Phil and Meg in New Zealand

Up, down, here, there, everywhere, and back again - Phil and Meg

2010-03-27T16:57:00.058+13:00

Well, after we left Mum and Dad in Auckland, it was back to work for us two in Hanmer, both at the campsite and Phil also had his shifts at Monteith's. We were both a lot more happy with our work situation there than we had been in Ohakune. Maybe it's the simple reason that it was summer, who knows? We made good friends with eveyone there.

And Alan the boss made regular Sunday bbq's/fry-up which we all enjoyed!

We definitely felt quite happy and content in Hanmer. The whole place is surrounded by lovely walking and mountain biking tracks in the forests and up the hills, and it is easy to get out of the town, within 5 minutes you're into the wilderness. We tried to do as many of the little walks as we can while we've been here, and we've been using them as running tracks too. However, for a few weeks, it was far too hot to do pretty much anything! So running went out of the window, and staying in the shade was the main aim of our days.... It was really sweltering! But we certainly didn't complaining: we had been waiting a long time for some hot weather!

After a few more days at work, we had another exciting event to look forward to: we were going to meet up with Sadie and Steve in Christchurch. They had been travelling on a round-the-world ticket as their honeymoon, and had already been to Hong Kong, Australia and spent about 2 weeks in New Zealand. They were flying out from Christchurch, so we were desperate to see them before we missed our chance. So on the 17th Jan we finished work early (Alan kindly let us off) and we drove the 2 hour trip to Christchurch. We had arranged to meet up at the Stonehurst hostel which has campervan sites. Sadie and Steve had hired a van for their trip so we were able to park up right next door to them. It was so exciting to see them, as we had not been able to go to their wedding in the UK in October. They looked really well and incredibly happy, and we were so chuffed to have some of our English friends with us. Steve had already spied a cool pub/restaurant to go to, which we headed to. It was The Twisted Hop, which had loads of home-brewed ales on proper hand-pulled pumps, which made us feel very at home. We had lovely food and wine with them, before going onto Sol Square (a cool area of the city) to have a few more drinks and chit-chat. We didn't want the evening to end. We wandered back through the main city square where Meg got 'inspired' with her camera.

However, when we eventually got back to our campervan at about 1am, we realised that Meg had left her bag (with money, cards, and crucially, van keys!) in the city square. Uh-oh. Feeling a bit tipsy by this point, we had to quickly sober up and run for about 10 minuted back into the city. Thankfully, Christchurch being quite a sleepy city, it wasn't anything like Manchester or London, which has people all over the city centre 24 hours a day, and lo and behold, I found Meg's bag waiting for me on a bench in the middle of the main square were she'd left it. We felt very lucky.

In the morning, we had to bid farewell to Sadie and Steve who had to catch their plane onto the pacific islands. We also had to get back to Hanmer for the start of our shifts!!
We arrived back in Hanmer in time for me to start at Monteith's at 11am, and Meg went back to the campsite for her morning shift. It was quite a typical busy monday for the first few hours. And then a strangely familiar man came up to the bar, and asked 'Are you Phil?', to which I replied yes, but thought nothing of it, but then he asked, 'Meg's husband?'. I responded positively, but my cogs started turning over, and I suddenly realised. James Wilthew. And Anna his wife was standing next to him. James is a really good old friend of Meg's from her uni days, and who I had only met once at his wedding in 2004, nearly 6 years ago. We had absolutely NO IDEA that they were in New Zealand, let alone near Hanmer.
After being rather shocked, and asking lots of questions, it turns out that a friend of theirs had had a wedding in the North Island a few days earlier. They knew that we were in New Zealand, and James' sister Angela had emailed Meg to ask how things were going, and where we were working at the moment etc. Meg had thought nothing of it, as you wouldn't do. The information was then passed from Angela onto James, and he decided to surprise us. The incredible thing is that he didn't know exactly where we were working, so on his arrival in Hanmer, merely thought to himself, 'well if I was looking for work in town, what would I do? Probably work in a bar', and then proceeded to ask someone where the nearest bar was, which led him to enter Monteith's.... and there I was serving people at the bar. Obviously there was such a slim chance that a) I would have a bar job, b) that I would be working in that particular bar, and c) that I would be working at that exact moment....

Anyway, it was excellent to see them both. I told him that Meg would be coming to meet me at 5pm for the end of my shift. When Meg arrived I got her to come into the bar to have a drink (always an easy task). As Meg picked up her drink and turned away from the bar, she got the shock of her life as James and Anna casually walked up to her to say hi.
The whole experience still feels a bit (a bit? A LOT!) unbelievable, but it was fantastic.
We quickly discussed our evenings plans and arranged that we would come with James and Anna to stay with their family friend, Mo, who lived in Hanmer.
When we drove to Mo's, we saw another side of Hanmer – her house was amazing. She had horses and loads of land, and beautiful 360 degree views of the mountains, as well as having a neighbour who flew everywhere in his helicopter that he kept in his garden.

She was a lovely lady who didn't seem to mind us dropping in on her completely uninvited. She even kindly let us use her kitchen to cook our spaghetti bolognese...!
We had another lovely evening drinking and eating with our English friends, and catching up after so long.

In the morning, we had to start work at the campsite at 9am, so had breakfast with James, Anna and Mo, and then had to dash off. We'd had a crazy 48 hours, but felt really lucky to have seen some special friends in New Zealand.

A couple of days later, we had another exciting trip away to see John and Dorothy. They had completed their tour of the north island, and we had arranged to meet them off the ferry in Picton. We set off at about 9am in the morning, but the 4 hour drive from Hanmer was much longer than we expected. We had to stop off at grey Kaikoura and found this funny sign:

John and Dorothy had already arrived and pottering around Picton by the time we got there. We greeted each other and then caught up with each others news over a leisurely sandwich at a cafe. Following a little wander around the harbour market, we decided to get on our way towards Havelock, where we would be spending the night.
Havelock is renowned for its green mussels, which are larger and more succulent than its northern hemisphere cousins, so we booked ourselves into the Mussel Inn for the evening. We got to choose which sauce the pot of mussels got cooked with and got presented each with a pot of mussels to devour. They were lovely, and nicer than the mussels I had had in Golden Bay a few months ago.

After our mussels, we had a quick look around Havelock, which isn't particularly big. It turns out that Ernest Rutherford (he, of physics fame) had studied at the school here as a teenager. The school is now the YHA and we spent some time looking at the information about him and chatting to the owner of the YHA.
John and Dorothy then had to drive onto their B+B a few miles away, while me and Meg treated ourselves to a nightcap at the Slip Inn, a nice pub beside the campsite where we were staying.

The next day was our trip onto the Abel Tasman National Park. We met John and Dorothy at a pre-arranged picnic spot, and drove onto and through Nelson (where we picked up food supplies). Our destination was Fraser Highlands, a B+B located just outside Kaiteriteri. It was a steep drive for Salvador, but when we got there we saw that it had been worth the effort. The owners, Jim and Sue, had built their own house on top of the hill, with no other houses around, and had the most incredible views of the valley below, the coastline and mountains behind them. They had a huge garden area, where they grew all their own veg, and were very keen for us to help ourselves – we took some rhubarb which Dorothy later stewed and we ate with crumble and custard – yum! We had been given the self-catering cottage separate to the house, but unfortunately there was only one bedroom! In the UK, Dorothy had enquired via email whether there was space for a sofa bed as her children would be staying with them. Sue had said that there was space, but obviously didn't appreciate that these 'children' would be fully grown adults. As such, the sofa bed option wasn't really a go-er. But I guess that is why Salvador is so great. Me and Meg were more then happy to sleep in Salvador, and then John and Dorothy could have the cottage to themselves at night-time. This seemed ideal, as it meant we could use the main room for cooking and eating and not have to worry about beds in the way, etc.

We got ourselves settled, and then had a drive into Kaiteriteri to see the beach and sort the following day's activities out – this would be our full day in the Abel Tasman National Park.

Returning at the cottage, we were quite happy relaxing and enjoying the views – Meg and John both got inspired by the light, and got a bit camera-happy.

Phil made a delicious Lasagne and garlic bread, and John and Dorothy attempted to teach us Bridge – something that will obviously take some getting used to.

In the morning, we had a quick breakfast and sorted ourselves out for our day in the park. John and Dorothy had booked onto a 'Discoverer Day', taking them up and back down the coastline, meaning they got to see the whole length of the park. As the park has no roads within it, the only way to see it is either on foot or by boat. Me and Meg decided to do a section of the Abel Tasman coastal walk, so we started from Marahau and did a 3-4 hour walk ending in Anchorage.

John and Dorothy had disembarked their boat here also, which meant we could meet up with them and go for a short walk around one of the bays.

We had a walk towards Te Pukatea bay, which was possibly the nicest beach we had seen in the park (but don't get me wrong, they are all beautiful!), and it took us through lots of natural forest, which seemed alive with cicada's – tiny flying cockroach-type creatures that make an incredibly loud clicking noise with their wings, which can be almost deafening when there's about 1000 in the audible vicinity of you.

On our return to Anchorage, we were all keen to have a swim in the Tasman sea, so got our swim costumes on and ventured into the sea. However, in typical fashion, as soon as we were ready, the rainclouds appeared out of nowhere and proceeded to have a 20minute shower on us. We still swam though, which was lovely (as long as you had the courage to get in the water in the first place..!)

Our water taxi soon arrived to take us back to Kaiteriteri, and by this time it was about 5pm and we had all had quite an exhausting day, so we headed back to the cottage. We had another evening full of lovely food, wine and card playing ahead of us!!

The next day came and unfortunately me and Meg had to return to Hanmer. We'd had a fantastic few days with John and Dorothy, but we had to return to work. Jim, the owner of the cottage played us out on his bagpipes as we departed.

We had about a 5 hour drive back through Murchison and then along the Lewis Pass, so it was a lovely drive as well as being long. We did stop along the way at a small country fair, with horses, sheep, shearing contest cattle, dog-trials, etc. However, it was raining so we didn't get a chance to take any photos, sorry. But it was great, so there.

We had to get back to Hanmer for early evening, as we had another appointment to make: Aunty Anne and Aunty Pat were in town! They were on an organised bus tour around NZ and we'd only discovered a few days earlier that they would be spending a night in Hanmer Springs!! We had been in touch with Sarah (cousin Rob's ex-girlfriend) to let her know and she had also arranged to come to meet up. We'd booked Sarah into a cabin at the campsite, and she was already there when we got back. It was good to see her, and she'd been enjoying seeing the west coast of New Zealand for the last couple of weeks. We had dinner with her at a tiny thai restaurant in town that we had not been to before – Green Chilli – that was really nice, and then had a drink at a bar before heading to Anne and Pat's hotel to see them. We couldn't have met them any earlier as they were busy being entertained by their tour hosts for the evening. They were staying in the Heritage – very posh – the central hotel in Hanmer. We met them in the restaurant bar, and had a good chat for an hour or 2, but couldn't stay any longer as they were exhausted after being up for about 18 hours travelling from the north island. It was great to see them over here, and by this stage we were feeling very lucky to have seen so many friends and family such a long way from home in such a short space of time!

After those exciting few days, we had to come back to reality very quickly. Back to work and shifts at the bar etc., but at least we knew it was all money that we were earning for ourselves.

Alan, the owner of the campsite, has been really good to us, and after doing an 8 day stint without a break, let us have a day off to relax. We decided to drive ourselves to Waikari, which is a tiny village about 50km away. We have driven through it a number of times to and from Hanmer. It sits in the middle of the Weka Pass – an area which has amazing limestone rock features. We actually camped there the night before we arrived in Hanmer to look for work, so headed back to the same campsite - a patch of grass by a cricket pitch and tennis courts, but it is very quiet and we have never seen either used.

We treated ourselves to a walk to the local pub, where we had a beer and some chips – a lot cheaper than the tourist prices in Hanmer.
In the evening we cooked steak and mash and drank beer under the beautiful red-skied evening. The moon was huge and we ventured over the playing field to get some better pictures.

The next day was sweltering. We had to return to Hanmer later in the day so decided to go for a walk before heading back. From Waikari, there is a nice walk over the hills in the main Weka Pass limestone area. We walked pretty slowly up the exposed hillsides, mainly because it was so hard to walk up in the baking heat.

But as we descended on the other side the cool rock features became evident, and the whole valley had weird bits of limestone sticking out from its underbelly. Around here there was also a limestone overhang, which has ancient Maori paintings on – this has been cordoned off now to stop people graffiti-ing the rocks, but we were still able to make out the original drawings, of people and animals.

The rest of the walk back to Waikari was along beautiful farmland, surrounded by cool limestone rocks and overhangs.

The next meeting up with Phil's folks was only a few days later. On Thursday they arrived in Hanmer, and pulled into the Alpine Adventures campsite unexpectedly (we hadn't told them in which campsite we were working). It was great to see them again after a 2 week break and they had had a good time down the west coast and central parts of the south island. We showed them to their chalet and caught up on each other's events, before setting out for the hot pools. This was only the second time we had been to the hot pools (the first was with Carol), and it was still a lovely experience. Even though it had been a hot day, by the time we got there it was turning into a nice cool evening, and the hot pools were a very relaxing thing to do, as we flitted from one pool to the next.
I wanted to show them where I worked, so as we were all relaxed after the pools, we went for a meal at Monteith's. Despite working behind the bar there, this was the first time that I had eaten there, but the food was lovely and it was a nice way to round off the day.

The next day was a big one for Meg. She had agreed to do another shoot for The Wool Company, but the only date that everyone (client, model, photographer) could agree on was while Phil's M+D were here. So unfortunately Meg had to leave us for a couple of days. The client arranged and paid for Meg to fly up to Napier (in 2 tiny planes, which Meg was quite apprehensive about!), so Meg drove herself to Christchurch airport early on the Friday morning, and Phil would now travel around with his mum and dad until her return on Sunday.

After Meg had left for the airport, me and the folks headed towards Kaikoura. We had rang ahead to enquire about whale-watching and decided to try and get on the afternoon's boat-trip. We got there in plenty of time, so headed out to the seal colony on the peninsula to see what was there. We saw a few seals sunning themselves but little else.

The boat trip whale-watching was obviously the main attraction, so we headed to the boat launch and had a cup of coffee/hot chocolate before being ushered into a bus to take us to the boat. Once on the boat we all took our seats and we whisked off to the open sea. The crew clearly do this many times a day, and were very good and professional. They must use sonar and other communication with other boats as they zoomed around the ocean following apparent whale 'sightings'. We saw about 4-5 sperm whales, some of which were fully breaching the water and crashing back down which was mightily impressive. Others just rested on the surface of the water, hanging about and resting for about 10-15 minutes before eventually diving back down to get some food, and everyone on board managed to get the obligatory 'tail' shot on their camera.

We also saw plenty of gannets and the Royal Albatross which was HUGE.
As we landed back on dry land, we went off to find our accommodation for the night. We were in a self-catering cottage on the outskirts of Kaikoura. It was a lovely change from sleeping in Salvador, and because Meg wasn't with me, I got a whole double bed all to myself!!
In the evening, I cooked Spaghetti Bolognese and garlic bread, and me and Dad lazed in front of the TV watching the rugby sevens in Wellington. Very relaxing.

The next day we decided to drive up Arthur's Pass. We had hoped to take the train journey on the Sunday but after enquiring about costs it became apparent that it would be almost double the price for a weekend ticket...! So we didn't take much convincing that we should make Arthur's Pass our destination for the day. It was quite a long drive and the weather was pretty obnoxious as we drove along the Canterbury plains, but as soon as we started to reach the high country, the clouds turned into blue skies, and we were treated to a hot afternoon. The drive was very windy and we went through some beautiful countryside, and we finally passed through Arthur's Pass village and stopped to overlook the Otira viaduct, which cut through the landscape quite dramatically.

We had a peaceful lunch back alongside the DOC office in Arthur's Pass hiding in the shade from the baking hot sunshine. As we headed back to Christchurch, we stopped at a few places to admire the impressive valleys and mountains.

The Castle Hill reserve, which is a protected area full of fascinating Limestone formations that have been forced up from the earth. It is a rock climbers dream, as all the rocks present themselves for perfect bouldering opportunities. I scrambled up to the top of some of the rocks, as was afforded great views of the large limestone area.

Back in Christchurch, we found Mum and Dad's B+B, which was very central to the city and I found the nearby hostel that I would be staying in. For the evening, we found a English-themed pub which did lovely homemade pies and British ale. It was a lovely taste of home.

The following day, Meg was due to arrive in Christchurch in the afternoon, so I met up with mum and dad after some breakfast and wandered around the city's main sights – the arts and crafts market, Rutherford's Den, and the botanical gardens, where we chanced upon a troupe of bagpipers in the central garden area, so we had some tea and cake while they played.

We met up with Meg at the hostel and caught up with her exciting tales of small planes and photo shoots. I will let Meg explain her experiences:

The morning of my shoot was the day Phil and his Ma and Pa were heading off to Kaikoura. Phil helped me to get loaded into the van and waved me off at some unearthly hour. I had a two hour drive to Christchurch airport and I knew that was without getting stuck behind any tractors or sheep being moved to another field along the highway.

I arrived in good time and made my way into the airport filled with apprehension about my flight. Knowing I like to sit above the wing on the plane I had decided to look at the type of plane I was flying on in order to choose my seat. It was then I realised it was more like a canoe with wings (Bombardier Q300). Still this was for work and I couldn’t exactly tell my client I wasn’t able to do the shoot because the plane they’d organised me to get there on wasn’t big enough. After speaking to my sister who suggested pretending to myself that I was famous and the plane was my own personal jet, I felt a lot better! Napier here I come.

Margot met me at the airport and we went for some lunch and then looked at some different locations. After the last shoot I knew it would be better this shoot to keep the background as simple as possible. It was quite difficult being strict with myself as there were lots of amazing options. We had the beach, various cool old mills, vineyards, restaurants/bars, retro baches (kiwi holiday homes). We had to decide within 2 hours so we could start shooting as soon as the model arrived. The model is Margot’s university friend from about 20 years ago and Margot’s clients Love her! We used another model as well as Caroline on the last shoot and the feed back wasn’t great so Margot wants to stick to her friend Caroline. Much to Caroline’s disappointment as she is not a merino cardigan wearer herself.

We began shooting at Caroline’s Mum and Dad’s house that is situated on “The Hill” over looking Napier. The views were amazing but we used the front porch and the side wall as our location, glamour all the way! To begin with we had an audience- Caroline’s Mum, Uncle, Uncle’s wife, and their friend. When we were left alone we got cracking, stopping around 6.30pm for the night.

We had a slow start the next day but decided to make up for lost time by shooting at Caroline’s house. This was the kind of house I dream of living in. In keeping with the Napier vibe the house has an Art Deco feel with an ornate veranda outside, polished floorboards, really high ceilings, open planned and like most Kiwi houses all on one level making it feel very spacious. We rattled through the pictures and went to two other locations. It was quite frustrating how much we needed to do in such a short space of time. I didn’t feel as though I was able to be creative at all. But this is always the way with catalogue photography and I should just accept it instead of feeling frustrated! The great thing about this shoot was that Margot and Caroline are both lovely, so an otherwise stress full shoot was actually really good fun. To celebrate finishing everything Margot and Caroline took me to a “cool” part of town where we drank a couple of bottles of bubbly. Quite a world away from Phil and I’s usual Saturday night.

I spent the morning doing the digital work for the shoot and then Margot drove me to the airport with my laptop on my knee and the images still copying to Margot’s hard drive. The down load was complete with about 5 mins to spare before I had to board my plane. Luckily the airport was so small we could see when the lady who had checked my bag in walked the 5 meters to the gate to open the gate and ask people to start boarding so I knew I didn’t have to go far.

The flying canoe was fine and I arrived back in Christchurch unscathed!

I drove into town where Phil and his Ma and Pa met me at the site that Phil and I were going to stay in Salvador. Within an hour an a half we had rendezvoused and were up the Christchurch gondola. Which to my surprise isn’t actually in Christchurch. It is on the south eastern side of the city, the gondala takes you to the summit of Mt Cavendish and has 360-degree views of Christchurch, the Canterbury plains, the volcanic outcrops of the banks peninsula and the Southern Alps. After a walk and some cake at the café we made our way back down.

That evening there were a few things going on in the city. We decided to go to a jazz service that was being held in the cathedral. The Cathedral itself is what the whole city is based around and was designed by George Gilbert Scott, the architect of London’s St Pancras. As it was the day after Waitangi day the Vicar was trying to relate the jazz to the signing of the treaty - the 19th century struggle between whites and Pakeha's was mirrored by the suppression forced upon the early black American jazz musicians....... I wasn’t convinced but it was still nice to hear the jazz from the local musicians and see the inside of the Cathedral. I did not envy the vicar trying to conduct a service with lots of people (mainly tourists) coming and going and taking photographs. Even a drunk heckling his sermon, well handled by the Vicar, the Kerr’s conKerred!

Phil again:

We left the service early as we were concerned that we would miss our meal booking. We ate at Mu Steakhouse, which was very posh, and very meat orientated. We all had different steaks, all cooked to different specifications and delivered with different potato/veg combinations. All washed down with some posh red wine. It was one of the best meals we've had in New Zealand.

In the morning, we headed to the airport to try and get Mum and Dad on an earlier flight to Auckland and to drop off their hire-car, but were unfortunately beaten by the red tape of bureaucracy. Needless to say, we had to wait about 6 hours til their originally scheduled flight so entertained ourselves by all fitting in Salvador and going to have a late breakfast at the Willowbank Reserve, where Meg and Carol had previous been to see the haka and kiwi's. It was Mum and Dad's first time in Salvador!:

Once it was time for Mum and Dad's flight, me and Meg had to rush back to Hanmer in time for more work shifts. It was sad to say goodbye to Mum and Dad, but we departed in the knowledge that it only be about another 10 weeks til we saw them again in the UK.

The following couple of weeks we knew we had to get our heads down and get as many hours as we could under our belts. We made the most of any time off to try and get Salvador ready for the market . Our anniversary of meeting (12th Feb) and Valentine's day passed by without too much fuss, but we treated ourselves to walking up Jacks Pass (the hill behind the campsite), nice food, nice wine and watching the film Cocoon, a film about lots of old people and aliens. Very romantic. In fact, we went on local walks whenever possible. Both us feeling incredibly grateful/lucky to be living somewhere so gorgeous.

With only 2 weeks left in Hanmer our boss Alan was heading to the UK. He asked us if we’d like to staying his (big) house while he was away, the deal being, we cleaned it in order for him to put it on the renting market. Of course we jumped at the chance… can’t take that long to clean…can it? Two days later and lots scrubbing and hovering, we were in and the house was spotless. Still smelt of stale cigarettes but I was getting my essential oils out and trying my hardest to sort the lingering odours out. And while we were there, we had one of the most brilliant vibrant sunsets:

In the first few days at Alan's house, it was Pancake Day!!:

During the 10 days we were staying at Alan's, we were able to completely empty Salvador of all our stuff and give him a thorough cleaning. We took the opportunity to do a spring clean of all our stuff , so threw a lot of stuff away and felt a whole lot better for it. The weather during these few weeks was the hottest that it has been since we've been in New Zealand. It was often so hot that going outside was unbearable, and we just tried to stay in the shade as much as possible. Still, we didn't complain, having been desperate for hot weather for the best part of a year. We did go for a few walks around the local forest that was quite well shaded.

Meg was able to take advantage of the local horse trekking company, as they were offering free horse rides to the local employees in Hanmer. The owner-woman had had a lot of bad stuff said about her in the town, and Meg was able to witness how badly she treated her staff close-up... But she was very appreciative of the horse treks and was a highlight of the week.

Our last weekend in Hanmer was the 27th/28th February. This coincided with the local jazz festival that was being held all around town, and the main stage was at the old Queen Mary Hospital. We were working all day on Saturday at the campsite, and followed this by having a big barbeque with all the staff. It was a nice way to finish working there, and we headed off to the jazz festival with Rewa, a friend we had made at the campsite. We found a nice spot on the lawns and proceeded to chat, listen to the jazz, and drink nice local wine for the rest of the evening. We had to walk/stumble home, but it had been a really fun night.

The next morning wasn't quite so much fun, as we all felt very hungover, and had to clean the toilets for the last time....

We left the campsite at lunchtime, with the plan being to head as far south as we could. We had to stop off at timaru to show the van to a potential buyer who had been in touch, and then we camped up for the night at St Andrews, a small settlement nearby. It was a great feeling to be on the road again, albeit for the last time as we knew that we only had 4 weeks left in NZ.

The following day we stopped off at Oamaru, where we wanted to see the famed blue Penguins. These are the smallest penguins in the world, and are pretty rare. The main 'show' is in the evenings, which we weren't around for, but we were still able to wander around the colony area, where little houses/dens have been built for the penguins.
Because we were there in the middle of the day, there wasn't too much activity to be seen, but we were able to peek into a few of the dens and see the 'at home' penguins resting. You could tell which boxes were occupied, as they had lots of little feathers surrounding the opening – this is because they were moulting and their skin was not waterproof enough for the ocean. They were very cute and very shy, and very small!

Just beyond the colony set-up, we went for a walk around the coast. We found some pillow lava in the cliffs, which created an amazing layered effect as well as lots of Paua shells, which we collected to bring home – these normally cost quite a lot in the tourist shops!

As we left Oamaru, we realised that all the street names were names after English towns and rivers and came across this one:

We were heading towards Dunedin, but before we got there we wanted to stop at Moeraki, where the famous boulders are located. These boulders are almost perfect spheres, that have just been formed over millions of years and been forced/carved out of the cliffs/ground. The tide was coming in as we arrived so we got to see the boulders in amongst the water. They were very strange but felt quite magical. A few of them had been broken open and you could see the honey-combed effect of their insides.

Simon Field is an old friend of Meg's from school. He now lives in Dunedin with his wife Bobby and their daughter Georgie. We stayed with them for the evening, and got treated to a lovely roast beef dinner and chocolate puddings. They are such a lovely family and very welcoming to us in their home.

In the morning, we had a few chores to get completed in the city – buying some camping food for the Routeburn, a new thermarest, and some tent waterproofing, and some dirt-cheap haircuts!
We had hoped to spend the night camping somewhere on the Otago peninsula but the only campsite was booked up, but we still really wanted to go and have a look around, so after a bit of a to-ing and fro-ing getting Salvador filled up with diesel, we eventually got out to the tip of the peninsula. Here there is the only mainland breeding colony of Albatross in the world. Annoyingly the very tip and colony was fenced off and you had to pay an extortionate amount to view them. So we quietly sat outside and managed to see plenty of Albatross flying up above – they really are HUGE, it is amazing when they are surrounded by other gannets and gulls and you can see that they are about 3 times the size of anything else in the air.

Down at the bay beside the colony there is also a known blue penguin colony, and unlike the one at Oamaru, this one is free. So we sat in the van and cooked some food. And waited until dusk came around.

At dusk, the penguins come in from the ocean where they have been fishing all day; they are very nervous so come in when it is dark and less predators are around; they call out for their partner, who has been sat 'at home' all day in the den (they were moulting when we were there, which meant they weren't waterproof enough to go into the ocean), and then make their way to their respective dens.

We were stood just above the beach and squinted our eyes in the darkness to watch for the little penguins to arrive at the beach from the water. We actually couldn't see anything on the beach, but the penguins had obviously come in and made their way up the little hill behind the beach because all of a sudden we heard a loud inhuman cry repeating itself. We tried to follow the noise and slowly but surely we made out the sight of 3-4 penguins huddled together and shuffling their way past us – they were only about 2 metres away! We had to keep very quiet and still so as to not frighten them as they listened for the partners in their dens and waddled up their houses for the night. We saw about 10 penguins in total, but it was very hard to follow their movements in the pitch black.

As we couldn't stay on the Otago peninsula, we drove back past Dunedin towards South Brighton, where we could park up and have a shower. We didn't really want to stay here for too long, so once we had showers in the morning and refreshed we headed further south down the coast into the Catlins area. This is a really beautiful area, mainly used for farming and had gentle undulating hills all around. It felt very much like parts of England, and the constant rain also helped! The coastline here was also stunning. It had some of the longest, whitest beaches we've seen in New Zealand, and they were all empty. There are so few people living down here that maybe the beaches are a local secret...

We stopped off at the Taeri Mouth and had a walk out towards an offshore island (it was low-tide, so you could walk all the way over if you wished).

There was quite a lot to see in the Catlins, but we only had a few days to get round everything, so had to decided what we'd do.
We stopped off at Kaka Point Scenic Reserve and did a short walk before heading to Nugget Point. This is a rocky outcrop with a lighthouse at the tip, and a few rocky islands out to sea – a bit like the Needles on the Isle of Wight. It was very blustery, but the sun was in the right position for a rainbow to appear just out to sea, and there were hundreds, if not thousands, of seals scatted around all the rocky formations down below.

At Cannibal bay further along the coast we hoped to see some sea lions. We spotted one about 100 metres down the beach, but daren't go much further as it was MASSIVE and looked pretty scary – it was breeding season and we'd been warned not to go too close. We met a man called Doug who was camping there in his camp bus for the night. We had a cup of tea and a nice chat, and he kindly gave us some freshly caught fillets of blue cod to take away with us.

That night we camped at Purukaunui bay, where we found a busy DOC site. But it was clearly busy for a reason, as it was right on the beach flanked by dominating cliffs. It was probably the most beautiful place we've camped.

We found out in the morning that a lot of our fellow campers were surfers who'd come for the morning waves as we were awoken by noisy surf dudes getting ready. This didn't matter too much as we wanted to get on our way to the Purukaunui falls, which were a gentle stroll into some native bush to the beautiful waterfalls.

Our plan for the day was to do a 5 hour walk along the Catlins river – this would be a warm-up practice for the Routeburn the following week - but the access bridge had been closed because of the bad weather, so we had to re-jig our plans. Instead we found a nice 2 hour loop walk at Tahokopa, which took us along the beach and through the forest. It was very windy but we saw some amazing sand formations from the strong winds.

We also stopped at the Maclean waterfalls which had some school kids jumping in and out of the splash pool.

Finally, we ended up at Curio Bay, which is famous for its fossilised forest – a Jurassic-age forest that has been fossilised and is occasionally visible at low tide when the sea reveals the tree stumps.

The sea was incredibly wild and rough while we were there, and we were mesmerised by the power of the waves as they crashed all around the jut of the land that we were on. Unfortunately we didn't see any Hector's dolphins that live in the surrounding sea, but we did see plenty of Yellow-eyed penguins that were jumping around the rocks by the sea.

Back in the van we cooked the fish that Doug had given to us and had them along with some chips from the local takeaway van – it was delicious!

We camped that night and Weirs Beach, a free camp site that we found nearby.

This was about as far south as we were able to get – there was a little walk to the southernmost point, but the next morning the rain was unforgiving and we didn't fancy getting outside in the cold wet. Instead, we drove to Invercargill where we had some chores to do – petrol etc, and then continued on our long drive to Te Anau, stopping at Gemstone bay and the Clifden Suspension bridge along the way for breaks from driving.

In Te Anau, we went straight to the DOC office. We had been talking about the Routeburn track and Meg was unsure about carrying a heavy rucksack for 3 days (she has lower back problems). She still wanted me to do it, and it meant that we would not have to pay out for the costly drop-off and pick-up fees as Meg would be able to do that. I think she probably just wanted to get rid of me so she could have some peace and quiet!
We camped at a lakeside campsite and planned to stay in Te Anau for a few days to rest and chill out.

While we were in Te Anau, I had to re-waterproof my tent and we also had a good look around the town, treating ourselves to eating out for lunch(!), and went to see the local glo-worm caves in the evening. This was fantastic, getting a 45 minute boat ride up the lake to the caves. The caves were a mythical attraction until the mid-20th-century when a local explorer spent 3 years searching the lake and eventually discovered them. Once arriving at the caves there is a low arch to crawl under and then it opens up into a magical world, full or waterways, waterfalls, rock formations, and ultimately glo-worms.

We had to keep very quiet and still as we took a boat along one of the cave waterways and there were thousands of glo-worms surrounding us everywhere, only a matter of inches away from our face. They were like multicoloured stars, glowing the shining in the damp dark atmosphere. It was like nothing we'd seen before. Of course, you weren't allowed any photography in the caves, so don't have any images to upload the blog, but we took away some great memories. When we came out of the caves, it was about 10pm, so it was also pitch-black and the real stars were also out in force. Seeing the stars so much and so often will be one of our most-missed aspects of New Zealand...

The following day was Sunday, and we had another lazy day in Te Anau, spending some time walking to and around the local wildlife park, where they had a couple of Takahe birds. These birds were considered to be extinct until they were re-discovered in the 1940's in a small remote area of Fiordland. They are, like a lot of NZ birds, flightless, and are about the size of a fat chicken. They are not protected in the same remote area of Fiordland, and all predators are kept out as much as possible, but the Te Anau wildlife centre are allowed a couple of them to educate and inform the general public.

We had put Salvador up for sale on trademe (NZ equivalent of eBay) a couple of weeks previously, and Sunday night was the end of the auction. Unfortunately he didn't sell, but we put this down to the fact that we were still in the South Island, and that if we got ourselves to the north island (in particular Auckland, where 3/4's of the population lives, we'd get a lot more interest. So although we were disappointed that we hadn't sold him yet, it made us have some direction for the next couple of weeks – driving up to Auckland! Therefore, after the Routeburn we would have about a week to drive about 1500 kms.

I was due to start the Routeburn track on the Tuesday, so on Monday we drove to Milford Sound, and it was possibly the most amazing 2-3 hour drive that I have experienced in New Zealand – luckily it was a bright blue sky day, and a still wind, and around every corner the views and landscape were just incredible: wide, flat expansive valleys, followed by dramatic sheer cliffs along the road, followed by deep rainforest, followed by 2 km tunnels through seemingly impenetrable rock faces, followed by waterfalls everywhere, followed by a windy road into Milford Sound itself.

Milford Sound was very cool. We could stroll right up to the water's edge and had picture postcard views of Mitre Peak and some of the waterfalls coming into the Sound. It was clearly not as dramatic or as awe-inspiring as Doubtful Sound, so we were glad that we had spent our overnight excursion on Doubtful. There were no sandflies about, surprisingly, so we were able to sit on the grass and have an ice-cream as we enjoyed the views.

We stopped onm the way back at The Chasm, an impressive waterway that has cut through the hard rock along the riverbed.

However, we also had to stop twice along the way out of necessity (once there, and once on the way back), because Salvador decided to overheat – the hills were pretty unforgiving and going in 1st or 2nd gear for 15 minutes at a time didn't sound very healthy... It meant we had to stop for about 30 minutes or so before topping up with fresh water and then getting on our way again. At least we had some nice views! We knew this would be something that we'd have to get looked at by a mechanic when we got to a larger town.

We were camping at a DOC site that evening (Cascade Creek) very close to the beginning of the Routeburn for the next morning. It was very busy with other campers, but we found a nice spot, and went for a little walk through the forest to Lake Gunn and packed my bag for the big walk.

Meg drove us to the Divide in the morning, where one end of the walk is.

Most people start the walk at the other end, which meant there weren't loads of other people there at the same time as us. Meg walked with me for the first 90 minutes or so, to the top of Key Summit, and it was great walking up through the cloud to reveal some amazing views all around.

However, shortly after arriving at the summit, the clouds started to drift in, and sure enough they were there to stay for the next day or so.

Meg headed back to the van once we had reached Lake Howden hut and had had lunch together.

For the remainder of the first day I was walking gradually uphill for about 3- 4 hours through lush verdant forest,

with occasionally waterfalls and glimpses of the blue sky that existed above the ubiquitous white clouds.

For the first evening, I was camping in the tent at Lake Mackenzie. It was a beautiful setting, and was a peaceful place to rest up for the night. I cooked with my stove and read my book beside the lake.

When I woke in the morning, the mist was even thicker.

It was scheduled to rain during the day, so I started walking pretty early to try and get most of the walking done before getting wet. Again, it was pretty hard-going for the first few hours, as it was a constant uphill heading towards the Harris saddle, the high point of the walk. It was a big shame that the cloud was so thick as I knew there would have been the most amazing views in clear weather. The days' walk was mainly on exposed alpine ridges, and there wasn't much protection from tree or forests like the previous day. I arrived at the Harris saddle shelter and found about 20 other walkers taking shelter from the rain that was starting. I had lunch here (jam sarnies, of course), and left my bag at the shelter to take a side trip up Conical hill which should have given some more panoramic views, but of course the cloud restricted everything.

There was little point hanging round up there for the cloud to scatter as it was showing no signs of shifting, so I decided to get a move on down to the next night's stop: the Routeburn Falls hut. Coming down from the Harris saddle, I was leaving the Fiordland national park, and moving into the Mt Aspiring national park. It was weird seeing clear sky far ahead of me for the first time, as behind me it was very grey.

The Routeburn Falls hut was a very well looked after hut. There was space for about 48 people, and was situated with stunning views over the Routeburn valley. It was pretty much full to capacity and a nice atmosphere as everyone cooked in the large kitchen and headed to bed as night fell – there was no electricity anywhere so as soon as the sun sets, everyone goes to bed.

In the morning I wasn't in such a rush as the previous day as I knew I only had 2-3 hours walking to do. I had a leisurely breakfast and waited for most people to leave before packing my bag and heading off at about 10am. The day's walk took me through some beautiful alpine beech forest before coming alongside the Routeburn river and following it down towards Lake Wakatipu.

While I was doing the Routeburn track on my own, Meg had time to relax without me, but she also had quite a few chores to do – she had to take Salvador to a garage to ask their opinion on the overheating (they just said it would be fine until we got to a larger town and get it checked then), and also had to drive about 400km in order to pick me up at the far end of the walk. She got to the far end in the morning of my final day, so was able to walk some of the track and we met up in the middle of the forest! We had a nice stroll back to the car park, past the bridal veil falls along the way.

From the car park, we drove to the Glenorchy holiday park so that I could get a well-earned shower, and then we moved on to Queenstown. We had some chores to do here, and also treated ourselves to a famous Ferg Burger, which certainly lived up to the hype.

Our aim was to get to Wanaka, as we hoped to go to the Wanaka show the next day. We camped at the Lake Outlet camp, where we had been previously with Carol in November.

The Wanaka show the next day was excellent. It was huge, with loads of shows and stalls. There was plenty of horse activity which kept Meg entertained, and other animals were cattle, alpaca, sheep, goats and loads of cool entries to the fruit and veg competition, including some fascinating manipulation of some foodstuffs to represent a variety of animals and objects.

While we had been at the show, we had left Salvador with a local mechanic who had been recommended. We hoped they would take a look at the cooling system following our 2 overheating incidents on the Milford Rd a few days previously.
The mechanic's wife dropped us off at the show and then picked us up a few hours later. They had replaced the thermostat and refilled the system with new water/coolant.

When we had previously been to Wanaka, we had been on a wine tour with a lady, Julie, and she had offered us to pay her a visit if we ever returned to Wanaka. So after leaving the mechanic we had a drive out to her house to meet her and her family.
Julie had been working during the day with the horses at the show, so had returned just before we arrived. We met her family and all her animals – cats, dogs, horses, and cows. Her house was a bit bonkers but very cool. It had loads of land around, and her house had lots of things hanging off the walls and ceilings. It was very cool.

The show was going on for another day, but we wanted to get further up the west coast towards the glaciers, stopping for a walk by the blue pools, which were a peaceful place to stop and admire the crystal clear waters.

We camped that night at Gillespie's beach, close to Fox glacier and Lake Matheson. The campsite was free, so it was quite busy, and it was basically just a car park, but we could stroll onto the beach, and we enjoyed the dramatic sunset. Being along the west coast is a fantastic feeling, and we love just watching the pounding surf attacking the coastline in endless waves. It can be really hypnotic.

We got up early the next morning as we wanted to get to Lake Matheson before the masses. Lake Matheson is the location for many a famous NZ photograph, as the lake offers near-perfect reflection of the distant Mt Cook and the southern alps. As we arrived there were some coach loads coming in just behind us so we quickly got a move on and walked around the lake to find the best spot. It was really amazing to see the southern alps, as when we had last been on the west coast in November, we had been there for 3 or 4 days and the rainclouds had never lifted.

From Lake Matheson it was a short drive back to Fox Glacier, where we had not been before (we'd done Franz Josef last time), and we parked up and did a nice walk up to the Chalet viewpoint, where we got to see the full frontal angle of the glacier. We were even able to spot some ice-climbers and helicopter, which really emphasised how huge the glacier was.

Driving further up the west coast we stopped for brief lunch at Harihari, but knew we had a long drive to get to Arthur's Pass, our target for the night, stopping briefly at the Otira viaduct where we got pesterered by Keas.

We arrived just before sunset and again, it was very dramatic.

In the morning, we had a quick look at the DOC office in Arthur's Pass but couldn't spend too long, as we had decided to get the next morning's ferry over to Wellington. We stopped for a break at Castle Hill, where we explored the limestone formations and had our sarnies.

That day we had to drive for about 7 hours - probably our longest driving day yet - and we got to Blenheim in time to get a takeaway pizza and arrived in Picton at about 9pm.

Our ferry was at 6.30am, so we didn't get a huge amount of sleep before having to get up at 5am and drive to the terminal. The crossing was far better than it had been on our first trip and we were able to get some sleep during the journey after firstly watching the sunrise over the Marlborough Sounds.

Wellington was a big shock after spending nearly 5 months in the South. Suddenly we were on a multi-lane carriageway with about a thousand other vehicles going a lot faster than us, and people were everywhere. We had arranged to stop off and see a friend of Meg's mums in Lower Hutt, which is a large suburb of Wellington. We called in to see Lynne for a good couple of hours and it was nice to rest and chat with a nice Yorkshire lady for a while, as we played with her new puppy Dolly, and talked about her kids and life in New Zealand. She had a fascinating Swan play outside, that attracts a certain type of Caterpillar and in the summer it gets covered in Chrysalis's but then they all turn into the most beautiful butterflies.

After seeing Lynne, we decided to treat ourselves to a cinema visit so went to the nearby mall to see what was showing. There wasn't a great selection, but went for 'Up in the air' – the recent George Clooney vehicle. It was OK, not amazing, but it was great to be in a cinema again after so long. From Lower Hutt, we hit the road to travel further north to Taihape, where we had organised to meet up with Margot – Meg's Wool Company client. She and her husband Norton had cooked a lovely roast chicken dinner and let us sleep in their spare bed, which was a real luxury.

Margot let us have a cooked breakfast in the morning which was brilliant, and we packed our stuff together. We called in at the Wool Company office to see everyone and Margot gifted us with some possum merino wool socks – ACE!

We drove through Ohakune from Taihape, and it felt strangely normal to be back. We called in at Kings to say hello to Tracy and Ian, but unfortunately Tracy wasn't there. We had a catch-up with Ian and the dogs Harry and Bella, and also saw Selwyn.

I wanted to do the Tongariro crossing the next day so we camped at a DOC campsite near to the start – Mangahuia. Again, the sunset was very dramatic, but the night was the coldest we'd had for several months – in the morning the inside of the window screen was frozen!

Meg drove me to the start at the end of the Mangatepopo lane at about 8am, so that I could get going before all the hoards arrived.

The Tongariro is known for being one of the best one-day walks in the world. It is about 19km long, and traverses the central volcanic region in the north island. It is very barren everywhere, as the lava and volcanic rocks surround the pathways.

It was a fantastically clear day so I could see over to Taranaki in the far west.

The first 2 hours were solid uphill, which took me up to the base of Ngaurahoe, which was used as Mount Doom in the Lord of the Rings film.

As a side-trip it was possible to scramble to the top of this volcano which of course I did. However, it took about 75 minutes to get up to the top, clambering up soft, loose volcanic soils and rocks, and at times clinging on for dear life! There were plenty of other people also going up, but there was not defined path, so you just had to pick and choose your route up and hope that it was OK.

At the top you could tell that you were on top of a volcano as there were steaming vents all around and the smell of rotten eggs was very strong. It was very windy so I didn't stay there long, but I made sure I got a good look of the 360degree views , and it was cool to see the other side of Mt Ruapehu and across to Taupo the other way looking over Tongariro.

The rest of the walk, once I was down from Ngaurahoe was fairly straightforward in comparison, but took me through very alien terrain – I could have been on the moon! There were craters everywhere and shimmering Emerald lakes to be seen, as well as richly red-coloured cliffs and bluffs.

The walk back down to the far end of the walk was through some native bush which seemed quite tame after the landscape behind me, but it was still lovely and serene.

I met Meg at the carpark and caught up with what she had been doing, and then we drove on to Taupo.

The main aim in Taupo was for me to do a skydive!!! This was an early birthday treat, but we had to wait for the weather to clear the next day before we got the go-ahead. Meg would have liked to do one too, but she did one when she was last here with her sister and the activity is so expensive that we couldn't afford for both of us to do it.

We got a safety briefing before we got harnessed up and were all told to remain as calm as possible, as if we got too much adrenaline flowing through our bodies we wouldn't be able to remember any of the jump.

We got assigned an instructor, ans after an initial mix-up I was told that Logan would be looking after me. I was on the second flight of the day, so got to see a plane-load of guinea pigs going up before me. They all came down with their parachutes open, so I was relieved.

We squeezed onto the plane, which didn't leave much room for manouvre – you didn't have much choice but to get friendly with the people behind and in front of you. I did my best to remain calm as we went further and further up, just looking out the window and not thinking of what I was about to do.... When we reached 12,000feet the slide door opened, and my time had come. I was about 3rd or 4th to jump. Well, I say jump, but really everyone gets pushed out. I slid to the edge of the plane, tucked my legs under the outside of the plane, tipped my head back into my instructor's shoulder dip, and next thing I knew we were outside tumbling towards the earth. It is a really strange feeling, almost weightless, as you adjust to your new surroundings. Like the safety briefing had told us, it just feels very very windy, and you can't necessarily tell that you are falling at all, as you can't tell that the earth below you is getting any closer...

I was apparently free-falling for about 45 seconds, but it seemed to go by in a flash, and the parachute went up above me, and we were suddenly stopping in mid-air. After getting over the initial discomfort around my groin area (the straps pull on you rather harshly when the chute opens), I was able to enjoy the float back down to the earth, and enjoyed the view of Lake Taupo below me.

Landing back on the ground was a relief, but the whole of the last 30 minutes had seemed to go past in a blur and I couldn't quite believe that it was all over.

I waited in the reception to get my obligatory DVD and t-shirt, and then we hit the road again.

After another 2 hours, we were arriving at Megan Ince's house in Arapuni. She was actually preparing for a friend's wedding at the local village hall, so we popped in to see everyone and then went to unload at her house. We cooked Chilli con carne for everyone (Megan came back with her boyfriend Kevin) and had a nice evening catching up with them.

We stayed there for 2 nights, and just took the opportunity to relax after a few days of long driving. We packed our bags properly so that Salvador was ready to hand over to a new owner should he sell when the auction finished in a couple of days time. On the second night (Saturday), Megan and Kevin were at the wedding so Me and Meg entertained ourselves by watching about 10 episodes of Phoenix nights – bliss.

On Sunday morning, we had to drive to Rotorua to show Salvador to a potential buyer. He was very nice and took Salvador to a mechanic friend who gave the engine a good once-over. He thought it was in very good shape, but was unsure whether there might be a problem developing with the cylinder head..... However, he was still confident that we had a good van on our hands and didn't discourage his friend from making a bid on trademe.

From Rotorua we drove back to Megan's to pick up our belongings and then got straight off to Raglan, which was the destination for my 30th birthday.
We camped at a place called Solscape, which we had seen online a few months before – it is a bit of a hippy retreat, with tipi's and old converted train carriages dotted around the grounds. We liked it, but the people there were a bit too cool for school, too busy perfecting their boho image to be very friendly to anyone.

Meg booked us in to the campsite and came back to tell me she'd also booked my surf lesson for the next day!! I have always wanted to surf, and Raglan is known for it's excellent surf beaches so I was very excited!!
In the morning, I got a further surprise when Meg dumped about 30 birthday cards on me! She had been in touch with friends and family back home and got them to send cards to the Hanmer campsite where we had been working, and secretly stashed them in preparation for my birthday. This was a lovely surprise, and really made my day.

My surf lesson was at 10am, and fortunately there was only me and one other beginner, so it was pretty much a one-on-one lesson.

Andrew was the instructor and was very good at going through all the basics on the beach before taking us into the water and getting us to practice in the little waves.

I was in the water for about 90 minutes, and managed to stand up about 10 times, mostly falling off straight away, but 2-3 times I got my balance and rode all the way back into the beach.

It was so much fun, and I can't wait to go to Cornwall in the UK to keep it up.

We had a lazy afternoon in Raglan, mooching around the art galleries and little shops, and even managed to have a little snooze in the van parked up by the sea – a perfect afternoon!

In the evening we ate at the Harbour view hotel in the centre of town. It was a treat to eat dinner out for an evening, and was a good end to a great day.

The next day was Tuesday and the big event of the day was: our trademe auction of Salvador would be finishing!

It wasn't scheduled to finish til about 9 in the evening, so we drove up to Auckland in the daytime, and arriving at Nic's house at about 2pm. We made friends with Nic in Winter when we were working in Ohakune.

She had kindly offered us to stay at her house for a few days. We met her housemates Tom and Caleb, who were both lovely and had a communal roast dinner for tea. Very nice.
As it got closer to the end of the auction, we turned our interest to the internet and watched as the clock ticked down.
We had a 'Start Price' of $4000, and a 'Reserve Price' of $5500. We didn't have any bids before Tuesday so were bit nervous that we'd end up with no bids again, but after a final flurry in the last 10 minutes, we sold Salvador for $6150!!!!

We were very happy, but also very sad, as it really was turning into the final home-straight of our NZ adventure, and Salvador had been our companion for so long.
The buyer actually lives in Australia so we have arranged to drop the van off at his aunt's in Pukekohe, just south of Auckland..

So we have had our final week in Auckland. We have slept in Salvador outside Nic's house but been able to use the toilet and kitchen and living room in the house so it's been a nice few days.

We also spent a night in Whenuapai, a north-western suburb, where we met up with Alana, an old-friend of mine from university who now lives over here with her kiwi boyfriend. It was lovely to catch up and see her new life over here, and we were very envious of all her freshly home-grown fruit and veg that we got to eat for dinner.

We also spent a day over on Waiheke Island to see Heidi and Kirby. This was another sad moment, as this was where we had started off our NZ journey last April, and leaving Waiheke in the evening was quite emotional as we waved goodbye to Heidi.

Earlier in the day we had also seen an old friend of Meg's from when she was travelling with her sister. We met Ben and his wife Paula and their baby Oliver by Onetangi beach, and had a lovely hour or so catching up with them.

In our final few days, we are just tying up loose ends in New Zealand, making sure that we have got everything packed and that everything is ready for our next 3 weeks in California.

It is a strange time for us as we realise that we have had our year here, and it has flown by so quickly. However, we know that we have done everything that we hoped to, and have got tonnes of memories to take back to the UK with us. We fly to San Francisco on the 29th March and then back to London on the 20th April, almost exactly a year since we left.

2010-02-08T21:36:00.039+13:00

Hamming it up in Hanmer

So, we have not updated the blog for about 8 weeks now, and a considerable amount of action has occurred.
We have not been lazy but rather, very busy with work and play.

Carol was still with us when we last wrote. We were visiting Hanmer Springs with her, and enjoyed a trip to the hot pools here.
They were discovered by a Mr Hanmer about 150 years ago and the town has developed into a small tourist attraction, surrounded by the St James mountain range and replete with some of the best walking and mountain bike tracks in the country. As a result, it attracts a lot of holiday-makers from the Canterbury region and further afield.
The hot pools resort is located in the center of the town and has about 9 thermal pools, all different temperatures (the hottest being a sweltering 43 degrees c). It also has a 20 metre swimming pool and some water slides and kids pool for the youngsters. I imagine the best time to use the pools would be the winter season when you can really feel the benefit of the thermal water, but the mild springtime still seemed appropriate for us.

Carol had her 1st ever bounce on a trampoline!! Me and Meg also managed to make use of the mountain biking tracks around Hanmer Forest and did a few cycles, but realised that we weren't as familiar to bikes as we used to be when our legs ached for a few days afterwards.

Our stay in Hanmer fell on a Saturday, and we chanced upon the village market on the central green.
Meg had her back looked at by a chiropractor, but ended up feeling worse than she had before she started! Carol treated us all to a palm-reading from Arthur, the local palmist. He was very nice and took his time with each of us, being very sincere with his readings. I can't remember all that he said, especially about Meg and Carol, but he did forecast that I would live to be a healthy old man. (with a lovely wife) Meg said that bit. So that's nice.

Our next stop from Hanmer was Christchurch again, as Carol was flying from Christchurch airport a couple of days later. We arrived in time for Meg and Carol to go to the Willowbank centre. They got to witness a genuine Maori family and the traditional welcome and presentation into a Maori tribe. They enjoyed it, and were very impressed with the veracity that the haka was performed with and the performances of all the tribe members.
They followed this by a guided trip around the Willowbank wildlife centre, where they were shown kiwi's and other rare birds. The Kiwi's were kept in a special nocturnal house, where the time of day was manipulated to convince the birds to come out at 'night'. Although the birds and wildlife were impressive, Meg and Carol felt that they had been hurried around the centre more quickly than they would have liked.

While they were at Willowbank I was carrying out important food shopping and had the task of getting fish and chips, which we ate in Carol's hut afterwards.

We now had one full day to utilise before Carol's exiting flight, so it was suggested that we take a visit to Akaroa, which is on the Banks Peninsula, just to the South of Christchurch. It took us about 2 hours to get there, but it was a delightful drive, through landscape similar to the Lake District – green rolling hills surrounding us everywhere.
Akaroa is a harbour on the peninsula that was originally settled by the French settlers in the early 1800's. It therefore retains a certain French feel and charm, with French road names and French inhabitants. We had a stroll around the town, and had our dinner at a seaside restaurant.

We drove back to Christchurch and did final packing for Carol's big day the next day. We had to get up at about 4am to take Carol to the airport. We were sad to let Carol go back. We had 3 weeks spent with Carol and it had gone so quickly. We had squeezed a lot into our time, so I hope she enjoyed it. We loved having her with us.

Without Carol, it felt quite strange to be reduced to just us 2 again. But we had pressing financial matters to deal with. Since leaving Ohakune at the end of October, we had managed to spend a considerable chunk of our money and now job-hunting was the order of the day. Rather than parking up in central Christchurch, we drove to South New Brighton where we had been with carol, and parked up by the library, where knew we could use the free internet. We made ourselves comfortable on the sea-facing chairs and scoured the job- and traveller-sites for any potential jobs.

While Carol had been with us, were constantly making mental notes of places that we would like to find work, and we had narrowed it down to 3: Wanaka, Hanmer, and Akaroa. We had been offered some cleaning work by our campsite in Wanaka, but it was not enough for both of us, and was located quite a way out of the town. Akaroa had had a few job-signs in shop-windows the previous day but when we rang to enquire, there was either no answer, or the job had already been filled.

We therefore decided to head towards Hanmer Springs (only a couple of hours drive from Christchurch), and base most of our hopes on find work there.
We stopped for a night in Waikari, a tiny village that had little to warrant stopping, but had a very cheap campsite! (This is a big attraction for us!). And as it turned out, it is probably one of the best places we've camped. It was on a really quiet recreation ground, and we had access to free hot showers and free laundry, and we were one of only 2 campers there, so it was really quiet. If we weren't in such a hurry to find work, then we could have quite easily stayed there another couple of days, just relaxing.

The road to Hanmer is very picturesque. It goes through the Weka Pass, which has some astonishing limestone features, and always demands that we stop (or at least slow down) in awe of them. We haven't yet had time to explore them close up, but hope to sometime soon.

When we arrived in Hanmer the following day, we headed for the same campsite that we had stayed in with carol – Alpine Apartments. This is run by a lovely couple called Brian and Tezeh. During the next week that we were there, they were very kind to us, and we got to know them quite well. They even invited us to their Sunday dinner, where they cooked venison (Meg's first time), and we met all the family – their son Tyson and their foreign exchange student, Rhonya. Meg did some cleaning for them and I did some lawn-mowering in return for our accommodation (free tent site for Salvador) for the week, so it didn't cost us anything, which came in very helpful as we had little money to spend! Most daytimes we spent at the local library which provided free internet access, which we used to job-hunt, and we also printed out and handed in our CV's to most companies and shops in the village.

Over the next few days we had various phone calls with different possible jobs around the country – a hotel on the Marlbrough Sounds, a hotel in Glenorchy, and a dairy farm in Otago. There were drawbacks to each of these, even though they were located in incredibly beautiful areas of the country. Our breakthrough came one day when we were at the library. A lady who worked in the local hotel recognised us from us asking for work the previous day, and came up to let us know that she knew that there was some work for a couple at a nearby campsite. We quickly drove up the road to Alpine Adventures Holiday Park, and introduced ourselves to the owner, Alan. He told us to come back in a couple of days' time, and he would have some work for us. In the meantime, I also got a call from the Monteith's Brewery Bar, which is located in the centre of the village. They wanted to me to have a chat with the owner with regard to starting work there.

So we had spent nearly a whole week job-huntng, and suddenly all our prayers were answered!

We arrived at the Alpine Adventures campsite a couple of days later ready to start work. We felt a bit bad for Brian and Tezeh, who had been really kind to us, as we moved to work for the enemy...

At Alpine Adventures, we were introduced to Alan, the owner, and his 2 closest workers, Zane and Hayley. Zane and Hayley were about to go on a 2 week holiday, so that was why Alan was keen to get some workers in to help out.

Alan is a lovely man. He clearly is a big man, but he has a big heart to match, and can't let a sentence slip by without cracking a (terrible) joke. It became clear that he could offer one of us – Meg – a full time position, and myself a part-time position helping with cleaning/gardening etc. This worked perfectly as I also had my job at Monteith's to top up my income.

So basically, for the last 7 weeks, that is exactly what we have been doing: Meg's been working 5 days a week at the campsite. This entails her working on reception, checking people in, taking bookings on the phone and online, cleaning rooms and linen, and generally looking after the campsite as a whole. I work at the campsite most mornings, (and before Christmas it was most afternoons too, as we prepared for the holiday rush), cleaning rooms and doing the bin rounds, before going to Monteith's in the afternoon/evening for some shifts there.
It is nice working in the same place together, and makes the whole experience much more bearable. The village is also really lovely, with all the right amenities and surrounded by beautiful landscapes.

Other than working for the last 7 weeks, we have had some adventures. On our last day before starting work, we attempted to climb Mt Isobel, the mountain that overlooks the Hanmer valley. We cycled part of the way, and then walked up a waterfall track, which took us through the mountain forest. After about 2 and a half hours, we found the track leading us out of the forest, past the tree line. As we ascended the hillside the wind was getting stronger and stronger, which wouldn't normally bother us, but as soon as we reached an exposed plateau (on the saddle of the mountain), the wind was unbelievable. We could barely stand up it was so strong. We had about another 30 minutes walk to go to the proper summit, but not much actual ascent as we were already about 1500m up. Because we weren't going to get any more sheltered (in fact, we would only have got more and more exposed), we decided to head back down to an altitude/area where we could stand properly without having to lean 30degrees into the wind.

We were also here for Christmas!! This was a very strange period. We obviously felt incredibly homesick as we would without all our family and friends, but we did all we could to immerse ourselves into the NZ Christmas experience, as it would be our first (and probably only) Christmas away from the UK. However, we definitely felt that Christmas was not such a big deal here as we are used to in the UK. There was a clear lack of lights/decorations in town – none of the shops or bars showed any evidence that it was Christmas – and people were not quite as excited as they get at home. My theory is that in the UK (or northern hemisphere in general) is in the middle of winter, and Christmas time brings a brief glimmer of excitement to an otherwise pretty miserable time of year. It is therefore normally grabbed with both hands and made the most of in the UK. In New Zealand (and perhaps the other southern hemisphere countries), it is the height of summer, and people are more excited about the hot weather and holiday time than celebrating Christmas. Christmas is almost just another excuse to have a day off work.

So despite our feeling slightly miffed at lack of excitement, we still attended the local carol service. This, rather oddly, took place at the hot pools complex. It felt weird, not only being outside in the warmth of summer singing carols, but also surrounded by water slides and hot pools. There was a brass band and a choir who led the singing, and everyone got handed candles (in upturned plastic coke bottles as wind protectors) and carol sheets. It was a really clear evening, so felt quite magical under the stars.

We were obviously concerned about what we would do on the actual Christmas day, so we looked at various ideas. Alan had invited us round to his house to have Christmas dinner, where he planned to cook a Roast Dinner to help us feel less homesick.. So we decided to take him up on the offer. However, we still wanted to do something special for Christmas eve and morn.
After a bit of research, we decided to drive to Lake Tennyson. This is a lake about 40km north of Hanmer Springs, but it is nearly all on gravel/unsealed roads, so we could only go at about 20km/h, so it took us 2 hours to drive there. The landscape was awesome. It was completely desolated, with tussock grass and gorse everywhere, hares running all over the road, hawks and falcons scouring the hills, cows and bulls stubbornly playing chicken in the middle of the road, and wild horses scatted around surrounding fields. and We arrived at about 8.30pm on Christmas eve (as we had been working in the daytime), and it was just starting to turn to dusk. We hadn't seen anyone else on the road and there was only one other camper nearby. It was a clear evening, and spectacularly silent. The stars were so clear that we spent a while just in open-mouthed awe at what was above us.

We cooked steak and mash as a Christmas eve treat, washed down with some local red wine.

In the morning, the snow-topped hills in the far distance were visible and the sandflies were already awake and active by the time we got out of bed. We didn't even dare get out of the van for an hour or so. However, eventually a fresh breeze picked up, and we were able to sit by the lake while we opened our presents. We used some of Meg's big socks as some stockings, and opened presents that we had got each other (books), and also the presents from the UK that carol had left with us. We were quite emotional missing everyone, but had to keep reminding ourselves of how lucky we were to be where we were. There wasn't another soul in sight.

After having our breakfast and drinks we got ourselves ready to go on a Christmas day walk. There weren't any formed tracks in the area, so we decided to try and find our own way the nearest hill on the other side of the lake. This required us to wade, thigh-deep, through a big stream coming out from our end of the lake. This certainly woke us up, if we weren't already awake. We walked along the edge of the lake for about an hour before heading up the hill that we had earmarked for exploration. We got about 45 minutes up the hill before we decided to turn back round. We were surrounded by bracken and soggy moss and were not on any sort of track whatsoever, and the ground was very uneven. We still had magnificent views of the lake and of where we had camped at the far end. We also had to think about getting back to Salvador as we had to drive back to Hanmer Springs for lunch/dinner at Alan's house.

On the drive back to Hanmer, we were still mesmerised by the landscape – the electric pylons that seemed the only manmade objects able to withstand the conditions and stood out like sore thumbs along the valley floors.

As we arrived back in Hanmer we had quick showers before heading to Alan's. He had invited Zane and Hayley and also his friend Dean and his family. Anthony, his son, also did some part-time work at the campsite, so we were already familiar with him.
The whole affair was quite strange, as the men just sat outside drinking beer (or bourbon), while the women sat inside, either sleeping or prepping the dinner. Because the roast lamb was so massive, it wasn't cooked until 9pm, so the preceding 3 – 4hours was spent drinking and watching Anthony play on his new playstation game.
After dinner we had to rush back to the campsite in order to skype with our families in England, which was great to talk to them as they were just starting their Christmas day.

The campsite was incredibly busy following Christmas, and was for about 4 weeks after. It is the start of the summer holidays in New Zealand, so all the sites were booked up in advance and we were all busy cleaning and fixing things every day.

The week after Christmas was also the time that I was required to start work at the bar properly. I had shifts most days of the week, and it was a nice job to balance out the work at the campsite. It is more food-orientated than most pubs, so is busy in the evenings with mainly diners. The food is good quality and the whole place is probably more expensive than other bars. But the staff are great and I have made a lot of friends there.

Kate and Ian (our friends from home) had said they would send us some money for our wedding pressie. So we decided to use this and treat ourselves to a posh meal at a restaurant called Peppers a couple of days before New Year, which was a nice luxury. We don't often get the chance to eat posh food and drink expensive wine, so we made the most of it. It was delicious, and we had the nicest wine that we've had so far in NZ – Lake Road Syrah.

For New Year's Eve, I had somehow not been given any shifts at the bar, so we were free to go out and see in 2010 in style. We headed for the Monteith's bar, where we knew the most amount of people (my work-mates), and there was also Willie Macarthur, a one-man-band, playing lots of Irish and Scottish music, which got everyone in a very jovial mood for the night. We had a few drinks(!), and boogie-woogied on the dance floor, and managed to stop by another pub on the way home, where some bands were playing outside (playing RATM's 'Killing in the Name' – that's all I remember).

As January passed by, the campsite got less busy as the holiday season calmed down, but with plenty of cleaning still to do and bins to be emptied each day, and the bar is a bit less manic than it was a few weeks ago. We have made a few friends that we see each day: Rewa and Kay are both cleaners. Rewa is a keen fisher womann andregularlyy goes to Kaikoura where she goes crayfish and paua fishing. She sold me a whole crayfish for $20, which is a bargain (we're been offered it at a roadside cafe for $50!). It was already cooked through wrapped in news paper, ready for me to enjoy. I have never eaten lobster or crayfish before, so it was quite an experience, breaking it all apart and pulling the fleshy meat out of the various arms and legs and tails. Meg did not want to try any (she does not like seafood) so she watched and squirmed as I ripped it apart!

The big event of January was 'The Arrival of Phil's Mum and Dad', aka 'The Arrival of Meg's mother- and father-in-law'.

They flew into Auckland on the 7th January, and managed to get out of the UK just before the worst of the snow, which was lucky as they could have got caught in all sorts of delays.
They stayed in Auckland for 2 nights before we flew up to meet them. We flew up from Christchurch, and the night before had met up with my cousin Rob, who had decided to part ways with his girlfriend Sarah and head home. We had a cool night with him in a tiny backstreet bar where we drank ale (not real ale) and ate Mexican.
We arrived in Auckland early in the morning, and had to wait a a couple of hours for mum and dad to pick up their rental car and drive to the airport. When they arrived, it was fantastic to see them, as it had been nearly 9 months since the last time.
The plan now was for us all to drive up to the Bay of Islands where we would spend 3 nights. It took about 4 hours to get up to Paihia, but we stopped at Whangerei along the way to take a walk through a kauri forest and take a look at the Whangerei falls.

Arriving in Paihia, we found the B+B. This was a big treat for me and Meg, even though we had only arranged to camp on the lawn.

The place was fantastic and had a view over the bay, as well as having a swimming pool and spa pool. The swimming pool was only about 5 metres long, but it had jets of water at one end, so that you could swim against the current constantly and never reach the other end.

Because it was too late to do any activities when we arrived, we decided to arrange everything for the next day. We walked along the seaside and wharf and pier, and spoke to the various operators, while we ate ice-cream. Unfortunately we had just missed the Tall Ships festival, but we were still able to see a few big ships in the bay.

In the evening we were advised by the B+B owner to try the Swiss Cottage, which was along the sea-front. This was a shame, as although the setting was great, the food was pretty poor. Still it was lovely to have an evening with the Kerr seniors.

The next day we had to get up early to meet our scheduled departure time down on the wharf. Breakfast was a work of art. Inge, the B+B owner obviously takes great care over her breakfasts, as we had boiled eggs, yoghurt, muesli, fresh fruit, dried fruit, fruit juice, and all sorts of bread and preserves. It was all displayed beautifully on the table and you didn't want to spoil it by touching anything.

We were booked onto a Bay of Islands tour at 9am, so had to swiftly make our way down into town. We were on a large cruiser-boat thing, but could sit in the open on one of the decks. It was a beautiful day, but the breeze on the sea made it feel very refreshing. We went through the bay (of islands), with informing commentary from the driver and crew. Our aim was to make it out to the hole in the rock – a geological wonder – that stands at the entrance to the bay. However, after about half an hour along the route, the driver was made aware of some dolphins up ahead. We had luckily already made our way to the front of the boat, and managed to squeeze through the barriers to stick our heads out so that we were directly down into the water beneath the boat. We had the most amazing view of all these dolphins that suddenly appeared and started playing around the bow wave of the boat. It felt incredibly special to be that close to them and to be able to hear them talking to one another and playing. They were being pushed along by the boat, but often they could just wag their tails/fins, and suddenly zoom off into the distance – it was amazing how fast they were. They were jumping in and out of the water, and more and more just kept appearing. We managed to get a video of them all here.

After our dolphin experience, we would have been quite content to just go home – we were that happy – but we continued out to the hole in the rock. This was pretty cool, and the sea was calm enough for the boat to manoeuvre itself through the rock, which often isn't possible when the sea is a bit rocky.

We then went on a whale-hunting expedition, as the crew were aware that there was a whale nearby. We made our way to when another boat was looking for the whale, but we were only able to see the occasional surface-break of the whale, and couldn't see much. It didn't want to be disturbed, as it had a calf, so we left it to its own devices and took off towards one of the islands.

On the island we were taken on a guided walk by a Maori lady who explained the significance of the Bay of Islands to the original Maori tribes and the history and cultures that were begun here. She was full of information, but almost too much to take in, in such a short period of time (we only had half an hour).

We were dropped off in Russell, which was the original capital of New Zealand, and the main port when European and Asian whalers started coming here in the early 1800's. Back in the day it was re owned for the “down and outs” that inhabited the township. There was little evidence of them these days with mainly nice cafes for the tourists!
Mum and dad treated themselves to a guided bus tour, while me and Meg sat by the beach and I went for a swim. We then met up with Mum and Dad and had (another) lovely icecream.

We decided it was a good time to catch the water taxi back over to Paihia, we were glad we didn't leave it any later as the wind had picked up and the boat ride was a bit choppy.

We made the most of the lovely view at the B&B and had fish and chips on the patio.

The following day started with another lovely breakfast and some socialising with the fellow B&Bers. We had decided that we would visit Waitangi where the Treaty of Waitangi was signed in 1840.
The treaty was presented as a contract between various Maori chiefs and the British Crown to establish who owned what (and to prevent the French getting anything). There were, and still are many disagreements as to what exactly was agreed on the treaty. The different language versions differ significantly. I'm not sure how they will ever resolve this problem, but from what I can make out it is the main cause of the anger between the Maori and Pakeha (white people) today. Mostly things seem to tick along OK, but I get the feeling there is an undercurrent of bitterness/anger . People say it is because the Maori people are angry that so much of their land was bought (and taken) for so little, and that they had not imagined the magnitude of the takeover.
It was mentioned yesterday on the news how great it was that Waitangi day (which was on Saturday 6th Feb) had passed without any demonstrations or disturbances. This is obviously looked at as being a very positive sign.
We spent a few hours at the treaty grounds, reading the various information and visiting the treaty house, the whare runanga (Maori meeting house) - this has lots of cavings from different Maori tribes. There are also some original Maori war canoes. They were incredible, soooo long. It is hard to imagine them full of people and on the water. You can see how big the Kauri tree trunk was, unbelievable!
The grounds themselves had such an amazing view. It felt like you were at the top of New Zealand, even though you are far from it. I really enjoyed the visit. It has helped put the things that you hear about into perspective.

After our picnic we decided to head to a nearby waterfall. Phil gave the slight wrong directions and much to John and Dorothy's surprise/horror we ended up on a gravel road. We eventually found the waterfalls and realised we could have come from the other side on a fully tarmacked road!

We had another evening on the patio this time with wine and a pack of cards. John and Dorothy have been teaching us how to play bridge. It's fun but complicated!

The following day it was time to head back down to Auckland where Phil and I had to catch our plane, leaving John and Dorothy to begin the rest of their New Zealand adventures. Their next port of call being the Coramandel and ours being back to work in Hanmer!

We've got so much more to tell you about...we're only up to the beginning of January! It's scary how fast the time is flying. At least writing this makes us both realise how much we've seen and done and how lucky we are!

The Mother-in-law from Hull - Phil

2009-11-30T19:56:00.021+13:00

This is an attempt to update the blog a bit quicker than last time, as we realise that it was left a bit too long....

We now have Carol with us, and have been travelling with her for the last 2 weeks. It has been quite an experience, so I will try and make sure I don't miss out on any gratuitous moments.

Our last blog ended with us in Wanaka, from where we travelled to Queenstown. We drove straight into the centre, which felt like a metropolis compared to the places we had seen over the last 2 weeks. We met up with Nic (a friend from Ohakune) at one of the bars, where we also met her brother Dan. We agreed to meet up the following day for a game of Frisbee-golf. This is essentially the same principle as normal golf, but instead you thrown your own frisbee a number of times towards a bin (the 'hole'). After our drink with Nic, we headed out to set up camp for the night. We didn't actually stay IN Queenstown, but rather stayed just outside at Moke Lake, a DOC site. This is probably the most dramatic and beautiful site that we've had the good fortune to stay at so far. We loved it, and were one of only a few campervans staying there. (This is getting quite rare as we head into summer and campervans are getting more and more ubiquitous).

Our main aim for the next day or so was to completely overhaul Salvador and all our belongings – with Carol's arrival imminent, we knew that we had a Hodson-amount of luggage to accommodate for over 2 weeks, and had to make sure there was ample space. Leaving Moke Lake behind we headed for a proper holiday camp where we could get showers, do washing, and charge up electrical goods.
We ruthlessly got rid of all the stuff that we hadn't really used for the last few weeks/months, despite Meg's occasional protestation that we 'might' use something. We ended up clearing a whole box'-space under the bed, which we would use for Carol's belongings.

Once these boring chores were done, we headed into town to meet Nic and her brother Dan. As we headed to the frisbee-golf course (which is in the main central park in Queenstown), Nic rang to tell us that they had decided to play some lawn bowls instead, which was also nearby. This was a fantastic choice. Me and Meg have never played bowls before, but we both loved it. We drank white wine, ate crisps and rolled the balls around. There is a clear knack to the technique, but it was very satisfying and enjoyable. The 'pitch' was, like the frisbee-golf, in the main park, so was not far from town and had an amazing view all around. If we are allowed, it will be nice to play bowls when we return to the UK. As long as the old people don't mind.

Me and Meg headed back to Salvador while Nic and Dan headed out to see The Wailers gig (lucky buggers).The next day Meg was due to fly to Auckland to meet Carol.

In the morning, we didn't have long before Meg was due at the airport so I dropped her off at 9am, and then found I had the whole day to myself. This was the first moment in about 8 months that I had entirely to myself – no Meg, or no work to go to either. I therefore decided to make the most of my day off, and go for a big walk. I chose to tackle the Ben Lomond summit, which towers about 1800 metres above Queenstown. After our trek up the Roy's track in Wanaka, I felt that this would be a suitable follow-up. The day was a scorcher, and nearly all of the walk was on exposed hillside. Nevertheless, I rocketed up the walk, and made it to the summit in just over 2 hours. The view was incredible, and had Lake Wakatipu to one side, and the Southern Alps to another, and the Remarkables on another. The air was still and calm, and still hot despite being so high up. This is now the highest hill I have ever climbed. I really enjoyed it.

Heading back down to Salvador who I had left in Queenstown, I was lucky enough to get some more great views of the town below me, as well as some very peaceful paragliders floating through the air. I would like to to do this sometime as it looks very relaxing.

While I was doing all these exciting things, Meg was busy twiddling her thumbs in Auckland. She had arrived in Auckland and given herself a good 12 hours or so before Carol's arrival. Unfortunately, the weather in Auckland was the opposite of Queenstown which meant Meg was confined to her hotel by the airport. I think she caught up on some shut-eye and did some sticking in for our memory book.

Carol's flight arrived at about midnight, and Meg met her as planned. However, I will leave it to Carol to explain her flight and experiences. Carol will be doing a 'Guest blog' in the next few days....

On the Thursday morning, I was just busy making sure I was prepared for Carol, hurriedly making some fresh bread, finishing washing clothes and doing some last-minute shopping before getting to the airport for about 11am. Meg and Carol were just coming out of the terminal as I arrived, so the whole affair was very calm and relaxed. Carol got her first ride in Salvador, which she very much enjoyed (of course) and we took her back to the campsite. We knew (or expected) that she would be pretty tired, so had nothing planned for the day other than to relax, eat, and get her settled into Salvador.
We had a laid back lunch and bubbly to celebrate. We had a short walk along Lake Wakatipu, and Carol got lucky and quite close to a shag. (This is a bird).
In the evening we had a BBQ (our first - ! - since being in NZ) and watched coronation st.
The plan for Carol's duration was for Carol to sleep in Salvador and me and Meg to sleep in the tent (Agnes), so I had put the tent up in the morning and got it ready with all our extra bedding.. Carol's box and belongings comfortably fitted into the slot that we had allowed for it, so everything had gone according to plan. Everyone slept well that night (ish).

On Friday, our adventure with carol was to begin properly. We headed into Queenstown to explore and get Carol fully immersed in NZ. We headed straight for the Gondola, which is basically a cable car, up the hillside next to the town.

At the top the view was fantastic and we even all had a go on the luge – a funny racing track where you sit in a simple kart which you control by pushing either forwards or back. It was v cool.

We also had a walk along the skyline track, which gave us a view of the Ben Lomond hill that I had climbed 2 days earlier.

We met up with Nic and Dan again and I got my first taste of proper leaf tea – the funny little metal ball things full of herbs and spices that you drop in the cup of hot water. It was good. I would definitely like some more. Carol has since bought us some metal balls for us to use.

Leaving Queenstown we headed to Arrow town, which turned out to be one of prettiest towns we have visited. It is an old mining town and still has a few streets full of the original miner's cottages, on a beautiful tree-lined avenue. All the shops and buildings are still the original mining style that makes the town feel really quaint. We had arranged to go to Arrowtown because there was a 'trolley dash' scheduled to be there on the Saturday morning. Unfortunately, it was a bit rainy in the morning but there was still a good turn-out of people. The whole event was for a good cause – the local pre-school, who had put on the whole event and do so every year. There were about 20 home-made trolleys, all in different styles, and different speeds! It was really good to watch and was nice to see a local community event that everybody was supporting. There was a really good atmosphere in the town, and we spent quite a while wandering round all the little stalls that were there.

The following day we were booked onto an overnight journey on Doubtful Sound - our christmas present from Carol (Thanks Carol!!!) - so we had to travel towards Te Anau the night before. We decided to stay at one of the local DOC sites on the Milford Rd rather than staying in Te Anau, and eventually chose to stay at Walker's Creek, a tiny basic site. We were blessed with the amazing sunset, but that was balanced out by the large number of sandflies that swarmed around the tent and campervan!

We wanted to be clean before getting our midday boat to Doubtful Sound so quickly called in at a holiday park to use their shower facilities, and then got off to Manapouri. The weather had been forecast as rainy and miserable but the sun had come out and it was blue skies everywhere. Initially we had to get a boat over Lake Manapouri, which was an amazing trip in itself – as we entered fiordland, the hills got bigger and the lakes bigger. It took about an hour and ended at the West arm power station – which provides about 15% of NZ's energy and was the focus of a famous political hot potato in the 70's, when environmental issues really started to have an effect on political decisions.
From there we got a bus over the Wilmot pass, with the bus driver stopping at all the best places for photo and informative opportunities. As we headed over the pass, Doubtful Sound came into view and it was unbelievable. We finally saw the scale of the sound and it was truly awe-inspiring.

When we arrived at the boat we quickly found our room and after an initial confusion with the room allocation, we were given a 4-berth room for the 3 of us.

We were then treated to some complimentary muffins and drinks as we made our way into the Sound proper. The boat was pretty luxurious and there was a constant commentary by the onboard nature guide who had a thorough knowledge on NZ's history and environment, obviously very enthusiastic about it all. The whole area was amazing, with the most massive cliff-faces and waterfalls everywhere. Some of the waterfalls would classify as some of the tallest in the world, but they are not included in any official lists as there are not permanent, i.e. they only appear after it has been raining.

After a couple of hours, we were taken down Crooked Arm, an offshoot from the main sound. This was where we had the option of either kayaking on the sound, or being taken out on a tenderboat with one of the nature guides. Me and Meg were both keen to do some kayaking, but expected that Carol might prefer to go on the tenderboat. However, Carol surprised us by revealing she had been having kayaking lessons back in the UK before she came away! So we all ended up kayaking around Doubtful Sound - a fantastic experience as we were pretty much left to our own devices as we kayaked around Crooked Arm for about 90 minutes. Meg was understandably nervous after her Wanganui river experience, but overcame her fears and Carol performed admirably too. Some of the kayaking was over small waves and the water was about 200 metres deep.

As we arrived back at the boat, we were given the option of whether we wanted to go swimming in the water. The staff had informed us that the water was about 10degrees, so wasn't particularly warm. However, the brave among us (or the stupid) decided to have a go, so I happily volunteered. Jumping off the balcony off the boat's side into the freezing water was certainly....invigorating.

We were treated to hot soup after our kayaking and swimming escapades and were taken further out towards the open sea. We saw a few penguins, a few distant dolphins, a couple of albatross and hundreds of seals. We also went out onto the open Tasman sea, which is quite rare as the sea is normally too rough.

As it got darker, we were brought into the main cabin for dinner, where we were treated to the largest buffet I have had for a long time. I greedily gobbled up some roast chicken, beef and lamb, as well as some salmon and tonnes of veg and salad. And then dessert. There was about 70 guests as well as us, and everyone was very friendly and equally as over-awed as us. After dinner, the nature guide presented a slideshow talk on NZ's flora and fauna which was very entertaining and interesting. By the end, it was about 10pm, and completely dark outside. Meg took some nighttime photography but it was a bit too cloudy for any good pics.

The next day brought a sharp contrast to the first. We woke up to a very eerie misty morning, which gave the whole sound a really moody atmosphere. It was great to witness it like this, especially after the gloriously clear day we had had the day previous.

After a cooked breakfast we saw some more penguins (fiordland crested) and seals, and got to taste some genuine fiordland springwater, which we collected from waterfalls at the side of the sound. We also got treated to a 'sound of silence' where the boats engines were turned off, everyone turned off their phones and cameras, doors were shut, and everyone remained quiet for 5 minutes. We were moored in a tiny cove of the sound, and it was awesome to hear nothing but the birds and wind and waterfalls.

The whole sound felt completely untouched and really felt like we'd walked back in time. We were the only boat we saw for 24 hours, and felt really isolated. The whole operation was really well done and we felt really honoured to have had some time there.

On the journey back, the bus driver stopped for us at various points that he thought we'd find interesting and we got to see some Mount Cook Lilies – large buttercups that are found in NZ and only flower for a few weeks in Alpine conditions.

We also got to see some Kea, a cheeky alpine parrot that is quite prevalent in Fiordland. I have become a keen birdwatcher in NZ so was excited to see one of these, which I hadn't up til this point (apart from a distant one at Franz Josef).

Back in civilization, we stopped at Te Anau to visit the cinema where a short film was showing called 'Ata Whenua', or 'Shadowlands' – a film created by a local helicopter pilot, who had access to some truly unbelievable shots of the fiordland landscape. The whole film was a homage to the beautiful environment that is a privilege to those who know about it. It was only 30 minutes long and had some fantastic images, but frankly, the music was awful.

From Te Anau, we had a long drive to Wanaka. This took about 4 hours, and was through very pretty countryside and wine country, but it had turned quite hot, which was strange after our misty moody morning on Doubtful.
Arriving in Wanaka, we had all decided that Carol should stay in a cabin/hut, where she would have more space and probably a better night's sleep than in Salvador. It also meant that me and Meg wouldn't have to put up the tent! Hurray!

On Tuesday, we had arranged to do a wine tour in Central Otago. We had found a really funky company called Funny French Cars, so we got picked up in a Citroen 2CV at 9.30am and we were ready to go wine-tasting! We had picked this company as Carol had used to have a 2CV and it was a surprise for her,, which I think she enjoyed. In the course of the day we visited 5 or 6 (I can't remember!) vineyards, and tried about 6-8 wines in each place. Of course, it was only a sip of each wine, but it must have amounted to a full glass of wine at each vineyard, so we were all pretty tired by mid-afternoon. The central Otago area is known for their Pinot Noirs, which both me and Meg are fans of, but even I was getting a bit sick of Pinot by the end of the day! Otherwise we also tried plenty of Chardonnays and a few Rose's. We weren't on the look-out to buy loads of wine, but were scoring each wine at the vineyards, and the one that we bought was Meg and Carol's favourite – Friends and Lovers, a Rose from the Bald Hills estate. We had lunch between vineyards at a pretty nature reserve, as we had prepared a packed lunch before we set off.

In the afternoon Julie (our chauffeur) took us to see a local artist, Alan Waters, who is well-known in the region. He had a fantastic house overlooking Cromwell and had some interesting pieces of art, all watercolors but very vivid and rich.

Julie also took us to a local ice cream makers, where we all had huge ice-creams.

On Wednesday, Carol wanted to have a look around Wanaka, as she had not really had time to explore, so me and Meg went to Puzzleworld while Carol was in town. Puzzleworld is a popular attraction in Wanaka, and is a bit like a tiny theme park, and would be great for kids. Or us.
There are loads of optical illusions everywhere, and some really cool rooms where your senses were really confused. For example, there was one room that was built at an angle of about 30 degrees. So because all the fittings/pictures etc were at the same angle, you started to feel uneasy and a bit drunk. Also, my favourite room, which was built so that from one side it looked like you were a giant, and in the other corner you felt like a dwarf. It was very funny.

We picked up Carol in town and headed on our way northwards. After the drive from Te Anau to Wanaka, we had sat down and re-discussed our plans with Carol. Initially we had hoped to drive all the way back up to Auckland with her, but Carol found the amount of driving combined with the heat quite exhausting, so we had agreed to cut driving times down and just remain in the south island, and Carol would just fly back to Auckland from Christchurch. This was good, as it meant me and Meg would stay in the south island (our favourite) for longer and we'd also probably end up working there over Christmas, rather than the north.
So instead of heading straight over to Christchurch, we were able to stop at Lake Pukaki for the night. On the way we went over the Lindis Pass, which is one of three east-west Passes. It was another beautiful day so the views were great and the landscape was really dry – something we had not really seen so far. We pulled over in Omarama for some refreshments at The Wrinkly Ram, and the surrounding area was full of lupins - in fact, none of us had ever seen so many lupins in our life - there were millions all along the roadside

Lake Pukaki was incredible. It was a lightning blue colour that looked artificial, but is completely natural, being the glacial water from the alps. We camped in a free campsite right next to the lake, and had views over towards Mount Cook, where we would be going the next day. The water was pretty cold, but me and Meg still braved it to get washed in (there was no shower at the campsite). Me and Meg put up the tent, but the night was very windy, and although we got some sleep, Carol was awake half the night worrying about us and even came out twice to check our guy-ropes! Needless to say, we were still there in the morning.

The morning was crystal clear, and we could see Mount Cook, our destination for the day. We drove up the 50km road leading to it, stopping at the relevant places for photos. When we got there, we visited the most magnificent visitor centre we have been in so far – a really modern building, designed with a huge rhombus-shaped window looking out to Mount Cook. As Carol had not slept well, it was decided that me and Meg should do a reasonably hard/long walk while Carol rested in Salvador. The track was called the Hooker valley track, and took us along the valley, over 2 swingbridges, past the Mueller glacier and towards the Hooker glacier. Along the way we saw hundreds more of the Mount Cook lilies. When we got there, there was a glacial lake formed, along with 2 small icebergs, that had broken off from the glacier. These bits of ice were over 600 years old, having travelled down from the top of the alps all the way down to the lake, and they were only going to last another few hours before melting into the lake. It felt strange and quite honoured in a bizarre way to see the last moments of an age-old iceberg....

When we arrived back at Salvador, Carol, although not slept, had rested and was happy to do smaller walk in order to see a glacier. We took her on the Kea Point walk, which went a separate way up to the terminus of the Mueller glacier.

From Mount Cook village, we headed about 80km to Lake Tekapo, which is just east of Pukaki. Lake Tekapo is also a lightning blue colour and has the village of Tekapo on its shores. Tekapo is famed for the church of the good shepherd, which I had been led to believe (by photos and literature) was a lonely church in the middle of nowhere. However, I was mildly disappointed to see that it was on the edge of the village and was certainly not in as much a barren landscape as I expected. It was still a lovely church and had an amazing view, but obviously was not quite so isolated as the photos had implied.

Tekapo and the surrounding region is also famed for having some of the clearest night skies in the southern hemisphere. There is the Mt John observatory just next to the village, 300m up a hill (Mount John, coincidentally), and they ran night tours on clear nights. Well our luck was in, it was the clearest night sky they have had for weeks, so we booked ourselves in for the tour. At 10pm we were picked up from our campsite and taken up the hillside to look at the telescopes and get toured around the stars. The guides were excellent and gave a simple guide to the stars we could see with our naked eye, pointing out the southern cross, the Magellanic clouds, Achernar, and the true south pole star (or rather, lack of). We also saw Jupiter, orion, and a number of astrological constellations. We were then free to look through the telescopes that they had set up for us which had close-ups of the moon, Jupiter, the seven sisters, and others. Meg was drawn to their in-house photographer who was helping people with obtaining some night-time photography. He had a mount rigged up that could accommodate up to 5 SLR's or DSLR's at one time. The mount was designed so that it moved at the right angle and speed as the stars so that during long exposures of the sky you wouldn't get any star-movement or blurring. Meg had deep discussions with him (his name was Fraser Gunn) and ended up with some awesome pictures – some 2 minute exposures that when you look at them, you can zoom in and see more and more stars every time you zoom in – they really are brilliant. (Should note that Meg has not processed any of those photos yet, so i can only upload one that i took of the moon from my little camera through the telescope)

We were quite tired when we got back to the campsite at 1.30am, but all quite pleased with what we had seen.

In the morning, we treated ourselves to breakfast in a cafe (woop-woo!) - we normally have our homemade muesli, and Meg retrieved her tripod from the stargazing company as she had left it on the bus the night before. Our plan for the day was to head over to Christchurch, which we did at a leisurely pace. The drive was a bit disappointing as we had become used to rolling hills and snow-topped mountains, and suddenly we found ourselves on flat ground going through dull-looking towns...We stopped along the way at a garage for some refreshments and chocolate and got to Christchurch at about 5pm. We camped just outside in New Brighton, which is just by the coast, and had a buffet dinner – roast chicken, bread, dips, crisps, etc.
Carol had another cabin at this campsite as it has been decided since that Carol is more comfortable in a cabin an probably sleeps better than in Salvador. This is fine for us (Me and Meg) as it means we don't have to put up the tent anymore and can sleep in our beloved Salvador!
Meg and Carol had an evening walk along the estuary, while I washed and cleaned- Pa ha! They had a nice walk and got barked at by a dog on a roof.
Carol then taught us to play Rummy. This is a card game. I didn't win any games.

We had a full day in Christchurch ahead of us, and I had had communication from one of my cousins, Rob, that he was also in the city with his girlfriend Sarah, so we arranged to meet them in the afternoon. Initially we got the bus into town – this was a treat in itself as we normally have to drive ourselves everywhere – it was great getting the bus. We headed for the arts centre where the weekend market was taking place. We strolled around the arts and crafts stalls, and admired the paintings/jewellery. There was also the dyslexia centre here which had some artwork created by, surprise surprise, dyslexics.
We met Rob and Sarah in the town square at 2pm and went for a coffee/hot chocolate. It was great to see them. I have only seen Rob a handful of times in the UK as we live so far away, so the hour or so that we had in Christchurch was more time than we've had together, like, forever. We chatted about our NZ experiences and shared stories. Rob and Sarah have been here since September and are backpacking using a bus service to take them round the country.
We agreed to meet them again in the evening at the free 'Christmas in the park' concert that was in the town park. In the meantime we went to eat our sandwiches and then Carol wandered around the town sights while me and Meg had a look at trees and flowers in the Botanical garden, which was pretty.

The 'Christmas in the park' is a big event in Christchurch, and they expected about 100,000 people there, although it didn't feel as busy as that. It was nice to see such a family-orientated event, as everyone turned out with their kids, and everyone was having picnics everywhere.

Carol treated us to a 3 course takeaway meal, with each course coming from a different food stall – chips for starter, then whitebait/houmous pitta for main, followed by mini doughnuts. When we met up with Rob and Sarah, it started to get a bit cold and the teenagers were out in force, making it feel a bit like a funfair in the UK, so we decided to go grab a beer in town. Me and Rob enjoyed talking football and found a pub serving English-style bitters, so we were happy for an hour or so. We had to get the bus back to New Brighton so Rob and Sarah walked us back to the bus exchange and we said our goodbyes. We will definitely see them again in NZ as they are here til March, so we'll keep in touch about their whereabouts.

On Sunday, our plan was to drive up the east coast to Kaikoura. We firstly had to stop off at a library to use the internet as Carol had to book her flights from Christchurch and Meg did some shopping at the supermarket. The New Brighton library was ace, as it had a whole row of comfy chairs facing the wall, but each chair had its own window that looked out onto the beach where there were loads of surfers and you could just sit and watch the waves roll in.
On the way to Kaikoura, we drove through more wine country and stopped at a railway station to have our lunch. As we started to arrive in Kaikoura, we saw more and more people looking out to sea, so we stopped to see what the fuss was. We saw loads of seals, who were just relaxing on the rocks and chilling out.

In Kaikoura, we had a look at a few campsites and compared cabins and prices. We ended up choosing the one with a swimming and spa pool, which we all made use of in the evening. Carol has an underwater camera which provided fun for all.

The plan for Monday was for Carol and Meg to go whale-watching, as this is the main activity in Kaikoura. Unfortunately the weather meant that the sea was too choppy for anyone to go out to sea, so we had to ditch that activity. We hope to have another go when my folks are here next month.
After using skype to talk to Meg's sister, we had a drive out to another Seal colony at the end of the peninsula. We have definitely seen enough seals now to last a long time!

Carol then had a look around the town's galleries, while I went to try out some fresh seafood (and Meg watched) at famous little takeaway place on the road to the seal colony. They were cooking whole crayfish, which looked delicious, but was quite expensive, so I had some fresh scallops instead. I have never had scallops before, and they are...ok. They come in 2 pieces, one that is nice and meaty, and the other is really mushy, which is a bit less nice.

As the whale-watching was cancelled for the day, it meant we could get further up the east coast than we thought. So rather than stopping in Blenheim or Picton, we managed to get all the way to Nelson, where we camped at Tahuna beach. The weather was still pretty rotten here, so we just sorted out our dinner and played some more cards for the evening.

The campsite wasn't particularly nice, so we got off early in the morning, and headed into Nelson city. We had a walk to the cathedral, which was interesting as it had been rebuilt in the 50's and was quite different to the usual design. We had lunch in the grounds of the cathedral, and then continued on our way towards the Abel Tasman national park.

Me and Meg visited Abel Tasman a few weeks ago, so we knew how beautiful the area was, and Carol was eager to see the park. We drove all the way to Marahau, which is the southern tip of the park, and me and Meg went to explore the pubs while Carol relaxed at the campsite – an old hippy farm with Alpaca's and cows. After a few drinks, me and Meg hitched back to the campsite (the first hitch-hiking we've done!) and then went out for some dinner with Carol at the Park Cafe – which marks one end of the Abel Tasman coastal track. Carol kindly treated us to the meal, which we all appreciated.

On Wednesday the plan was to get out into the park so Carol could see the park for herself. It is possible to do some kayaking on the sea, but we wouldn't have got very far in just a few hours, so we decided to get a water taxi and explore that way. We all got a water taxi from Kaiteriteri, and me and Meg got dropped off at Bark Bay and walked back to Anchorage – this is part of the coastal track. We have considered doing this track in the past, but now that we've seen it, we are quite happy that we haven't forked out the money for it. It is actually very similar to the Queen Charlotte track as it runs parallel to the coast and goes through similar bush. The beaches are picture-perfect, but annoyingly our camera ran out of battery just after we started....
For part of this walk we were able to walk across a low-tidal beach, which was quite an experience. It became apparent that Meg has an uncontrollable fear of crabs. And the beach, or rather, sea-floor (as it has been under the sea only an hour previously), was clearly very much alive with movement and you could see hundreds of crabs quickly scurrying into their holes only a few metres ahead of you. As we had to remove our boots and socks and walk over barefoot (as there were lots of little streams to wander through) this led to Meg's running/dancing across the bay, quite clearly in distress at the possible nipping of these tiny crabs that were obviously out to get her. When we were nearly over (and it was nearly a kilometre to cross the bay), the ground was getting very soggy and our feet were sinking into the sand/mud mixture about a couple of inches at each step. Meg was close to tears, so I managed to get her to the side of the bay where we dried our feet and put back on our socks and boots and managed to do the last hundred metres in our boots. She was very happy to reach the other side.
While we had been doing this walk, Carol had been getting a full scenic boat ride up and down the coast, to see the whole park from the sea. I think she really enjoyed it, but the weather was quickly coming in, so that when we all met up at Anchorage the rain started and we had to wait for about an hour under some shelter for our final water taxi to take us back to Kaiteriteri.

Once back in Salvador, we drove for half an hour to Mapua, where we stayed for the night. In the summer season, this campsite is a nudist camp, so we unfortunately timed our stay so that we missed out on that....
Me and Meg managed to do some swimming in the pool and then used the campsite sauna – a real treat.
Carol cooked steak for us in the evening, so we all felt very relaxed by the time we got to bed.

We knew we had a long drive the next day, as we had decided to go all the way to Hanmer Springs, where we were going to stay for 2 days and relax at the hot pools there.
We set off from Mapua at 11am and drove for a couple of hours to Murchison where we stopped so that Carol could look at the museum (me and Meg had visited a few weeks earlier and liked it), and prepare lunch. Annoyingly, the sandflies were out in force so we couldn't eat outside, we had to eat in Salvador.
From there it was a good drive to Hanmer Springs as we went over the Lewis Pass. We stopped at a rest area near the top of the pass where we had heard about some natural hot springs – Sylvia Flat - next to the river. We had to walk along the riverside for about 100metres, and were surprised to come across another person there, a guy just hanging out in his birthday suit.... he was relaxing in a hot pool beside the river with a beer in one hand and enjoying the amazing view of the southern alps. He certainly had the right idea and it would be a fantastic place to just be alone and relaxed, but I don't think he was expecting 3 other people to stumble upon his moment. We politely said hello and carried on further upstream where we found another small hot pool so showed Carol the bubbles of hot air heating the water. It wasn't really big enough to sit in, so we headed back to Salvador. The man in the other hot pool kindly offered to make space for us in his pool, but I'm not sure how keen Carol was to get cosy with him....

From there it was a short drive to Hanmer. We had a look at the hot springs resort, which is the main attraction in the town, and then had a look at a few campsites before finding one with a lovely cabin for Carol – it even had her own kitchen area and was a lot cheaper than others we had seen. Meg cooked curry while me and Carol watched Coronation St.

Today we are planning to do some mountain biking – the campsite has given us some free mountain bikes, and then we'll chill out at the hot springs.

Captain Cook is from Yorkshire! - Meg and Phil

2009-11-14T17:54:00.028+13:00

(Meg wrote this first half...)

Captain Cook is from YORKSHIRE!!

I know, I know.... all those trips to Whitby when I was younger and you would have thought I'd have realised that Captain Cook was from Yorkshire. Sorry Mum, I was listening….honest!

So we've finally left Ohakune after more weeks of work, some brilliant skiing, a day out at golf, and a well earned free canoe trip. I think the last time Phil wrote he mentioned the disappearing snow? Well, there was a big storm at the beginning of October. This was in time for the school holidays, which was good for the local businesses, and us too as we had the long awaited free time to enjoy the snow. We even went off piste! Phil now thinks he's a true expert.

On a freak spare day in Ohakune, when we couldn't go up the mountain (due to poor weather), we headed over to Waioru, about 20km away to visit the war museum that they have there. It was very good, but involved a LOT of reading. New Zealand have played an active part in most wars since the Boer war, and there are plenty of interesting stories and information that the museum had to show.

Heidi, Kirby and the girls came to visit in time for Ohakune's carrot carnival during the school holidays. I think it was the busiest I've ever seen Ohakune. Lots of carrot shaped things everywhere, even a carrot parade, and carrot cake contest, which Donna the chef from Kings won. We got to sample it and it was a mighty fine carrot cake, a deserved winner.

The next day was when the snowstorm came. The contrast in the two days was unbelievable! Bright sunshine and flip-flop weather one day and thermals and gumboots the next. Roads were blocked so people couldn't leave town for a few hours, even days. We always think it's just the UK that comes to a standstill when it's really snowy. Well it's not.

With Simon, our boss at Canoe Safaris, there had been a mention of the possibility of us being able to do a canoe trip free of charge before we left town. This was very vaguely talked about in Simon's great way of vaguely talking about things. Maybe he didn't really want us to take him up on his halfhearted offer, but we weren’t going to let that one get away! He ended up trying to persuade us to go with a group of people that had been working up the mountain on the ski fields. We knew one of the guys who was organising their trip and he said that it would probably be a boozy trip and that everyone knew each other quite well. We really didn't feel like being the spare parts and asked Simon if we could hold out and see if there was anyone else going out individually another day, which he reluctantly agreed. However, our luck was in; I arrived back at the motel on an evening a few days later to see that Simon had loaded a kayak on his roof rack – someone had made a last-minute booking for a trip the following day. This prompted me asking whether there was any chance of us going on the trip too and he said yes that should be fine. I was annoyed he hadn't let us know sooner as there were quite a few things we needed to get organised for a 3 day trip down the Whanganui. With Phil at work I had 30 minutes to get the necessary things from the supermarket. I made a mad trolley dash to get all the food we would need for 3 days away from civilization. I returned from the shops to see our canoe on the roof of Simon's minibus next to the kayak. It was a nice sight and was the sign of our life outside Ohakune! Hooooray!

The next morning quickly arrived; we packed our gear into the necessary blue barrels that were watertight and to be tied onto the canoe in case we capsized. Ignoring this possibility(!) we loaded our barrels and selves onto the minibus where one of our fellow travellers awaited. He was a 24 year old rugby-playing physiotherapist called Remy, from Burgundy in France. We got transferred into another bus at a halfway point and joined a German couple Roman and Ruth. They had only just arrived in NZ and looked very clean and organised. If they were a pair of towels they would have been neatly folded, crisp and white.

We arrived at Whakahoro, the launching point, and after a briefing and being shown how to paddle (Phil was the steering wheel at the back, I was the engine, at the front) we were loaded into our canoes and off we went. Just like that! Suddenly on our own, navigating NZ’s longest navigable river. The full length is 329km long, but we were only traveling about a fifth of this over 3 days. However, it was still daunting knowing there were no roads or any kind of civalisation anywhere in the national park.

A bit of history: The river was first inhabited by the Maori who believed each bend in the river had a guardian that controlled its life force. They built settlements along the river choosing the most practical places to catch the fish and eels. In about the 1840's the Europeans began using the river as a way of transporting their goods to the towns and villages up the river, this apparently being best and easiest route to the interior of the North Island. It later became popular with tourists and travellers. In 1917 the NZ government tried to ease the return of servicemen from WWI by opening up areas of the national park for them to build farms and use the land for cattle. There were well-intended plans for roads and bridges etc, in order to make the accessibility of the farms a bit easier. This seemed like a good idea but the government was pretty slow with their help, and the servicemen quickly realised that the land was very poor quality for farming with little goodness for cattle. Most of the animals died, and the farmers abandoned their farms and the land. Now there is only one clear sign that the land was ever used for anything – a bridge over a river in the middle of the forest. it is now known as the Bridge to Nowhere. (We would be passing a track leading to this bridge on our canoe journey.)

As we set off down the river I was awestruck with the massiveness of the gorge the river had created. On both sides we were surrounded by steep cliffs, waterfalls, native bush and the sound of the native birds, it was quite overwhelming. As the minutes turned into hours and my muscles began to ache from paddling I tried really hard to focus on the abnormality of being in a canoe in such a peaceful part of the world. Gradually all I could focus on was when were we getting to the spot we were stopping for lunch! It finally arrived and it was then I realised how basic the landing spots were. I had thought when they had said ‘landings’ that they had meant some kind of jetty to tie your canoe to. This isn't the case. The river fluctuates so much in capacity and water level that it wouldn't be possible to have a jetty. Instead you have to aim you canoe for the desired area and paddle like mad to get to the relevant side of the river, and then jump out to pull your canoe out of the river. We made use of the shelter at the first lunch spot as it was raining quite a lot by this time, and met a scotsman and fellow brit in the shelter. They were both around our age, and came across as very posh - you couldn't tell the Scotsman was from Scotland (he sounded more English than us!) and the other guy seemed to have decided we were just about worthy of chatting to, or should I say talking at. Glad to see the back of them we enjoyed our sandwiches and were joined by the rest of our group. The Germans were tucking into chorizos straight from the packet.

The afternoon on the river was very similar but with a bit more rain. Phil tried his hardest to make things less laborious by pointing out the things of interest he had highlighted on the laminated map we'd been given for the trip and I taught him lots of songs I'd learnt in girl guides. He liked this! We eventually reached the 'landing' where we were to stop and have our first night in a backcountry hut. We pulled our canoe as far out of the water as we could. We'd been told that if it kept raining the river could easily rise a couple of metres and to make sure that we tied a good knot. Phil couldn't remember the knots he'd learnt sailing so I did a quick release knot with a difference.

The hut was about 10mins walk up-hill, which took a lot of effort as we'd packed our watertight barrels with as much as we could. Still, it made us appreciate the hut when we got there. So for those that don’t know, a backcountry hut is something run by the DOC (Department of Conservation). Generally they have bunks, a wood burner, running water, and this particular one had gas for cooking. It also had a warden called Bernie, who reminded me of one of the flumps. The huts don't have any electricity or showers, and there were drop toilets and a tap outside if you're feeling brave! I was a bit surprised that there was absolutely nowhere to get change privately. You just have to hope no one is looking. Much to our initial disappointment, the guys we'd met earlier weere also staying in the hut. There were also two American's (who told everyone they were from Alaska as they'd been working there for a few summer seasons), and then the people from our group.

It actually ended up being a really nice night, and as there's no electricity it meant candle and torchlight were the only lightsource. We all sat around reading and playing cards (I think I beat Phil again at cribbage). The American's acted like Alaskans swigging bourbon from the bottle and then deciding to find and kill a wild goat outside. I'm quite glad they came back empty handed! The annoying guys were, I think, trying their hardest to be as eccentric as possible. They'd brought steak and filter coffee, and wanted us all to know about it. We on the other hand, just looked super organised as we'd brought pre-cooked lovely dishes. We made the right move sleeping on the top bunk, as that's where the heat was from the wood burner. And I'm glad I had earplugs as someone was snoring and I don't think it was me. Always difficult to tell with ear plugs! Phil assures me it wasn’t him snoring either.

The next day Phil and I were first to our canoes, Bernie came and helped us get loaded up. The river had risen substantially. I was reassured when I was reminded that it wouldn't look as fast when we were on it. Which I'm glad to say it didn't. Still, not my idea of a walk in the park, being on a dark brown fast-flowing river with just a bit of fibreglass between me and it. Our main and only stop-off before our evening stop was Mangapurua which is the landing you for the walk to the Bridge to Nowhere. On our way there it really rained, and we both had our waterproof everything's on and we were kept warm by paddling. The landing came into sight ahead of us, and we could see it was on the far side of the river on a bend, where typically the river picks up speed. The shape of the landing also demanded that we had to turn back into the current to get up the landing slope. We both paddled as hard as we could and finally made it to the landing point, but still not completely out of the river’s main current so there was a big possibility of us drifting back down river. I decided to hop out onto the landing and pull the canoe up and out of the water. I was possibly overestimating my own strength. I jumped out, got hold of the front of the canoe and pulled. Much to my surprise I was pulled in the opposite direction and into the river! It was like slow motion but there was nothing I was able to do apart from look at Phil with very wide panicked eyes and plop into the river. It took a nano second for the realisation to hit me, and the wetness!! After my initial panic, Phil remembered what we'd been told to do if anyone goes overboard, and that's for the overboadee to hold onto the canoe and for the person on board to steer the canoe to an area/edge of the river that would make it possible for the overboadee to get back in. Already we were drifting away from the landing point and quickly further down the river. Finding a good spot for me to get back in initially looked impossible (from where I was) but sure enough Phil found a tree sticking out into the river, slowing the current, and some rocks for me to climb onto, and back into the canoe. PHEW. It was then Phil reminded me I had our new camera attached to me… We decided we wouldn't worry about the camera and we were glad I was ok!
A few pictures survived!....

After this exciting episode, We gave the bridge to nowhere a miss and paddled straight to that night’s accommodation. I was soaked through. The accommodation was a Murae (a Maori meeting place) that had the fire lit when we arrived - it was like heaven! - and the fire fueled the hot water - double heaven! Brilliant! We had a hot chocolate and discussed the day’s events. Gradually everyone else arrived and there was quite a good vibe, and we all stayed up late chatting, eating and drinking.

The following day I did NOT want to get back in the canoe, the river had risen about 3 metres again overnight. Luckily for us our fellow canoeists were all quite experienced and they suggested we follow them the rest of the way. After a LOT of encouragement and reassurance I got back in the canoe. It was a much shorter distance to paddle to the end of our 3-day trip. I'm really glad we did follow the others; some bits were very choppy, like the sea on a choppy day (apparently due to the rise in the river capacity). Anyway we finally made it back onto dry land and I felt much happier.
I have never enjoyed a shower as much as I did that day.
Our fellow canoeists stayed in Ohakune for the evening so we went out and played pool and danced for the 1st time since June. The 2 guys who we had thought to be quite irritating turned out to be thoroughly nice chaps and cooked us all a big breakfast the following morning.

While we had been on the river trip, Salvador our new van was getting some much-needed TLC at the local garage! I can't even begin to explain what he needed fixing; all I know is it got done after the initial confusion with the garage losing our only key! Once we were back from the canoe trip Phil picked him up from the garage. I'm not going to say how much it cost, let’s just say we'll be not doing anything extravagant over the next few months…
Getting Salvador back meant that the work on the interior could finally begin. Sat writing this in the back of him now it's hard to believe what he once looked like. As I still had some shifts left at Kings, Phil did most of the hard work, working out how much material was needed, cutting and sticking it to the walls and doors. I helped as much as I could. It's quite amazing really, he looks like a different van. We are quite proud of him.

Once he was finished it meant there was nothing stopping us escaping Ohakune! HOOORAY!!!

As a bit of a thank you and a goodbye from Kings, we were treated to an afternoon of golf with our bosses (Tracy and Ian) and another employee Selwyn. Who is a lovely very small Chinese man.

The actual afternoon was intended for all of the hospitality businesses in the area to get together and try the new lager that Tui (a make of lager as well as a bird) were launching called Tui Blond (without an 'e' to supposedly make it more appealing to their male customers!). This was ready available for sampling throughout the afternoon and if you needed to keep sampling that was also fine. The golf was followed with a buffet of food resembling what you would get at a christening in the late 70's (?) when deep fat frying everything was the fashion. Still it was free, as was most of the booze, so no complaints from us. This was followed by a midnight spa back at Kings. Tracy and Ian had kindly said we could stay in one of the rooms at the hotel, which meant there wasn't too far to walk to bed. All in all, a pretty good day.

Our last evening in Ohakune was spent with our friend Nic. She cooked us a lovely dinner and played her guitar and then we went for a glass of vino at a local bar. It was lovely and not too sad as we know we'll be seeing Nic in Queenstown next week and hopefully again before the end of our travels.

Saturday 24th October arrived, the day of leaving Ohakune. We'd done all of our washing, cleaned our old room, charged up the electrical things, put the auto-reply on the email system, said our goodbye's... it was time to leave. HOORAY!!

We called in for lunch at Margot's house, which was along the way as we traveled southwards. Margot is my client from the Wool Company who I did some photography for. Margot and her family are so lovely, it was a really nice way to begin our travels again.

We had decided to go south towards Wellington but for our first night kept enough away so it wasn't a huge shock to the system to be in a big city! We headed for Paraparaumu this is on the west coast about 30km north of Wellington. There we found a reasonably priced campground mainly full of “long termers” and the odd “one nighter” like us. We were greeted with a lovely sunset and the view of Kapiti Island that is famed for being NZ's biggest wild bird sanctuary. It was official..... WE WERE FREE!!

The following few days consisted of getting a few things in order before we could head off properly again. Our priority was to get a new camera and sort out the insurance for the old drowned one. We did the odd touristy sights, saving a few to do with my Mum when she's here. The Te Papa Museum was really interesting, but was so big I was over-reading after the 3rd hour. They did have a giant squid which (when caught) was the only live giant squid that has ever been caught, and was found in about 2006. It was in a big display unit in some sort of liquid. But you could get really close to see it, and it had rotating hooks on its tentacles, with each hook being 5cm long and each tentacle had about 20 hooks on it. Not something you'd like to meet down a dark alley.

Wellington seems like quite a cool arty city, much moreso than Auckland. It was nice to spend some time there, but we were both very glad to get on the Interislander ferry to get to the South Island.

Well, that was for the 1st 15 minutes until the captain warned us of the rather larger swell there was on the Cook Strait… Wow boy, it was huge - 6 metres in fact!! Phil thought it was quite funny at first, doing videos and taking pictures out of the window. Then he went a bit quiet and then he went a bit green. I'd overheard a crewmember telling another passenger that it felt less rocky the lower down on the boat you are. We moved as quickly as we could and it did seem a bit less rocky but I'm not sure if it was or not, as we'd passed the section of the Strait were the Tasman Sea and the Pacific Ocean meet (or should I say collide in this instance). Anyway we were happy they were showing Coronation Street on the onboard TV’s, as it occupied us for an hour.

We arrived in Picton and drove straight to the site Phil had sourced. It was dark so we didn't really know where we were parking. We realised at about 2am, 3am, and 5am that we must be near a railway bridge!

Picton is much nicer than I'd remembered it, I think they've made a big effort there as most people just arrive and either drive South or hop on the ferry. We went to the local DOC office and booked our water taxi and campsites for the Queen Charlotte Track (a 71km tramp along the coast of the Marlborough sounds) that we were intending to do later that week.

In the afternoon we decided to go and explore a bit more of the Marlborough region. No wine tasting this time – that can wait. We made our way to a place called Pelorus Bridge; the drive took us along the Queen Charlotte drive and along the sounds themselves. The road was incredibly windy and steep but the weather and views were spectacular. It gave us a taster of what we'd be seeing on our tramp later in the week. We found a perfect spot to have lunch overlooking the sounds. It felt very strange to be wearing our shorts and flip-flops when not even a week before I was still wearing my thermals!

The campsite at Pelorus Bridge was lovely and had the added bonus of free hot showers – not normal at Doc campsites. We arrived there and decided to do the walk to the top of the nearby hill. We'd been told this would take 4 hours so we knew we'd be pushing it as we only had that amount of time until sunset. We did the walk in 2 hours and it was very steep, Phil was extremely happy about this, yet again beating the DOC recommended walking time.

That evening we had our 1st encounter with a wild possum. They are a much hated pest over here (I personally think Kiwi's say that about everything so they don't feel bad for shooting anything that moves). They apparently eat lots of protected birds' eggs and strip the native trees of their bark making them vulnerable to disease. This particular possum was just outside our van and when I shined the torch directly at it, it seemed to go into a trance - a bit like a rabbit in headlights. Nothing happened - it didn't suddenly jump at us or do anything scary, it just stayed still. No wonder they are so easy to shoot. It reminded me of a raccoon.

The following day we visited a more remote place called Duncan bay. It was so remote it was quite difficult to imagine anyone living there. We drove the windy route up to the hamlet and found about a dozen houses that looked inhabited and there were a few boats moored in the bay. The water was so clear and calm it looked like glass.

Then we took the long windy road back to Picton driving through Havelock that is famed for its green-shelled mussels. Much to Phil's disappointment the cafe that sold them was shut.

We arrived back in Picton in time for me to drop my camera gear off at the i-site (the local information centre) where they have lockers. This was for the few days we were intending to walk the Queen Charlotte track and we would be leaving Salvador in an unmanned car park.

We woke early the next day, our rucksacks all ready and packed. It was a lovely morning, a bit fresh but the light was amazing. We made our way to where our boat taxi was departing from, feeling strange carrying our rucksacks. I am very glad we do not have to do this all the time! As my Sister would testify, I become a slightly grumpier Meg when I am carrying my rucksack. I thought in the 9 years since Becci and I were travelling that maybe this would have changed, but no. I do not like carrying a fully packed rucksack! I am happy to say that the price of our water taxi also included the service for our bags to be picked up and dropped off at the different campgrounds we were staying at each day. Hooray!

The water taxi began its journey with us and a few other trampers going to various places along the track. It took us along the Marlborough sounds, which we'd come through on the Ferry but it had been dark and as I mentioned before, rather choppy! On this morning the water looked like glass. The driver pointed out some penguins floating on the water, and they were tiny. Then a gasp from a few other travellers caught my attention. I went to see what was happening and there were a school of dolphins alongside the boat. They were very close to the boat, and they played in the wake for a while. It was brilliant! It was Phil's first close-up wild dolphin experience. And he was very excited!

After about 40 minutes the boat arrived at Ship’s cove, where we would start our walk from. In a nut shell, this is where Captain Cook first set foot on New Zealand land and was confronted by the Maori's. He finally got his point across and they let him come ashore... to continue his exploring and data collecting etc.

ah haaa I hear you say, this is when Meg finally realised where captain Cook came from. It's just how my brain works. If school had've taken me to Ship’s cove and I could have seen what they were talking about, it might have made more sense. Instead they just took me to Whitby!

So this is where we started our 4-day walk. The walk goes along 71km of the Marlborough sounds that consist of lots of hills alongside many picturesque bays and inlets. Overall the walk was more strenuous than we'd been led to believe, as the DOC had graded the walk as ‘easy’. I was glad that we had started on this one and not gone straight in for a harder walk. I felt sorry for a few people who'd obviously thought it was going to be much easier than it was and seemed to be struggling, some were just in trainers and hadn’t brought walking boots.

The first night we stayed at a campsite called Miners Camp, but this was basically a bit of grass in Bev and Bob's orchard, next to their rabbit hutches and their gigantic rabbits. Phil was a bit annoyed by the amount of hen-pecking going on, but this wasn't by me but about 10 chickens that wouldn't leave us alone. He was also VERY happy to be getting his tent out for the first time since we've been over here. We have to put it up like it's some kind of military operation - in a specific order and in synchronisation. He was also happy to be using his new Primus cooker. This boils water in less than 3 minutes! On this particular evening we were testing out the Backcountry meals that are dehydrated meals they have over here for walkers. On the menu was Thai Red Curry and then a portion of sweetcorn and peas that was meant to feed 5 people. It was pleasantly delicious and we were satisfyingly full. It was much better than the beanfeast that I had when I was hiking in Iceland!! We were in bed for about 8pm as it had turned into a cold and miserable evening and there was nowhere dry to sit outside, so we read while it was still light.

The morning was much the same; a bit miserable to begin with, but improved as the day went on. The walk was only a couple of hours so we took our time and used our tree and bird identification books to make the walk more interesting.

When we arrived at the next campground our bags hadn’t arrived at the jetty yet, so we walked around to another jetty a bit further along the bay. Unbeknown to us there was a resort there and they had the most picturesque bar overlooking the bay. It was like something out of Condenast Traveler Magazine, and it sold Monteith's on tap. Not quite real ale, but it's the next best thing! As it was the 31st October, our friends Sadie and Steve were due to get married, so we decided to have a beer in their honour. We'd also brought some wine to have with dinner (if you can call dehydrated rice and chicken dinner?) for the occasion so we had that too.

Later we had a walk to the bay and watched some fish jumping out of the water possibly trying to escape with their lives - it kept us entertained for a while, then we went to bed! It was another cold night; I tried to keep all the heat in my sleeping bag leaving only a small gap for fresh air. We must have looked like two big slugs. I woke at 2.30am and woke Phil up to take a picture of where we were when Sadie and Steve got married!

After our morning muesli we took the tent down and got on our way, saying goodbye to our rucksacks for the day. The route took us up a steep climb to the top of Kenepuru saddle. It was a hard slog first thing in the morning with the sun beating down on us. The walk took us across the top of the hills which had the most amazing views and made the effort worthwhile.

The rest of the day gradually got a bit easier but was by far the hardest and most rewarding day we had done. This could have been helped by the glorious sunshine making the water below look so translucent and the colours really vivid. The terrain was quite varied which made the walking interesting. The previous days were primarily through thick forest and bush areas, not opening up to show us where we’d walked from. I don’t know about you but I need to be able to give myself a pat on the back as often as possible!

It was a great sight to see the road that led to the campsite we were due to stay at for the evening. With the sun still shining I made the most of the cold running water and washed my hair for the first time in a few days. I felt like a new woman, isn’t it amazing what shampoo can do?! It felt very strange to be in a campsite that people could drive to – the others we’d stayed at had been properly off the beaten track. It meant it was a bit busier than the other nights, especially as it was a bank holiday weekend (only for the Marlborough region). I was a bit envious of the Kiwis camped opposite us who were making the most of their massive bbq! The local people really seem to make the most of their time off and the great campsites. That particular one was $7 per person per night. No showers though!

We woke in the night to go to the loo. Usually Phil wakes up and I make myself go with him as I don’t want to wake up an hour later and have to go on my own as there are never any street lights or lights in the toilet. The stars were so amazing. You know when you look at the sky and can’t believe how many there are – it’s like that quite a lot here. Phil bought me a star book for my birthday so I’ve been learning a bit about them. The Southern Cross is probably the most famous, but there’s also a false cross so you have to be careful not to get them mixed up. Orion is visible over here too, just upside down! All the stars are also given Maori names and have legends. But I miss the plough and seeing the moon the right way round!

Monday was our last day and I was glad the sun wasn’t as hot. We seemed to motor on faster than the day before and saw a lot more walkers and bikers. We’d met a couple the night before who were walking the whole track there AND back just so that they didn’t have to pay for the water taxi. They were doing 142km in 6 days carrying their rucksacks and a tent and everything. Wow dude, imagine the mood I’d have been in after that… They had warned us there wasn’t anything at Anakiwa, where we were due to finish, but I still dreamt of an ice cream even though there was no point. I was getting to the stage where my feet were starting to say ‘When are you going to take your boots off? I’m, like, totally tired down here. Not another corner, oh no, I can’t enjoy this downhill bit because I know it means there’s a uphill bit coming soon….’

Suddenly, there was the sign… QUEEN CHARLOTTE TRACK…. We’d done it! AND there was an ice cream shop. Brilliant!

We spent the few hours waiting for our water taxi back to Picton with a guy we’d met called Andrew, who was a really nice guy but extremely quiet. He did the track on his mountain bike. I got the impression he liked to be with us but not say much. We all read and snoozed by the jetty listening to the kids running up and down and the water lapping the beach. It was a lovely way to end the walk.

(Phil wrote the next bit....)

We arrived back in Picton and immediately packed up Salvador and headed over to Nelson. We were very smelly, having not had a shower for 4 days, but we had decided to get on our way rather than spend another night in Picton. We arrived in Nelson as it was beginning to get dark, but managed to have a very welcome shower and then headed into town to treat ourselves to burger and chips at the Vic Brewery bar – this is the home of Mac’s beer, which we have become strong patrons of since our time in NZ.

We had tonnes of washing to do after our big walk, so we had set aside the next day for doing lots of chores and getting properly clean. We found a hostel in Nelson that had free internet and we made use of the laundry facilities and kitchen. We had mixed feelings about being in a travellers hostel. We were definitely on the older side of most of the guests, and the whole place was quite cliquey – lots of young travellers trying to impress members of the opposite sex. We didn’t have such things to worry about, so instead we burnt our home-made muesli and got really angry with ourselves. Oh dear. We made ourselves feel better by going to watch some jazz in the evening. Niiiiiice.

The next day we enquired in the DOC office about our hopes to do the Routeburn track before The Arrival Of Carol Hodson. The Routeburn track is in Fiordland and is one of our big aims while we are in NZ. It is a 3 – 5 day hike and is supposed to be incredible. Unfortunately, the DOC officer informed us that parts of the track were still impassable after the winter’s snow, and that the forecast for the next week or so was not very favourable. So we re-jigged our plans, and decided to casually make our way down to Queenstown in time for the aforementioned lady’s arrival about 2 weeks later.
Therefore we headed over to the Abel Tasman region for the next few days. Everyone we have met has mentioned how amazing this area of NZ is, and in fairness, they are pretty much spot on. We headed to the northern end, Takaka, and stayed in a DOC campsite called Totaranui. Apparently in the summer this campsite gets completely booked up for weeks at a time and you have to put your name in a lottery if you want to stay there over the Christmas/New year period. This, in a campsite that can accommodate 850 people!

While we were there it was relatively empty and was nice and peaceful. We enjoyed the sandy beach and I even tried a bit of swimming. But the sea is still pretty cold, having not warmed up for the summer yet, so my pitiful effort did not last long.
We spent one day doing a long walk around the coastal headland, which gave us great views of Wainui bay, where Abel Tasman first moored his boat, and we also went to Separation point, where we were informed a seal colony regularly visited. Well, we saw 3 seals, which wasn’t great, but better than nothing, I guess.

We stayed in the Abel Tasman park for a couple of days, and then decided to get on our way. We went up the coast further to Golden Bay, and Collingwood. The area is noted for its artists who have galleries to visit so we made the most of it and paid a visit to some potters and painters. We stopped off in Collingwood and took a walk along the beach which had a flock of very timid Oyster-catchers, and also some ladies fishing for whitebait. They told us about the process which seemed very time-consuming and requiring a lot of patience, but they all LOVE whitebait patties over here.

We had lunch at a very cool place called The Mussel Inn, that Heidi and Kirby had recommended. It brewed its own beer and served fresh green-lipped mussels. They take great pride in their mussels in the area as the mussels are larger and more succulent than the usual mussels we are used to in the UK. They were delicious.

We also stopped at Pupu Springs, which claim to be the world's largest (and clearest) freshwater springs in the world. It was certainly very impressive, and the amazing colours that you could see in the crystal clear water was incredible. There were bubbles of water coming up from underneath all around, but in a very calming way. It was lovely.

Over the next few days we headed over to the West coast. We stayed at Owen’s River reserve on the way to Murchison, which is an old gold-mining town (they all seem to be old gold-mining towns around here), but they had a pretty horrific earthquake in the 1920’s that their museum featured a lot of artefacts and stories from. The elderly lady in the museum (Gertie) was charming and very helpful, and mentioned in passing that she had pulled her sister from a landfall in the earthquake. It was only later when we went to visit New Zealand’s Longest Swingbridge that we saw the same lady’s heroics mentioned on an information board that we could fully take in the fact that we had been talking to a living legend.

We had considered staying in Westport for an evening, but after going to Cape Foulwind (what an awesome name – frustratingly we failed to get a picture of the welcome sign) to see some more seals (and we saw a lot more this time), our quick drive through Westport failed to stir up any positive emotions. It was like a poor mans’ Witham. If anyone reading this knows what Witham, Essex, is like, then you will shudder at the prospect of Westport.

Therefore we continued to make our way towards Punakaiki, where we wanted to see the Pancake Rocks the next day.

When we woke in the morning, we made our way to the visitor centre who informed us that the best time to see the rocks was at high tide, which would be later in the afternoon. With this in mind, we decided to go for a couple of local walks, before finishing off with the rocks later on. We headed into the Paparoa National Park, which is famed for its limestone formations. We walked up and down the Pororari valley, which was very beautiful. We also explored the Punakaiki caverns, which were very dark, and did a short coastal walk, that had a cool beach.

The rocks were undoubtedly the highlight of the day. I was ready to dismiss them as nothing special, but I was very wrong. I was mightily impressed. They were fantastic. Seeing the waves crash into the rocks and the effect they had on the blowholes was really cool. The Pancake effect comes from a layering of the limestone (they call it ‘Stylobedding’) which over time has caused the rocks to appear layered like pancakes. There are tall columns of these all over, with random holes going right down to the sea, so when the waves come into land and hit the rocks, the water is forced up through these holes, giving a spouting effect that you would normally expect from a whale.

That night we stayed in Rapahoe, right by the sea, and attempted to get our clothes clean and dry. We only half-managed this task, as although the washing machine worked as it should, the dryer was TERRIBLE. Also, as a side note, nearly all the washing machines we have come across in New Zealand use COLD water to wash the clothes. We find this a bit odd, and pretty useless.

The following day we had plenty of boring chores to do, as well as plenty of wet (but clean!) clothes to dry, so spent quite a bit of time at Greymouth laundry and library. Once we had ticked off most of our to-do list, we decided to treat ourselves to a tour around the Monteith’s brewery. Monteith’s, along with the aforementioned Mac’s Beer, is the most well-known of the NZ brewers, and have managed to export to places like America and Europe – in fact, we asked if they exported to England, and apparently Waitrose stock their beer, so if you visit a Waitrose in the near future, you should look out for a Monteith’s beer, and you can pretend that you are with us in spirit.
The tour around the brewery was very interesting. Despite having a non-professional interest in beer and its associated drinks, I didn’t know much about the actual brewing process. They prided themselves on following traditional methods, and were very good and answering all our very probing questions. The Greymouth brewery actually only accounts for about 5-10% of the final Monteith’s output, and it is likely that their umbrella brewery, DB, who have huge breweries in Auckland and Christchurch, probably aren’t quite so careful (or bothered) about keeping to such tradition when they brew their Monteith’s batches. But anyway, Greymouth was the original home of Monteith’s, and they were keen to impress upon us that they were keeping with time-honoured tradition.
They showed us the barley that they bought in, and we were allowed to taste them to see the difference in the beers from the start. The barleys are mixed with spring water from the southern alps, then the hops are added. These are then filtered off, and the whole mixture is cooled down. The beer is then contained in massive vats and the yeast is added. The yeast they use is 200 years old (from Denmark), and they use the same yeast for different batches for 3 month periods at a time. The yeast activates all the enzymes ‘and stuff’ in the beer, which creates the alcohol. This stage takes about 6 weeks. Then there are the final filtering stages, and then it’s the taste test!! This was obviously the best bit, and we got to try the full range of 7 beers, and their new cider. It seems that the UK’s cider craze of the last 2-4 years has reached NZ, and all the breweries are releasing their own versions of Magners and Bulmers. So, it was a tough job having to sample all the beers, but it was an essential part of the tour. We felt quite light-headed afterwards, but this was surely just a symptom of all the fascinating information that we had just been taking in, and the beer had nothing to do with it.

In the evening, we went further towards Hokitika, and camped at a DOC campsite beside Lake Mahinapua. The next day we planned to go into Hokitika and get Meg a greenstone necklace.

When Meg came to NZ in 2000 with her sister she did buy a greenstone necklace, but did not realize that Maori’s believe you shouldn’t buy greenstone (or Jade, as most people would recognize it) for yourself. Therefore, whenever she wore it, it kept falling off. It has mystical powers, you see, a bit like Lord of the Rings, which is apt seeing as we are in Middle Earth.
Meg has since given said necklace to me (Phil, for it is me writing this now) and the necklace has never fallen off. (Well, actually it did once, but we’ll ignore that for the sake of the story).
So in Hokitika we planned for me to buy Meg a greenstone necklace, so that she wouldn’t be cursed with a falling-off necklace any more. It was quite cool, seeing all the workshops that were visible and seeing the craft that goes into shaping the stone. Most stones are shaped into conventional maori images – the hook, or the spiral, or twist. Meg wanted something a bit simpler and less polished, so we found a really beautiful pendant, a lot lighter greenstone than most of what is available. Meg is very happy with it, so that makes me happy.

From Hokitika, we headed further down the coast road, through some tiny settlements towards a place called Okarito. We went by one bay called Bruce Bay, which has thousands of little cairns all along the beach, which was about a mile long. It was quite cool, so we did our own little cairn, and took some photos.

On our way we passed through Whatoroa. As we did so, Meg screamed with excitement as she recognized a craft shop where she had bought the greenstone necklace (now mine) 9 years ago. We went in to meet the owner and share our excitement, but he was unfortunately away for a couple of weeks. In his place, the attendant showed adequate excitement for us, and was keen for us to see some other of the owner’s carvings in the shop. The big draw was a whale jawbone that the owner had been gifted with from some friends in the Chatham Islands about 2 years ago. The owner has carved dozens of smaller items from this and they were all amazing beautiful. They had carbon-dated evidence that the whale bone had been dated to 3500 years ago, which the attendant tried to convince us was the oldest bone ever found in New Zealand and may have connections to mythological maori heroes. I have my doubts about this, as surely they wouldn’t allow the oldest bone ever discovered in NZ to be chopped up into tiny sections and have jewellery carved from?! Anyway, sceptic that I am, there were some amazing pieces there.

Okarito, where we stayed for the evening, also extracted a squeal from Meg. As we slowly made our way to the campsite at one end of the village, Meg realized that she had also been here 9 years ago with her sister. We attempted to recreate a photo of Meg with the same background so that we can compare it to her old one when we are back in the UK.

Okarito is next to Okarito lagoon, which is home to 100’s of nesting herons in the spring months (which it is currently). To get the best view of the herons, you really need to go on a guided tour as the nesting areas are at the far end of the lagoon. We did our best to see what we could from Okarito and saw a heron flying around, which briefly satisified our cravings. We are avid bird watchers now, and are constantly keeping our eagle eyes peeled.

Our next stop was at Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers. Unfortunately it wasn't the clearest of days, so we didn't have the best conditions to view the glaciers. People have told us to do some ice hikes or ice-climbs, but we will save this for another time when the weather is better, we will almost certainly be coming this way again over the next few months. We did take the obligatory walk to the face of the Franz Josef glacier, which was pretty cool, and seeing the area that it covered only 50 years ago is incredible when you realise how much it's retreated.

In the evening, we stopped at Lake Paringa, a DOC campsite by a huge lake. It was only a small campsite so the facilities were minimal (just a toilet), but it was quite relaxing.

From Lake Paringa, we had decided to head over to Wanaka, but we wanted to stop off at a couple of places on the way. We stopped at Munro beach first, where we hoped to see some Fiordland-Crested Penguins. However, when we arrived we were informed that the best time to see them was early in the morning just after dawn. We had got there at about 11am, so we were disappointed to just see an empty beach with waves crashing into it. Ho-hum.

The second place we stopped at was Jackson Bay. This was slightly out of our way, as we had to take a side road for 50km through very remote and isolated farmland. Jackson Bay was supposed to thrive as a fishing port, and in the 1800’s hundreds of immigrants were given farmland there, but the government (in true style) failed to keep investing in the area, and without even a jetty or wharf for the fishing boats, the township failed and nearly everyone left. Now there is just a few people remaining and one small diner/café place called The Cray Pot. It did the most fantastic fish and chips and we enjoyed our lunch looking out onto the few fishing boats there were in the harbour. The kind girl working there suggested we have a short walk along the bay to see if we could see any of the Fiordland Crested Penguins that we had missed earlier in the morning.

The bay was covered in large stones and boulders that you had to carefully negotiate, so we were only really looking 2 or 3 steps ahead of us a time, and then looking out to sea to see if there were any penguins. We had been walking, or rather, jumping from rock to rock for about half an hour when it happened. I was about 5 metres ahead of Meg, and was concentrating on my footing, for these rocks were occasionally uneven and slippy. I was just about to take my next step when I realized what I was about to step on – a sunbathing seal! However, this wasn’t your pretty tiny seal that you get in cute nature documentaries; this was a large female, as black as a rock (which didn’t really help, as that was what I was hoping to find). I have read quite a lot recently about seals as we have been visiting a few breeding sites, and all the info has stressed not to get too close to seals as they can be quite dangerous, especially in the breeding/mating season. Well, I didn’t want to be eaten, or even mated, by a seal, so I said a rather rude word, and turned on my heel as quickly as I could. The seal, who was just waking up, saw the sight of a very tasty Phil hovering above her and let out an almightly ‘RROOAARRRR!’, and pulled itself up onto its flippers. Meg said she has never seen me move so fast. Of course, this Killer Seal couldn’t keep up with me, so it settled down to a pretend sleep, quietly awaiting its next victim. Of course, my first thoughts were of saving Meg from any other impending Seal Danger, and I ushered her away from the beach in case there were any other dangerous cute animals lying around waiting to be stepped on. She didn’t laugh, honest.

We drove on from Jackson Bay back to the main road and onto Wanaka. This was an awesome drive, as we made our way through the southern end of the southern alps, and were treated to a warm, calm afternoon, with plenty of photo opportunities. At nearly every corner there was someone who had pulled over for some picture-taking, and it felt like proper NZ postcard country – snow covered hills all around, beautiful blue lakes, and lush farmland.

In Wanaka, we made our way to one of the main campgrounds, as there is a dearth of DOC campsites in the area. Meg also wanted to get a shower, which you don’t tend to get at the basic DOC sites. I should note at this point that I sometimes like showers too.

We have now had 2 full days in Wanaka, and it seems very nice, if a little posh and very trendy. It is beautifully located by the lakeside, and has got some amazing hills and mountains on all sides. Last night we ventured into town to watch the New Zealand football team play against Bahrain in their World cup play-off. We found 2 pubs showing it, and it seemed strange to watch what I would consider to be a huge game in a quite empty pub. Football obviously is nowhere near as popular as rugby here, but the radio stations and newspapers had been really building up to the game so I had expected their to be more of a turn-out, but I guess it will always play second fiddle to the game with the funny shaped ball.
Today we had climbed what I think is probably our biggest ever hill. We have been up to Roy’s Peak, which is 1598metres high. Considering the carpark is only at about 300m above sea level, we went up a pretty long way. It was continuous up-hill for 3 solid hours, and our legs had already decided that they were unhappy after the first half an hour. Needless to say that the journey downhill was much easier and we did it in half the time. The view from the top was incredible, and gave a full panorama of the unbelievable landscape that they have here.

We rewarded our legs with a trip to the spa in Wanaka afterwards, and can now start to rearrange Salvador in preparation for The (impending) Arrival of Carol Hodson.

Birthdays, breakdowns, and anniversaries - Phil

2009-09-29T16:45:00.012+13:00

Well as I write this, I am sat outside on a bench in the sunshine in shorts and T-shirt, so Spring is definitely here.
Winter is still hanging on by a thread, and skiers are still coming into the town in drips and drabs trying to make the most of the retreating snow, but there is no denying the changing of seasons is upon us.
We have had a very mixed last month.We have continued to have our ups and downs as we have put up with our work routines, in line with the promise we made to ourselves to make as much money as possible so that we could hopefully enjoy the spring and summer months without having to work.
We have had a few frantic days and nights at work. Meg has been in tears because of some guests' rudeness towards her, while at the other extreme she has also been sent a bottle of premium Rum from a guest as a way of thanks 'for a brilliant weekend'..... Humph.

I have had some pretty long shifts on busy saturday nights at Kings. There was a live music event a couple of weekends ago (for those that know NZ music, Cornerstone Roots and King Kapisi were playing), which lasted until the early hours, but nights like that tend to be quite enjoyable, if a little exhausting. Much more painful are quieter days\nights, when there are few guests and clock-watching is the order of the day.

The 2 highlights since our last blog entry has been Meg's 32nd birthday and our 1st wedding anniversary. For Meg's birthday, Simon offered to come and look after the lodge for a couple of days so that we could go away and celebrate. We decided to go to Taupo. I spent a bit of time organising some surprises so that we could remind ourselves of why we are in New Zealand. We left Ohakune at 8 in the morning with jam sandwiches made and flask of herbal tea all packed up. We travelled to Taupo along route 1, which takes us along the Desert Road past the central mountains (Ruapehu, Ngarahoe, and Tongariro). It is an awesome drive as it took us through pretty bare deserted bush, while the Mountains soared up from the earth to dominate the surroundings.

I had organised for a trip on the Huka Jetboat at 11am, so we made our way to Huka falls. Huka falls is NZ's largest waterfall, in terms of quantity of water that passes over per second). The actual descent is not all that big (about 15 metres), but this is compensated by the huge propulsion of water that is continually spouted over the top. To put it in some sort of perpestive, it is the only outlet for water from Lake Taupo, and quickly condenses a river of water about 20 metres wide and 5 metres deep in a narrow channel that is about 10 metres wide and 2 metres deep. Therefore the surge that powers the water over the edge is rather awesome. The jetboat trip was pretty cool. Because the boats uses a jet propulsion method of movement, it means they can travel in very shallow areas of water at a hight speed. We were treated to some very close shaves with trees and cliffs and were shown the nearby dam and the inevitable close-up with the Huka Falls. It was all very impressive, all the while being filmed by an accompanying speedboat – we were told later that our 'pilot' is due to be on NZ's 'Dancing with the stars' TV show and this was his introduction piece!

After our speedboat trip we drove over the road and had a quick bite of our jam sandwiches (still impressed with the beautiful simplicity of fruit preserves) before a horse trek! I think Meg was quite pleased to get to spend 2 hours trotting through woodland and along country paths. We even got to do some cantering, which was fun but a bit painful on the nether regions! Not being used to horses, I did enjoy the experience and would definitely be keen for some more horsing around, but someone will need to teach me the best way to sit to avoid discomfort.

Following the horse trek we finished our lunch off overlooking Huka Falls, and paid a trip to the local 'Honey world'. Since we were enthralled at Bury Show last year by the local beekeepers, we both have a fascination with honey and the world of bees, so we bought ourselves some Pohutakawa honey after a few tasting samples of different kinds.

I had also booked Meg a 90minute massage\treatment at the Taupo hot pools, so we drove back through town while Meg had no idea what awaited her. I dropped her off at the said location and went back to our motel (Simon had kindly booked us a night in Taupo) to drop off our bags and so that I could make the most of the spa pool in our room! However, I think Meg's 90minute treatment (called 'Eau Thermale') ticked all the right boxes. When I picked her up she came out half asleep and very floppy!
Back in the motel room, Meg opened all her cards and presents that she had received. She had even had a cake baked for her by Sara, a friend at Kings.
In the evening, we visited a restaurant called Pimentos, which allowed us to drink the bottle of Pinot Noir that the owners of Kings had given Meg. All in all, a pretty good day.

The following day we had hoped to go skiing on the way back from Taupo, but the snow report was not very good, so we decided to have a wander around Taupo and slowly make our way back home. Taupo didn't seem anything particularly special, but has the advantage of having the lake at its side, so lots of activities (mainly in the summer, I think) go on there. We decided that the best thing to do was to have Fish and Chips by the lakeside. It was lovely. On the way back, we stopped off at a nature reserve by the water's edge to have an hour's sleep. It was brill, and reminded ourselves of how ace it was to sleep in our beloved campervan.

Unfortunately, it proved to be our last sleep in Peggy.....

The next morning, as Meg drove to work, she broke down as she was turning right at a junction. After a few tears as she tried to push our 5 metre van across the road (all the skiers and snowboarders were just too damn desperate to get up the mountain to bother stopping to help a lone tear-strewn woman push her massive vehicle across a busy road........), she got to work safe and sound. She rang me from work, and I came to meet her at the end of her shift. We thought that Peggy would be suffering from a usual battery problem - we had to jumpstart her a number of times over the last month. However, on this occasion there was no luck with anything we tried. Ian and Selwyn (our boss and a colleague from Kings), who are more mechanically minded than we are, also had a look and tried a few other ideas, but nothing was working. It was only when Selwyn took a look at the oil-level that we realised what had happened. We had ran out of oil.

Our hearts sank. We hadn't topped her up with oil for a couple of months, and it appears we had been running on empty. The engine had seized. It is difficult to explain how unbelievably stupid we both felt. Since being in Ohakune we had only been doing short journeys and not thought about topping up with oil, but it had come back to bite us on the bum in a rather expensive way....

We had it looked at and properly diagnosed by a mechanic and we were left with 2 options – get a new engine, or get a new van. Both would cost about the same amount.
We started to look on trademe (the New Zealand version of eBay) for new vans and there were plenty to choose from, but we were keen to get one a similar length and height to Peggy as she gave us a lot of space to live and sleep in. A lot of campervans that are on the market are renovated tradesman's vans, but they have little else except a bed in the back, and no other living space. With Peggy, she had extra length to move about it, and cook etc. Basically we had spoiling ourselves for the last few months and didn't really want to downsize to a smaller van.

We eventually found one based in Tauranga which is about 200kms away. This van was the same model as Peggy but 3 years newer and about 100,000 less miles on the speedo. The seller offered to take Peggy off our hands as they planned to either a) use her for parts, or b) fix her and sell her for more.
Simon offered to go to Tauranga and check the van out as he lives in Matamata (which is a lot closer than Ohakune). His report was good – the van drove well, and was in good condition. It had passed it's WOF (equivalent of MOT) the day before at an offical Vehicle Testing Station, so it all seemed fine,.

We agreed that the new van could be dropped off at the weekend and Peggy could be picked up a few days later. The new van is not kitted out with bed/carpets/benches etc, so the plan was to transfer the bed, fridge and worktops from Peggy to the new van. With it being the same model, we are hoping that the fittings should be a straightforward swap from one to the other. We'll see....
Anyway, the van was delivered on sunday morning, and when it arrived we obviously took it for an obligatory test drive before exchanging monies. The new van drove really well, much better and smoother than Peggy, all the dashboard fittings/lights worked (most of Peggy's hadn't!), so we were sold. We exchanged cash and Darryl (for that was his name) agreed to return the following week to pick up Peggy.
As he left, he mentioned that he had had a problem with the battery on the drive down to Ohakune, but had swapped it for the battery in his other van (the one that his girlfriend drove down, and that they were driving home in), and now it worked fine...

WELL. As he left we decided to take it for a longer drive and to enjoy the freedom of having a van again. First stop was the garage as we had to fill up on diesel. Well, we put $20 dollars in, and as Meg returned from the cashier to the van, she noticed (well, you couldn't miss it!) a drip-drip-drip of diesel coming from the fuel pipe onto the forecourt floor.

'Blimey' wasn't really the word that sprang to mind, but that will do this blog.
We drove abck to Canoe Safaris, rang Darryl and left a 'concerned' message on his answer phone.

So, that was the first problem. A bit annoying, you might think, but not actually the end of the world as it was just a fuel pipe that needed replacing.

We drove to a mechanic the next morning to confirm that it was just the rubber fuel pipe (he confirmed it). As we made to drive away from the mechanic's garage, we couldn't start the new van. It sounded like the battery. We called the mechanic over again who checked the battery – nothing was wrong with the battery except that it wasn't charging, so the conclusion was that the alternator wasn't working.

'Blimey' again.

Anyhow, the one good thing about our situation – if this can be a good thing – is that we still had Peggy as our bartering tool. Darryl had knocked $1000 off the price of the new van for Peggy. When we eventually spoke to Darryl, he was very sorry about the predicament that we found ourselves in and agreed that he would fix the fuel pipe and alternator before we would let him take Peggy away. (I don't think he really had a choice). In his defence, and I am sure most people will not believe this, he seems like a genuinely good sort and did not know that any of these problems were in existence. Simon has said that when he had viewed the van in Tauranga, there was definitely no diesel leak, and if the alternator was not working the van would not have passed the WOF. It must just be our unbelievably bad luck that these 2 issues happened at the same time as the van was being brought to us. At least if they were going to happen, it is better that they have have happened now rather than in 3 months time.

Darryl's mechanic Brett has now been to Ohakune and spent a day fixing our new van – fitting a new alternator and fuel pipe and we now have a working van!! It feels very exciting, and it is very enjoyable to drive. It also has a new name.

Salvador.

The big job now is to fit the back of the van out with carpet, bed, etc, so that he is livable-in for when we get on our way. So we have about 2 weeks to get it sorted. We are very excited about this.

This problem with the vans has obviously hit us financially. Nearly all the money that we have earned at Kings this season is going towards our new van rather than going towards our adventures/activities as hoped. Fortunately, some of this is being made up by the fact that Meg has managed to get some photography work that should see us through the next few months. She managed to get a commission for The Wool Company, but I will leave the full details/story of this for Meg to write in the next blog.....

The other big event this last month is our first anniversary as Mr and Mrs Kerr. The 13th September fell on a sunday, and on saturday night I was allowed to leave work early so that we could go out for a meal at the best restaurant in town, or so everyone said. Indeed it was really good, and was the first Saturday night we've had to ourselves since being in Ohakune.
On the sunday, by miracles of miracles, we had no rooms to clean. Usually Sundays are the busiest days of the week with guests leaving, meaning lots of rooms (normally 5 or 6) to clean. But this particular Sunday no-one was schedule to leave! This was fantastic news, which meant we could a) have a lie in, and b) go skiing for the day.
We decided to go around to the other Ski-field on Mt Ruapehu, Whakapapa. It is about 40 minutes drive. (It should be mentioned that while Peggy has been broken, Simon has kindly let us use his VW Passat, which feels really fast and smooth compared to what we're used to). Whakapapa seemed a lot bigger than Turoa, and the landscape is also much more varied – lots of cliffs and valleys everywhere. We spent about 3 hours there, with mixed feelings about the snow. It was obviously softening up quite a lot with the sunshine, so much so that is was turning slushy, and also was very bumpy/lumpy on many runs. We both fell over a hatful of times, but fortunately didn't manage to hurt ourselves in the process. We are both left with the overwhelming decision that we are definitely fair-weather skiers – we need plenty of good snow and good weather. Lots of people here go up the mountain whatever weather there is, and when the snow is either hard/very soft, but, frankly, we don't see the point/enjoyment in that. So fairweather skiers we are, and unashamedly so.

Other days/events that are worth noting are:

One day we went to Horopito car wreckers. This is the largest car wreckers in Australasia. We had driven past a couple of times but not actually visited before, so one day when we had a couple of hours to spare, we decided to go and have a look around. One other reason was that we hoped we might find a campervan that we could salvage some cool fittings from.
So we had a wander around the car yards, where there were 1000's of old cars, all in a state of complete disrepair and effectively just structures of rust, with plants growing in the main body of the cars. Cars were piled on top of each other everywhere you looked, and it was very cool.
We didn't find any campervans worth looting but we had a look around the 'museum'. This wasn't really a museum but just a collection of car parts. If you imagined that cars had just been dismantled into every little separate piece possible and collected in boxes in a large warehouse, then this was the place. There were boxes/shelves of steering wheels, gear sticks, indicator levers, rear view mirrors, windscreen wipers, and all the tiny nuts/bolts that make up the engine/mechanics of the car. It was a Dad/photographer's dream. I look forward to when I get excited about things like that.

We have been to the local cinema twice in the last month. The cinema is a tiny one-screen cinema that is open about 4 times a week to show one film at a time. We have seen 'The Boy in Striped Pyjamas' – a rather twee film about WW2/holocaust that I found rather simplistic, and the much better 'District 9', a Sci-Fi film about a race of aliens in Johannesburg. The cinema is one of those old-fashioned theatres that feels like it hasn't been cleaned in a decade, is dusty, and is freezing cold. I love it.

The only walk we've been on this month is part of the round-the-mountain track. If done in full, it should take about 5 -6 days. We had about 4 hours, so just did a small section of it. It took us from the mountain road through some native bush, past some waterfalls, up to Blyth Hut, which is a hut where walkers (or Trampers, as they're called here) can rest their weary heads for the night. The huts like this are very basic and just have some bunk beds and basic cooking equipment, but they are incredibly peaceful, isolated and quiet. We will stay in some similar huts to this when we do some of the walks in the south island and we look forward to it. The Blyth hut afford some fantastic views all around and we didn't see anyone else on our entire walk. We also walked along a fantastic walkway through some very english looking moorland which made us feel at home.

One day, after skiing, we decided to make the most of one of the Spa pools at Kings. They have 2 available for use, and we hadn't taken the plunge all season. I was a bit sceptical about how great they would be, assuming it is just a glamourised jacuzzi, but I can't express how awesome it was. It was boiling hot, and so utterly relaxing. We both only lasted about 15 minutes in there and were both so floppy and exhausted when we got out. I was definitely converted.

I have continued to make the most of a full kitchen here, and have been making soups aplenty, as well as homemade museli every week and pies/lasagnes/oven-based dishes.

The one thing that has struck us about our time in Ohakune is that we haven't met many people that we have struck a massive bond with. We have made a few friends at work and a good friend in Nic, a girl who works at another lodge in Ohakune who is pretty cool and we will definitely stay in touch with.

Since Carol has booked her flights to New Zealand, we have been getting excited about planning our further adventures in NZ. When we head off from Ohakune, we will head south and hope to do the Queen Charlotte Track around the Marlborough sounds, before heading towards the Abel Tasman region to enjoy the national park there, and then down the west coast to the glaciers (Franz Josef and Fox). That should take us to Queenstown in time for Carol's arrival.

So the plan for the next 2 weeks are just to work as much as possible to earn as much as possible to make up for the loss of earnings with the whole van-dango.
On the 13th/14th/15th October we are currently pencilled to be doing a canoe trip along the Whanganui river with Warwick and Olivia – another couple that we've met here - and after that we hope to head south.

Hoooray. And phew.

Ohakune: Where Adventures Stand Still! - Phil

2009-08-15T14:05:00.014+12:00

Well, we are still in Ohakune, and crikey, does it feel like it.

The winter season is still here and despite a few forays into the teen degrees, it will remain for another couple of months.
We have had a mixed last month, lots of different emotions flying around, and feeling slightly hemmed in by the small community, cold weather, and work-sleep-work routine that we have found ourselves slipping into.

However, we are now much closer to the end of September which is our agreed finish-time in Ohakune and then we can get on our way again in Peggy and start to do what we did in our first 6 weeks here - travel round, do fun things and have a good time.

We have been having a good time in Ohakune, dispite my occasional misgivings:

I am now an accomplished skier. Well, perhaps you can omit the word accomplished. Maybe even skier. That leaves: I am now an. That's about right.

Anyway, we have had about 10 days (or mostly half-days) skiing up the mountain. We are tending to get 3-4 consecutive days skiing every 2 weeks when Simon comes to Canoe Safaris and takes over the day-to-day running of the business so that we can get out and enjoy ourselves. I had a private 3-hour lesson, and came out of it with a tenfold improvement. It really was unbelievable how much I improved over those 3 hours, so for any of you who have not skied before, definitely get a private lesson as soon as possible, as you will benefit far more than you can imagine.
Since my lesson (nay, epiphany), me and Meg have been able to go up all the chairlifts and been exploring all the blue runs that are available to us. (The blue runs are the areas for intermediates). On my last day skiing a few days ago, we were there for 3 and a half hours, and I fell over just once. Just once. Meg fell over TWICE. This marks an important landmark in our skiing relationship - the day I finally fell over less times than my wife. And I actually came off the mountain having definitely enjoyed skiing. On previous days I had thought, 'well, skiing, is...OK, but I don't see what's quite so addictive about it..'. After my last day I had a really good time, and felt safe and like I knew what I was doing. I am now a skier (accomplished).
Lunch on the mountain is always good. We make our sandwiches beforehand, and I have rediscovered the beautiful simplicity of jam sandwiches. Wow. They are fantastic.Having a jam sandwich with some herbal tea at the top of a slope surveying the landscape for 100's of kilometres is awesome.

Work has been ok, but it has been very up and down. Meg has stopped working at Mountain Rocks as it was a bit too cliquey, with the promise (unfilled so far) of more hours at Kings. At Kings Meg has been mainly working on reception, which I never thought I would see her doing - an administrative job surrounded by paperwork and answering phonecalls. She really enjoys it, and is very good at it - very customer-facing which she excels at. I have continued to do my Thursday night shift at Mountain Rocks which I enjoy as I get to do the quiz and speak to all the locals. I do 3-4 shifts a week at the bar at Kings, which has been ok, but I have had a few disagreements with the bar manager, which has led to a few uncomfortable moments/shifts. It has certainly made me realise that I am most certainly just an 'employee' and nothing more. So now I just go to do my job and come home. I have learnt not to ask any questions, or suggest anything, as it will most certainly be 'wrong'.

The work at Canoe Safaris has also turned into a bigger task than was originally agreed. After being told that most of the work would be at the weekends, we are now ending up having to have one of us on the premises every day for 3-4 hours in the morning up until about 11am, and then again from 2pm onwards for check-ins etc.
We are currently 'discussing' this situation with Simon, so will await and see whether we get any sort of compensation. We are getting free accommodation, one free ski season pass and free ski gear rental for the season but this still doesn't make up for all the hours that we are putting in. We'll wait and see.

More than anything, we have been getting homesick. We did sort of expect this at this stage (about 3-4 months into our trip), so hopefully it will pass soon. I am sure we will be fine once we are on our way again, but having all this time here has given us the opportunity to think about everyone back home.
Both sets of parents are currently planning on coming to see us, which has been cheering us up.
Carol (Meg's mum) has booked her flight to come and see us for 3 weeks in November/December, which will be brill. It has made us get the map out and plan our whistle-stop tour with Carol, and reminds us why we're here and how much we still have to do. My folks are planning to come over in early 2010, and will probably hire a car to drive themselves around in, and we will arrange to meet up with them in different places around the country. We are really excited about getting to the south island and seeing all the 'biggies' (Milford/Doubtful sound, Queenstown, glaciers, Arthurs Pass, Christchurch, Kaikoura, Nelson, Abel Tasman, etc).

I have found some football to play!! Every wednesday there is some 5-a-side football played at the local college. I have joined a team called 'Seagulls', and so far we have won 2, drawn 1 (but admittedly only had 4 players). Most people that go seem to be foreigners (English, Irish, South American) presumably desperate to get their 'fix' of football in a rugby-dominated country. Rugby does seem to be everywhere. Whenever I work at the bar, there is always either rugby union, rugby league, or Aussie Rules football on, and there seems to be so many different leagues/cups/tournaments. It did seem very confusing until I reminded myself of all the football that is played in England and Europe and it must seem equally confusing to someone unfamilar to the Premier League/Championship/FA Cup/League Cup/European cup etc.
Anway, I am really enjoying playing football for the first time in 4 months, and have already nutmegged lots of people.

It has been good to be able to make use of the oven here, and there is also a blender. We have been making pies, toasted muesli, and lots of soups. It has been lovely. Going back to our 2 hobs in Peggy will be a bit strange, but we won't mind. But we may miss home-made muesli. The local shop sells huge bags of veg for the equivalent of £5, so we keep getting these and making lovely soups from them.

Meg has been very productive and got some photography work. She met a fellow photographer a few weeks ago, who must have visited all the local fashion/clothing catalogues. However, he has since had to return home (to Argentina) and passed on some work that he has been offered to Meg! The company is called The Wool Company and has been in existence for about 20 years. It is family-owned and is now run by the original owner's daughter, Margot. Meg has had a few meetings with her, and it looks like it will be a 3 day shoot in early September, possibly in Napier. Meg is looking forward to getting her camera out, and it's nice to be creatively inspired again.

In our spare time together, other than skiing, we have done most of the local walks. A lot of the walks are through native bush, which is really nice (and keeps us dry when it rains!). It is surprising how complecent we have got about walking through forests here – all the foliage is still lush green and it feels really deep and rich with life/activity – we know that most walks through woodland in the UK in the winter season would be through bare trees.

We have also done a nice walk by some local lakes, which are considered sacred by the Maori – people are even requested not to eat near the lake as it is considered offensive.

Another nice walk is along the Old Coach Road. Before the railway line was in existence, people travelled from Auckland to Wellington along this route. It is more open than the forest walks which makes a nice change and you can see all the lovely surrouding hills and scenery. It also leads to a fantastic viaduct, which is the sight of the world's first commercial bungee jumping operation. It has since closed down (due to safety standards!), but is quite a feat of engineering as it spanned quite inhospitable/inaccessible terrain.

We have also been allowed to walk the 2 dogs that belong to the owners of Kings. They are 2 border collies called Bella and Harry. They are the kind of dog that we will get when we are older, and are lots of fun.

So, in summary, we are reminding ourselves of how lucky we are to be here, and that this small stage in our NZ adventure will be coming to a close soon. When that happens we can continue our exciting exploration of the countryside and leave work behind us again for a couple more months. We can't wait.