JUST CATCHIN' UP

Chris, Susie & Martty contemplating cliff diving on the West Coast

Well crap, the inevitable has happened. I drug my feet on writing new entries on this blog and before I knew it, more than a few months had passed. I’d been trying to keep it updated about once a month, but now it would take a major, novel-length entry to get caught up so what follows is my totally random, Cliff Notes take on our New Zealand experience the past few months. I'm also going to throw in some random photos for those who don't want to tax your brain cells.

Bought a couple couches to make our tiny house a bit more livable

I had hoped I wouldn’t get complacent about keeping this thing current, because if nothing else, when my mind is completely gone it will serve as a reminder of our experiences here. Of course, whether or not we or anyone else will ever go back and look at it is another matter. It may turn out to be the cyber-equivalent of a tree falling in the forest. When no one hears it, does it make a noise?

When our kids left after the Holidays, I drove them to Christchurch, about seven hours away, to catch their respective planes. I know it doesn’t sound like a big deal, but it is still the furthest either Chris or I had been from Takaka since we got here over a year ago. Therein lays one of the fantasies of living/ working in a foreign country. When we were making plans to move here, I for one thought that within a year or so I’d have checked out every little wide spot in the road and have become a virtual walking guidebook, but in fact, we saw about 10 times more of NZ in the 3 weeks we were here with Abby 4 years ago than we’ve seen in the 15 months we’ve been living here. We are getting pretty familiar with the Golden Bay area though. Go ahead, ask me anything.

New Zealand horses are also small. This one appeared to be looking for the toilet. We couldn't find it either.

And halle-friggen-lujah, we finally got sorta-high speed internet. We have a very small “data cap,” (3 lousy gigabytes per month) …a combination of the amount we upload and download…but at least we don’t have to take a beach walk while waiting for the next webpage to load. New Zealand will never win any prizes for their advanced technology. It would be a stretch to call New Zealand broadband “high speed,” and there’s no such thing as the unlimited usage common in most parts of the civilized world. I’d never encountered the term, “data cap,” but as with all the ISP’s here, you buy in at a certain level of usage. The biggest package available from our provider is 30 GB’s. I’ve heard some Americans are howling about Comcast and others proposing a minimum data cap of 50 GB’s…don’t come whining to me for sympathy.

Zing, our world music choir performs at the local Mardi Gras show. The crowd went nuts.

It’s funny how the internet has much the same addictive appeal as heroin….maybe that’s just for American’s, though. Kiwi’s just don’t seem to get too worked up about it; the internet (or much of anything else for that matter). Right now I’m online, streaming KBBI radio trying to get the latest on the fire out East End Road, very close to our Homer house. Fortunately, the wind seems to be blowing it away from our place.

Tom talks fishing with one of his few New Zealand friends

We’ve had a procession of visitors since early December. After our kids left in January, Martty and Susie were here from Washington for a couple weeks and a bit later Rusty and Dia, from California, spent a month here. With both groups, we spent a fair amount of time exploring the local scene and taking lots of walks. Weather was very good for those weeks. Chris’ brother Jim came for Easter weekend…a little tag-on to a business trip to Singapore. Rusty and I managed to get in some guitar playing time most days as I struggled to learn something other than the “cowboy chords” I typically stick with.

Martty & Susie bill to bill

Jim (Chris' little brother), Chris, me, Rusty, Dia

Formal shot at a cool rock formation about an hour from here

In case you don’t already know, the Holman’s, along with Paul Dungan and Jenny Carroll bought a small, camp-worthy van that they’ve left with us and are renting it out to any of our or their friends who come this way. If you’re interested, let me know and I’ll hook you up. In the meanwhile, I get to not only drive it, but clean it, change the oil and replace broken fan and other belts. But whining aside, it has been nice to have a fossil-fuel powered vehicle to get around when Chris is off to work with our car.

Us with Martty & Susie. Because of the slope of the beach, Martty looks taller than he really is.

Probably our most significant pursuit other than Chris’ work, of course, has been our application to Immigration New Zealand to seek status as Permanent Residency. Right now, we’re in NZ on 3 year work visas, which would mean that if one of us weren’t working, we’d be booted out, post haste. Permanent Residency isn’t citizenship, but pretty close. With that status, we wouldn’t be tied to working and would be able to do pretty much anything as far as coming and going from the country and being eligible for all the bennies that a good socialist country offers; health care, retirement, voting rights and so on.

Found this baby fur seal on the beach. Made reallygood sandwiches.

If we were the spring chickens we once were…specifically, under age 56…immigration would be no problem. They rate all applicants for immigration on a point system with points given for each of the items on their 40 page form, among other things, having a job in NZ, having a college degree or other specific training, good English skills, good personal hygiene and so forth. So if it weren’t for this age thing, we’d be shoo-in’s. As it is, we have to request an exemption to the age-limit policy to the Minister of Immigration before we can even submit an application. I just hope the $20 I slipped in the envelope swings things our way.

Since these kinds of exemptions to policy are so rare, the folks at the immigration office don’t really know what to tell us, so instead, they just make up whatever pops in their mind, which would be much less irritating if we were just asking their opinion on whether the Brumbies are a better rugby team than the Crusaders. So after several false leads from the people who should know better, we’ve submitted our best case “package” to the Minister and are anxiously watching the mail for a decision. If nothing else, we can fake being Kiwi’s since we both have NZ driver’s licenses now.

I suppose even if they turn us down cold it would make our planning for the future a bit easier…one less option to muddy the water. As if there weren’t enough factors out there to consider already. Do we (or at least Chris) keep working? Retire? Work part time? US or NZ? Sell the Homer house or keep it? Buy a house somewhere else? Move back to Homer? Anchorage? Oregon or somewhere else? Where will our kids end up? Will we ever have grandchildren? Will we ever score on the Lotto?

Stay tuned.

CARE FOR SOME MOA?

Summoning the moa spirits

If you’ve read any of these blog entries, you may remember that our kids were here over Christmas along with Abby’s partner, Paddy and his younger brother Matt. All of them tend toward the unconventional, so this particular day they were off on a hike at the top of the infamous “Takaka Hill,” a high ridge that divides GoldenBay from the rest of New Zealand. So in their not-so-conventional way, they took off cross-country on a basic adventure-exploration.

Most of the north end of the South Island is made up of limestone, and as such is pretty much honeycombed with caves, pits and labyrinths caused by water seeping, dissolving and re-forming in various ways. One common formation is called a sinkhole, which is just a vertical hole that can be anywhere from a few feet to over a 1000 feet deep. Often, caves open from, or lead to sinkholes.

Best way in and out of a sinkhole. Note special climbing footwear.

In their little hike, the group had been traipsing over a landscape that’s hard to describe. It’s basic limestone but has been eroded to create an incredibly rough, yet generally horizontal, surface where the highs and lows can vary a few feet over a very short distance. Definitely not ADA compliant. The highs are knife-edged shoe shredders and the lows are ankle breaking, foot wedgers so it was slow going, but they did happen on a few sinkholes. And, as with any troop of monkeys, they had to get down into them if possible. Since they hadn’t brought their climbing equipment, it was done without a net so to speak.

Apparently animals are curious (or clumsy or maybe stupid) because the main thing the similarly curious troop discovered was that all the bottoms of the sinkholes were littered with bones. It seems as though the local livestock and a few wild (introduced) mammals have been falling into these holes for years with little hope for escape seeing as how they are short on opposing thumbs. So after collecting a skull or two, and about the time the troop was about to head back to the road, they found another sinkhole that was narrow enough to get down without ropes so, of course, in they went.

Actual sinkhole where this particular moa had been lurking for a few hundred years

They tell me that once you’re in a sinkhole, you look for caves opening off the sides, so that was just what Ian was doing when he spotted a long bone, unlike what they’d found in the other holes. So without tools except fingernails, they commenced to dig through the mud at the bottom and came up with a good sack-full of bones. With Abby and Paddy having recently suffered through intensive anatomy courses, they realized that there was something unusual with the bones. There were three knobs (not a medical term) on the end of what were obviously leg bones as opposed to the two present on pretty much all mammals. And certain bones had a distinct yellowish color. So the crew packed up what they could find with the tools they had or in their case, didn’t have, and headed home.

A moa skeleton in a Christchurch museum; standard size in from, giant in rear

As with anyone of his generation, Ian headed straight for the computer. They had a hunch it could be a moa, but needed to know a little more, and who knows more than the internet? Indeed, this was a moa, or at least a boxful of moa bones, but not the whole bird.

Another view of a regular sized moa...about 6 1/2 feet tall

If you don’t know, a moa is an extinct, flightless bird related to the ostrich, emu, cassowary and even the kiwi. There was a giant version that stood about 12 feet with neck extended up, but the “standard” version is more like six and a half feet tall. Moas have been considered extinct for 400 to 800 hundred years, depending on who you believe, and were endemic to New Zealand. What our group found was a standard version…its legs were over 3 feet long.

Bones found on the 1st trip. A few more have been added, since.

So, not knowing if the find should be reported or if so, to whom, Ian made some calls and wrote some emails to various ministries…not preachers, but NZ governmental departments. He ended up with a letter from The Ministry of Culture and Heritage that would have allowed him to take the bones back to Alaska if he so chose, which he didn’t. Instead, he dumped them on his old man, hoping he’d go back up the hill and find the rest of the skeleton.

A month or so later, I, the old man in question, with a couple trusty helpers and the aid of a hand drawn treasure map, a climbing rope and miscellaneous gear, found the right hole and some more bones. The most exciting thing was finding most the claws, but much of the spine, some toes, most the ribs and the skull are still out there somewhere. Someday, I’ll have another go.

Sue Sets Sail for Somewhere

For a couple days around Solstice, while all the holiday visitors were here, we had rented a house in a remote part of the far northwest coast of the South Island called Mangarakau, which is pretty much a wide spot in a gravel road. It’s a limestone landscape with rugged coastline and a couple nearby rivers that empty into the Tasman Sea. There are a few rather large sheep “stations” in the area, but not much else. The surf is pretty wild compared to the little lumps we call waves in Golden Bay…a lot like the Oregon coastline…with nothing between it and Australia.

Launch site at top-center @ whitest part of surf

So, with the group assembled, we had a little Solstice celebration dedicated to our most excellent friend, Susan Arndt, who died almost 2 years ago. She was always a traveler and before she got sick was planning her next adventure, which didn’t happen during her lifetime. For many months, we’ve been packing some of Sue’s ashes around and Chris dreamed up a way…using a less-than-appropriate figure of speech, to get Sue back on the road. Here’s how we made it possible (by “we,” I mean I drove the car).

One late afternoon, with an ample supply of saussies (a more civil term than the American “weenie”) and wine, we drove out to the end of the road past Mangarakau to the mouth of the Anatori River. Given the sparse population of the area, there’s an abundant supply of driftwood, shells and other detritus with which to fabricate about anything one might want…in our case, a raft on which to set Sue to sea. So while the saussies sizzled, and the sun set, we sat sipping in the sand and sank our souls into Sue’s simple ship.

Weaving the sail. Sue in upper shell with candles.

Paddy grilled, Matt lashed, Abby and Tom wove, Ian assembled, Chris designed and decorated and soon we had a seaworthy craft fitted with 3 candles to light the way, with Sue occupying a paua (abalone) half-shell.

Paddy testing out for fire-building merit badge

Somewhere along the way, we had adopted, or I should say, were adopted by, a stray 14 year-old girl, who for reasons only a 14 year-old would know, found our group much more interesting than her own family with whom she was camping. It turned out she was a competent flax weaver, which for us was anyone who could tell flax from cream cheese, and was more than willing to share her skills in showing us how to weave a sail.

Crew, including stray (in pink)

Completed vessel

Lighting the candles

Along about dark, after a few glasses of wine, and on an outgoing tide…remember we’re a couple hundred yards from the mouth of the river…Matt and Ian, with candles lit, set the Sue Maru adrift in the swift current.

Bon Voyage, Sue

With a set of mild rapids about half way between us and the surf, we figured Sue was likely to flip there and then wash back up on the beach, nearby. With the group following the raft downstream, offering verbal encouragement, she actually made it through the rapids, with candles lit. This boosted the confidence of our group immensely and the encouragement stepped up a notch to cheers, whistles, woo-hoo’s and “go-Sue’s”. The 14 YO flax consultant was at least as exuberant as any of us. I like to think of her as an Aasta stand-in.

Another 100 yards ahead was the surf, with many sets consecutive, breaking waves, maybe 3 feet high. The chances seemed pretty slim that she’d make it over any of them. But thanks to the candles, we can confirm that she made it over 6 or 7 breakers before the candles went out, but those with younger, better eyes swear that she kept going for several more before fading into the darkness. We’re pretty sure she made it through the danger zone and is still probably enjoying her trip to The Gold Coast of Australia.

First Visitors

"Where you going?" more, louder funny noises...”hey, do come back now, hear?”).

Tom practices ventriloquist act for JW visit

While all the people were here, we managed a few hikes (tramps), the most scenic of which was at the northern end of Abel-Tasman National Park, the eastern edge of which is just a few minutes from here.

Mutton Cove in Abel Tasman National Park

Besides experiencing the beautiful beaches and “native bush” we found a dead penguin that we tried to prop up into a cute pose…but failed…

Shhh, don't want to wake him

and I was attacked by a ferocious black oystercatcher (a bird) for getting too close to its nest. I expect Abby was pretty impressed with her dad’s fancy footwork, which involved cleverly appearing to trip over my own feet and landing on my face in the sand and avoid imminent contact with this 12 ounces of flying fury.

Sure, it looks harmless enough

Now, everyone is gone and we’re back to our routine…see previous posts to see what that is. If you’re interested, check the post after this one to get a couple more details on the last couple month’s activities including setting Sue adrift, regressing to the 60’s, and the Great Moa Discovery.

A Nod to Mom and a Few Other Things

Although most of the people reading this probably didn't know her, my Mom, Doris Emerson (she-hated-her-middle name) Laing, moved on to wherever it is that people move on to, early in the morning, October 22nd. Given that she was 93, it's not like it was unexpected, but there was no prior indication that it was going to happen just then. She walked to the bathroom in the middle of the night, sat down on a cabinet and never got up. Of course, at age 93, every day could be considered a bonus, or from another perspective, another day of marking time.

As far as anyone could tell, her memory, at least of the past 50-or-so-years was gone, but she had related to me several times that she had just had lunch or gone shopping with her mother or her sister, both of whom were long passed. For all I know, in her mind she may have been younger, living a pretty normal, active life…just one that wasn’t too obvious to any around her. Still, it’s sad, and despite her age, a shock, but maybe a bit of a blessing. Rest in peace, Mom.

Meanwhile, back in New Zealand, Chris and I just returned from our big World Music Choir Concert in Nelson (our nearest big town). I’ve mentioned in previous posts that we’re in a local choir that sings music in languages no one understands, with words we can’t pronounce…we just try to do it in the same way, right or wrong. Our group of 25 singers was one of 5 choirs to perform. We did a few songs as a combined choirof 115 people plus 6 songs of our own. If you’re curious, and have $20 NZD’s to spare, the CD will be available in a week or so. If you can’t get it from Amazon, we’ll try to round up a copy for you. Actually, if you’re on the US Dollar, that’s an excellent price considering the exchange rate is really good right now ($.55 USD = $1 NZD). Or get two or more, they make great Christmas gifts.

The performance went quite well. The venue, a large cathedral (see photos) was sold out, and I judged the audience response to be a bit more enthusiastic than straight pity applause. Actually, they stood up at the end, but I wasn’t sure if it was a standing ovation, or if they were just in a hurry to leave.

I’ll attach a couple recent photos of my veggie garden so you can see that I’m at least doing something constructive. We’re getting a good mix of sun and rain, so the plants are going nuts. Unfortunately, so too are the leaf-eating caterpillars, which are actually baby, white moths. I just inspected every leaf of every brassica plant (cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower and kohlrabi) and gleefully mashed the ones I found into a green paste. I’m trying to figure out how to mount a dead one as a warning to others. A skull on a stick would be ideal, but I don’t think they have skulls…and hanging would be difficult as they don’t have necks. In the meantime, I’m sprinkling them with some (yes, organic) powder and have a net over them to keep the nasty parent-moths out. And…my first broccoli is ready to eat, so I think that means I am winning.

I did have two tragedies the same day, last week. My first 5 strawberries, which were about ready to eat, were swiped by some pesky blackbirds, and something sheared off an incredibly productive cucumber plant right at ground level. Oooo, was I bummed. In an act of random retribution, I ran over a blackbird with my car the other day.

In case you don’t know, this is my first real garden, and if you haven’t done it yourself, you should also know it’s a bit addictive once you commit to it. I find myself at gatherings talking insect control and the relative merits of cow manure vs. seaweed as fertilizer. If I were still in Homer, I expect Rosemary Fitzpatrick and I would be hanging out.

I am actually working, yes, for money…doing (surprise, surprise) carpentry. I’m doing an addition to a cottage at a retreat compound, and this is the first time I’ve been a hammer-for-hire for many years. I’m regressing in so many ways, it’s frightening. I just hope the diapers and crying jags don’t come on too quickly. The grounds of this place could be a set for a movie; large limestone outcroppings, manicured lawns and lots of fruit trees. You can see it by Googling Golden Bay Retreat New Zealand.

Chris has a new interest/activity. She’s taking a Waka Ama class. Waka’s are Maori outrigger canoes which are very stable to one side and terribly tippy to the other. Each boat has six paddlers using canoe-type paddles. Her last class was spent learning to right an overturned boat. Fortunately, the weather is warming. From the class she could graduate to a membership in the “club”, which competes with other NZ clubs in races. I'll try to get a photo to attach to my next posting. She definitely looks the part in her new paddling togs. Of course, the first rule of any sport is, "Look good."

Tourist season is just kicking off, with more and more rental vans driving through the neighborhood. Paddy (Abby’s boyfriend) Kinney and his brother Matt are currently traveling somewhere in NZ in a van they bought. Since cars are one thing that’s relatively cheap here, it’s a pretty common thing to do if one has a month or more to drive around. Even if you take a loss on the price of the car, it’s still cheaper than renting for a month. With all the travelers in NZ, you can buy an outfitted van for $2500 to $3500…complete with bedding, cooking gear, cell phone; the works. Here's a photo of one I found online and the description of the accessories.

"Has a double bed sized platform in the back with single mattress (can supply double mattress at your expense), lots of room underneath for storage. comes with gas stove, pots, pans, plates, cups, chairs, solar shower, water containers, cutlery, Pillows, blankets, sheets and more!"

Both Ian and Abby show up the 2^nd week of December. They’ll join Paddy and Matt then head up to Golden Bay for an exciting visit with the older-yet-wiser set. I’ve been saving up several tidbits of parental wisdom to pass on to them, which I expect they'll remember as the highlight of their trip.

In the meanwhile, Larry and Barbara Holman will arrive just about the same time. All should be here for winter solstice and Christmas. Ahh, Christmas in shorts and sandals (“jandles,” here). For some reason, even in NZ, Santa still has the traditional suit and hat with fur trim, and they play I’m Dreaming of a White Christmas and Winter Wonderland in the stores & TV ads. And most TV ads manage, somehow, to incorporate snow in their pitch. I'm not sure if this says something about New Zealanders or American consumer influence on the rest of the world. But at least in Takaka, mob tramplings of employees are rare.

Although we haven’t had any long-term adventures lately, we've had some little ones. We took one, wind-tossed kayak trip with our 80 year old neighbor Pat a couple weeks ago, and I went on a scalloping trip with another neighbor. There are productive scallop beds just a 10 minute row from our beach…the limit is 50 each. Not your jumbo Alaska two-bites-per-scallop size, but very tasty.

Yesterday, we took a drive up to the north tip of the South Island to a beach called Wharariki. It's a pleasant walk through sheep paddocks and over fences to a pretty spectacular place with cool rock formations, seals and large sand dunes, which in combination with 60

MPH winds, pretty much removed the stratum corneum (look it up) from our exposed legs and arms. Cheaper than the peels (I think that's what they're called) that people (mostly women people) pay for, I suppose. Came home with a good deal of sand packed in our ears.

Today is a warm up round for the annual Paton’s Rock Invitational Golf Tournament up at Pat and Fran’s 9-holer in preparation for the real thing on December 6th. The longest hole is about 60 feet and played with 60 year old, wood-shaft putters. I’m giddy with anticipation, yet quiet nervous, hoping that I don’t drink too much beer to affect my game.

October is Spring, Here

A couple of the many trees in bloom in our yard

Warning! This blog entry may contain inappropriate political commentary totally unrelated to our being in NZ. Sorry, but I’ve just gotta vent to some Americans about some of the stuff that’s going on in this bizarre presidential campaign. My compulsion may be a result of one or more of these things: 1) My not having a job where I can ramble-on to sympathetic co-workers, 2) My being in a foreign country where people would rather be out checking their possum traps, or 3) Because I pass most my daytime hours speaking only to my imaginary friend.

The people in NZ do present quite a contrast to your typical American in that most have a pretty good grasp of US politics and economics. For comparison sake: How many of you can name the political honcho of Canada? President or Prime Minister? Man or woman? Mexican President's name? Prime Minister of New Zealand? Yeah, that’s what I thought. Americans have to be the most national-centric people in all of history. And, no, I’m no exception. I'm thinking we should all be boning up on our Chinese and Indian politics…maybe learning the languages, too. May need them all too soon.

Kiwi’s typically know stuff about the US that we would have no idea about their country, which is no doubt because their economic fate is so tied to ours. (FYI, the entire country of NZ has basically the same population as Kentucky.) The US housing market tanks, so does theirs. The stock market crashes, so does theirs, and so on. The opposite is certainly not true. It’s no wonder they have a vested interest.

But New Zealanders are polite enough as to not offer a negative opinion about anything U.S. without first having some clue as to the views of the person they’re speaking with. Only when they confirm they have a sympathetic ear do they ask the rhetorical question(s), “Sarah Palin?” What's with the Americans? Do they really want a president who doesn’t read a newspaper, and who can’t answer a question about any significant national issue without a beauty-queen-contestant smirk on her face and a stack of note cards in her hand (wink, wink)? (OK, so those are my question, not “theirs”.) Most are scratching their heads over her selection, though. Is she ever going to hold a press conference?

I could go on and on with the details of the things that are scaring the bejesus out of me, and indeed I do go on and on reading lots of stuff on the internet and watching these debates looking for some glimmer of hope that even if the McCain/Palin team won this election, that things might at least be a step up from the Bush fiasco. So far, no luck on that.

Tom and some of his tasty friends haaaaaaaving dinner

Here in the Southern Hemisphere, it’s spring. Every tree and bush is in bloom and there are baby lambs and calves everywhere…well, at least in lots of places, and it’s hard to imagine these little cuties as next week’s leg of lamb or veal cutlet.

And spring means that it’s garden time. Not that it’s EVER been garden time for me. Yes, I have tilled lots of chicken crap into a patch of Alaskan dirt fantasizing that maybe I or Chris would drop in a few seeds and see the process through all the way into the freezer or canning jar. All we ever successfully raised was a few bags of spuds, but probably only because you can pretty much plant ‘em and come back a few months later and dig ‘em up...no maintenance required. Of course, if there was a commercial market for chickweed, we’d be like, totally, on Easy Street.

A couple of Tom's gardens (yes, I know they look a bit pathetic right now)

So this year, given a new-found bit of time--and a new climate--on my hands, I made my first steps toward agrarian independence…that is if one can be even close to independent in 100 square feet. I’ve got all your basic stuff that anyone, so inclined, could grow outdoors in Alaska plus others they couldn’t…corn, lots of tomatoes, cukes, zucchini and a smattering of herbs. I’ve borrowed 3 gardening-in-NZ books from a friendly native and have added a few gardening terms to my vocabulary…"brassica," for one…look it up. And I may have gone a bit overboard on the tomatoes, which I attribute to the chronic shortage of the Solonaceae family in Alaska.

I’ve decided to name my grub patch the Susan Arndt Memorial Garden in honor of my model gardener. Maybe some of her gardening talent and addiction will rub off on me. In Alaska, we didn’t have to grow anything; we could just raid her garden.

Susan: Garden Queen

After reading all the gardening books, I’m kind of worried about all the things that can thwart my efforts such as bugs, birds, diseases, too much or too little water or soil-chemical imbalances. So after tilling in some bone meal, some horse crap and seaweed, I just hover over the new plants waiting for holes to start appearing in leaves or for them to turn yellow. Needless to say, weeds get yanked the minute they break the surface. A few months ago, Chris planted a few broccoli plants and within weeks, the leaves looked like grandma’s doilies. I’m hoping to avoid this kind of thing, but despite my organic bent, I can empathize with those who adopt the Shock and Awe theory of gardening.

In the past couple weeks, we’ve done a bit of hiking on both ends of the Abel-Tasman Track. The A-T is a national park, the border of which is about 15 minutes from our house. We’re fairly close to the northern end of the track and about 1 ½ hours drive from the south end. The entire track is about a 4 day walk and we’ve only made it about an hour into either end. Still lots to see.

Beaches at North and South ends of Abel-Tasman Track

About 2 minutes from Takaka, there’s a place called Labyrinth Rocks, which is a very accessible example of a limestone deposit where erosion has caused some pretty interesting shapes and forms. I’m attaching a couple photos of the place. So many examples of this geology are so inaccessible or overgrown the you’d never see them, but it happens that a retired geologist had made it his mission to keep this one accessible to the public for many years, but now has untreatable cancer and has given it up. Although it’s technically a park, there is no official person, group or money to maintain it, so a group of local greenies is organizing to take over the weeding and trail maintenance. Did I mention that things grow really fast, here?

A couple rock formations in Labryinth Park, including the secret elephant burying grounds

I think I should wrap this up. I would describe the Hui (pronounced; Hooey) that Chris attended, but since I don’t know anything about it, will leave it to her to explain in a separate post. All I can say is that it is a Maori traditional gathering and she was thrilled to have gone. Watch for updates.