 Introducing: the new camera! I like this one because the buttons are glove friendly. There are a few quirks about New Zealand I've noticed. 1. All the light switches are upside-down. In North America, you flick up to turn something on (that's what she said); down, to turn it off. It's backwards here. I'm not sure if it's to emphasize the fact that we're down-under and hence upside-down, or what. I wonder if it's the British system of switches, I can't remember... 2. The B&B's here heat everything! Heated floors in the bathroom, heated towel racks, heated bed sheets! It doesn't get too cold in NZ, but I like the fact they heat the bedsheets. Keeps Neda's cold feet from waking me up in the middle of the night! 3. What is up with all the graveled driveways? Every parking lot is a gravel pit. Can they not afford to pave the last 10m of every road? Definitely not motorcycle friendly. I've almost lost it a couple of times manouevering the bike around graveled parking lots. And we're not talking a bits of gravel on top of a dirt lot, we're talking a couple of inches of gravel rock that you can drag your boot through and leave behind a little gravel mountain... WTF? 4. Does water spin the other way when you flush the toilet in NZ? Don't know, don't care. As long as the poop that's in it disappears when I do flush, I'm content! For that to happen you have to press the big button on top of the toilet. Turns out the little button is only for #1. Guess what, two #1s do make a #2... Anyway, today is a travel day, we're heading north towards the interior again. Back through Otago and Dunedin in the cold, but at least rainless morning. Then past Moeraki where we were a couple of days ago. This roads here are kind of boring compared to the ones we've seen on the west coast. There's a lot more open spaces due to the lack of any kind of mountains. Mountains are always a good time. Good for snowboarding, good for motorcycling, we like mountains! No mountains here.  Riding the Vanished World Trail The path we're on is called the Vanishing World Fossil Trail, which has a few stops along the way that highlights different rock formations from different periods in geological history. The most interesting of these formations are called the Elephant Rocks. Not only do they look neat, but they were in a movie! Do you remember in the first Narnia movie, "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe", when the kids meet Aslan the lion at his camp? I don't, but apparently that lion's camp was situated here.  Start of the Vanished World Trail, not sure what kind of rocks these are, but we needed a break and stopping in the middle of a narrow two-lane road is ALWAYS a good idea!  Some bonding time with the Sprint ST  Walking towards the Elephant Rocks. I am looking down to avoid all the sheep poop on the ground. I think you can even see it in this picture! I'm not sure you're allowed to, but these are great rocks to climb up upon. I think the reason why you're not supposed to climb these rocks is that they're covered in bird doodoo! And the ground is covered in sheep shit, so we have to constantly watch where we step while being in awe of these awesome looking rocks.  Elephant Rocks. Very cool place!  Here I am pretending to be a giant talking Lion that's in the closet. I mean, that lives in a wardrobe...  "Bartender, I'll have a Neda on the rocks" Elsewhere on the Vanishing World Fossil Trail we come across a fenced off area on the side of the road so we pull over to investigate. There are ancient Maori wall drawings here! Wow! The first signs of Maori culture we've seen! They were mildly interesting. They were pretty faded and there was alot of graffiti over the walls before they put up all the fencing, it's kind of a shame. The rocks were a lot more interesting though!  Maori wall drawings. I hesitate to say they are ancient wall drawings, as they were only done in the 19th century, which demonstrates how new New Zealand is. The black lizard monster like thing is the Maori drawing, the rest is just graffiti  Neda is more interested in the Vanished World limestone formations  If the black lizard-monster-like drawing had eyes, this is what it would see. The wall was fenced off to protect it from graffiti artists As we close in our destination for the night, we encounter Lake Pukaki, which is a brilliant blue colour. Normally you'd associate blue with clear and clean water, but this is almost an unnatural brilliant blue, kind of like KFC cole slaw is an unnatural green... Turns out that the blue colour is actually suspended sediment in the water that the glacier ice has scraped off the mountains, and all the particles reflect the blue in the light spectrum. That's one mystery solved, I wonder what the story is behind the radioactive-green KFC cole slaw?  The blue Lake Pukaki. hehe. Pukaki... BTW, you can see Mount Cook in the distance.  All over New Zealand we've been seeing (um, passing) these cute little ragtop cars. Sunbeam is an English car company and every year NZ Sunbeam enthusiasts get together for a ride in the mountains. Stopped in Lake Tekapo for the evening. It's starting to rain again, thank goodness the weather held out while we were on the bikes! For once!!!  As a side note, I think Vanished World Trail is the coolest name for a road.
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