Pupu Springs, Farewell Spit, Havelock December 4, 2008 There are many differences between staying in a hotel and in a caravan park. (Now that’s an understatement.) I want to make note of the so-called “wake-up call.” In a hotel the phone rings at your preferred time and a pleasant voice or recording informs you that it’s time for you get moving. In the Marahau Beach Camp this morning my wake-up call at six was an aggressive bite on the forehead (the only part of me not buried in the covers) by one of those buzztards, a sandfly. Yep, time to get [View Full Entry]

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Marahau/Abel Tasman NP December 3, 2008 It’s an efficient operation they’ve got going here. We pulled into the Marahau Beach Camp near Abel Tasman NP late yesterday afternoon and within ten minutes we had a place to park the van, water taxis scheduled to drop us off and pick us up, and a lunch ordered for the hike today. One of the “must dos” for us on this trip was to hike part of the Abel Tasman Coast Track. It’s another one of those “Great Walks” and we’d read and heard a lot about it before we got here. At nine [View Full Entry]

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We tore ourselves away from Kaikoura today...we highly recommend that town! Traveling north we entered the Marlborough Wine region and spent an hour at a small winery for some tasting and lunch (curried sweet potato soup and Mediterranean salad). The wines here were excellent and we walked out with a bottle. We know now why Nelson Lakes NP isn't on the list of "Must See Places." It's pretty much a couple of lakes and trees. A black swan tried to attack me as I tried to get out of the van, so I just stayed put. The rest of the drive [View Full Entry]

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Kaikoura December 1, 2008 A new month means the high tourist season has begun in NZ and the same caravan spot we had last night in Kaikoura is $6 higher tonight. All of the whale tours and other activities prices have also increased greatly overnight. Our day was excellent. We spent most of it tramping the Kaikoura Peninsula Walkway which takes one over sea cliffs with views of craggy shores, clear water, and fur seal colonies and down into red-billed gull nesting areas. It took us four hours because we stopped so much and would have taken longer if we hadn’t [View Full Entry]

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Hamner Springs and Kaikoura November 30, 2008 Yesterday I wrote that in NZ we don’t drive much on any one day, but today we drove a little over four hours traveling from Karamea on the west coast to Kaikoura on the east coast. We drove through more twisty mountain roads with nothing to see but scenery! The first stop was in Buller Gorge near Murchison where we crossed the biggest swing bridge in NZ and took a short walk, mainly to stretch our legs a bit. Second stop was an ice cream and window-shopping stop in the pretty tiny town of [View Full Entry]

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November 28, 2008 Day 57 Happy 30th (can he possibly be that old?) birthday to our son, Tom. Seems like just a few years ago that we were driving from Yellowstone to Livingston, Montana through a blizzard on a road that was closed in a borrowed four-wheel-drive pickup for Tommy’s birth. Didn’t get going until around 9:30 this morning. Our park near Fox Glacier (that we never saw) was so nice we hated to leave and it was such a pretty morning. We don’t ever drive very far in a day and today was no different. We drove along the west [View Full Entry]

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Westport and Karamea November 29, 2008 We took another look at the Pancake Rocks and were on our way north up the coastline. While we were there we got our first good look at some Hectors dolphins (smallest species of dolphins) that we have heard so much about. First stop was the small town of Westport that we feel gets a bum rap in our guidebook. We thought it was a delightful place with friendly people and fun shops and at least one pretty good café. We were going to head inland from there but two gas station attendants convinced us [View Full Entry]

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West Coast November 27, 2008 We had a late start out of Wanaka. It was just so pretty and quiet in our caravan park that we took our sweet time getting showers, having breakfast, washing dishes, and putting the jigsaw puzzle van back to its daytime configuration. We’re a team now, and we might win the “changing the van from nighttime sleeping to daytime use” Olympics. We also decided to take a drive to an overlook of Lake Wananka and I requested that we make a stop at Puzzling World. If you are in Wananka, you don’t need to stop there [View Full Entry]

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Wanaka November 26, 2008 It’s a rare thing for me to read the same book twice or watch a movie twice, so Joe was surprised when I asked if we could drive up to Glenorchy again this morning because I wanted to see it again. It’s 50 kilometers of winding road from Queenstown, but he was happy to oblige. It was just as beautiful as yesterday, this time there was more sunshine and the water of Wakaputi Lake looked bluer. After three days in Queenstown, we were finally off over the mountain pass and into the vacationland of the Wanaka area [View Full Entry]

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Queenstown November 25, 2008 The southern cross was brilliant last night. We were both up in the middle of the night to enjoy the clear night sky on our way to the facilities….more quality time together. Today was rainy and miserable so we holed up in Queenstown for several hours. We cleaned the campervan and took long hot showers. We didn’t want to drive on because the road ahead is supposed to be beautiful and we don’t want to see it (I should say not see it) in the rain. The weather isn’t stopping a lot of adventurers. I spoke with [View Full Entry]

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