A Night on Long Beach

This is the home of the best climbing in the Dunedin area.  The little cave with the three entrances that we camped in is called Cathedral Cave and has some cool bouldering routes.  Further down the beach is where they do sport climbing (our gear will arrive with our parents so we can climb a little in January).  The big cave I'm standing in is the home of what must be some pretty wicked Guy Fawkes bon fires/parties.  You can see how the roof of the cave has been painted black with the years of smoke.  This was Mae's first day off since we went to Te Anau nearly three weeks ago.  It was really good for us to get out, even if it did start raining in the middle of the night and through the next day.  That wasn't so surprising though as all of my days off for the past month have been cold and rainy.  Sorry the blog has become so boring, hopefully the pictures make up for the less than inspiring writing.  Not much new has been happening since our last post, just more work.  However, I am undergoing two major changes at the current moment.  I, for the first time in nearly 25 years, have a great desire to be drinking coffee and eating soup pretty much all the time.  I don't know what did it but there are two more down.  I'm sorry to say that I don't love seafood yet, but the other night Mae made some Hoffman/Chugwater chili littered with beans and I loved it as well.  Suffice it to say that we are turning over some new leaves here in New Zealand and are still so happy to be here, even if we do miss the sun we grew so accustomed to back home.  That's all for now.

Cheers,

Johnny

Te Anau

Te Anau, who's pronunciation baffles us still, is totally awesome!  It is about 2 hours South of Queenstown, and is the gateway to Fiordland National Park.  Te Anau the town is small but really cool with some great shops and pubs.  It is right on Lake Te Anau with incredible mountains behind it.  We actually stayed in the much smaller "town" of Manapouri, situated on Lake Manapouri (again with an incredible backdrop).  Most of New Zealand's great walking tracks are around this area and Maegen and I did the last 6 kilometers of the Kepler Track.  The next 7 pictures are from that walk.  Not to focus too heavily on Middle Earth, but the canoeing scene at the end of the Fellowship was filmed on that river, and the forest was used for scenes of Lothlorien.  We had a sweet cabin right across the street from Lake Manapouri.  You could climb up the chimney and poke out the top to get a great view.  We renamed Fraser's Beach, "Viking Beach" for Gunner due to the yellow and purple flowers all over it.  We now have to figure out what tracks we want to make reservations for, and how we are going to explore Doubtful Sound, probably by sea kayak.  It was absolutely beautiful, we had a great weekend.  

Cheers, Johnny

Allen's Beach

Hey Everybody- These pictures are of Allen's Beach, where Johnny and I went last week.  The beach was just gorgeous, it seemed to go on forever.  Johnny and I climbed around on the rocks which had little rock pools and hidden seal lions.  The sea lions always scare me because they blend in with their surroundings and then they hiss at you as you walk by.  We also had a huge white bird (Johnny's convinced it was an albatross) dive bomb us because we were near her/his nest.  He made awful noises at us that sounded like a propeller.  I thought Johnny was going to get his head taken off by the bird swooping over him.  The weather has been really nice lately, and it was so exciting to be on the beach with the sun shining.  After Allen's Beach we drove up the peninsula and waited until dark for the blue penguins to come out of the ocean.  We got to see around 30 penguins.  They come out of the water in groups of 10 to 15.  Then they climb up the beach and waddle to their nests where they have their partner and chicks waiting for them.  In the picture you can kind of see his blue feathers, and they were only about a foot tall.  The penguins walked only about 4 or 5 feet away from us.  It was really neat, but unfortunately at that point it was to dark to take pictures of them (can't use the flash because it hurts their eyes).  Tomorrow we are taking a trip to Te Anau and Doubtful Sound, where we will hopefully kayak.  We'll let you know how it goes- cheers maegen

Tunnel Beach

Rumor has it that the farmer who owned land nearest to tunnel beach dug the tunnel you see Mae in so that his daughter could get down to the beach in the next three pictures.  The surf is really strong here and as a result of the beach access, the daughter drowned.  A pretty sad story, which made Mae a little uncomfortable walking down the tunnel to the beach.  We came across this enormous sea lion down on the beach so we climbed back up and watched it struggle across the beach and glide into the water.  It would duck four or five waves at a time on it's way out to the open water, it was really cool to watch.  There are just so many incredible landscapes all so close to us here, we are so lucky.  You can see how big the tunnel is in the last picture with the little pink spot on top being Mae.  It is also incredible how empty all these places are, even being so close to the second largest city on the South Island, it kind of reminds us of Wyoming.  Now it's back to a week of work.  Happy Guy Fawkes/Election day!

Cheers, Johnny

High Cliff Walk

Hey Everybody!

We've just been working away, and by that I mean 30 hours a week in New Zealand.  Things have been pretty good, we've had an awakening these last couple of weeks that we actually have to work here and that the jobs are not very interesting.  I have been putting new label after new label on merchandise that had to be repriced, and Johnny has been dealing with grumpy co-workers.  He also has to turn down shifts because they don't have enough employees and I have to beg for shifts in order to get enough work.  But last week we had our days off together and we went for a beautiful hike.  The hike took us to the top of a very large cliff that overlooked the ocean and city.  It was a pretty steep climb up and so the way down was much more enjoyable!  The yellow flowers in the picture were all over the hills and they smelled awesome (sort of like vanilla).  We are now looking forward to our next days off together, and in a couple weeks, a trip to Doubtful Sound in Fiordland National Park.  

Kia Ora, Mae      

Recap

Here are a few things we've wanted to add for awhile, we just needed a chance to use Bobby and Natalie's newer, faster computer, thanks guys.

All of us at Cathedral Cove (Narnia)

Mae thrashing in Raglan

This is a video of us zorbing way back in Rotorua.

Queenstown 2

Unknown Range visible only from the Remarkables

After visiting Arrowtown, we drove up the Remarkables all the way to the resort, which closed about a week ago.  The views were breathtaking and the pictures really don't capture much of it.  It was a bit unnerving driving up as there are very few rails, big washboards, and steep drop-offs.  It was well worth the nervousness though as it allowed us to see an entire range that you can't see from the town.  We camped for the first time and our tent was great.  It rained the second night and we were warm and dry.  We can't wait to go back.

Two peaks over 6,ooo feet, rise above Lake Wakatipu

On our way back to Dunedin we stopped at Moeraki beach.  These boulders are huge and almost perfectly spherical.  It really looks man made but it's not.  It is so nice to have a home to come back to, and to not have pack and unpack everything we own for a weekend trip.  

Cheers,

Johnny  

Queenstown 1

The Remarkables, Lake Wakatipu, and Queenstown

Our trip to Queenstown was excellent.  It is a beautiful town on a large lake surrounded by incredible (some might even say remarkable) mountains.  The first thing we did was take the skyline Gondola above the town and did the luge.  The luge had awesome scenery as you can see, and was really easy to control, both speed and turns.  Unfortunately my head was far to large for the biggest helmet they had, which is why I look a little bit like the happy kid.

Johnny luging in front of the Remarkables

Sweet Helmets

The next morning we got up early to go paragliding.  Queenstown is the extreme sport capital of NZ and they literally have it all.  The paragliding was outside of Queenstown just in a valley.  There were small villages we could see, but it was basically just gorgeous mountains, emerald rivers, green grass and sheep.  A big wind came up just as we got up and they had to bring us down pretty quick which was disappointing, but we get to go again for free when we go back so it's not all that bad.

Mae flying with her Chilean guide

The small town of Arrowtown is about 15 km outside of Queenstown, visible from our flight actually, and was well worth the visit.  The river behind us in the picture was in Lord of the Rings when Arwen rescues Frodo and crosses the river into Rivendell, it actually looked just like the movie.  

 

Penguins!!

So last night we went out on Otago Peninsula (about 30 minutes from our house) and walked to boulder beach, were Bobby had heard that we would have a good chance of seeing penguins and sea lions.  It was a beautiful walk through the bush and a beautiful beach.  We did come across two sea lions catching the last of the sun.  As soon as it went behind the cliffs two penguins surfed up on the waves, stood up and waddled to their nests in the rocks.  It was one of the coolest things I've seen.  They looked pretty big so we thought they were probably yellow-eyed penguins, which my dad says are pretty rare.  We couldn't get very close (and Mae said one picture would be enough), but you can definitely tell what they are, it was so awesome.  Tomorrow Mae and I are going to Queenstown for a couple days (Natalie got sick so they are staying in Dunedin).  Maybe when we get back we'll have some bunjy pictures.  No matter what we do it will be nice to have a few days off together. 

Cheers, Johnny