Bluff

This weekend is when New Zealand celebrates the Queen's Birthday. They call it Queen's Birthday weekend, no fancy names here. What it means is that Monday is a holiday, making this a long weekend. It's nice that the school term is halved by a long weekend.

Our weekend started with two rugby matches on Saturday morning. Sam had a game in Edendale, about 25 minutes south of us and Abby had a game in Gore. Both of the kids teams won. Sam's team played their best match of the year. Sam loves it and is right in there pushing the pile and getting after it. He comes home covered in mud needing a shower. After Abby's games, you wouldn't even know if she played or not. She's out there on the field but so far does a lot of trotting after the play. It is strange to us that our more aggressive child is very meek during rugby. Saturday was a wet and drizzly day so we did some housework(and by we I mean Samantha), and hung around the house.

Sunday morning we headed to church in more drizzle but things had cleared up by the time we got home so we headed to Bluff. Bluff is the southern most town in New Zealand. It is a quaint little village with an incredible walking trail along the coast line. It feels like you are tip-toeing along the edge of the world. We headed out for Lookout Point, a 50 minute hike one-way. We thought that this would be a good test for Samantha's knee. She found it not too bad except for the downhill sections which caused some discomfort. Abby seemed to find the walk much more difficult than the rest of us. You would have thought she hadn't eaten or had anything to drink for days the way she carried on at one point. We were pretty sure that her legs were going to fall off as well. They didn't and Abby survived quite nicely. We made it to Lookout Point just as the sun was starting to set. It made for a spectacular view. On a clear day you would be able to see Stewart Island off the coast. We were able to see parts of it but most of it was clouded in. At some point we plan to spend some time on Stewart Island. It is accessible by ferry or helicopter. We headed back towards the car at a much quicker pace fearing that we would run out of daylight. We made it just in time. On the way back to the car we experienced thunder for the first time since our arrival. There was a storm coming across the Foveaux Strait and thunder rumbled out of the storm for a good 10 seconds. Samantha loved it. Enjoy the pictures.