nearing the end of our time in nelson...

hello again! hope you all are enjoying your halloween festivities. halloween is theoretically celebrated here, but the pumpkins and ghosts and cobwebs are certainly not out in full force like they are in the states and, lacking a november thanksgiving holiday, new zealand has already moved on to their warm and sunny christmas season.

i've made an effort to bring the camera along with us this last week so that you all could see a bit of nelson...i hope you're appreciative, because i'm quite self-conscious about being the one standing on the sidewalk while traffic rushes by, snapping silly shots of the beach. for the most part, however, the pictures i have are of remote locations where i can slip the camera quickly into a pocket if there's any indication that someone else might appear in the vicinity.

these first few pictures are from tahunanui beach, downtown nelson's beachside counterpart just a half hour's walk over the hill from the hostel. the first is a statue of abel tasman, the first european to "discover" new zealand, with an attractive headpiece; the second is of two beautifully presented cups of coffee from esquires coffee, the main nz chain. the "arrivals" coupon magazine that can be found at nearly every hostel includes multiple two-for-one offers at this chain, so it's quite a nice (and nearly unlimited!) deal.

the short but steep walk to the beach is made especially beautiful by the lovely private gates along it, two of which are pictured here. colorful paua shells decorate the first; the second is just a standard garden gate that i found attractive. as you can imagine, there are some beautiful homes on the hill overlooking the beach.

this afternoon, convinced by the shorts weather and a cloudless blue sky, we got off our bums and went for a two-hour hike along the grampians walkway just east of the city. this should-be-easy-especially-without-a-pack trail thoroughly chastised us for having allowed ourselves so much chocolate these last few weeks and gave us our first good workout since early october. it also gave us another embarrassing lesson in routefinding. having arrived at an unmarked junction, we made a guess as to the trail's direction and wandered around with a small family of sheep for a while, eventually returning back at the "unmarked" spot to find a very clear sign ("to tawa track -->") nailed to a tree right in front of us.

these last photos are of our home ("the shed") at the bug, which some of you have expressed interest in seeing. while we're really quite fond of it (it's the secretive living space that my twelve-year-old self desperately wanted), it's really just a storage area with a homemade plywood bunk system making use of the top three feet. there are three good-sized bunks up on top with wooden dividers between them; we were able to slide our divider out to make a double unit for the two of us. the japanese guy who was staying in the shed with us, "tyler" if we heard him right, has recently moved out and has been replaced by julian from germany, who is very friendly if a bit slow with the mop.

in this last picture, i am proudly displaying the most delicious chocolate chip cookies ever made. i made four batches on two separate occasions and, being more than satisfied with how they turned out, requested that bryan burst forth in praise every four minutes for an indeterminate amount of time. it was sucessful for twelve minutes, with much prompting.

as you can see, we feel very at home here and are having a wonderful time on our new zealand adventure. we plan to move on sometime in the next ten to fourteen days, being excited to see more of the south island, but have been having the most restful time reading the paper each morning, biking to the grocery store, and perusing local bookstores. this second month has certainly been different from the first, and i'm sure the third will hold its own special vibe. miss you all!

-rachel

learning finnish

i just had to give a quick rave about the beaus and belles show that i attended on thursday night, since it really was one of the highlights of the trip so far. while the show itself was fantastic, there were a number of factors surrounding the event that made it so spectacular, which are as follows:

1) i attended the show alone, by choice, not realizing until afterwards that it's one of the very few times that bryan and i have been separated in the two months that we've spent in new zealand. when i returned from the show, i told him "i love you, but you don't know how nice it was to have some alone time," to which he quickly and emphatically responded "oh, i know". sounds like i'm not the only one feeling that way.

2) the film was screened at the suter theater & gallery, conveniently located next to the queen's gardens as if beckoning me to arrive early with a book and snag a pondside bench. hardly any pages were actually read, though, as the four squawking ducks working out some sort of family drama provided an entertaining distraction.

3) the 150 or so others in attendance were primarily sporting a head of white hair - no backpackers to be seen! when old pictures of nelson flashed onto the screen, the theater rippled with murmurs of recognition - "those must be the cathedral steps"; "remember when oysters were sold in bags like those?"; "look at the water levels back then". it was beautiful.

highlights of the 70-minute film were the self-conscious girls posing uncomfortably for a beauty competition, a skiier attired in what can only have been a predecessor of ronald mcdonald's classic outfit, and the surprisingly moving closing footage of the sinking of the tahiti ferry. a local pianist provided live accompaniment that perfectly fit the mood of the film. i walked home the long way, a happy little smile planted firmly on my face.

yesterday we found some leftover baking supplies in the free box and made 5 batches of chocolate chip cookies, which were partially shared with others but mostly devoured by the two of us and our new friend salla, an 18-year-old from helsinki who is teaching me a bit of finnish. i can now confidently say "moi!" (hi) and "mita kuuluu?" (how are you?) but won't be able to carry the conversation any further should the other person respond to my friendly greetings. we popped in at the farmers market this morning before work so that salla could pick up some supplies for her fruit crumble, an unfamiliar dish that she's adventurously planning to attempt this evening. from what i'm picking up, traditional finnish food includes the famously bland meatballs and mashed potatoes, which led to some enjoyment at the farmers market when she vigorously fanned her mouth and warned me "spicy!" about a very tame mustard sample. :)

bryan's out picking up dinner for us at the moment - naanwiches (salad and chicken tikki on naan bread), from the indian restaurant mango, which we actually had for lunch yesterday as well. tipping at restaurants is not customary in nz, so eating out can be surprisingly affordable, especially at lunchtime. ooh-he's walking in the door now and i'm hungry, so that's it for now. wish i knew the finnish word for "goodbye"!

-rachel

still chillin'

happy wednesday!

as we're coming up on the two-week mark here in nelson, we're forcing ourselves to start planning the next leg of our journey lest we let ourselves squander away the rest of the year at the bug, which would be plenty easy to do (friendly people, free internet, great city...). also prompting us to pull out the maps again is the realization that we're becoming the kind of sedentary backpackers who don't actually do any backpacking. my short bike ride home from the grocery story (i went to get chocolate and ice cream) left me surprisingly winded...that just won't do!

yesterday we visited the DOC office in town and received some very helpful information about track conditions, transport options, and resupply locations that filled in the gaps of our current plan and instigated some possible changes. one of the benefits of this trip is that i'm becoming much more comfortable in these kinds of conversations, finally shaving off the last stranger shyness of my teenage years (a little delayed, i know) and coming to appreciate the many disasters averted by the information that i gain as a result.

the last few days at the hostel have been especially enjoyable because of the number of solo travellers that have been passing through. a monday evening power outage made for a great atmosphere in the hostel as everyone gathered around the few candles in the commons area. i was especially revered for my "torch" (flashlight-i can't get past the image of a torch as a flaming stick) which made bathroom trips much easier and i quickly secured a few new friends with my newfound power. finally i found myself conversing long into the night with travellers from ireland, wales, germany, finland, and taiwan - the hostel experience that i've been seeking for the last few months. all five of these girls are in nz alone, which i much admire and have plenty of curiosity about. from al, the welsh girl, i've learned plenty about cardiff and the revival of the welsh language and eisteddfod festivals and dr. who; in return, i have introduced her to the mall of america and given strict instructions to watch the mighty ducks movies. it's obvious that i made out better on this cultural exchange.

tomorrow i'm planning to attend beaus and belles at the nelson arts festival. the film presents silent footage of everyday life in the 1920s with live piano accompaniment and will, i'm sure, make me plenty nostalgic for this bygone era, especially as i'm going alone - solo visits to obscure films practically guarantee a withdrawn and contemplative mood for the rest of the evening.

here's what we're tentatively thinking that we'll do after we leave here in a few weeks (sorry about the poor quality of the map):

-take a bus or water taxi from nelson to motueka and spend a night at a backpackers in motueka or marahau, which lies just north of motueka and serves as the beginning of the abel tasman tracks. hike a modification of the abel tasman inland track (5 days) and end up in takaka, on the west side of the track. the two long tracks in abel tasman national park are the inland and the easier coast tracks, of which the coast track is by far the most popular. it's also one of new zealand's nine great walks, which means that it's much more expensive to stay in a coast walk hut or campsite and the route is always crowded; nearly everyone that we encounter at the bug has hiked or will hike the coast track, which dramatically lessens the appeal for us. unfortunately, according to the DOC office, at the current time the inland track is hardcore tramping due to wind damage and heavy snow in the higher passes, so we'll have to check on conditions before we leave to see if it's still appealing. we're really just hiking it to have seen the golden bay area, so i don't think we'd be devastated if we have to bypass abel tasman for now.

-take a bus from takaka to the start of the heaphy track (3-4 days) in kahurangi national park. this is also a great walk track, but DOC workers at a few different offices have especially recommended it and the lower volume traffic makes it more enticing. the big sell for this track is that it crosses a variety of landscapes before emerging on the wild west coast, originally settled during its short-lived gold rush but currently pretty sparsely occupied.

-spend at night in karamea, just south of the end of the heaphy, and arrange for a shuttle to the start of the wangapeka track, which cuts back east across the park. the transportation from here is a bit awkward, as the wangapeka track ends far from civilization, but we may be able to arrange for a shuttle from tapawera, where we're hoping to spend the night at a campground.

-catch a bus from tapawera to st. arnaud, the entry point to nelson lakes national park. here's where our plans become less settled. we may hike the travers-sabine circuit, but another option is to hike just the southbound portion and detour onto a trail heading south out of the park and eventually connect with the st. james walkway. we could also explore some of the many other trails in nelson lakes and extend our visit from a few days to a week or more. we have some ideas for the route after this, but i think this will keep us busy enough for a while (probably about a month). isn't this fun?

sorry about the lack of pictures - i'll try to get some shots before we leave nelson. hope you all are doing well - we'd love to hear what you're up to!

-rachel

words and pictures

what a strange lifestyle this is, spending whole afternoons barefoot on the couch with a mug of tea and a new book, not just on weekends but every day. it's wonderful, but it makes me feel terribly unproductive, especially when i log on to begin a new post and realize that i have absolutely nothing new to say. in another sense, the blank space welcomes reflection in a way that, surprisingly, a long day of walking does not. i've found that while hiking, i can focus fairly successfully on hiking itself - a new area of soreness, hunger for a specific food, an estimate of the miles behind and ahead, evaluation of the trail's condition, anticipation of an upcoming view - perhaps just lacking the energy that serious thought requires.

i've also been spending some of my time transferring pictures from my camera to our photobucket page, so those of you who wish to see more can check them out here. along the left side of the page, you can select the album that you'd like to view, which are organized by region. more work will be done on this page, so please try not to shudder too severely at the amateur layout that's there now :)

for those of you who are interested in this sort of thing, i thought i'd also share a bit about the books that i've been reading, as i've found some unexpected gems as well as a disappointment or two.

currently reading: (i like to have options)

dark star safari, paul theroux

letters to malcolm: chiefly on prayer, c.s. lewis

tess of the d'urbervilles, thomas hardy

woody allen: a biography, john baxter

read:

the pilot's wife, anita shreve

surprisingly good. the author describes grief in a way that i, though mostly untested in this experience, found to be realistic and moving.

new zealand disasters, nicola mccloy

this one's more of a coffeetable book than a serious read, but it filled a rainy afternoon and educated me about the famous erebus plane crash (on a sightseeing tour in antarctica) and the sinking of the wahine ferry in the cook strait.

the film club: a memoir, david gilmour

one of the bigger disappointments so far. i'd been looking forward to reading this one, about a film critic father who lets his son drop out of high school if he will watch three movies a week (of the father's choosing), but couldn't get past the author's snobbishness and incessant name-dropping.

water for elephants, sara gruen

not sure what all the fuss is about with this one. it was fine. not a masterpiece.

james herriot: the life of a country vet, graham lord

while it contained plenty of interesting tidbits about the life of alf wight (known to his readers as james herriot), i couldn't help but feel that author assumed a closer relationship with his subject than was actually there and focused uncomfortably on unimportant details.

south: the endurance expedition, sir ernest shackleton
the best read of the bunch, by far. everyone needs a moderately obscure historic leader to claim as their personal discovery, and i believe i have now found mine.

a certain justice, p.d. james
i'd never heard of p.d. james before, but she's apparently famous in britain for her thrillers, and i now consider myself a fan. though the book is stocked almost completely with unlikeable characters, it's written so insightfully that i couldn't wait to pull it out in the tent each night - sometimes even before dinner! :)

enduring love, ian mcewen

this one's from the author of atonement (which gives it an automatic boost, though i admit that i've only seen the movie) and made it onto my reading list because of this bill bryson quote on the front cover: "i cannot remember the last time i read a novel so beautifully written or utterly compelling from the very first page." it is well written, and the first chapter is more than intriguing, but my interest faded midway through and i finished it more out of obligation than anything else.

the curious incident of the dog in the night-time, mark haddon

i've fingered this one in barnes & noble quite a few times, and finally got around to reading it a few days ago. it's written from the perspective of an autistic fifteen-year-old, who investigates the murder of a neighbor's dog and uncovers some significant information about his family along the way. well worth the quick read.

where are you now?, mary higgins clark

terrible, just terrible, but i had fun reading the many cringe-worthy quotes aloud to bryan. here's a good one: "an innocuous statement, i thought, remembering the dictionary definition of the word "innocuous": 'pallid; uninspiring; without power to interest or excite.'"

props to those of you who read this far :)

-rachel

exploring nelson

fun day in nelson! we unexpectedly both had yesterday off, so we took the bikes out for a spin and explored our new hometown. fortunately, the weather was beautiful (today's rain would have made our outing much less enjoyable) and we didn't have any accidents on the bikes, despite my multiple attempts to create one at the many confusing roundabouts.

(side note: we have yet to master the traffic patterns in new zealand, and so crossing the street without the aid of a traffic light becomes a frogger-like scenario as we try to work out right of way and the direction of traffic. we thought that there would be no need for us to master the left side of the road concept, but we never considered that as pedestrians we would be expected to also walk on the left side of the sidewalk...this one's been rough. when coming upon a person walking in the opposite direction, we generally need a moment to whisper frantically to each other "i'm going left!" in order to avoid the unbearably awkward middle-of-the-sidewalk showdown.)


so we biked down to the bay on the north side of town and followed a new walk/bike path to its end point at the miyazu japanese gardens (right), where the newly floorless tea house was still taped off from a firebombing less than a month ago, a day before the annual friendship celebration with nelson's sister city of miyazu was due to take place. i have a special place in my heart for japanese tea houses, due almost entirely to my fascination with the one in the minneapolis institute of the arts, so this, along with the ponds being nearly dried up, certainly diminished my experience at the garden. it would have been lovely otherwise.

we left the bikes locked up at the garden and walked another block to the start of the "centre of nz" track (left), a 30-minute walk that takes you to a spot that suggests itself as the center of the country, though it's really just an arbitrary starting point for the survey maps. it happens to have a nice viewpoint, too.

returned to the bikes and pedaled into town, stopping to browse a secondhand bookstore on bridge street and eventually finding ourselves (surprise, surprise) at the state theater, where we watched 500 days of summer along with a middle-aged woman who seemed to appreciate the film as much as we did. we'd read an adorable review of the movie in the local paper in havelock by a writer that we seemed to have much in common with, and were not disappointed.

stopped for a late lunch at burger king, which in nz feels more like a nice cafe than a fast food quick stop, popped in the local library, and picked up some groceries at woolworth's before returning to "our loft" to watch masterchef australia (like top chef, but it's on every weeknight and the less experienced chefs get more training). i tried to start on a woody allen biography later in the evening, but the author includes way too many peripheral examples to keep me engaged for very long and it was hard to focus over the noise of the squealing tires in the italian job's car chase sequences anyway.

we're so glad that we took this break in nelson and are having a blast planning out the next part of our journey, as there are plenty of trails in the area that we'd love to hike (pelorus bridge track, abel tasman, heaphy track, wangapeka track, nelson lakes national park...). recommendations are definitely being accepted, so let us know if you think there's a must-see that we should keep in mind!

-rachel

settling in

just wanted to let you guys know that our first two days of "work" went well, though you really can't consider our 2 1/2 hrs a day anything like working a real job. the bug is kept impeccably clean, so while we spend a good chunk of our mornings scrubbing showers and toilets, there hasn't yet been anything to inspire a gag reflex and the hours pass quickly. after lunch, the day is ours. we spent a few hours exploring nelson yesterday, happening upon the very english "queen's gardens" and then following the riverfront path to the city center. thankfully, we forgot our "wallets" (credit cards and cash bundled in a rubber band), as we could easily have found plenty of excuses to stop for something sweet. in an hour or so, we'll be biking down to rutherford st for a sunday evening church service; unfortunately, our days off don't correspond, so a morning service is out of the question.

as we've been sifting through older photos that didn't make it onto the blog, we found some that we like and wanted to share with you guys. the first one is just a picture of some sheep in a pasture that we crossed near kerikeri, but we like it because the treeline makes it look as though it has rounded edges (and those who helped with our wedding invitations know that i love rounded edges!). the second is a beautiful inscription from a monument that we found in a small park in auckland...we also got a chuckle out of the "K" that was originally missing from the last line.

-rachel

change of plans

you're probably surprised to hear from us just two days after our last post, and that would be understandable, as we told you we'd be hiking the pelorus track for a few days. so here's what happened - we think it's kind of funny :)

not looking forward to 15 miles of walking along a highway to pelorus bridge, we checked online before setting out yesterday morning and discovered that we could get a cheap ride on the nakedbus that left in the early afternoon. saved from a day of monotonous pavement-pounding, we paid our $9 and waited dutifully outside of the mussel pot restaurant at 1 pm to catch the bus. when it arrived, half an hour late, we showed our confirmation to the hurried driver and found a pair of seats in the front row. the ride was only supposed to be a 15 minute one, but we didn't recognize what was supposed to be our stop in tiny pelorus bridge (a cafe and a campground - the bus didn't even pause) and after passing through the town of rai valley, which we knew to be further up the road, we made an abrupt change of plans and rode the full hour into nelson instead. what a wonderful life this is, being able to make up our route on the go.

last night we stayed the paradiso hostel, the kind of place where the patio tables are crowded with empty beer bottles each morning and grungy americans swagger in with loaded backpacks bragging about their recent conquest of the abel tasman coast track. we fled as soon as we could this morning, having found another hostel in town that was looking for two people to work in exchange for accommodation, and are now officially on staff as cleaners at "the bug" for at least the next 3 weeks. we'll share a little barnlike loft space with another guy, whom we haven't yet met, and 6 days a week from 9:30 am-noon get down and dirty with the toilets and kitchens and bed linens. this is one of the highest rated hostels in town and the owner is more than friendly, so we're pleased to be able to stay here while we explore this city of about 50,000. the hostel's about a 15-minute walk out of town, but they have bikes available (and 15 minutes isn't that far anyway). i've got my eye on some museums and secondhand bookstores and coffee shops and gardens already, and i have the feeling that nelson and i will get along quite well. we'll keep you updated!

rachel

auckland to havelock

hello again! this post is coming to you from the small town of havelock on the northern fringes of the south island, where we're resting from our recent completion of the queen charlotte track. the current plan is to west through mt richmond forest park to arrive in nelson in about 4 days and then decide if we want to hit up abel tasman or just continue south to kahurangi national park.

i realize that i haven't given you much visual assistance lately, so here's a map that may help a bit. we arrived in picton (northeast side of the map) by ferry, took a water taxi back northeast through the queen charlotte sound, and hiked from there down to havelock, which is disproportionately large on this map. the map-maker must have been a havelockian. so we'll walk west tomorrow to the road bend, where we'll branch off to the west towards nelson. got it? good.

by the way, thanks for continuing to read the blog. some of you are very familiar with the geography that we're referencing, but most of you probably don't know rotorua from lake rotoroa (apparently two very different places), so we appreciate your dedication to following us around. :)

thursday, october 1
i'm going to skip the details about the full day spent on the bus (8am-8pm) from auckland to wellington. we passed some incredible scenery and made plenty of mental notes to return to certain places; i even fancied myself some sort of social scientist or brilliant travel writer and made notes every half hour about what was immediately on my left or my right, but i won't torture you with those. for those of you who are interested, we had rest stops in hamilton, rotorua, and palmerston north, so i have "seen" those places in the most technical sense of the word. for our accomodation on this evening we chose to get our huge hostel experience out of the way and stayed in the 215-bed wellington downtown backpackers, which wasn't as bad as we thought it would be. in my opinion, anything with an on-site bar holds the potential to deliver a night of minimal sleep, so thankfully this was not the case. we saw, unfortunately, none of wellington, but that will certainly be rectified before we leave the country. it is, after all, prime lord of the rings territory. bryan and i admitted to each other that we'd love to join a lord of the rings tour but couldn't possibly bear being "those people".

friday, october 2
nearly missed the shuttle bus to the ferry terminal, as it left earlier than the reception desk at the hostel told us it would, but we were the last ones on the bus and were able to board the 8:30 am ferry across the cook straight to picton. the 3-hour journey was longer than i expected it to be, given the actual distance travelled, but i learned later that this is because of speed restrictions in the sounds. basically, the south island looks like it's been forcibly ripped away from the north island in the marlborough sounds region, as its northern edge is fringed with tendrils of land and little islands. it made for a beautiful boat ride and constant views while we were hiking along it.
once in picton, we arranged for a water taxi to ship cove (the start of the queen charlotte track) and found a couple of empty beds at the villa, where hot apple crisp is served with vanilla ice cream at 8 each night. most of my evening was spent talking with two american girls from south carolina who were gearing up for their hike of the abel tasman coastal track the next day; bryan chose to retreat to the quiet tv lounge for a repeat viewing of prince caspian (still terrible).

saturday, october 3
ship cove to camp bay, 16 miles

hiking the queen charlotte is so wonderful that it feels like we're cheating somehow. in stark contrast to most of our earlier tramping, the track is wide and benched (i swear you could almost push a stroller here), there are always breathtaking panoramic views that seem better each time, and the DOC-owned campsites are plentiful and cheap. though we were the only ones on our water taxi, a full load of day-hikers arrived just moments after us, so we had company for about two-thirds of the way to our campsite. we're finding that there are at least 3 ways to hike the track:

1) thru-hikers (like us), carrying full packs and staying at campsites
2) day-hikers, taking a water taxi both in and out in the same day. these are often families with kids who wouldn't last for more than this 6-hour excursion.
3) hybrid-hikers, planning to complete the whole track but staying in lodges or hostels along the way, their bags being shuttled from stop to stop. met a very nice family from auckland who was doing this with their kids over the school holiday.

i should probably mention for your reference that the entire track is 71 kms (42 miles) long and takes 3-5 days to complete. we stayed this night at camp bay, where our movements were closely followed by a weka, a fat little flightless bird notorious for its attraction to shiny objects.

sunday, october 4
camp bay to camp bay (via mt stokes track) , 8 miles?

took an entire day off the trail to explore the mt stokes track, a 5-hour trip (plus 2 hours each way from our campsite to the trailhead) up to a 1200m summit, 400m higher than our previous record. we met with unexpectedly frigid weather that gnawed through our gloves and bit at our toes, causing us to question at 800m the likelihood of developing hypothermia. it didn't seem like this was a serious risk (we're just wusses after having been so long up in northland), so we donned an extra layer and made it to the top in another 90 minutes, a light covering of snow adding drama to the rocky peak. the track was appreciably straightforward, lacking the downward dips that can be so irritating when you know that your final destination lies upward. returned to camp bay for a second, much chillier, night.

monday, october 5
camp bay to black rock camp, 11 miles

excruciatingly cold. painful. these journal entries were all written at the end of the hike, as my hands refused to linger outside of the sleeping bag for any non-essential functions. somehow the views are still lovely, but the constant rain and wind makes them difficult to be enthusiastic about. shared our lunch spot today with another american couple, he from colorado and she from new york. we spent at least a half hour in conversation but never exchanged names. i think there's just a mutual understanding that knowing each others' names isn't as important as the other information that can be gleaned from an encounter like this one. we learned about the ease of buying a car in nz, how obtaining an IRD is essential for working here, and about the arduous nature of kiwifruit picking, but how would we really benefit from the name exchange? it seems impersonal, but is it? i'm not sure.

overnighted at black rock camp, regrettably a camp high up on the ridgeline, shivering with each new gust of wind.

tuesday, october 6
black rock camp to davies bay, 13.5 miles

mercifully, the sun came out again for our last day on the trail, allowing us to see the snow-tipped peaks of the distant southern alps as we breakfasted in the cooking shelter. found an orange in good condition along the trail and enjoyed it with our lunch. the same thing happened with a lifesaver (individually wrapped, i promise) on saturday - i'm beginning to wonder if someone's trying to lure me away, hansel and gretel-style.

two mountain bikers passed us on the trail today. we think we're kind of hardcore for hiking, but they're really the ones to be impressed by. despite my earlier comments about pushing a stroller on this track, it really is a serious ride.

this evening's camp was at davies bay, a big grassy site next to a bay of genuine postcard-quality aquamarine.

wednesday, october 7
davies bay to havelock, 1.5 miles (+10)

finished the tail end of the trail in 35 minutes and then followed a road, queen charlotte drive, west to havelock. we were hoping to be offered a ride, but this didn't happen until 2 miles from havelock. when the road started winding around a mountainside about 3 miles in, we realized that we'd largely missed our opportunity (there were no spots for a car to pull off) and figured we'd be hoofing it for the rest of the way. bought groceries, pored over maps, used the internet, exchanged books, did laundry, showered...all the usual rest-stop items were taken care of. we'd planned to stay for two nights, but we're really not all that worn out from our tramp and i don't know how we'd possibly fill another day here in havelock. it's cute, but a person can "do" havelock in about an hour.

unfortunately, i've just discovered that the computer i'm using is not planning to allow me to upload pictures from my camera, so i'll have to show you our amazing shots of the queen charlotte and kenepuru sounds at a later date. it's okay - the pictures don't do them justice anyway. sorry for the text-heavy post! let's just consider this an exercise for your imagination. again, we expect to be in nelson in about 4 days (maybe even less?), so it shouldn't be too long. i'm also working on putting pictures on picasa or photobucket for those who are interested in more than the 5 or so pictures that make it on each blog. i'll let you know when that's up.

good night!

-rachel

pictures:
1) map of marlborough sounds region
2) me at the picton harbour wearing my favorite "in town" outfit :) who knew that orange and blue could be so awesome together?
3) one of many marvelous views from the queen charlotte track. this one features the ponga (silver fern) tree, one of new zealand's distinctive symbols, in the foreground.
4) bryan crawling under a fallen tree on the mt stokes track. the picture makes it look like the track here is flat and wide, seeming to suggest that he's crawling under it just for fun, but that was not the case.
5) the snowy view from the top of mt stokes.
6) watching the fog drift out of davies bay in the morning.