Dart River

Once again, I am left pretty speechless with our experiences here in NZ. It will be good when I can get some pictures up here, so you all can start to understand better. Today, we went on a Funyak tour, which involved a jet boat ride up the Dart River, and then kayaking down the river, with a lunch stop along the way, and a quick tour of some filming sites on the drive back to base. It was my favorite part of this whole trip. The boat ride was very cold, but fun. The kayaking was even more fun. And the scenery was incredible! E and I shared a boat and she did very well with the paddling. C and A had a good time in the other boat, so I hear. E was not really looking forward to this one, but she ended up really enjoying herself, I think because she got to participate physically, instead of just sitting and looking at pretty scenery. A has decided she really likes kayaking and that we need to do that again. I agree! After we got back to base and got changed out of our wetsuits, we had a few minutes to look around the town of Glenorchy. One thing C has wanted to get since we came here is a possum pelt, so we went to a little fur shop. The Aussie possum was introduced to NZ and has been a natural disaster, so the Kiwis are working hard to eradicate them to save their native trees and wildlife. I was keen to help, since the fur is so soft, but everywhere we saw it, the prices were so high. This little shop had a reasonable price for the pelt and a special surprise tucked in the shop for me. They had a bag of scrap fur, full of all different colors, for 2o bucks. I was so happy to snatch one of them up and I am going to have great fun crafting some warm and soft goodies with those scraps! So, if I seemed to have forgotten a souvenir for you, there just might be a little something trimmed in possum coming your way!

We got back to Queenstown a bit earlier than we expected, so we took a walk by the lake and through the gardens. There were huge redwoods planted there and fun ducks on a beautiful pond. Good day all around.