Let’s start today with a detour.  The road bridge over a river was washed out by a rain and wind storm so these intrepid kiwis improvised by re-routing traffic over a railroad bridge.  Sweet!  You pretty much take your chances when a train comes along!!

Let us next talk about the stupid (but really fun!) idea we had to fly out over the glaciers of NZ.  Here is our ride.

Here we are on the Fox Glacier with our comrades in crime, Ralph and Frankie from New Hampshire.

Above is the Franz Joseph Glacier, the Fox Glacier, and the glacial moraine and run off from Franz Joseph. See the Tasman Sea beyond?  Oh, and by the way, this is an active earthquake area with the fault line running right under the gas station in the town of Franz Joseph.  Funnily enough the government is contemplating moving the town.  Think it will help?!

When we got back on Earth, we decided to hike to the foot of the moraine.

The top pic is of old Franz Joseph again, but this time from the bottom and not careening perilously close to the jagged rocks waiting to eat us.  Of course, the Glacier has receded miles in the last few years.  You can see the scraping of the glacier in the rocks of the canyon wall.  Doing a 180 we saw the rippling sunshine in the run-off from the glacier.  What a spectacular day!

Continuing our theme of getting high, haha, the next day we took the Queenstown cable car up to the top of the mountain.

We had these spectacular views of Queenstown, the sound, the incredible mountains, and the sun breaking over us.  What a beautiful place!!

On our way to Wellington we stopped to take a walk along the ocean to see the Punakaki Pancake Rocks.  Okay, you all know I like geology, and this is a fantastic example of what Mother Earth can create.  Stacked like pancakes, these rocks have been shaped by wind and rain for eons.  In the first one if you look hard you can see faces, wombats, owls, anything you want.  The bottom pic is of what the Maori call flax.  They split the leaves into their fibrous parts and use them to spin fabric, rope, and other useful things.

On another stop over the Arthur Pass, where we just beat a snow storm which closed the road, we stopped at a sheep station to watch working dogs, sheep shearing, and llamas.

That’s Debbie with the sheepdog, Blue, and me getting drooled on by llamas.

And we also went to an old mining town called Reefton.  Here was mined coal and gold.  The mines are gone now but the town is recreating itself as a tourist destination.  My favorite part was meeting the “Bearded Miners” who made us biscuits and tea and showed us how to pan for gold.  It was here that Mark discovered tea rich with Manuka honey.  This is a special type which supposedly has antibacterial and healing properties.  Maybe.

So next up was Wellington, the capital of New Zealand.

Windy Wellington as it is known is another vibrant city built around water and profiled along with the entire country by its favorite son, Peter Jackson, who designed this sign.

On the top we have The ‘Beehive,’ a name fondly (or not) given to the legislative building.  More interesting is the other picture which is of the Supreme Court.  The interesting detail around the top of the building was made from melted down pennies which were removed from circulation.  Very interesting!

But back to Peter Jackson.  His touch is everywhere.  One of my favorites is The Roxy.

The Roxy was an old theatre that had gone through many iterations until Peter and Weta Workshop pal Jamie Selkirk decided to restore it to its former glory.  We watched a brief collection of clips from new and old movies.  It’s amazing how many we knew and how movies have been intertwined in our lives.  Jamie won the Oscar for editing.  Weta workshop lets you know why they are what they are.  There are orcs, goblins, heroes, eagles and other reminders all over Wellington.

My favorite is this one in the airport.  You know there’s more but WiFi is slow here (maybe they should put Peter on it!) so all my pix haven’t downloaded yet.  I have a few more to share and then we head out for the final leg of our journey to The Bay of Islands.  Soon!!