Happy New Year!

So much to add despite having only posted yesterday ... where to start ...

1. The NZ photo set is finally all sorted and labelled. You can view the whole set here; here's a couple of sneak previews:

Just landed, and about to hike on, the Franz Josef Glacier

Driftwood in Bark Bay, Abel Tasman National Park - about to tramp the track down to Torrent

Portage, where we spent a couple of happy, chilled days at the beginning of the trip

2. We're now in Te Anau, where we will celebrate New Year's Eve later with the sort of knees-up that entails food, drink and fireworks. It's strange to realise how close we are to leaving (we shall be Hawaii-bound on 2nd Jan).

3. We spent last night on a boat in Doubtful Sound. What a perfect excursion. The biggest operator of this type of tour is "Real Journeys", but their boat (whilst quite visually fetching) is huge and sleeps about 70. We went with Fiordland Cruises, a much smaller enterprise whose vessel the MV Waverley sleeps only 12 including 2 crew. Our party consisted of a British family of 4, an American family of 3 and the 2 of us - which made us a feel a little at a disadvantage, until we turned that into an advantage by befriending the crew. Skipper Dave and First Mate Chris were a fine pair of good ol' NZ boys and we felt honoured to be in "their gang" (e.g. we got to eat at the "captain's table"; we got first dibs on a freshly-roasted crispy leg of lamb, going spare while Chris cooked dinner; they even shared their private wine and whisky supplies with us when we ran dry - which I have to note is because I had shared around the 2 bottles of wine we took with our companions, giving away I guess 5 glasses in total, and we got a measly half glass in return! Tsk!) The Waverley took us right out to sea and then back in via various coves and detours along different arms of the Sound (which is actually a fjord, misnamed by British or Dutch sailors who had never seen a fjord before! - the doubtful bit comes from Captain Cook, who did not enter the Sound because - due to the direction of the prevailing winds and the angle of the Sound's entrance - he doubted he would be able to get out again without rowing, which he didn't fancy). Anyway - Pete did a bit of kayaking off the stern, I took lots of photographs (of rata trees in bloom, of blowsy waterfalls, of soaring forested hills on either side, of birds and water and sun and moon and so on ... might be able to add these to Flickr before we get back). We enjoyed a fabulous meal cooked on board by Chris, including delicious NZ lamb and - for those who like this sort of thing - fresh blue cod caught by Dave during the trip. We stayed up late listening to yarns about (amongst other things) the legendary heli-hunters of the 1970s, who used to shoot deer from helicopters, to claim their bounty from the Department of Conservation - deer being an introduced pest (effectively) in NZ. Sounded like a thrilling but dangerous job - the heli-hunters might find themselves being shot at by hunters on the ground, who were p*ssed off that the heli-hunters were swooping in to take deer that ground hunters might have spent hours stalking. Later, when the deer ran low and some bright spark decided to capitalise on the strong market by beginning deer farming, hunters were paid even more to take female deer alive (NZ$3000 each). Tranquillisers being useless (because you couldn't adequately gauge the size of the prey), hunters initially used to *jump* from helicopters to land on the deer and wrestle it to the ground - many died in so doing. Later a net gun was invented, but this carried its own disadvantages - a hefty kickback which was enough to dent the metal casing of a helicopter! And so on.. lots of great stories. My favourite quote of the evening could be this one from Chris, on aging: "When I was younger, I used to shoot a deer in the bush and carry it out on my back for 2-3 hours. I can't do that now ... I've gotta shoot 'em on the edge of the bush these days." What a great euphemism for getting old - "shooting on the edge of the bush".

Well, could probably keep rabbitting on with stories of a great day/evening/morning (early start when Dave started the engines at 7am!) but had probably better get on with today's adventures (a nap, a "cinematic experience of Fiordland", and some NYE festivating) rather than writing endlessly about yesterday's. Might manage another update before we leave NZ, but if not, it'll be Aloha from Hawaii next time!