Microblog

Breakfast at Open Book: coffee, crumb cake, mittens. Ready for a Minnesota winter.

San Francisco SFO heading for UA 5932 to MSP.

A 7-hour hike around San Francisco was our antidote for jet lag. At the Pacific Ocean, fog probably rendered this camera obscura ineffective.

On board, AKL—SFO UA916. 12 hours 20 minutes.

On our Waiheke Island hike: a geodetic marker, with Auckland visible in the distance. We’re spending our last two nights in New Zealand on this island, a 35-minute ferry ride from downtown Auckland.

Posted Snapshots: Whanganui National Park.

Today, a jet boat brought us back to a world with Internet and roads. 3 days earlier I maneuvered our rental car along a narrow, winding road, avoiding recent rockfalls. At Pipiriki, New Zealand, a jet boat came to take us up the Whanganui River to the Bridge to Nowhere Lodge.

Walked towards clouds, looked at small things.

The summit of Mount Taranaki peeked through the clouds as we hiked lower paths.

Posted Snapshots: Egmont National Park.

Egmont National Park, Day 2 of 4. After yesterday’s Big Climb, we eased back and hiked lower-altitude forest tracks starring numerous waterfalls and furry trees hosting mosses and epiphytes.

Clambered, sometimes on all fours, over volcanic scree to reach this hut at 6,450 feet. We turned around at the hut and rode the scree back down. We’d need ice axes, crampons, and the skill to reach the summit of Mount Taranaki at 8,261 feet.

Our room for the next few nights in a small lodge built in 1896 half-way up a mountain. Many of the electrical outlets are DC, powered by possibly the oldest operating hydroelectric generator in the southern hemisphere.

On our Wellington urban hike: a glimpse of the ferry we took last night for a four-hour journey from the South Island.

Tasted the wines of five Marlborough wineries with friends from Oregon. We hired a driver.

Hiked above and beyond Picton, a port on New Zealand’s South Island. Tomorrow evening we take one of these ferries to Wellington on the North Island.