The Sheep farm and Traveling through the Southern Alps to Hokitika

Before I begin today’s post, just wanted too tell you about the first picture below. This was from our kayak experience yesterday and one of the Maori showed us his war stance to scare the opponent. It was pretty scary as his tongue came way out of his mouth and his eyes rolled back into his head. If I was his opponent, I would have run away for sure!!! It is called Pūkana. Women open their eyes wide and jut out their chin.

Now to tell you about today’s adventure.

We started our day visiting the Rubicon Farm, a working farm in Rubicon Valley, nestled in the Southern Alps. Our guide for the day, Chris, the owner of the farm, doesn’t own the sheep, but borrows the sheep from his neighbor so he can run his tour business and show people how the sheep get herded as well as how they get shorn.

We watched as Chris rallied the sheep in the paddock with commands with his voice to his dogs, having the dogs round up the sheep and bring them into the pen. The dogs only respond to his voice and some of us tried to give the commands to the dogs, but the dogs would not obey.

Then Chris took us over to where the long-haired Romney sheep are shorn. It is a very hard job, but the pay is very good. The record for shearing one sheep is 28 seconds which is really amazing. Shearing a sheep takes many years to learn and we watched Chris demonstrate both the electric shears and the hand blades that are used today.

In the shearing room there are many workers and they know exactly what their jobs are. Some are shearers and some sweep away the pelts as they are shorn. The pelt from the poop underpart is separated from the underbelly, etc. since it is the dirtiest part. The workers must work fast and it is all synchronized like a ballet.

Chris told us how the wool is then sorted for market according to its length, color, the amount of seeds and debris in it etc., and how it is graded. White wool free of debris and long in length gets the highest rating of one. Four is short tufts which is not as good. Some of the wool is sent away to be washed in huge washing machines, but this is costly and diminishes the profits.

He also has alpacas on the farm and we were able to have a photo op with them.

We went for a BBQ on the farm and enjoyed lamb, sausage, potatoes, and delicious salads and desserts. It was a very informative and fun morning.

Then we boarded our bus for the drive through the majestic Southern Alps on our way to Hokitika, and what a beautiful ride it was. We stopped many times for photo ops and you can see the beauty of the landscape in my photos.

Our day was filled with sunshine, which is unusual for this area since it usually has a lot of rain, so we were very lucky.

We arrived at our hotel which is right on the beach and Allan and I enjoyed some wine and cheese on our balcony looking at the ocean and the afterglow of the sunset.

When it was fully dark, Susan took us to see the glow-worms at Glow-worm Dell.

Glowworms are bioluminescent, meaning they produce and emit light naturally from an organ similar to a human kidney. While glowworms are pretty small, about the size of a one inch needle, they prey on even smaller insects such as mayflies, midges, moths and flies. To capture their food, glowworms build a network of silk threads that are covered in a sticky mucus and hangs vertically from their habitat. As the insects are drawn to their glowing bioluminescent light, they fly toward it and into the sticky silk maze, where they get stuck for glowworms to eat. When the glow-worms are hungry, they glow even more, so when we walked through the dark to see them, it was like looking at the starry sky. I guess they were pretty hungry! What a fabulous opportunity it was to see these unusual creatures.

And then we all walked to the beach and gazed at the stars and Susan showed us the Southern Cross. We had seen it in the Outback but we never get tired of seeing it again.

We have a very exciting day planned for tomorrow! Hopefully, a once in a lifetime for Allan and me. Stay tuned!!