Riding, Caving, Kayaking and reading magazines

Here we are on the 8th March already and we've been all the way up the West coast (well as far as we could, Karamea, before the road became a gravel track-that was a wasted day!). During this stretch and to my great joy, I finally managed to persuade Ric to come on a horse trek around the lovely valleys, rivers and beach at Punakaiki (between Greymouth and Westport, both of which we stopped in briefly but didn't linger) which even he admitted enjoying, possibly because of the three German girls who also came. While in the area, we visited Cape Foulwind, Westport's most amusing and evocatively titled stretch of coastline. Yet again it is Captain Cook, who battled against horrendous weather there in 1770, to whom we can attribute this naming.

From our horse ride we went on to the magnificent, bizarre and aptly named Punakaiki Pancake Rocks and Blowholes. Every road we go down seems to take us to yet another site of natural beauty and/or strangeness!

Since then we have traveled right over to the east side of the island again, via the old gold mining town of Murchison, then Nelson, again a pleasant enough port town and apparently the sunniest place in the whole of New Zealand.

Now we are in Motueka, a pivotal point for tourists wanting to explore the Abel Tasman National Park (Tasman was the first European to discover New Zealand even though he never set foot on it for fear of the Maori). The weather is certainly warmer here than further south and there are lots of orchards and vineyards in the area.

After our lousy Kayaking experience in The Philippines where we got caught in a thunderstorm whilst wearing just our swimming togs and spent nearly an hour trying to turn the kayak around, I decided to give it another whirl so today we got up early (7.30am nearly killed us after three weeks of lazy lie-ins) and headed over to Kaiteriteri where we joined Kahu Kayaks and went on a half day trip from Mahahau to Stephens Bay passing all sorts of fascinating coastal scenery including the famous Split Apple Rock, several nesting cormorants (or shags as they call them here), caves and some cute little beaches which have an odd but pretty black and gold sand. With gorgeous weather, surroundings and the aid of a rudder it was a much better experience than the last one! Think we caught the sun a bit too.

Then we drove a bit higher north to the huge and ancient (we're talking millions and millions of years old) Ngarua Caves where we had to have a guided tour. Ric was a bit miffed about that since we've just bought a special head-torch for exploring such caves solo. The caves which remain at 11 degrees celcius all year round, were full of stalactites, some stalagmites and ancient bones of now extinct bird-like dinosaurs. No glow worms though and when the guide turned the lights of we were in total darkness - no amount of staring and squinting could help us see a thing - imagine discovering these caves by candle light! The mountains in this area are like honeycomb and water is constantly seeping through including caves like these making them constantly damp. Would you believe that some nutters have chosen to get married inside them? Chamber orchestras have also played inside the large 'cathedral' area - great acoustics apparently.

With energy still to burn we went to the idyllic (am running out of adjectives for this stunning country) PuPu Springs, the clearest freshwater springs in the world, where we were warned not to touch the water in any way (we weren't even allowed to fill up water bottles) to prevent the spread of Didymo. Seems a bit over the top considering how fast the water comes out of the ground and washes away into the rivers around. I wont tell you if we obeyed the rules...

Despite the books we brought with us to NZ, Ric and I have been devouring magazines, especially New Scientist, Scientific American Mind (and OK - well we all need some light relief occasionally). It's amazing to find even the smallest back of beyond newsagents selling these publications. Ric is rather alarmed by the all too frequent articles in New Scientist about depression, eating and anxiety disorders. This week they write about how people with bulimia have the highest suicide rate of all psychological conditions and many people kill themselves because they feel such a strong sense of failure and shame. There seems to be a lot of interest in that area of medicine, perhaps because these illnesses are on the rise?

I am getting by but feeling hampered and frustrated every day by problems which I am longing to sort out but scared to let go of. I wish I could pop and pill and rid myself of these endless irrational fears and my love/hate addictive relationship with food. So bored of even talking about them.

We are seeing a lot of Wekas by the way...clumsy looking birds.