Strawberries Galore

When we first moved to Christchurch I planted a few strawberry plants- in pots and in the ground in our backyard. They have grown so well- and multiplied and spread everywhere. This year has been an exceptional year so far- probably cause we've already had quite few hot days. For the last month they've been producing a bowlful of berries every second day.

Routeburn Track

Routeburn Falls

 Looking back at Routeburn Falls huts and valley

 Mount Cook Lily 

These flowers have the amazing ability to collect and store water in puddles in their leaves. They then tip the leaves to feed their roots when it is dry.

 Lake Mackenzie

 On the other side of the Harris saddle (which we crossed over on the second day) the forest gets nearly twice as much rain- and it is obvious by how much moss there is covering everything.

Earland Falls

The Routeburn track is one of New Zealand's Great Walks and it is rated one of the top eleven multi-day walking tracks in the world by National Geographic (2005).  The track crosses over from the Queenstown area to the Milford Sound road. We walked it in 3 days with a couple of friends and did a crossover with two others so that we could swap cars instead of taking a shuttle back.  It certainly has quite amazing scenery- which has been the case for all of the Great Walks we have done so far. The weather was ok- generally overcast with a little bit of drizzle- but we were very happy with that considering on the Milford side they get over 200 days of rain a year! The hut warden at the Lake Mackenzie hut had some pretty interesting stories of people that had walked the track- including a couple guys that did much of it on unicycles (they were world unicycle champions), and a lady from France that carried her Louis Vuitton suitcase the whole way instead of using a backpack (I guess it initially had wheels but they broke. Her hands, naturally, were covered in blisters by the end!)