Blogs from Central Otago, South Island, New Zealand, Oceania - page 4

Mar. 15 Wanaka Nelson has a competitor for my favorite NZ community. Wanaka has it all: a beautiful blue mountain lake, hiking trails, friendly community, decent shopping, restaurants, and an overall peaceful attractiveness to it. We spent our first day here doing a lot of walking. We headed out of town about 2km where we started up to the view point on Iron Mountain. This hill is about 260 m high and took a good 40 minutes to climbed to the top. But the views made it all worth while. We had a 360 degree view of Wanaka and the surrounding areas. Lakes, mountains, rivers, and fields. We then headed down the hill on a much steeper incline that took us down the hill to a place called Puzzle World. Now Puzzle World totally lived up ... read more

Forgot to mention on previous entry, a clear sky here at night here is nothing short of breathtaking. The stars appear so much closer and clearer and you can actually see other galaxies with what appears to be gases around them. Onto today and we woke up to a cold grey start and ducks spuddling outside the van. One thing we’ve noticed while over here is how many old caravans are still functioning. How different to the UK where there is this obsession with having the latest model with all the gizmos. Our travels to day took us off the main highway (although these are still very quiet roads compared to the UK) and onto a pretty road between Kurow and Oamaru taking in Elephant Rocks (huge rocks formed in the sea between 26 and 30 ... read more

Geo: -44.6987, 169.133Woensdag 9 februariNadat we vanmorgen Te Anau hadden verlaten, kwamen we terug in zonnig weer. Het blijft wat killig maar de lucht ziet toch al helder blauw. Het was bovendien weer een erg mooie route door het landschap waar vele scènes van de Lord of the Rings zijn opgenomen. Na wat hindernissen zoals een kudde schapen, een kudde koeien en schapen, talrijke wegwerkzaamheden, enz kwamen we tegen de middag aan in Queenstown. Queenstown is de hoofdstad van de extreme sporten, en de plaats waar het bungee jumpen is uitgevonden. We hebben de fameuze brug gezien, maar hebben er niet aan mee gedaan. Ik heb op het einde van de vakantie nog een sprong van de Auckland tower gepland. We zijn in Queenstown met de gondel de berg op gegaan. Daar hebben we meegedaan aan ... read more

Day 112-115 26th-29th December We were with Simon’s mum, Gay, for the next 2 days and spent a lot of the time chilling out. On Boxing Day we met up with Gillie and Simon’s friend, and stopped at a restaurant near Sumner beach and had yummy giant pizzas, Anna then went home and the four of us walked down to the beach and spent a couple of hours at there. It wasn’t as hot as sunny as it had been the previous day but there were lots of people out and once again, Ellory and Gillie were taking lots of arty photographs. It was a nice way to spend the afternoon and was certainly different from my normal Boxing Day tradition of eating leftovers and watching Christmas TV. We also picked up our hire car for ... read more

Internet connectivity is better today. Yesterday afternoon it was quite hopeless. I think the link must be getting saturated by too many people trying to use it at once. I bought another four hours' worth. The link's still not good enough to let me upload to Travelblog, though. Today I went to church at St. Andrew's, which proved to be an attractive 19th-century church. They do not have their own minister; apparently there is a shortage of clergy all over New Zealand. One Sunday a month they make do with a lay service, and this was that Sunday. So we had Morning Prayer. Everyone was very kind indeed. They took my name and then recognized me when they made their announcements. The service was simple and earnest, though modern. I liked the sermon, on Joseph's ... read more