Sicily - Eolie Islands

We had breakfast on the deck with this view this morning. Another beautiful day in Italy. We decided to make our way to Milazzo then do a day trip to the Eolie Islands

Parking in Milazzo was a nightmare, and our time was short to get tickets to the boat, so Anne dropped me off and then went and parked the car. I was told, no - boats were full. I waited to Anne then went into the Tarnav office a second time and asked if there were any cancellations. She then asked how many was in our party, and when I said only 2, then she sold me a ticket on the boat.

The view leaving Milazzo...

My name is now.. 'Currency'!

The first of the two islands we stopped at was Panarea. White houses dotted the landscape. The water is crystal clear blue..

In the distance the island of Stromboli has a small eruption

...

A small fishing boat greets us as we walk down to the jetty to the shore...

We decided to walk to the beach - it was quite a long way, mostly uphill... A fishing net is draped over a wall..

The island reminds me a lot of Santorini - with so much blue and white...

Lots of Bourgainvillea and oliver trees... 

And a Cathedral...

The walk opens up to this vista, and the beach is on the otherside of the cliff...

We stopped and had a wine on this terrace..

After our wine, I caught a taxi back to the boat while Anne walked. This time we got a seat upstairs by the open canopy so I was able to take photos directly from my seat.

\Our next (and final) island was Stromboli. An active volcano.

\

The beach was a mix of scoria and pumice from previous eruptions, and fine black sand...

We walked up to the plaza and cathedral, then walked back down to the beach. Unfortunately the sun had gone from the beach so it wasn't nice to sit. So instead we went to a hotel bar for one beer so we could use their wifi to book our accommodation for tonight!

Lots of fishing boats lined up on this beach...

And we watched the sunset...

After our beer, we got back onto the boat where dinner was serviced, then we headed out around the otherside of Stromboli to watch some eruptions. Unfortunately, the eruptions were tiny so we got no lava pouring down the cliff face into the sea, or anything dramatic. But we did get some fresh sea air, and a nice cruise back to Milazzo.\'

Once back in Milazzo, we headed to the car... and couldn't find it. After some help from a nice restaurant we found it a further 100metres down the road! We then drove 15 minutes to our accommodation to find the host wasn't there, spoke no English, said he would meet us, and never came! It was a dark, isolated, dingy area, so we quickly went online and booked another place. We asked Airbnb for help and they cancelled our booking, gave us a refund and a travel voucher.  Way to go Airbnb!

St John's Creek - Wanaka

After photographing frogs and landscapes all day, we headed to St John's Creek for some evening, sunset shots.  I knew this was our second time to St John's Creek and it seems that I missed out blogging about the previous time we were there the night before this one.  So I'll have to go back another time and show you St John's Creek in another totally fun light!

Unfortunately the evening was fairly windy, which meant choppy water and no reflections.  Still - the light was beautiful giving lots of shadows and colours on the mountains.

Unfortunately, to get the right shutterspeed, meant the Lupins in the foreground were a bit out of focus due to the wind blowing..

 The shadows were long - this is Liz and I with our tripods...

And just as we were leaving the sunset finally hit the top of the mountains.  I had wanted so much more but that is all nature was going to give us tonight.  But I'll take what I can get!

The Nor'West Arch

The last week the weather has been fantastic.  Hot and sunny with temperatures in 30s.  That's Celcius, not Fahrenheit! My temperature guage got up to 31.6 on Sunday  In Auckland, that temperature would have come with extreme humidity and would have been uncomfortable. Not here.  It was a lovely dry heat and very very nice. I spent some of the day weeding the garden, reading in the sun, and shifting sprinklers around the lawn.  It's that time of year again when I have to water the lawn in regular shifts as it's so dry.  Between now and Autumn, that's my sole job.  Greenkeeper!!

It was a bit windy on Sunday during the day, but not overly so. That was the Northwester, bringer of warm weather so I didn't mind at all. As well as the warm weather it brings amazing sunsets which I was told was the Northwestern Arch. My neighbour saw me out taking photos and explained it to me. I looked it up on Wiki and it there it says it's 'peculiar' to the east coast of the South Island.

This is what it looked like from my deck early on, which is looking west.  But over a period of 10 minutes I got some spectacular cloud shots...

It literally looked like the sky was on fire and I simply had to stand and stare and on occasion had to lift my camera up and take a photo. I couldn't go inside and miss a minute...

In the end I walked out onto my road  when the street light turned on and started shooting from there...

I have been watching out for a repeat, but so far it hasn't happened. Just the normal amazing sunsets that I get every day, but not the spectacular sky on fire ones!

Bring on the Nor'Wester