Our transportation for the next 8 days.
Today was the longest day of driving since we were going from the East to the West coast (~400 km) where we will spend the rest of our days hiking, biking, and kayaking.
We stopped along the way at Castle Rock, the place where portions of Chronicles of Narnia were filmed, and hiked up to the rocks. They do a lot of bouldering here (rock climbing with no ropes).
They are very LARGE boulders and that's me going around to climb up.
...and look at me standing 'almost' on top.
Then it was back on the bus to cross the Southern Alps . Next stop – Devil’s Punchbowl Falls. According to the guide this was a short easy hike just to stretch our legs. If you added up all the bleachers we did over the past two months in preparation for this trip, it wouldn’t equal the steps we climbed to reach the falls. Whew! But it was worth it.
View from the bottom of the falls.
And now we are at the falls. You just don't get the magnitude from the picture.
As we come down out of the mountains we get our first glimpse of the Tasman Sea .
Back on the bus for a couple more hours to our home for the night. We are staying in the village of Okarita (pop. 32), in what they call batches. We have a group of houses together with one large house that has a huge kitchen / dining area to prepare the meals and eat. Kim and I are in a tiny little house right off the beach. I can hear the waves crashing on the shore as I write this.
Outside of our little house.
Inside of our little house.
The guides are great and stop frequently for bathroom breaks and to let us stretch our legs. Magnus is the chef and it is clear we won’t be losing any weight on this trip. For dinner we had Mediterranean Terrine with couscous, salad, and strawberries and cream for dessert.
I LOVE this, the little house, right on the beach, the waterfall, the boulders, the whole thing looks so inviting.
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