Puff vs. Cluckers: Round 1

Hey All,

Drea and I signed up for a social group a month or so ago called "Greendrinks". The idea was to get environmentally conscious people together for drinks and networking. The first meeting was a month or so ago at the Green Man brewery. Yum. This month drinks were held on board the "Rainbow Warrior", Greenpeace's flagship boat. We weren't entirely sure what to expect but we met a nice Spanish woman on the crew of the boat that gave us a tour and told us some of the history of the boat. (Did you know the French secret service blew up the original Rainbow Warrior in a harbor in Auckland during French nuclear testing in the South Pacific?)

The next afternoon our first friends in Dunedin, Brian and Mary, had a barbeque to say goodbye before they headed off on their trip back to Colorado. Good luck you guys. Hopefully we see you either back here or over there some day.

Brian and Mary's going away party (They're the two in the middle)

They have a couple kids and were unloading some stickers at the barbeque. Note to self, don't let Andrea near stickers.I am not amused.

Wednesday of this last week was also Andrea's 30th birthday. We went out to dinner at Plato, a Tchotchke (I had to look up the spelling for that one) filled restaurant that was quite good despite it's questionable decor and industrial park location. Probably the best dinner bread we've found in New Zealand and we gave kudo's to the sauce chef. Unfortunately we ate too much to try their desserts. (don't feel bad, we made cookies and a raspberry tart this week)

Thanks to Mark and Molly who sent Andrea one of the coolest birthday presents ever. Check the video at the bottom to see how well Puff got along with his doppelganger, "Cluckers"...

And this weekend has thus far been all about manual labor. We received our firewood for the winter (I know, so much for being environmentally conscious. God knows why they would build lots of high ceilinged houses without putting in any insulation.) We didn't realize they were delivering the wood on Friday and forgot to move our car. Ooops.

It took most of Friday night to get this pile out of the driveway and stacked up.

Here's a picture of an amazing sunrise from our house the other day...




and here's a little line up of the tomatoes we harvested this morning. Our tomato plant is going absolutely nuts...
Best wishes to all.
Love, Dave and Andrea

The Kepler Track

Happy Easter everyone,

Hope everybody had a good time over the holidays. Both Drea's and my work were nice enough to give us not only Friday and Monday off for Easter but, as an added bonus, Tuesday after Easter as well to celebrate our yearly regional holiday, Otago Day. So we got to spend a wonderful 5 day weekend over in Fiordland tramping on the kepler track and doing a bit of relaxing.

We did some searching beforehand for a place to stay Te Anau so that we could get an early start to our hike on Friday without having to sleep in the car. And we got soooooo lucky!!! We found a spectacular little backpackers that was our own private cottage with a veranda overlooking Lake Manapouri. We will definitely go back to this place next time we're in the area. Freestone BBH. Here's a picture of our veranda...

Getting up relatively early, we got a tip from our host that we should get a move on because a storm front was supposed to come in that afternoon. Thanks Jimmy, very good tip! We hit the trail and started our way up the mountain. And up up up we went. The first day of this track was about 4 hours of nothing but up through some beautiful forest and along some spectacular limestone cliffs. But the slope was pretty consistent and wasn't switchback after switchback so when we reached the top we still felt pretty good.

This is our track profile, we went from left to right.

At the top we dropped our packs, grabbed our bunks and then headed out to explore the luxmore caves which were a 10 minute walk from the hut. (Side note: I can't say enough about new zealand's hut system. It's like luxury backpacking, which I'm sure some of you will say is cheating. I'm ok with it.) The caves followed an underground river down through the mountain. The walls were chalky white and covered in stalagmites, stalactites and beautiful waving curtains of limestone. We were told that you could lose almost 800 meters in elevation following the river down. We never heard from anyone if there was an outlet. Drea and I went down till we got a bit scared, went a ways further and then turned back when we decided we didn't want to crawl 40 meters to get to the next area where we could stand up. It was amazing turning out our flashlights (sorry, torches) and just feeling the closeness of the air, the gentle rumblings of the river and absolute blackness. Just remember, all you fellow spelunkers, that closeness of the air and absloute darkness is best experienced when your partner is not feeling a bit gassy. We left the caves and got back to the hut the very moment the skies opened up and started pouring down rain. Sweet

Part of the cave where it got a bit tight.

Day two was up and down for the first couple hours hiking along the ridge of the mountains. We started out fairly early and then decided to slow down to let the fog lift off the surrounding hillsides. We wanted to go up to the summit of Mt. Luxmore to get a 360 degree view of the area but it took a bit of time before the summit was fully clear. We're here, It's clearing, we don't want anymore bears! (Andrea's clever adaptation of a simpsons reference for those who are confused)

The rest of the hike from there was glorious. Lots of up and down but the views were beautiful, the temperature was mild and the wind was light. Here's some pics of our day two...

That's Lake Te Anau in the background. The Iris Burn valley

It's all downhill from here!!

At the end of the second day we climbed down from the ridge tops through a series of switchbacks (the ranger said there were 97 but I only counted 82). Regardless, I was a bit concerned that my knees would take a beating going through so much downhill. Luckily our friend Volker gifted us his trekking poles. They made a tremendous difference for me. Thanks Volker!!! We reached the bottom of the track, unloaded our packs and headed to the nearby stream to soak our tired feet. Drea's earned massive girlfriend points here by surprising me with a little gift that she'd hiked in for me. See below...

The last day was a nice mellow hike along the river through dense bush with occasional views of the river and surrounding mountain tops. Our last hut was along the edge of Lake Manapouri. We had a beautiful sunset, a very cold but gratifying swim in the lake (by swim I mean up to Drea's neck and up to Dave's belly button) and unfortunately an attack of sandflies. The sandflies mostly left Dave alone but Drea got assaulted. And we have since learned that Andrea is allergic to Sandfly bites. Luckily she works at a hospital. They put here on an anti-histamine and that has helped tremendously.

Here's a cool family of mushrooms on our hikesunset on our last night

At the end of the track!!!

We finished the hike around 1 then had a relaxing lunch and afternoon in Te Anau before heading back to the freestone backpackers.

"Now...cluck like a chicken!"

Hey all,

Sorry for the long dry spell of postings. But all I can say is we've been busy. But here's a quick attempt at catching you up...

First the big news...

That's a picture of Anna, Drea's... niece. (ha ha gotcha. Sorry Drea's mom)

Last weekend Dave went up to Paradise and Queenstown to play in a disc golf tournament. The little town of Paradise is about an hour past Queenstown. And it really is...paradise that is. They were filming the movie Wolverine just on the other side of the hill from our golf course. So whenever that movie comes out you can get an idea of what the scenery was like. You might be saying, "Dave, how about showing us some pictures instead?" Well, I'd love to but unfortunately I brought my camera and forgot to charge my battery. I was only able to take one picture and had I known that ahead of time I might have saved it for a scenery shot. Instead, all you get is a picture of my meager accomodation.

The previous weekend we had made plans to collect cockles on the beach (Hawkins! Quit giggling!) and cook them up with a Slow Food (as opposed to fast-food) group that Drea had heard about during one of our trips to the farmers market. Apparently you wade out at low tide and just dig them up. Unfortunately we got rained out and spent the weekend doing Dave's taxes. Boo. We're waiting to hear if there are any plans to reschedule.

We're also trying to learn all kinds of new things while we're here. Dave was sent to a project management class for a couple days in Christchurch and Drea signed herself up for an embroidery class. She's so crafty! And while we were at it, we both signed up to be our office coordinators for the Dunedin bike to work competition. We were responsible for encouraging people from our respective offices to ride their bikes. As part of it we also entered in how many kilometers we rode during the two weeks. Between the two of us Drea won with 112 km to Dave's 98 (I blame my project management class)

And we've been busy planning. First, we are taking off over the Easter holidays (yay to 5 day weekends!) to do the Kepler track. It's a four day hike and one of New Zealands great walks. Then Dave's parents are coming to visit in mid April. And then Andrea is flying off to Dublin Ireland to go to a course on Medical Physics stuff. So it's going to be a busy end of March through early April.

Here's a picture of us on one of our bike rides to the beach.

A side note: We miss hearing from you all, hope you're doing well and enjoying the blog. Leave a comment on the blog or send us an email and let us know what you've been up to. (Even if it's raining non-stop and all you're doing is your taxes)

I would just like to leave you with the following video. Drea finally convinced Dave to try out his hypnotic ability on poor unsuspecting Puff. Just one of the many wonderful things to be learned on youtube. Now when I clap my hands, Puff, you will cluck like a chicken....