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Rimu tour Day 6

admin — Tue, 12 May 2009 03:32:29 +0000

It was so good to be back in Okarito for a couple days. We got to see our bosses again and sleep in the caravan for the last time. We all went kayaking on the Okarito lagoon in the morning. We’ll show you some pictures and introduce you to our awesome tour group.

Meet Stan… He’s the only one that we forgot to take a picture of Kayaking… oops sorry stan. Stan in from Tulsa, Oklahoma and has a wife and 4 children and was just about to start a new job when he got back home. Hope it’s going well!

Here’s Crispy and Jen. They are best friends that came on this trip celebrating their birthdays. This was Cripy’s 3rd Rimu trip with Active! She lives in Florida and works at Walt Dinsey World. Jen lives in Wisconsin and works for a trucking company.

the brothers… Wayne and Ben. Wayne (in front) is a web designer who lives in LA. Ben (in back) is a civil engineer who lives in LA as well. Ben is also getting married in September, so congrats!!!

Where to begin… this is Russell and Bruce. Bruce (in back) is long time friends with Stan. He lives in Tulsa as well and also has four kids… and he’s an accountant. Now about Russell. Poor Russell was the only non-american on our trip (other than our two guides). We picked on him non-stop for two weeks and he had a great attitude about it all… he pretty much just played along with it, but making us laugh the whole time. He’s an accountant as well – i guess the accountants were sticking together. In this picture they actually look good – like they know what they’re doing…

but as you can see, they had some issues… Russell apparently didn’t like to paddle, but what can you expect… he’s English! haha. It was definitely hilarious watching these two trying to figure out how to kayak.

Steve and Margaret (or Marg). This lovely couple owns Avarest B&B (www.avarestbnb.co.nz) in St. Arnaud (Nelson Lakes). They joined our trip after the hike and were an awesome addition. They know so much about the history of New Zealand and the land. It was a pleasure to get to know them!

Meet Mark. Mark has just graduated from medical school and is about to start his residency in New York. I think we all picked his brain at least once on the trip – but we were just getting him ready for the real work. Mark is specializing in dermatology. So if you’re in the New York area and have a skin condition, we just happen to know someone who might be able to help!

Here’s Jamie. Jamie is a C-17 pilot who used to work for the AirForce. She attended the AirForce Academy in CO, but now lives in Charleston, SC. She was probably the most fit person on this trip – other than our guides. She would go for long runs at least every other day if not more. It kinda makes you realize how in shape you can be…

And lastly, we have Scott. Scott is a fellow Texan! He is an engineer and lives in Dallas. He loves his steak and potatoes and also celebrated his birthday on this trip.

So that is everyone (except Ben and Cristina our guides) who were on our tour. They are all amazing people and am so glad we got to meet them all!
As for us, Colin and I had a pretty relaxing kayak on the lagoon. We mainly wanted to photograph everyone else. BUT, we did go in this little inlet that looked pretty cool, and this beautiful black swan came out. At first she was just squawking really loud, but then she kept coming closer and i seriously thought we were going to get attacked. But thank goodness she was just trying to get away and flew right by us. We almost missed the picture, as you can see, but the bird was flying parallel to the kayak so we were just feet away from each other!

The rest of the day in Okarito was nice and relaxing. It just rained a bit towards the end of the day. Rebecca and Shawn threw us a little goodbye party and made an awesome dinner of lamb shanks with pesto mashed potatoes and homemade tiramisu. YUM.

By Colin and Andre’a Feldhaus

5 mile beach

admin — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 23:23:41 +0000

Colin and I (Andre’a) headed down to 5 mile lagoon to go kayaking again. The day we went was just beautiful. We really wanted to spend a little more time at this beautiful lagoon before we left. However, this time we went, five mile lagoon happened to be open (meaning it was flowing out to the ocean) and we needed to cross it to get to the kayaks. The current was very strong and we almost gave up hope of going kayaking. Lucky for us, Colin doesn’t give up very easy and found that he could wade across closer to the surf where the water spread. I was sitting in my saddened state of mind hunched over on a rock when all the sudden i see Colin running on the opposite side of the lagoon… and not even wet! It was a hilarious moment and thank goodness it wasn’t a wasted 5 hour return walk to get there.

These are some Pukeko birds. We have some that we see at the hostel.

There were some amazing views of the Franz Josef glacier.

Some history of 5 mile…
Five mile lagoon used to be a rather large gold mining town. (And by large, i mean bigger than Okarito or Franz Josef.) Anyway, after awhile, the gold dried up and then the town died. Now when you look at the area, you won’t really see any traces of a town that used to be. weird. BUT… when we were kayaking, we found these posts. What you can’t see in the pictures is that it is holding a broken pipe of some kind. I imagine maybe a water pipe to the houses… but who knows. The pipe was broken in the middle where we took these pictures of the glacier.

On the hike back to 3 mile lagoon there is a sand dune that Colin has been dying to climb up for months. Since this was our last trip out here, we thought we’d get it done.

These last two are of 3 mile lagoon.

5 mile lagoon

admin — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 07:13:20 +0000

I think this about sums it up…

Here are some more pictures. (all taken with my point and shoot… don’t judge me….)

by, Colin Feldhaus

the other side of the Okarito lagoon

admin — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 07:05:37 +0000

A couple of weeks ago the Okarito Lagoon closed up. Usually the water flows from the lagoon into the ocean or the other way around (depending on the tides). But every once in a while it gets blocked up by sand…. and no one knows why. It just does. But when it gets blocked off you can walk across to the other side of the lagoon on the “land bridge”… or take the quad bike like we did (it’s much faster than walking). It was sweet going over there because it looks totally different than on our side of the lagoon. There are great views of the mountains and it is just neat-o. Here is a panoramic shot from over there.

That concludes the photography for today.

Colin and Andre”a Feldhaus

sunset from the trig on a clear night

admin — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 06:42:28 +0000

I promised more pictures. Here they are. This was seriously the most fantastic (photographically speaking… if that is even a word) night that we have seen in Okarito. And, as it were, there were 2 other photographers up at the same location. They looked much more professional that I did. One was shooting a medium format hasselblad, and the other was shooting a nikon D3. It was interesting to talk with these other photogs because we were all at the same location, at the same time and we had 3 completely different ways of capturing the moment. The hassablad guy was shooting panoramics, the D3 guy was shooting HDR (high dynamic range) photos, and I was shooting the big scene and planning to stitch together to make a massive image (the one on the previous post), and capture a great sunset. As it turns out the guy shooting the D3 was Andy Belcher (here), and he was staying at our hostel for a week. It was really neat getting to know him and see the images that he captured around the area. He was very much an inspiration to me. He even let me use one of his lenses (70-200vr), i must have one. Well that is a little story for you. Hope you enjoyed it. Now on with the pictures….
Note from Andre’a: Three serious photographers at the same small lookout area, all trying to capture the same thing, at the same moment… can get a little intense. It was interesting to watch them all try not to scream at each other to move out of the way. They all had great attitudes – even if the air was tense. I opted to hang out on the bench talking with another one of the wives… a good way to stay out of the way!

Look how cool this sunset is….

This is with the 70-200vr lense, and I am pretty sure it is at 2.8… wow it is razer sharp.

It was nearly dark when I took this picture, but I think it came out way cool (pun intended).

By: Colin Feldhaus

the seals

admin — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 06:28:24 +0000

Andre’a and I have figured out that if you do the 3 mile lagoon walk on the beach close to high tide, you have to climb on rocks to get past, but you also have a high chance of seeing some seals. We saw 2 seals on this trip and luckily enough we had the camera ready for them.

This was the first seal we saw that day. He was pretty far away.

We got really close to this one, I would say probably 20 meters or so away.

by Colin Feldhaus

more beach

admin — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 06:19:05 +0000

I know, I know. It has been ages since my last blog…. but I have been having some computer problems. Well, not really computer problems, more like power problems for my computer. Thank goodness for applecare. I got a new power supply and a new battery. Now she is good as new…. maybe even better than new.

Well, it has been really busy around here in Okarito. We have been having lots of tour groups come through and when they are not here the place usually sells out. Keeps us occupied.

Pictures. All of these pictures were taken the same night. The sunset was super cool and we got to witness it from the beach. The colors were amazing! I read somewhere that a great photograph has to have a great subject, if that is the case here are some great photographs. I am working on a HDR image of the sunset and I will post it when I figure out how to work with 32bit photoshop files. maybe….

by Colin Feldhaus

stars

admin — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 06:17:50 +0000

Here are the stars in New Zealand on the longest day of the year. I think it turned out really cool. I like how high up in the sky the stars rotate around. I think it is because we are so far south. I took this picture using 30 second exposures and combining them in photoshop. In all, there were around 25 images used. I had to get a rubber band and a rock to hold down my shutter button for that long. I felt like a real MacGyver… ah, I miss that show. I also, while I was in photoshop added a little texture. Hope you enjoy the picture as much as I enjoyed making it.

Colin Feldhaus

Last day to whitebait

admin — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 05:48:49 +0000

The last day of whitebait season. We figured we couldn’t live on the west coast of New Zealand for 6 months right in the middle of whitebaiting season, and not give it a go. So on the very last day, at the wrong tide, we tried…. and were VERY unsuccessful! But we did it and got some pictures, and that’s what matters.

Andre’a makes it look alot harder than it actually is. But she might tell you differently… This is where she pulls up the big “puddin” as they call it… or not…

Note from Andre’a – This picture really does not give justice as to how difficult this really is… especially when the tide is against you. It’s so hard to keep the net straight in the water without the tide pulling it sideways. And as weird as it sounds, the water really does weigh down the net, making it very heavy to pull up. Colin struggled too, he just won’t admit it!!!

Note from Colin – I told you that is what she would say, and it was easy for me.

See, look how easy I make it look.

I caught a whitebait and Andre’a didn’t!!! I found this little crab and put him in the bucket. It was only after playing with him a little while, did I notice that he was actually eating a whitebait fish…

Another note from Andre’a – I don’t think catching a crab in a bucket and it just happened to be eating a whitebait fish… counts as actually catching one. So, the final count of whitebait we caught was….0!

by Colin Feldhaus

general last light photography

admin — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 00:53:27 +0000

Andre’a and I are really excited about our days off this week. The weather is… well lets say… not rainy. The rain tends to go in weekly cycles that have been happening to hit on our days off, but not this week. We are going to head north to the pancake rocks…. and that is really all I know for now. they look really cool.

here are some shots I took a couple weeks ago at last light around town.

I just loved how the sunlight just kissed the wharf. it was really nice.

By Colin Feldhaus