Drea's surprise birthday weekend

Hi All,

For those that missed it, Andrea's birthday was April 2nd. To celebrate, I surprised her with a weekend at a little B&B on the peninsula. We got out there Saturday afternoon, and I did a little fishing up past Harrington point (Yes, she wanted to!) and then went up to Tairoa Head for a look at the Albatross.

That's a sea lion in the water behind me.

One of my several catches, we were catch and release today so none of these came home with us.

This is the view from the fishing spot.

The birthday girl at Tairoa Head.
The Royal Albatross

The next morning was absolutely stunning. The sky was unbelievable. I'll let the pictures do the talking...

Dawn

Our cute cottage for the weekend

There was a farmers market sunday morning right in front of the cottage.

We went to the farmers market and browsed through one of the local artists studios before going on a short bike ride around the back roads and estuaries of the peninsula before heading back into town Sunday evening.

It was a lovely weekend and we enjoyed wandering around out on the peninsula. We certainly feel so lucky to have such amazing wilderness just outside our doorstep.

Happy Birthday Andrea

Tom's superhero birthday party

Our good friend Tom turned 40 the other weekend and to celebrate he threw a party. For those not from New Zealand there is a common characteristic to New Zealand parties. They almost always have a theme. The particular theme for this party happened to be, "Come as your favorite superhero or villain". We weren't sure we were going to be able to make it so we didn't think about a costume until the day of the party but we made do with a wetsuit, two towels and a pair of rubber gloves. And of course underwear on the outside. There were some fun, non-traditional superhero costumes there including an egg, a can of anti-fungal cream and a toothbrush and dental floss combo. Here are a few pics from the party...

I couldn't decide if I was good or evil for the night. This is me flirting with the dark side.

My battle with Radioactive man as depicted in Radioactive man comics #23, "Radioactive Man versus Wetsuit Guy"...worst episode ever!

40's man stole my danish and needed to pay!

Some superheroes have the ability to pull off the underwear on the outside thing... some don't

An unstoppable crimefighting team or the scourge of gotham, you decide

West Matukituki with Molly

Hey All,

So we took advantage of the three day weekend celebrating Otago Day (our regional holiday) to head up to Aspiring National Park to wander through the West Matukituki valley and make our way to the Liverpool hut that we'd heard a lot of good things about. We met up with Molly in Wanaka at the DOC office to get our hut passes and head out. Turns out that the Liverpool hut was being rebuilt at the moment so we decided on the more challenging hike to the French Ridge hut. It turned out to be just glorious.

Our first day was a relatively gentle uphill through farm pasture. We got a late start and missed out exploring one of the side hikes to the Rob Roy Glacier. Something we're definitely going to have to go back to see. That's a glimpse of the Rob Roy Glacier behind them.

Here's a few pictures from the hike up the valley.Drea was on a mission to find a cowpie with grass growing through it. I'm still not sure why, but here's the winning one.

Beauty, eh?

We got into the Aspiring Hut to find it totally overrun with high school girls. A class of 40 or 50 students from one of the local girls high schools was there for the weekend. Lets just say the hut was not the most tranquil of places during our night there and the kitchen smelled strongly of burnt toast. Thankfully they'd left one of the bunkrooms for the non-students so we retreated there for the night. First order of business, kill all the sandflies on the window.

The next morning we got up early (with our hut neighbors it was hard not to) and hit the trail. We absolutely lucked out on the weather for the weekend as it was perfect. Just a few clouds and only the tiniest hint of wind. We hiked for a couple of hours before stopping for a side trip to one of the glacial waterfalls.

From there we continued on to a small river crossing (saving us a 30 minute hike to the bridge) at the base of the mountain and the start of our uphill climb.This water was COLD!!!

The hike uphill was brutal. It felt more like rock climbing and less like hiking. I think we spent half of this hike on all fours scrambling over rocks and roots over some very steep sections of track. Luckily the roots made quite good handholds.

At this point we were only about half way up but thought we were about three-quarters of the way up. Although the track did get a little less difficult from here it was still quite a grunt up to the top. On the way up Molly had one goal for the trip. See Kea. Kea are an alpine parrot native to New Zealand and known for being quite a troublemaker. Well, Molly accomplished her goal and then some. There were 10-20 Kea up at the top that were kind enough to pose for lots of pictures.

We explored the area around the hut and enjoyed the incredible scenery.

Toilets in New Zealand make for great scenery!

The next morning was a continuation of the incredible weather. We started making the long way down from the top and enjoyed spectacular vistas along the way.




On the way back down the valley we took advantage of the warm weather and this incredible pool along the river to go for a very brief swim.The jump from the top of the rocks was great. Here's a few action shots....

Drea went first:


Molly thought it was a bit on the cold side..

And finally my turn:






This was such an incredible trip. We headed home tired but inspired by such a great weekend. Molly stayed with us in Dunedin for a couple days and we got to introduce her to our chickens before heading on her way back to the states. Good luck in your new job Molly!

Love to all,
Dave and Andrea