Pushing on Up the Coast

Our host fed us a hot breakfast of eggs and bacon, at the leisurely hour of 8:30 (we chose it).  We talked about her life these days, having moved to the South Island with her husband just a year and a half ago. Of course you can't ask a person about their origins/parents but we wonder about her ancestry because she looks like someone of Polynesian descent.  She had observations about everything we were curious about -- perfectly happy to chat for as long as we wanted.  She had a part time job milking cows but she is going to look for another one because that operation doesn't follow the rules. Whatever that might mean.  She says she has noticed that the North Island dairies are more progressive/efficient because they milk using the rotary method (we are guessing this means the cows get onto some kind of slowly turning table, get hooked up and milked and walk off, so there is no pause) but down here they are still doing it the old way.  All the milk is contracted to a local processor that exports most of it. Buying milk in NZ is expensive, even though it comes from nearby.  She had a friend visiting from Christchurch who lived in this very house for 20 years and they gave us advice on what to see and do in our travels today.

Talking about the hunting business, she says that people are interested in bow hunting more now, but she calls them "bow wounders" because it is really hard to hunt with a bow.  It is important to get a very good shot, and if you only wound the animal, then you have to track it until you find it and shoot it anyway.

She confirmed that there are no predators on this island (except stoats and ferrets) so the tahr and deer and chamois goats have only humans to fear.

We headed back up the coast some more, toward Hokitaka (the location of the big book I have been reading, The Luminaries). It was exciting to be in the exact region where this piece of historical fiction is focused.  We went to the Hokitaka Gorge, along with lots of other friendly tourists.

Hana's favorite kind of road -- completely overhung with vegetation.

The suspension bridge over the gorge.

The kind of bridge we should build to get to the creek house.

Again, the color of the water from glacial run-off.

Next stop a few hours later was in the Paparoa National Park to see the Pancake Rocks -- amazing limestone formations on the coast.  Almost equally amazing was how artfully they had made these views accessible, by making a winding all weather trail with lookouts all along the way. It was sunny and hot but luckily the whole walk was only about 20 minutes long.

The striations in the rock they call "pancake."

Then we had our daily picnic before pushing on up the coast. We were in the national park all day, or if we weren't we in some some other nature reserve. Pristine, uninhabited, vast. Rain forests, beaches with no one on them, steep mountains, rivers running with that bright blue water. It was a long day of going in and out of those deep valleys again, curving back and forth, facing down huge trucks (this is the only road in the region) on those one lane bridges. We finally decoded their absolutely crystal clear signage about who has the right of way.   At least today the navigation system didn't tell us repeatedly to make a U-turn whenever we made all those hairpin turns. I wonder if that thing can learn.

There are at least three requirements to make a town: a golf course, a helicopter rental service to see the fiords or glaciers, and a sign showing where to put the "stock effluent." The houses are all modest, mostly one story, no basements (the soil only goes down one foot before you hit rock), the landscaping reflects a weather pattern that is nice to perennials (big blooming plants), and there is nothing excessive or flashy. It is nothing like the US, actually.  Or we haven't seen where the rich people live, if there are rich people. Some regular houses are made of corrugated metal. Everyone has lots of big windows.

We ended up in yet another elegantly furnished B&B -- this time we have an entire house to ourselves so Jon is using the washing machine. He grilled some sausages outside and we ate on the little back deck. We thought we bought salsa to eat with our chips but it turned out to be much more like the tomato sauce that goes on currywurst, so we changed our menu from Mexican to German in an instant.

A little change of pace, no sheep, just cows ...

... and farmed deer.

A weka, just to see if Mark is reading the entire blog.