HEY, DOES ANYONE ELSE HEAR THE THEME MUSIC FROM "JAWS"?

April 8 - Well, it serves me right for being hearty and active so early in the morning, it really does.  I was up very early this morning and everyone else was still asleep, so I decided to go for a walk on the beach.  We leave the coast today to go inland and won't be returning, so I thought one last look would be nice.  I was walking along, really enjoying the sunrise, the salty air and the sound of the pounding waves, when I thought I saw something that looked remarkably like a fin skimming along the top of the water.  As I stood there gawking, an older man walking his dog stopped beside me and said "Did you see that?"  At that point, I knew that I was not hallucinating and that there was probably a shark in the water.  I knew that there were sharks here, as there was a plaque on the walkway further up the beach commemorating the people who had been killed along that part of the coast by great white sharks.  There are also dedicated shark warning bells (yikes) along the beach.  As we stood watching, a large wave rolled up through which we could see, as clearly as anything, the shark swimming across the wave, right before it (the wave, not the shark) crashed over.  The gentleman said that he has been walking his dog on that beach every morning for 15 years and has never seen a shark there before, so that was quite a rare experience.  He told me that he was a retired fisherman, and that the shark was quite harmless to humans (I believe he said it was some kind of whale shark).  He called it in to the surf patrol anyway, however, because there were surfers in the water some way down the beach.  The surfers were in quite enough peril anyway, in my view - the waves where they were surfing were fairly high but were crashing onto some pretty scary rocks, so a bad ride would not end well at all.

The unfortunate part of this story, however, occurred because the older gentleman and I were so enraptured by what was in the water that we failed to pay any attention to where the water was actually going. Namely, up and over our shoes courtesy of a rather large rogue wave.  As I squished-squished back to the hotel, it dawned on me that someone should really make hiking shoes waterproof on the inside too.  After I managed to dry off and we had our breakfast, it was time to pack up and move on to our next destination, Queenstown.  It was going to be a fairly long drive today, so we wanted to get an early start.  This has been one of the things that I have had to get used to again  - when you are driving these very twisting, one-lane roads, it takes a lot longer to get anywhere.  Which is surprising, really, given that people here take hairpin turns at 100 km/hr without batting an eyelash.

En route, we stopped for lunch at Jimmy's, famous throughout New Zealand for its pies.  I have to say that the reputation is well deserved.  Although the pies must have been heated on the "nuclear" setting and burned off most of the skin in my mouth, the apricot pie was utterly delish.  This part of the country is basically like the Okanagan - there are orchards and wineries everywhere.  It is somewhat surprising, as it appears to be quite a dry area as well.  There were tons of fruit stands along the sides of the road, but given that it is now autumn, most of them were unfortunately closed for the season. (The orchard pictures are off Google Images, by the way.)

We arrived in Queenstown and Pete was unfortunately under the weather so the kids and I headed out to give him some peace and quiet.  We ended up at Vortex, a really neat place where you could play lazer tag or see some "12D" movies.  Naturally, I had to see what that was all about.  You actually had your own little theatre with 6 seats that moved along with the movie, for your own private "thrill ride".  Liam got the first pick and opted for a haunted house movie (a whole 5 minutes) which was actually really scary (well, to me, anyway).  It was awesome - the seats moved, air and water were blown across your face to simulate wind and rain, things reached out to grab at your feet at really intense moments.  It was so great that the kids twisted my arm and we saw four movies in total.  A roller coaster, alien sci-fi and a dune buggy race - they were all good.  We also got a great photo of a dinosaur attack - totally spontaneous, I assure you.  After that, we headed back to the hotel to get some sleep for our (hopefully) adventurous day tomorrow.