Just some photos of buildings,

We had a great trip to visit Vaughn, the lead doctor at the clinic where we work, at his home in Christchurch. We had a chance to see the devastation to the city center from the earthquakes of 2010-2011. The damage is quite dramatic, and despite the understandable delays in redeveloping the infrastructure of a city built 150 years ago, you can get a sense of the pride the residents have in their city and their chance to create something really special with the redevelopment.

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This is an area that has been razed and now home to shops and places to eat housed in brightly colored shipping containers, ReStart.

We  had a great visit.

Along our travels in New Zealand, I have taken some photos of unique but also typical buildings we find in the small towns  on the South Island. I am particularly fond of the brightly colored Dairies, their answer to our  7/11s . Also  the older taverns, part hotel, part bar and part restaurant, are great places and bring a sense of community to some of the very little towns.We have stayed in several excellent bed and breakfasts that are housed in beautiful Victorian homes. Among my favorite structures are the Four Square markets, which I have to photograph away from Westport. Though we do not have a traffic light here, we are big enough that the larger two grocery chains have displaced the Four Square.

Warwick House Nelson

 New,above, and Old, below, Westport city Buildings.

And of course my favorites:

Eric and the Queen

In New Zealand, the first Monday of June is a national holiday, the Queen's Birthday, and this year it was celebrated on June 3rd.  That's Eric's birthday as well, so we got a three day weekend to celebrate, and raised our glass to Queen Elizabeth too.  (Her actual birthday is in April).

We traveled back to Nelson for two nights, with a quick side-trip to Maruia Falls which was created in a 1929 earthquake.  The fault line crossed the river with land on one side being raised up.  The riverbed was shifted and a new waterfall resulted. It was raining, so we didn't stay long.

 

Nelson is a beautiful town on the Tasman Bay.  An Irish musical festival was taking place, so our first night, we ate a great Indian food dinner, then went to sit in a Mongolian yurt and listen to Irish session players.  A mix of cultures, but the music was clearly Irish and reminded us of the pubs on the Dingle Peninsula.

 

On Sunday, we drove through the Moutere Valley, wine-tasting, stopping at galleries and coffee-shops, and picking up shells on the beach.  One reason we like wine-tasting is that vineyards always seem to be located in the prettiest spots!  Harvest is over, but the views are still great.

 

Eric at Woollastone Estates Winery

 

 





 



Carolyn waiting for lunch on the vineyard patio.

Sheep grazing in the vineyard.

 

Modern art at the vineyard.

 

Monday, Eric's actual birthday, threatened to be rainy.  The rain didn't start until we were back near Westport.  One of my favorite signs on the Buller Gorge Highway is "Beware of Slumps!"  but I didn't really understand what a slump was until I saw one on the drive home.

 



Slump = part of the hillside collapses onto the road.  With an average rainfall of 6 feet, it's not surprising that drivers need to be wary.  Over the holiday weekend, 3 inches fell in 3 days, and we were glad we were over the mountains and dry.

Hot Springs and Hut trips

With our weeks here winding down and the winter darkness upon us we are still trying to squeeze in a few weekend getaways. First we took a quick weekend to Hanmer Springs, a little alpine resort centered around some natural hot springs. The Springs are now manged by the district council there and seem to me a cross between Glenwood's Hot springs and Thornton's Waterworld. It was quite fun, we lounged in the pools each day and took quick walks in the exotic forests above town and Carolyn use the opportunity of actual stores to shop in to pick up a swim suit for our Cook Island stop on the way home. But hey also had these great Fatties to rent:

Which would have come in handy on this past weekends trip to the Heaphy. We had walked a day hike on the Heaphy, one of the Great Walks of New Zealand, in January and encouraged by Kristen and Angie and their  ROuteburn tramp, we had decided we could manage a backpacking trip as well.

 This was the first actual backpacking trip for Carolyn other than our snowshoe hut trip last winter, in many years. But New Zealand has this great Hut system and the Heaphy hut is brand new and like a castle.

 This is Carolyn when we arrived at the Hut. It had bunks with Mattresses,  6 propane stoves, LED light that came on at night, a wood stove for heat and pre chopped wood. It is supplied by the Dept of Conservation via helicopter. It was very Plush, and with everything supplied, we had much lighter packs than we would on a tent self contained trip

 The hut overlooked a beautiful river outlet into the Tasman Sea. One of the other trampers organized a giant Bonfire on the beach. Most of the other folks spending the night in the hut were bikers, as the Heaphy is open for mountain biking in the winter, It is a rugged 2 to 3  day trip across the mountains and those fat tire bikes would sure of been handy on the sandy segments by the beach the last en miles or so.

 There were four cool suspension bridges on river crossings during the hike and I kept thinking how I could slash the cables after I crossed to watch all the Orcs chasing me fall into the Chasm below. But every time I look back it seemed I had lost them so I left the bridges standing, or suspending, for others to enjoy.

 It was incredibly green and wet though we somehow were lucky enough to make the entire trip with only a bit  of rain.  When we got back to our car Sunday it immediately began to pour. 

ALso, though tattoos are big here, perhaps due to the Maori influence, it certainly was evident at the Hnmer SPrings Pools, If I got one it would be this NZ icon:

Martinborough wines, Old Friends and musings on work

A bit of time has passed since the last blog and we put that down on our work schedule. When we are here and short staffed and on for the weekend, work pretty much occupies our time. And for you Northern hemisphere folks, remember our days are quite short in Mid autumn, so no after work bike ride or hike. But to complain about my hours is silly, I see men and women at the fish processing plant work 70 hours a week and the people up at the Mine work tough 7 days on and 7 off schedules. We have it good, though our recent visit to see Duncan, a friend from our freshman dorm at Stanford, raised the work issue as well. And not just because David Beckham

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is retiring at age 38 but because Duncan has now a nifty lifestyle farm in the Greytown Carterton area north of Wellington with his partner Jan

SO Duncan has now traded his academic hat for a pick and shovel and an infinite number for projects around the farm. And though I am tempted to post a picture of Meatloaf here as that is one of the cows name, the fat Meatloaf's drunken support embarrassed Romney and totally eliminated the 1.3% chance that Nate Silver predicted he had of winning the election, and I do not want to popularize him again to the 4 readers of the blog.
Actually I was thinking of Kurt Vonnegut and Cat's Cradle and the tenet of the fictional religion ( is there a non-fictional one/) Bokononism called Karass.  A karass is a group of people who lack the common socially acknowledged ties like Cheeseheads, Rotarians, meadows club members, Boy Scouts, Boulderites, etc but actually seem to have an undefinable close tie. That's how it felt visit Duncan and Jan, though we have  only visited Duncan now three times in thirty 34 years or so, it was immediately familiar and warm. And that was not just the Wine talking

Though the Pinot Noir at Ata Rangi was excellent. I hope we can get together more often in the next 30 years, though I do not know if retiring to a lifestyle farm is really retiring or not.
And speaking of close friends, our returning flight to Westport was cancelled due to a giant storm that shut down the Wellington airport and Mark and Linda Baxter came to the rescue with  their hospitality and provided us with an excellent dinner, bed to sleep in and great company. All the more reinforcing the Karass tenent.

Milford road and Mutton

Views of Milford sound from the water.

Mitre Peak

So the Road to Milford sound is as fantastic as the sound itself, which is actually a fiord. But the road is still a road and not a highway or street. Along the route from Te Anau are multiple places to stop for extraordinary views and Flora and Fauna

At Gunn Lake walk you will find the most amazing lush green forest that you will ever see. The chlorophyll is overwhelming. It is like wlaking with an oxygen mask. The fabulous Beech trees covered in moss were the inspiration and models for the ENTs in the Lord of the Rings Trilogy.  Their trunks do indeed resemble giant mammalian pachyderm type feet and they tower above the forest quite magnificently.

On the way in it was raining and we saw literally hundreds of waterfalls that cascaded hundred of meters down the sheer cliffs along the road. Once we were on the water of Milford the waterfalls were even more stunning, Though Milford lacks the wildlife seen at Doubtful sound, It has a slightly more spectacular geology and that make the walls of the valleys steeper and the waterfalls more spectacular.

Though not to be outdone by the Tolkienesque surroundings and Ent inspirations, The Baxters put on an ANZAC day feast in Wellington worthy of any Hobbit Elevenish meal. And though there were no Dwarfs to eat the hosts out of house and home, the guests did a remarkably good job on the cases of wine , beer and the roast mutton. A feast that only the Baxters could host this side of fantasy literature.

Stunning Blue Water and Milk

Last Saturday we awoke to pounding rain, sheets of water cascading down. It is still a novelty for Coloradoans to experience drenching rain, and rather nice to watch from inside. We had a weekend get away planned however, so after a quick trip to the gym and a bit of dawdling, we  were off. Within twenty minutes of leaving, the rain stopped and blue sky appeared- perfect timing. 

We were off to the Hokitika area south of Westport and went by Punakiki again where the rainstorm had caused high seas and the blowholes were quite dramatic. We continued on to our destination of Kumara, a tiny town of 320 people, a few kilometers in from the coast on the Alpine highway. Like many towns here Kumara was once a busy gold rush town with four banks and 2 hotels.
We stayed in the recently restored Theatre Royal Hotel, which in its heyday hosted performers from the world over including the London Circus.

The interior of the hotel reflected the original Victorian sensibility. We were then only overnight guests though the bar and dining room were hopping. Our 

waiter told us they had served 80 people the night before. We continue to be amazed when we find these out of the way spots seemingly in the middle of nowhere.

The next morning we drove through beautiful farm land up to the base of the Alps and the Hokitika Gorge. The beautiful blue color is from glacial rock powder suspended in the water. 

Though there are many more sheep in New Zealand than cows, the dairy industry is by far the largest export industry, it over took sheep 25 years ago. Dairy is huge, though comes with a cost and quite a debate here, cows require much more resources and produce much more waste.

The North Island has the bulk of the dairy farms but it is huge on the South Island as well. Fonterra is a huge national cooperative that is a virtual monopoly on dairy here, most of what we buy in the stores are Fonterra products, though the bulk of exports are in the form of milk powder that goes to Asia. Hokitika has one of the few remaining independent                    dairy Producers, Westland.

Imagine having to drive the Coast Highway with these milk trucks, not to mention the mining trucks, sharing the narrow road and the frequent one lane bridges.

Coast Highway Point Elizabeth

Queen Charlotte Track, part 2

After a great meal and healthy breakfast at Mahana Lodge, we were off on day #2 of our tramp on the QCT.  There were 24.5 kilometers to conquer before we were at the next lodge, and I was a bit apprehensive.  Of course, Mahana Lodge was at sea level, so the first 30 minutes of walking was straight up a hill, and then we continued uphill but at a lesser grade.  The day was spent walking the hilly ridge of the peninsula, with Queen Charlotte Sound to our south and Kenepuru Sound to our north. 

Here is our first glimpse of Kenepuru Sound, very pastoral and beautiful.  We spent the day climbing up and down on the ridgeline you see in the left of the photo, and at the end of the day, we could look back and spot the farm we had initially seen, way at the end of the sound.  

Along the way, we stopped to eat delicious lunches we carried from Mahana Lodge, and we found a group of like-paced travelers: we passed them when they were taking a break, and then they would pass us, and we began to recognize faces.  Overall, there was less traffic than the day before, as day hikers were not on this segment.  The high point of the climb was 420 meters, then we went down a bit, only to go back to 404 meters.  Finally, we reached the turnoff to the Portage Bay Hotel, our destination for the night, and down we walked, back to sea level.  It was great to take off our hiking boots, enjoy the view from our room. and have a cold beer.  Yes, there were cars;  it seems most people DROVE to the resort, but we saw several familiar faces from the track in the bar and the restaurant.

We woke on day #3 to the sound of rain, lots of steady rain.  We were prepared though, wrapped our cameras in plastic and put on our raincoats.   Today, the hotel drove all the trekkers up 200 meters to meet the track, so we only had the second 200 meters to the top of the ridge to climb.  I was definitely slower on day #3.  The rain would tease us and seem to stop, but whenever I put down my hood or thought about taking off my raincoat, it would start again.  Although the track continued for another 15 km, this was our short day of walking, and we soon saw the turnoff to Lochmara Lodge where we were stopping.  I had wanted to stay overnight here, but the lodge was booked, so we settled for lunch and walking around.  Luckily, by that time, the rain had stopped.
    Lochmara Lodge is famous for promoting art, and sculpture is scattered throughout their grounds. This mosaic sofa reminded us of Gaudi's art in Barcelona.

The lodge is also known for environmental awareness and protecting native species.  They have a breeding program for threatened parakeets.  We got to help out at the daily feeding.

Finally, it was time to go back to Picton via water taxi #4.  We had a great time.