Queenstown and Beyond...

We are now at Queenstown (middle of south island close to the bottom). We crossed on the ferry with a pleasant voyage. I was talking to some women from the bus and I suddenly thought I should go look for the dolphins. I walked to the front of the ship and looked out the window and presto! there they were. Four of them jumping toward us. They passed in front of the boat then along the side. I couldn't call Jacob over fast enough. Heather was on deck with Alan, he saw none and Heather saw the last one passing the side. Apparently they were the only dolphins spotted at all by anyone on the ferry, so I timed it PERFECTLY. Luckily we saw lots a day or two later between Nelson and Greymouth at a place called Punakaiki in the west We stopped at a hostel to let some people out and the bus was facing the ocean. There were about 20 dolphins playing in the surf just in front of the bus, thankfully the whole family saw them this time. Later we saw more of them from the lookout at the pancake rocks (see same link as Punakaiki above for info). Heather even saw one jumping in front of a lucky kayaker. We can now check the box marked DOLPHINS....

We were picked up at the ferry by another bus and driven to Nelson. We stayed two nights in Nelson and spent Sunday with a friend of Ruth's from Canada (now New Zealand) called Laura. She was VERY hospitable and took us to a beach with her partner and his 5 year old daughter. It was a day of fishing, swimming and frisbee enjoyed by all. After the beach we stopped by a Gypsy Fair. In New Zealand, old hippies live in flatbed trucks with elaborate houses on them and call themselves gypsies. There was one open for touring and it had a bedroom (the size of one on an 18 wheeler) as well as a kitchen area and a sitting area with a balcony off it. It had beautiful stained glass windows all over. The owner said he could do 90km/hr on a flat road and he got a whopping 8 miles/gallon. We saw a couple of the caravans on the road south and then we saw an advertisement for another Gypsy Fair in Greymouth, so presumably they do some sort of circuit.

It was a bit of a craft fair and a bit of a psychic fair. It was possible to have your tarot cards, palms or aura read. They photographed your aura for you, then analysed it. The aura reader had a computer and I noted it was probably a lot easier to catch the aura on digital "film" now that we have photoshop software available. We all enjoyed it a lot, even Laura said she was glad she went because she had seen them advertised and had never been before.

After Nelson we headed for the East coast and spent the night in Greymouth. We didn't do much there that I can think of. The next night was at Franz Josef, which is a world heritage site for natural beauty. We signed up for a heli-hike where they fly you up to the glacier in a helicopter and take you for a walk. Sadly, the cloud layer was too low so we couldn't fly. Instead we took the shuttle bus from town and walked an hour to almost the base of the glacier. We were worried about missing the next shuttle to town so we turned around. A narrow escape since it poured BUCKETS in the hour we would have had to wait in the open for the next bus. It was a fabulous walk and everyone was pleased with the day in the end. We saved over a thousand dollars ($300 a piece), but a woman on the bus next day said the heli-hike was fabulous. C'est la vie.

Today we headed over here to Queenstown which so far reminds me of Banff with smaller mountains around it. Let you know how it all turns out later.