Christchurch: last night in NZ

Tonight is our last night in NZ. We start our long journey home by flying to the North Island to Auckland and then we catch a direct flight to San Francisco then catch another flight to Denver. It will take 25 hours of constant traveling time. Whew!  Maybe I can get the pilot to sign my souvenir!

Besides waiting for our flight tomorrow we walked around Christchurch. This is a big city that suffered two major earthquakes in 2010 and 2011. They are rebuilding the city but it has been slow because of funding and insurance claims. So 4 years later we can still see the scars everywhere around the main downtown area.  Construction is everywhere with a positive Kiwi attitude of survival.

So thanks for coming along with us. It's been an amazing adventure!  We highly recommend coming down under to visit these great islands. Good day good day'
xxoo
Mary & Sam

Mt Cook--"Roof of New Zealand"

Hey.
We are at Mt Cook for two nights and staying in the National park here.
They have a big sign over the restaurant that says, " this IS a national park so behave!"  Haha. Reminds me of my Mom.

It was very windy today so we only took a short 45 minute hike. All the events were cancelled due to high winds. We spent a lot off time in the visitor center and the Sir Edmund Hillary museum. He was the first man, a Kiwi, to summit Mt Everest (30,000 ft) and he practiced on Mt Cook (14,000feet). The. We watched a Mountain Rescue documentary that was really interesting. It's a volunteer helicopter rescue team here that saves about 30 people a year from Mt Cook's dangerous slopes. 130 people have died on this mountain over the last 100 years. 2000 crazy people have hiked this glacier. It's too cold and windy for me.

Tomorrow we have a 4 hour drive to Christchurch and we start our long journey home on Thursday. So we will leave Mt Cook..."elevation 14,000 feet from worries. "
Thanks for following our adventures!

Rails to Trail central Otago Biking

Good day good day!  This is the usual local greeting followed by a big smile. NZ people are very happy and friendly people and not just because they want your tourist dollars.  I think their nature seems to be relaxed and carefree. It's a very easy country to tour.

So we had previously booked a remote 6 hour bike ride with a jet boat crossing half way through the gorge. Needless to say...plans had to change. The biking company gave us the tandem bike and a mostly easy downhill coast along the countryside. After learning how to start off on the bike without looking like the two stooges, things went along very well. We started out in the rain but it cleared up after about 20 minutes and the weather was just cloudy and cool. I was pretty anxious for the first two hours because I was frightened of falling and breaking my other arm. That would just look silly.

We took it slowly and enjoyed the day. We biked 19 miles over 3.5 hours. We passed through two pitch black tunnels and several bridges and a lot of sheep. Central NZ has the big sheep and dairy farms that is their primary industry (inc tourism).

This is a weird story of the local festival reported from the bike transfer driver.  Rabbits are not native to NZ and have no predators. Europeans colonized NZ and thought it was a great idea to release rabbits into the forest many years ago. Now there is an overpopulation of rabbits and they are eating all the crops. She said you can go to a hillside and clap your hands and the hillside will move with hundreds+ of rabbits jumping. So on Easter Sunday the locals have the annual "Easter Bunny Shoot" where they kill rabbits over a 24 hours period. The hunter with the most rabbits killed wins a cash prize. Last year's winner killed 1200 rabbits. She said people get very creative.  When I asked 'why do you do this on Easter?!"  She flatly said in a totally matter of fact tone, " because it's an Easter bunny shoot". I don't think NZ has the 'Real Easter Bunny' sitting in their malls and happily passing out candy to children or maybe they would be hunting him, too!  Never mind the other symbols of new life of Easter.  Ironic, huh?

Anyway, that's my observation of the day.

Good day good day!

Doubtful Sound overnight cruise.

Yesterday we boarded a boat in Manipourri and went across a lake (50 min) to catch a bus on an island that drove us through a rain forest to get to a dock (1 hour) where we would board a large sailboat ( a Ketch) for an overnight cruise to Doubtful Sound that is actually a fiord carved by the glaciers.  It was an awesome trip!  We motored 90% of the time but put up the sails when we reached the Tasman Sea. We were lucky and had beautiful sunny weather. Then the boat turned around and headed back into the fiord to find a quiet bay to moor for the night. We were the only boat in the area.

Then People had the choice the to take out in single kayaks or go out with a nature guide in the speedboat. Sam went out in a single kayak and I did the boat ride since I would have just paddled in a circle with my one hand. It was early evening  and Everyone was eaten up by sand flies. Ugh. Not so fun.

There were 70 people on the 110 meter boat. We started chatting with two couples early in the trip & ended up sitting with them for all the meals. In the picture, you can see from left: Nicki (psychologist from Scotland) married to Stephen ( British businessman), Annie (Utah psych nurse) married to Don (Utah psychiatrist ). We made a pact that nobody could talk about their life problems! It was a lot of laughs.

At one point in the trip, the captain shut down all the engines and generators so that we could appreciate the quiet and rainforest sounds in the fiord. I think that was my favorite part--utter quiet and peace. We are truly blessed to be in New Zealand.

Kayaking Milford Sound

Today we kayaked Milford Sound!  I acted like the Princess of NZ by riding in the front of the guide's kayak. My job was to try not to flip the kayak, not get my cast wet and feed him my food frequently. The guide, Jack, was from San Diago and he was about 25 years old...Cute as a bug.

It was the best kayaking trip ever! "We" paddled from 10am-2:45. I realized that kayaking is a lot more fun if you don't have to do all that paddling.  The weather was gorgeous, sunny and warm. The fiord was spectacular. Sam was in another kayak with a friendly Frenchman (I know!)
I did feel bad when a young woman, Jo Marie from Phoenix , got sea sick and the guide told her to paddle harder to help her get over the nausea. I tried to look busy. She ended up being too sick to continue so a shuttle boat picked her and her new husband (honeymoon) up to get out of the water.  Poor kids. Oh well, back to being the Princess.

Jenny suggested that I should blog that a Dolphin jumped into my kayak, grabbed me by the cast and dragged me out to the sea. She said the followers may very well believe it coming from me!  After a shark was spotted. The guide told me that sharks can smell broken bones. Everybody is a comedian.

Tomorrow we head off to Doubtful Sound. We have an Overnight cruise through this fiord for 24 hours. It should be beautiful!  No hiking, biking or paddling required.

Thanks for following the blog!

I broke my arm yesterday on the glacier hike.

The good news:
The glacier helicopter Tour was amazing. It was a lot more difficult than I expected. The tour guide plus 10 tourist set out for a 3 hour tour.  a 3 hour tour.
I guess I expected more snow and not pure ice. It's the top of a huge mountain!  In Colorado we have Mountains too and they are covered in snow, not solid ice. Anyway, the guide spends the entire time chopping the ice into steps and paths for us to walk on. He was very impressive. The we wear special boots with "cramp-on" or huge cleats/Yak Tracks.  The guide tells you to stay on his path and dig in your cramp-on into the ice.

As you can see with the pictures, the scenery is incredible. we decided that this was one of our top ten 'best things we have ever done'. We walked up to the top of the glacier where there was a water fall (note the rainbow ). We walked through crevices and ice tunnels and ledges and all kinds of cool ice sculptures. It was a lot of climbing. Highly recommend this tour!

Bad news:
So we are 1/2 done and start hiking down the glacier. It's much harder walking down ice.  So I'm carefully hiking down the ice steps, minding my own business, when my cramp-on sticks in the Ice and I go falling head first down into a crevice!  Sam is right behind me and sees me fall but can't reach me. I fall on my hand/arm to brace myself and flipped over to stop myself from falling further into the hole--which has water at the bottom of it. I only fell about 5 feet down but could have gone farther down. Sam reached down and pulled me up from under my arms.

I walked a while longer because I felt like a klutz in front of the group.  I thought my wrist was broken because I couldn't move my lower arm. But we had to climb down using ropes and I was hanging onto Sam so the guide said we were both going to fall down a crevice. The guide decided I needed helicopter evacuation and summoned my own private helicopter. It was pretty cool. They landed right next to us after sending the rest of the group Down with another guide. I sat next to the pilot with Sam in the back and it was amazing. Much better than the ride there.

The rest is Boring ER stuff, transfer to the only hospital 2 hours away ( where's that helicopter now?) X-rays, fractured Radius (clean complete break but not displaced), open topped cast done because of swelling. I have to go back in 7 days for a complete cast.

So would we do it again?  Yeah, Baby!

Dog with a blog

It was a travel day to get to the glaciers so I thought a puppy update would be blog-worthy.

Bailey is skiing at Vail with Bob, Jenny and Josh this weekend. She looks great in her ski goggles and helmet!  I hear they are having cocktails and appetizers at the Ritz tonight. I hope Bailey brought her manners.

Arthur's Pass National Park

After landing in South Island, we rented another car and headed west to the coast through the  Southern Alps. This area was formed by the glaciers and not volcanic activity.

Who's Arthur you may ask?

Arthur Dobson was the man credited in 1864 with hiking into this pass on his way to the west coast. After gold was discovered on the coast, 4000 people wanted to cross this mountainous pass. In 1866 the first stage coach (see picture) started carrying people instead of hiking. The stage coaches carried 14 people and pulled by 5 horses. That's 14 people without benefit of deoderant on that small coach. The local museum has one of the original stage coaches imported from New Hampshire.

Today we did a hike to 'Devil's Punchbowl'. It only took an hour round trip and it was beautiful. The cool picture taken through the stone wall was taken while standing on the porch of a small stone house. Sam wouldn't come up to the house because of a little sign saying 'private property'. He said I was being snoopy, but there was no sign saying 'no trespassing'---a loophole. The windows were covered with steel shutters otherwise I'd have pictures of the inside, too.

Tomorrow we will continue on another 150 miles to the coast and to the glacier area. We have a 3 hour glacier hike planned in 2 days where we are dropped off from a helicopter on the top of a glacier. You would think that in this time of glacier melting, global warming, etc that this type of adventure would be discouraged but apparently not in the name of tourism.

I hope things are warming up and spring is coming at home.
Thanks for tramping along with us.
Xxoo

Dog with a blog...

Bailey is staying with Bob for the 4 weeks that we are away on our New Zealand trip. I asked him if Bailey was missing me and he sent the first photo. Hmmm, she doesn't look too bothered by my absence.

In other doggie news, Cooper turned one year old last month!  Remember how adorable he was last May when the Andersons watched Bailey for our Spain trip?  The last photo is Cooper now...waiting for Bailey to come home to Pratt Lake. He's still adorable.

Answer to age of Maori Carving at Lake Taupo

This was a trick question or a trick by all the venders trying to get tourists to book trips to see the carvings.  We guessed 1500 or 1000 years.

Answer:  it is 37 years old. Carved in 1978 by artist trained in the ancient Maori style except they only carved in wood, never stone.  Now the two artists are upset that they donated their time and effort without commission and lots of people have made it a money making boat tour.

Diane and Jeff...thank you for playing along. 😊

Waitomo Caves

It's 6:30 am and we are awaiting our flight from Auckland to Christchurch in the South Island. Everyone says the South Island is more beautiful but that's hard to imagine.

We spent 4 hours yesterday exploring the Waitomo Caves by boat and by foot. The little raft took the twelve of us to see the infamous glow worms. Really cool little insects. My camera phone couldn't catch the lights. It looks like a starry sky on a moonless night. The bioluminescence of these larvae in caves are only found here and a few places in Australia. The cave ceilings are covered with these glowing bugs.

Tongariro Crossing--very difficult hike!

Whew!
Now I know how the IronMan finishers feel after competition.

Sam said the Tongariro Crossing was 10 miles long but that was before the last eruption that mandated the path to be re-routed. Now it's more like 12 miles long and the most spectacular scenery we've ever seen on a trail before. Even Sam said it was the most difficult hike he has ever done (I say that after most hikes). We also passed the hikers-hut that was devastated when a 'miner eruption' in 2012 sent flying boulders through the roof and landed through the bunk beds but fortunately it was empty that night. The hut is closed now and was never repaired so it stands as a testament to the danger in this ring of fire. I'll pause here for you to hum along with me.

As you can see from the photos, it was an awesome day. Jenny and Josh did this hike 3 weeks ago and poor Jenny had a difficult time. I would have smoked her and rolled by her on this crossing! (A little volcano humor).  I did well from 7:30 am until 3:00pm after passing the 10 mile marker and my dogs were barking. I usually hit my biological wall at 10-11 miles on a medium-difficult trail. One guide said its your knees and ankles that take the beating climbing up and down these mountains...and he was so right. We finished at 4:30. At one part of the trail you are walking through pure volcanic ash and it's all downhill to the banks of those beautiful lakes. We were glad to have our hiking poles but most people didn't. 1000-2000 people hike this famous crossing every day and we noticed that most are under the age of 35. I'm glad we did it.

We fly out tomorrow morning to the South Island. Good Night or Good Morning.
M & S