nouvelle-zelande

I had a great time in New Zealand. So much happened, I'm already forgetting some of the things. Thankfully, I was travelling with people who can remind me. Here's a couple of pictures and their stories to start us off:
In this picture I have my head between my knees to avoid fainting. I felt faint because I had just been in thermal pools with water that was up to 44 degrees, then I went into the cold plunge pool. My body couldn't really handle it. These pools were at Morere Hot Springs, where Mianh and I walked 10 minutes through rain-forest to some nice tubs that we had all to ourselves.
Here I am feeding ducks out of my hands at Owlcatraz. Stupid name, but cool place. They had some giant cattle, an alpaca, some deer, Morepork owls, ducks, and glow-worms which were eery and awesome at the same time. Mianh took this picture at just the right moment, two seconds before I was yelping in shock at what the duck bills felt like, and two seconds later I was getting away from the duck bills as fast as I could.
This is my favorite windmill picture. I have about 20 more, which I'll introduce to the blog slowly but surely. There's a big windfarm near where Mianh lives (in Palmerston North) and I took lots of pictures of the windmills as we left on our road trip, and made her go up to the wind farm lookout, where this picture was taken from.
This is one of the national symbols of New Zealand, the kore, or a curled up palm frond. I think they're pretty, and like the way the sun was shining on this one. New Zealand was way greener than Australia, since they're not experiencing a drought. The dampness made my hair really curly, much like this fern is curly.
Here I am in Kerosene Creek, where the water is from some thermal source, and therefore nice and warm, and free of the eels which are in most New Zealand waters. It was cool to be in the actual creek, rather than just a hot tub that was filled with thermal water, and it was also cool that it was free.