Skype!

Just a quick update -

First of all, we have skype set up and running! If you have a skype account, email us and let us know your user name. :)

Mike is currently off in Australia for the men's FIG judging course. For the non-gym people out there: that's the course/exam required to be an international-caliber "brevet" judge for this next Olympic cycle 2009-2012. FIG only offers the credentialing once every four years, and only in a handful of places around the world (i.e. - plus or minus once on each continent).

Here in New Zealand, I'm trying to tackle the paperwork involved in getting our cats from the US here.

*chuckle* - You would think we were trying to import a sample of the last remaining small pox virus. The process literally involves officials at the New Zealand Minister of Agriculture and Forestry; our own veterinarian (thanks Natalie!) as well as veterinarians from the USDA, LAX & the airport in Christchurch; a quarantine facility; notaries on both sides of the Pacific; microchip scanners; and a "zoosanitary certification" for good measure.

To be fair, those are the simple entry procedures. USA is one of the "specified countries and territories recognised as countries or territories in which canine rabies is absent or well controlled."

Okay, back to Section 22 of the Biosecurity Act 1993 for me. :)

Summer Vacation... Part 2

(If you haven't already, read our post "Summer Vacation... Part 1." It will give you a lot more of the background to this trip.)

Here are some of our favorite photos from the rest of our vacation. We threw in a photo of our car in Kaka Point for good measure, but after that, the photos are arranged by geography from north (closest to Christchurch) to south (closest to Curio Bay).

Our noble steed: a 2001 Mazda Premacy as seen in Kaka Point.

Farmland in Canterbury, not far south of Christchurch:


The little town of St. Andrews on the coast. As far as we know, there's nothing particularly significant about St. Andrews. It was just representative of the villages we drove through. (Both photo of the town and the ocean below were shot from the same rest stop. And yes, that's the entire town pictured there.)



The town of Oamaru, known for its Victorian architecture and its Blue Penguin colony. The theater is in a covered walkway between the old buildings. We didn't stay long enough in Oamaru to see either the nightly performance of the "Great Storm of 1868" (true story) in the theateror the 180+ penguins coming ashore, but both are things we'd love to do if we get back to Oamaru.




A giant chicken hedge. To give you an idea of scale, the egg is almost as tall as I am.

The famous Moeraki Boulders.



The flower field:

The big, fast flowing Clyde river on the outskirts of the town of Balclutha (which, quite reasonably, means "town on the Clyde").

Kaka Point. Our bed & breakfast "the Molyneux House", its view to the sea, and the rock formation in the surf (90 degree uplifted ancient ocean bed sedimentary layers)


Nugget Point Lighthouse - It's 250 ft above the water, surrounding by small rocky islands known as the Nuggets. There's a 15 minute walk to get to the lighthouse. The cliffs to either side of the path look tame, but they're actually quite steep as you can make out in the last picture.



Matai Falls. *chuckle* - Just another Department of Conservation stop along the Southern Scenic Route. You really can't drive more than about 20 minutes without seeing the signs pointing to the walks.

Lake Wilkie - It formed behind sand dunes during the last ice age, and has been there ever since. (There are no streams running into or out of this lake.) For those interested in plants, it apparently shows a complete transition from water side (bog) moss through fully mature forest in only 65 m.


Florence Hill Lookout. Looks over Long Point to the north and Tautuku Beach to the South.



Cathedral Caves. Huge caverns accessible only at low tide. It's about a 15 minute walk down the hill through the rainforest to the beach, and 10 minutes further down the beach. The big fern trees in the forest reminded us of Cousin It.

And finally, just before you arrive in Curio Bay, there's the sign that made us laugh the most. I guess with all the amazing scenery... the concete needs to be pointed out!

Summer Vacation... Part 1

In New Zealand, Christmas is summer vacation time. Car trips and camping abound. Great idea! So, on Dec. 27, we planned a five day trip for Dec. 29 to Jan 2. (*chuckle* We're starting to get the hang of the Kiwis' laid back - "she'll be right" - approach to life.)

We figured it was too late to have any hope of finding camp site or backpackers reservations in the Kiwis' favorite Christmas spot - Abel Tasman National Park, in the northwest of the South Island. Ditto for many of the other major outdoor South Island tourist destinations like Mount Cook, Queenstown, the Fiordlands, etc.

So we looked south. It didn't hurt that, by all accounts, this area is known to be "winter-y" in winter, so hitting the south in summer seemed like a good idea to us.

(For those not in New Zealand - "south" in New Zealand is almost as far south as you can go on land without being in Antarctica. The town of Invercargill is home to the world's southernmost McDonald's; the town of Dunedin had a iceberg from the antarctic ice sheet drifting offshore two years ago; and only the tip of South America reaches further south.)

A little bit of google research helped narrow it down: "Situated off the beaten track on the southern-most coast of South Island, New Zealand, The Catlins is a major highlight of the Southern Scenic Route." Sounded perfect for last minute planners like us.


An ocean front B&B in Kaka Point conveniently had a cancellation for the nights of December 31 and January 1. We just needed to find someplace else to stay for the couple of days before that. The first backpackers (kiwi term for hostel) we called was all booked up, so we kept calling around. Mike finally made reservations for the 29th and 30th at a completely random one called "Dophin Lodge." I thought the name was cute, Mike thought it was cheesey.

And off we went. (I'm having some trouble with embedding the Google map, so here's the link: http://maps.google.com/maps?f=d&saddr=Christchurch,+Canterbury,+New+Zealand&daddr=Curio+Bay,+New+Zealand&hl=en&geocode=&mra=ls&sll=38.168775,-86.993993&sspn=0.008283,0.021071&ie=UTF8&z=7)

There were amazing sights on the drive down and back, and the B&B in Kaka Point was elegant. (We'll get to those photos in the next blog "Sumer Vacation... Part 2".) But nothing came close to what we had accidentally stumbled across at our backpackers.

Curio Bay is a flat, rocky ledge of a bay, connected to Porpoise Bay, a gorgeous protected bay ringed by a sand beach.


The backpackers is actually on Porpoise Bay - it's one of those little dots on the road. Here's a closer view looking down the road. The brown & white house is the backpackers; the sandy beach is just below the houses hidden by the rise.


We hadn't been there more than 15 minutes (just enough time to drop our luggage, take off our shoes, and walk on the beach), when we discovered that the Dolphin Lodge's name wasn't cute or cheesey, just understated. There in the surf, not even 30 feet away, were dolphins!

We hadn't even thought to bring our camera - we just wanted a walk on the beach before the sunset. But here is a photo we found on the web to show you just how close they came:


And they weren't just any dolphins, but Hector's Dolphins. Found only in New Zealand, Hector's Dolphins are the smallest and rarest marine dolphin in the world. The random backpackers we had chosen was on the only bay in the world where Hector dolphins come so close to the shore without people feeding them.

Not to be outdone, a seal walked up on the shore right in front of the dolphins, and rolled around in the sand and settled in for a nap at the base of a staircase off the beach. The people walking up and down didn't seem to bother it in the least. We caught a photo of the seal the next day on the Curio Bay side (the rocky ledge side). He's the third "boulder" from the left.


Once the dolphins had moved on, and the seal obviously was going to sleep for a while, we went back up to the backpackers. There we were told we had to go out again to see the penguins come in at sunset.

Turns out that Curio Bay is also a nesting ground for Yellow Eyed Penguins. You can probably guess about them - they are the rarest penguin in the world, endangered, found only in New Zealand, and some just happen to come onshore next to the backpackers we had randomly chosen. (At this point, if someone had said there was a unicorn in the field next door, we would have believed them.)


The Yellow Eyed Penguins nest in the flax bushes on the cliffs above Curio Bay at this time of year. The baby penguins wait in the bush with one parent, while the other goes out to sea to fish. At sunset, the fishing parent comes ashore to switch places.

The penguin makes its way past the bull kelp where the surf pounds the rocky ledge.


It very slowly, cautiously, and silently crosses the rocky ledge. (There is one penguin in the first photo; there are two in the second.)




Then it disappears into the flax...




... and once hidden in the flax, produces the LOUDEST calls you have ever heard from a little bird. The Maori term for Yellow Eyed Penguins is "Hoiho" - meaning "noisy shouter." Apparently, it's "hi honey, I'm home" in penguin-ese.

Makes you feel a little silly for sitting so still to watch them come onshore, but they won't feed and/or they'll abandon their young if they are scared on the land crossing to/from the nest. There are two wardens that monitor the viewing area to make sure humans don't get too close, move too much, or make any noise.

The next day, we explored the area a little more. The area where the penguins land had a sign above it saying "Fossilized Forest." (The penguins aren't even the major attraction here.) We hadn't seen any fossils the evening of the penguins, and it turns out that you really can't see a forest for the penguins!

Go back up and look at the photos of the penguins crossing the ledge. See all those little lumps of rocks? Each and every one is actually a petrified stump from a Jurassic forest. Well, more correctly, from four Jurassic forests. Stubborn forests kept growing despite repeated layers of volcanic debris.

Yup, Curio Bay is home to rare penguins, rare dolphins, a small population of seals, and the world's best preserved petrified forest. The photos don't do justice to the number of stumps and fallen trees (aka - balance beams). Even the bark, right down to its coloring, is perfectly petrified in some places.

We laughed so much! How the heck had we missed an entire forest while watching the penguins?
Just to put the icing on the cake, we spent our last afternoon in Curio Bay learning to surf. Nick was a great teacher, and Mike is a natural. (I didn't do so badly myself, but even Nick couldn't believe Mike hadn't surfed before.) We will definitely try to keep surfing here in Christchurch!

Keep your eye out for our next blog entry: "Summer Vacation... Part 2." It will have photos of the many other areas we visited on our trip south.

NOTE - my apologies for any typos etc. in this post. Our internet connection is having just a *few* issues, and I'm hoping to upload this post before it dies again!