Our first stop on the West Coast was Punakaiki for its ‘Pancake’ rocks. One of those things you see in the tourist brochures and it looks kind of neat. Plus it was pretty much the farthest we could realistically drive in a day from Wharariki Beach. The distances in New Zealand aren’t that far compared to what we’re used to, but the roads are so twisty-turny it’s tough to travel much faster than about 60km/hr due to all the tight turns. The rocks at Punakaiki have been pounded and eroded by the rough Tasman Sea and kind of look like stacks of pancakes. We think that it’s a bit of a stretch, but ok, still interesting. Next we headed to Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers which are probably the biggest tourist attraction in the region. At ... read more

Finally, it’s here. This is a trip we’ve been looking forward to for a long time. We booked our campsites months ago while we were still in China dreaming about New Zealand’s great outdoors. Having heard mixed reviews from other travellers about the tramping track, we decided to stick to the water/beaches and kayak it. We previously spent 5 days kayaking on the west coast of British Colombia and figured that would be just about the right amount of time. There are numerous kayak tour operators that offer guided trips out of Marahau and the surrounding area near the beginning of the park, but we instead went for a “freedom” hire which allowed us to go at our own pace. Kayaking comes with several benefits over tramping. First, space and weight are non-issues meaning that you ... read more

So this is it. How time flies. Back in late September we crossed into China with excitement and slight nervousness. After spending several weeks in Central Asia we were excited for the cultural change as well as the food, but a little apprehensive about the language barrier and population. The food has been great, and the language barrier wasn't really an issue (though it made things interesting every once in a while). Now, four months later we are looking forward to another change of scenery when we fly to New Zealand for summer weather, beautiful nature, fresh air, and low population density. As our final tourist activity, we went to go visit the giant pandas. Our trip to China would not be complete without seeing them. The last time either of us had seen a real ... read more

Shangri-la is a fictional place; an isolated, utopian paradise in the Himalayas featured in James Hilton’s famous 1933 novel “Lost Horizon”. Sometime around 2001, China decided to capitalize on the tourism boom in Yunnan province (mostly centred around Dali and Lijiang) by claiming that the nearby city of Zhongdian was in-fact the place that inspired Hilton’s novel. They even went as far as changing the name of the city to Shangri-la. And that’s how fiction becomes reality. In reality, the Chinese Shangri-la is very similar to other tourist destinations in Yunnan except with a Tibetan theme. It has the “old” town/new town relationship and a couple of “x-largest” items to add to China’s long list of superlatives. The Ganden Sumtseling Gompa or Songzanlin Monastery is the largest Tibetan monastery in Yunnan and is supposedly modeled after ... read more

Christmas in Kunming Kunming is not very remarkable as a city, but we decided to spend Christmas here since we could stay in a nice hostel with great facilities and also have access to everything the big city can provide. Also, it makes a decent transportation hub for places we want to see in the area. Transportation within the city, however is another story... There are also some great cheap DVD shops which is just what we needed for some holiday down-time. Our Christmas tradition at home is to have a fondue on Christmas-eve, so we decided to go for the Chinese variant of fondue – the hot-pot. We headed out for dinner and foolishly forgot our trusty Chinese-English food menu. We haven’t needed it in a while since most places we’ve been to recently have ... read more