God is good

Hey guys,

As you know, it's been raining 97% of our time here in NZ. But, God is good. The ONLY time it clears up is when we plan to spend the day outside on somesort of adventure. The day before a.k.a the booking day, we're always very apprehensive about the weather in the coming day. We think about how we can't let the weather stop us from exploring the country so we should just go for it.

The other day, while at Abel Tasman National Park, we booked a Sea Kayaking day trip. The weather was predicted to only get worse. We woke up the next morning able to see our breath. I despise being cold. And I thought, 'here we go, another rainy friggin day in NZ.' But, God is good. The weather was absolutely perfect for our whole day out on the water. It was the first day without rain since we set foot on NZ almost 2 weeks earlier. We took a water taxi from Marahau to Tonga Island (a marine reserve). We paddled back to Anchorage Bay, stopping at lagoons as well as the reserve to see the seals -- it was almost like a real-life 'Where's Waldo' -- the NZ Fur Seals were able to blend right in to the surrounding rocks. The younger ones were pretty playful. Apparrently they sometimes hop onto the kayak! But it was already a nice day, I wasn't expecting much more from mother nature. We paddled with our guide Steve and one other couple from London. So again, it was quite a personal tour (like Fiji). On the last leg of our journey we put up a sail with the three boats and floated at a much faster pace toward the Bay. Very nice.

We stayed in Nelson that night to have a nice relaxing/non-driving day in the town the following day. We went to the Nelson market which only occurs on weekends -- they have local farmers and artists as well as other vendors, it reinforced how much I love the town. I love it in Nelson. I bought a blanket at a local store (because nights can be quite FREEZING!) but what I love about it is that it looks/feels like it's made from some sort of wool like Alpaca or something but, get this, it's made from recycled milk bottles!! Yeah, soooo cool, it makes me love my new blanket even more.

As it continued to rain, the days after our kayak, we made our way down the west coast of the South Island. We stopped in Punakaiki for the Pancake rocks-- part of the Paparoa National Park, the Pancake are limestone formations that began forming 30 million years ago, when lime-rich fragments of dead marine creatures were deposited on the seabed, then overlaid by weaker layers of soft mud and clay. The wind and sea have etched away at the soft layers of rock making the pancake look on the rock (pictures to come). Many earthquakes have made them coastal cliffs.
When conditions are right, heavy ocean swells gather into the caverns beneath the rocks and huge water spouts blast up through the blowholes. Pretty neat. We thought that the horribly rainy and windy conditions would suffice that day but we only got little spurts out of the blowholes. We thought what we saw was pretty cool, until we went into the gift shop and saw posters of what they were supposed to look like -- which, I may add were taken on what look to have been a pretty fantastic day. I'm pretty sure that most travel photos of NZ were photoshoped against a blue sky though.
Note: I sound bitter but I'm not really. I'm loving it here. Remember, God is good, He clears the skies when they need to be cleared. And really it's just a matter of the season. If we were here in the summer, things would be different. Gorgeous anyway. It's magical here. I feel like we're living in a painting.

Yesterday we got into Glacier Country. We chose to explore the Fox Galcier over the Franz-Josef because it is backed up against NZ's two largest peaks in the Southern Alps. We booked the day before, and so, fittingly, it was raining. It was only supposed to get worse. So we decided to hold off on the payment and see how the morning looked (we could cancel up to an hour before, which was a plus) because it looked pretty horrible that day -- we went to checkout the "Peak Lookout" and couldn't see anything but cows. We thought it was a joke because it was just in the middle of a farm field and only a sign with a picnic table. Not until we turned around to leave did we see a tidbit of mountain coming through a little cloud window. We were soooo exicited just to see something remotely mountainous. We woke the next morning, the birds were singing and there wasn't a rain cloud in the sky. God is good! We drove into the town and realized that we had been driving through a picture all day prior; mountain views everywhere. Pretty much a town ON the glacier. Stunning.
We trekked the Fox Glacier for 7 hours. No rain. It didn't even start to spit until we had taken our Crampons OFF! Perfect timing!!! What a great day though. This glacier is 13km long, roughly 40 million tonnes of ice and is moving forward about 5 feet a year. As it advances and retreats it reshapes the valley, and moves massive rocks out of it's way. The edge of it looks dirty but it's the result of rubbing right up against and carving the cliffs. It was neat trekking up to the glacier, seeing a group already on the glacier and just tiny; putting it into perspective. We trekked up as far as we could, getting off the track and cutting our way through (well, the guide cut...) the maze of crevices. The main mountain it came from was Mt. Tasman. Yes, the same man that the Abel Tasman National park is named after, as well as the Tasman Sea and even Tasmania! This guy had it good. If anyone wants to name something after me, I'd be honoured.

We've since driven on to Wanaka. A cute town just before Queenstown that reminds me of Whistler. Mountains in every direction and crystal clear blue glacier water. Lake Hawea and Wanaka were made from glaciers. We went rock-climbing here today at an indoor-outdoor venue. Felt good to be back in the shoes. I miss it. Hopefully the weather holds out and the South Island will continue to amaze us.

I miss and love you all,
elke

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