Rob & Liz's Blessed Adventures

Yesterday we ventured up the West Coast in the fog, cloud and rain to Greymouth. This is where you can catch a train across the South Island to the East Coast. Famous sign at the beach Pretty miserable day and rough seas On our way up the coast we stopped at a cool little town called Hokitika which is on the beach. A smallish town with lots of unique stores. This are is known for Jade, so lots of stores sell these items of jewelry and such. We also got to pickup a real Paua shell. They are really colourful and lots of tourist stuff is made from bits of it. As you see it was raining and the sea was rough as. We wondered around the town taking in the local wares. Next onto Greymouth for the night where it was still raining and the Lizzy's quilt store was closed till late Nov- she was a bit disappointed again. (nothing to spend money on :)  ) Grey river at Greymouth The town had a lot to do with gold mining in the early days, so no eating the fish from the river in town. They say too ...

Well today was, and still is very wet, Bucketing from early morning so lucky we had our kiwi encounter tour which was indoors. Fortunate we had our helicopter flight yesterday as no flights today. model kiwis to hold so you can feel their weight at different ages We ventured in to town to do our Kiwi tour as well as penguins, and the Tuatara. They have a couple of options. A guided tour and also a backstage pass, where got to see a baby kiwi about 14 days old. They have a breeding program which they raise eggs collected to ensure that the released kiwis can make a go of surviving in the wild, and not get eaten a by by invaders. backstage pass talk Did you know there are 5 species of Kiwi? The kiwi egg very large compared the size of the bird. They have a pool which houses a few blue penguins ( fairy or little) and they have a feeding time and a viewing tank. They also have a Tuatara enclosure which houses about 5 of these fellas. They don't need to breed these as they do have plent...

Today was our planned helicopter ride to see the glacier and have a snow landing.    We were a tad worried as the weather report the night before was not all that encouraging.    We had a bit of a slow start and checked in at the flight desk at 10am as requested.     The advice was, the flight would go ahead - however with the changing weather conditions the snow landing would be determined on a minute by minute basis.    If the landing was scrapped we would have additional flight time added to keep our trip to the same length.    Honestly we were just happy to be able to take off. Safety briefing done, the loading crew led us to the helipads.    They were pretty cool.    Looked a little like landing pads for space craft.    The pads are made from the rocks that make up a large part of the landscape of the area.     We were given our assigned seats and Thomas (our pilot) got us sorted and...

  It has been a few days since we blogged. We were supposed to do it yesterday, but we’re just so exhausted after our 2 days off at Lake Wanaka. 😉      On our first morning there we went for a wander around the lake to see the famous Wanaka Tree. The wind was blowing a gale, but the walk along the edge of the lake was very peaceful.  We were surprised at the amount of branch debris at water’s edge.  The tree itself looks very lonely, but is a good talking point and it was lovely to walk with no time limit. We also spotted a lovely field of lupine not far from the tree.    We then wandered back into town and did a spot of window shopping. Our main objective was to find somewhere to have dinner that night. Our motel was lovely, however it had no in-room cooking facilities, so we had plans to treat ourselves to 2 days of no cooking/reheating. Such bliss.    Dinner plans made - we headed back to the motel for our lunch. The....