Good-bye New Zealand, Hello Australia!

We have seen and done a lot since our last post... the boys filled you in on quite a bit with their entries. Till now, they have been dictating to me and I have been typing for them. They have now discovered that they really enjoy pecking everything out on the computer themselves! It takes forever, but it keeps them occupied!
We left the west coast over a week ago and made our way east via the Gates of Haast. We stayed a few days close to Queenstown and had a lovely and relaxing few days exploring some very cozy villages. We then made our way to Te Anau, which would serve as our base for exploring Milford Sound by car and by boat. Te Anau is the closest town to Milford Sound and from there, it is still a two hour drive. Two hours may seem quite long, but it is an amazingly beautiful drive. Unfortunately, the weather did not cooperate with us and there was a nice steady rain falling the entire time. It was cold and wet enough to stop us from doing any of the really nice walks that are found along the way. That was a pity, but we had been blessed with a nice heavy rain the night before, and as a result, we were able to see hundreds of waterfalls. We were in complete awe the entire time. Literally, we were gazing up at all of them with our mouths hanging open. Everywhere we looked, we were surrounded by waterfalls. No wimpy trickling streams either, they were all massively tall, gushing waterfalls. In various places, we counted all the waterfalls we could see at one time and we averaged between 25-30! I couldn’t manage to get a picture that could do it justice. It was truly amazing and exceeded all of our expectations.

After dragging ourselves away from Milford Sound, we then headed to explore the Catlins, which is along the very south of the island. Here we had beautiful beaches, bays, waterfalls, and lots of great walks through the rain forest. This is where we were able to see the very rare yellow-eyed penguins. They were coming in from the ocean, after spending the whole day fishing, to feed their young. The babies were left behind in the nests while their parents spent all day in the ocean, but they were now old enough to come out of their nests to meet their parents on the beach. We were all so excited to finally get to see penguins! Again, it was an amazing experience.
Through the Catlins and then off to Dunedin to view the Royal Albatrosses. This is the only place in the world where they nest (on the mainland), so getting to learn about them and observe them in the wild was pretty special. The boys wrote quite a lot about them, so I’ll not bore you with repeating any details.

(notice Bart standing behind this HUGE fern on one of our walks through the bush)

Our last few days in NZ were spent in Christchurch and in exploring the surrounding areas. We spent our days walking the streets of this beautiful city and visiting the various bays, beaches, and small towns around Christchurch. It’s hard to believe our 2 months in New Zealand is now over. It’s hard to say goodbye to this wonderful place, as it has definitely captured our hearts and minds. It has been a truly fantastic and amazing experience. And that seems to be the word that sums up New Zealand quite well... Amazing.

We have arrived in Cairns, Australia, and the weather is.... rainy! Somehow, my research was a bit off and we have arrived at the tail end of the rainy season (I read it would be over!) and the tail end of killer jelly fish season! (also read it would be over!) The rain is a steady light rain, but it is warm enough that it shouldn’t be too much trouble. Yesterday, we had the whole day in Cairns, feeling a bit tired after waking up at 4am to catch our flight and a 3 hour time change. The boys played at a water playground and went for a swim in the lagoon along the waterfront. Our first day in Australia has been pretty unproductive, but that always seems to go hand and hand with a lack of sleep! Even on our lazy first day, we have already managed to see the most colorful parrots imaginable and a tree full of hundreds of flying foxes! We were walking back from the grocery store when we heard what sounded like hundred of squawking birds in the huge tree over our heads. Looking up, trying to spy the birds, we saw, instead, hundreds of HUGE light brown colored bats! They call them flying foxes, but they look like bats to me! I decided I wouldn’t be there when it became dusk and they all took to the sky! So, walking under all these bats the ground was surprisingly clean. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that it had just rained... maybe not. So, the boys have a question for you... (without looking up the answer on the internet!) How do bats poop? Remember, they’re hanging upside down!
Today, we are getting a car and making our way to the Atherton Tablelands, where we will spend the day exploring, hiking to some waterfalls and swimming. At least there aren’t any killer jelly fish at the waterfalls...

Post from Ash

We went to a petrified forest and we did lots of fun stuff and the logs looked like rocks. A petrified forest is made from a flood (like Noah’s flood!). It is not really a forest anymore, it is a fossilized forest. This one was at the ocean and they are really special because there are more found under the ground than above it. We had fun walking and jumping over the stumps.
Penguins are the most special ice creatures. They are so cute! I got to see them feeding their babies on the beach. They are like torpedos in the water! Now, I’m going to write about some seals, guys! Seals are amazing too! We saw some today. They were swimming in a pool (not a real swimming pool!) at the bottom of a cliff. They were also like torpedos in the water!
The Royal Albatross is an amazing bird! It goes around the globe but never touches land, only here in New Zealand! All the things that the Albatross' do are amazing! We got to see some real life babies, not in the zoo, but in the wild! Albatross' eat squid. Sometimes they eat them whole and sometimes they chop them up with their beaks. Now, time to write about biking!
We biked on an old train track that they have made into a bike path. We biked about 22 miles (35 kilometers) in one day! It was easy for me! (luckily, we had wind in our back almost the whole time!) We also biked in a long tunnel and over lots of bridges. That was really neat! I love biking!
This trip is great all the stuff we have seen is great! I love this trip! Bye, everybody, I’ll write more next time!

South Island, NZ

We’ve been on the south island for just over a week and we have done and seen so much! First of all, the ferry ride from the north to the south island must be one of the most beautiful in the world. It was 3 hours of stunning scenery. We spent the first few days in Upper Moutere, close to Nelson, at a cozy B & B called the Gingerbread House. We ended up relaxing and reading on the front porch for a few days longer than we expected, because the boys befriended two sweet girls that lived at the B & B. They were able to have a couple of days riding bikes and playing out in the yard with their new friends. It was a much needed play time and break for them.

We spent one whole day at the Golden Bay, which was one of the most breathtaking bays we have seen. We hiked along the bay in the Abel Tasman National Forest, which offered amazing views the entire time. Afterwards, we headed to a beautiful waterfall. The boys love hiking when it entails jumping over rocks, crossing streams, and swinging bridges... luckily, this had all of that, otherwise, the 3.5 hours we did in one day would have been too much for them! (It also had a group of naked women who were just finishing a swim in the falls when we arrived. They then proceeded to hike back out butt naked. Don’t we learn so much in all our travels?)

We also went to an amazing natural spring that has almost the clearest water in the world, second only to Antarctica. It was pretty amazing to be able to look at what looks like a pond and be able to see all the way through to the bottom. It had the most amazing colors, and was so clear that it was like looking through glass instead of water.

We then made our way south along the west coast and stopped at Punakaiki to see the Pancake Rocks, crossed the longest swinging bridge in New Zealand, and then on to Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers.

I have to say, that the glaciers, particularly, the Franz Josef, was the most spectacular thing I have ever seen. To walk along a old river bed surrounded by lush greenery, various palms, dense ferns and the odd waterfall or two.... Then to see this magnificent, huge glacier butting up to all of this. Amazing... A rainforest resting right beside this massive slab of blue ice. It didn’t even look real. We felt like we were looking at a canvas of a painting. I was in complete awe of God’s handiwork. He takes my breath away.

We really wanted to walk to the top, but there were various reasons why it didn’t work out for us. First of all, it is a minimum of a four hour hike and 7 years old for the age. Ashwin really wanted to try it, being that he’s a pretty tall 6 year old and will be 7 in a month, but if you can’t make it, they have to send a helicopter for you (at your expense). Plus, the glacier can actually be quite dangerous, as it is consistently moving and shifting. And the last reason (and really the deciding factor) would be that Bart was stung by a waspy thing and his foot has swollen up two times its normal size. He managed to make the hikes to the terminal faces of the glaciers, but to put on boots with spikes and hike for that long would have been a bit much. Poor Bart... he's already getting better though. The photo below is from about 2 weeks ago. I thought it went well with his current condition. He seems to forget how tall he is and hits his head quite often... this was after one such incident and then a day later we were all playing tag and he ran into a tree. He actually broke the branch. I'm certain that's why he's lost all his hair. His dad still has his. Bart must have scraped it all off throughout the years. ;-)

Moeraki Station

So, we've been a bit out of touch with the real world lately, as we've enjoyed living a week far from everything! We've spent the last week at Moeraki Station which is 30 minutes down curvey and partly dirt roads from the adorable little town of Martinsborough in the south east. It was FANTASTIC! Such a beautiful place. It is a new little house located on a 8,000 acre sheep and cattle farm. Yep, that's right, 8,000 acres of majestic views in every direction! We enjoyed just hanging out and relaxing together... just soaking up all of God's beauty around us! The pictures are of the house and us all jumping for joy in our new backyard!

Ash & I dancing in the backyard.

Glowworms, Rotten Eggs, & Volcanoes

Well, we completely forgot to mention the astonishing glowworms we saw a couple of weeks ago. They are only found in caves here in NZ and are an amazing sight to behold. The worms are tiny, white and glow a bright green light on their tails. They reminded us of lightening bugs, just for the fact that they also glow, but their glowing is actually caused by their poop that they use to attract a mate. They spend their whole lives in the darkness of the caves. After we walked deep into a dark, damp cave, we turned our flashlights off and looked up at the ceiling. It was amazing! Glowworms were everywhere! It was just like looking up at the stars.
A couple of days ago, we were walking an old rail car trail that had been used for mining in the past. This walk took us through old tunnels high up in a hillside that were used to transport quartz by rail carts pulled by oxen. The tunnels were about 100 yards long and very dark! We walked quite a few feet, clinging onto each other, (actually, we were all holding onto Bart as he lead the way!) in pitch black darkness before (literally) seeing the light at the end of the tunnel! My fear was that Ash would lose his flip flop while walking and we would never find it! We also had a few glowworms with us there in the dark, but they only provided a distraction, deffinitly not enough light to see anything! The boys loved following the rail tracks and crossing the swinging bridges on that walk.

We spent two nights in Mt. Maunganui which is actually a town with a volcano that sits out on a peninsula and offers amazing views of the coast. We walked around the base and it was such a nice walk with slightly rolling hills and great views, that we decided to try and jog it the next morning. Matthijs and Ash did great! It was about 2 miles and Ash did the whole thing! Matthijs left us in the dust and did extra as he turned around at the end and jogged back to us. Now, I’ve got some jogging partners when we get back home! That same evening we walked up to the top and back down the volcano and that took 1.5 hours without stopping. The boys slept good that night! And then the next morning we jogged it again...

The next couple of days we visited Lakes Rotorua and Taupo. This is the area of the country that has the most geothermal activity. The whole town of Lake Rotorou was lovely, but due to all the steaming fumaroles in the area, a smell like rotten eggs hung over the town. We were so glad that we were only there for one day! We also went to a park with boiling pools of mud, water, gysers, and water pools of various colors like bright green, orange, and yellow. The colors seemed so unnatural, but they are all due to the various mineral elements found in this area. It was all very interesting. Actually, Matthijs’ exact words when I asked if he liked it were, “I think this is much more spectacular for grown-ups.” Maybe so... although, the bright green pool did leave a bigger impression on them than anything else.

The lakes in the area were gorgeous and like the ocean, they are so incredibly clear, clean and blue. Beautiful black swans were swimming everywhere, which is very rare to see.
We only have one week to go in the north island, and that is being spent in the wine area from Napier on south. We are enjoying every minute of it, but we can’t wait to head to the less populated and even more spectacular south island.

Luging- Post by Ash

Luging is when you get in a little car at the top of a hill and ride all the way to the bottom. You control your speed with your handlebars. Forward was stop, middle was go, and pulling the handlebars towards you was slowing down. We also had some good views, it was lovely! I got to go on two different tracks by myself and one time together with my mom. I went a lot faster with my mom than when I was by myself! At the bottom of the hill, you put your lunge onto a band and it rolls towards the ski lifts. Then you got on the ski lift, but the cool thing was, that the lifts had hooks on the bottom and the lunges hooked onto them and that’s how they went back up the hill too. Then we all went back up and did it again and again!

New Zealand...

New Zealand is a land of intense and almost untouched beauty. It’s climate ranges from subtropical to subantarctic. It is one of only two places in the world where you can begin your day in a tropical garden filled with exotic flowers and in an hour or two end up on the top of a glacier. The Pacific “ring of fire” begins here and it is one of the most active volcanic regions in the world. At Hot Water beach, the boys dug their own thermal spa in the sand. Water fills the hole from the ground as you dig and it is HOT! Everyone has to be very careful about where they stand and dig, as some areas are much hotter than others. In one area, it actually scalded your skin if you stood in it. The funny thing is, we haven’t dealt with crowds the entire trip in NZ, but here, the beach was crowded with people lounging in their own personal spas, laughing and joking around with each other, with only a short wall of sand separating pools. Okay, Nederlanders, crowded is relative... nothing like your beaches, maybe 250 people, but for here, that’s the most we’ve seen in one spot!
The landscape here varies from rolling green pastures, dotted with sheep and cows, to snow capped mountains. Orchids filled with kiwis, apples, oranges, persimmons, avocados, and various other exotic fruits. Vineyards abound, producing some of the finest white wines in the world. Spectacular cliffs and bays along the coast with crystal clear blue water. On the surface, it is a paradise of sorts. The landscapes of Ireland, England, South of France, and the Alps (the list could go on), all rolled into one amazing country. New Zealand is one of the most isolated and least populated countries of the world. It is one of the few places left where you can find your own private beach, or walk for hours and not see anyone else along the way. There are still quite a lot of gravel roads here. They are very narrow- clinging to the side of cliffs and going around hairpin curves, we feel like we have accomplished something when we make it back in one piece at the end of the day!

The towns here are like stepping back in time to small town America in the 1950’s. The main streets are filled with various shops and eateries that serve as the center of shopping, and in most cases, the only shopping available. Various shops line both sides of the street such as the butcher, bakery, pharmacy, clothing stores, and restaurants. It’s like visiting a lost and forgotten time in America that, for me, was only experienced on old TV shows, but always seemed so ideal. Now, I feel like I get to walk around a new Mayberry everyday! (That’s something only those from the south will appreciate.)

Before people came to New Zealand, there were no native mammals (other than nectar drinking bats) . The only land mammals that are here now are those that have been introduced by the native Maori people and European settlers. These animals have posed a great threat to the native bird population. New Zealand is known for it’s unusual birds. In the past, not having any significant predators to eat them, a number of these birds are flightless. With the introduction of various mammals, these birds are now fighting for survival... with the help of most New Zealanders. We have seen numerous signs posted to keep dogs on a leash because they, and cats, kill their much beloved kiwi bird. Possums eat the tender young shoots of two particular native trees. These trees are very important for producing nectar for a great number of the birds. Wild boars root out kiwis and eat them. The government arranges helicopter drops of poison (that is illegal in almost every other country in the world) into dense areas that target possums and any other mammal that may not be able to resist its lure. Hunters, and those concerned with safety, protest these drops because they are also causing the death of the deer, wild boar, dogs, and any other animals that may eat it. Since none of these mammals are native to the land, the government, basically, shrugs its shoulders, putting the welfare of the native birds and plants before these animals that came later to NZ. It’s a tricky situation that doesn’t seem to have any immediate answers on the horizon.

So, still on the subject of birds... of the 17 different species of penguins in the world, six are in New Zealand. These are the erect-crested, Rockhopper, Snares, Blue, Fiordland Crested, and the Yellow-eyed Penguin, the world’s rarest. We haven’t spotted any yet, but hope to have more luck on the south island in a few weeks. We also haven’t had any luck yet with spotting a Kiwi; being nocturnal, they are a little more tricky. But there are plenty of signs that they are in the area. Unless you love birds and sheep, you definitely don’t come to New Zealand for the animals. Wildlife aside, it is a nature lovers paradise. Walking trails abound and the scenery never fails to take your breath away. Thailand gave us plenty of animals encounters to hold us over until we hit Australia. We are anxious to see the cuddly kangaroos, koala bears, and wallabies in a few weeks... oh, I almost forgot, AND some of the most deadly animals in the world! Maybe we do need to enjoy this break from wildlife for the moment!