so they hop all the way up. And believe me, it is a lot of work, because I had to do it too. So here is a photo of part of the dune (I didn't get the top!) with the penguin on his way up, and a blown-up version, so you can actually see the bird. In the first photo he is pretty much in the center: that white spot.




And here is Marcia struggling back up slippery dune.


Christmas and Milford Sound:

We arrived in Manapouri at the Captains Lookout, overlooking Lake Manapouri. Spectacular!

On Christmas morning we set off for Milford Sound, a 2-hour drive over a high pass. Rain and fog greeted us, but the cruise on the sound was still very nice.

And lots of bottlenose dolphins in front of the bow on the way back:

Back at the B&B Marcia prepared our favorite summer dish for Christmas dinner: red-white and green (tomato-basil-camembert pasta)


On "Boxing Day" it rained all day, so we stayed put at our very comfy Captains Lookout, I was reading from a selection of Dutch books - Harry Mulisch: a surprising treat left by some visitors from the Netherlands.

Queenstown:

We drove to Queenstown on December 27. On the way, the weather turned sunny and warm again. In the afternoon we ascended Bobs Peak by gondola, spent a wonderful sunny afternoon admiring the view, gawking at the tourists, watching the luge riders, briefly hiking, and watching the para-gliders take off with their "payloads." Who knows how much those rides cost - but it was fascinating enough to watch from the solid ground!



The next day we also had sun, and spent a wonderful time on a Central Otago wine tour. We are learning a lot about NZ wines which we had never heard of - lots delicious!

Apologies to those of you who are on our list. We finally figured out how to upload smaller photos, so are editing the earlier posts to make more room on the blog - hope you are tolerant of repeated notices!

We got behind while we were traveling - between being busy and tired and too "frugal" to pay for internet :-D . . . .

So maybe just some "catch-up" photos?

This is the view across Lake Taupo, where Anton swam - not too much colder than Mazatlan. We sat on the bank with a glass of wine and watched the local Wed night regata.

Whale watching

Friday, December 18

Up early for the whale watching: it was a beautiful morning! I wore my long underwear, and then barely needed a sweater. Sea was calm while we were over the shelf, then, as soon as we hit deep water, we were in large round waves – not rough, but lots of rolling! We rode the catamaran out only a few miles – amazingly close to shore. Along the way we saw quite a few albatross along with lots of other birds. I actually got a photo of an albatross – though not of the really large variety, though we saw those, too.

The crew had a “sighter” on top, looking for “blows,” and stopped a couple of times to put down a microphone to listen for the sonar clicks of the whales – but in the end it was a passenger who made the first sighting of the spout. We pulled up next to a sperm whale who was floating on the top of the water, re-oxygenating himself before diving deep again to feed. Mostly only his back was out of the water, with his nose coming up every couple of minutes to blow. On a sperm whale, his tail hangs down in this rest position, and the blow hole is right at the top front of the nose. In retrospect, I’m not sure just where he was taking in the air - seemed to be mostly pretty much underwater, with only the middle 1/3 peeking above. Pretty cool even what we could see. We watched until he dove – tail in the air, then motored over to where we could see another blowing. Apparently it is somewhat unusual for more than one to be at the surface at one time, but there were 3 in our area. We got a really good look at two of them!

MONDAY DECEMBER 7, 2009

After a leisurely breakfast Sarath, Linda and the two of us drove to a garden specializing in daylilies. The lilies originally came from the US via Australia, but they had been interbred to create new varieties. Dozens of them.

We then drove on to the tip of Waihi Beach for a walk around the Bowentown Domain. Got to try out our new high-tech walking sticks. They really work and take a lot of pressure off the knees,

especially going down. We climbed to the top of the hill we had beautiful views of the Bay of Plenty and Tauranga Harbour.
Then to Katikati for lunch. We learned the Kiwi word for cooler: a "chilly bin", and went out and bought one. Then filled it up with New Zealand Sauvignon Blanc and yoghurt.
After a short walk in the Quarry Garden near Te Puna we returned "home" and put our feet up.

Last night Linda and Sarath cooked a Sri Lankan banquette - really wonderful! Wish I'd thought of taking a photo!

Got a good photo of the pohutukawa yesterday, while walking around the mountain. Linda says that they are called Christmas trees here, because they bloom in December. You can see why I talk about them so much!

We continued on to Serendipity - the B&B we are staying in for a couple of get acclimated days. Stephanie hooked us up with a childhood friend of hers, who now runs this B&B. Linda has been very helpful with tips and ideas for our trip, and with some marvelous hospitality as well. And just see the views from our room!



Sunday we woke up to sunshine again, and after a somewhat lazy morning, we headed off to Mt. Maunganui, where we walked around the base. A lovely path, about 3 km with ocean and bay views, and lots of blooming pohutukawa trees shading the way. These are the red blooming trees I mentioned yesterday. They are so unusual the way they love to be practically on the beach - you see few of them inland. After that jaunt, we had lunch in a beach side cafe, then walked along the beach for a while - didn't make a dent in the distance - it went on as far as we could see!

Our second day in Auckland was wet and wetter - we hopped on the link bus and made our way through the rain to the War Memorial Museum and the Maori galleries. Pretty amazing carvings and a huge canoe - I tried to take a photo from one end with Anton standing at the other. Even with my fabulous new camera you cannot even see that there is a person down there at the end!

The photo is of Anton's favorite piece - a water scoop for a canoe!

We woke up yesterday to sun!!!! Had our car dropped off at the hotel and set off on our driving-in-the-left-lane adventure. . . .We both decided that it was lucky that it was Saturday (notice that we are on a different day here! :-) because wouldn't have wanted to deal with more traffic than there was. Went smoothly, however, except for a continuing problem with hitting the windshield wipers instead of the turn signal. I suppose that by the time we get home we will expect the turn signal to be on the left, and go through the same comedy all over again!

We headed to the Coromandel Peninsula where we drove up the west coast for a ways - incredible road winding along the bay, some spots straight down to the water, some spots with a rock or two on the water side with a tree clinging to it, some with trees on both sides forming a tunnel of color. The trees were blooming with red flowers - I have no idea what they are, but beautiful! Out on the rocks on the water were flocks of cormorants - grayish, instead of black. As we drove back they were still there, sitting on the same high, pointed rocks with their bills pointed to the sky, even though with the tide out the entire area was rocks.

We had planned to take a small road over the mountains to the east side of the peninsula, but the heavy rains had washed out the narrow road, so we had to go back the way we came. Went up far enough to visit Rapaura Watergardens, however. Our first foray into "natural" NZ landscape, so we were impressed. All the ferns, and lichen - though, oddly, we didn't see any mushrooms. Must be the wrong time of the year.

Our trip went smoothly - we even managed to sleep on the way so, though stiff and sore, managed to make it through most of the first day in Auckland. Rained off and on, but we walked quite a lot, and took a tour of Devenport across the bay, so that we could view the city from above and away.

For dinner we stopped into a Belgian pub and dined on (you guessed it!) mussels! I want to share a photo, if I can figure out how to do it, of these beauties.