Friday, February 5, 2010

Mountains and a Different Kind of Taxi

February 3

We did indeed sleep well last night, though we also again slept through Ian's alarm. We should have learned from yesterday not to rely on it. Fortunately, Wes woke up at 8:00 and the mild panic at having missed the alarm got us going pretty quickly. We have to be on time today because we have a water taxi scheduled for 9:45. After we packed up the site, we headed out once more to the beach, for another round of oatmeal with raisins and brown sugar. The drill is old hat now, and though we weren't at the beach until just before 9:00, we were finished and cleaning the dishes shortly after 9:30.

By the time the taxi came we were done cleaning and ready to go. The ride was awesome. It was the closest we'd gotten to see New Zealand from the sea and it was even more interesting to have a new perspective on the trails we'd been hiking for a day and a half. The driver was incredibly friendly and energetic -- running out through the surf at one of the stops and returning with no less than four fully-loaded backpacks -- and made an out-of-the way stop at a seal breeding ground. The newest babies had been born around Christmas and were at an adorable size when we saw them. On the way to the next stop we even briefly got to see a seal feeding in the water 2-3 meters from the boat. Our favorite stop was not Bark Bay but Aworoa Bay, where we had hiked across at low tide. It was now very close to high tide and the whole area had been flooded with water. It was beautiful and a very dramatic change from when we had seen it. We saw five sting rays as we idled at the shoreline, one of which was quite large (a meter, maybe? I'm still working on the metric thing).

And finally it was our stop all the way back at Totaranui Campground. It felt like a long time since we've been here, though it was really less than two days. We took some time repacking the car and headed off. We had another scenic ride through the hills and coasts of New Zealand. We stopped at Motueka for groceries and made PBJs on the road. We also went to see the pancake rocks in Paparoa National Park, which you will hopefully be able to can see pictures of shortly now (along with pictures of a lot of other things):

 

 
 Buller Gorge

 

 
This is a picture of a seagull.

 
 
Water runoff channel / tunnel. It made me think of Mario Kart.

Our final destination was Klondyke's Corner at the end of Arthur's Pass. It was a huge, wide open area in the middle of the mountains populated by some pesky sand flies but also the world's only Kea Parrots, one of which took a liking to our car as we were cooking dinner. We made all four cans of chilli that we had, but Wes and I were still hungry and decided to make soup with some of our egg noodles while Zach and Ian set up the tent.
I just discovered Photoshop's Photomerge.
 
I'm pretty impressed.


 
We found the rusting and crumbled remains of a large structure.
 

Maybe a bridge?
The site and smell of our still-chilli-flavored soup convinced them they were hungry as well, so we shared a second dinner under probably the starriest sky I've ever seen. Ian and I went for an excursion around the completely dried riverbed, and it's a little too bad we did, because by the time we came back the moon had risen and flooded out a good portion of the stars. But there were plenty of stars nonetheless as we all fell asleep outside, our tent standing nearby as a forlorn last resort in case the weather turned bad. It didn't.

2 comments:

  1. YOU GOT TO SEE BABY SEALS??!

    NOT FAIR *pouty emoticon*

    ReplyDelete
  2. p.s. I found the first typo/missing word: under probably [the] starriest sky I've ever seen

    Noun 1. typo - a mistake in printed matter resulting from mechanical failures of some kind
    (Your mechanical failures are few and far between, sweetheart.)

    ReplyDelete