Ingrid's premie twins are doing fine! At two weeks old, two-pound Isla Jane grabs Mom's finger and shouts encouragement to her more placid sister in the next incubator. The family is residing at the neonatal care unit in Dunedin. If the girls continue to do well, they hope to move them back to Invercargill in a week or two. Thanks for the prayers and support.
A fraternity of imature male seals strut their stuff on Shag Point north of Dunedin.
Sue captured this photo of a Sperm Whale off the coast of Kaikoura, just north of Christchurch. Last week she took a solo trip to check out the north half of the southern island while I raced around the countryside stamping out disease and pestilence.
The Artist's Palette in Wai-O-Tapu's thermal wonderland exhales rotten eggs but captivates us even so with its smorgasboard of color.
Lady Knox Geyser is New Zealand's version of Old Faithful. It erupts every day at exactly 10:15 a.m. but it needs a little prompting from the park ranger. He drops a few bits of soap into the cauldron which disturbs the surface tension of the upper layer of cooler water. This allows the boiling water below to blast to the surface in a fifteen-minute eruption.
Kuirau Park in the heart of Rotorua has its own collection of mineral springs and boiling mud pots. The landscape around the city is dotted with steaming pools of hydrogen sulfide.
Wine tasting at Peregrine Vineyard outside of Queenstown spoke to us after we passed up the more popular Gibbston Valley. It's parking lot was plagued by tour buses and robotic waiters doling out generic samplers.
Sheep defines the word, "ubiquitous", in New Zealand. The baashful bleaters even have the right of way on the Queenstown Highway.
