13 more, and that concludes the weekend

With daylight savings ending during the night we had an extra hour to work with this morning and despite sitting around chatting with Carl and Miriam and Shirley at home, we still got to church early! Got to love the earlier daylight. Sat listening to the worship team at practice and thoroughly enjoyed the more contemporary style of music. Miriam says I'm always doing sneaky things with the camera - would this be one of those times? Nick preached his earthquake message (follow the link top left for a full manuscript) to a fairly full church; although some of their regulars were away, they had several visitors (including us - we practically filled a whole pew!). After church and much chatting and getting to know more people, we left for a picnic lunch before the long drive back to Timaru. The preferred and preplanned spot at the beach would have been great had a light rain not started - the boat pictured is cement and contains wooden picnic tables on the deck. Plan B was a covered spot a bit further inland which was ideal. I'm told it rains a lot on the West Coast but I'm starting to think this is a conspiracy theory as we had the most amazing weather the whole of Friday and Saturday, with just the tiniest bit of gentle rain today. What a blessing though as we could not have done all our exploring with sheets of water falling from the sky. And then, we were off. Thank you again so much Carl and Miriam for hosting us, and Peter and Harry for sharing your special climbing place and showing Caleb and Aaron your room! It was really a most interesting and relaxing and enjoyable weekend. The drive home was uneventful apart from me being super-stressed around the death corners again and wishing it was over! We noticed these red-painted rocks and plants on the way to Hokitika and wondered aloud why they had been painted. Shirley suggested (without a hint of making us feel silly) that the red colouring came from these little red-headed lichen growing on them. The red blobs are only as big as a pin head but together they obviously make a pretty good show.Had some amazing weather again and very beautiful skies. Dropped Shirley off home around 6, making it a 4h20 journey.