The Birds

I've always had this fantasy that if I was alive in the time of the great explorers that I would have hitched myself to one of them and sailed around the unknown world. After the one hour crossing from Bluff to Stewart Island, I rescind this fantasy.

The hour long crossing to get to Stewart Island wasn't even in rough weather! It was really windy and there were giant swells and whitecaps, but it was a beautiful sunny day. The first half hour went pretty well but then there was that one huge swell and I almost lost it, but didn't-thankfully! I guess it was just mild sea sickness, but really that was enough! After what seemed like the longest hour of my life, we got to Stewart Island and I never wanted to get back on the ferry ever again!

We got to the island at about lunch time, so after lunch and dropping our bags at the backpackers place we were staying it was time to go out and explore the island. We had hoped to rent a sea kayak and kayak to Ulva Island that afternoon, but the one person who rents kayaks was gone for the day (of course!) so we took a short water taxi ride to Ulva Island.

Ulva Island is a predator free island sanctuary for native plants and birds live in a safe environment. I can't say Keith and I have ever been birding before, but that is pretty much what we were doing-keeping our eyes and ears peeled for the large number of birds that live on the island.

The bird we saw the most (and had come across before) was the weka, that always seemed to be following us as we walked down the beaches.

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We also had seen these little robins before-they also like to get really close to people like the weka do-they are so cute!

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Unfortunately I didn't get a good shot of my favorite bird on the island: the tui. I mainly love the tui because their bird call sound almost exactly like R2-D2, which is just awesome! We saw just about every bird on the island, except the kiwi bird which is nocturnal and almost never seen.

Hiking and bird watching were not the only thing to keep me entertained on the island, Keith also had to show off the guns!

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On the water taxi ride back to the main island we came across three Mollymawks (these are considered medium sized albatrosses) that felt like putting on a show for our boat. This does no justice as to how big these are!

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From New Zealand

So far the trip to Stewart Island was living up to the hype!

The times are a changing

Well, I'm not sure if you could tell, but both Keith and I have been a little down on the reality of some aspects about living here-mainly the weekdays-at least most weekends tend to be pretty awesome. But it seems like things are finally turning around.

Keith has actually been busy at work the past few days, although I'm holding my breath that this will keep up! And shockingly I have actually found something to do too! I have started volunteering at the high school library. I have to admit that I was not really looking forward to volunteering at any of the area schools, since, well, most of you know I'm not the biggest fan of children, but since teenagers don't really want anything to do with adults, this seems to work out pretty well!

Saving the best for last-we are moving!!! We looked at places today and found one that was exactly what we were looking for-rent only $20 more a week than what we're paying now, has a kitchen that is bigger than a closet and a fridge bigger than a dorm room fridge, and has a yard that will be just our yard-instead of living in someone's backyard like we are now. The house we'll be renting is actually in town, which means I'll actually be able to walk to town without my walk back being a epic climb up a mountain-yay!! I'm not going to miss living in our current place that is horribly isolating, incredibly windy, and exceptionally small-but with the fam coming next week and us going to Ranfurly the week after that we won't move until Easter-but that's soon enough!

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Off to Stewart Island first thing tomorrow morning!

Such is life!

After a few weeks of some pretty awesome adventures, things seems to be slowing down a little bit. Well, actually a lot. This past weekend we weren't really up to anything, just a little chillaxing (I will never get tired of this word!) by Lake Wanaka and trying to go to the farmer's market in Cromwell-which we found out ended last weekend! Oh well!

We did spend some time in Ranfurly and Naseby area on Friday. Keith had a meeting at the hospital there and is going to start filling in for the one doc in town for a week every month or so. Keith has been barely working three days a week in Alex and when he's there it's usually boring and since no one seems to want my help here volunteering or otherwise, we're both getting kind of bored and are ready for a change of scenery-even if it isn't that frequent.

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Sorry to disappoint but next weekend will also be boring. Keith is filling in at the hospital in near by Clyde and will be actually be working all this week and weekend. Stay tuned for more adventures the next weekend when we go to Stewart Island!

Feel the Burn!

Over the past three days Keith and I did the Routeburn Track, one of New Zealand's Great Walks and one of the top 11 hiking trails in the world according to National Geographic-so we knew it was going to be good!

We started on Saturday and it was a ridiculously warm and beautiful day! This was our view during lunch on the first day.

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More epically gorgeous views!

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After a not really hard few hours of hiking we made it to the hut where we would be staying the night, the Routeburn Falls Hut, and it had kind of a good view too...

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And here is where everything changes-this is the exact same view at about 8:30 Sunday morning:

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If you want to see all the views we were supposed to see I don't doubt that you can google them and find them! On the second day (in theory) we could see to the coast, instead we could see maybe a few hundred meters in front of us! But still it was beautiful-in a different way!

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Seeing this ghost of a giant mountain right in front of us made me realize that it is hard to say what all we missed!

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In case you can't see the mountain in that pic, the clouds broke-just a little-for us to see it!

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We made it to our second hut, the Mackenzie Hut, pretty quickly on Sunday. Once we were there the rain just came down harder and we didn't want to leave!

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There are really no pictures from the third day. What we thought was 'raining' on the second day turned out to just be drizzle-we found out what rain in Fiordland National Park means on Monday! Which isn't surprising since the forecast was for 250-350 millimeters (10-13 inches) of rain during Sunday and Monday. All the rain meant hiking was a little harder, because we had A LOT more water to cross! And by water I mean raging waterfalls that yesterday were probably just little trickles coming out of the side of the mountain and a trail that was more creek than trail. But that also means we saw a ton of waterfalls, they were incredible!

So what did the Routeburn feel like? The first day it felt warm, with slightly sore shoulders from the backpack-but in retrospect it felt incredibly lucky! The next two days felt wet-with ice cold water squishing under your toes with every step, and pants that are completely soaked through after being on the trail for five minutes. But they also felt warm, with Keith's hand reaching for mine while we're getting across waterfalls, and the magical warmth of a cup of tea and a fireplace, and the comradery of a dozen strangers laughing at how wet and cold the day is going to be for all of us.

Yeah, the weather kind of sucked, but I would do it again in a heartbeat!

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.

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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!

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

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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!

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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!)

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From New Zealand

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

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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!

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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!

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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!

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From New Zealand

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

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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!