Whitewater and Alpacas

It is a few days since I managed to get anything on to the blog so I will do my best to bring you up to date. The Rangitita River is one of the best places to go whitewater rafting and it is something that we both love so we spent a fabulous day doing that. Dave has a fancy camera that he puts onto his helmet so there will be some footage of that at some stage. In theory I could probably add it to this blog but you will have to make do with this picture for the time being.

The water is ice melt off the mountains so is very cold and it wasn't all as rough as that so here is another photo where you can actually see us!

To be specific there were two grade 5 sections, one quite long but the rest 3 or much less. Jolly good fun anyway and I wanted to do it again. We headed south again and stopped briefly in Dunedin, the second largest town. It was so quiet though. I found a lovely wool shop and bought my souvenir wool. Actually I bought enough for two projects. Then we headed west to Te Anau.Th countryside had changed from flat alluvial planes and massive mountains to pretty rolling hill around Dunedin. By the time we reached Te Anau it was more like the Lake District but with much bigger mountains. Te Anau itself was a little bit disappointing but there were glowworm caves that I really wanted to see. That trip was really magical. There was a walk through part of the caves and then an underground boat ride in pitch dark apart from the light of the glowworms. We were not allowed to take photos underground butI do have a CD with pictures on. Unfortunately I have no way of accessing that until we get back home. We visited a conservation area where

a breedng pair of the rare native birds called Takahe are kept along with a number of other native birds. It was a treat to see them as so many of the birds so far have been the ones that we see at home. Our last trip for that day was to an Alpaca farm. This was my idea of heaven. Friendly animals with such very soft fleeces that I could have cuddled them forever. And to cap it all there was wool for sale in the farm shop, so I now have enough for another project.