Following a Sunday of transfer from Christchurch to Hanmer Springs we got settled in with our friends and had an invigorating Monday with a morning bike trip on a forest trail ...
...where we encountered this simple but very sturdy and inexpensive bike rack, complete with good anchors for the wire locks.
The afternoon was busy with another bike trip and a tramp up and down through the dense forest to visit a waterfall.
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| Local freshwater mermaids. |
Along the tramping trail there were multitudes of wonderful plants, especially ferns. New Zealand has an unusually high number of fern species for a temperate country. There are about 200 species (80 of which are endemic to NZ), ranging from 10 m high tree ferns to tiny, filmy ferns just 20 mm long.
Alas, my botanical knowledge is rather limited when it comes to "fernology". The purpose of the following photos is just to convey to you the beauty of the fern forms and the 50 shades of green with which these ancient plants adorn Nature.
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| Mother Spleenwort / Hen-and-Chicken Fern (Asplenium bulbiferum). |
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| Maidenhair Spleenwort (Asplenium trichomanes). |
The only "snakes" in this paradise were the miniscule, but highly energetic and hungry sandflies. Below is a female digging right into my leg's fleshy buffet.
An unfed sandfly female can lay up to 12 eggs, but if she can get just one drop of blood, she can produce around 100 eggs. On a full blood meal, she may leave behind hundreds of successors. Nobody has ever seen a male sandfly do anything at all, let alone just eating anything. Obviously, the males play their role in the sexual propagation of the species, but otherwise, their life is a mystery to science.
If these black female midgets can't get a bloody meal they will have to suffice lapping up nectar from flowers of the Lancewood (Pseudopanax crassifolius) in their neighbourhood.
Today's tale from Nature ends with the fun tail end of a Fantail.
. . .
In the evening we dined with friends at the local top-notch restaurant MK. The meal was gastronomic art at its very best.
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| Red beet soup (barszcz) with dumplings (pierogi) and many well-spiced vegetables with surprising tastes. (Photo: R. Frankland) |
And another fine day in Hanmer Springs came to an end.
