from turquoise waters to golden hills and snowy peaks.

We bid goodbye to our friendly (and very talkative) hosts in Nelson early - and were on the road by 8:30am.  it is a long drive from Nelson to Grasmere lodge, about 1  1/2 hour from Christchurch, in the mountains.  There is basically no way to "here from there" - so we started by driving from the north east coast, where Nelson is, to the West coast, through the mountains, and back to the east coast again (or at least close to it).  But on the way, we had the opportunity to stop and see some new sights:
First, with stopped at Buller Gorge, which has a long swing bridge (the longest one in NZ I believe).  These are quite scary ....  but we did it!

And got rewarded with the views of the beautiful gorge, carved in pink rock by the Buller river.

Then we drove through a very long set of steep zig-zags all the way to the west coast, where we stopped to see the truly amazing pancake rocks (I know I use the word amazing a lot in this blog - but these, really, are amazing!):

They are these structures of layered limestone, carved by the ocean into complex shapes.  No one knows why they are layered like this - but the result is magnificent.  The ocean has created holes underneath them, and at high tide (which we were lucky enough to show up for), the waves create these odd blowhole effects (this is NOT geothermal activity, just waves):

In the parking lot of the park, we met this flightless bird:  I thought it was a kiwi (which would have been very unusual during the day), but it is a weka,  more common - still I like him.

we continued down the coast for a while - it is very grand and rocky, with beautiful cliffs (the driving would be scary even on the right side of the road, but - obviously - we survived).
Then we turned east toward the mountains - though Arthur's pass - were we saw our first snow in the the southern hemisphere:

We are now at Grasmere lodge - where we had too nice a dinner for me to remain vertical for much longer.  I'll talk about the lodge, the surrounding and the sky - the sky!!!! tomorrow.