Lake Matheson

Kia Ora, mates! Hello from Auckland on Wednesday evening, where I imagine we'll all be heading to bed very soon after a late night with friends last night and an early morning today. But first, a few rainforest photos. Much of New Zealand is covered in rainforests and we've seen heaps of them by now, but one of my favorite walks so far was the morning before we headed up onto Fox Glacier on the west coast of the South Island.

It was about an hour around the lake and at the far end on a clear, calm day (not common in this part of the world) you can catch a crazy mirror reflection of Mt. Cook. We had a pretty view but not the one that ends up on a postcard. In fact it was only for a very short time that morning that you could see Mt. Cook at all and then the clouds covered it for the rest of the day, so I guess we were lucky it made its persnickety little appearance. If we hadn't seen it at all, it would've still been one of the most beautiful walks we've been on.

It seemed so odd that we were surrounded by snow covered mountains and glaciers but here we were trekking through a lush leafy green rainforest, dripping and burbling at every turn.

I recently learned that lichen only grows in clean air and that the longer and fuller it grows, the cleaner the air. So you know I saw more lichen on that South Island trip than I'd ever seen before in my life and I kept thinking that this was the cleanest air we'd ever breathe.

And now, off to bed for all of us, after a few cookies, of course. And maybe some yogurt. And a shower. That's it though, then bed. Hope you're all well. Go have a cookie.

xoxo, K.