What a job!

Last week Bhaskar and I were in the city and all of a sudden we came across a guy, naked except for a little piece of cloth in the front and a harness. We drove by and I asked Bhaskar, "did I just see a naked guy in the street?". He said, "yes, ma'am." Well of course my reply was to turn around so I can photo this guy. No one seemed to be bothered that this white lady was taking photos. For the sake of little eyes I have photoshopped in a leaf to cover his rear end. This guy apparently is a government employee and his job is to crawl down the sewers and do who know what. Evidently these guys have to be able to hold their breath for quite along time as the fumes can be lethal. It is not uncommon for men to succumb to these fumes and die. But unfortunately the government believes these workers can be easily be replaced. You just try telling that to their loved ones.

Here is an interesting article if want more info: sewer workers in Chennai

New Zealand-finally the end!

Dunedin was the next stop on our two week tour of the South Island of New Zealand. Dunedin (pronounced Done Eden) was actually founded by Scottish and the name Dunedin is the Celtic name for Edinburgh. Dunedin is home to the Speight's Brewery which we toured and everyone got a sample of beer. The kids had fun helping Ted fill his cup. The tour guide was fantastic and it was really interesting to learn the process of beer making. They have a tap outside so townspeople can come and fill up water jugs. This is the water used in the beer as well. The spring produces a huge amount water daily. We also toured the Cadbury factory and sampled lots of yummy chocolate as well as learning some about the chocolate making process. We also drove up the world's steepest street according to the Guinness Book of Records. We wimped out and drove both up and down. I must admit it was a bit creepy as it was steep! We did not stay in Dunedin but stayed out on the Otago Peninsula. We had the most incredible day ever when we were guided around the Peninsula with wildlife filmmaker Robert Brown. His knowledge of the animals and environment were amazing. He gave me some photography tips as well. Everyone really enjoyed the day and would say this was probably our favorite day in New Zealand. We saw the nesting boxes for the little blue penguins (they hunt in the day and come in at night). The peninsula also is home to yellow eyed penguins but they are solitary animals and harder to find as they to just come ashore at dusk. Robert took us all around to secluded areas where we came face to face with both male and female sea lions. One female sea lion even had a pup which we could see and even hear it nursing! It was so interesting to watch them. The male sea lions that we saw were teenager sea lions and really tried to "strut their stuff" by trying to keep the females out of the water so they would stay near them. One of the males charged us but we were told just to stand our ground and they would stop which is good because they have very sharp teeth. Many them had radio devices on them which will monitor their activity for 6 weeks. Why on earth scientists need to know how deep they dive is beyond me. The teenager male was constantly going after the females. They weren't being mean just simply bugging them. It reminded me of the way dogs play fight. The next stop was to go to the tip of the island, Taiaroa Head, to get a glimpse of the royal albatross. This is the only mainland breeding colony for any of the albatross species in the southern hemisphere. I really didn't know anything about them before going so learning that their wingspan was over 3 meters or 9 ft and that they can weigh over 20lbs was impressive! Imagine one of those hitting your windshield. Fortunately that will never happen as they are sea birds. Our guide told us to come back towards dusk when the winds picked up so we could see the birds soar to land. They looked enormous in the sky.
After our two nights in Dunedin we headed towards Mt. Cook. We stopped to see the the Moeraki Boulders. The kids had fun climbing on them. When we stayed in Franz Joseph we were only about 20 miles from the Mt. Cook village but due to the mountains you can only reach it from the east. Unfortunately the weather was rainy so we didn't even get to see Mt. Cook, but considering we had fantastic weather the rest of the trip I can't complain! After one night in the village of Mt. Cook we drove towards Christchurch. We stopped at the famous Church of the Good Shepard at Lake Tekapo. The drive to Christchurch was a much easier drive as we crossed the Canterbury Plains that is primarily farmland. I missed seeing the mountain scenery but this just confirmed our wonderful 2 week adventure was coming to an end. We headed the apartment and repacked luggage and headed for the airport the next morning for a long, long flight back to Chennai. The first thing I noticed when I got off the airplane was the lack of the wonderful crisp clean air of New Zealand!

Logan filling up his water bottl~with water

Pouring beer

Robert Brown showing us some sea weed

Little Blue Penquin boxes

A teenager male sea lion

A mama and her baby

He was yelling at me!

A Royal Albatross

The Moeraki Boulders

I was goofing off, the kids always do stuff like this when I am taking photos! Mason was trying to get a photo of the church and I couldn't resist!

Church of the Good Shepard

Lake Tekapo~don't you love the blue water?

Again, thanks for your patience with these entries and for all the photos. I took so many photos it was hard to decide which ones to post. I will be back to blogging about India next! I have some interesting photos I took last week!

And if anyone is interested in more photos you can click New Zealand for more photos

New Zealand - part 5

Wanaka, Queenstown and Milford sound were our next stops in New Zealand. I hope you aren't growing tired of New Zealand but this is such an great way for me to document our trip. We had a fairly relaxing drive to Wanaka, not too long of a drive so we took some nice stops. One stop was at a beautiful waterfall that came crashing down into a river. We spent quite a but of time building rock towers. The kids took of their shoes and walked through the freezing water to get to the island. We enjoyed walking around Wanaka and going to Puzzling World we where explored an outdoor maze. We also toured Gibbston Valley winery and sampled some of their wines. We were able to see the wine cave where the wine turns into wine! We hiked to the top of Mt. Iron (elevation 549m) where we had beautiful view of the town, mountains and lakes. Stunning! Plus it was a good hike! The kids grew tired about 5 minutes from the top so we left them to build rock towers and went the rest of the way. The drive to Wanaka to Queenstown was great, we drove on the Crown Range Road which offered us spectacular views
We stayed in Queenstown for 3 days and the manager upgraded us to a three bedroom apartment. The kids were thrilled to be able to spread out. It was the nicest apartment yet! We enjoyed walking around the town. We rode the gondola up the mountain and then rode on the luge. The kids had a blast. We took a stroll by the harbor and the botanical gardens.
From Queenstown we left very early and made our way to Milford Sound to see the ever famous Mitres Peak. The drive was once again beautiful to Milford Sound. There were waterfalls, mirror lakes, grassy knolls and snow capped mountains. We drove through the Homer Tunnel which is at a fairly steep grade for 3/4 mile. It is one lane and there was a stop light to help the flow of traffic. Up to this point we had incredible weather but this day it was very overcast. I am thankful it didn't rain though! We then went to the dock to board our boat to do the Milford Sound tour. When checking in I asked if the boat was pretty full so they moved us to another boat with only about 2o other people versus 150 people! The boat also included a stop an an underwater conservatory where we could observe the marine life.

The Wine Cave

Lake Wanaka

View from Mt. Iron

Ready for the luge (Queenstown)

Lake Wakatipu~Queenstown

Queenstown Botanical Gardens~Logan helping Emily up the tree

Homer Tunnel-Milford Sound

Mitres Peak, Milford Sound

New Zealand- part 4

Before planning this trip I had no idea that New Zealand had glaciers. Just another thing that makes New Zealand such incredible country. The two most famous glaciers are the Fox Glacier and the Franz Joseph Glacier. We arrived for our half day glacier hike at 8:45 am, well more like 8:55 am because we can never be anywhere on time! When we arrived they told us that Emily may not be tall enough to go on the hike. But after a manager came and spoke with us and Emily they decided to let her go. We were in the slow group which consisted of mostly folks in there 60's and 70's and our family. We had to get all the necessary equipment which consisted of boots, wool socks, a gortex jackets and our spikes for our boots. We boarded the bus and drove about 10 minutes to the park. It was probably a rough 40 minutes to the base of the glacier. We climbed up steep paths where there often streams of water flowing. Sometimes we hiked along the river bed where chunks of ice from the glacier could be found. Often there were waterfalls spouting of the rock faced mountains. It was just beautiful. The guide had Emily and Logan up front with him so he could help in difficult spots. They did better than I did! What a workout that day was. When we got to the base we were told we would only be hiking up about 1/4 of the way. Of course my first reaction was what a rip off but two hours later I changed my mind! At the base of the glacier we put on our spikes and got some lessons in walking and off we went. The first part was about 100 ice carved steps. They had a roped hooked in the ice for you to hold on to. There were some really steeps steps. We thought it would be cold but by this time the jackets and sweatshirts were tied around our waist, the sun was out and we were working hard. We hiked about 2 hrs the the "top" of where we were going. It was a beautiful view. The ice in some spots was the most beautiful shade of blue, it is hard to describe.

The trailMason and and ice chunk

Logan tightening the bolts that secure the rope

Emily and the waterfalls

A crevice in the glacier...love the blue color!

Franz Joseph Glacier

The base of the glacier

We were extremely exhausted after finishing up around 2pm. We head back to the Glenfern Villas and rested. The next day we began our drive to Wanaka. The drive of course had several major stops on the way. The first stop was just about 30 minutes from Franz Joseph to Lake Matheson. The lake is know for its calm water in the early morning hours where you can see the mountains reflection...an absolute mirror image! It was so beautiful. We walked around the lake which took about 1 hour. I think by this point every time the van pulled off the road the kids went into panic mode...how long of a walk this time was the question!

Mt. Cook and Mt. Tasman