Hamner

As you heard, today got off to a great start... Well we're both feeling a lot better now, and we just had a really nice dinner. But my net connection problems continue :( The web site for this hotel says there is broadband access in the rooms. They just forgot to say not ALL rooms, and then booked us into one without it... So now I'm sitting in an unoccupied room using the broadband here, at an outrageous price. But I was going thru withdrawal ;)

Anyway here's some pics that I haven't been able to upload till now:

http://neil.creek.name/panoramas/bridge-pano.html

This is an interactive panorama (1.5mb quicktime) taken from one of the many one lane bridges over one of the beautiful wide rivers that flow from the Southern Alps to the East. The distinctive light colour of the water is from the erosion of the mountains and the melting of snow.

http://img140.imageshack.us/my.php?image=061112052vl8.jpg

Nomi video tapes the beautiful and rugged coast on the road from Christchurch to Kaikoura.

http://img297.imageshack.us/my.php?image=061113048lx1.jpg

This is what we faught sea-sickness and 1-2m swells to see. The massive and amazing Sperm Whale, here seen beginning a rapid deep dive in search of food.

http://img295.imageshack.us/my.php?image=061113076nm9.jpg

Here you can get an idea of the size of the whales - about as long as the boats we were in to watch them - and how close we were able to get. The second boat joined us an hour into our nightmare :)

http://img139.imageshack.us/my.php?image=valleypanope0.jpg

Last photo for today, this is a 10 photo panorama looking down into one of the many deep valleys, carved by a mountain runoff river. The full size file is giant, and I may print it up to poster size one day :) These valleys and mountains are an awesome sight as you drive along the NZ highways. Hopefully we'll be seeing more and more like this as we head deeper into the mountains in the coming days.

We're heading off early tomorrow to Lake Tekapo, and we were up very early this morning too, so I need to go get some sleep. I THINK we have net access at the next place, but I thought that about here too, so who knows.

See you when we see you!