Saturday, May 29, 2010

This evening Coy and Tyler flew back to the states. It was so good to see them again and spend time. I thought you would enjoy hearing about a few things we did.

Boys at our Sims Flat

Coy and Tyler flew in about 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, May 18th. It was a cloudy, rainy day that would plague us the entire time. But they told us at the beginning of this adventure… “if you wait for it to quit raining you will never do anything.” So off we went.
Because of Jack’s schedule, we needed to work around a few things. Jack had lined up a tour of a powdered milk plant. New Zealand exports a lot of milk but most of it goes out as powdered milk. The Lincoln professors were amazed that Jack could get into this plant. The students enjoyed it…we all did.

Drive from Hanmer to Kiakoura

The next day we were off to Hanmer Springs, a hot springs north of Christchurch about 2 hours. It was fun to sit in a warm pool of water while it rained down on us. The next day we headed to Kiakoura, a small village on the east coast where there are several seal colonies. We saw lots of seals, some you could walk right up to, but as the boys were shopping in the village, one of the shop owners told them of a hike where you could see lots of baby seals. What an amazing find! North of one of the colonies there was a hike up a creek, through rain forest type jungle. There were several baby seals playing in the creek. But when you walk up about ¼ of a kilometer there was a small pool at the base of a waters fall and there were about 50+ baby seals playing in the water.

Baby seals

They didn’t seem to be at all worried about the people watching them. Tyler knelt by the rocks and a seal came up and touched his hand. Jack said it was probably the highlight of his New Zealand experience.