A Visit from the Eareharts

Amy's parents dropped by in February for a two week visit. We spent a few days showing them around Wellington and catching up as it had been over 6 months since we had last seen them.

First stop: the botanical gardens and the playground.


Quinn tries the big slides for the first time.

Mr. Earehart tries the zipline for the first time.

Feeding the ducks.

Enjoying the rose garden, which bloomed like mad all summer long.

Near the rose garden is one of my favorite spots in the gardens; a greenhouse chock full of exotic plants. There's a section of carnivorous plants as well as a pool with several varieties of water lilly. Sounds a bit dull, but these aren't your everyday water lillies, and there are some neat fish in the pond. Here, Pap and Amelia check them out:


After a few days in Wellington, we boarded the ferry to head down South for a week's vacation. It's hard to get tired of the views from the ferry.

Granny checks out the scenery and tries to avoid being blown overboard by the wind.

Pap, cliffs.

We then headed down the east coast to a place called Kaikoura. This is an interesting spot because it's really close to a continental shelf. Currents bring tons of nutrients near the shore and the result is some spectacular marine life in the area. We headed there primarily to do some whale watching.

Granny and Pap enjoy some time on the beach with Quinn.

The whale watching trip was successful, and Amy shot this great pic (zoom in for the full effect):



My favorite wildlife photographer.

From Kaikoura, we headed through the Queen Charlotte Sound to the city of Nelson. The drive through the Sound is incredibly tortuous and we've ended up with puking kids on several occasions because of it. Hopefully they'll be able to appreciate the pictures one day...

Carol and Harold in front of the Queen Charlotte Sound

You can take pictures like this...

....all...

...day...

...long.

We had a great time in Nelson, though I neglected to take many pictures. After a few days there we headed back to Picton for another ferry ride home. It was really wonderful seeing our family after being away from home for so long.

A Brief Update

Well, we made it. I've been saying that a lot lately. First was the long haul from NZ, then a few days of R&R at Amy's parent's house in WV to recover a bit. Next was a 5 hour road trip to Portsmouth to stay with our friends Sarah and Danny while we recovered some more. We moved to an apartment with my parents for a week while we searched for houses, and we've finally settled (at least for the moment) in yet another apartment while we continue our search for a home. I failed to mention that I had to make one road trip back to Charlottesville to euthanize Nelson (our Rhodesian Ridgeback) and another to move our furniture down here.

So, after almost a month we finally have a place to call our own. It hasn't been the easiest transition but everyone's holding up well and we're in good spirits. There have actually been a lot of fun times in the past month and we're getting to spend a lot of time with friends these days.

We're starting to get re-acclimated to life in the states, too. I remembered to tip at dinner tonight and I'm having fewer instances of turning on my windshield wipers when I go for my turn signal. And no, I haven't been driving on the wrong side of the road (though I probably would have gone the wrong way on our city's only roundabout if I hadn't seen someone else do it first).

More posts to follow in the near future. Thanks to everyone who helped us with the move!

Things I'll Miss About NZ

Sunset from our living room.

It's funny how time flies. Almost a year ago, I was in Charlottesville, starting a blog when I should have been packing. Now I'm thinking about things that we'll miss when we leave NZ and writing about it when I should probably be packing.

Amy and I are excited about moving back for a few reasons. We'll get to see our friends and family, and we'll trade the cold, rainy winter for a summer at the beach. Hopefully the new job will work out, and I can quit worrying about the exchange rate when I'm paying my student loans.

I have to be honest, though; it will be hard to leave this place. Wellington is the best city we've ever lived in, and by a fair margin. That's saying a lot coming from Charlottesville. The people here are fantastic. We don't worry about much at all, and the quality of life is quite good. So, without further ado, here are the the things I'm really going to miss about this place, in no particular order:

1. The lingo. Sweet as, eh, bro? Push bike, lollies, gum boots, poku, wee bit, holliday, pram, diary, heaps, keen, brilliant, goss(ip), ripper, bach, mum, swimming togs, good on ya, trundel, flash.

2. The service. Un-freaking-believable. They don't tip here, but every time you go into any store you will be treated promptly and respectfully and people will go out of their way to make sure you're satisfied. Even in a fast-food joint.

3. Being awestruck by the beauty of my surroundings every single day.

This is one of several stunning views I see while driving to work. I'm lucky I'm still alive because I'm always staring out of the side window during my commute.

4. The good beers; Monteith's, Founder's, Three Boy's, and Mac's.

The back of the Mac's bottle. Worth zooming in to read.

5. The botanical gardens, which are superb. We need more gardens in the States. Oh, and you can walk through these gardens at night and not get freaked out.

6. My job, and the lifestyle that accompanies it. I actually got tired of taking vacations. Seriously. I worked hard but never felt overworked (I now realize that as Americans we have no concept of not feeling overworked). My colleagues are fantastic, too.

7. Playcentre. Like preschool, minus the schooling and those annoying rules. My boy isn't two yet, but he knows how to handle a saw and a vise, and Amelia can now build a fire. Sounds like anarchy but it's actually run by parents, with lots of theory and planning behind the scenes.

8. Roundabouts. They beat the hell out of stop signs once you figure out how to negotiate them. I'll also miss the prolific "give way" signs which mean that I go weeks without coming across a stop sign.

9. Trips to the South Island. I haven't been everywhere in the world yet, but I'd be surprised if there's a more beautiful place on this planet.

10. Common courtesy is actually common. Schoolkids and grandparents alike shout, "Thank you, driver!" from the back of the bus before they get off. I see ipod-clad teenagers offering their seats to women, and Amy is always surprised at how quickly young boys offer her help when she's out with the kids. It's refreshing.

11. Wellington. What a place. It has all of the benefits of a big city, with tons of activities going on all of the time and heaps of good restaurants. At the same time, we never worry about crime and it's like living in a big village. Traffic is a joke and you can walk straight across town in a half hour. Oh, and it's absolutely beautiful. I think I'll even miss the wind (which is blowing over 60 miles an hour today).

Our lovely city, from the Botanical Gardens.

12. Our new friends, who already feel like old friends.

13. Place names that compete with Thibodeaux and Natchitoches, as well as the Maori culture that is evident in more than just road signs.



Ka kite ano, whanau. We'll miss all of you very, very much.

Editors note: I've received a few kind requests to keep the blog up and running after we return to the States. I'm still documenting trips we took in January, so the posts will continue until I've finished writing about all of our NZ adventures. At the current rate, that means another few months at least.

Dunedin, Mount Cook, and Lake Tekapo

Mount Cook. At 3,754 meters, it eats climbers on occasion.

After a few days of taking in the views of the remote beaches in the Catlins we headed north, back towards civilization. Our next stop was Dunedin, a city on the east coast. As we'd been roughing it for a few days we decided to recharge our batteries and take a hot shower, so we camped at the local RV park.

We headed to the city's museum, where Amy and Amelia found some nifty outfits. They toured the museum dressed like this:

My girls, dressed as settlers. Fetching, eh?


During our stay in Dunedin we heard about a "castle" built by a local businessman about a hundred years back and we decided to check it out one afternoon. Back in the 19th century, the risk of invasion from medieval armies was small, so the castle was really more of a crenellated mansion. It was certainly worth visiting, though, as it had been built by local craftsmen and lovingly restored. The gardens, in particular, were amazing.

The gardens at the castle. Gardens do well here due to the nuclear-grade sunlight and mild temps.

Our next stop in Dunedin was the impressive Otago Museum (Otago is the name of the region). Part of the museum housed a multistory rainforest environment complete with a swarm of butterflies which delighted the kids and left Amy ducking for cover.

Apparently fear of flying insects isn't genetic; I won't be surprised if this gal turns out to be an entomologist.

The fossil exhibit at the Otago museum was the highlight for me; there were moa bones (remember those huge, flightless birds hunted to extinction by the Maori?) found in local caves as well as NZ's largest fossil, a really aggressive looking aquatic animal with big teeth. The kids got a big kick out of the lifelike crocodile on the museum floor.

Quinn, enthusiastically demonstrating how a crocodile goes "snap!"

We left Dunedin and soon came across the Moeraki boulders, a bunch of unusually spherical boulders which formed about 65 million years ago. These boulders started out on the muddy sea floor as small crystals of lime with a bit of an electical charge; over about 4 million years they slowly attracted other minerals in spherical layers. The sea floor was eventually pushed up above the water's surface and you can now see boulders being eroded out of the side of the hills near the ocean. Most of these are about 8 feet wide. It's really a neat sight.

Notice the shattered boulders in the background, they are all essentially hollow.


Our next stop was Oamaru (Wa-ma-roo). This was a tiny town on the coast that really caught us by surprise. The town was built from local limestone and it featured one of the best gardens we'd come across in NZ (that's saying a lot). We were camped right next to the gardens and had a nice time walking through there, though I didn't take too many pics. Here's Quinn enjoying himself at the garden playgrounds:

My little bald man. He would later begin referring to slides as "weeee!" for obvious reasons.

Another neat thing in Oamaru was a local blue penguin colony. We bought tickets to the nightly show; people sit in bleachers and watch the penguins swim ashore while listening to park rangers talk about the cute little things. They swim up to 50km a day and return to that spot to feed their young. The chicks practically attack their parents as soon as they waddle ashore, exhausted.

Around this time Amelia developed a fascination with marriage, asking me and Amy about our wedding nonstop for about 3 days. She got a huge kick out of playing the bride, and we fashioned a veil for her from a napkin. She wore this for most of the day.

My girls on Amelia's first wedding day.

From Oamaru we headed inland, almost all the way across the island. Our destination was Mount Cook, the tallest peak in the country. On the way there we passed a lake saturated with minerals, resulting in a deep blue color that defied the imagination.

I was mobbed by sandflies while taking this pic, so I hope you enjoy it.

We had debated whether or not it would be worth the detour towards Mt. Cook, and we ended up being very happy that we decided to do it. The area was one of the most impressive we visited during our trip. The base camp was located on flat ground (carved out by glaciers, of course) and surrounded by incredible mountains. The mountains, incidentally, were part of the same range as those containing the Fox and Franz-Joseph glaciers which we'd seen whilst traveling down the west coast weeks earlier.

I don't know if it made international news or not, but two Japanese climbers were caught in a storm on Mt. Cook about a week before we arrived. Sadly, one of them didn't make it down. This isn't unheard of as it's a popular climbing destination and it's also a serious peak. Our babysitter, Kirsty, told us that her dad has climbed it a few times (she declined his offer to join him).

Amy and Quinn in front of a glacier-covered mountain range near Mt. Cook. They are standing on a huge lateral moraine which is basically a big pile of rocks deposited by a glacier. You can see other huge moraines in the background.

Me and my girl in front of Mt. Cook. Note the U-shaped valley; if you've paid attention then you'll know how that got there.

We stayed here for two days and we really couldn't get enough of the area. There were lots of day hikes in the area and we found one with two swing bridges over roaring rapids which led to great views of Mt. Cook. This was our favorite hike in NZ (there are better ones, but not the sort of thing to do with two toddlers).

A view looking away from Mt. Cook. The valley was truly stunning.

We had been rained out weeks earlier when we tried to visit Fox glacier, but we managed to get our fill of glaciers in the few days we camped here. The glaciers were in constant motion and you could hear them popping and cracking. It sounded like thunder echoing through the valleys. Amy woke up one night to the rumbling and thought that a landslide was going to hit us.

Family pic! Happy about it, Amelia?

A close-up of the crevasses formed as the glacier moves over the rock.

The girls playing in front of Mt. Cook.

The kids amused themselves that evening by playing house with a bunch of rocks. Yes, Quinn later managed to pull the house down on himself but avoided serious injury.


Our next stop was Lake Tekapo, renowned for the cute little stone church built on the edge of a gorgeous lake. The water here was an amazing shade of blue and the trout in the lake were gigantic.

Quinn points out the church, just visible on the peninsula.

The church itself is tiny but picturesque as it's constructed from uncut local stones and situated so that the view out of it's altar window is really pleasing to the eye (sorry, running out of synonyms for "beautiful" again).

The view from in front of the church.

Amy and the kids playing in a field in front of the church, with the clouds just starting to cover the mountains in the background.

We left Lake Tekapo with mixed feelings because we knew that the end of our journey was near. It was exciting to think about living in a house again, but Amy and I both loved spending so much time together as a family. It certainly was a challenge at times, but it was worth all of the effort.

Here's one of the last pictures taken on the trip. This was the nightly routine; we bought the books on sale in a small-town library and read them to the light of headlamps.

The Catlins

One of the many deserted beaches in the Catlins.

We headed south after leaving Fjordland, making a beeline for the southern coast. This part of our trip would lead us off of the typical path taken by most people visiting the South Island. We were heading into a really remote area known as the Catlins.

As we approached the coast we stopped at some limestone caves to have a look. Amy and the kids decided to stay behind and I headed in alone to have a look around. That move ranks pretty high up there in the Stupid Things I've Done category but thankfully it all worked out all right. I couldn't get my camera to focus in the darkness of the cave but I found graffiti there from the late 1800's and some really neat limestone formations. After scrambling through the caves for 300 meters I found myself staring at a huge underground pool of water which completely blocked the exit. I had to turn around and try and reverse my steps (harder than it sounds) and ended up popping out of a third entrance to the cave. Whew.

The entrance to the cave. The kids and Amy went in about 20 meters, enough to spot some glow worms and convince Amelia that she was not going to take up spelunking.

After spending an uneventful night in a small southern town, we grabbed some provisions and headed down the coast into the really remote areas. As we approached the Catlins reserve, traffic was stopped by an errant flock of sheep:


By this point in the trip, we could see Stewart Island, the third of the major New Zealand islands. Didn't realize NZ had 3 major islands, did you? Most people don't talk about it much because it's essentially uninhabited. The whole thing is a nature preserve and the weather...well, you can probably guess what the weather is like being located that far south.

Given our location, we were taken completely by surprise when we came across a bluegrass festival being held in the middle of a sheep pasture.


It was surreal listening to Johnny Cash and an assortment of Appalachian music being sung in a Kiwi accent in South Nowhere, but everyone had a great time. It was laid back; there was no admission fee and the men's bathroom was a sheet of plastic strung between two stakes in the middle of a pasture.

You can make out the stage on the left and some of the local residents (sheep) on the right.

Amelia and me in between dances.

Quinn enjoying some hummus while sporting Amelia's hat.

After a relaxing afternoon of music we continued on to a beach in the Catlins. We camped on top of a hill overlooking the Southern Ocean. The views were really nice and the wildlife in this area was impressive.

The view from our campsite.

The sun came out the next day and we headed to the beach. Amy and I got our feet wet just to see what the water was like; it was painful but we did get a good laugh out of it. The kids then went to work digging a big hole.


Soon a sea lion swam up out of the ocean and started cruising around the beach. You can see him in the background of this picture:


It wasn't long before we had to scoop up the kids because the sea lion liked the look of their hole. He looks sweet enough in the pics but sea lions can be fairly nasty if you get too close.


This wasn't our last run in with the local fauna. Sea lions regularly visited the beach and a rare species of tiny dolphin also came in remarkably close to shore. The dolphins occasionally play around with people brave enough to swim in the frigid water.

Amy keeping an eye on another sea lion.

Right next to the campsite was a spot that I'd been looking forward to seeing; a petrified forest from the Cretaceous. 270 million years back, some flooding had covered a forest in silt and the entire thing became petrified. The ocean eroded away the covering rock and you can now walk around and look at the stumps and logs when the tide is out. It's still possible to make out the growth rings in the wood. Amelia really got a kick out of this.

Amelia checking out a petrified log.

Soon a thick fog rolled in and blanketed the area. It made for some really neat pictures, though.

One of my favorite photos from the trip; Amelia checking out the petrified forest and the coast.

Quinn and Amy playing in the pools at the petrified forest.

The sunsets here were nothing short of spectacular. Here are a few photos I took of the Southern Ocean at dusk:





Up next: back towards civilization. Dunedin and the butterfly exhibit, the extraordinary Mount Cook, and our return to Christchurch.