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!)

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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!

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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!

Exploring Glenorchy

Well, another weekend, another adventure! This weekend we headed to Queenstown, where quickly got tired of the mass of tourists-so we only stayed long enough for Keith to buy a used kayak before getting the heck out of town to the Glenorchy area at the northern tip of Lake Wakatipu. The drive out there was nothing short of spectacular!

From New Zealand

Once we finally set up camp, we did a short walk to Lake Sylvan, where Keith had to go swimming. And just a note on how long our days are-it was about 6:30 in the evening when we got to the lake-but we have daylight until 10 pm-yeah it's awesome!

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The next day we did a little harder tramp called Glacier Burn and it took us to Bryant glacier in the Humboldt Mountain range. We climbed up a ways to make it to the basin and while I was content to take pictures and read once we got there, Keith went and climbed up the mountain as far as he could and he got pretty far! Can you find Keith in this picture?

From New Zealand

While I was hanging out in the basin I tried to take pictures of the stream that was fed by the glacier-but I'm not going to post anything in there (but I'll put one in the photo gallery on the side-they're terrible!) because the water was so incredibly, impossibly clear that it just looks like rocks-it was kind of amazing! There were also great views of the little town of Glenorchy and the surrounding mountains.

From New Zealand

Who knows what this week is going to have in store!

Alexandra, Central Otago, South Island, New Zealand, the World!

I would put our address too, but I honestly don't know what it is-we're staying in a small guest house/apartment behind a very lovely house on Old Golf Course Rd...if you come visit we'll give you better directions! :)

I took a walk up to the Alexandra Clock-the book described the walk a 2-3 hours and pretty difficult-which is fine, I've got nothing but time! Unfortunately I'm apparently pretty terrible at following directions (or maybe it was the book!)-I did not got the right way at all, but I did finally end up getting to the clock and a great view of the city-and the walk was still lovely. It was along the Manuherikia River-which is less impressive than the Clutha but still very pretty to wander along (yes that is a winery right in town and yes their wine is great!).

From New Zealand

From New Zealand

I finally climbed up to the clock-which is really just a giant clock on the side of a hill. I could hear its motor running while walking up the hill and the minutes ticking away was incredibly loud! But it comes with a great view of town-and a great view of the way I could have gone if I hadn't paid attention to the directions in the book and that would have only taken about a half hour total instead of almost 2 hours!

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So, here is Alex. We live on the other side of the bridge where an old golf couse used to be. All the houses have in our neighborhood have incredible views-but it seems their guest houses don't!

From New Zealand

More adventures to come this weekend!

Central Otago: home

We are now in Alexandra (or Alex as it is known by and how Alexandra will be referred to from now-so I don't miss spell it a thousand times) in the Central Otago district of New Zealand. When you mention Alex to people here it seems to bring two things to mind-it's hot and it's SO far in-land! They seem to forget that it's not humid at all-which means the heat really isn't bad, that it's crossed with rivers and lakes-including the Clutha River that is the highest volume river in the country and that the closest beach is about 2 hours away-oh and it's beautiful (I swear at some point I will use a thesaurus and stop using that word every sentence!)

Before we got to Alex, we stopped at Lake Wanaka and even though it's a touristy town and it was the weekend, it really wasn't crowded and the views were stunning! It's only a little over an hour from Alex, so we will defiantly be going back-if only to do the hike that our South Island guide book suggested-but then gave us wrong directions too, so we unknowingly did a different hike-still with great views!

From New Zealand

From New Zealand

We are getting settled in our new home-a small one bedroom apartment about as far from town as possible-but it's inexpensive and will be good enough for 6 months!! Hopefully we'll get the internet at some point in the apartment-but probably not for a while...

A Three Hour Tour

After a ferry across the Cook Strait, we are officially on the our new home the South Island-even though we won't be in Alexandra for another day or so.

We had a beautiful morning for the three hour ferry ride and it was smooth sailing for the whole trip!

From Wellington

From New Zealand

We are in Christchurch right now-about a 5 hours drive from where the ferry landed. We had an amazing drive-that I slept through-but at least Keith woke me up for the seals!

From New Zealand

From New Zealand

They look so much smaller in pictures than they actually are! I hope it's just the beginning of getting to see all different kinds of wildlife!