Ferns

New Zealand is all about ferns.  Specifically the silver fern.  Check out the image below.  It's the International Symbol for New Zealand (I'm making that up).  But in real life it is a self-selected symbol of New Zealand, especially for their international athletic teams.  Because the whole place is covered in ferns.  See this list of ferns in New Zealand: thanks for the link, Te Papa!

This is at the top of the South Island, and probably half of the plants in this picture are ferns.  Little ferns, giant ferns, ferns that look like trees, ferns that look like animals.  If you told me that every plant in this photograph was a fern, I would believe you.

Fern that look like trees.  This was shot with the photographing machine pointed straight up into the air.

I don't even know what this is, so I bet it's a fern.  Some sort of weird, weird prehistoric-type fern.

When I made this photograph, I thought it was just cool-looing moss, but it might be a strange mossy fern.

Dried fern, or fern that is supposed to look like this?  I don't know!  It wasn't crunchy like you'd expect a dead fern to be...

Giant tree ferns!

The Ferry into Picton, Appropriately Colored!

Ah!  These photos are from the point after which I realized the white balance was not right.

Passing the ferry headed in the opposite direction, from Picton to Wellington.

Having safely and easily arrived in the South Island, we picked up our suitcases and our rental car.  We ended up with an adorable little silver thing, who will feature heavily in future stories.

All three of us were registered as drivers, though in reality Rachel would be the consistent navigator and the driving would alternate between Katie and I.  So, I was the first one behind the wheel, which was located on the right side of the car.  

Other conservators had arrived for holidays prior to the conference, and had rented cars.  Their advice to us was essentially, "You'll be fine - just ignore your instincts."  Which was right.  You'd be laughing, ready to turn, and whoops!  Hit the wind shield wiper toggle instead of the turn signal...

We practiced by taking a short turn around the parking lot.  All was successful, so we headed out into the world!  

Directly to a grocery store, to stock up our Mobile Pantry!

Illicit Venom.

Puppy Food.  If I had a puppy, I would feed it this exact food, because I would have this exact puppy.  This brand's adult dog food had an adult black lab on it, and an older dog food with a white-muzzled black lab on it.  Sold.  I'd buy this for my (hypothetical) black lab.  Advertising win.

I wouldn't fee this to any puppy of mine.  What's the 'meat' component in all of these different flavors?

Sanitarium makes a huge range of foodstuffs for people: it must be like the Kraft of New Zealand.  They make this repulsive yeast-based spread called Marmite, a New Zealand version of Vegemite, that goes on toast and stuff.  Sanitarium and Marmite have been in the news recently: the one Marmite factory in Christchurch was damaged by the big earthquake, so there had been massive shortages, and Kiwis were depressed.  But!  The shop is finally up and running: read it here!

But man, Sanitarium.  Non-ideal name selection!

Okay, more dog food.  It was just so funny!  Click on it and read the names, and try not to laugh.  

Hound Log.  Dog Roll.  Wag.  Bruno.

Apparently they also make them for people.  Codename: luncheon.

We tried to get Rachel to purchase some Tofu Luncheon, but it kind of did look like a roll of vomit...

On Holiday!!! And I Forget to Change the White Balance...

The conference ended on Friday, and early Saturday morning co-worker Rachel and I met our friend Katie (also featured in New Mexico last spring) for a week of road-tripping across the South Island.  It seemed like it would be a pain, and unnecessarily expensive, to take a rental car across to the South Island via ferry when we could just pick one up there.  So that's what we did.  Rode the ferry as normal people, avoided the car crunch, and picked up on rental on the other side.

From the ferry's top deck, headed out from Wellington.

I had to tinker too much with these photos: I accidentally had the white balance on the camera wrong and the color was all wacky.  They're still kind of cray-cray, but I've mostly accepted it.

We're approaching the South Island!

Wellington

Our suitcases arrived, the sun came out, and our talk went great.  Time to enjoy Wellington worry-free!

The conference venue, Te Papa.

The lecture hall was lovely, and the conference so well-put together, they really outdid themselves.  I would go into specifics, but it would be too dorky.  Excellent workshops, excellent tours.  Picture below is the balcony off of the tea-time reception space.

The opening reception was held at the National Library of New Zealand, where we were formally welcomed in a Maori welcoming ceremony.  We were all led in quietly together (all 150 conference attendees) by a Te Papa conservator.  The Library staff was collected together inside, and one of the Maori women on staff was singing a song, asking if we were friends or foes.  Our leading conservator, also a Maori woman, sang back that we were friendly.  The welcoming singer then had us all come in and sit down together.

After that, we had a long speech/prayer/intention, first in Maori and then in English, about the conference, the goals, the participants.  Then more brief speeches by the director of the library (the equivalent of our Librarian of Congress) and the minister of culture.  After a second song by the entire Library staff, we were expected to sing a song in return!  In Maori!  Such pressure...  We'd been handed little slips of paper with the words printed on them, and told the tune would be "How Great Thou Art," no doubt to make things easy for us.  After the song, wine, aperitifs, and freedom to wander (food and drink free, of course) through the exhibits on the ground floor.

Te Papa is right on the water. 

Never fear: there are gaps in the dock where you can leap right into the harbor.

Suspended fern sculpture above a courtyard outside the Wellington town hall.

Suitcase Woes, and Cable Car Fun

Going to New Zealand, you cross the international date line, so in addition to being on an airplane forever, you also loose an entire day.  Once you reach your destination, you're very excited to get your things and clean up.  A fine plan, as long as your suitcase arrives when you do...

My co-worker Rachel and I purchased our flying tickets together, and our other co-worker Barb purchased hers separately.  However, surprise surprise, we all ended up sitting in a row together from Philadelphia to LA.  Once in LA, we'd go our separate ways, both ultimately ending in Wellington, the capital of New Zealand.

This was easy enough, and should have involved a nice, dull four-hour layover in LAX.  Instead our plane was over an hour late arriving in Philadelphia, and was a corresponding hour-plus late departing.  And after we boarded the plane, taxing down the runway, the pilot explained how airplanes have fuel tanks in the wings.  This particular airplane, why one of the fuel tanks was broken!  Funny thing, we'd have to stop in Kansas City to refuel, or else the flight would not make it to LA.  So we rode on a busted plane.  Was there no other unbroken plane in the whole of the Philadelphia airport to borrow?  No.

The Kansas City stop took and hour, and once we finally arrived in LA we sat on the runway for 45 minutes while we waited for a parking spot.  This was eating far into our layover time...

Once we finally got off the airplane, we ran out of security, outside from Terminal 1 to Terminal 3, got our new boarding passes and explained to the Virgin Australia people how our flight was late and that our luggage would be hard pressed to make it.  They sighed, said they'd do what they could, and went home (it was 10:00 pm, and they had been keeping the desk open, waiting for only us).  We booked it through security again and ran to the next plane.

After an uneventful flight to Brisbane, Australia, and from there to Wellington, we looked hopefully for our luggage.  No go.  Sadness.  We bought a few small items in Wellington - the Virgin Australia representative said that our bags would probably arrive the next morning, and we figured that as soon as we bought things, they'd arrive.

The next day, no luggage.  No messages from anyone, only answering machines.  Co-worker Barb, whose luggage was also lost, had her bag returned the very next day.  I figure the problem was with US Air, who had shuttled us on that horrid flight to LA.  That they were not communicating properly with Virgin Australia.  But how to contact them from New Zealand?  The solution: email Mum all the details and let her loose on the culprits.

Only Mum knows who she had to scold, but our bags were located and sent on their way to Wellington, arriving luckily the morning of the first day of talks.  Honestly, I think if she hadn't called, those doofuses would still have our luggage, we never would have gotten it.  I never want to travel with US Air again!

For a short and sad time, it seemed that the outfit pictured below would be my New Zealand Conference Outfit.  It's a perfectly fine dress, but in happy times, I would not wear it with blue sneakers.

While our luggage had not yet arrived, Rachel and I attempted to cheer ourselves by taking the Wellington Cable Car to admire the city from the high ground!

At the top were a number of nice overlooks and a huge botanical garden.

Sneakers.  I like you, but not as conference-wear.

An Update and a Promise

Where have I been?  Mostly in my apartment, baking madeleines, hosting my own single-viewer Jane Austen film adaptation movie marathon, the usual.

But more importantly, I was getting ready for a paper that my co-workers and I were going to present at a major conference in Wellington, New Zealand!  

I have well over 600 photographs from this trip, so stay tuned, and sooner or later I'll post an extensive blow-by-blow on my excursion to Middle Earth.  Promise.

Animals Other than Buffles

I saw plenty of animals aside from buffles, but not nearly as many.

This is, Wikipedia tells me, a Lady Elk.

There's a little white canine-ish guy in the mid-ground.  I think he was a coyote.  He was pretty far away, but one wandered much closer by while I was at some boiling mud bogs.  I was just too slow when it came to operating the photographing machine at that moment...

And heading out of Yellowstone, this time through the North Gate, back into Montana.