NZ Diary: Day 7

Wow, finally managed to get through half of the NZ diary, well, it's been busy which is good in times like these...

So here the view up from the tiny path that was winding from our house through the jungle to the rough coast...

...were you are expected to look rough as well. If you - dear reader - zoom in you might see a rough beard between my upper lip and nose. (that's about it)

Then walking along a rough stony beach to get cornered by the rough water.

Somewhere in that cave we found a wilson volley ball and a few teeth. If you have ideas where they could come from, please notify us.

The gorgeous couple.

The gorgeous, but also rough, north west coast of New Zealand's South Island.

Everything there looked like the setting of Peter Jackson's King Kong movie. The fog, the clouds, the heavy waves, the gigantic gorillas (in the upper right of the picture, behind the hill, can you hear it?) only we completely failed looking like Adrien Brody, Jack Black or Naomi Watts.

Here another one of the many Mother Natures attractions on our way down south, The Pancake Rocks and Blowholes in Punakaiki.

Here the explanation how they were formed: "The Pancake Rocks that Punakaiki is famous for, are limestone formations that began forming 30 million years ago, when lime-rich fragments of dead marine creatures were deposited on the seabed, then overlaid by weaker layers of soft mud and clay.
The seabed was raised above sealevel by earthquakes to form the coastal cliffs and coastline. The sea, wind and rain have since etched out the soft layers to form the unusual rock formations we see today.
When conditions are right, heavy ocean swells thunder into the caverns beneath the rocks and huge water spouts blast skywards through the blowholes in a truly spectacular sight."

And they were really really impressing, they looked so much like pancakes that Kitty poured Maple Syrup on them and lost a few teeth while biting on the stone. Luckily we still had the Teeth we found earlier in the cave so we just replaced them and everybody was happy.


And here again - rough beautiful coast.

On the way to our next place we got hugged by a huge insanely green tree...

...and enjoyed a playground from the 50s in the middle of nowhere.

This is one of the typical NZ-one-way-bridges that one has to share with the train traffic as well.

And here we are - a bit far from the coast but surrounded by beautiful mountains and green hills - our church. A few years ago it got transformed into a vacation home and moved on the back of a truck up that little hill to make people enjoy the great view from up there.

This is a lake. With water in it. A lot of water. And people standing in front of it.

This is Hoppy, the hopping leader of a Weka family (Weka can also be call woodhens) that was living in the churches garden.

here, Hoppy on the left, Elisabeth on the right.

And here the attempt of the 6 of us taking an underwater group photo in the tiny jacuzzi behind the church in the woods. yay!