south island tour photo highlights

south island tour photo highlights

west coast - fox glacier half day walk: me in a big ice hole. nice.

classic west coast road signage.

fur seals and big surf, cape foulwind.

not a kiwi - a flightless NZ bush hen called a weka.

saturation point in typical west coast weather - torrential rain. perfect for touristing!

enkeldoovery corner: home to the wallabies and the crazy/hilarious lady who look after them - just think colleen from home and away but thinner...

another attraction at the wallaby place - a crippled pony! <:s

moeraki boulders at sunset

boulder gremlin

dunedin train station - one of the few classic 'old' buildings in NZ

truimphant summit of the world's steepest street!

new zealand's only castle. tick.

pre-penguin watching excitement

spot the penguin!

slightly blurry yellow eye penguins

post-penguin sunset

lulu's air conditioning refit. bless.

the big clap

the big clap

I'm styling myself after a section in our local ads mag tonight - you see it's 2am and I've just been out to see my neighbours... I went to sleep to the gentle baseline of a local party - 10 minutes ago I got woken up by a ridiculousy *fat* baseline shaking through my bed. perhaps foolishly, I thought in a small town like this I might be able to phone into the police station direct and tell them my problem, being half of fernhill would now be awake, but alas my nice local telephone number took me through to a central phone room where I was told I would have to call the council on monday - not too handy at that moment! so, being a girl of directness and action who doesn't deal with offending night time noise too well I got out of bed, put on a jacket, and followed my ears to the party on the basic assumption most people are nice and when asked to do something reasonable normally respond in a nice way... although I walked away to people calling after me what drugs was I on, the baseline has gone entirely and as soon as my poorly-acclimatised-to-such-late-night-actions english heart has subsided from shaking my ribcage, I will be going back to bed :)

broken glass

broken glass

sunrise from our lounge last week

hello from the world of daytime infomercials! I'm back, but it's been a pretty busy time and might take me a while to blog my latest pics & news so I thought I'd post a quickie. it's trying very hard to be winter here - temperatures have dropped so much our bedroom was 5oC yesterday and long johns are a must most days, though the skifield looks decidedly patchy at the moment. my south island trip with ann was great - the weather wasn't as kind as the previous week and one day we finished tourising with our trousers sucking onto our legs they were so wet! we had a few amusing calamities on the way, one being our dodgy rent-a-dent car whose battery went flat after the first hour and performed accordingly thereafter, and my prescription sunnies breaking as we left QT, meaning I had to drive all week with my other one-armed glasses looking decidedly lopsided on my face! (I now have no in-tact glasses to wear!) we saw glaciers, pancake rocks, a LOT of rain!, fine buildings, art, a few cafe's here & there, wallabies, penguins and a petrified forest. ann's plane *just* managed to take off through the snow clouds after a final day of holiday pampering. the day after we got back a stone went through lulu's windscreen and thankfully the glass people could get a second hand one, meaning it was quarter rather than half the value of the car to replace! a day after ann's departure we met a lovely danish family, the dyhr's, who are travelling the world for a year and have a few days in queenstown - right about now peter & charlotte are skydiving and fran will be filming them! ...so come back soon for the photo highlights!

oh, and can I just say how amused I am to visit friend's blogs and see that facebook has reeled them in but still left them scratching their heads! right now I'm off to bite the bullet and put some details on my profile! see y'all soon - xxx.