Our great walk

   (l-r) Our first afternoon at Beaconstone, Drew strumming his guitar in the lounge; Miner’s Brewery tasting tour in Westport, the closet town to Beaconstone…Good Bastard beer; Drew and his surf instructor Mark heading out at Tauranga Bay; Drew and our friend Grae Stevens at Tauranga Bay

   (l-r): The beach at the mouth of the Fox River; exposed karst, typical of the Paparoa landscape; Drew, mid-way through the Fox River crossing; the Ballroom Overhang, a popular rock bivy which they say can accommodate up to one hundred campers; Kirk crossing the Fox River (we smartened up and did the Kiwi thing by walking through the water in our boots, not our bare feet); wave-sculpted rock platforms off the Truman Track

We experienced New Zealand’s newest and largest national park in two visits: the limestone formations of the Oparara Basin (l-r: Kirk entering the Moria Gate Arch; Moria Gate Arch from the inside) and a two-day hike along the Heaphy Track, from the trailhead at the sandfly-infested Kohaihai river to the Heaphy Hut (l-r: Kohaihai bridge; Kirk on the Kohaihai bridge; Scott’s Beach; nikau palms; some NZ bird I don’t know the name of

Drew at Waimangaroa; Sunset at Karamea, the end of the road.

Known to locals as ‘Pupu’ springs, the water here is the clearest we’ve ever seen. Drew tried to capture it digitally but we aren’t sure it does it justice. The springs are considered a treasure to Maori both locally and nationally. They provide water for healing, and in the past were a place of ceremonial blessing at times of birth and death, and the leaving and returning of travellers.

The northernmost point of the South Island – it is further north than the city of Wellington on the North Island. It was one of the windiest days we’ve experienced in New Ziwi. We’d visited the sand dune wonderland of Wharariki Beach before Cape Farewell but the wind blasted sand into our eyes and noses making it difficult to explore.

A friend suggested we spend less time and money in upkeeping our blog, and more time exploring and experiencing. I couldn’t agree more. That’s why we prep our photos and blog comments in our down time on my little iBook. We save the blog comments in Word format and the small photo files to Drew’s iPod. When we find cheap internet (on the West Coast, the cheapest we’ve found is $5 per hour), we hook the iPod up to an USB, and within 20 minutes, we’ve uploaded photos and content.