New Zealand

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WELCOME TO NEW ZEALAND!

We had a great flight with Singapore Airlines, and although we only got a couple of hours sleep, the outstanding entertainment system (and the free Singapore Slings) meant we had a very enjoyable night flight. We tried not to notice the git who had an entire aisle to himself and was sleeping horizontal, away with the fairies.

The cabbie who took us into Auckland town gave us a mini-itinerary whilst excitedly telling us about all the different varieties of crops that many kiwis were harvesting this autumn. We picked up our campervan, which was beautifully custom painted in flowers (much to Rachel's delight!), and headed straight out of the city and hit the New Zealand countryside. Driving on no sleep was fairly easy in our relaxed auto-transmission camper, and we made it in good time to our first campsite in Miranda Springs, with it's own hotspring baths ready for a long soak in the lovely hot sulphury waters. The camper was pretty comfortable to sleep in and warm too, despite the autumn weather and so we slept like logs that night.

The next day we visited an old goldmine, walking through underground passageways and crumbling shafts. We met Robert the Cornish boy who had been down there for 80 years. Well it certainly seemed as if the over-enthusiastic guide believed so! We then got to see the stamping process, which seperated the gold - lots of noisy banging machinery. Finally we got to try the old-school method, panning for gold, which was basically sifting through mud with a bowl. If you can be bothered to do that all day, you deserve to get rich!

Afterwards we ventured deep into the Coromandel region and saw landscape like the Scottish highlands as we travelled along the coastal roads. We had to stop when a bunch of animals that looked like wooley camels leared at us (turns out they were llamas), and we stayed that night at a DoC (department of conservation) campsite, paying a few quid for our pitch on the west-facing beach and watched the sunset over the sea. I then fired up the stove and cooked a feast of New Zealand Greenshell mussels (that we'd bought that morning for £1.50!) in cream of red wine sauce. Yummy.

We covered hundreds of kilometres over the following days.

Our favorite stop was at Hot Water Beach, where around low tide, hot water springs permeated the beach and you could dig a hole to make your own hot-tub! But as we dug our hole, we found that every now and again the sea would come back and ruin all our hard work, filling our hot tub with cold water. Other groups had had similar ideas to us and build walls and moats, but it wasn't enough. Eventually people turned to sharing their tub with their neighbours in efforts to keep the waves out, and what resulted was one giant hot tub with dozens of people inside! As it turned out, it was quite hard to get the temperature right - most areas were luke warm and the centre was red hot. In fact was so hot that one family started cooking greenshell mussels in it! Their chubby kids woofed them down, although we weren't too convinced it was hot enough to cook them properly...  

We stopping at Rotorua to see the hot springs in people's front gardens - most bizarre to have steam pouring out of your lawn! The whole town had a sulphury whiff to it - surely that can't be good for you long term?

In Lake Taupo we stopped to try to buy alchohol (which we found out is illegal on good Friday, unless you are in a put buying food! Grrrr). We entertained ourselves that night by sabotaging a Spanish/Dutch couple's fire and drinking tea with them whilst Rachel had to keep telling the possums to stop eating the leftovers...

On the southern part of the North Island we powered along, briefly stopping at a volcanic activity centre to experience what it's like to be in an earthquake, and at a honey farm to watch the bees in their hive and sample their very tastey honey liqueur :-)

Having had four nights in the camper, we were happy to spend a couple of nights at my mate Brian (from uni) and his missus Kylie's lovely home in Wellington. We ate like kings and went to the toilet indoors. I also spent half the time doing DIY with Brian. Happy days!

So the south island beckoned with tales of it being a magically different country. We weren't convinced but were hopeful, if nothing else just to find better weather! It had been pretty dull and soggy so far.

The crossing was fair and calm, with some impressive views as we sailed through the Malborough Sounds. God knows why they are called 'sounds', they're just clusters of islands. Impressive nethertheless.

After disembarking the boat we decided to head straight to the road, and go somewhere pretty. The stop was Cable Bay, a quiet 10km detour from our planned anti-clockwise loop of the south island. The campsite was friendly in the middle-aged sense, all the other campers were all parent/grandparent age. One particularly chirpy old chap who was touring with his wife in a converted bus got talking to us in the kitchen when he came in to do his washing up, something he clearly wasn't used to doing as somehow he'd managed to get two wine glasses entangled - that is the base of one trapped in the head of another. We couldn't work out how he'd done it, and after twenty minutes of twisting rotating and heating the glasses under the hot tap the only solution was breakage. Answers on a postcard please!

The following day we decided to take a ride on the Flying Fox cable ride, which promised to be adrenaline fueled excitement as you freefalled on a cable car between two mountain peaks. And it was fun, but for the cost of a day's entry to Alton Towers, it was no Nemesis! Still, I got to go twice as it wasn't busy, and we saw some 2000 old trees where the female trees stay beautiful and smooth, but the male looks old and wrinkly, and it's sap is alcoholic - which meant it took the tree fellers twice as long to cut them down ;-)  

We found a gem in Takaka - a grungy campsite for rock climbers called Hangdog. We felt like we were back in Ton Sai, except for the freezing rain that was upon us. No worries though, we had a camp fire burning and a pizza oven firing bready items for the starved climbers! The next day we hired some gear and went for a climb, I  managed to onsight a pumpy 6b, yep i've still got it despite the scrawny noodle arms...

We stayed in Pohara on the beach that night, and decided we needed to get drunk. This was starting to become a regular pattern now! We hit the local bar - which seemed like they had a slight underage drinking problem! We met some school teachers from the UK who were there on a school trip (private school then?!??) and got some tips on what to do from some local kids (apparently there wasn't anything!). I got Rachel thoroughly pissed on a bottle of sparkling wine, and retired to the camper to await our hangovers :-p

The following day we rented sea kayaks and went to explore the nature-infested islands, taking far too many photographs of shags (no there weren't young couples fornicating everywhere, these are actually birds) and seals, and we then paddled to a remote and deserted beach for our lunch. There were some enormous greenshell mussels on the rocks so I went off to collect our tea. It's brilliant just going off to pick your free dinner, really brought out the pikey in me!

We got back, left the kayak on the beach with all the gear (the owner would come back and collect it later, how trusting those kiwis are!) and drove to the far northwest corner of the south island to venture onto a amazing sand dune beach sprawling miles wide with only a few souls (and a small seal colony) dotting the horizon.

We did our first night freecamping, that is camping without even a loo for comfort that night. We coped pretty well - it was quiet enough that Rach didn't even need to christen the she-pee! The night was completely clear and it was so cold the next morning that it was really difficult to get out of bed. It took nearly an hour to boil the kettle for tea and to make the porridge! Established facilities and power were definitely on the cards for that night...

We arrived in Westport and checked into a backbackers called Basils. Nothing like fawlty towers fortunately, all was good and we rustled up a decent lunch in their fully equipped kitchen. Living the dream! It was our first backpackers we'd stayed at since Asia - nice to just meet some similar people and have others around to chat rubbish with :-) After we'd been out to buy me some new shoes (I'd lost one of my decent walking shoes out of the camper's side door the day before, gutted!), I was amazed to find a second hand set of similar looking shoes and my pikey side took over and convinced my non-pikey side that seven quid was better than a hundred, since we only had a few more weeks travelling left! In the afternoon we took a trip on a jet boat. A bit like a jetski but a whole load bigger and faster. The ride was pretty good (I even got excited, proving that I still can have fun now I'm 30 :-p) and we learnt loads about the river that freakily rises by up to 15 metres every year and floods the entire valley. Later that night, an air-raid siren went off nearby and we sat blot upright, worried whether it was the blitz again or a freak flood that was going to wash us away! It turned out that it was the local volunteer fire brigade, what an anti-climax!
 
We did our research on glaciers when we arrived at Franz Joseph village and decided that Fox was our glacier. It was quieter and the big tour buses full of kids didn't go there. We wanted to get up and see all the glacier had to offer and it seemed the way to get up close and personal with the best of the glacier was to take a helicopter up. So £400 later we had our helihike booked. Alhough it was totally weather dependant. Apparently the weather could change in 5 minutes up on the glacier and they don't want to be responsible for a load of tourists getting stuck up there. So 15 mins before our allotted take off time we were watching the clouds with untrained but wishful eyes. Please don't let that low cloud roll in. At 11.50 we were given the all clear and we jumped in a bus to get to the helipad! 

We booted up and were given the safety briefing. The first chopper fired up with the first 6 people and we jumped in the second once it returned with people coming off the glacier. Donning the fetching earphones and fastening our safety belt we took off. The views were lovely. Green bush, followed by mountains followed by ICE! And a lot of it!! We circled round to see a waterfall and the next thing we know the chopper is spriraling in closer and closer to the waterfall. The waterfall had carved it's way through the glacier, an awesome sight. Totally disorientated, not quite sure which way is up we oohed and aahed before the pilot bought us down to land safely on the ice. Bending unecessarily low, just like in the movies we gingerly ran from the 'machine' as they called it. Crouching down so as to not get swept off our feet as the chopper took off we got splattered with loose ice. We were up! We had a quick intro with our guide Cole and we got our crampons on. What great inventions!

Walking on the ice was made so easy with boots and crampons. First we came across a little cave full of brilliant blue ice, it was explained that the deeper the ice, the less light it reflects in a similar way to the sea looks blue, so does the glacier. Rich was the only one brave, or stupid enough to go sliding through the dripping wet and icey cold tunnel in the cave. Moving on we found a much bigger cave which we all wandered through at our lesiure. Stunning! We had heard from another guide that there was something pretty cool further ahead so we kept walking. 

All the features we being caused by the ice on the mountain above moving down the hill faster than the ice below causing 'bunching' and cracking ... Not quite the technical terms but they explain it well enough. We finally came across another tunnel and Cole dug his way in creating footsteps in the wall of the tunnel with his axe. We couldn't walk on the floor as it was full of a flowing stream coming off the glacier. As Cole chipped away, the ice he displaced plugged up the waters exit hole and the water in the tunnel started rising. Rich went in first and stuggled to spot all the nice foot holds freshly dug by Cole. My turn next, the waters were rising fast. I had one close call, sticking the crampon into the side wall, leaning heavily on my walking stick I jumped to the next ledge. I barely made it but avoided falling in to the icey stream. I smiled having my pic taken through the hole at the end and turned to get out. Oh dear, the water was even higher. I stamped hard against the wall trying to dig out footholds as I went. The ice under the water was so solid I couldn't get my walking stick with it's big spike to hold at all. It kept slipping. I just made it out relying heavily on the promise that my boots would be waterproof for a couple of inches. Which suprisingly they were!

The Spanish guy who bravely went in after me managed to accidently dislodge the ice plugging the stream and once the water was flowing the water levels sunk enough to allow everyone else into the tunnel for a peak.

My boots got one more test of the waterproof abilities as we walked back to the makeshift ice helipad. We crossed many icey streams and with my stick I was poking around finding the most shallow path. Sadly I didn't poke quite enough and my footing gave way with my boot gettin totally submerged past my ankles!!! I screamed at the icey water pouring over my socks but it wasn't as bad as I expected and the layers of socks protected me. 

We got back on the chopper for another exciting ride back down to the town. We loved our helihike and it was all the better knowing that even if we had walked all day we would never have seen what we did today. And we had had sunshine all day! We couldn't ask for more. Even the rain as we cooked our dinner at the free DOC site couldn't dampen our spirits.       

After a very wet nights camping by a picturesque lake, we drove to Queenstown. The route was nice - more mountains, rivers and valleys - and we arrived at Queenstown in the rain. Planning to stay a couple of nights there, we went into town to see what there was to do. A gig guide told us that there was diddly-squat on that night, apart from a ‘Blind leading the blind’ backpackers pub crawl. Now hanging around with a bunch of excitable 20 year olds isn’t exactly our cup of tea these days, however we’d drank so much coffee recently that we decided ‘sod it’ and booked onto the crawl. It was alright actually, guiding each other blindfolded from pub to pub was a fun challenge in itself, as was drinking the 5 free shooters blind. We met a few people that were entertaining enough, one couple who turned out lived a five minute walk from our house in Hove! Rach also met two blasts from the past from dodgy Slough where she grew up…..

The night got drunker and Rach was shortlisted to have a ‘dance-off’, the winner claiming a free bungee jump. Taking one for my the team, she got up and got her groove on and certainly impressed the important judges (me), and did the right thing when cock-sure teen boys yelled ‘get yer t%ts out’ (kept them in). Needless to say, the girl on the nearby stage who took her top off and got dry humped, stole the sexually mature show.

So the following day, after relieving our mild hangovers with a fried breakfast and a couple of hours in the cinema watching the new Alice in Wonderland film, we went to the AJ Hackett 134m high ‘Nevis’ bungee site. Annoyed with not being afraid by a lot, we’d decided to do the second highest bungee jump in the world, and hoped it would give me a reaction. I was very excited arrived at the top of the Nevis River valley, and a look at the jump ‘pod’, suspended in the middle of the two mountain peaks gave me a slight raise of the heartbeat. Getting into the little wire basket that winched you out over the gorge got it beating faster still. Hearing blood-curdling screams echo through the valley as people free-fell from the pod got my ticker pumping faster still. But the muscles at the corners of my mouth had definitely tightened more than my butt so I was looking forward to the jump. Trance music was banging out in the pod which only added to my psyching up as I got strapped up to jump and only when I stood on the platform with the elastic cord dangling between my legs and heard the ‘5-4-3-2-’ I thought sh%t, this is gonna freak my stomach out! And then I jumped. God, what a freefall! It was so long, my stomach almost managed to catch up with itself before the cord yanked and I was hurled back up fifty metres or so, before plummeting back down into the valley. I don’t think I can describe it any more, if you haven’t done one you’ve gotta try it.

We went out for dinner that night and found a nice Irish pub where I got a decent beef and ale pie and a pint of Guinness. Looking forward to more of that in a few weeks 😊 I had to return to the pub on my own later on at nearly midnight, as Rachel was having an interview with the NHS over the phone from the campervan! I enjoyed another Guinness whilst she convinced a panel of four over the phone to offer her a very competitive job. That’s my girl!

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Photos

On the road!
Our camper with views over the Coromandel area

She's a gold-digger
Didn't have much luck in striking it rich :(

Fancy a dip?
Everyone digging hard to make their hot-tubs

Rachel's Pool
Her very own smelly pool of volcanic steam

Figure this one out?
Answers on a postcard please!

Weeeeeee!
Zipping down the flying fox

Paddle faster!
Kayaking in the Abel Tasman National Park

Oi! Who's nicked my clothes?!
A morning dip after a night's free-camping

Spot the missing key ingredient
Getting ready to jet boat on the Buller Gorge

Check out the view!
Rachel gets the front seat in our helicopter journey

Don't fall in!
Rachel uses her crampons to good effect

Ice ice baby
Glacial ice is blue like the sea

Blind leading the blind
Drunken shennanigans in Queenstown

I'm gonna jump!
Contemplating bungeeing into the 150m gorge over the Nevis river

Boo!
Probby the Monkey spoils a beautiful photograph at Whareki Beach near the Cape Farewell peninsula

The sky at night
Can you see the southern cross?

Check out the view!
Brian has his morning fag taking in the view over the Wellington suburbs