Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Glacial Rock Cottages


Today was one of the easiest driving days so far. I started out the drive today because John was too sleepy. I drove for about 1.5 hours; we seem to be off the curvy roads at least for the time being so the driving wasn't bad at all. The total drive time today was around 4 hours to Te Anau. We're staying on a farm here and it's amazing. We have a self contained cottage with a stocked kitchen and even a barbecue outback in case we decide to do some grilling. Our hosts are Sarah and Finn and their three children: Olivia (10), Josiah (7), and Esther (8). Sarah and Finn must be two of the hardest working and busiest people in New Zealand. They own and run a huge farm with elk, sheep, horses, "pegs" aka pigs, cows, and chickens. We have milk fresh from the cow and eggs straight from the chickens in our kitchen. Finn is a police officer, they're building a new home on the farm, they own and manage the two cottages, and are raising three kids! They must have 200+ elk and goodness knows how many sheep and cows. After we settled into our cottage John and I headed down to the "swimming hole" in the river. Finn and the two little girls came down on their four wheeler with the 4 month old puppy Lucia chasing after them. The girls jumped into the cold river like it was a warm bath and Lucia got in on the fun too. John swam in the river but I only managed to wade out to about waist high (too cold at around 70 degrees), We all relaxed on the rocks and talked about school with the little girls..Esther reports that she has more homework than her brother or sister and that she's the fastest runner in her class. Finn talked about the national health care system in NZ and how it's poorly run and a basic failure. Most New Zealanders buy private insurance if they can afford it because the wait for public services is so long. New Zealand is a country of less than 5 million people and according to Finn the country is hugely in dept. After the nice chat with Finn and the girls he offered us a lift on the 4 wheeler back to the cottage. Three adults and two kids on a 4 wheeler with a puppy chasing along side. The ride on the 4 wheeler was great fun and it was really thrilling and a little frightening when the puppy managed to disturb the elk and we had over 100 elk running behind us! After being chased by a herd of elk we went through the sheep area and I learned something really interesting about sheep farming. Apparently wool isn't worth much these days and sheep are being breed for food rather than their wool. Shearing sheep is expensive so sheep are being breed that do not produce wool or much less than normal! See attached photo. We also learned that Teddy Roosevelt gave the original 4 sets of elk to New Zealand. Te Anau is in fiordland and the scenery is absolutely stunning. The town of Te Anau is a stop off for tourists heading to the fiords about a two hour drive from the town, there are very few hotels any closer. We ate dinner at Cafe Dolce Vita on Finn and Sarah's recommendation; unfortunately, the food was a real disappointment and not much better than The Olive Garden. John said the owner Roberto must have been a waiter back in Italy definitely not a chef! Today was great fun and it's really neat to have kids around.

No comments:

Post a Comment