Adventures in New Zealand

Now that we've sorted through our pictures from our 3 week trek in New Zealand we can make some posts. We traveled with our friends from Houston, Marci and Mike Barnes, and were delighted with sunshine for all but one day of our trip, even along the temperate rain forest of the West Coast. Attached is a map of New Zealand showing our general route, starting first on our own driving up to Nelson from Christchurch. We stayed several days in Nelson at a great bungalow (The Crow's Nest) up on a NW facing bluff over looking Tasman Bay. The views across the Bay toward Abel Tasman National Park where we did some hiking were glorious, especially as we had a full moon while there and crimson sunsets. The Bay is funnel shaped and experiences huge 15 foot tidal effects. Every 12 hours we watched the cycle from high tide to mud flats back to high tide, with fishing boats and freighters timing their coming and going accordingly. The area around Nelson is burgeoning with wineries, having particularly good soils and climate for pinot noir and sauvignon blanc. We could taste the distinctive soil minerals in the wine amidst the various oak and fruit flavors - quite nice.

We rode a boat up into Able Tasman park to hike, since there are no roads into the park, and then hiked back along the coast for about 6 miles to a boat pick up point. There were beautful views of the Bay and we got our first exposure to the diverse ferns and plants of New Zealand, including exotic fern trees. The area in Nelson reminded me of Berkley California (a la the San Andreas Fault) in terms of the steep hills made up of unconsolidated soils - earthquake country. Yes, Nelson, and probably the steep slope on which our bungalow was perched, lie right along a splay fault branching off of the great Apline Fault running through South Island. The Alpine Fault marks the tectonic boundary between the Pacific and Austro-Asian plates. We didn't experience any earthquakes in Nelson, but we thoroughly enjoyed the area and got our hiking legs in shape and our wine tasting palates refined!