Nelson: evening of nov 3, 2006

Wow. Jester here.
The boat tour was totally worth it. We declare ourselves Much Pleased. Abel Tasman Park where we took today's boat tour, was really, really beautiful. We’ve got a ton of good photos of the area.
We also had a good time talking with the tour operator, a 40-ish guy named Shaun, about cameras. He's planning on upgrading to digital later this year. They have so much FILM cameras still down here. We're a bit surprised. Kodak's film that they're trying to get rid of in the States seems to all be shipped down here. Big 40-gallon bins of film cannisters to purchase.
Shaun's use for this planned digital camera is interesting. He does some community work with a group that goes and visits really out-of-the-way Maori villages for community outreach, and he'd like to bring his digital camera (he's been using his wife's 5MP for the last year), and a little digital printer. The places they're visiting just barely know of the camera. *Maybe* one person in a village has a camera or has seen one before. So he gets great results when he offers to take a photo of someone's family and print it out. They're thrilled, and it's good for trade - he can get fruit or goods for the photo. They don't have money in those villages, but the barter is good.

NOTE to TheJester’s family – we should come back here when TheBoopster is older. The hiking and car camping is fine for families. We encountered lots of seals, and lots of sea kayakers.
The granite in this area is weirdly sheared by the plate tectonics, so it falls off in these huge artificial looking diagonal square chunks. You’ll see what we mean when we upload photos later.

For TheDoro, there’s a backpackers’ boat here in Abel Tasman National Park – it’s in permanent anchorage in a cove called, appropriately enough, "Anchorage". They offer pickups from the beach, a dorm room, dinner and breakfast then off you go tramping again. It seems to have been in permanent anchorage there for years, so we’re hoping it shows up on Google Earth.

Near Abel Tasman Natl. Park, there are these HUGE tidal plains that are exposed when it's low tide (like a 1/4 mile out). There's a nifty eco-friendly pseudo-graffitti that the locals seem to be doing: when the tide is out, they gather up a bunch of fist-sized stones, and spell out letters and symbols on the tidal flats within sight of the road. When the water comes back in, they're a different color from the seabed, and are visible through the water, which is only a foot or so deep. Normally, they're lighter, but once they've been there for a while, they get moss and stuff growing on them, and they become darker than the background seabed. Pretty cool. Also, all seem to be g-rated messages, which probably wouldn't happen in the States.

TheCleric seems to have picked up The Parsley Game (research under the heading "Penn and Teller" and ask TheBoopster’s mom for details). *sigh*. He does, however, seem to think that it can be combined with the Jedi Mind Trick ("I saw you put that on my plate." "No, you didn’t" "Yes, I did." "No, (Jedi finger gesture) you didn’t.") Doesn’t work.

A "dude, blog this conundrum": TheCleric’s meal this evening has a little short corn on the cob, but it’s drowning in the rest of the gravy. One wonders how you eat it without getting gravy everywhere. Too big to spear, too small to just gulp.

We have got to figure out a way to transport home or find in the States some of the Sweet Chili Sauce they have here. It’s really good. Not quite like the asian variants we can get in the states. It’s good, sweet, a bit hot and sour, and really, really good on Fish and Chips.
Which we have been eating regularly. weirdly, the best Fish and Chips so far was a chain restaurant called "Breakers" in Rotorua. It's got a heavy surfer ethos (tables are surfboards, dishes are called things like "the Big Kahuna Burger", etc.) The Fish and Chips there were FANTASTIC.