Hi All,
After a very relaxing day recuperating we got back in the saddle and were on the road again by mid-morning. We had a very scenic drive on HWY 6 over the mountain pass and to the Tasman Sea at Westport. Now the Tasman Sea is one of the roughest seas in the world and many of the bothersome SW swells we were getting in Tonga and Fiji started with the large storms in the Southern Seas coming up the Tasman Sea. Well, what we witnessed last week and again this week is a very benign and calm Tasman. It was trawler weather…..we now sort of wished we had brought Mystic down for another go of the Fiordlands!!!!
A quick stop for some groceries and we made our first stop at the “Pancake Rocks”. These are made of limestone but somehow in the process were layered….very unusual and unique. We had seen some of this formation last week but this was an excellent view!!
We then stopped in the knifemaking shop, got our B&B key and off to the house…..pretty basic house but all to ourselves. It was close to 4:00 and we were beat…..hmmm, not totally recovered yet!!
The knifemaking the next day was an experience. I can’t say it was a “wow” experience but I’m glad we did it and we learned a lot. The couple, Stephen and Robyn were a delight and worked very hard for everyone to make a good knife. Who knew that knifemaking was so intricate. The day took almost 8 hours and that was with Stephen doing some of the fine tuning and correcting mistakes…wow!! Unfortunately, imho, the class was too big so you stood around waiting too much and the instructions were often mumbled and too quick to understand….remember we have to translate the Kiwi accent:)))) Consequently, me more than Kathy, made some avoidable mistakes but all in all we think we made a “good” knife with those “homemade” features!!!! Kathy just read this and said I was way too negative and I didn’t mean to be….did we have fun, yep, are we glad we did it, yep, would we recommend to others, yep, would we do it again, maybe not!!!
After the knifemaking we went for a stroll on the beach….gorgeous views of the calm Tasman as well as the coastal mountains. We also hunted for jade greenstone….very popular with the native Maori’s back int eh day and still collected today…..we found many stones that had green and maybe jade in them but nothing that that would be a collectors item:((((
The weather has started to turn…..we have had some rain mixed with showers…..but no complaints as we have had almost ideal weather up to now, especially last week for the Heaphy trail….this week looks like quite a few days of heavy clouds and rain in the mountains!!!
Stats:
Traveled: 200 miles today; 1100 miles total!
Wrong Turns: holding at 4:))) GG is still our best friend, plus we are on the only highway along the coast so it’s hard to make any wrong turns:))))
One-Way Bridges: OMG – I quit counting at least over 100; today we had one that was blind but it had a stoplight working….TG!!!!
Food: after the many CO’s we had on the Heaphy Track nothing special since:((((
Hope all is well!!
John
Calm Tasman Sea near Wesport
Pancake Rocks – layered limestone
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Can you see the faces in the rocks??
The knifemaking class pounding the steel
Kathy hard at work……such concentration!!!
Arghhhhhh……now what am I going to do….ponder, ponder!!!!
Stephen helping out!!
Halfway done!
Stephen at work!
YES, nailed it….old guy rules:))))
The finished knifes….Kathy’s on the bottom!!
Before and after…..not too bad!!!!
All the knifes made that day!!
View from the beach!
I know I can find THE greenstone…….note the refreshment in hand:))))
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