Minty sprogged this morning:
We’re going to have a tough time telling her (yes, it’s a her !) apart from her cousin Nabaztag — when she gets bigger, anyway:
The boys look on, no doubt anticipating a new playmate:
Prepare to have your bandwidth usurped.
So looking through the raft of trip photos, I realized that I am guilty of doing the typical tourist thing, and taking lots of photos of pretty landscapes, when some of you might (hah hah) be just as interested to see, say, streetscapes, people doing things, what your typical pretty antique house looks like in New Zealand, the classic Kiwi woolshed, a forestry block — the sorts of things that make up our own personal mental conceptions of “New Zealand”.
It also occured to me that, really, some of the most memorable aspects of ths most recent trip were the interesting people we met: Pat & John from Lake Huron, whom we met on the ferry, and who are scouting out NZ to help their friends back in Canada plan *their* vacations; the Scottish couple who run “The Flying Haggis” pub in Picton, who’ve spent their lives living (and quite possibly running Scottish pubs) in various places around the globe (and who serve a mean grilled cheese-and-haggis toastie); Russell Gent, one of the “oldtimers” in the NZ alpaca industry, who once spent five years hunting deer and possum to make ends meet after a bad winter killed off two-thirds of his cattle; Pagan, a microbiologist who left a career developing transgenic mammals to teach high school science in Japan after a rat with a particularly ferocious zest for life inspired a crisis of conscience; Steve, another alpaca hobby farmer who moonlights as a wilderness guide in the wilds of Alaska; the garage-owner who sold us petrol and ice cream in Windwhistle, who says the wild country behind the town reminds him of his native Dartmoor…. and all the others. But I didn’t get photos of any of *them*, either.
Here’s some of what I *did* get.
The historic bridge over the Rakaia river, running blue after rains on the glaciers:
The road down to Queenstown — it gets quite dry in the middle of the island, and some places are really bleak-looking when they’re not covered in snow, or flushed with spring grass:
Lake Tekapo, one of the many pretty lakes down this way:
One of the restored Chinese miner’s huts at Arrowtown — tiny little home-made things, with a schist floor to sleep on, and a chimey made of mud and corrugated iron:
Our token Lord of the Rings site — the ford of Bruinen, complete with German backpackers panning for gold:
Three (count ‘em!) shots taken on the 20km gravel road to Mount Aspiring Station — two of the Matukituki river (Stephen waded out in search of pretty purple rocks for me — isn’t he great ?), and one of the slanting light on the weirdo rock formations on the way back:
We made it to Stewart Island ! The South South Island ! Here’s a shot of one of the many pretty little coves we saw on our hike, and also one of the village cat, asleep in a file tray in the grocery store. The sign reads: “Hi, my name is Koru. Yes, I am real. I am the village cat, I live in and around the bay. I come into the shop to be fed and sleep. I am about 4 years old — Sorry I know I am beautiful — but I am not for sale.”:
A couple of moody shots of the south coast. Got wind ?
Here’s something we were sorry we missed on our first trip here — the Moeraki Boulders. Aren’t they freaky ? Gigantic spherical boulders just strewn along the beach. Oh, and a particularly friendly local cormorant. The local term for a cormorant is a “shag”, by the way.
I will be kind, and spare you photos of other people’s alpacas. :^)