New Zealand: Crossing the Cook Strait again

The Cook Strait, named after the adventurous Captain James Cook, separates New Zealand’s two main islands. Three years ago today we rode the Interislander ferry from Picton on the South Island to Wellington on the North Island. The first photograph shows the last rocks the ferry passes as it leaves the South Island and enters the Cook Strait. I took the second photograph out in the strait 12.5 minutes later.

© 2020 Steven Schwartzman

Rust and paint patterns on the Sibonga pier

Late in the afternoon on December 23, 2019, we walked out to the tip of the Sibonga pier that juts into the Cebu Strait in hopes that we might enjoy a good sunset. While waiting, I got intrigued by the rust and paint patterns on the structures that boats tie up to. Not knowing what those things are called, I searched online. A few sites call objects like these bollards. A few other sites refer to them as mooring dolphins. Perhaps there’s not one universally accepted term in English. Anyone who knows is welcome to tell us.

Here’s a closer and more abstract view of the first one:

Could patterns like these have inspired the Abstract Expressionist painters?

© 2020 Steven Schwartzman

New Zealand: more views of the Pancake Rocks

Five years ago today we visited the famous Pancake Rocks at Punakaiki on New Zealand’s South Island.

You can read a little about the geology of this site in an article at Te Ara.

This renewal of pictures from New Zealand reminds me that we can renew something but we can never new something. Likewise we can reveal but we can’t veal; reproach but not proach; retract but not tract; we can replenish but we can’t plenish; etc.

© 2020 Steven Schwartzman

Still more from Coron’s island-hopping tour on December 13

© 2020 Steven Schwartzman

 

More from Peggy’s Cove

On June 3, 2018, we visited Peggy’s Cove in Nova Scotia.
Supplementing the pictures from there that I showed last year are the ones in today’s anniversary post.

© 2019 Steven Schwartzman

Ovens Natural Park

On June 4th, after Blue Rocks had only two hours earlier finished providing my second sustained encounter with Nova Scotia’s seacoast, Ovens Natural Park gave me a chance to spend two more hours engaging with the coast.

Below is a closer view of that visually yummy rockweed (probably Fucus vesiculosus, according to staff member Ana):

Oh, those upturned rock layers:

And look at this seaweed on what I take to be granite or something akin to granite:

Imagine replacing the symbol in “I ❤ You” with a closeup of this seaweed. Okay, so maybe the only person who’d ever want to do that is a phycologist or somebody cozying up to one.

© 2018 Steven Schwartzman

Blue Rocks

On June 4th, the day after we visited Peggy’s Cove and had our first reckoning with the Nova Scotia coast, came another important coastal encounter at a place I’d likewise never heard of called Blue Rocks. There I found upended and eroded strata akin to those from 2017 on the other side of Canada in British Columbia’s Yoho National Park.

Here’s a better look at some of the sharp upended rocks and the patterns in them:

And here’s an even closer look:

That last view has entered the realm of abstraction, so here are three more abstractions from Blue Rocks:

The rock in the next-to-the-last image has a shape reminiscent of Vermont’s, don’t you think?

© 2018 Steven Schwartzman

Peggy’s Cove

6566: that’s the number of miles our trip odometer showed on the evening of June 16th when arrived back home on the 25th day of a long drive that had begun on May 23rd. The vacation was a combination of visits to family, friends, and scenic places in the northeastern United States and the Atlantic provinces in Canada.

On June 3rd, our hosts in Halifax, Nova Scotia*, took us to a site on the Atlantic Ocean called Peggy’s Cove. While most visitors probably go there to see the lighthouse, you’ll understand that I found my joy in the rocks and the water and the plants. Here are seven photographs from that encounter.

© 2018 Steven Schwartzman

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* Did you know that Nova Scotia is on Atlantic Time? That’s one hour later than Eastern Time. Except in airplanes to and from Europe, I’d never been in that time zone.

New Zealand: large and small projections

On March 6, 2017, we followed New Zealand’s State Highway 25 north through and beyond Thames on our way to Whitianga. In one place on the west side of the Coromandel Peninsula we saw this roughly conical rock projecting out of the shallow water in the Firth of Thames. Yes, that’s another pōhutukawa tree (Metrosideros excelsa) at the top of the rock. Elsewhere on the beach I looked down at contrastingly small projections wind-rippled up from the sand.

And look how another pōhutukawa projected out over the craggy rocks along the shore:

© 2018 Steven Schwartzman

New Zealand: crossing Cook Strait again

3:23 PM

A year ago today we sailed eastbound on the Interislander from South Island to North Island. I took the first photograph when the ferry was almost out of the Marlborough Sounds, and the second one four minutes later after the ship had entered Cook Strait.

3:27 PM

© 2018 Steven Schwartzman