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Published: November 30th 2008
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November 28, 2008 Day 57
Happy 30th (can he possibly be that old?) birthday to our son, Tom. Seems like just a few years ago that we were driving from Yellowstone to Livingston, Montana through a blizzard on a road that was closed in a borrowed four-wheel-drive pickup for Tommy’s birth.
Didn’t get going until around 9:30 this morning. Our park near Fox Glacier (that we never saw) was so nice we hated to leave and it was such a pretty morning. We don’t ever drive very far in a day and today was no different. We drove along the west coast and stopped at some funky little towns. In Whataroa while Joe was eating lunch I spent some time with a Maori girl that was working in her family’s store/museum. Since I was the only customer, she told me the Maori legends behind the different symbols and explained what the traditional tattoos were all about. Her family had done the carvings in the store and she had made a lot of the jewelry. Her father had carved a beautiful 10 ft. long model boat that was on display. I bought a very inexpensive jade pendant that is
supposed to bring good health. It was the least I could do after that extensive culture lesson.
We had read about a white heron sanctuary near Okarito, but the only way to get in is to pay for a permit and go with a guide. Just for kicks we stopped at a lagoon near the sanctuary to see what we could see and in about 10 seconds a white heron flew over Joe’s head. White heron…Check. That was easy. A few miles down the road we walked for about a half hour along a “Kiwi Track,” but of course didn’t see any kiwis. Good exercise though, it was a steep climb. Only birds we saw were the singing tuis and the tiny silvereyes.
At a food store in Greymouth, (at the mouth of the Grey River, natch), we bought some kind of fish that was recommended to us by a fellow shopper. We were getting lots of advice as another local told us to buy this little box of new potatoes that were covered with dirt. We boiled the potatoes (scrubbed the dirt off) and cooked the fish in a foil wrapper with onion, lemon, butter, and mushrooms.
The fish was just as good as the view at our caravan park tonight. We are in Punakaiki near Paparoa NP and behind us are mountains covered with palm trees, and other lush growth. In front of us is the ocean. After we ate we walked a short trail to lookouts of the Pancake Rocks that are Dolomite limestone stacks near the coast. In somebody’s imagination (not mine) they look like pancakes.
The only negative about this place is there are those little black nasty sand flies. It’s a mystery to me how those little buzztards know how to get up my pant legs and down into my socks before I even see them. The Coasters (that’s what the people on the west coast are called) say if you don’t scratch the bites they won’t itch. I don’t understand that logic, because if they didn’t itch in the first place I wouldn’t be scratching them. There must be more to it that I’m not getting. By the way, I made up the word “buzztard” and think it’s very appropriate.
It is nice to hear the ocean waves, better than a sleeping pill.
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