Just like every other Christmas, things got going very early in the morning. The difference in the Southern Hemisphere being that the sun is up at 5 am too. So at least we could see what was going on.
Santa figured out a way into the mini-van ("people mover" as they say here) and stuffed stockings and left presents on the seats.
Everyone was happy with their gifts.
Maggie asked Santa for a dog for Christmas and she got one! A Hairy Maclary from Donaldson's Dairy! It's her favorite series of books.
She also got several books about Hairy.
Maggie finds a new Barbie in her stocking!
A beach Barbie with "togs" (what they call swimming suits).
What else could there be in there?
Choclate!
New pj's!
More new pj's!
And even more new pj's!
Lots of books and pj's this year.
Happy Caty getting a book of Science experiments she can do with things from around the house.
First year ever that Erik didn't have to assemble toys and look for batteries! Yeah!
Here is Maggie in her new nightie and Catys new sparkly flats.
After a "wee while" (Ben's new phrase) we drove up to see
Farewell Spit. Its Maori name describes it well. Onetahua means "piled up sand" and that's just what it is: a 35km (22mi) sand bar attached at one end to the NZ mainland.
It's pretty too. You can see it curving off to the right from the central clump of trees.
The geographer in me can't resist a quick lesson on how it got there. Unfortunately for the pilot whales it sticks out so far that while they are following their internal compasses, they swim right up onto the damn thing. Constantly beaching themselves and often dying on the sand. It's in the news constantly. In fact, I just went to find an article I saw a few days ago and when I Googled it, I found a
new article just published today.
This image gives you a bit of a feeling for the scale of things. We restricted ourselves to the Visitor Center and its surrounds because just the walk from there to the first sand was too far for Maggie to walk. And would have been uphill coming back. We try to walk her up hill on the outgoing hike and downhill on the way back to the car. So that when she hits the wall, it's down hill from there. ;)
We had breakfast at the cafe with a view of the spit. (On Christmas Day! Everything was open! In Christchurch this wouldn't have been possible but this area is full of tourists so there were lots of shops open on Christmas. But you have to pay a "surcharge" when you eat out on a holiday. The reason is that the government fines the establishment for being open on a holiday and they pass that fee on to the customer in a direct surcharge. Some restaurants don't do this and use it as a marketing ploy with signs out on the side walk saying: No Surcharge!)
View from the cafe patio. The weather was warm enough to eat outdoors but the wind was evil! Based on the
Beaufort Scale, I'd say it was a Fresh Gale.
We could barely walk up this hill with the wind whipping at us. It was so windy that it hurt when Maggie's hair whipped against my hand! In this photo we are all leaning forward to keep from rolling down the hill! But the view was magnificent!
And it made the clouds look cool!
This is the view into Golden Bay and toward Nelson (South).
This is the view looking East at the Spit.
Wind be damned, we loaded up the car and went off to our next stop: Wharariki Beach (pronounced: fah-rah-ree-kee because "wh" when followed by "a" makes the sound "fah" in Maori.)
This is a picture of what it looks like. One of those places when a regular camera held by a non-photog just doesn't do it justice. So I borrowed this photo. But before we could get there, we had to walk there. Seriously, if you are disabled, you won't get to see much of NZ. Nothing is near the parking lots. It's all hiking and trails.
Had to start by visiting the local horses first.
Maggie was already burning out so Erik carried her nearly a mile each way. He's super fit now that he's biked >2000km to/from work last year. (We won't mention that his ankle injury is going to need surgery and he was walking all over the place on it. We iced it at night but he wouldn't let it stop him during the day.)
So here's a peep at where we were going. See that bit of ocean between the rocks and the hill on the left?
Ben and I wore our rain coats because they were wind proof but eventually we heated up enough to take them off.
Getting closer. Still walking. Still carrying Maggie.
Part of the walk is on a little sheep trail on the steepest hill I've ever seen. I mean, it was just this side of needing to call it a cliff.
Heading into the trees.
We must be getting close!!!
I love ferns. It's the
quasi-national symbol. They have ferns everywhere. I love it.
Erik and Caty, still not there but we can see more of it now!
Windy much? These trees all had elongated canopies from the constant wind. But the wind is necessary to keep building up Farewell Spit, so you gotta appreciate its work.
A rare shot of Maggie actually walking. This was the only downhill portion on the way to the beach.
Ben struck this pose on his own and Erik got a shot of it. Santa brought Ben new sunglasses in his stocking.
Maggie flat out refuses to let us clip or tie back her hair most days. This day, regardless of the wind, was no exception. Behind Caty is the big rock out in the water that makes such picturesque photos.
It's difficult to get a feel for scale here but these dunes are powdery, deep, and broad. That's a lot of sand folks!
Yep. Worth the walk. Worth the wind. Worth the sanding.
Ben loved it. He was rolling around in the sand and wanted to see if he could dive off the back end of a really tall dune!
Interesting fact. We didn't realize it but our friends Molly and Jeremiah (also Americans living in Christchurch) were at the campground at Wharariki Beach. But on this day they had gone down to our campground and walked around trying to find us. No one had cell reception (not reliably anyway) and we missed our chance to meet up with them at the salmon farm because we didn't nail down a time before we left on our trip. But, never fear! NZ is a small place. We ended up stopped next to them at a red light in Motueka on the way home and caravanned back to Chch with them stopping for lunch at a "cafe" but more of what we would call an "automat" in the states - but with a register at the end rather than coin operated. Anyway, Molly and Jeremiah have a very different style of traveling/camping from us and they have a cool blog. Check out Molly's
post about their Christmas in the same area we were.
Ok, walk over! Thank goodness. We had been sandblasted enough for one day. Back to the campground for a yummy Christmas meal of green beans and smoked salmon and corn on the cob. The fish upstaged everything.
Bedtime in the tent. Yep, she's 3 1/2 and still drinking her milk from a bottle. She'll use a cup for everything but milk belongs in a bottle apparently. I'm going to have it bronzed and put it next to her baby shoes someday.
Bedtime was easy that night. The kids were wiped out! :)
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