Grant Visit

Patrick- We had a wonderful time with Grant, my friend from law school. He visited us for a week after traveling for a week each in Australia and New Zealand with his girlfriend Grace.

The first picture is Grant in front of the Tui Brewery building. This is pretty much the Budweiser of New Zealand and we went for a tour of one of their breweries. I got a free beer for eating a hop plain- including chewing and swallowing it. This was not worth it- it sucked every bit of moisture out of my mouth and I ate the hop at the beginning of the tour without anything to drink for about a half hour. Awful, but the tour guide said it in a daring tone and no one else was willing to try so I was the "brave" one.

The second picture is a mass of sheep being herded across the road to a pasture after being sheered. It was raining and quite cold and the sheep surprised to have lost their fleece. They looked pathetic running through the rain and cold but that is agriculture. At least is was only the sheering shed and not the slaughter house.

The third picture is Grant by a giant kiwi statue at Bushy Park this bird reserve 25 kilometers north of Wanganui. Weasels, Australian possums (very different from US possums in that they are furrier and more like a cat/fox cross), feral cats and rats have really taken a toll on NZ's native bird population that was not used to predators and the Department of Conservation has begun to create these bird preserves with fences around them to keep all the predators out. They then poison all the existing predators and continue to poison them to protect the birds. It is a beautiful place with a cacophony of bird calls. There is also the largest rata tree in NZ which I would say would require 10-12 people stretching their arms to link around it.

The next picture is in front of the City Gallery in Wellington. We actually didn't go to the exhibit but their is an exhibit involving polka-dots. They put these dots all over the front of their gallery and while they are neat to look at and certainly catch your eye, are they really art? I'm not so sure, but perhaps I am jut not enlightened enough.

Grace is in the bottom picture atop an outlook of Wellington where the cable car drops you off Wellington Harbor is very pretty but functional with ships coming and going and plenty of other commerce. I took Grace to the airport because she didn't have time to make it up to Wanganui and Grant stayed with us for a week. More of our adventures soon!!