One Fine Day

They use the word "fine" around here to describe good weather. We hear this word routinely in weather reports (given the amount of rain we've seen, maybe "routinely" is a bit strong).

The weatherman predicted that it would turn "fine" on Saturday and stay that way through Sunday, so we decided to make the most of it by taking off on our first tramping (hiking) trip. We targeted the nearby beach at Makara because it's only about 20 minutes away and we've learned not to trust the weatherman. Makara has a reputation amongst the locals for being windy, which is kind of like having a reputation amongst the Spartans for being violent. As it turned out, though, the weather held and we were treated to some nice views of the Cook Strait and the South Island.

The cliffs were steeper than the pictures would make them seem. This, combined with the fact that we had to sneak through a section of trail closed for sheep-herding (which was, predictably, covered in sheep dung) means that Amelia's favorite new game is "sheep on a cliff." She runs around pretending to be a sheep and warning us not to step in sheep poo.

Here's a picture that deserves further explanation; Quinn waited patiently until we were at the apex of our journey before having a category 4 blowout in his diaper. He trashed most of the clothes on his lower body, so he got to wear Amelia's emergency pink cat shoes on the way home. This did not appear to agree with his sense of fashion:



Aside from this brief and understandable protest, everyone enjoyed our first go at tramping. (Below) to Amelia's left you can see the South Island, around 10 miles away. A few editing notes: due to improvements in staff training, clicking on a pic no longer takes you to a ridiculously huge version of that pic (try it!). Also, we're going to begin linking to our online picture album because loading tons of pics on this blog would make it unreadable. If you'd like to see a few more pics of our hike, for instance, you can click here.