Around Here

Around here, I am heading into the final few weeks of the quarter, and summer vacation is so close I can almost taste it. I really love my program, and all of my classes, but it is really hard to focus on schoolwork when so much is happening outside! This is one of my favorite times of year in Portland, when everything is green green green, rhododendrons and iris and roses are blooming everywhere you look, and we wake up to birdsong every morning and the air just smells so flowery and fresh. We've had a two-week stretch of absolutely beautiful warm weather, and this morning it is still warm, but gray and drizzly.

I am taking a little break from the usual pile of homework--right now in addition to my regular weekly heap of readings, I am writing a plan to use community organizing to improve opportunities for physical activity for older adults in East Portland- an area of town that has very poor infrastructure and resources and has generally been neglected by the city. For our Mass Communication & Health class, my friend Laura and I are putting together a media advocacy campaign aiming to get the city to change zoning laws to restrict fast food restaurants near schools, with an accompanying anti-fast food social marketing campaign targeting school-aged kids. This is the kind of stuff I want to do in my career, so it's really exciting, even if it means many hours spent inside rather than outside.

Since the weekends are the only chance I get to spend some time in the garden, I put in a couple hours yesterday, weeding and planting and watering- but really, by now the big rush of spring planting is over and it's mostly just maintenance until we start putting in the fall crops. I am so proud of our garden, it's where I've been putting all my time that isn't focused on school (or Matt, he's a priority :), and while I am missing things like cooking and sewing and knitting SO much, it's nice to see how much my efforts in the garden have paid off. I have done most of the planting, and Matt has been working hard doing most of the maintenance while I'm away at school, and has been taking care of the community garden and the animals too.

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This bed contains onions, green onions, a tomato, carrots, spinach, lettuce, and Alderman (Tall Telephone) peas. I love the yarn trellis Matt built- I think it looks like a suspension bridge. I gave this bed a thorough, and much-needed, weeding yesterday- now the wee carrots won't have to duke it out with a million little invaders.

From now on, I am only ever planting out brassicas with floating row covers over them- that month spent under cover means that we're going to be eating our own broccoli by the first of June! (The broccolis out front that weren't covered are small and stunted, and have tiny heads on them but are essentially bolting). 

The garlic is super tall and thriving. We should be seeing scapes sometime soon. The only real issue with this bed is convincing the peas planted along the back that they should use the fence as a trellis, not the garlic!

We have tomatoes! This is the first tomato I planted out, probably earlier than I should have- it's a Green Zebra, I believe, and is putting on fruit and flowering away!

Kale. Glorious, glorious kale. 

We've trained our marionberry all over the fence, and it's going apesh*t. It was a two foot tall cane when we planted it less than a year ago.

We've planted nasturtiums around the trunks of the fruit trees, they are excellent companions to apples and pears- aphids love nasturtiums, so ideally they'll go there instead of to the trees.

Little parsnips working their way up in one of the beds at the side of the house. They were getting really shaded by our overly enthusiastic rhubarb, so yesterday I cut the plants down to half their size, and they're still big!

Like the rest of the garden, the peppers are thriving. This bed also contains basil, cilantro, and a new planting of lettuce (you'll notice I have marigolds dispersed throughout the garden- they are the workhorse of all companion plants, to quote Carla Emery, and do a fantastic job of keeping the soil healthy and attracting the slugs away from the veggies).

By the front steps, two lemon cucumbers in a pot, and a hot pepper. 

I think we're going to have a bumper crop of berries this year. Last year we had tons, but we were just moving in and this whole section of the garden was massively overgrown. With all the pruning and fertilizing we've done, plus our very sunny spring, I think we might just get the mother lode this time around.

I wish I could take a photo that captures the entire front yard garden, but it's too big! This is just one side- potatoes, tomato, pepper, and along the roses at the back is a row of beets. 

The dogwood tree in our front yard is in full bloom right now- I love this peachy color! One of the really fun things about this time of year is that we had no idea what our trees would look like when they bloomed- we moved in in late June, so this is the first time we got to see the lilacs, apples, Asian pear, rhododendrons, and dogwood bloom! We also got surprise tulips and lilies.

 Look closely- Matt and Maggie are in the doorway.

 This is what our rhodies look like- beautiful, no? We had no idea what color they might be.

Another addition to our backyard- Matt built this fireplace out of bricks salvaged from a demolition site nearby! Looking forward to trying it out.

We've been eating a lot of rabbit! Someday I will write a post that is only about our rabbit experiences, but for now I will tell you that the entire second generation has been successfully butchered, both does have been bred again, and homegrown rabbit has proved itself damn tasty! (Tastewise, it is very similar to chicken, but there is a different quality to the meat- richer, maybe?). So far we have tried it braised with sage and rosemary, and also dredged in flour and fried. Both are delicious, but the frying is labor intensive (and not as healthy). Either way, though, it is incredibly satisfying to eat meat we raised from the very beginning.

This week is an anniversary- one year since Matt and I returned home from our Big New Zealand Adventure. It's hard to believe it's been a full year since then- and what a year! Full of tenuous or nonexistent employment, good friends, the stresses and joys of graduate school, our first forays into the world of urban homesteading, lots of eggs, the bunnies, and many ups and downs. We've been poor, but productive, and pretty darn happy overall. And it has been a year spent in this house that is more home to either of us than anywhere we have lived since leaving our childhood homes. We truly love our home here, and everything we have done with it. It is comfortable, just the right size, affordable, and we are lucky enough to have good neighbors, a really excellent landlord who lets us be in charge of everything on the property, and a roommate who we are extremely compatible with, and who came with a cat that keeps us constantly entertained. Back on the road in New Zealand, camping in a different place each night and enjoying the itinerant life, this is what we dreamed of in the back of our minds, and now we have it.

In just a few weeks, I will have time to do more than write one big post every weekend- I can't wait to be able to settle back into domestic tasks, read something that isn't a textbook, and build some new householding habits like soapmaking. Until then, my friends, thanks for reading my big long summaries of the week!

One Year: Pieces of New Zealand

One year ago, on a rainy afternoon very much like this one, Matt and I flew out of Portland and began our Big New Zealand Adventure. A year later and nearly four months after returning home (!!), I still can't conjure up the words to express the profound change that our time in New Zealand wrought on us as individuals and as a couple. These days, the thought most frequently on my brain is Damn, we were gone a long time! I can't believe we left an entire year ago and were away as long as we were. Here's what I do know: New Zealand will always be with us, in one form or another. We think about it every day, and do a lot of reminiscing and occasionally have moments of heart-ache when a far away memory comes rushing back with no warning. A few weeks ago, out of nowhere, the image popped into my head, clear as day, of a particular stretch of the coastal highway driving east into Opotiki, where enormous and beautiful Pohutukawa trees create a long tunnel of green over the road, with the blue-green Bay of Plenty sparkling in the gaps between the branches. It took my breath away the first time I saw it, and it took my breath away to remember it, almost a year later. Sometimes I catch a scent on the air, unidentifiable, but which speaks to me of our long New Zealand summer. Occasionally I can almost feel the heat of the southern sun or the scorching sand of a black Taranaki beach. Once in awhile, a news item from New Zealand comes up on the BBC, and the accents take me straight back.

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Aside from the emotions, every once in awhile a simple material craving pops up. I would kill for a good Flat White. Or some Superwines (the best tea biscuits I have ever had). I'll settle for Hershey's, but it's got nothing on a Cadbury's Dairy Milk. I miss the weight of dollar and two-dollar coins, and bank notes in more than one color. I miss the accents, the regularly sunny smiles, "She'll be right" and "Good on ya."

The phrases we use when people ask us what our time in New Zealand was like are insufficient. "It was amazing" and "It was incredible" only go a fraction of the way towards the meaning of our trip. How to you describe something that spanned eight months and every emotion in the book? The struggles, the joys, the surprises, the loneliness and homesickness, the freedom, the moments of paradise, the friendships, the disappointments and the things that absolutely blew our minds.

And here we are, a year down the road, more happy and confident in our relationship than we've ever been, settled at home in Portland, in the house of our dreams, with a big garden and chickens, plans for the future, no desire to move or travel anytime soon, and me about to embark on my second round of higher education. Right now we wouldn't trade this for anything, but we are both so infinitely glad that we took the opportunity to live abroad and travel and face the challenges of that experience. Across New Zealand are plants we planted, things we built and animals we helped raise. And the gumboots we bought last September in a little town on the Bay of Plenty now live by our back door here in Oregon. New Zealand is here with us, and we are still there.

Haere Ra Aotearoa

Monday, 23rd May, 2011
Auckland, New Zealand

On September 18th of last year, Matt's mother drove us to Portland International Airport, where we hugged her goodbye, and started the biggest journey of our lives to date. Eight months, thousands of miles, hours of surf, lots of money, and a million amazing memories later, we're coming home on Tuesday.

I've been struggling for the last month or so with how to put all that I am feeling into words, to say an appropriate goodbye to this country of unparalleled beauty and to say an appropriate hello to my home, at this point still far away on the other side of the Pacific. I'll never be able to say everything I feel about this transition, but some excerpts from my journal over the past few weeks will hopefully convey a bit of what I am feeling.

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I feel a deep sadness at leaving New Zealand, and yet I am more than ready for home. I have such a deep affection for this country, and for the amazing and monumental experiences it has given to me and Matt. It has been such an incredible place to spend the past eight months of my life, and I will be forever grateful for the opportunity to spend so much time getting to know a foreign culture and landscape, but one of the many things I have learned during our sojourn here is that there is truly, truly, no place like home, no matter where your home is.

Before we came to New Zealand, I knew I loved my home, but I felt hopeless and despairing about so many U.S. policies around social issues, food systems, distribution of wealth and the environment, and I thought New Zealand was the solution. I saw New Zealand as a paradise in which everything was affordable, all systems were preferable to those in the U.S., everything was progressive and environmentally friendly, and there were few social problems. This image was due in part to the media's depiction of New Zealand, ploys for tourism, my own limited knowledge from my previous visit to the country, and partly because this is what I wanted to believe. I think the single biggest benefit of actually living in a foreign culture for an extended period of time is that you truly get to know it and must acknowledge its imperfections. We have discovered that New Zealand has its own mix of good and bad policies, and that not all aspects of the culture are as progressive as we had thought. So too have we discovered that New Zealand's food systems operate in a far healthier way than their American counterparts, that the population is far healthier on the whole, that conservation and environmental protection policies here some of the most advanced in the world, and that New Zealand's sense of community and friendship is incomparable. Also, physically, New Zealand is truly a paradise, with a diversity of landscape and terrain that is unfathomable for such a small country, and it gave us the delicious endless summer we came here in search of.

In short, our time here has hit home the fact that, like the U.S., New Zealand is a highly beautiful, highly imperfect place that is appreciated for what it is, and is home to its citizens because it is what they know and where they are most comfortable. Both countries have their positive and negative aspects and positive and negative people, and I can't explain how healthy and inspiring it has been to see this with my own eyes. I have never been particularly patriotic in the traditional sense, but being removed from my homeland for so long, and knowing that even one of the world's most renowned destinations has its flaws makes me realize that I love America simply because it is my home, and that that is ok. And for that reason I can truly appreciate it, regardless of how much I disagree with some of its policies and cultural aspects, and I feel refreshed and newly fired up to come home and work there for the changes I believe in.

Apart from realizing just how important my home is to me, this trip has taught me just how long eight months really is. Matt and I were talking the other day and he mentioned that we've been gone so long that in some ways it's hard to remember what home is really like. I know that home is good, and that I have missed it in a huge way, but the details of daily life back home have been so intangible while we've been in New Zealand that that aspect seems very far away. Looking back on our time here, in some ways it seems to have flown by, while in other ways it has been an incomprehensibly long time since we first touched down in Auckland. Eight months after leaving home with Matt, I am having trouble comprehending that all of the vastly different experiences we have had here are actually connected as one long experience. They are each so much their own and they have occurred over such a long period of time that it hardly seems possible that they weren't part of some other trip; that we didn't go home in between! This also brings home to me the magnitude of this journey, of just how much time has passed and how many amazing and unique things we have done during our time here. Hatching ducklings in Opotiki; surfing and making beds for three months in Taranaki; weeks of hot, idyllic summer in Northland; the packhouse; mustering at Spray Point Station; working at Kathmandu; and our final trip around the South Island by bus---these are all connected, while completely distinct as their own experiences, and they make me feel unspeakably rich.

We achieved all of our primary goals for this trip: have an extra summer, surf endlessly in warm oceans, work on a variety of farms, and challenge ourselves and our relationship. The true depth of our time down under is apparent to me when I realize that there is no way that I can communicate the enormity of the changes it has wrought on both of us as individuals and as a couple. We are different people than we were when we first arrived, and I think I can confidently say that we have both come closer to our ideal selves, and are coming home happy and satisfied, and eager to put dreams for our life back home into action.

With all of that said, my face and heart are turned toward home and the new chapter that is starting for us. These past few weeks, my heart and eyes well up when I think about the two ends of our upcoming journey: boarding a plane and leaving the place that has changed us so much, and touching down in Portland a day later. I well up for both sides of the equation: for saying goodbye to the land that gave me roasting hot summer days on Ahu Ahu Beach, in the waves with my board or on the sand watching Matt surf, and for seeing my family, and Matt's, and my dear, dear friends again, and giving them all enormous hugs. For leaving behind the country that gave us skills and strength we never knew we had, and for holding the wee babies born to my friends while I was away, and seeing those friends as mamas. The bittersweetness is inescapable, and I will always miss New Zealand, but I take with me countless fantastic memories as I head for the place I love best.

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This is my last post from New Zealand, and here's a massive thank you to everyone reading this---knowing you've all been there, whether I know you or not, following along, has given me so much strength through our entire trip. I have loved sharing our experiences with you, and am returning to the states with a renewed drive to get more involved in the blog world, and get to know those of you who are as yet just virtual acquaintances. To those who are a part of my life in Portland or up in Washington, I will see you in person so very soon.

I am going to take a little vacation from this blog for the next few weeks, as I will be jetting off to Hawaii and then up to Spokane soon after arriving stateside, and of course coping with jet lag, culture shock, job interviews and all of the massive emotions surrounding our return to the states. But in a few weeks I'll be back, with a new drive to write about simple living and sustainability topics, and then of course the excitement of setting up housekeeping when Matt and I move into our new house at the beginning of July. I hope you'll tune in, and thanks again for reading. (I'll probably be back here sooner than I intend; I'm so used to blogging regularly that it will likely be harder than I anticipate to stay away!)

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So this is it. Tomorrow we board the jumbo jet that will take us home across the ocean, and some hours and many timezones later, we'll be in Portland. Matt and I have both been insanely excited recently to return home, counting down the days for the past two weeks. Now, it's tomorrow.

See you on the flip side.

Full Circle

Saturday, 21 May, 2011
Nelson, Marlborough
South Island

Well, we're back in Nelson, 16 days after departing on our Great Southern Circuit. Those two weeks absolutely flew by, and we had a really amazing time, and fantastic weather everywhere except the West Coast. I can't believe how much we saw and how many cool people we met in such a short time, and how lucky we were to have Magic tote us around for free while we wrote and photographed on their behalf. I can safely say that we're both incredibly grateful for the opportunity, and extremely happy with our Magic Experience. I'm pleased that we were able to do our southern explorations by mass transit as well, to lessen our carbon footprint; it was also very nice to have someone else do the driving! I think I'm also a big fan of touring around in the off-season, as the buses weren't full, and only having 15 passengers made for a much cozier experience than if every seat was full.

It was freezing cold when we pulled into Kaikoura on Wednesday evening, but we awoke on Thursday to a beautifully warm day, and after nearly two weeks of chilly temperatures, it felt totally exotic to put away the fleeces and scarves, and walk around in just one layer of long sleeves. Because we had spent a good long weekend in Kaikoura a month previously, and Magic's timetables required at least a two-night stay before heading north, we decided to abandon Magic for one short leg of our journey, and caught an Intercity coach (for $16 apiece) to Picton on Thursday morning. We hadn't spent more than an hour in Picton before, and decided our time would be better spent there than in Kaikoura, and we were pretty pleased with our decision. I missed Magic Scott's commentary as we drove up the coast, but as this was a section of our circuit we had already explored thoroughly, it made the most sense that this was where we took Intercity. It was a lovely day and we had great views of the coastline and the seal colonies, and after a brief stop in Blenheim we pulled into Picton at about 12:30. It was warm and sunny, barely a cloud in the sky, and the town was relatively quiet on this fall day.

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Our backpackers in Picton, Sequoia Lodge, was far and away my favorite hostel of all the ones we've stayed in in New Zealand. And we have stayed in some awesome backpackers here, so that's saying something! Cozy but airy, painted with bright colors and decorated with houseplants and Far Side cartoons, and complete with a massive (though not quite life-sized) chess board and hammocks, this was the place to be. The log fire at night and the free homemade hot chocolate pudding and ice cream was just the icing on the cake.

After checking into Sequoia Lodge, we wandered around Picton for most of the afternoon, poking about in shops, admiring the beautiful waterfront and ogling sailboats, and feeling pretty blissed out, having seen so much in the previous weeks and looking forward to heading home in just a few days, and soaking up the unparalleled New Zealand sun. We also got our last New Zealand passionfruit ice creams, which hadn't been particularly appealing in our previous chilly destinations.

Passionfruit and vanilla (arguably the second best flavor in NZ- it tastes nothing like American vanilla ice cream!)

We got to have a nice leisurely morning yesterday, and then got a free lift from the hostel folks to the ferry terminal, where we reconnected with Magic Scott for the final leg back over the ranges to Nelson. It was really interesting riding a tour bus over a stretch of road we've gotten to know very well, and we got a definite feeling of being back on our turf again. We made one stop at Pelorus Bridge, and Matt and I took a quick walk down to a cool swing bridge over the Pelorus River.

Note the shadow of the bridge with us standing on it.

We pulled into Nelson around 3 PM, and immediately got stuck into all the errands that needed doing, to allow ourselves to focus on packing and blogging today. It felt pretty nice to be back in Nelson, and then Nickola picked us up from town and our old room was waiting for us, now complete with the driftwood headboard that Matt built for Nickola (see his blog for a photo). It's good to see Nickola and Jamie and Tom again one last time, and last night we had a "Leaving Do" at the Free House with several of our former workmates from Kathmandu, as well as some other friends we've gotten to know here. All and all, it's been an excellent feeling of coming full circle, and now, suddenly, we're down to our final few days in New Zealand. It's an odd, bittersweet mix of sadness at leaving and utter excitement to get home, but that will have to be another post entirely.

So we've seen the South Island, with many thanks to Magic for the opportunity and the awesome experience we had, and now we're headed north!

From Dunedin to Kaikoura

Thursday, 17 May, 2011

Picton, Marlborough Sounds

It’s time to catch up again, after a couple of long days on the road. On Tuesday morning we said goodbye to Dunedin and boarded our next bus, driven by Magic Scott. After a stop at the world’s steepest street (see Matt’s blog for details and photos), we headed north up the coast, on our way to Lake Tekapo. Our morning stop was at the Moeraki Boulders, an incredibly unique set of rocks on the magically beautiful coast south of Oamaru. These boulders are perfectly round, sitting partially submerged in the beach, and are a geological anomaly. Geologists say that the rocks came out of the mudstone cliffs, and not the sea, but apparently no one really knows why they took the shape they did. The Maori have a better explanation, I think, as told to us by Magic Scott: long ago, an outrigger canoe carrying baskets of kumara shipwrecked on this coast, and the round baskets that washed up on the shore became the Moeraki Boulders. At any rate, they are extremely bizarre to look at, and we all enjoyed walking among them, and some of our fellow Magic-ers did some climbing and gymnastics on the rocks!

(Click on Photos to Enlarge)

After leaving Moeraki, our next stop was Oamaru (the most common pronunciation is “WAH-mah-roo”), a beautiful coastal city built primarily of white Oamaru stone, mined just south of town and used in buildings throughout New Zealand. We had an absolutely gorgeous day to travel, clear skies and lots of sunshine over the green, pastoral landscape of the east coast. Once we turned inland north of Oamaru, we headed up into the alpine country, which is much dryer, yellow tussock-covered sheep country sprinkled with blue-green rivers and very few towns.

 First view of the Southern Alps! Somewhere east of Omarama. 

Yellow countryside at our quick stop at Aviemore Dam.

At Omarama (oh-MAH-rah-mah) we entered Mackenzie Country, named after a famous (or infamous, but he got the place named after him) sheep thief from the 19^th century. With the Southern Alps standing up alongside us, we were truly in the mountain country, and stopped at Lake Pukaki, which often affords a view of Aoraki/Mt. Cook on the far end, but the elusive mountain was hidden away in the clouds. That didn’t stop the views from being spectacular, or our busmates from posing inadvertently for this shot:

We learned from Magic Scott that the Maori name for Mt. Cook, Aoraki, means “cloud piercer.” This is derived from the mountain’s tendency to have clouds sitting over the middle of it, but the summit sticking out the top. I’ve also learned that according to New Zealand law, the Maori name (pronounced “AH-oh-rack-ee”) must be placed before the English name in all guidebooks, signage etc. Also, mountaineers are forbidden to stand on the actual summit, as it is an incredibly sacred place to the Maori; Aoraki is also considered to be the ultimate, all-encompassing ancestor.

Have I mentioned that it has been extremely cold in the southern regions lately, and that this was incredibly apparent while we were en route from Dunedin to Kaikoura? It was windy, freezing cold, and the dry cold chilled us all to the bone. When we pulled into Lake Tekapo, our overnight stop on Monday, temperatures were hovering around 45 F or so in the sun.

 Beautiful, but COLD and windy!

We really loved our BBH hostel in Lake Tekapo- comfortable non-bunk beds, a very well heated and organized lounge area, and no TV (a rarity in a backpackers!) While the evening was clear and the views gorgeous, we could hardly bring ourselves to go outside into the bitter cold- that wind really gets you! While we had pre-booked all of our hostels and used the BBH ones because we already had the membership, if we hadn’t planned ahead, we wouldn’t have had to worry, because Magic really takes care of its own. The company has relationships with various hostels and tour operators in every town along Magic’s routes, and these places reserve spaces for Magic travelers so that you are guaranteed a bed everywhere you go, and a space in every activity if you want it, and the Magic drivers book it all for you. It is a really good system, and although we haven’t really used it because we did all of our planning ourselves, it is a really great way to operate and serve your customers.

We got up in the dark again for another long day yesterday. Prior to the Christchurch Earthquake in February, Magic traveled a half day from Lake Tekapo to Christchurch, and then another half day to Kaikoura the next day. Since the earthquake dismantled much of Christchurch’s infrastructure and the entire city centre is still cordoned off, Magic now drives from Lake Tekapo to Kaikoura in a single day, stopping in the outskirts of ChCh to drop off and pick up. Thus, it makes for a long day and our bus pulled out of Tekapo at 7:30 AM. It was “cold as” yesterday morning, with a completely clear sky that gave us really stellar views of the southern alps over the lake as we walked down to the bus.

The temperature when we got on the bus was -1C/30F, as the heater couldn’t run until the engine had gotten good and warm. So we all stayed bundled up, and watched amazing views of the alps roll by under a glowing sky and a full moon.

Sunrise on Magic Bus, Burkes Pass.

Our route north took us through Fairlie and Geraldine, into the Canturbury Plains and to Methven/Mt. Hutt via the Inland Scenic Route. It was a long drive to Christchurch, back into pastoral, seaside country, but still bloody cold. Traveling through Christchurch was a truly surreal experience, and sort of difficult to think about. At first we just drove through the suburban sprawl, and because it was entirely modern buildings, there was no sign that anything was wrong, no destruction, and it seemed hardly possibly that such a big quake had rocked the area only a few months before (with loads of aftershocks every day since). But soon we started seeing older buildings with their facades lying in piles at their feet, and shopfronts with signs reading “Still closed due to earthquake.” Driving to the bus stop, we could all see the downtown district a couple kilmoetres away, where the tallest building, the Grand Chancellor Hotel, has been sitting at a noticeable tilt ever since February. Driving to the second stop at Christchurch Airport, we passed through an older neighborhood, where there was no huge appearance of destruction, but an eerie sense of something wrong, with stop signs and streetlamps standing slightly akimbo, and a house covered in scaffolding here, one with a window boarded up here, and the next with a big tarp covering the hole in its roof. I have no other way to describe seeing these things, than to use the word heavy.

From Christchurch it was pretty much straight through to Kaikoura, on another beautiful day. The scenery was beautiful, but stood out less than in the alpine country. Beautiful green fields, lots of sheep and cows and goats, and lots of beautiful little farms.

 First view of the snowy Kaikoura Ranges

Matt chilling out as the countryside rolls by.

Coming into Kaikoura, Magic Scott told us loads of interesting factoids about the area, the name, and the various activities on the menu for Kaikoura. We saw loads of seals on the rocks alongside the highway as we drove north into town, and we all got a massive fright when we came around one of the tight corners on the very narrow highway and discovered a very large fur seal in the middle of the road about 8 metres in front of the bus. Luckily it managed to get off the road just in time, but Magic Scott about had a heart attack, and we all had a moment of wondering what, exactly, it would be like to hit a seal while on a bus.

Matt and I were very happy to be back in Kaikoura on such a gorgeous day, and to be staying at Dusky Lodge with most of our busmates. With a big airy kitchen, huge wooden slab tables, and an enourmous deck and hot tub with views of the snow-covered mountains, it was a pretty good place to be.

And now we’re just one leg away from completing our circuit with Magic, and it’s been an incredibly good run. We’ve also been amazingly lucky with the weather- since we got off the West Coast, we have pretty much had perfectly clear days straight through. With that, I’ll end this novel, and update again when we are back in Nelson. Just five days till we fly home.