The last few days of NZ

Wednesday - Friday, June 22 - 24

Hanmer Springs - Christchurch, New Zealand

We are currently sitting in the Christchurch airport with 30 minutes of internet access. We have been up since 5:15 am. Our flight to Fiji has been cancelled on Jet Star Airlines because of the volcanic ash coming from Chili. We are trying to get rebooked for tomorrow on Air New Zealand; they and Emirates are the only airlines flying out of this airport. This ash problem has been an issue for us before because Ulla could not get to us from Australia. It took her several days of rebooking for her to finally get a flight. Hopefully, we will not spend out last few days of the trip at the airport.

The stay in Hanmer Springs was very nice. We met up with Dave, our local contact who provided some interesting activities for us. We went horseback riding along the mountains, and then spent the afternoon in a huge outdoor sulphur pool, complete with water rides.

Next stop Christchurch. I had been looking forward to coming to New Zealand and spending time here. Once the September earthquakes hit and the main city centre was damage, I was sad. Yesterday, as we drove around the residential areas and walked around Christchurch city centre, the sadness became more real. What once was a very busy, bustling downtown area looks like an abandoned movie set. There was a restaurant that you could look inside the windows and see the RESERVED sign on the table and the dead flowers in the fallen vase. The pepper shaker had dropped to the floor and the pepper had spilled. It was all surreal. Time was frozen. All the group was deeply moved by our observances.

Our last stop of the day was to experience the Maori culture tradition. We participated in the program by electing Kevin our chief. The girls did the poi dance and the guys did the haka. We all had lots of chuckles.

Now to Fiji…we were so excited to get to the warm sunny beaches but that has been delayed. Keep your fingers crossed that the rebooking goes well.

Coast to Coast

Monday - Tuesday, June 20 - 21

Hokitika - Hanmer, New Zealand

Hokitika is a small mining village on the western coast. From our lodge, we walked to the roaring beach and were impressed with the stormy waves. This was just a preview to the next day when we drove to Pancake Rocks and saw and heard the powerful sea. This day was a photographers dream as we had great lighting and a different scene around every corner.

In the evening we grabbed our tripods and hiked to the glow worm dell. The stars were out and it was a beautiful clear night. The glow worms and stars looked very similar. It was interesting setting up the glow worm shots because we all had to use the self timer and long exposures and every one had to turn off their "torch" at the same time and keep it off so as to not disturb the others pictures. You can imagine what that was like with 14 kids in total darkness. The shoot was successful and we had lots of fun.

Ulla Lohmann, our National Geographic photographer, joined us in Hokitika. She is a fireball of energy and the kids really enjoy working with her. She is an exploration/expedition adventure photographer and has a most impressive bio. She is extremely down to earth and very fascinating to talk with.

Today was a very long bus ride from the west coast to the east coast….five hours….but we stretched it to an all day event because we stopped at several beautiful places. The most powerfully scenic was a place called Castle Hill. It is an area full of boulders. Scenes from the Narnia movie were filmed here. In fact, the landscape of NZ has been in many movies and now I know why.