It wouldn't be a trip to New Zealand without a rugby game. Now I'm certainly not a "keen" sports fan, and I'm the last one to teach you the difference between the All Blacks, the All Whites, Black Caps and the Blues. But the local chemist kindly invited me and the girls to accompany him to the season opener of the Southland Highlanders rugby team. Unfortunately, no one can plan for the weather. We have been having very unseasonable cold and rainy weather here for February, and after the severe drought in January, we are now very close to having the local farmers complaining about TOO MUCH rain. (But at least we aren't as bad off as the poor folks on the North Island, who have been flooded out. Daily we see pictures of homes and cars filled with two feet of mud, rivers washing out bridges, "landslips", and stock washing away in the currents.) So we ended up attending our first rugby match in about 14-15 degree C. weather, with howling wind and rain. The stadium stands have a back, but we were uncovered. I had made Vicki buy a nice raincoat earlier in the week, and we took trashbags to put over our knees. But frankly, cotton clothes do not cut it in weather like this. I had on a pair of warm-ups under my jeans, 3 layers on top all under my nice gore-tex hip-length raincoat. Lesson learned: you need polypropylene "thermals" in this climate. But a little suffering while watching the game really puts you in the right mood anyway.

That's because, out on the playing field, there is a lot of suffering going on. Not that any of the players are going to let on. The game consists of two 40 minute halves, and there were only two stoppages for injuries, and in neither case was there a substitution. Geoff, the chemist, explained that mostly these were a ruse to buy a little time and regroup. The goal of rugby is to move the ball quickly down field by running or kicking. You cannot pass the ball forward in any way. So you pass it laterally or backwards. The receiver then charges up field until he slams into a defender. The SMACK of the bodies colliding is the sound I will most long remember from my first game.. There was no blood on the field that I could see, but that may have just been a function of all the blowing rain. There should have been blood. Lots of it. These guys wear no padding or helmets. And there is a reason that they call two of the major types of play a "maul" and a "ruck". Cause that is what the players do to each other. As you can imagine, it was GREAT fun. A very fast game mostly, with lots of action. As a viewer, you need to really watch where the ball is going. And there is nothing like the sight of one of YOUR guys sliding on his belly and hydroplaning into the end zone to complete a try. And oh yes, by the way, our guys WON.

Saturday the rain continued heavily, so we mostly did some shopping in Winton and stayed around the house. It has been cold enough here to need to keep the wood stove burning most of the time, to heat the house. But on Sunday, I prevailed upon the girls to drive up to Te Anau. This is a drive to the northwest, up the river valleys about 1.5 hours from Winton. Most of the drive is through farmland, past some more of NZ's 39 million (recent census) sheep. But some of it is past the Takitimu mountains, and over some tussockland into Te Anau. The small town is the headquarters for Fiordland National Park, and it is quite small- mostly an outpost for backpackers and trampers, as compared to the resort atmosphere in Queenstown. I had wanted to hike along the shore of Lake Te Anau, a deep glacial lake nestled in the mountains. The first part of the Kepler track (one of the Great Walks) has one of the only two examples of mature red beech forest left in the world, the other being in Patagonia. We drove to the start of the track and ate lunch in the car during a brief but heavy rain shower. Once this passed over, we crossed the control gates of the lake, and walked 5 km through the forest to Brod Bay. This is a fabuous forest, with a very open understory, unlike most New Zealand "bush" which is usually impenetrable. The forest was filled alternately with huge ferns, thick green moss, tree ferns, or occaisonally a segment of understory full of moss, a "goblin forest". Its a fun walk because the forest changes every 5 minutes from one type to another. All the time, you can hear the waves breaking on the lakeshore 20 meters away. The red beech are a beautiful tree, many of them I figured are 600-800 years old. We arrived at Brod Bay and had a quick bite of dessert on the beach (quick due to the sandflies deciding WE looked like dessert to them). I hiked up another 5 minutes to look at the climb from Brod Bay up to Mount Luxmore. I would dearly love to walk the Kepler track, but I'm just not sure I can physically do it with a pack- its very steep and a climb of 800 meters in about 5-6 hours. We'll see. We walked back through the forest, hopped in the car, and scooted home in time for New Zealand Idol, our Sunday night family obsession. Its kinda hokey, but a kick to watch together. And if this weather keeps up, we may know all the New Zealand commercials before we come home. (Did you know the female breast vertically bounces 8 cm without a sports bra, and only 4 cm with one? There are some very graphic commercials here you will NEVER see in Superbowl-shocked America!).