pancakes and wekas

Today we woke up early and drove to Panakaiki to see the pancake rocks and the blow holes.  Pancake rocks are formed when horizontal fissures are washed away and look like stacks of pancakes.   The blow holes are holes in the rocks that the ocean (Tasman Sea) blows through and makes sounds like dinosaurs.  The walk was very easy; the area was covered in flax plants as well.   At the car park we had two Wekas (birds) dodging around our car with us taking many photos hoping that they were Kiwis!  

Then on to the longest swing bridge in New Zealand.  It was a bit dicey walking across, especially in the middle.  Hold on tightly to the cables!  

Then on to our hostel with a stop for fish and chips on the way.  It is not a youth hostel, it is a private hostel.  We are the only guests so we have the building with the common areas to ourselves.  It seems very nice, except that it is very cold and we have to go outside to go anywhere--including to the shower and toilet!  And from the common area building to the building with our room.   We shopped for groceries, washed clothes, had dinner, and watched a movie together.   A shower tomorrow morning should be interesting.  

We had planned to walk around the Tasman National Park tomorrow, but the forecast is for rain--we’ll have to play it by ear!  

Every vacation I again wonder why our country can’t adopt the metric system.  Instead of this half-way thing of the banks displaying both celcius and farenheit and the rulers having both inches and centimeters, we need to just switch over.  All weather forecasts in celcius--it won’t take people long to figure out what 12 degrees feels like.  Also, give all distances in kilometers.  Oh well, enough of my rant.  It just hits me every time I leave the US!  

Ooops--problems with the website, it won't let me upload my photos--I'll try again tomorrow!

Glaciers--not a new DQ treat

We saw two glaciers today!  We went to Fox Glacier and Franz Josef Glacier.  Walked through the rainforest (yes, walking through rainforest to get to a glacier) for 30 minutes the first one and 45 minutes for the second one.  Annie thought that it felt colder as we got closer to the glaciers.  The first one was earlier in the morning and it was very chilly out--three layers required.  By the time we got to the second glacier it was a bit warmer, so we could unzip our jackets and take our hands out of our pockets.  We took silly pictures with the picture of the forest service person (he warns you not to go any further and of all of the ways you could die from the glacier if you are stupid and go beyond the barricade).  They have signs (even in the bathroom stalls) warning you not to go beyond the viewing area--it doesn't matter if you came all of this way to touch a glacier (it tells you to ask the parents of the people that have died if it was worth it!).  So we didn't get to touch the glaciers but we got very close after walking through the rocky valley that the glacier had carved.  We got to see by markers how much the glacier had receded through the last three hundred years (it is a lot!).  The differing shades of green in the rainforest is amazing.  It also amazes me how moss and vines cover every available surface so that everything is green!  Today I saw little tiny vines with red berries trailing all over a rock wall--very beautiful!  Then, after walking through every imaginable shade of green, you step out into a valley of rock.  Gray, black, white, blue, dark purple, and orange.  We even had to walk across rocks to cross streams (another thing the forest guy warns about--the stream can change in several hours from almost dry to flooding--several feet high).   We came back to the hostel for a late lunch (after making our "donation" to the community at the local grocery store).  Then the children decided that they would like to spend the rest of the afternoon and evening hanging out at the hostel playing games, reading, etc.  Last night we spent a nice evening in front of the fire in the common room eating a pizza and and fish and chips we picked up in town, then playing New Zealand Pictionary.

No Penguins

Still a little sore from yesterday’s hiking!  My toes are only a little sore, but my quads and calves make me feel like an old woman!  44 is not old, is it?   Today we left Queenstown and drove to a small, cute little town--Arrowtown.  Very picturesque.  Then up the western coast toward Franz Joseph Glacier.  That’s the name of the town and the glacier.  The scenery was beautiful!!  Different shades of browns and some greens, a lot of vineyards.  Being winter, the browns were predominant, with some red berries in trees as well.  The “towns” we drove through were almost nonexistent--some were a cluster of a few houses, some had a few shops or a gas station, and for some there was nothing at all.  Driving through mountains with varying shades of brown, then through the Haast Pass and green everywhere!  We went from the east side of the mountains to the west side--next to the Ocean (actually the Tasman Sea).  And we drove into the rainforest!  I’ve never been in a rainforest before!  It was so green and lush--moss and vines covered everything!  We walked through the rainforest a short way to see the Thunder Creek Falls.  Very pretty (see the photo).  Then along the coast, we stopped to see the ocean a few times.  The first was windy and very dramatic.  We were so taken with it, we even had our sandwich lunch at a picnic table on the edge of the beach.  Then we took a longer walk through the rainforest to the Munro Beach (45 minutes each way).  That was very fun--a suspension bridge and having to navigate several huge puddles (with no way around).  Annie went through three pair of socks today!  The beach is the breeding grounds for the Fjordland Crested penguin which I very much wanted to see!!!  They are breeding in New Zealand June through December but evidently hadn’t gotten there yet.  Annie and I were crushed.  But life goes on and we had fun looking for rocks and taking pictures.  We drove through more picturesque mountains and vineyards (again on the East side of the mountains).  And arrived at our Youth Hostel in Franz Joseph.  Where we could only find dinner for, $8 for fish and chips, $28 for a “large” pizza, or $20 for a hamburger!!  And at the grocery store, $8 for a box of cereal or $4 for a muffin.  How do people here eat?   They can’t just bleed the tourists, the locals have to eat too.  Well, tomorrow, off to see the glacier! 

Anneliese wants to add that she has a cold and is very unhappy about the shower here at our hostel.  Our last one was great, this one was cold but with adequate water pressure.  Poor Annie.  

Queenstown

It took us two days to get here, but we did--at 9:55--five minutes before the front desk closed!  They were out of regular rooms, so we had to take the apartment.  Very posh (for a youth hostel!).  We have two bedrooms, a kitchen, and an en suite bathroom (which means that we don't have to go down the hallway to shower or use the toilet!  Very nice.  Today we hiked to the top of the mountain and luged up there.  We liked the luging we did in Germany last summer better!  Wow was that hike strenuous!  And the walk down was tough too--several hours later and my toes still hurt (they pushed down into the toes of my shoes).  The luging was very cold!!  Down in the valley it is chilly, but up on top we wished that we had mittens!  Our hands were frozen!  It is winter here, so I wore jeans, a turtleneck, thick hoodie, and waterproof jacket.  (the snowman is from Annie)

Hi there! This is Anneliese! I am super tired right now from the super long hike today. Yikes. It was hard going up. Though it was really fun on the luge however. :) Then we hiked back down and then drove for a while. Now we're back, and I am glad because it was getting very cold out. It is just wrong that we left Minnesota, which was 103 degrees and then we come here for summer vacation and it's really cold here. Brrrrrr! (Refer to the snowman) See ya guys later!

Auckland to Queenstown

In Auckland we went to a very nice museum--it reminded me of the Bell Museum.  It had some cool displays, especially the volcano exhibit and seeing live Wetas (Annie really loved the volcanoes).  Joshua learned that a kiwi is a fruit, a bird, and a person!  Auckland has many restaurants and grocery stores with Asian food:  Malaysian, Indonesian, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese, etc.  Auckland has many palm trees--very tropical looking!  This morning (Sunday), we got to the airport in Auckland to fly to Queenstown.  Then we found out that an ash cloud from a Chilean volcano was in our airline’s fly space and our flight was cancelled and that sometimes the clouds last several days!  We could take a flight from another airline which would have charged us $450 instead of the $100 we originally paid!  We reviewed our possibilities and eventually called the rental car company that we were renting from in Queenstown and arranged to pick up a car in Auckland instead.  Then we cancelled our lodging booking in Queenstown and started to drive.  We got all the way to Wellington City to take the ferry first thing in the morning.  (And all of this with no cell phone!).  We’re in the Wellington Youth Hostel now getting ready for bed.  Too much time in the car!  And just for the record, Chile is in the western hemisphere!  Not near here!

Oh, and Annie has decided to do a video blog with her new video camera she purchased with birthday and babysitting money so she might not post anything on this--I’ll keep on her to try anyway!    

4+7+14

That’s how many hours it took us to get to Aukland!  We’re here--it’s beautiful weather for ducks and we negotiated the public transit system so that we only had to walk a mile to our lodging--Verandah’s Backpacker Inn.  The first leg was Sun Country from Minneapolis to Los Angeles; ordinary with friendly flight attendants.  Then a seven hour layover--very long.  But we found a mobile recharging station in our gate area to charge our iPods.  Then Qantas to New Zealand.  Qantas was refreshingly accomodating!  They realized that happy customers are fed customers on a 14 hour flight and fed us (Iceland Air stopped doing that a few years ago).  Dinner, breakfast and a bag of snacks.  The two dinner selections included wine or soft drinks and several courses.  A blanket and pillow were provided.  Also, a little bag with a toothbrush, toothpaste, and an “eye mask” to sleep.  The crew encouraged us to eat dinner and then sleep to help reset our body clocks and turned out the lights after the dinner service.  Randy took Joshua this time and I slept!  Several hours at a stretch!  We took a nap when we got to our lodging and took in the sights.  It’s winter here so the days are short.  It’s not too cold, just very wet!  We left Minneapolis Wednesday morning and arrived in New Zealand Friday morning.  Maybe I slept longer than I thought!

Names: "a rose by any other name..."

Just a little rant here--

What is it about names that people feel they have the right to shorten them?  People often shorten the names of places--as if they are too lazy or too busy to say the entire name, but that is not what I am talking about.  I mean the names of people.  They are introduced to "Robert" and say, "Hi Bob, nice to meet you"--Robert does not go by Bob and was never introduced as such.  It is perfectly polite to ask if someone has a nickname or, better yet, they might propose that you call them by a shortened form of their name or another diminutive they sometimes use.  But it is an assumption that you can call them by any name you choose--whether that person wants you to or not.  An example is my 7 year old son--Joshua.  He goes by the name of Joshua and most children call him by that.  Many adults, however, call him "Josh" without asking what he would like to be called.  Or else they ask,"can I call you Josh?"; which, of course, to an adult he says "sure" (what else would he say to a teacher, parent, or school staff?).   They never seem to note that I call him Joshua and that he introduced himself as such.  A parent of one of my students went by Mrs. Johnson and when a social worker asked "is it Barbara?", the mother answered "my name is Mrs. Johnson."  Shakespeare's "A rose by any other name..." lines are not always true.  A name is what defines us, tells who we are from, and how we see ourselves.  A Peg brings up a different mental picture than Margaret, Margie, Maggie, or other name.  I chose to change to my full name as a teenager after a childhood of a nickname; my daughter did the same when she started middle school.  When one reinvents oneself, one usually choose a different name as well.  Calling your teacher Ms. Jones is different than calling her Janie.  Call a person the name they were introduced by; whether it be Ms. Brown or Chuckles unless he or she invites you to call them something else.