Jan 27 (yesterday for me)

I am writing this one day late. I will try to get today's blog out later this evening, but it may not get out until tomorrow. I am on Stewart Island and their are only two Internets on the island.

Well, the weather caught up with us. We have had a cloudier day with intermittent rain (which never seems to last more than 5 minutes). But the worse is the southeaster that has blown in. We tried to have a picnic for lunch, and the wind made it hard to eat. To make it even more fun, we had, as Winston (our guide) said, a picnic table for hobbits - it was no higher than mid-thigh.

But I digress...this morning we drove along the shore toward Invercargill, and ultimately Stewart Island. On the way we saw lots of animals and unique geology.

The lower south island of New Zealand has a unique geological formation called a "syncline". Synclines are parallel ridges that are created from one part of the land squishing against another. Several of these ridges run parallel across the land out to the see, creating multiple bays along the coast. We visited Nuggets point, which is one of these ridges and named for the plops of rock just off the coast. The wildest thing was when we noticed that there were fur seals on the top of one of these rocks that must have been 4-5 stories high. How they climbed up there, I don't know. Especially given how clumsily they move around on land.

Next we drove to Purakaunui Falls. It was about a 10 minute walk though the woods to get there. As we were walking along, I could almost imagine I were walking through the Amazon jungle again. There were fern trees (I didn't know they came in a tree form as well), orchid plants, deep forests, etc.

Wynston informed us that he had been over Niagara Falls in a barrel. Given mom and dad living so close to Niagara Falls for so long, I have watched many documentaries about the falls and called him on it. So he proceeded to take us to Niagara Falls - New Zealand style. It's not nearly as big as ours in NY, really just a couple of rocks causing a few bumps in the water. But I guess he was right about going over a barrel on it.

As I have mentioned before, there are tons of sheep here. They just cover the hillside. We are seeing more cows in this area as well. One type of cow looked a lot like the sheep because of its color (sort of off-white). Soon after, we saw a cow with black front and rear, and off-white in the middle. These were deemed "oreo" cows by Margaret, another lady in our group.

The last stop before we headed for the island was Curio Bay, where we went to see one of the best fossilized forests in the world, lucked into a close visit with a fur seal, and had a fantastic show from a yellow-eyed penguin. The fossilized forest is the remains of trees from the Jurassic period, which were covered at least 4 times by lava. On the beach, you can see remnants of old tree stumps and tree trunks. The penguin (considered the rarest type of penguin in the world) walked out of the water and up the beach not too far from us. I got a video of him walking and jumping over the rock.

We took a one hour trip on the ferry to Stewart Island. The waves were so choppy it was like an extra long roller coaster ride. It was fun for me, but not for some of the others who struggle with seasickness.

Going on a hut for kiwi birds tonight. More on that tomorrow.