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Published: February 26th 2008
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We left Queenstown and headed north and west through the mountains to the south island's west coast again, this time to Glacier country. The Fox and Franz Josef glaciers are on NZ's west coast and are a couple of bigguns that are part of a select band of glacier's (only 1% worldwide) that are currently advancing as opposed to retreating. We decided to do an all day trek on the Fox (Franz Josef is about 20kms north) which turned out to be a fab day out. The Fox is a great big 13kms long chunk of ice and if you sit on it whilst you're eating your butties then you're sure to get a numb bum....just as we did. Like most ice cubes it's pretty slippy too so it's a good job we had crampons on to help steady the way. It's also pretty dangerous, what with pinnacles, crevasses and big holes to fall down so you have to be with a guide. We walked up and down a fair chunk of the glacier which gave us a good appreciation of how it's form changes as it 'flows' down the valley due to the differing forces in play.
After glacier
time we headed up the west coast and then back east into the Southern Alps again - to Arthur's Pass National Park. Here we did a full day trek right up a big ridge up to Avalanche Peak (1833m) and then back down via another ridge. It was a steep hike up and down and it wasn't without danger as there were some fair steep drop-offs here and there and especially off both sides of the 'razor' ridge at the top! It was a really good walk though and we were lucky to get some amazing panoramic views. After our big day trekking we continued in an easterly direction ending up back in Christchurch (where we started out exactly 2 weeks previous) where we paid a visit to the zoo. We didn't manage to see tigers on safari in India but we did catch up with a few at the zoo! We paid a bit extra to get the chance to do some Lion watching from inside a cage whilst the keeper fed them a load of meat. We had lions all around the cage (including the roof of the cage) looking at us whilst licking their lips...
From
Bob and his Salmon
Bob was well chuffed with this Salmon he caught whilst fishing off his kayak! We stopped by this lake for a picnic on our way up to the Fox Glacier Christchurch we headed north up the coast to Kaikoura which is not only a nice little seaside town with some great fish & chip shops but it's also just about the best place in the world to do whale and dolphin watching. The chippies are pretty good in NZ, you get a good choice of fish (we like the blue cod) which almost makes up for the lack of mushy peas and curry sauce. Kaikoura is a special place for marine mammals because there's a big shelf not far out to sea where the sea bed very quickly drops down a canyon to a depth of 2km - there's also a couple of currents that meet around here (1 warm, 1 cold) that basically results in there being loads of food for fish, dolphins (including orcas), seals, sharks, whales and sea birds too. They're so confident that you'll see whales and dolphins here that they'll give you your money back if you don't! On our whale watching cruise we got up close to a couple of big sperm whales, some dolphins, a seal that thought he was a dolphin (this chap was out jumping the dolphins in a top display
of 'anything you can do i can do better') and a huge albatross with a wing span of around 3 metres.
When we arrived to check in for our dolphin swim we were warned of a 'big swell, choppy sea conditions and a good chance of sea sickness'. The captain had specifically asked for strong confident swimmers only so we decided that we'd be strong and confident swimmers for the day...! They dressed us all in full wet-suits (including hoods), snorkels and flippers and then took us out about 2kms to sea. Once we'd found a big pod of interested dolphins we all jumped off the back of the boat for a swim at a depth of around 700m! eek. They gave us some good tips to get the dolphins interested in us which included making funny noises through our snorkels, diving down into the water and generally behaving dolphin like. Steve found some success in singing the Trio song through his snorkel (not 1, not 2 but 3 lumps of chocolate, i want a.....etc) and at one point was serenading 3 dolphins all at once! Janine found more success by constantly saying 'hello, hello, hello' in an incredibly
squeaky Leeds accent - they liked that a lot and frequently nodded their approval. Not wanting to be outdone Steve then started diving like a dolphin which gained him much approval from numerous excited dolphins as they joined him for a dive in the 'depths'. It's quite difficult to 'dive' whilst wearing a fully buoyant wet suit so most of Steve's dives generally involved him dipping his head under water whilst raising his arse in the air which probably didn't look too graceful but the dolphins seemed to like it anyway! We did 3 separate swims with different pods throughout the trip and we both absolutely loved it - swimming around the sea with dolphins is really really good fun.
After Kaikoura we headed up to Picton, top of the south island. We were going to do some hiking along the sounds and peninsulas but unfortunately it was raining big time (our first lot of rain in NZ, pretty good going eh?!) so given that we've gone soft and gotton used to nice weather we decided to jump on a ferry up to the North Island a day earlier than planned. The three hour crossing was very picturesque indeed
Tiger
We finally spotted a Tiger - even if we did have to go to the zoo to see it! and when we got to Wellington (NZ's capital city) we got the heckers out of there quick sharp (we're not in city mode at the moment) and headed up the east coast to Napier.
Napier is a super cool place, we like it A LOT here - it might just be the bestest place in the world ever! They had a big old earthquake here in 1931 that totally levelled the place. Art Deco was the big thing back then so they re-built the whole town in art deco styleeee and they've kept it just like that so there's loads of fab buildings everywhere in all sorts of colours. It's by the big blue sea and they have a good climate here too (boiling at the moment!). Could this place get any better you may ask......well yeah it does......not only are the fish and chips good here (pretty much our staple diet at the moment :-)) but they have 40 odd wineries around the place so there's loads of plonk too. Today we went off on a cycle tour of the wineries where we visited 5 wineries, a chocolate factory and a brewery - cycled through some jolly pleasant
Steve with a Lion on his head
.....and who are those other chaps getting in on our holiday photos?? countryside too. The wineries were good fun - lots of wooden floors and ceilings and what not - lots of pleasant smiling people talking to us about the wine ('yes this one has been grown on a gravelly surface which brings out the fruit flavours and the partial oak containment really gives this one it's depth' etc etc etc). We didn't really know what they were on about most of the time but that didn't really matter as more importantly they were pretty generous with their tasting portions so from 10:30am up to 5pm we managed to get ourselves into a pleasantly enebriated state.
The weather down here in NZ is getting hotter as we move north which is just grand - the nights are starting to draw in now though as we head into autumn so it's dark by 9pm these days!
We're probably going to go to Whakapapa tomorrow to do a bit of hiking. We really like the name Whakapapa and that's reason enough for us to go there - in fact today we found out that Whakapapa is a Mouri name and in Mouri you pronounce 'Wh' in the same way that we pronounce
'Ph' - so now we like the name Whakapapa even more! ;-)
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DC
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Jealous
I couldn't care less about your visits to India or Vietnam. But now you're in NZ, I'm really jealous. You luck swines. I think my 10 year plan to return there may need re-thinking. Up the Everton. Down the Boro. You're gonna owe me a box of Jaffa Cakes come the end of the season, mate.