ellipse, elapse @misttemple - Tumblr Blog

city sunset

Epic sunrise over Echo Pond last week. Yup, it was worth getting up early for.

#whyiwakeearly sunrise echopond morning newfoundland pink

Here's the rainbow and sheep that I tried to post a couple posts ago and it didn't work for some reason... Both are in Renwick, where I was WWOOFing. What a magical time...

I'm into the last couple weeks of my time in New Zealand now and have begun the beach vacation part of my travels! Which I didn't intentionally plan but it seems that it's what the North island is all about. Top left: Bayleys Beach, reflection of sky and wet sand. Top right: Leigh, the woman who I worked with at the farmers market in Blenheim while I was wwoofing. She was down to earth and friendly and extremely generous. She bought me coffee and fresh squeezed juice and kept offering me free things from her stand. She was buddies with half the the town and was always chatting, sometimes while other customers were lined up waiting to order, but she'd never rush who she was talking to. 2nd from top: one of many beaches that aunt Donna, Jerry and I passed on our tiki tour of Northland. 3rd from top: mangroves near Paihia; me and aunt Donna on Bayleys beach; Arahia (daughter of my aunt's friends) with a soon to die cicada that had landed on my yoga mat. She put it in a plastic container and put tape all over it, made huge holes, and made a label. She was very cute and curious about me while I was staying with her family for a few days. 4th from top: me doing a tree pose during a 3 day silent meditation/yoga weekend. Loved it. The beach was 2 minute walk from the centre. I was still in silence during this photo, but a co-meditator/yogi saw me with a camera and silently asked if I wanted her to take a picture of me; just bird... A Godwit maybe. That was in Thames, by the river. 5th from top: either sunset or sunrise at my aunt and uncles place in Dargaville. Bottom: another photo of the beach where I did the silent meditation. I walked along it many times each day I was there and it changed a lot between high and low tide because it's very flat. I've moved on to some more beautiful beaches on the Coromandel peninsula now, and will post a few more photos soon. I watched the sunset last night, the sunrise this morning, and the sunset again this evening. It seems to be a popular activity at the hostel I'm at.

Top: Woke up to a rainbow; sheep staring at me as I stared at it Middle: Clouds over the orchard Bottom: Bicycle ride through vineyards; calm evening at the orchard

Here are some food and beverage-related photos from the organic fruit orchard in Marlborough, New Zealand Top row: There are many types of plums at this orchard and the ones in season right now are elephant heart, omega and freedom so all of the plums at the top are a mix of those varieties. My co-woofer and I made dehydrated plums on a rainy day, as well as plum sauce, yum! Which had the yellow hot peppers in them (2nd row from top). 2nd row from top: A selfie of my hand holding half of a puffball mushroom. It had been cut in half to give the other half to a friend (who happened to be a organics certifier). I made the half in the photo into gravy for a sprout-style poutine! By my hand with the puffball is an unripe fejoia. Fejoias are fruit that are very popular in NZ... I was pruning the tree. 3rd row from top: blue mountain-bike: me and this beauty went on several wine tastings togethe. This winery is organic and don't add yeast to their wine... they just use the naturally free floating yeast that was on the grapes. The winery also happened to be at the top of a hill and it was a winy day when I went there, so I arrived 5 minutes before it was closing with sweat dripping down my face and really thirsty for water... but did a wine tasting instead, haha. All in all, quite classy. Beside the bike photo is a view of a vineyard. They are all over the place, in every direction I bike. It really makes me think about the amount of land it takes to make a bottle of wine... I don't think about it that way very often because I'm not usually around so many farms. bottom row: grapes I helped pick today. They are to eat, not for wine, and are delicious. There are a few varieties here, and this is the one that tastes like candy. Missing from photos: blueberries. There are several varieties such as delight, and blue blush. There delight is a beautiful pastel blue and when it is unripe it is pastel pink. Talk about gorgeous!

Now I have arrived at a fruit orchard in Marlborough and am enjoying sleeping in the same bed for a few nights in a row and leaving my toothbrush in the bathroom for awhile. Also, been enjoying yummy grapes and plums and homemade meals that the wwoof host makes! The photo on the left is from the bus, on the way north and the other one is from last night while I was eating eggplant lasagna on the picnic table outside that me and my woof friend made.

Dunedin was oddly similar to St. John's. It had George Street, a Rob Roy Dairy, a coffee shop called the Fix, and a Signal Hill Road and lookout, which I walked up even though my legs were quite sore from hiking in Te Anau. But I couldn't not do it.

I fell in love with Te Anau (pronounced Tea-On-oh). It is on the edge of a big national park that is a UNESCO world heritage site, called Fiordland National Park.. It is impossible to show it in photos, partially because I'm doing this on an ipad mini and when I'm selecting photos to post they are really small and I can't tell which are the best ones. But anyhoo, I loved Te Anau. The first day I was there I went kayaking in an iconic area called Milford Sound - a picture of Milford Sound is actually the cover of my NZ Lonely Planet. Saw a yellow crested penguin there, going for a dip; and a couple seals that were just twirling endlessly on the top of the water (they seemed pretty relaxed)... Couldn't take my camera on the kayak so I just took a lacklustre photos of the kayaks afterward. The photo of me jumping was taken by one of the kayak guides. They drove us to and from Milford Sound from Te Anau and this jumping photo is one of their traditions. The other awesome thing I did in Te Anau was go for a long, tiring but worthwhile hike on the Kepler Track. I think I was hiking for 10 hours and almost all of it was up (then down). The beginning was amazing beech forest. Eventually (after many hours) the beech trees started to get shorter and scrawnier and covered in lichen, and finally I got out of the forest to the top of the mountain that had a spectacular view (all the plants were tussocks - the photo with the woman in pink from far away was taken there). I was sore and could hardly walk for 2-3 days after that hike but so worth it!

After Wanaka, I spent basically 1 day in Queenstown, which is the big adventure tourism town in NZ. As in, I could see people paragliding from a mountain all day and there were signs for skydiving and such all over the place with slogans like "do something that scares you at least once a day". It was a stunningly beautiful place but super touristy and party-ish so not my fave place. Interesting to experience though. I hiked up Queenstown Hill in the morning - that's where the photo with me in it is taken. The bird, at the top, was on that wire forever, and then I realized it was watching the mom bird and here babies who were right next to where I was sitting! Very cute. That was on the way down the hill. Bottom one left is from Queenstown Hill; bottom middle is the way down from the hill; and bottom right is just from a street where I went for a wee walk.

I arrived at a fruit orchard where I'm doing some wwoofing for a couple of weeks. It is very hot here - its the wine growing region of NZ. I worked this morning, pruning fejoia trees (a type of fruit) and now I'm having a little siesta in my room away from the sun. Up until now I have been travelling around a lot so its nice to get to stay in one place for a bit longer. I'm going to put up some photos from each place that I've gone since the last photos I've posted. The ones above are Wanaka, a town I really liked. It is on a lake in the mountains on the west coast and super beautiful. I did some epic mountain biking for two days that I was there and the trails were super fun. One day I biked along the Clutha River and another day I biked along the side of a mountain/hill and it was scorching hot. I ended up taking shade breaks under scrawny trees while I waited for the sun to go down a bit. The top photo is the view from the awesome hostel I was staying at (favourite one I stayed at in NZ) and the rest are from my mountain biking adventures. One of the cool things about Wanaka is it has a movie theatre that serves fresh homemade ice cream and cookies, and they always have intermissions during movies and take cookies out of the oven right before. I also treated myself to bacon and eggs from a little local/organic restaurant. Yum.

All of these photos are from Franz Josef, a town in Westland/Tai Poutini National Park, that is named after the Franz Josef glacier on the south island of New Zealand Top left: Moa sculptures. Moas were flightless birds that I think were comparable to the size of big moose... now extinct. I saw real live rowi kiwis in Franz Josef as well (!!!), in a wildlife museum and fell in love with them. They are basically balls of fir with legs and a head/beak that is almost always leaned over poking at the ground, and I heard one make a sound like a baby mouse. What a sin. Top right: me on my way back from hiking up to the glacier 2nd row: A glacial river: It is grey and really beautiful. The greyness is from 'glacial flour', which is rock that has been ground really fine by the glacier. The rocks are covered in red lichen. 3rd row: reflection of Franz Josef glacier in Peter's Pool, a 'kettle pond/lake', which is formed when a piece of the glacier breaks off and melts when the glacier retreats; the river again; and me going on a hike, sort of. Bottom row: flower in the sun in the morning when I was sitting outside the hostel; walking towards the glacier. Didn't know these people but they said 'hi' in a friendly way and I kept them in the photo for scale. I heard all kinds of funny bird calls on this walk... one of the bird calls seriously reminded me of a Newfoundland jig. I didn't have an audio recorder so I took a video to try to capture it, but haven't checked to see if it worked yet. I'm now in another town that is really different from Franz Josef, but also amazingly beautiful.

Top is demolition/construction in Christchurch (post-earthquake); me walking on a trail in Picton; below that is the ferry from Wellington; me on the beach in Wellington; and bottom is Aunt Donna on the beach at Pakiri (it was soooo windy that day and I tried boogie boarding, which was fun) and beside that is a beach in Auckland where I went with my friend Kim on one of my first days in NZ.

The top one at the beach is in Greymouth, the two out the window are on the train between Christchurch and Greymouth (through a mountain range called the southern alps). The bottom one is in a park in Christchurch and makes me laugh every time I look at it. I've been enjoying the timer feature of my camera, hehe.

The bush in NZ is like a new language. I've learned the names of a few plants, trees and birds but there are lots to learn. Yesterday I went for a walk along Piha beach, a popular place for surfing (and near drownings), then walked to a waterfall nearby. Just took this with an ipad so doesn't quite capture it. Today I ate a nectarine from a tree and it was soooooooooo good.

rainbow bird

After 30 hours of being squished on an airplane listening to podcasts (thanks Annie and Kyle for getting them for me! 'Serial' is fascinating) eating mixed nuts and chocolate and salty, slimy potato mush, I arrived in NZ on Thursday morning at 6am, having left NL at 7am Tuesday. I completely missed Wednesday, because we crossed the Date Line in the Pacific. So suddenly its humid mid-summer and I've started exposing my pale winter skin to the summer sun. I'm staying with my friend Kim in an Auckland suburb for a few days. I went for a wee walk this morning and saw a rainbow coloured bird in a palm tree: my trip down here is already worth it.

mid january walks in norman's cove

#newfoundland #winter #snow #january #seasons

Trending Blogs

Recently Viewed Blogs

ellipse, elapse