Blogs from Hanmer Springs, South Island, New Zealand, Oceania - page 3

We started out our day making a lovely meal in the camper van and then going out to explore. The forest are very lush around Hanmer Springs and we hiked out to a waterfall. The waterfall was amazing! Probably 50 feet high with ferns and moss everywhere. We then happened upon a trail that led to the summit of Mt. Isabel and summited our firest New Zealand mountain! After our hike we drove out to Kaikoura and walked around the very lovely beach town. We stayed at another holiday park right on the beach! It also happened to have a zip line (called a "Flying Fox" in NZ) which was probably 50 years old and sent us crashing into rubber tires that poured water on us (um, yes, it was awesome.) ... read more

Morgen's mussten wir die Kea-Station in Christchurch aufsuchen. Grund hierfür war der Zulauf zum Wassertank, der uns in der bitter kalten Nacht am Mt. John aufgefroren ist. Nach 30 min war das Problem behoben. Das Personal war sehr freundlich und hilfsbereit. Danach machten wir uns auf den Weg nach Hanmer Springs, das für seine Thermalquellen bekannt ist. Bernd zog es vor, bei schönem Wetter lieber eine kleine Wanderung zu unternehmen. Währenddessen ließen es sich Jürgen und Michi in den Thermalquellen bei 40° gut gehen. Nach diesem kurzen Zwischenstopp fuhren am Abend noch nach Kaikoura, wo wir direkt am Meer übernachteten. Bei sternenklarer Nacht konnten wir noch die Milchstraße bewundern. Grüße aus dem sonnigen NZ!!! ... read more

New Zealand Day 8 & 9 Day 8 saw us drive up the coast from Haast to Fox Glacier, a distance of 120 kms, but took about 2 hours. The kms mean nothing over here, as the roads are soooo windy in places that you are travelling very, very slowly. The open road limit is 100kms, but we are only allowed to do 90 in our motorhome.....which is fast enough as times. Anyway, we arrived at Fox Glacier at about 12-30......in the rain. I was soooo disappointed. We were both really looking forward to doing the walk & had decided that I wouldn’t do the chopper flight if we both do the walk. That would have been great if it wasn’t raining. All I could think of was that my photos just wouldn’t be the same. ... read more

Day 19 – Friday the 1st of April Pinch and a punch for the first of the month! And no returns! Sadly today we had to leave wine country, but not without a few more sips of wine. Hello Allan Scott! The Sauv was ok but nothing wow until we tried one of their single vineyard sauvs......yum! A bottle of that and we’ll take the bubbles too and off we set with more bottles of wine and us still trying to figure out how we were to ship it all home. No way were we going to pay for excess baggage. We’d only collected about a case and a half so far to try and send back. We could not come all this way and NOT stop at Saint Clair our favourite Sauvignon Blanc winery, that ... read more

21 04 2010 We were on the road at 0930 hours. Pretty good time for us. Destination Hanmer springs via the Lewis pass and Lower Buller gorge. The sun was shining and all was well. The scenery was brilliant. We had mountains, tropical rain forests, gorges, rapids, rivers, valleys, gulleys sunshine hick towns (Reeftown) and all. I thought the views yesterday were great because of the coast line. Today was inland and the views as spectacular as before. I am running out of words to describe how beautiful the scenery is here. Plunging cliffs covered in forests, alpine scenery, roads that twist and turn, wide open valleys with trees of every colour, simply marvellous The photos we took can’t begin to compare to the vista of views we enjoyed. It is a must visit place and ... read more