Bucy Family Fun

This entry is from a few days ago, but due to internet difficulties is only being posted now...and of course, with irritating random symbols. Sorry about that!

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Where to begin, where to begin.

I致e put myself, yet again, in that irritating situation where I have too much to write about! So I will pull out a few highlights from the past week for you:

The whole Bucy family made it to NZ, without too much difficulty. There was a teeny bit of difficulty, of course. Mom and Dad somehow (and don稚 ask me how) booked themselves on different travel itineraries from Nashville to Christchurch, NZ. Mom was to fly to Denver, then San Francisco; Dad was to fly to Chicago, then San Francisco; and in San Francisco, they were to get onto the same flight to Auckland, and then onto Christchurch.

Well, Dad痴 silly flight from Chicago to SF was delayed by about three hours, so・e missed the flight leaving SF to NZ. They had had a marital pow wow ahead of time ・whether one should go on if another got left behind ・and decided that yes, one should go on. So Mom, arriving with plenty of time to catch the flight to NZ, came ahead, arriving in Christchurch around 8 AM on the Tuesday before Christmas. By some Christmas miracle, father dear made it onto another flight from SF to Sydney to Christchurch, so his arrival came a few hours later, around 3 PM on the same day. His luggage, of course, did not manage to arrive with him, though it was found and delivered to Akaroa by noon the following day. Not too shabby, all things considered!

John came two days earlier, directly from SF, so he had zero problems and spent a couple days in Christchurch, touring around on his own.

Our time in Akaroa was great. Christmas Eve morning was spent, rather untraditionally, swimming with the dolphins in the Akaroa Harbor. Here in our harbor, we have the densest population in the world of a rare species of dolphin called Hector痴 Dolphins. The tourism industry has naturally taken advantage of this fact by taking eager tourists out into the bay on boats, waiting til a pod of dolphins has been spotted, and then throwing the tourists into the water to play with the dolphins.

Mom, John, Bjorn, and I all donned very attractive wetsuits (Dad decided he would just be a spectator), and we were off! We spotted the dolphins very quickly and easily, so the boat parked itself, and one by one, we made our way into the water. Mom stayed in the water for about 30 seconds, before climbing back into the boat, and I can completely sympathize ・the water was FREEZING! And even though they had told us that the water would only feel cold for a few minutes, until our wetsuits had properly warmed us, the water still does take your breath away, and when you can稚 breathe, it痴 hard to rationalize that if you値l just continue to not breathe for a few minutes, it will all be just fine. So Mom and Dad stayed on the boat, which worked out well, because they were able to take millions of pictures of us swimming with the dolphins!

The dolphins wanted to play, and though we were told not to touch them, it was plenty exciting to just watch three of them swimming right towards you, then at the very last minute, separate, and dive under and around you. And, to my surprise, it wasn稚 just like the dolphins came, played for a minute, and then went on their way. They stayed with us for about an hour! It was wild!

Christmas morning, we went to a service at the local Presbyterian Church. Overall, the service was, well, sweet. There were probably 40 people present, we sang a few of the traditional hymns, as well as one Maori one, we listened to Christmas stories, and ate small pieces of a homemade Christmas cake, a favorite tradition of this particular church. I was sort of giggly during the whole service ・the piano player was all over the place, hitting more wrong notes than right ones, and the reading of the main Christmas story was taken from 典he Rhyme Bible・(I will leave that to your imaginations). But, like I said, it was sweet. Far from the pomp of the Westminster Christmas Eve service, but sweet and genuine. And there was a moment at the very end of the service, when the minister stretched his hands out to the tiny congregation and spoke the same words that the ministers at Westminster conclude with, and I just felt my the hairs on my body stand straight up, rippled with goosebumps. It痴 always a jolting sensation to realize how similar things can be when so far away.

The weather was terrible for the rest of the afternoon, which was disappointing to Bjorn and me, as we were eager to show off the beauty of our surrounding bays, but these things are out of our control, I suppose!

I did, interestingly, receive a personal invitation to Steve痴 family痴 Christmas Day barbecue ・extremely decent and kind of him, I thought. So we spent Christmas night with the Bradleys, as well as the other homeless restaurant staff.

The next morning we were off to Queenstown. We made it by 7 PM on Friday night, after a gorgeous ・though slightly long ・drive. Queenstown is quite a bit bigger than Akaroa, but is still pretty small, with a population of about 8500. It sits on the edge of the huge Lake Wakatipu and is supposed to be the Adventure Capital of the World, mostly because the first bungee jump ever was performed there. They do have all kinds of adventurey things to do, though I can稚 say the family Bucy was too eager about those. We stuck to relaxed boat rides, hikes up to stunning views, wandering about the local cemetery, and a little fine dining.

Sunday was to be a big day for us. I had booked us all to go on a 擢ly Cruise Fly・tour of Milford Sound, the number one tourist attraction in New Zealand. We were going to fly into Milford on a small airplane, take a boat cruise on the sound, and then fly back to Queenstown, all in about 4 hours. Well, the weather in Milford is constantly rainy. I think it rains there like 350 days a year or something. So I shouldn稚 have been surprised when, on the morning of our flight, the tour company called to say that they wouldn稚 be flying that day due to weather. Ugh!

But we were up and at 粗m, so we decided to just make the 4.5 hour drive to Milford, take the cruise, and drive ourselves back. I have to say that I am actually really glad that we ended up driving, because the drive was beautiful. At this time of year, lupine, a sort of conical flower, blooms all over the place around NZ. And I mean, ALL OVER THE PLACE! Fields of this one flower stretch for miles and miles down the sides of the highway, and huge patches of it frame the rivers running down the road into Milford. Deep purple, lilac, pink, ivory, and yellow blossoms mix with each other at random, creating this awesome and quite unbelievable burst of color.

And finally arriving into Milford Sound was quite amazing. The scenery changes gradually from farmland to forest to rainforest, and suddenly, you drive out of the rainforest, and find yourself staring out at these huge gray walls of stone that rise up and up and up before disappearing into the low lying clouds. Fat, white streams of water cascade down the face of the mountains, coming from some mysterious place in the clouds, totally invisible to the viewer.

To support the tourist industry (or for some other reason I don稚 know), a tunnel was drilled (drilled!) through some of these mountains, creating a pass into Milford Sound. It would otherwise be rather unreachable. On either side of the tunnel is a traffic signal, which changes every fifteen minutes, telling one direction of traffic that it痴 okay to GO! Not sure I壇 want to go through that tunnel after 6 PM, when they turn the signals off. Yikes.

We boarded a little boat in the rain and took off into the misty sound. After just a few minutes on the boat, the rain stopped, so we were able to go up onto the top of the boat and take it all in. It was really stunning. (And I have photos!) The cruise passed very quickly, though all I did was stand up there drool at the scenery. Rushing waterfalls pouring down lush, green mountains into the steely grey water. The moistness of the air. The fine, white mist spraying from the waterfalls. The full rain clouds hiding the tops of the mountains. It was like nothing I致e seen before.

We made it back to Queenstown that night with little trouble, tired, but energized by the day痴 incredible sights. At least I was ・I should not speak for the family!

And the following morning, I boarded a bus to bring me back to Christchurch. Brother John痴 plane back to SF left later that afternoon. And now Mom and Dad are cruising up the West Coast! I hope they are having a good time! They値l be in Christchurch tomorrow and I値l have three nights to hang out with them before they head back to Tennessee on Monday.

So, so, so. The family adventure in NZ is now (almost) over, another Christmas has passed, it痴 2009. I can稚 even begin with what a year 2008 was. What a year! And though I致e been a bit slacking on the blog lately, I am so glad to have this record of the year. I知 going to have a big sit down with it next week, on the anniversary of my leaving New York, and read it all!

I hope everyone has had a wonderful Christmas. Happy New Year to you all! And much love.