Purakanui

Kids in school. Midday walk with David. Taking advantage of the low tide to walk from our house to the Waitati beach, through the caves, past the site of the old Mapoutahi Pa, to Purakanui beach. Warm, calm, peaceful summer day.

Puzzling World

On our last day in Wanaka, we stopped in this unexpectedly fantastic museum - Puzzling World. Teeming with mazes, puzzles, and optical illusions. 

We started with this enormous maze. After nearly an hour of intense team work, and a combination of spatial memory and luck, we managed to find all four colored towers, but we try as we might, we could not find our way out again (luckily they had a number of emergency exits, so we could opt out before finishing - we'll know to enter the maze with lots of snacks and water next time!).

 Inside there were tilted walls...

Crazy patterns.

Eye-following heads. 

 Mirror paneled ceilings.

  

And illusion creating rooms.

Awesome!

Lake Hawea

 

Part 2 of our weekend adventure - we shifted our camp to Lake Wanaka's sister lake, Lake Hawea.  From Boundary Creek campsite to Kidds Bush campsite. Equally beautiful, in a different way.

  

Gwen (and then me, and then very briefly David) braving the snow-melt temperatures of this cold lake.

 Then chilling in the golden afternoon sun.

Pretty much idyllic. With one major exception. By early evening we were besieged with sand flies. Not one or two, or even 20 or 30. There were thousands! The air was thick with them. It was impressive. The kids took refuge in the car. And then in the tents. Making for a pretty early night for all of us :).

Lake Wanaka

A few hours later, we emerged from high plains to mountains to subalpine finger lakes, originally craved by glaciers...

  

We set up camp at Boundary Creek, at the very top of Lake Wanaka. Which was wonderful!! We loved it so much we would return again and again in the months to come.

Simon became obsessed with these driftwood structures, and each time we returned, he would add a bit more (as would others - some of them were really big and impressive).

The flat lake rocks also made perfect cairns. 

Here, waking up to beautiful morning clouds over the lake:

Central Otago

New Zealand is so varied. One minute you're in rolling green sheep pastures, the next on jagged coast, and then high desert. So many different types of landscape, all so close together.

A new landscape we discovered - the high plains of Central Otago. Making us miss New Mexico!

The road from Waitati to Wanaka - beautiful!!!

Futsal!

Simon has a new love! It's called Futsal. Quite a bit like soccer, but played indoors (maybe because of the cold, wet Dunedin winters?). And it's super short, about half hour in total for the whole game.Simon quickly decided he wanted his own ball, so we could practice at home.

Teams from all the different schools in and around Dunedin gather every Wed afternoon in the Edgar sports center, where dozens of games go on at once. It's kind of controlled chaos (or not so controlled). But super fun! Here Simon is, bravely defending the goal.  

And here's his team, the Waitati Wingers, ready to high five with the opposing team.

And the excitement at getting 'Player of the Day'!

Birthday David - Part 3

The third and final part of David's birthday also took an unexpected turn. We'd decided to spend the night on the Otago Peninsula so that we could wake up early and see the albatross colony by boat in the morning - what David had requested as his birthday gift. Unfortunately, we woke to thick fog coating the peninsula, with high winds plus a turning tide. The boat company called early to tell us the tour had been canceled.

So we explored Portobello instead. The penguin pancakes at the Penguin Cafe were a big hit.

 As were the hundreds of painted chickens at the Happy Hen.

And then, fog lifting, a walk on the shore.

But perhaps the best birthday present of all came at the end of the day when we returned to Waitati, and finally moved into our permanent house. Home sweet New Zealand home :)