Holiday Photos #1

Here we have the first installment of our holiday photos. To see the photos in the second installment, you'll have to wait for a post that is shortly coming out.

We went away for a fortnight. We stayed in Westport (a little town on the West Coast of the South Island of New Zealand) for five days, then went to Nelson (top of the South Island) where we stayed with our grandparents for nine days.

To view any of the photos bigger, simply click on them.

All of the following photos are from our time in Westport. Apologies for the number of photos, I was trying to have as few posts as possible on this subject because I personally hate massively long series (e.g. installment #8, two more photos... and so on :P) So I've managed to squish them into two posts, but each post has lots of photos. I'm sure you won't mind. Anyway, you don't get to choose. :P

This is my favourit-est photo of all the holiday photos. Isn't it (and Jacob) cute? It reminds me of a hobbit house, for those of you LoTR lovers! It's at Mitchells Gully, a historic gold mine.

The entrance to Mitchell's Gully

You go on a walk that takes you around Mitchells' Gully, the old gold mine, and see lots of old relics left over from the gold rush. You also get to walk through lots of tunnels, like the one the boys are about to enter.

Inside a tunnel

This is a cool photo! From left: Lydia, Danella, Johnny, Mum, Caleb, Sophie, Ben, Dad and Jacob. They are all standing in tunnel openings.

An old stamping battery, used to get gold out of sandstone

Lydia

This is at a little bay we stopped at. I don't remember the name of it. 

Carter's Beach, where we stayed while we were in Westport. Dad and Jacob having fun.

We went to Cape Foulwind (seal colony) and walked along a ridge path over a cliff looking out onto a bay. This is Danella and Lydia.

The view from the track

A small portion of the track (it took us an hour or so to walk the whole thing)

All the walkers except for yours truly who was behind the camera - L-R - Ben, Caleb, Sophie, Danella, Lydia, Mum, Johnny.

Sophie in front of the house where we stayed (see our van parked in the carport and all our stuff under the other one? We did move all our stuff, don't worry.)

This photo is from Denniston. It's a historic coal mine on a mountain. It's famous for the Denniston Incline, the top of which is shown here. It's a 45 degree slope down the side of the mountain, which the miners used to get coal from the top to the bottom. It's a fascinating place to visit. We only have this one photo of it unfortunately! It was really foggy as the top of the mountain is virtually always in cloud as you can see.

We did this walkway up Charming Creek. (Isn't that such a cool name!) Here is Dad, Jana and Jacob on the swingbridge from which you can see an amazing waterfall. The walk took about two hours.

And... the waterfall. You can't get the full benefit of it unless you see it in real life!

Stay tuned for installment two.... coming soon!