Wow that is some interesting imagery. It also sounds like quite a bit of an adventure. The mushroom... that might be an amanita. I knew whenever I was collecting wild mushrooms to never eat anything like that. :) They are cool looking though. The interesting thing is I live all the way in Colorado and we still have mushrooms that look like that in the wild. It blows my mind that you are in New Zealand and they look the same. :)

That food made me hungry. Thank you for the post. It is fun to hear about places I'd love to visit. New Zealand always seemed like an interesting choice due to the variety of biomes in such a small area.