Cruising on the mighty Clutha River

This past warm and lovely Monday evening, we went on the Clutha River cruise. We went with Steve and Sandy, who are trying to get in all the sights of the area since their locums time on the South Island comes to an end on Friday.

I had heard their ads on the radio consistently and they were pretty cute (Steve may be an Aussie, but he really knows his stuff!). The focus of the cruise is the gold rush history of the area. We learned that the Otago region on New Zealand went from being the poorest region with almost no population to one of the richest regions with a booming population almost overnight in 1861. Since there was no forest along the river (due to the way Maori hunted Moa)the workers lived in very small huts carved into the rocky bank of the river.

From New Zealand

From New Zealand

We got a chance to get out and explore some of the huts, that had been everything from homes to general stores!

From New Zealand

From New Zealand

Along with the history lesson and hike, we had delicious wine, cheese and other good stuff.

From New Zealand

Gotta enjoy the summer while it's here!

A relaxing weekend at Mavora Lakes

You would think that now that Keith has all the kayaking gear he needs and has found a group that goes whitewater kayaking at least once a week, that that would be enough kayaking for him-but it's not. So this weekend we headed to Mavora Lakes area so Keith could kayak the Mararoa river.

With a forecast for the weekend calling for rain and chilly weather, we drove the 3 hours to get there thinking we wouldn't be there for the whole weekend. Luckily, the forecast was wrong, as they always are, and we got beautiful sunny days both days-but we also got very chilly nights. I think the Mavora Lakes area is just about one of the most beautiful places ever!

From New Zealand

Peter Jackson must have also thought Mavora Lakes were beautiful, because this location was in Lord of the Rings a couple times. It was the location of the Fangorn Forest, where the Ents live(my favorite characters in Lord of the Rings!) and as Nen Hithoel which is where the breaking of the Fellowship occurs after the fall of Boromir and when Frodo and Sam leave together, on their way to Mordor. (and no, when I saw the locations listed I did not immediately know them, Wikipedia reminded me!)

From New Zealand

From New Zealand

Keith kayaked the Mararoa river both days and had a blast doing it!

From New Zealand

From New Zealand

The one con about this river is that it was coated in dydimo (aka rock snot). It's an invasive species of algae that effects stream habitats (it's have a huge negative effect on the fishing industry) and can be spread by a single drop of water. If you knowingly spread dydimo the penalties are up to 5 years imprisonment, and/or a fine of up to $100,0000.

While Keith was kayaking, I wandered around taking pictures of sheep, reading, and maybe even a little napping in a meadow-it was a rough weekend!

From New Zealand

From New Zealand

This coming weekend we'll be doing the Routeburn Track, which is hiking 32 kilometers in 3 days, so it was nice to have relaxing time now!

It was Professor Plum in the kitchen with the....

jam? Let me take a few steps back!

Sandy, the wife of one of the other locums docs, has befriended an older lady who has a large number of fruit trees and asked if we would like to go pick some plums. Of course we would! The yard was an oasis full of plum, fig, apple, pear trees! Keith came along to pick and in his usual, extremely efficient manner picked a massive amount of plums.

This is only about 1/3 of them!

From New Zealand

What are we going to do with all these plums? Well, we've never made jam before but even if we mess up a batch, we still have lots of plums-so let's give it a try!

From New Zealand

From New Zealand

After about an hour of cooking and boiling we finally had jam and it is surprisingly good!

From New Zealand

I have a feeling that next week will be filled with making plum sauce or plum butter and that we will be making more jam in the future!

This is much more my speed

After our kind of killer weekend last weekend (my knee still hurts just thinking about it!) and since this is our first 2 day weekend (how do people live with just 2 day long weekend!?! ;), we decided to do a little exploring in our area.

We started the weekend with a bit of wine-tasting in the town of Bannockburn, about 20 minutes away. We ended up having a kind of Walla Walla day, but I think that we need to just admit to ourselves that maybe enjoying and then buying a little too much wine is just our style now! On one little, beautiful road we stopped at 4 wineries and each one was really fantastic-living in pinot noir county (again!) is just about the best thing ever! We started at the end of the road (it seems like all the best places we've been have been at the end of the road), with Bald Hills Winery. They have a slew of amazing wines and award winning pinot noirs (which will become a theme!). Next was Remarkable Winery, which wasn't officially open so we were there as 'guests'. Here we got a tour of the winery, which was tiny but cool. We also got to do a barrel tasting of two different barrels along with the regular wine tasting, which included (you guessed it!) more award winning pinots! Our next stop was Bannock Brae, which had great wines, an adorable yellow lab and great views.

From New Zealand

Our last stop was Akarua, where their winemaker had just gotten back from spending a while in Oregon-wish we could have met him!

We can finally introduce you to our ruggedly handsome 'new' car, our 1997 Nissan Wingroad (I just kept forgetting to take its picture!), with over 300,000 kilometers, that sometimes doesn't want to start, but for the most part gets us around!

From New Zealand

On Sunday we drove out to St. Bathans, an old, little gold-mining, now holiday retreat town. There are two reasons to come to this town: the pretty clay cliffs surrounding Blue Lake. The lake and cliffs are a result of the method of gold-mining used in the area.

From New Zealand

The other is the Vulcan Hotel, which is haunted. The ghost is said to be that of a young woman, who is thought to have been a bar maid who died of a broken heart and now haunts the bar and her old room. The room that was believed to have been hers can be asked for, if you decide to spend the night in the haunted hotel...but of course this place is only 45 minutes away-which means I won't get to spend the night there!!

From New Zealand

I'm guessing the wine isn't going to last us very long, so hopefully we'll be back soon!

The Wild West Coast!

Surprisingly we got going early Saturday morning, despite the late night we had before and got back on the road. The destination was Paparoa National Park where we were going to do the Inland Pack Track trail-all 27 kilometers of it-in two days! It started out great, but in the end we bit off a little more than I could chew on the first day...no worries-obviously we made it out in one piece!

The trail started out easy (which in not surprising-it was described as moderately difficult and flat-though I feel very strongly that the author should look up the definition of 'flat' and change his description accordingly) and beautifully! It made both Keith and I want to watch Lost, even though walking through the rainforest was better than watching it on TV!

From New Zealand

From New Zealand

We made it out of the forest and into the part of the hike where we had to cross a number of rivers/creeks-which was both beautiful and incredibly hard....

From New Zealand

With a big backpack on I kept slipping on the rocks and almost falling in-not to mention the bugs-the bugs that I think are still buzzing in my ears-they were everywhere. Not surprisingly we have bug bites everywhere-from the bottom of my feet to behind my ears. Don't bugs know that if you're covered head to toe in DEET they're not supposed to bite you? But still, it was beautiful!

From New Zealand

After 9 hours of scrambling about 19 kilometers, we finally made it to our final destination: The Ballroom-described as "unforgettable"-was kind of disappointing-but who cares, we made it!

From New Zealand

We made it out pretty quickly on day 2-not surprising since we only had 8 km to go! Once we got we stopped at Pancake Rocks-which did look like pancakes on top of each other (mmmm, pancakes!)

From New Zealand

One more stop at another glacier-this one is Franz Joseph.

From New Zealand

I'm not sure if I can handle another 4 day weekend anytime soon!

I just one day....

Friday February 5th was a very busy day for us-in a relaxing kind of way!

We started by driving to Jackson Bay, all they way at the end of the road. There was one main reason for driving to the end of the road: The Cray Pot-which is supposed to have some of the best fish & chips in all of New Zealand. While Keith got the fish & chips-me, being lame (or so I thought)-got the burger.

From New Zealand

I did not take any pictures of the burger, but it has inspired me to really try to take pictures of delicious food-to quote Keith "this burger is the shit!" Who would have thought this tiny little place right on the ocean at the end of the road (universe?) would make the best burgers of all time? So what is on the best burger? The basics: beef, cheese, lettuce, tomatoes-and then some surprisingly delicious things: beet relish, coleslaw, stone ground mustard, fried egg, and caramelized onions-I really wish I had taken a picture!

We needed to walk off some of the fantastically delicious fried food we'd just eaten, so we followed a little trail to a secluded beach. On our way, we say a couple who were stopped on the trail looking at something-that something was a Fiordland Crested Penguin!!There he was just hanging out in this little creek. There were a number of 'Penguin crossing' signs in the area, but we didn't expect to actually see one!

From New Zealand

After taking tons of pictures of the penguin, we got back on the trail and got to beach-perfection!

From New Zealand

We got back on the road with no destination in mind, we just knew we had to go north. We drove by Fox Glacier and even though Lonely Planet made it sound like stopping there was kind of over-rated, we decided to stop. I think it was worth it!

From New Zealand

From New Zealand

So would amazing food, penguins, beaches and glaciers be enough for one day? Almost! We made it to the town of Ross at about 7:30 pm and we were ready to stop for the day. We chose the Empire Hotel for the evening and to be honest I thought it was a little sketchy-but Keith loved it. The hotel was actually just a few rooms above a bar that looked like no one had been in the rooms for a while!

From New Zealand

We went down the the bar for a little dinner and some drinks and we didn't really expect what happened next. As Keith tried to pay for our dinner, we got enveloped by the locals at the bar. It stared with singing along to the Hollies Air that I Breathe and then there were more beers and all of the sudden someone pulls out a guitar and everyone is half singing songs and telling stories-it was a great night! And just the first day of a long weekend!