Nelson again, Dec 7-9

We left Kaikoura on Friday morning and drove north along the gorgeous east coast. There were some stretches of sandy or gravelly beach that were many many miles long, with occasional offshore rocks at small points, but mostly nothing but open sea, bright aqua. Seabirds galore, occasional seals. On the land side cliffs or steep hills, vegetation not looking nearly as windwhipped as on the west coast. Lots of silver poplar, lots of rata or pohu.......--the NZ christmas tree. Not a lot of ferns. After the road turned inland south of Blenheim, I could have sworn I was in California in summertime. Golden hills, isolated trees that looked from a distance like big valley oaks but were actually often either Monterey pine or Monterey cyprus, occasionally something else I couldn't identify. Vineyards, rounded golden hills, isolated trees, sunshine--the most "familiar" landscape I have seen. No sheep!

We didn't do any winery visiting or tasting, seemed a dumb idea on a warm afternoon with more driving to do. Did stop at Makana chocolate factory, but didn't care too much for what was on offer, too sweet to my taste (give me that 72% Valrhona!!). At Havelock we turned west and for the first time were retracing our previous route. John asked if I'd like to go around again, and I surely would, but that is not in the cards.

We found a place to stay in Nelson and took a long walk on the beach and along the seawall, had dinner and took a long walk back to the place we're staying. Shorts weather, first time since Wanaka three weeks ago. We reallly like the Nelson area--it's reminiscent of Santa Barbara in a way, hills backing the town, lots of tourists, fishing, attractive downtown area. We went to the well-known Nelson market Saturday morning--good crafts, lots of cooked food, lots of coffee, baked goods, and the first farmstand produce we've seen. The produce wasn't as varied and there weren't nearly as many vendors as the SB market, but it was a lovely market, and we spent several hours and bought some gifts and our first strawberries, raspberries, and cherries (probably our last, too). Talked to a lot of the craftspeople and farmers--everyone very friendly of course, happy to chat even if other people were waiting to buy something.

Fed ducks along the little river here in the afternoon, went to a Japanese garden that seems a bit unkempt, must be a lack of funds, and wandered on the beach again. Made dinner at the motel, and took one more beach walk. So many clam and mussel shells on the beach. Sunset around 9PM here further north.

Today is Sunday here, and it's our last day on the south island. We're driving to Picton and will take the ferry to Wellington early tomorrow morning, spend some time at the Te Papa museum. Tuesday is my birthday, we'll celebrate somehow! Feeling sad to be leaving the south island, certainly hope we will make it back one day. It is ungodly beautiful in many many places. This might be the last post until we get home (assuming we get home. If we don't please all know that we love you very much!)

Dolphins and Albatrosses

Here's one of some of the white white rocks on the beach here in Kaikoura.











These below are of a couple yellow-eyed penguins on the rocks at Curio Bay, and the bluffs at South Bay in Kaikoura with a couple of shags resting.








Thursday 6 December here (Weds in America) and after our dolphin swim day of warm sunshine and no wind it’s 14 degrees (57 F) and gray, with a cold wind from the south. Can’t even see the coastline across the bay where yesterday we could see the snow-capped mountains. The weather is so changeable. In five weeks we have had one period of settled sunny weather, three days long. Several periods of settled rain, however, including on the east coast of the South Island here, which is normally sunnier than most other places, at least that’s what they claim! I’ll try to get some of this stuff up on the blog today, take the laptop to an internet place in town. We have one week left in the country.

Dolphin swimming! I’m so glad we did it. The dusky dolphins here are playful and so acrobatic—we saw one do a series of five or six complete somersaults about 6 feet in the air, landing on his/her back after each one, then after about 3 seconds back in the air for another. Amazing. The dolphins are still pretty far out in the ocean this time of year—took us about 40 minutes to reach them, at 20 knots. The water was cooolllld but they supply great wetsuits, really thick ones, complete with hoods. Thirteen people swimming from the boat. There were hundreds and hundreds of dolphins. Once we were in the water they just swam all around us, jumping in the air, circling us in the water (they suggest trying to swim in a circle with the dolphins, but they are way too fast). The instruction is to be interesting, do funny things, to get the dolphins’ interest. Diving is supposed to really interest them, but it was impossible to get under the water with the wetsuit on. Constantly dolphins would swim up right under me or pass me by on one side or the other about three inches away, looking curiously at me. It was a pure delight. You are instructed not to try to touch them, to keep your hands at your sides—and to make funny noises, which really seemed to bring them closer. I sang to them (through my snorkel). The boat followed different pods and we got in the water for swims six different times, each time for 5-10 minutes. The last time I just stayed on the boat and watched, which was as amazing as being in the water with them. They were so playful, so fast, so graceful. We saw lots of babies, about two feet long. Adults are about 5 feet long, quite small. Some might have been 6 feet.

There were big swells, really big ones, and half the people on the boat got seasick, including John, who had taken some medication which didn’t seem to help. Lots of buckets going round. The crew were totally nonplussed, they are so used to it. When we were checking in they told us it was a moderate to severe seasickness day, because of the swell, but we decided to go for it anyway. John is glad he went, too, even with the sickness. It was a great afternoon. In summer I understand the dolphins move much closer to shore where the water is more sheltered (probably to get away from orca, their only predator aside from Japanese and Chilean fisherman), so seasickness is not as much an issue.

We also saw albatross flying for the first time from the boat. Oh my, what a gift that was. They look like giant gliders—such long wings in relation to their bodies. The longest wingspan of any sea bird—up to ten feet. We had visited the Royal Albatross colony/preserve on the Otago Peninsula near Dunedin, but the birds were on the nests there, and we didn’t get to see them fly. Yesterday we saw two kinds—the wandering albatross, biggest of them all, and another with a darker body—is it the sooty, I forget? (Got to learn those seabirds now.) Several times one followed the boat for many minutes, staying close to the water surface, almost touching it with its wings (the way pelicans do in California), and flying back and forth across the wake in a zig-zag that is characteristic of them. We learned at the preserve that they do it to use the energy generated by centrifugal force in one turn to give them speed into the next turn—sort of like skiing or rollerskating. They were reminiscent of sailboats tacking, though much faster! They fly for days at a time and flapping their long long wings very much would exhaust them. Gliding in this zig zag way they are able to conserve energy. I couldn’t take my eyes off them.

When the young royal albatross leaves the nest at about nine months of age, it doesn’t touch land again for about 4-5 years. Years! Our guide at the preserve said one young bird from there (all the birds there are banded) didn’t return for 8 years. And unless they are on their breeding grounds, albatross do not touch land. Years in the air and on the water. The young ones that come back after all those years can hardly stand up, their legs are so weak. That’s why albatrosses have that funny gait that led them to be called “goony birds” by the American sailors in WWII. All species of albatross mate for life. The oldest royal recorded at the preserve was 62 when she died--they called her “grandma”. She had a fertile egg at 56. That species doesn’t start to breed until they are 12 or older—they spend time with other “teenagers” hanging around during the breeding season for a bit, then go off to fly and eat for another year. They spend a lot of time checking out possible mates during those years. All the birds are solitary outside the breeding season, but they usually arrive back at their nesting site within hours of each other. And they always nest in the same colony they were born in, often trying to build their first nest right in the spot they were hatched (it’s the male who builds the nest, but the female has absolute veto and often rejects it and starts another one a few inches away). The colony on the Otago peninsula is the only place in the world where albatross breed on a mainland, and as a result they are studied and managed intensely. They don’t seem to mind. Since they have no predators, they are very easy for the naturalists to work with. They allow the staff to reach under them as they are sitting and pick up their eggs and weigh them, to weigh their new chicks, etc. The colony consists of about 150 breeding pairs—the first pair arrived in the 1930’s, and it wasn’t too long before the local people and the conservation establishment began to protect them from the introduced predators—ferrets and stoats and even rabbits, whose tunneling undermines the steep grassy areas where the birds nest. The rest of this species breeds in the Chatham Islands.

Most species of albatross are under threat, and the biggest threat to many is longline and trawl fishing. The lines are so long the birds don’t associate the boat with the bait they see flashing through the water, and when they dive for the bait they get hooked and dragged and drowned. There is a movement to change the way longlines are set to help prevent this (once the bait has sunk it’s not a danger, since albatross hunt by sight), with lots of strategies fisherman can use to minimize the risk. That would mean cooperation by many nations that fish the entire Pacific. It’s not something a lot of people seem to be aware of, but if something isn’t done quite soon, many species of this bird WILL be extinct within the near future, including the huge wandering albatross, which flies up to 25,000 miles every year of its long life. Coincidentally there is an essay by Gary Snyder (hero) in November’s Shambala Sun about writers and nature in which he talks about this albatross. There are some great photos of the bird. Lots of good stuff in that issue, as a matter of fact!

Random observations--
Something that no one mentioned to us before we came was how different it feels to be in a place where there are no large mammals except domestic animals and people. There’s a lack of wild mammals and reptiles in general--walking through a forest, no snakes, no lizards, no bear, coyote, bobcat, fox, raccoon, skunk, badger, beaver, squirrel. No turtles or tortoises. No gophers or moles. No antelope, elk, moose. If you see something dead on the road, it is usually a bird or a possum or a rabbit, possibly a stoat—except for the birds, all introduced animals, not natives. So many times I have seen something, a large shape, in a field, and immediately I’m reflexively on the lookout for some large mammal. Then I remember—oh no, not here. Or I’m walking in the rainforest, and it’s all wet and slithery, and snakes come to mind, watchfulness—but there are no snakes. In the forest, there is always birdsong, and that is pretty much it, except for the sound of wind or rain. No scrabbling of little feet in the underbrush (never have heard birds making scratching noises on the ground in the forest, though I understand there are some ground feeders), no insect sounds, no lizards darting. There are bees and wasps where there are flowers or sooty mold on the trees, but not the kinds of insect sounds that are so common in the northern hemisphere—cicadas or beetles or crickets or grasshoppers or different sorts of flies buzzing. (Saw my first grasshopper two days ago on our cliff walk here in Kaikoura.) There seem to be many fewer flying insects—or else the ones that are here are very quiet. Not many screens on windows except where there are sandflies or mosquitoes. It feels very alive in the forests, but in a different way than what I am used to. Lots more plant life of all kinds, much less animal life. Undoubtedly there are worms and other invertebrates helping to break down the dead forest stuff, but I haven’t seen them. My little guide has photos of some gnarly looking insects and arthropods, but I haven’t seen any of them. Flies and ants and moths, that’s about it. And spiders (nothing scary like in Oz).

Kaikoura, December 3-7

We’ve been in Kaikoura for two days now (it’s Dec 5, Weds here) and I’m going swimming with dolphins today! There was only one “swimming space” on the boat and John wasn’t too keen, so I’m doing it while he stands on deck and takes photos. It’s pretty expensive, we hadn’t planned on it, but the owner of the place we are staying here talked us into it, said it was not to be missed. We’ve never swum with dolphins anywhere else—like places where the water is a bit warmer, for instance. (Ohh, now we just got a call, another space opened up and John will be swimming, too.)


We’re in a self-contained cottage on top of a hill overlooking the town and the bay and the mountains beyond. This morning for the first time we could see the tops of the mountains, and they have snow on them still (they actually had a little snowfall two weeks ago). They rise up pretty much out of the ocean, and the highest one nearby is 2600 meters, about 8000 feet. And just offshore of Kaikoura is a series of ocean trenches that are 3000 meters at their deepest point. The trenches are the reason there’s so much sea life here, the currents bring plankton and other goodies up from the deep into the “light zone”. The place is famous for whales and bird life and fur seals and dusky dolphins, which is what I hope to be swimming with this afternoon.

We took a walk yesterday afternoon all around the end of the peninsula on which the town lies. There were hundreds of seals basking on the rocks (not pleasant to be downwind of them) and thousands of red-billed gulls, which are native to NZ. We have been seeing these gulls everywhere. Their call is more high-pitched and whiny than other gulls, if you can imagine that. They sound like two-year-olds having a tantrum. At one point I got a bit too close to part of the colony and about a hundred of them came after me. It was a bit scary, all these very sharp beaks and beady little eyes flying at top speed right at me. I made a quick retreat, and they followed me for a couple hundred yards. I was way back from the official sign at the point beyond which people are not supposed to walk, but obviously it was too close for their comfort. Hope I didn’t do any harm.

The walk was gorgeous (of course—I said to John yesterday that this whole country is like one big nature photograph), with big horizontal slabs of limestone extending way out into the water like pavement, interesting cracks making geometric patterns under the water, barely submerged when we passed a couple hours after low tide. Some cracks with seaweed growing in them, so there were green lines through the rock. Then there are typical limestone coast kind of rock outcrops eroded in very interesting ways all along the shore, and blindingly white small rocks for the beach. Also we saw whale and dolphin bones, bleached pure white. White stone beach immediately melding into green green sheep pasture and cliffs. The sun came out, and it was all sooo bright, so much reflection. John was wearing #45 sunscreen (supposedly, the bottle is quite old and maybe has lost its punch) and he still got a bit burned. Sometimes he complains about the cloudiness, being a sun-lover, but the bright sun feels tougher on me than the cold. The weather is so unpredictable and variable, temperatures can fall or rise 10-15 degrees celsius (18-28 degrees F) in a very short time. Good to be prepared!

The place we’re staying is owned by the couple next door, who are artists and have a gallery right here. We like some of their work, it is quite humorous and theatrical. We thought of the Pods immediately (friends of ours, for those who don’t know them). The style of the place is right up your alley, I think. The place has diagonal walls that are open at the top so it’s very breezy. The only door that can close is to the toilet. Shower is a room of its own (John’s dream shower). Built-in clothes storage looks like something Dr. Seuss would invent. And we can hear the waves and see forever up the coast. We like it a lot. Walter and Brigitte, our hosts, are Swiss. They moved here 15 years ago after one visit to NZ, without knowing any English. They’re an interesting couple, a bit impatient with the laid-back kiwis, very productive themselves.

That’s another thing about NZ. Imagine in the US going to a motel and having long conversations with the owners—how often does that happen? Here it has happened everywhere we’ve stayed, except one place. In Kaka Point the owner even walked right in to the unit and hung around to chat as we were packing up. I suppose some people would hate the informality, but we love it. Even if the motel managers are not the owners, they mostly have treated us like guests in their homes, like in a B&B.

Lovely day in Christchurch

ChCh

Sunday 2 December, lots of people about but not so much car traffic. John dropped me off at the Botanic Garden on his way to the airport to deal with the rental car and I strolled around marveling at the trees for an hour and a half. I began to wonder if the world’s climate was like NZ’s is now when all these temperate climate trees first evolved, because they grow so well here, no matter where they are from. So many huge trees, and none of them older than 140 years—the very first tree planted in the garden was in 1868, and it is an enormous red oak, must spread sixty or seventy feet in all directions, and almost as tall as wide. There is an avenue of giant sequoias (common name for them here is “big tree”—pretty accurate!) that are the biggest I have ever seen outside of the really old ones in Sequoia Nat. Park in California (we’ve been seeing giant sequoias throughout NZ in parks and beside roads). Trunks easily 8 feet in diameter, trees over 100 feet tall, and none of them could be more than 140 years or so. Douglas firs, too that are really big. Atlas cedars, Monterey cypress, coast redwoods (young and straight, not showing their ultimate potential, similar to young kauris here) hornbeams, horse chestnuts, northern beech, Dutch and Scottish elm trees, etc etc—all bigger than any I have ever seen before. The phrase “in the presence of trees” kept running through my head, and I felt energized just walking around them. I wanted to kiss them all but was pretty self-conscious about that (I could just see the headline--“mad American woman taken to asylum after indecent encounter in garden”).

I was really aiming for the NZ section of the garden, still determined to learn some of these local trees and other plants better. There were so few labels in that section, grrrr, I started to growl. Dozens of hebes and coprosmas, but all these different podocarps, what are their names??? You kind of have to be a plant nut to understand my frustration. I guess they figure everyone knows the local flora. There was a section where there were three varieties of native beech planted together and labeled, so I was able to compare them.

After that John and I together went to a bookshop for an hour or so (our favorite date, a bookshop) and then to the Christchurch Arts Centre, where we shopped for the first time since arriving. We actually bought a painting, kind of a bold move. Two fellows sitting on a typical cottage porch in the late afternoon, low sun on their legs. One is holding a beer bottle, and both are smiling. You can see the low evening sunlight on their legs but their face are more in shadow. It just seemed to capture something about kiwis and kiwidom for us—the open, free feeling that seems to pervade this place and the people.

I mentioned to John at lunch something that I’ve been aware of in myself—a feeling of freedom around asking people how things work here, what all the different names for coffee drinks mean (except for the basic Italian names, they have come up with their own), what different kinds of beer taste like, how to operate the pay phones, simple things that are handled differently in different countries. At the start of the trip we were having a lot of trouble using our debit card, and people were completely okay with it, running tickets through in several different ways until one worked, patient—like we were in this “together”, even if there was a line of people behind us waiting to pay. There have been times in England or France or America when if I was ignorant about this kind of thing I would be likely to encounter impatience or some other negative response and end up feeling like a yokel, a bumpkin, or just being angry and making judgments all over the place in return—but that is never the case here. People just inform me without any kind of loading. Even in places that look very hip and are full of thin beautiful young people sipping expensive drinks (not that we spend much time in such places!) we have yet to encounter a supercilious attitude. (Have seen lots of young people looking goth or punk and pierced and tattooed, with discontented looks on their faces, only in cities though, Christchurch seeming to have the largest number of them.) “Airs and graces” do not seem to exist here. As a result it feels more democratic than any place I’ve ever been. We have seen homeless people in Christchurch, but only a few, and only men.

We weren’t looking forward to coming to Christchurch because we got so very slowed down and relaxed in Fiordland and the Catlins that a city of any size seemed like too much energy to take. The first couple days in Dunedin we felt as if we had come off a long retreat and had a hard time re-entering the busy-ness of life so quickly. But we had a great day today (2 Dec), strolling the arts center and the city art gallery, which is very nice, some interesting stuff. It’s almost brand new, just opened in 03. Interesting building.

The physical Englishness of Christchurch is so self-conscious, at times it feels like a stage set. Oxford Crescent, Cambridge Crescent, most of the streets named after English towns—or colonial cities (Colombo, Madras, Barbados). The gothic style cathedral, the college buildings in Edwardian and Victorian styles. The river that meanders through town is the Avon and they actually wear straw boaters and punt on it, just like on the Cam! The central business district, around the Cathedral Square, is all modern buildings and sort of tacky—reminded me of King’s Cross in London, English in an entirely different way from the stately college buildings. The square doesn’t have the open feeling of a square in an English or European city. The cathedral is almost the only English-looking building there, the rest pretty generic office blocks. It’s not exactly a great public space. But further to the west at the arts centre and the gallery (museum) and the big park/garden area, it’s really lovely.

We have one week left in the South Island, and we plan to spend it almost entirely in the countryside, on the coast or in the mountains. But tomorrow morning we’ll first go to Smith’s books, three floors of used books (hoping to find some local natural history that doesn’t cost an arm and a leg, did I mention the cost of books here, yikes, I hope they have good libraries!) and back to the botanic garden for another stroll. We pick up a different car tomorrow and then we’ll be off North, probably next stop Kaikoura for whale watching or something like that, plus cliff walks and plain relaxing.

Dunedin to Timaru, November 30

Moeraki village, on the coast north of Dunedin, was so lovely, John started talking about retiring there. There are famous boulders on the beach about 1km from the village, but they are best at low tide and we got to the area a few hours before then so wandered around in the village, walked a pathway to the end of the little peninsula the village is on, saw some shags nesting and a couple stinky seals lolling around on the rocks, and had lunch at a place called Fleurs Place (no apostrophe) where we had the sweetest, freshest fish of our lives. From a hundred meters away the place looked like an industrial operation, maybe an old fish-packing shed, and it only had a small hand-lettered sign outside, not looking too promising, but we had read about it so were not fooled. Once we got close it revealed itself to be constructed out of reclaimed wood from old barns, big old windows from old houses, a staircase from an old hotel, big limestone blocks in the garden from the same old barn—it was eclectic and interesting, with a massive metal kelp-bed art work over the bar that camouflaged the glass storage, a big coal/wood stove in an alcove, lovely open feeling and simple country kitchen looking wooden tables and chairs. It’s only been open for about 4 years. Fleur is kind of a character, and I got the feeling she is always there. She sat at a little table covered with papers and seemed to be doing the accounts in longhand, getting up every once in a while to greet someone. It was the most interesting restaurant we’ve been in, in terms of “personality”. John had already been talking about retiring to Moeraki, and this place made it seem even more attractive. The town has a great northern exposure and view across a bay to low mountains on the east coast.

And those boulders! The most amazing boulders, concretions that formed in mudstone and have been revealed as the cliffs in which they are embedded have eroded. The boulders then roll onto the beach. Perfectly round and some 2 meters in diameter, with pentagonal fissures on their surfaces. Open them up and they are hollow and they are composed of cells in geometric shapes all coated with translucent silicates. Like giant rock pomegranates! I’ll put up some photos, they are absolutely remarkable, but I won’t put them up until we have a stable connection that’s pretty fast, not sure when that will be, could be when we get home! It was freezing on the beach so we didn’t stay long, but if we retired there I could spend days just gazing at them. If I had enough layers on.

We stayed the night with an old friend of our friend Grahame Lister in Timaru. Red McKelvie and Elaine Barnwell. Had a lovely stay, talked all hours about music and tried to convince Red to make a trip to the northern hemisphere. Elaine is keen but Red will be hard to budge, it seems. Maybe Grahame can convince him—seems he remembers all too well the one freezing winter he spent in England in the late 60s—but they have better heating now, and summer is an entirely different experience! Usually.

This is how the boulders look inside, really interesting. I bet D and A could explain.

Some photos from the West Coast

When we left Mapua and went down the west
coast, our first stop was Punakaiki, where we
saw the famous Pancake Rocks. Let's see if I
can get the photo of the rocks up here next to
the text, hmmm....The photo is low resolution
and you can't really see how strange and
wonderful the rocks are, but oh well.


Okay, that worked. The next photo is one everyone takes--if the weather is clear. Near the town of Fox Glacier is a lovely little lake, Lake Matheson, and it serves as a mirror for Mounts Tasman and Cook/Aoraki (highest mountain in the country, a bit over 12,000 feet). It was a lovely sunny morning and we went for breakfast to a cafe with clear mountain views that is near the lake, had the place to ourselves for a half hour or so eating our kiwi breakfast and drinking a flat white, then walked around the lake. Soon we were joined by a busload of Japanese tourists in dress-up clothes. They were in a rush, we meandered along the path and took a lot of photos of the lake--and a couple photos of them as well. It's about an hour's walk around the lake, but we stopped often. As we finally finished our circumambulation, we saw a tomtit for the first time, very small flycatcher with a black head like our phoebe, quite a bit smaller though. Birds seem to come much closer to us here, don't have the fear of predators that birds in our environment do. Trouble is that now there ARE predators here, introduced by people.


We went to see the Fox Glacier later in the morning. We had heard something about NZ glaciers advancing recently, but clearly they are overall receding. There were markers along the road showing where the terminal face of the glacier was in 1780, 1850, 1930, etc, and it was WAYY further downstream than now, miles. Lots of big seracs on this glacier, because of the shape of the underlying rock and the steep, curvy canyon it comes down. The Franz Josef, a bit north, is more smooth on top as a result of being in a wider canyon. If you've never seen a glacier, these are definitely interesting. I was more interested in the red lichen growing on the boulders and the waterfalls coming down through the rainforest in the approach to the ice face.



The lower photo has John really out of focus but it gives you and idea of the wealth of plants that exist in the
coastal rainforest. So many mosses, lichens,
liverworts, ferns, epiphytes, fungi and slime molds,
everywhere, covering all the rocks and all the tree
trunks. And that's it for now. Sorry all the photos are
on the same side of the page.

A few photos from our stay in Mapua, near Nelson, Nov. 12-14

These photos are from our stay in Mapua, at a lovely spot on an estuary, in an old apple pickers' cottage. The reflections are in the mud of the estuary at low tide. The birds are pukeko, the funny rail that you see everywhere along the roads in the North Island and in farming country in the South. They have red beaks and a silly gait, probably members of the Ministry of Silly Walks.

We loved the reflections in the mud of estuaries, and it's something we've seen many places in this country with hundreds of bays and estuaries that empty at low tide.


The truck below was the living space for one of the women living on the property. The inside was all panelled in wood and took us right back to the 60s. The woman Lisa had given up a job in the recording industry in Wellington to grow organic grapes and other produce, raise a few sheep and keep chickens. The other woman, Elspeth, is the daughter of the original owners. Only a few apple trees remained. It's a lovely spot for a relaxing stay, especially for birders!








The lower photo is of the road leading in to the property off the highway. It was just as idyllic as it looks. Lots of kayaking in the estuary when the tide is in. Otherwise, only birds ventured in.


We spent three nights at the cottage here, could have stayed much longer. I think we'll be back one day.

The biggest kauri tree we saw, Puketi Forest

Using Firefox to upload images seems to work. Very slow connection though, so probably won't have time to load many. I'll do more when we get home.

This was the biggest Kauri around where we were, truly a wonder. On this very misty day I shot straight up the trunk.
The tree was estimated to be 2500 years old. Trunk was at least 6 feet in diameter. Driving to this forest reserve not far from the Bay of Islands, the fog was so thick we couldn't see more than ten feet ahead. Narrow graded gravel road. It was spooky and romantic in the forest with the water dripping and the birds singing musically. Being in the presence of the trees made my heart beat hard. This was taken November 5th.

Kauris are in the araucaria family, ancient conifers that evolved hundreds of millions of years ago. For those who know the Bunya-Bunya and Monkey Puzzles, it's the same family. Kauris are very different in form from them. They grow straight and tall for about 300 years (!!) and then begin to branch, getting a rounded crown at the top. Kind of reminded me of our redwoods. There are almost no kauri forests left, just like the redwoods. Young ones were used for ship masts, and big ones like this could provide enough lumber to build several houses....And they used to gather the resin, the sap--it was called kauri gum. Used it in varnishes, etc. It's like amber.

I think kauris only grow on the North Island, could be wrong though!

Trouble with photos....

Well, I have been trying without success to upload photos to the blog. I think I'll create a photo album on one of the free photo sharing sites and then just put a link to it here. In the meantime imagine huge trees, beautiful coastline, glaciers, birds you've never seen, etc. And if anyone has experience uploading photos to blogger.com, feel free to chime in with advice....

A little more about Doubtful Sound and the Catlins

Our day trip to Doubtful Sound was like being in an altered state. Start to finish, beginning with a boat ride across Lake Manapouri, then a bus ride and a visit to an amazing underground hydroelectric station, then on to a great boat built specially for fiord sightseeing, and one waterfall after another, one incredible view after another, one glacial valley after another, for hours. Saw penguins, too. The skipper was so skilled, getting us very close to the islands at the mouth of the sound even though there were big swells and lots of wind, so we could see the penguins and seals—fur seals. It was blustery and rainy and misty and then on the way back across Lake Manapouri, the final stage of the trip, the sun broke through and we had about an hour on the top deck getting a sunburn and oohing and aahing over the mountains some more. The sun is sooo intense here. If I leave my sunglasses off for fifteen minutes when it’s sunny, I start to get a headache. Need a hat, too, or I can feel it boring into my forehead, frying my brains—even if the temperature is cool, 60s or so.

I still get disoriented all the time, have to re-teach myself the directions many times a day (“okay, sun coming from behind over my right shoulder, it’s 6pm, must be facing south”, etc.) In the absence of obvious landmarks (like the Southern Ocean, which we stared at for a while yesterday afternoon), I find I am often turned around, because some instinctual sense of the sun always being in the southern half of the sky is completely turned on its head! It was so strange to be facing south looking at the ocean and have the sun be behind my back.

Yesterday we drove from Te Anau to Invercargill (not a place you want to stop, except to buy groceries or gas) and then on to the Catlins, an area along the south coast that is so pastoral, rolling green with sheep and cattle, lots of little streams, remnants of native forest and some tree plantation, old houses, lots of corrugated metal and decomposing wood, and wide white beaches pounded by waves. Went to the almost southernmost point in the country, Waipapa Point, and
the wind must have been blowing 60mph. It was freezing. We spent the night at a motel in Papatowai, with a view of a gas pump—it was also a gas station and store. Today we are further east, on the Pacific side again, in a tiny town called Kaka Point with two big beaches separated by a rocky point.

There are many tidal estuaries that turn into mudflats at low tide, many many birds—herons and spoonbills and oystercatchers and stilts and gulls and terns and land birds too. We ate dinner last night (ham sandwiches and a bottle of Marlborough wine) in our car parked next to an estuary, watching two royal spoonbills and a white-faced heron among other birds poking about in the mud. The wind was so fierce we had to be careful with the car doors so they didn’t blow right off the hinges. Today it’s cool and breezy with big puffy clouds rolling by, and we took a long beach walk and later are going to visit a hide down the coast a few miles where you can spy on yellow-eyed penguins coming ashore a couple hours before sunset. That is, around 7:30….

It’s light until 10PM here, and still almost four weeks before the solstice. And the sun is up at 5:30 or so. I loooovvvve these long days, they feel so luxurious, as if there is plenty of time for everything you might want to do.

The Catlins, 11/25-11/28

The Catlins

We thought we weren’t going to have time to come to the Catlins, a relatively “undiscovered” part of NZ, on the south coast east from Invercargill and then up the east coast as far as Balclutha. I had read a lot about the area on the web and really wanted to come here, but it didn’t seem feasible as the trip progressed and we began to realize how short a time six weeks really is. But then on Sunday in Te Anau it was clear that it was going to be a very cold, rainy day, so instead of going back to Milford Sound as we’d planned we decided to head south and east, for the Catlins. It was blowing a gale, literally—gusts up to 100km/hr, enough to almost knock us off our feet. It rained intermittently, but the wind kept blowing the clouds away, and the sunlight on the wet pasture and forest was brilliant, hard to look at without shading our eyes.

The Catlins landscape is mostly rolling hills with small stands of native beech and podocarp forest interspersed with sheep pasture (of course). Lots of big tidal estuaries that penetrate a mile or two inland from the coast. Fierce surf at the ocean coast. We drove to Waipapa Point, almost the southernmost point in NZ, and the wind off the Southern Ocean (nothing between us and Antarctica) was frigid. The ocean color was still a friendly-looking blue-green, but the surf was big, pounding the beaches and headlands, and cold. Saw NZ sea lions, very similar to the Cal. variety as far as we could see.

Ended up staying in a motelin Papatowai that was part of a gas station and local general store, with a little studio unit facing the gas pump (motel units in NZ are about 80% “self-catering”, meaning they have full cooking facilities and fridges. Even if they don’t have cooking facilities, they almost always have a fridge, an electric kettle, and even a microwave.) The place closed soon after we arrived, but people kept arriving hoping for gas (not a lot of gas in small NZ towns, wise to buy a tank when you can, sort of like Baja) and it was partly funny, partly really annoying, having them right in our front yard, looking in our windows thinking we were the proprietors, hoping for some gas. So we made some ham sandwiches and drove about a mile to an estuary with a parking area with a great view, and ate them and drank a bottle of wine and watched birds in the estuary. Spent a long time tracking two royal spoonbills as they crisscrossed the mud flats (tide was out), as well as black oystercatchers, pied oystercatchers, NZ whitefaced heron, gulls, terns, etc. There are so many wonderful birds in NZ.

The next day we drove on to Kaka Point, where we are now. We’re staying in a motel with a wonderful view of the ocean at the top of a street that runs straight uphill from the beach. Kaka Point is a village on the Pacific coast with two beautiful beaches, no shops, and one bad bar/restaurant a few miles north of a place called Nugget Point where there are nesting yellow-eyed penguins. We went out to see the penguins last night. There is a hide where you can watch them without disturbing them. Of course we fell right in love. Probably it’s because they walk upright with their little wings akimbo that we identify with them so easily. The way they waddle with their toes turned out, that engaging “duckwalk” , and then when they come to an obstacle they hop, and you can see them making an effort, gathering themselves for the hop, exactly like the penguins in “Happy Feet”, if you’ve seen that. I didn’t realize they were as charming in real life as in a cartoon movie, but believe me, they are. They nest in thick brush, often in stands of flax, which is everywhere near the coast here. We could watch them hopping carefully uphill until they were lost in the bush.

Then we walked to the lighthouse at Nugget Point, on a narrow spit. There are large rocky islets beyond the point where fur seals and sea lions hang out, and where shearwaters nest. We saw many seabirds. Wonderful path to the lighthouse, along a ridgetop about five feet wide with cliffs and rocky bays on either side. I couldn’t look down without getting vertigo, had to stare ahead at the path. Got some good photos, hoping to upload some soon. I know I keep saying that—been having a tough time getting online with our own computer, so it has been next to impossible to upload anything to the blog for a couple of weeks.

Today we did some sightseeing, went to Curio Bay back on the Southern Ocean coast where there is a petrified forest embedded in the rocks, revealed at low tide. Took lots of photos, and as we were exploring the tidepools/petrified trees, we suddenly saw a pair of yellow-eyed penguins come ashore on the rocks. We watched them from afar for a long time, staying quite still, and they kept coming closer and closer to us, much closer than last night. Then other people noticed them and began to try to get close to photograph them. We got quite protective and kept signaling and finally shouting to people to stay back. The penguins are very shy of people. It’s hard to remember that their only mode of escape on land is to waddle, and if their preferred route to approach the sea is blocked, they might jump in where it is dangerous for them, just to get away from us. These yellow-eyed guys are about two feet tall standing up—they are the third-largest penguins. Emperors and fiordland crested are bigger. We heard later today that there are only about 500 nesting pairs of yellow-eyed in the wild. They are trying to create a reserve for them here at Kaka Point, but the local abalone (paua) fishermen are against it, unsurprisingly, and it looks like it won’t be successful. There are other reserves for them, and a captive breeding program.

This afternoon (Tuesday the 28th in NZ) John and I decided to institute a fine system for occurrences of “oh my god, this is so beautiful” and similar statements, which have become well over half of our daily conversation. Twenty cents for each infraction. It’s kind of unbelievable how gorgeous it is here. John keeps saying they have more than their share of beauty, and then we have an argument about comparing places and how anyone could determine what the proper “share” of beauty is for any one place, and what beauty is, anyway. We end up pretty philosophical usually, and mostly it comes round to the dharma.

It’s nine o’clock now, still plenty of light out, even though we’re facing east and can’t see the sun. Tomorrow on to Dunedin and I am hopeful we’ll have a place with an internet connection so I can upload all these blog posts (and photos) and also some emails and check in with some of the news from home. We only have two and a half more weeks here, can’t believe it has gone so fast. We will surely be back, god willing. There is so much to love here.

Dec 6, just added some photos to this entry--Nugget Point lighthouse, the view of the rocks from the lighthouse, a view of coastal rainforest at Curio Bay, where we saw the penguins, and a black oystercatcher--we see them at home, too, but they nest here, saw lots of nesting activity.

Southern Lakes and Fiordland, 11/17-11/25

Southern Lakes, Southern Alps

“Oh my god.” Must have said that about ten thousand times in the past week. We drove from Wanaka, where we had spent three beautiful days and taken a great day hike to the top of a little bump with views over the whole lake and quite a bit of Mt. Aspiring National Park, through Queenstown (which is like Mammoth Lakes Village on steroids) 45 km west to the tiny town of Glenorchy at the head of Lake Wakapitu, where the Routebourn, Caples, and Greenstone tracks all have their eastern ends. These “Southern Lakes” are all glacial lakes, some of them very deep (bottoms below sea level). They are surrounded by steep mountains in classic U-shaped glacial form, all crowned with snow and some with glaciers. Glenorchy is stunningly situated at the head of the lake, where two big rivers, the Dart and the Rees, flow into it. We stayed two nights there—wish we could have self-catered, as the one good eating place is closed for dinner except in high summer, January and February. There was a slightly strange vibe in Glenorchy, as though there was a skeleton in someone's closet that no one wanted revealed.

The beginning of those three famous hiking routes is on the west side of both the rivers I mentioned a bit north of Glenorchy. We took a long day hike near the start of the Routeburn, got our first taste of sandflies—or actually they got their first taste of us. We were in beech forest, mostly red beech. Beech trees in NZ are nothing like what we think of as beech in the No. hemisphere. Their leaves are very small mostly, the biggest about an inch long, most about ¼ -1/3 of an inch. Branches are horizontal, trunks very straight and tall. Red beech and mountain beech have huge trunks, up to 4 or 5 feet in diameter. They are not deciduous—there is only one deciduous tree native to NZ, and now I’ve forgotten its name….ribbon wood? There are five varieties of beeches, mostly growing in the west of the South Island. I have come to be very fond of them and will miss them when we leave here. I've tried to photograph innumerable ones, never feeling I've captured their grace and presence.

Our hike was on a very windy day and we saw several huge trees--100 feet tall or more, trunks four feet thick--that had fallen right smack over in the past few weeks (leaves on the fallen tree still green) so it felt a bit dicey hiking through them, hearing all this creaking and clacking as the upper branches would bang together with others. They have quite shallow root systems for such huge and heavy trees, so falling over is not an uncommon way for them to go. The oldest around seem to be around 4-500 years. Then they just get too big and fall over, if they haven’t been killed by disease or logged by then.

After Glenorchy we drove to Te Anau, the town on the lake of the same name, another huge glacial lake, which is where most people base themselves for trips into Fiordland. We were hoping to stay at Milford Lodge at Milford Sound, but it was all booked up til the end of the month. It’s the only place to stay at the Sound unless you’ve come off a guided walk on the Milford Track, in which case you spend the first night off the trail at a motel-type lodge right there at the end of the road. Only people on commercial tramps can stay there, not “freedom” walkers. Something I found interesting is that the quota for the trek is 48 commercially guided walkers and 40 independent walkers each day during the season. Commercial trips cost $1750 NZ (about $1275 US today). Seems a little out of balance to me, since most kiwis would not be able to afford the commercial trips. You have to reserve months in advance if you want to do it independently.

That night we did stay part-way to the Sound about 60K along on the Milford Road, at a place called Knob Flat in the Edlington River Valley. There’s a fellow (PC, his name is) who used to work for the DOC (Dept of Conservation—should be Conversation, these DOC people like to TALK--as a matter fact, it is a rare Kiwi we have met who isn't ready to talk your socks off), who got a concession to build some tourist units there, and they are almost new, with little kitchens and great views of the other side of the river valley, big waterfalls coming down off the mountains. The units are in a clearing, surrounded by beech forest. I love these beech forests more and more, keep taking photos but so far not succeeding in catching the elegance. (Kicking myself daily for not bringing my SLR camera, just have a little tiny Canon digital.) The red beech get very open, horizontal branch structure as they get older, look like trees in Chinese paintings, many horizontal planes with much space between, soft green lacy foliage, and those elephantine trunks. There’s an unmanned DOC info center at Knob Flat, and the only phone between Te Anau and Milford Sound. If the roads are too dangerous (icy), you can leave your car there and the bus will stop and pick you up to take you the rest of the way. That’s what the phone is for.

I saw a Morepork—NZ’s one owl, a fairly small one, about pigeon sized—just before dark that evening. It flew out from around the side of the little cabin and into a beech tree about forty yards away. Then in the night I got up to pee and I saw an owl fly up from a little wall about six feet from our window and then come back. I got the binoculars out and could sort of make out the face--it was almost full moon, a bright night. Probably the same bird I’d seen earlier. The next morning I saw my first NZ falcon—looks like a kestrel, pretty much—on a rock. It was the first time I had seen a hawk roosting anywhere. Up until then I had only seen the Australian harrier—twice as big as the NZ falcon. And it has always been in the air, often being chased by Australian magpies or gulls.

*******
Milford Sound, November 23

Okay, I cried. You know how the first time you drive through Zion you can’t stop saying “wow”? Well, it was a day like that. And it was raining and misty, visibility definitely poor! The last twenty miles of the Milford Road are astonishingly beautiful, awe-inspiring. The most perfect example of glacial valleys I’ve ever seen, perfectly U-shaped, thousands of feet deep, and soooo naked, rock rock rock, with water pouring off, a waterfall coming down a couple thousand feet of rock every 40 yards or so. Hanging valleys off the sides of the major cirques, huge themselves. Rivers the bluest-greenest you would ever want to see, tumbling around huge blocks of rock. Gneiss and schist mostly, I think. Then you arrive at the Sound and there is Mitre Peak in front of you, just like the photos. It was raining pretty hard but we hung around on the end of the jetty and just stared at the water and the beech forest—and the boats, boats going out constantly for tours of the Sound. We were going on a Doubtful Sound tour the next day so decided not to do a cruise on the Milford. There used to be a waterfall walk right from the end of the Sound but they’ve closed it because of landslide danger. Not much else to do at the Sound itself if you aren’t going out on a boat. They don’t have a DOC visitor center or any exhibits, just a big fancy building for the boat tour operators and a café and bar. (The interaction between government and commercial businesses seems very different—DOC offices are full of brochures for the various guiding and activity companies, motels, etc. No sense of “official” vs. “promotional”. It takes some getting used to. At first I had the sense the gov’t was endorsing these particular operations, but they don’t discriminate, everyone with a little tour bus can get their brochures in the slots.) We had coffee (two flat whites), hung around hoping for a break in the rain so we could see a bit more, and then drove back to Te Anau. The return drive was just as amazing, all those waterfalls again, all that rock. It is such a place.

From three on Thursday afternoon until 4pm Friday we were in Fiordland National Park and it was the first 24 hours since arriving in NZ in which I have not seen thousands of sheep. Really!

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Doubtful Sound, November 24

More tears. Even just recalling the day, tears start to come. I am so grateful these places exist, so grateful to be able to see them. It makes me deeply happy to know they are here. I must have taken a hundred photos on the trip to Doubtful, but none of them captured the mysterious, primordial beauty of it. More perfect U-shaped glacial valleys, more exquisite beech forests clinging to the steep mountainsides, more snow hanging over the whole. The water of the sound looks black because there is so much fresh water flowing into the sound that it forms a layer 30 meters thick on top of the seawater, and it doesn’t reflect the light the way the seawater does, it is brown-tinted from all the organic material it flows through on the way to the sea. It rained almost the whole time we were out on the water—about three hours on the Sound. Really of course it’s a fiord, not a sound at all, created by glacial action, not by the flow of a river, though many watercourses flow into it. We must have seen a thousand waterfalls during the day, many of them 1000 feet or more in height, with several levels. If I had seen even one of them on any mountain wilderness trip I have ever been on, from the Sierras to the Alps to the Canadian Rockies to the North Cascades, I would have thought myself very very ucky. As it was, it was almost too much, like being forcefed! So many lacy white ones flowing over wide walls covered with mosses and ferns, so many in deep clefts in the steep rock walls, so many variations on different surfaces. Again and again I pointed up and John looked and nodded, all day long.

The soil on the sides of the fiords is very thin, only a few feet thick over the bedrock, and when the forest trees reach a certain size, there are tree avalanches, and all the vegetation plunges into the water. We saw many of these, the most recent only a few weeks old. Afterward, mosses and lichens and liverworts begin to colonize the rock, and then eventually small flowering plants and ferns and then trees as soil slowly forms, and then after the trees become too heavy for their shallow roots to anchor them on the steep slopes again there will be an avalanche of vegetation. The sea creatures have adapted, and some even eat the fallen trees in the water.

We saw Fiordland crested penguins—our first penguins in the wild. They were, of course, adorable—waddling up and down very steep glacier-polished rock on their little islands. They are endangered and only come to land on a couple of islands at the mouth of Doubtful Sound, and we were lucky to see as many as we did—probably 20. The boat that does the trips is very comfortable and the skipper got us up close to the islands and the fiord walls so that we could see many things, birds, plants, seals, waterfalls. At one point he turned off the engines and we drifted in silence for a few minutes, and we could hear the bellbirds and others in the forest. That was my favorite part of the trip.

We left Fiordland this morning, Sunday the 25th. It was very hard to leave, and I think it has been the place that has made us most sure we will make the effort to come back to NZ again. For me, it was like our raft trip in the Grand Canyon—I feel that to have been gifted with the experience of it has changed me, taught me something about reality, about interconnectedness, about beauty, that is hard to describe but deeply felt. I feel strengthened and humbled at the same time, and I honor these places in my heart.

The West Coast, Nov. 15-17

We left Mapua on Thursday the 15th for the west coast. Hard to leave Mapua, it was so peaceful and lovely. That's been a theme, hard to leave each area since then. It was a beautiful drive through farmland and small river valleys, past sheep and cattle and deer and over little mountain passes. Much of the land that is not agricultural is planted in evergreen plantations—and the most common tree is Monterey pine. It grows very well here, reaching maturity in 30 years or so. We saw massive tree plantations and massive clearcuts everywhere from Northland on the North Island to the west coast of the South Island. Big northern hemisphere conifers in straight rows, mile after mile, mountain after mountain, interspersed with clearcuts, piles of logging leftovers (what is the word for all those limbs they leave behind in big piles?). The tree plantations were kind of getting me down. I kept thinking of all the native forest that must have been cleared to make way for all the trees in rows. From across a valley it looks like the mountainsides have been wet-combed with a very wide toothed comb. After seeing this for ten days or so we finally asked a ranger what was up with all the timber, and she told us that it was mostly planted in the 70’s, when NZ went through a terrible financial depression as a result of its main export market, England, joining the European Common Market and thus no longer buying much from the kiwis. It was a terrible time in NZ. They thought lumber would be an answer. But now, the ranger told us, the timber market is not profitable—it costs more to harvest the trees than they are worth. So they are stuck with huge tracts of non-native forest, trees in rows all the same height and the same color. In places on the way to the coast there was National Park on one side of the road, with a huge variety of forms and colors and textures and sizes of plants, and then on the other these rows of Monterey pines and other northern hemisphere pines, with lots of broom and other opportunists in the understory.

When we got to the coast, though, native beech rainforest prevailed. Incredible forest, windblown and ragged in places, lush and impenetrable in others. So many ferns again, so many mosses. Huge trees with creepers growing on them with stems 8-10 inches thick, trees with no limbs at all below 30 or 40 feet from the ground, but with a coating of other plants growing all over them like a big sweater. Podocarps, beeches, many broadleaf trees—and none of them deciduous. Epiphytic orchids growing on them, liverworts and mosses and classes of plants I am completely unfamiliar with, so many shades of green, impossible! Suddenly everything looked like a scene from The Lord of the Rings.

The rock formation at Punakaiki, Pancake Rocks, is so much more dramatic and interesting than any of the photos I had seen of it. It’s limestone, and they aren’t quite sure what caused it to separate into very equal layers with a very thin layer of something different between (like syrup between pancake layers). The consensus is that the thinner layers precipitated out for some reason. But in any case, the effect is lovely, layers upon layers of limestone about three inches thick. I took a gazillion photos.

Backtracking to Wellington

Hmmm, here we are in Wellington (this was written Nov. 8, sorry it’s out of order here), enjoying it very much after only five hours or so in town, three of them at the national museum, Te Papa, learning a bit more about the Maori and the English. Everywhere we have been up til now there is a kind of lip service paid to the “dual” history of the country, but a cloudy vagueness about the details of the history has been part of that. Te Papa seems to address it more directly, and it’s been very interesting to us, quite moving, compelling. I hope to write more about all that as time goes on.

Wellington is reminiscent of San Francisco—built around a huge bay, lots of hills, lots of distinct neighborhoods, sophisticated feeling, cafes, restaurants, culture, boats, big shipping port, a kind of self-aware style. Many people wearing black—haven’t seen that anywhere else. There are many wooden Victorian houses with pretty little gardens—kiwis for the most part live in houses, not apartments, even in cities, though I understand that is changing somewhat. But the residential areas seem to still be mostly houses, except right down in the downtown-est part of the city, Of course this is the capitol, so there’s all the government stuff, too, lots of people in suits with briefcases, lots of public buildings.

Right on the waterfront near the national museum is a skateboard park with several concrete half-pipes and some artwork that looks like permanent graffiti. There’s a very cosmopolitan feeling. We’ve seen skateboard parks and skateboarders in most towns we’ve been through with more than a few thousand people.

Auckland had a very different feel from Wellington, many big buildings and several freeways right through town, some interesting neighborhoods but a lot of sprawl—suburbs for miles in all directions--and a lot of very ugly buildings. People have consistently steered us away from spending time there, even though about a quarter of the population of the whole country lives there. Most people, when we ask about Auckland, say, “It’s a city” as if that says it all.

Ugly commercial architecture is one theme of this trip so far. Commercial districts of most towns and of Auckland as well are a hodgepodge of colors and styles, reminiscent of the high streets of English “new towns”—lots of plastic signs and gaudy advertising, big signs in shop windows with plenty of exclamation points. That’s been surprising, don’t know why—I guess with all the natural beauty I thought people would insist on good city planning, have more interest in the aesthetic design of the towns. Wellie is prettier but has many streets with similar shopfronts, as if they are competing for your attention by trying to be the brightest, most colorful, with the biggest lettering on their signs.

(Addendum: We had two lovely dinners in Wellington, one sort of French bistro fare, the other very “California”—plenty of good food in Wellie. Stayed in a great little motel very near Oriental Bay—the Apollo Lodge. Had a full kitchen so were able to make our breakfasts and lunches and get a little more fruit and veggies than are on offer in most cafes. We had a lovely day at the Wellington Botanical garden, finally started to learn some of the trees and other plants. The roses there were in their very first flush, covered with buds, mostly not even blooming yet. Rhododendron in a riot—that’s true everywhere so far. It’s very pretty, Wellington. Took the Bluebridge ferry across the Cook Strait to the South Island on Saturday the 10th. It was cloudy and rainy all the way across, hope it will be clearer when we return to the North Island next month. Marlborough Sounds very beautiful, reminiscent of the San Juans and Canadian Channel Islands up there, except for the huge tree ferns everywhere!)

We are loving Mapua

Three days in a little "bach"--a vacation cottage, formerly housing for apple-pickers in the orchards on the property (now mostly replaced by vineyard). (It's called Miro cottage, google it.) We are right on the shore of the Waimea estuary, a little west of Nelson on the north coast of the south island. It's so beautiful, cloudscape as well as land- and water-scape. Tides on this coast are huge--three meters this week, more during full and dark moons--and where we are the estuary is only about three feet deep even at high tide, so it's empty at every low tide, and the mud glistens in the sun (yes, it is finally sunny). There are wading birds--New Zealand white-faced herons, which are smaller than great blues but majestic, pukeko which are also known as purple rails, a very humorous bird that never stops talking (all night long), godwits and others. And when the tide comes in there are terns that fly over and dive and catch little fish, and shags--cormorants. They have about 20 kinds of shags, many that are bicolored and more glamorous than the cormorants we're used to seeing.

And all around the cottage there are other birds, mostly natives that I have never seen before. Little birds with very long tails (fernbirds) and little birds with very big voices (bellbirds) and the tui, a lovely big blackish bird with a white fringe at the neck and the most beautiful song, a series of clear bell-like notes (not to be confused with the aforementioned bellbird). Little green silvereyes, NZ blackbirds, NZ song thrushes, several others. All these and more are just outside, in the bushes and on the grass. And more of those pukeko which are very common here. At one point today there were six different species of bird in the garden, and I was searching them online, trying to figure out which one was singing that beautiful song (it was the tui).

Yesterday we hiked a long way (about 11 miles) on the coastal path in Abel Tasman Nat. Park. Golden sand beaches, clear blue-green water, and rainforest--dozens of varieties of ferns, both tree ferns and smaller ones, some just one single little stem unfurling a little leaf at the end. Vines growing up the tree ferns with tiny little leaves like maidenhair ferns. Silver beech trees with horizontal limbs like in Chinese paintings, very soft looking. Many different podocarps, some 100 feet tall, most 10-20, with many leaf shapes. Araucarias (think monkey puzzle or bunya-bunya), some so soft they felt like ferns themselves. So much green stuff, so much dead stuff, too. I think it never occurred to me before that there would be so much dead vegetation in rainforest, what WAS I thinking? Mosses and fungi--even slime molds. Many of the plants in spots looked burned and it took a while to figure out that actually they are covered by a fungus--turns out to be sooty mildew, which might be familiar to us from the black sooty mold that was growing on the eucalyptus trees that were attacked by that lerp insect. Same kind of process going on here, but it's all part of the normal ecosystem in the bush. I kept noticing a sweetish, winey smell in the black areas of bush, and it was the honeydew from the insects, which is what the mildew grows on. During the summer apparently the silver beech, which are often covered with this black mildew, are also covered by wasps drinking it. They create a bit of a hazard for hikers. Towards the end of the hike (near the park boundary) we started to see many young Monterey pines. More about them later.

We saw lots of backpackers (trampers, that is) on the trail (track), and I was struck by how many of them were young women. "Big girls," John called them--he keeps commenting on how healthy the girls look. Strong and muscular and lovely to see out there on their own. Late teens to early twenties. Girls seem very independent and "equal" here. And probably it is not a coincidence that almost the entire national cabinet is women! This was the first country in the world where women won the vote. Also the first country to establish a state old-age pension, and the first country to develop a national health plan and what we think of as welfare--aid to poor people. We haven't seen a single homeless person, though there must be some. There is poverty, of course, especially among the Maori, but it doesn't look like there is squalor. We did hear that 3000 kiwis a month are moving to Australia because of the cost of food. And believe me, it is costly! Most food items seem to cost about 1.5-2 times what they do in the US, some other things much more than that. Chapstick? $6NZ. Shoes! Deb better take note--I saw some very simple casual leather shoes today (you would have loved them, French and stylish)--for $459. Just flat go-to-the-market shoes, nothing dressy. Paperback books for double the publisher's price listed on the back of the book. Haven't seen a paperback novel for less than $25. (I did pop for a couple slim field guides today, couldn't resist, the desire to KNOW, you know...) The minimum wage is around $10/hr.

Okay, time to take a shower and get ready for dinner--we're barbecuing NZ salmon and having local veggies and wine. Sun comes up at 6 and it doesn't get dark until almost 9, even though it's still five weeks until the solstice. The sky right now is blue and the wind is blowing fiercely, but it doesn't stop the birds singing. Tomorrow we leave this place, where we're also surrounded by lambs and chickens and apple trees and artichokes, for the west coast, where they say it "always" rains. We've had two days of sunshine so it's kind of hard to leave. So far, this area is our favorite by a long way. But there's so much more!

We'll get some photos up soon, the birds especially if I can get close enough to make one distinguishable from another.

When your chicken is completed...

Wow, third night in the country and it already feels like weeks, so many experiences, so many thoughts.

I was thinking the day we arrived of the way a dog's sense of smell is so much more sensitive than ours--I read somewhere that a dog can smell just a few molecules of a substance that happens to float by its nose--and feeling as though something similar was going on in my mind. There seemed to be a million different perceptions, and the awareness of them, all being known at once. I don't know if dogs go the next step and place all their olfactory sensations in a context of already-known smells, comparing and making assumptions and predicting. But I could feel myself trying to do that.

New Zealand! I stepped out of the door of the airport and saw big araucarias all over, their very straight trunks and distinctive symmetrical branches, looking like trees put together from some kind of children's tree construction set. And New Zealand flax (phormium), growing huge and wild by the roadside, the bloom stalks 8-10 feet tall. And then, by god, it's spring! The smell of privet, of orange blossom, of wisteria. Birds nesting! It's November, and the birds are nesting. I kept seeing yellowish foliage on trees and immediately my mind made it old yellowing autumn foliage until I remembered, no, this is tender new foliage that hasn't filled up with chlorophyll yet. It's by god spring here! Amazing.

Outside the door of our room at the B&B in Auckland were orange trees pruned into a hedge. Oranges and blossoms at the same time, fragrance of the blossoms wafting into the room. So many things looking English, the furnishings and the electric kettle with the tea set-up and the architecture, and then the incongruity of the orange trees and that smell, what I have known as a Southern California smell. It was disorienting in an interesting and pleasant way. That keeps happening.

Something I have been struck by is my level of ignorance about what this place is like, what places have meaning for the people who live here, what kind of meaning they have. Ignorance about how things are done--things as simple as getting the check in a restaurant (not like home, let me tell you), as ordering a cup of coffee--long black, flat white. I spent the past few months doing research in preparation for the trip, and the way I look at that now is as a process of trying to gather up preconceptions. That may sound like a judgment but I don't mean it as one. When I travel I like to know what to expect in the way of customs, what is going on socially and politically in the place, what historically has gone on, what the current attractions are (for my tastes). I like to have a known context that I can fit my experiences into. But I know less about this country than any place I've ever been, and am noticing the tendency to take each new experience and compare it to others, to create a context. i can see that is cutting me off from the full experience of whatever is occurring, but it happens automatically. It feels so natural that it makes me think dogs are probably doing something similar with smells.

About the chicken being completed, though...It's the kiwi accent (ex-sent). Vowels quite unfamiliar to me are used here. "Please move to the depairture lounge when you hev complayted your chicken" I kept hearing. When you have completed your chicken, your chick-in, your CHECK IN! I get it. Vowels are mostly quite short and very very different. Not like Australian vowels, very different. Coffee? Keffee.... Auckland? Oakland...

Last minute repairs

I noticed yesterday that the new plumbing to a hose tap in back of the house had a little leak. John worked on it a little this morning, and five hours later we are hoping when we turn the water back on there won't be a fountain back there. Always going to be something. Leaving in 20 minutes, car's all packed, garden watered, sheets and towels clean for M, twiddling our thumbs, a little on edge here. What have we forgotten?

But the fact is that whatever we've forgotten, and there's bound to be something, we'll be able to take care of it almost as easily as if we were here. Twenty years ago that would not have been the case.

The baby is done

Off we go, then

One week and counting.  Packing going well, bill paying on schedule, still would like to get those cacti in the ground in case it rains while we're away. Will I get it all done?  When is anything done, anyway?  The point of the blog name, of course.  Hoping I can remember that as the days roll by.