(wed afternoon) first view of the west coast, rain had begun

as we drive out of the valley from murchison to the west coast, the
rain started. our views were a bit limited by the low clouds, and
windshield wipers... but lovely none the less.

lazy cow

left the lazy cow hostel in murchison this am (recommend it if you are
ever in that area ) to continue on out to the coast, and wander south
to franz Josef. rain predicted for the next 2 days, so we kinda lucked
out that one rain day was a drive day. little grey for some of the
sights along the way, but could be worse. we are slated to hike on the
glacier tomorrow. that is going to be more of a challenging day in the
rain.

sand fly rant.

I HATE sand flies. they bite. they suck. they are everywhere, and are
driving us nuts. we first encountered a few on waiheke island. not
bad. on the kayaking trip we got to know them real well. mainly while
lying on the beach in the afternoon/evening, and they were horrible on
the river! ugh. swarms around us if were werent paddling, and they
seemed to find any inch of skin not covered by the wetsuit of paddle
jacket. heather in particular had holes in the ankles of the wetsuit,
and was devoured. :(

seem to be the cousin of the new England black fly. little black bugs.
swarm. bite. draw blood. bites itch like crazy. swell. and don't away.
heather seems to be a little more sensative to them, but we both have
swollen itchy bites all over. from days ago. they are turning to
little blood blisters, and still itch. this picutre doesn't even begin
to do justice to how diseased my legs look.

I hate sand flies. we have already been warned they are even worse on
the fiords in the south, our final destination. woo hoo.

finally a proper sunset!

after dinner, we wandered back to the pub table to rejoin the guide
crew, and caught our first proper west coast NZ sunset. quite stunning.

needless to say, beer and conversation with the guide crew kept
flowing, and we ended up hanging out for quite a while. pretty quiet
river town. not many people stay after rafting, so other than 3 or so
other locals, we were the only ones at the bar. after the sun went
down, we moved inside and watched some olympics... don't worry mom, we
still made it home before midnight. don't think the guides did though,
we could hear them back at the bar from the hostel window. hahaha.

dinner at the hostel

quick loop back to the hostel for some dinner. they had an amazing
home made lasagne dinner for $10. really well rounded and delicious
for such an inexpensive price.

we have been finding meals in general to be quite expensive $18-30 NZD
each for lunch and dinner, and there are not many less expensive
options shy of cooking all meals ourselves. now that we have the car,
we stocked up on groceries, and have been making our own breakfast and
lunch... then eating dinner out somewhere along the way of our day.

beers with the guides after a fun day on the river...

spent the afternoon rafting the buller river with a company called
ultimate descent out of murchison. pretty mellow class 2/3 run, with a
waterfall portage at the end of the trip. runnable at some water
levels, it was definitely not something to run in commercial boats
that day! it was fun to be a bit of a spectator on a river trip fir a
change. I was a good girl, paddled when told to, and didn't really
throw any poach guide strokes. our guides Lisa and Simon were fun, and
really put on a good trip. wouldn't recommend really paying to run
that section again (pretty minimal run), but I was happy to see it and
chat up the guides. I even took advantage of being a customer swimming
rapids and jumping off cliffs.

got a cd with photos, and will post some as soon as I hit a computer.

after the trip, heather and I checked into the hostel, the wandered 2
building over to the bar, and joined the guides for some Happy hour
beers.

roadside stop

stopped at a little honey stand / honey bee display along the way.
honey tasting, yum. decided to pass on the "medicinal" honey with live
bee venom. didn't want to test the effectiveness of my epi pens before
I saw some whitewater. ha.

winding mountain valley road

pretty overcast day again, we crossed our fingers for some sun on the
river.

learning to drive on the left side!

heather took one for the team, and drove on the first day. day two in
the car was my turn. a tiny bit weird at first, driving on the wrong
side was nit that big if a deal. granted, we were mainly on country
roads. ha.

we left riwaka, and traveled south thrpugh a winding mountain valley
towards murchison for an afternoon rafting trip.

eden's edge - riwaka

we rolled into the hostel so late mon night, we really couldn't see
anything. pleased to wake up and find our hostel was a lovely little
bundle of buildings tucked into the side of an apple orchard. cute.

Abel tasmin travel blog

one of our fellow travelers on the 3 day kayaking trip was a gentleman named Carlos, from Spain. he quit his job 10 years ago, and since has traveled 6 months a year, supporting himself by keeping up a travel information web site. he took some amazing pictures on our trip! check out the links below...

his web site:

http://www.vagamundos.net/

direct link to the Abel tasmin photos:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/vaga_mundos/sets/72157623436456904

Sent from my iPhone

couldn't help ourselves

after our amazing beach experiences of the day, we stopped off in
takaka on the way back down and sampled some of the locals green
lipped muscles. they were huge, and heather was a wee bit yucked out,
but they were delicious!! yum.

dinner was really yummy, but the service was sooooo slow. we had hoped
to stop for an hour, but ended up there fir over two hours wAiting and
waiting. drove south back over the mountain pass, and arrived at our
hostel after 11pm. luckily we had called ahead, and they left a key.

next up, continuing south, and white water rafting the bueller river
out if murchison. I am really curious to see the river town life down
here!

driving back down the coastline...

took in a few of the sights on the way back down the coastline. hat
you can't see in this picture is farewell spit off in the distance,
and the flocks of black swans feeding in the tidal flats (little black
dots on the horizon line). we tried to get some pics if the birds, but
they wanted no part of people anywhere near them, and camera didn't
zoom enough. spied them fir a bit using heathers binoculars.

hiked back through sheep covered pastures

break for a little snack

we finally sat Down for a few minutes to just soak it all in and eat
the little snacks we had packed ourselves. awhhhhh. the rock to the
left was the giant arch from the last picture, and the one on the
right had 2 arches (earlier picutre).

the picture.

finally managed to hit the right light and position to capture the
final rock arch in the bay. this is the view that lured heather to
this place! what is great is that it wasn't visible wher you first get
to the beach... you need to explore the entire thing to get in the
right position to see it! :)

black lines in the rocks... coal?

heather gustafson... help me out here?!

wishing we had a geologist with us to tell us about the rocks and history!

huge tunnels!

rock tunnels

we wandered through a bunch of tunnels cut into the rocks on the far
end of the beAch...