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.
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