colour the coast with your smile

[i first wrote this entry about a week ago, and right as i was preparing to post it, safari quit on me. i've been too angry too try again, but here goes]

brad was here a week ago for ten days.

it was simultaneously hard and wonderful to have him here. hard in that our lives are so distant right now, but wonderful because i always feel better, and more complete, when he is around. i am so happy his visit was at the beginning of my life here (i've been in new zealand for over a month – how crazy) ... mostly because it is nice that when i talk about a place or person he knows what i'm talking about. quite comforting.

anyways, ramblings that probably no one wants to read.

while he was here we did a good combination of touristy and "us" things: tour of cadbury, going to te anau, hikes, visiting pubs, but also cooking together, listening to music, visiting cafes, wandering around the city.

he arrived saturday (4 march) and on sunday, got to go with me for a field trip to collect cockles for my marine ecology class. we went out to aramoana at low tide:





beforehand, my professor had explained that aramoana has a huge cockle population (sorry, cockles are clams), but it's not used for commerical purposes, so we were free to collect some for ourselves to have for dinner. "i, myself, prefer them on sandwiches"

so brad and i got a few for us to make for dinner: in pasta with a white wine sauce. it was really yummy (and so random).

we also ventured up signal hill, a lookout point near my flat, to get some views of the city:





while i was in class on wednesday, brad went to go pick up our rental car. a cute little toyota starlet (an automatic – thank god, for both our sakes) that got great petrol kilometerage (how do you say gas mileage in kiwi???). we left straight-away for central otago with the goal of touring and tasting some of the southernmost vineyards in the world.

central otago is about 200 km away, the speed limit is 100 km/hr – so we figured it would take two hours, right?

wrong.

it rained, the roads were windy, nothing was clearly marked so instead we were on a wild goose chase. by the time we figured anything out, most of the vineyards were closed, so we made it to one.

at least they had good wine.

and central otago really is beautiful:







we went to re:fuel wednesday night, the pub on campus to see an 8-piece jazz band: the retrograde funk machine. they were a cross between jazz, dub, and funk music. really really fun and pretty decent too. i think that's what i like most about being old enough to drink: you can go to pubs and see some great local music.

thursday evening, we made a picnic dinner and drove out to sandfly bay on the peninsula to see the yellow-eyed penguins come in from fishing all day. they have a blind there that the public can hide in to view the penguins without disturbing them.



[sheep at sandfly bay]


[view over the bay]




[view through the blind]


[new zealand fur seals which are actually sea lions, but who's keeping track]


[me, with new binoculars, a birthday present :D]


[penguin! thats him standing above the white spot above the white part of the rock coming out of the side of the hill]


just as we were leaving, another penguin came out of the water and was waddling and strutting around the beach. it is so, so cool to have penguins around. especially the world's rarest penguin! the south hemisphere really isn't too bad.

anyways, it was well worth it to see the four penguins we did, plus new zealand fur seals, and a gorgeous sunset over the beach.

we went to robbie burns (i.e. the jazz pub) after the penguins. i really do love that place. we met karen and a collection of butler kids, internationals, et cetera there as well. live jazz every thursday is a great tradition.

we drove out to fiordland right after my class on friday where we had made reservations at a b&b for the weekend, in addition to dive reservations to dive milford sound.

milford sound is one of the most unique places to dive in the world. because of all the rain (9 m a year. in one day in fiordland it will rain more than it will rain for an entire year in london), there is a layer of freshwater a few metres deep which acts as a filter to the sunlight. the fiords are also incredibly sheltered from any wave action, so the result is deep water conditions in relatively shallow water. thus, you get all sorts of deep sea organisms living in shallow water.

air temperature – 12 C. surface and freshwater temperature – 10 C. seawater temperature – 14 C.

sadly, brad's camera was being weird and so i don't have any pictures of underwater. but we saw forests of black coral (actually white) including the largest piece our guide knew of (a few metres tall), lots of deep water anemones, sponges, and fish. a few dog sharks.

it rained the whole time, which thankfully doesn't really matter when you're diving.

but, gosh, milford sound is gorgeous:





[so, so many waterfalls]


[misty mountains]


[more new zealand fur seals, except this picture isn't zoomed in at all]




it was ... incredible. not only was the diving amazing, it was also my first dive with brad, first of many many more, i hope.

on the way home, they stopped at a lot of different places to reduce our risk of decompression sickness (long explanation that will bore you, so just take my word for it), including this quite impressive waterfall cut into the rock. sadly, it was so raining and spraying water all over the place that my pictures didn't turn out very well. but you get the idea:



[this picture was taken looking straight down]


the next day, brad and i did the first day of the kepler track, one of the great walks. the track follows lake te anau for a bit before climbing upwards to the luxmore hut, at the base of mt. luxmore.





[limestone cliffs]


[right above the alpine line]








in the end, the whole tramp took us seven hours. an 800 m vertical and 28 km total. (we were proud of ourselves)

monday, we did the otago museum and toured the cadbury factory which smelled delicious and had a lot of free samples, but was quite touristy.

we had a great time while he was here.

it feels so good to live like you dream you will.