Paul's NZ Observations

This is a picture of Franz Josef. The glacier looks better from far away, in the picture we posted with us right in front of it, it looks "dirty" with the rocks and sand that it picks up along the way, but I snapped this from a different hike I took.

All in all the weather gods have continued to look favorably on us. It has rained a bit during some of the drives we have done and a bit on the Milford Sound cruise, but other than that we have had pretty clear and crisp days. Crisp translates to just over freezing most days. Luckily we came prepared with lots of layers and they have all seemed to do the trick. We picked up gloves and hats for the skiing and have gotten good use out of them. Night time has been the most striking difference from Fiji. The same way as Fiji doesn’t seem to attempt to do anything to compensate for the hot nights, Kiwi’s don’t seem to attempt to compensate for the cold nights, other than provide a warm blanket. The small space heaters in most motel rooms automatically go off every hour and don’t project much heat to start, so unless you are in the habit of getting up every hour it gets a wee bit nippy in the middle of the night. All in all, not much to complain about and it caused more worry for Deb than it actually caused lack of comfort for the kids.
Definitely a lot more animals than people here, and it isn’t just the 20-40 million sheep. Kids and even grandma got a laugh out of mom and dad constantly stopping to attempt to get the perfect picture of the animals with the dramatic back drop of snow capped mountains, unspoilt valleys and oceans. We made reasonable attempts at capturing pics of sheep, deer, cows, and even llamas. Mostly farmed animals (even the deer) didn’t really come across as much true ‘wildlife’.