Lake Tekapo and Mt. John's Observatory Hike

After our night at Peel Forest, we headed out on the road (after a stop for a flat white and some baked goods) with the ultimate goal of reaching Mt. Cook/Aoraki National Park (seemingly everything in New Zealand has a Maori name and a European name), with a few stops along the way as we wound our way around Lakes Tekapo and Pukaki (tee hee).

Some shots from the drive... this is before I realized that taking photos through the windshield was not ideal:

Sheep!

Fall colors!

Our pit stop/hiking break for the day was the beautiful Lake Tekapo... on Steve and Colleen's advice, we hiked up to the Mt. John Observatory, the long/scenic way (Mt. John Summit via Lakeshore)... gorgeous!!!  We didn't get the spring lupines they did, but the fall colors were pretty stunning, too.

Those colors and mountains are amazing, eh?  This was one of my favorite hikes of the whole trip... stunning views around every corner.  

Sigh... so purty:

Here's my homemade panorama:

Clouds.  Lots of clouds. New Zealand has some crazy, fast-moving clouds:

After all the pretty mountain views, you loop back around through a cool pine forest:

And back to lakes and mountains:

New Zealand!

A week ago Tim and I returned from a 2-week stint on New Zealand's beautiful South Island. All I can say it: amazing.  Scenery, scenery, scenery.  Everywhere you look, amazing scenery.  Picture the scenery from the Lord of the Rings: huge snow capped mountains, beautiful blue lakes, fern-filled rainforests, sheer-walled fiords, big old glaciers, rolling hills, giant gorges, more waterfalls than you've ever seen, winery after winery, miles and miles of grazing land (minus all the elves and dwarves and stuff, plus more sheep).

While we were there, we rented a campervan (RV for us Americans) and toured around the island, generally following Colleen and Steve's itinerary of sight-seeing, hiking, pie-eating, etc., but with a few additional adventures of our own.

It was a lot of driving, and, since it was New Zealand's autumn (May 1 is the transition from summer to winter seasons, tourism-wise), we had some chilly nights huddled together in the campervan, but it was so, so worth it.  Expect lots of landscape photos over the next few weeks- I'm still sifting through them to find the gems, of which there are many.

Anyway, here's Tim drinking his morning coffee in our campervan (rented from Kiwi campers, whom we have mixed feelings about for reasons to be described in a later post!) after our first night sleeping in it.  We had arrived in New Zealand (Christchurch, specifically) mid-morning after a long red-eye from Singapore, waited in the customs line for approximately forever (they are quite thorough there!), then spent some time renting the van and stocking up on food and stuff, and then we were crashing hard, so we didn't make it very far on our first day.  We ended up camping at the Peel Forest Department of Conservation (DOC) campground, which was lovely.

Phnom Penh Traffic

Driving in Phnom Penh is an exciting experience...

Tuk-tuks and motorbikes rule the road, serving as pick-up and delivery trucks as well as buses.

Traffic lights are few and far between, leading to a phenomenon in which, at intersections, people just inch out until they are in the middle of the road and oncoming traffic can do nothing but yield.

Here's a quick taste, on our way back from our cooking class past one of the city's big markets:

Plae Pakaa: Children of Bassac Dance Show

While in Phnom Penh we decided to check out the highly rated Plae Pakaa dance show at the National Museum just around the corner from our hotel.  We went on the night that the performance presented was a medley of dances from around the country: Children of Bassac.

Pretty cool! I definitely recommend checking out the show if you're ever in Phnom Penh.

First off, the buffalo sacrafice ceremony, kab krobey phek sra, traditionally performed by the Pnong ethnic group, asking the spirits for peace and good health for the community.  I liked the drums... kind of a dope beat, huh?

Then, the beautiful Apsara dancers (remember all the Apsara carvings at Angkor?) perform classical Cambodian dance:

Look at those headdresses!!

I love the flowers in their hair:

Next, the fishing dance, Nesat, celebrating water and the livelihoods it provides.  Also, some flirting.

Next, Sovann Machha, the golden mermaid from Reamker, the Khmer version of the Ramayana.  She's the mermaid who attempts to spoil Hanuman's attempts to build a stone bridge to Lanka.

There's the eponymous mermaid:

Hanuman is like "heyyyyyy!":

This dance is the dye-crushing dance, traditionally done at wedding ceremonies:

Phloy Suoy dance, using the phloy, a bamboo instrument.  The dance is a harvest dance meant to invoke rain for crops and bring a successful harvest:

The Krama dance, showing all the different uses for the traditional and widely used Cambodian checkered scarf, including a head covering, baby sling, towel, sarong, bag...

And, finally, the Chhayam dance, a traditional Khmer dance involving the long-drum, clackers and other noise-makers.  It's a comic dance, with funny face-paint and lots of phyisical Three Stooges-style comedy: