Advertisement
Published: December 3rd 2006
Hello all,
Well of late I have been a bit disappointed with my blog enteries, lack of time in internet cafe's and lack of time generally as we hurl ourselves at breakneck speed around the south island seems to have sapped the inspiration. Or perhaps its because really New Zealand is quite a lot more like home and though we are having a fantastic time, there just seems to be less wacky things to mention. Anyway, the upshot is we put our heads together and thought of all the things we forgot to mention, for all of you who may never have been here, to give you a bit more of an insight into what makes New Zealand the beautiful country that it is.
Firstly, as it has been a major part of our means of getting from place to place, the roads. Everyone is really considerate on the roads. We haven't sat in a single traffic jam (apart from the forest fire incident in the North Island, but that doesn't really count). It is customary for slow vehicles to pull to the side of the road to let those travelling faster pass (very polite). Mind you as we
are rarely overtaking, this mainly means us. There are no dual carriageways and you can easily navigate yourself around the country as all the major towns are connected by one highway. This however doesn't seem to help Rich who just generally struggles to read maps and would much rather be the "man" and drive the camper rather than have the role of navigator. His proptensity to direct me down narrow steep streets and then announce that in fact we may need to do a U turn is a constant (and rather frustrating) factor of his navigating skills. It is not out of fear of getting lost that it gets annoying but the need to manouever the camper in tight corners and try to avoid stationary objects as I attempt to turn the bloody thing around. Anyway, enough said.
New Zealand is so sparcely populated that between destinations most of your time is spent on a long straight road, with practically no-one else on it, save for the odd fellow campervanee. But there are strict rules of ettiquette and we only wave to our other fellow Pacific Horizon campers. Though Rich mistakenly waved at a Britz camper yesterday and remarked
that he felt soiled on realising his mistake! These long straight roads, surrounded by nothing but endless subtropical forests as far as the eye can see are occasionally broken up by the odd mountain range that needs to be traversed. Then the roads become distinctly not straight at all and you are plunged into travelling along precariously steep sided cliff roads, with death defying corners. But another thoughtful New Zealand road idiosyncracy is that they provide road signs advising you of the speed required for each particular corner (Rich feels that this is generally a good 10 km less than the speed one can actually take the corner at, I tend to disagree but at least the three very handy positioned grab handles come in handy!).
One other rather strange fact is that all the bridges (baring the odd anomaly) are one way. Quite hairy as your only warning is written on the tarmac as you approach the bridge indicating that it is a
(Imagine you are travelling up the page)
Unfortunately for a while Rich kept reading this the wrong way around, last word first! Obviously for those
who are unclear as you approch this warning the first word you see is "One"!
Rich's theory is that the right of way is given to the people heading north and west (very handy bit of insight I am sure you will agree).
In general New Zealand is a stunning country with superb scenery. Everything is of a varying shade of green, and the hills and countryside are lined with trees everywhere, from the traditional oaks, pines, willows etc you would see back home to sub tropical palms and a huge number of native NZ trees that I blantanly have absolutely not idea what they are called. And a huge number of different types of ferns.
There are also a huge number of birds, it is not rare to see hawks and other birds of prey hunting at the side of the road and many other type of birds. Fortunately only two so far have gone into the hereafter as a result of our camper! For some reason on hearing the truck they suddenly decide to fly across the road in front of you, a nerve racking experience and I am constantly in fear that one is
going to land slap bang on our windscreen sooner or later!
The millions of farms that line the road side when your not travelling through a national forest park are populated with an extraordinary number of cows for a country that is famous for its lamb. In fact for most of our time in the North Island we did wonder where they hid all the sheep! But travelling further afield we have also found numerous fields full of a wide variety of funny looking sheep and baby lambs, it being springtime here. As well as quite a lot of deer, venison farming is obviously becoming quite popular. And of course masses of cows and baby calfs. Rich unfortunately doesn't seem that enthusiastic when I try to persuade him that we could buy a plot of land and try our hand at farming, not so keen on my ideas of living a romantic life in the country.
The other thing you see is a lot of lakes. You can quite happily be driving along in a bit of forest when suddenly a massive lake appears around the corner, generally with a backdrop of snowcapped mountains. Absolutely stunning. And if
its not lakes then its rivers or the sea which suddenly pop up from nowhere. One example yesterday was Bruce's Bay which was a tiny hamlet in the middle of nowhere on the west coast. There was a sign proudly announcing Bruce's Bay Sports Day, but it was a wonder as to who would be competing in this great event for there were hardly more than eight houses, Bruce obviously has a monopoly on the medal winning.
The Kiwi's also have a great love of naming absolutely every single creek (aka a river to us brits) that you pass, not a habit that seems that worthwhile as they generally lack much imagination, here are a few examples...........windbag, random, hostel, mai mai, kiwi, kea, mi mi, boulder, ka ka, venture, murphy, cole, boggy, dismal, dizzy, roy, joe, gunboat, cemetrary, depot, dancing, whakpoui. But to our great disappointment we have yet to find a "Dawson's creek". As if we didn't have enough of that on one particular bus journey from Peru to Chili where they played the same episode three times. Its the one where Dawson and Joey have a fight and they all have to revise for a test and
end up doing an "sex questionnaire" and Pacey lies about his previous experiences and they all end up jumping fully clothed into the swimming pool. I know all you closet Dawson fans out there will know the one we mean. If anyone wants to discuss the episode in greater depth, either Rich or I will be happy to go over the finer points on our return.
Right - this is now a few days later and we have massive hangovers from a rather excessive night on the town last night. In which I lost my handbag (fortunately Rich has just retrieved it from the restaurant where I left it hanging on the back of my chair). This is not just casual forgettfulness. Before going out for dinner we had taste a record number of 25 different wines, no spittons this time! And we also had a glass of our favourite to finish the tasting off with (or at least the one we thought we liked most, must admit was a bit sozzelled so could have been drinking anything!) Unfortunately we then had to wait for our table at the restaurant and ended up having a mojito and martini, that
is perhaps where things started to go more drastically wrong! We also forgot that we promised ourselves that we wouldn't buy a bottle of wine to go with the meal as we had already had so much and swiftly spent $60 on another bottle! Whoops! Oh yes and not to mention that we had to get up at 6.30am this morning so that Rich could jump the Nevis Bungy at 134 metres.......................................!
"I very narrowly avoided soiling myself and that was just on the bus journey there", not to mention the fact that he needed to pee so badly he thought he might wet himself on the way down!
But I am very proud of him as he did jump, despite the fact that I got a wee bit upset, it was scary enough just being in the pod! Unfortunately we don't have any photos yet, but don't worry we will put some on as soon as we get them on CD.
For those of you who are interested the lake photo on the last blog was in fact Mapourika Lake just outside of Franz Joseph village.
Well, we have just put on loads of photos
for you all to trawl through, so we will leave you in peace to have a look. Also we are meant to be driving to Dunedin tonight which is only a mere 5 hours away and as its not 5pm we best get on the road.
Loads of love from us both to you all. Hope your all enjoying the crowds whilst your out christmas shopping!!! Its blissfuly peaceful out here!
Ta'ra for now Rach and Rich xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Advertisement
Tot: 0.091s; Tpl: 0.014s; cc: 9; qc: 23; dbt: 0.0555s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Vicky/Mum
non-member comment
like the hats!
Do they have any drink driving laws over there?! Sent your three films to be developed Rachael, which were in the first box. They came out blank, so we think they were unused. Sorry, trying to be helpful! Vicky and Simon xxxx