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Published: March 10th 2006
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Beautiful moon...
Shaz actually owns an acre of land on the moon - Gaz bought it for her 30th birthday. Dead cool, eh? We think it's on the other side that's not lit up here. How y’all doin? Kiss ma grits honey! Britney and Kev, step into the shadows and welcome the new breed of White Trash that’s just driven into town. Well, it’s only natural that we have to live the lifestyle now that we are moseying round NZ in our motorhome, living in trailer parks, sweetcakes! We’ve now had Beryl for almost a week and it’s actually been excellent so far. We feel like little snails with our home on our back as we meander our way across country, stopping off where we like, when we like, making a cup of tea at the side of the road - or even beans on toast if we’re feeling reckless and dangerous.
The day we picked her up - we had to go find some basic necessities for Beryl - therefore we headed to this giant store called ‘The Warehouse’ which is a bit like Big W at home. We couldn’t believe how cheap it was and how much stuff we got for 40 British Pounds. Check it:
• Double duvet & two nice pillows
• Duvet set (it’s a bit boggin looking but fits nicely with our new trashy image)
• Sheet
• 3
White trash duvet cover.
How dodgy is this?!!! That said, it does go with the interior colours of Beryl. funky plates
• 3 funky bowls
• Pack of 4 lovely glasses - green striped.
• 2 dinky blue & white patterned china cups
• Decent 3 pot set, blue
• 3 wooden spoons
• Cruet set
• Bag of pegs (for hanging out washing)
• Set of metal coathangers
• Sharp knife for chopping
• Chopping board
Brilliant bargains, eh? Anyway - after a quick trip to the supermarket (New World - it’s the best we’ve found here so far) we were on our way and speeding into our adventure at top speed (100 kms an hour - we can’t go any faster due to A: speeding laws and B: Beryl is a delicate soul and likes to take her time).
We’re condensing two places that we’ve been to into this blog - firstly Hanmer Springs which is a Thermal Spa retreat town nestled charmingly into the middle of a mountain range North West of Christchurch - about a 2 hour drive. Very beautiful scenery everywhere - and the town itself has lovely walking routes (called ‘tramps’ here), mountain bike routes, and the main attraction - the Thermal Baths. The baths are a selection of differently sized
man made pools with big rocks and nice foliage around them, containing a waters of varying temperatures and a myriad of minerals including sulphur, calcium, phosphates and other chemicals that smell like rotten eggs. We visited of course, and the day that we went was a scorcher - lovely and hot with a nice breeze wafting around in no particular direction. The pool temperatures range from about 30 degrees to 42 - and there’s also a lap pool which we didn’t go into coz that would class as exercise and we were really only there for a big lazy lie around. How fab it was - we had a fantastic afternoon there and felt magic when we left, thoroughly revitalized - which might make you all laugh as we don’t really do anything to make us feel un-revitalised at the moment. Other than visiting the spa, the only other things we did here was go for a few walks in the emerald woodlands around the town, and took our time getting used to the life in Beryl. We haven’t eaten out at all since we picked her up and have been really enjoying cooking n our little space - which
When a tree falls in the forest, does anyone hear it?
This tree in the woodlands near HAmner Springs had fallenover and was pushing against another tree across the footpath. We thought it was going to fall too and hung around for 15 mins to catch it - then got bored waiting and moved on. No patience - that's our problem - so we dont know if it made a noise. will save us a fortune aswell!
After Hamner Springs - we moved onto a town on the East Coast called Kaikoura which is famed for Whale watching trips and swimming with seals. This place is an exceptionally good place to see lots of different species of whale, including Sperm whales and Orcas, not to mention heaps of Hector’s dolphins (smallest and rarest type apparently) and Dusky & Bottlenose dolphins. The reason for the abundance of animal life in the oceans around here is to do with the profusion of available food. Quoting here from Lonely Planet, it says; ‘More animals are abundant in Kaikoura because of the currents and continental shelf formation. From land, the shelf slopes gradually to a depth of about 90m then plunges to more than 800m. Warm and cold currents converge here, bringing nutrients up from the ocean floor and into the light zone. The waters are often red with great clouds of krill, the Sperm Whale’s favourite food, attracting larger fish and squid’.
We were really looking fwd to seeing so much sea life, and so we booked ourselves onto a whale watch trip for 3pm on Wednesday. We arrived at the appropriate
place for pick up only to find that it had been cancelled, due, they told us, to high winds. We were perplexed about this as the weather was incredibly calm and gentle. There wasn’t a breeze in the air. However, not to be deterred, we arranged to go on the next available trip next day at 12 noon, but much to our dismay the same thing happened again, and the same reason was given to us. Maybe we are just a couple of suspicious buggers, but we thing that maybe the real reason was that not enough people had booked on the trip. Whatever it was, we decided that we didn’t want to hang around another day just for it to be cancelled again. After our trip was abandoned again we had the rest of yesterday to play with and we certainly made up for it and had a brilliant time. We:
• Went to see a Sheep Shearing Show
• Visited a Seal Colony
• Took a nice big shoreline walk in the sunshine
• Went Star Watching in an organized group at night
STAR GAZING
Wont go much into detail about these things in main text here
- but we’ve put plenty of info on the photo captions below. However, the Star Gazing trip was one of our favourite things that we have done since we’ve been away. It was truly amazing, even though it lasted only an hour - the quality of the show & tell was superb, as was the lad who ran the session. Very knowledgeable he was - pointing out loads of constellations and planets to us, including, Milky Way, Orion, Sirius, loads of zodiac signs (including Capricorn & Taurus), Saturn, Mars and The Southern Cross. They took us out onto farmland on a quiet peninsula where there were no town lights to interfere with our vision and fed us cups of tea and Miky Way chocolate bars to keep us warm (it was VERY cold), and let us see wonderful close ups of those pinholes in the cushion of night through a strong telescope. We got a radiant picture of the moon at close up - our bestest photo ever. It’s the first one on this bog and even though it looks like we might have cheated and taken it from a magazine, we honestly took it ourselves.
SHEEP SHEARING
Sulphur pool.
Scenery surrounding the springs is amazing. All mountains and pine trees. This was such a good laugh - and really informative. The show lasted for half an hour and we learned loads about sheep farming in NZ. Shaz’s fav bit was when she got to feed Poppy the bless lamb with a bottle. She was only 9 weeks old and already super furry with all her wool growth. Baaaa!
So, as this blog draws to a close, we bid you a great weekend, and we’ll talk to you again soon.
Love Shaz n’ Al. xxxxx
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Gaz
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Travellin' in a fried-out camper Headful of Monteiths Summer Ale from our hamper We met a strange lady, but there was no peril Cos we live in a van called Beryl! (applause) Yes, I think the acre is on the back. But its so much nicer there, not like that common front bit...