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.