Last Picture Taken Sunday

I’m sure this isn’t actually the last photo I took on Sunday, but for some reason it’s showing up last in My Pictures, so I’ll go with it.

Ducks

I was trying for patterns on the water, or ducks for my HooHaa  365 photo.

And it looks like I got neither successfully in this shot!!!

Behind PB’s work there is a pond that is sort of part of a lagoon. But it doesn’t change too much with the sea levels unlike the rest of the lagoon on the other side of the road. This section usually has  Mallard Ducks in it and seagulls round about. Occasionally there is a  Kotuku (White Heron) here and other birds like shags &  swans. We often go there to feed the ducks on the weekends, and sometimes  during the week we have a quick lunch together down there when PB has his half hour lunch break.

For more info on Last Photo Taken Sunday see Tracy’s blog at Tracy’s Topics!

Rescue!

The West Coast  is a very large area, and some of it very remote  – with lots of potentially dangerous businesses such as mining, forestry, fishing and also adventure activities like white water kayaking, rafting & mountain biking.  (Not to mention the tourists in campervans who drive on the ‘wrong’ side of the road and run into the locals.)

So a Rescue helicopter is pretty much essential, as there is really only the one hospital on our side of the mountains. We went to the Open Day for the local Solid Energy Rescue Helicopter service.  (Solid Energy is one on the local mining companies that sponsors the helicopter.)

We watched a ‘pretend’ rescue, and looked around at the other displays:

Fire Service

St John  Ambulance  

Army Territorials   

Police AOS 

Mines Rescue

Land Search & Rescue  

Of course we ate the obligatory barbequed sausages, brought a raffle ticket (this was a fundraiser after all) and caught up on the goss with every second person there. Which is what happens when you live in a small town.   We did not bounce on the bouncy castle  (though given half a chance I would have!!) or have our faces painted, but  that’s all we missed!

Here are the pictures. First the helicopter does a fly-over to check out the situation. Then the rescuer is dropped, and a flare close by. And on the third fly over the rope is dropped and they are winched in again.

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Glacier Caching

We  managed to fit a couple of detours for caches into our weekend, as you do.

 One highlight as far as views go was this one: GC1PPX9 View of Franz Josef Glacier.   And because it was an earthcache it was all about what we could see around us!  A little bit of counting, a bit of geology and GPS skills, and off course the photo.  We were actually very fortunate as some tourists offered to take a photo of us. So, a rare piccy of us together.

Thanks to the tourists!

 This is the one we used for our cache log though:

Cache log photo

 It was also really fortunate that we had a stunning clear sunny day on Sunday. If we’d tried to do this cache on Saturday (not that we had time!!) our photo would have looked more like some of the other ones in the cache gallery.

Glacier View

Of course, if you are not into geology, there are always alternative explanations as to how the glacier got there!!

Tradition

 We did a little detour to another cache GC160J5 Lookout Back There, which is near the Okarito Lagoon, and the forest where the Rowi live.  There was more beautiful scenery, and it proved the ‘Mountains to the Sea’ aspect of the National Park   really well.  From the lookout, I could look west and see the lagoon & the ocean, and look east to the mountains!

Looking east.

  Another very cool experience that we had was an encounter with a South Island Robin  (Petroica australis australis.) The bird we saw was most likely a male due to the distinct colours. He was a very confident little fellow – coming within a foot of me, and not leaving the area even when we were quietly moving about.  We have seen these little birds before – about the size of a chubby sparrow, with longer legs – but this was the closest encounter.  I think we may have been disturbing a few bugs, as we hunted the cache, which was no doubt what he was interested in.

Little Robin

 

There are four species of ‘robin’ in New Zealand (although they are not in fact in the same family as European Robins at all.)   The little fellow we saw is relatively common and his species is not considered to be significantly at risk, although population numbers are monitored.  This is in comparison to his close relative the Black Robin    (Petroica traverse) which once had a population of only 5 individuals  – including one female!!!

Robin View Two!

PB was actually on to the cache almost immediately, though the logs had warned us that it could require a bit of a search, being as it was under tree cover, with the GPS reluctant to zero. But with his usual skill, PB picked where it would be straight away.  The cache was a good one too – an ammo can, with a few good swaps in it. We dropped off a travel bug that we had with us since the Valentine’s Day event in Nelson. It’s a brand new TB which we’d been asked to place somewhere outside of the Nelson area by its owners.  So we left Little Red in the care of one of the other cache occupants.

Little Red & a friend

Rowi

This past weekend PB was involved with the celebrations of the 50^th Anniversary of Westland-Tai Poutini National Park.  I sort of went along to be his roadie, and kind of to get out of town for a few days.  It was a great weekend over all, and we got a few caches between times.  But my highlight was meeting the rowi.

 The rowi  is New Zealand’s most rare kiwi species. There are around 350 of them, and their main habitat is the South Okarito Forest in South Westland.  It was only discovered in 1994 after DNA studies that they were a separate species. So now NZ officially has five ‘species’ of kiwi at present with 11 different types identified.

 The eggs are taken from the nests and incubated at a wildlife park in the city, then once they hatch, they are taken to a predator-free island until they are about a year old and weigh a kilogram.  At this weight they are big enough to fight a stoat and are much more able to survive in the wild.  Six of these young rowi were released on the weekend, and two of them came to visit at the celebrations. Only the very important guests got to hold one, but the rest of us got a chance to take photos, pat them and talk with the project leader.

Getting the rowi out of his crate.

Rowi with the project leader.

One of the other invited guests and the Honourable Kate Wilkinson, Minister of Conservation

A very rare oportunity to pat a very rare bird. (Terrible photo, but that's what you get sometimes.)

Snuggles with a rowi!!

 The Honourable Minister seemed rather reluctant to give  the little kiwi back, and I have to say he seemed very contented and blissful snuggling with her. Now, I might not agree with her party’s politics, but perhaps she’s the right woman for her job if this little kiwi knows anything!!!

Last Picture Taken Sunday.

I really can not believe that I did not post one single blog entry last week. But then, considering we were away three days, I earned money two days (which always wipes out any energy that I did have), did volunteer work with a girls group at church and took myself & animals to medical appointments – I guess in retrospect it didn’t leave much time for blogging.  So – we get to Last Picture Sunday again!!

And here it is:

Annie & the Thar

 

 We had stopped for lunch at the Pukekura  cafe on our way back from Franz Josef Glacier.However, we found that at 3:00 pm we were a little late for lunch in this corner of the world. We did get  to see the giant sandfly (picture below!)  and  to have a good look around & read of all the hilarious info, letters & signs and finally to chat with the thar who appeared to be very friendly.

A Giant female sandfly. (Glad this one did not try to suck my blood!!)

City Caching

Our trip to the city was mostly for shopping, but we had a few other very important things to do too.

New Brighton Beach

The main one was to take a young member of the caching team The Grady Bunch out for some caching and some decent food!   When your family lives really truly in a remote place, you’ve no choice but to go to boarding school  for high school when you get to Year 9. And eat the food. But that doesn’t mean you gotta like it!

So we rescued Grady #3 from the  hostel (dorms), went caching and then out for a meal. 

We had some technical issues with the camera, so there aren’t too many photos.

Firstly we went to GC1T8AD Bright-On  Pier where nimble young fingers were very useful! And then we went for a short stroll along the beach.

 We took photos near that cache the next morning also. This is a spot that we really like – one morning we saw a paddle surfer which was kind of fun towatch. And there’s almost always regular surfers and heaps of dog walkers. If you are dog people it’s interesting to see the different dogs and whether they are running or fetching, swimming or avoiding the waves, digging or playing or just generally doing dog stuff.

Pier View

Lift Off

This is one we took at GC24BDT Kate the Good Sheppard   – just before the camera claimed that the card was full. Grady #3 did most of the hunting here while we were fussing around with the camera – but would have found it anyway, being the only one looking in more divergent spots!! Us oldies had too many expectations about where a cache on a boardwalk ‘ought’ to be!!

Swany Cache Shepherds

And next we had a DNF ….. on a cache we’d found before.    LOL!

After a buffet dinner at the Oxford on Avon Grady #3 and I did a quick dash to GC20W94 New Regent Scene , while PB hovered with the van nearby! Grady #3 was very impressed with this hide, and was rather pleased to have found it.

We had to then return our young friend to the matron, but next time we all hope we can have a longer day caching. When fishing & weka hunting rather than hair-straightening is your area of knowlegde, city life is a bit tough sometimes, so a day’s caching is a good break I guess!

Two other caches we did on following days of the weekend that we  really liked  were  GCA46 Godley

This was near a spot where we’d hoped to park for the night at Godley Head,  but alas the nasty ‘no camping’ and ‘gates locked at 8:00pm’ signs turned us back. However we did walk down the track to find the cache at the historic WWII remains .

It was nearly dusk when we were here, so we didn’t stay long as we still had to find a parking spot for the night. We did investigate one part of the historic area beside where the cache was a little, but we’ll need to go back and walk around the whole place.

The view walking down towards the buildings & cache.

It’s a bit far away from the city centre for too much graffiti, but what was there seemed relevant.

All that is left are hollow shells of buildings with shattered windows.

A view out the door, over that which they hoped to protect.

Another cache we enjoyed, and which gave us a few laughs was  GC1TXB8 Good Luck for Ducks

Duck feeding

The ducks did get lucky with a bit of our bread, which is always fun to watch them fight over it. PB had a go at looking for the container – as we were fairly confident of its where-abouts – but found that he wasn’t quite bendy enough to get where was needed.  By then the muggles were starting to amass, so we took a break to admire the ducks some more.  Then I decided to give it ago. Just as I was about to get into the hiding spot a guy and a young boy (his son/nephew?) biked past on the bridge. The guy was on a bike quite a few sizes too small, knees sticking out the side, no helmet (cycle helmets are the legal requirement in NZ), and a cigarette hanging out the side of his mouth.

 All that is all very well, but what made the moment funny was that just as he went past us we could hear him giving instructions to the young lad: “ Now remember to be careful…. “  We hope that the little boy learns more from the words than the example – but I suspect not.

The car park by now was filling up  with vehicles out of which were emerging  late middle-age muggles – some clutching deckchairs, and some with their walking sticks. I could not quite decide if they were arriving for a walking group, or for a little rest in their chairs, but we decided that they posed no danger to the cache, so I continued my cave crawl and reached the cache in its little dark corner. This kept the muggles entertained – PB says they were pointing with their walking sticks, discussing what on earth I was doing & chuckling.  I passed the cache out for PB to sign, because there was no way I could get on a good angle to write in the log book under there, and I wasn’t repeating the damage to my elbows by crawling out and in again.  Your regular round shaped Kiwi girl is not ideally made for such tight spaces I have to say!!

Cache extraction

And speaking of ducks – any duck fan who has not watched the new introductory video on the Geocaching.com home page   should do so – keeping a close eye out for the swag.

Crafts & Coins

 

This is a little catch up post on a few things that I’ve said I would show people over the last couple of months!!

My first attempt at a mosaic title.

Here is my mosaic title that I made at Art in the Park a few weekends ago. A few different crafty people have wanted to have a look at this.  The person who did the grouting didn’t take quite as much care over it as I probably would have – but who am I to say really, as I’ve never done grouting and certainly not done the amount that she would have had to after the weekend!!  It’s my first ever attempt at such a thing, but it was kind of fun and I could easy add it to my list of hobbies to do more of one day.  

Do you know this frog?

And here is a somewhat familiar looking Froggy that Katy Rose, ErikaJean  & PJ all thought they recognised in an earlier blog post. Were they right……… ??? Perhaps they’ll let us know!!  We are hoping to be able to go to stained glass classes again soon, but the funding for the community classes at our high school got cut last year, so all the classes finished up. Our tutor was hoping to get his class running again this year, but at the moment he’s not well. So we are all hoping he’ll get better soon.

 (Hey Norwood… Nooorrrrwoooodd – you rrrrreally got to look into geocaching some more – there is a Frog in charge!)

And here – just for Tracy – the wonders of the world of geocoins!!  This is our small collection.

 See this photo at Flickr for the info on how we got each one.

Our trackable planisphere geocoin - there is a Northern Hemisphere version too.

Our geocoin collection

Now – if I’ve said  that I’ll show anything else – please remind me what it was!

And BTW – if there’s any words you would like added to the Glossary, just let me know too. I haven’t put anything in there for a bit.

Last Picture Taken Sunday

Now – by no means can I claim that it is still Sunday – anywhere in the world.

But I have been saying to myself for a couple of weeks that I must get back to posting my “Last Picture Taken Sunday”

So here it is – two of them actually.

This is officially the last picture on the camera for the week. But I didn’t take it. Strangely enough.

Studying a geocoin

It was at the geocache GC1GZY5 Four Cygnets and I am looking at the geocoin Cheyenne’s Blue Lips Geocoin, as seen in this photo:

Blue Lips

We though this cache was going to be a ‘troll’ cache going by the hint, so we spent quite a bit of time looking in the wrong place. But when we believed our GPS and actually WENT to GZ (ground zero – the spot where the GPs reads 0 metres, or as close to zero as you can get it), we soon found an UPS (unnatural pile of sticks) and there was the cache.

The last photo I personally took can be seen here —> at my Flickr page, as it was my Project 365 photo for Sunday.

To find out more about Last Picture Taken Sunday visit Tracy’s Topics!!

Free (and not quite free) Camping!

(Warning  -I’ll be talking about peeing & pooing behind bushes –If you prefer not to think about such things, well, stop reading now!!!)

 

 

 You need to learn to do the necessary really quickly when you’re free camping. Why – because otherwise you’ll end up with an insect bite on the butt!!!

You also need to know that this planet belongs to all of us, not just YOU!  Get with it. Read the book.  I do not want to see your toilet paper strewn all over every green space that I visit. I particularly do not want to stand on your crap (literally or figuratively).  And yes, I can comment because I free-camp too.  AND I’ve read the book.  I even own a copy.

Not that your average Kiwi who has spend any amount of time in the outdoors actually needs to read the book. We have manners and common sense. We know how to use a stick or a shovel to dig a hole.  And besides – we have the Department of Conservation to remind us about how to do things right. We value our green spaces – because they are ours!!

Now – I can’t honestly say that every New Zealander  is OK with pooing behind a bush or that every tourist leaves the evidence strewn all around (after all, an American wrote the book) BUT the tourists are taking the rap for the crap.  Particularly the people who travel in Spaceships  and Escape  vans and similar vehicles that are not self contained.

In our local newspaper recently there have been a number of articles written about the topic of free-campers and their pollution (the kinds caused both before and after alcohol & food consumption), and a lot of defence of the different points-of-view in the letters to the editor.

There is even talk  of getting vans that are not self-contained banned from our roads, and of outlawing camping and overnight parking other than in actual camp ground and designated areas.  In my opinion, it’s a bad move – and short-sighted. I’m quite fierce about people being able to have access to green space frequently, easily and freely. It’s good for us.  It keeps our bodies, minds and spirits healthy.

 But I also think that it is economically short-sighted.  Sure, these folk (me included) don’t PAY for their accommodation. But they do buy food & fuel, go out for meals, get drunk in our pubs, go to every attraction and activity that anyone cares to make available, use our internet cafes, buy quirky New Zealand gifts for their friends and family, and spend their money any other way they can find.  Plus, they stay here for a long time – a  month, two months, even six months. And all that time they are spending their money here, in New Zealand.

Why does it bother me that fee-camping may be banned?  Because I love free-camping. Not because it’s cheap (though some times that is a consideration) but because a major reason that I go on holiday is to see as much of nature as I can, and as little of other people as I can.  The two are not always mutually exclusive, but frequently they are.  It certainly seems to me that the MORE I’ve paid for a place to lay my head for the night, the LESS likely it is to be place that meets my requirements.

I love the peace, quiet, restfulness and refreshment of remote areas. I love waking up in the morning with only a vista of sea and sky, or bush and river, visible.  I don’t want the first thing I see to be the back window of the cabin in front of me and some old ugly guy scratching his armpits. I don’t want to see or smell the row of camp rubbish (garbage) bins as I stumble to the amenities block of a compulsory camping ground.

 I love to hear the frogs and birds and lapping waves in the evening and the morning, not the scream of annoyed babies and grumpy parents and children fighting over toys.  And speaking of the amenities block, I definitely don’t want to hear the person in the next shower cubicle enjoying themselves far too much for a public place (yes, that HAS happened).

So, I want to keep free camping. And for that reason, as often as we can we find the place to park up for the night that DOES have a public toilet nearby. (A lot of picnic areas, roadside rest areas and trail heads do. Unfortunately a lot of them don’t allow camping or ‘overnight parking.’)  And when our parking spot doesn’t have a public toilet, we make darn sure that we’ve left no evidence that we’ve been here. I mean, how hard is it to dig a hole.  We take any bottles & cartons and wrappers with us, regardless.  We make sure that WE are not adding to the mess that is slowly having an effect on the green space around us. We just wish that others would do the same.

So, enough of me ranting – the bit you’ve all actually been waiting for – the photos!!These are the free, and nearly free spots we found, and a couple of more expensive places too.

Night One: Lake Rotoiti, Nelson Lakes.

Cost: $0

View: Priceless    

Toilet: Very swanking modern glass & concrete block design with flush!   

Shower:  A swim in the lake if you choose

Lake View

Night Two: Accommodation Courtesy of  PB’s relatives, Blenheim.

 Cost: A thank you card (Oh cripes – which I haven’t sent!!) 

View:  Urban street (But the welcoming teddy bear and the fry-up for breakfast more than made up for the view!)

Toilet & Shower: All that you’d expect from a three year old house.  Actually the shower was excellent – the kind you could stay under forever.

Welcome Bear

Night Three: Pelorus Bridge, Department of Conservation camp ground

Cost: $14 bucks each  

View: OK, once we manoeuvred in amongst the trees.

Toilet: Concrete block building with flush.

 Shower:  There WAS warm water and it wasn’t too bad considering – so long as you had lighting.  

This was a night that we had planned to free camp, but our guide book badly let us down on three counts, and we didn’t want to back-track, so we went on – further than planned – to  Pelorous Bridge because we knew what was there.

Tree View

Night Four:  McKee Domain, Ruby Bay

Cost: $6 each

View: Priceless    

Toilet: An interesting concept in moulded fibreglass – kind of little all in one units including toilet & shower, or a good old long drop. 

Shower: See above.  With cold water only.  Briskly invigorating cold water.  I’m not convinced that the water in the bay would not be warmer.

Lights of Nelson

Night Five:  Paturau River mouth,  Anatori River Road .

Cost: $0

View: Priceless    

Toilet: Dig a hole   

Shower:  A swim in the sea if you choose.  

We had tried to stay nearer to the Anatori River and the ‘end of the road’ but there were sandflies – masses of them – deviously clever ones that could climb THROUGH the mosquito net. I had no intention of providing my blood to allow this particular population of sandflies to continue to reproduce, so we packed up again and moved on.

River Mouth Sunset

Morning view from the door

Night Six:  “Farewell Gardens,”   Puponga, Golden Bay

Cost: $28

View: of the house across the fence.  And on the other side, not to be seen, but heard – German tourist talking loudly. (Just because most of the other camp residents most likely can’t understand you, doesn’t mean they can’t hear you!!)  

Toilet: Complete with signs about washing your hands very carefully due to the possibility of Norovirus (particularly nasty form of gastroenteritis)

Shower:  Warm but in other way mediocre.

We’ll have to look a bit harder for other options in this area if we go back. The bonus here would be the exceedingly friendly and helpful camp ground owner/manager and the TV on which I managed to watch most of Grey’s Anatomy.

(There was only one uninspirational photo of the van – there was obviously nothing I felt motivated to take a photo of.)

Night Seven:  Milnthorpe, Sort of near Collingwood (ish.)

Cost: $0

View: Priceless    

Toilet: Long drop – but it was clean and had toilet paper!!!    

Shower:  A swim in the estuary if you choose

I loved this spot. We’ll be back.

Estuary view

Night Eight:  Pohara Top Ten

Cost: $36

View: Of the rubbish collection area and the back of some cabins.

Toilet: Your average long row of cubicles that you get at such places.

Shower:  Where you have to be quick in case your 50 cents of warm water runs out.

This was the day that we got completely soaking wet, and somehow the van leaked as well, so our bedding got wet.  So we decided to head for a bit of luxury where we could plug in the laptop and catch up on the world. We ended up going far enough that the weather changed. Or maybe it would have changed anyway. It ended up being scorching hot for the afternoon, so all our wet stuff got sun baked dry. Which was good.  And we did get the laptop, PDA & camera charged as a bonus.

Drying Out

The cliffs BEHIND our camping spot

Night View

Night Nine: McKee Domain, Ruby Bay  – Take Two

Cost, View, Toilet & Shower:   See above!!

Reflected

Night Ten: Slab Hut Creek, near Reefton,  Department of Conservation  camping area.

Cost: $5 each

View: Pretty good   

Toilet: Slightly smelly long drop   

Shower:  A swim in the river if you choose.

This is the area where our cache GC1N6PQ Slab Hut Creek is located, so it was an easy 100 metre stroll to the other side of the area for PB to check it in the morning!!!  We’ve been wanting to stay there for years, but it’s only an hour from home, so we’re always just driving past.  So this time – we stopped.

River View

Seal Farming

Windswept 1

 

Windswept 2

This is the beautiful Wharariki Beach in Golden Bay. Apparently if you go to the correct bit of the beach and look at the islands, you can see that they are, in fact, arches. We didn’t know that though until after we had been there. Never mind, guess we will just have to go back again!

Sculptured Vegetation

Anyway, that brings me to a funny tale I want to tell. (Well, it doesn’t really, but I’m going to tell you anyway.)

We were on our way to the geocache  GC1041F Windswept Wonderland. We were parked in the carpark prior to doing the walk out to the beach. I was just sitting there with the door of the van open, basking in the sun. PB was making use of the amenities (you learn to do this when you have the chance when you’re free camping – but more about that in a later post!) 

This tourist (possibly French) came over and asked me a question.

“Is this where the seals are?”

Or at least that’s what I interpreted from his broken English.  I actually didn’t know if there were seals there or not, having only arrived few moments before him. So I gave the universal big shrug, with my empty hands out in front of me. And just in case he understood more English than it would appear, I said “I don’t know, I’m a tourist too.”

To which he replied, “ Yes, yes, I am a tourist.” (Or something approximating that.) Which seemed to indicate that at least he knew the vocab I’d used, even if the grammar was a bit beyond him.

So I repeated my shrug and said that I didn’t know if there were any seals.

And then the conversation got really strange.  Because I’m pretty sure he asked me if I’d seen the seals coming down the hill yet.

Well, I could quite confidently answer that question, so I said “No, no, no.”

Never mind that there was a cartoon playing in my head of a laconic farmer with a piece of seaweed stuck out the side of his mouth, a couple of DoC workers (park rangers) and a steely eyed heading dog , herding a flock (pod, gaggle, bunch, herd) of seals down the track and back to their pens for the night.

The improbability of being able to explain this, or the simple fact that the seals (supposing there were  any) would be highly unlikely to be coming down the track – even though dusk was approaching – to the gentleman, given his lack of English skills, and my corresponding lack of French skills, occurred to me.

So I just shrugged my shoulders again.  He appeared satisfied with my response, turned away and started up the track.  I assume he thought that as the seals had not yet come down the track, there was some hope of his seeing them when he got up and over to the beach.

We missed seeing the arches

Horse trek passing by.

We never did see any seals on that beach – though we saw some at a distance elsewhere the following day.

I really hope the French tourist DID see his seals.

And by the way, what IS the collective noun for seals?