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Published: March 18th 2011
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OK, so we've already been back for 6 months but some of you have been kind enough to say you'd like to see the rest of our trip, so here it is!
After Milford, we headed down to Riverton, spending a few days there with a lovely couple - Mabyn & Ngarita. Visited The Rocks, Riverton Museum, craft shops and fell in love with the gorgeous Trotter House (6 bedrooms on 3 acres and we would have had change from our house!) From there we stayed on another farm with Gillian & Maurice, where Charlie terrorised the calves and Joe confessed that in another life he would have liked to have been a farmer. We moved on to Invercargill where we stayed with the Browns and their 6 children, plus horses, cows, sheep, chickens, ducks, guinea pigs, rabbits and dogs. Our kids had a great time and even ganged up to make us stay another night!
When we were finally allowed to leave, we headed across the bottom of the South Island and made for the Catlins, an area not on many people's tourist trail but really interesting, including Curio Bay - one of the world's few petrified, fossilised
forests. Our second stop here was at Purukunui Falls, a spectacular 4 tiered waterfall. As we were walking in, I vaguely registered the two people passing us on the way out, before suddenly doing a double-take when I realised they were Joe's aunt and uncle from Sydney! A couple of minutes later and we would have completely missed each other!
We drove on to Dunedin via the Nuggets where we saw a rare yellow-eyed penguin, and stayed in Dunedin for a few days, touring the albatross colony, enjoying the stunning scenery of the Otago Peninsula and travelling on the Taieri Gorge Railway. On our last day we went to Cadbury World where we saw a 1 tonne chocolate drop and learnt that Cadbury's in Birmingham currently make a staggering 1bn Creme Eggs per day - nice to be able to bask in the reflected glory of such a great English achievement, but who on earth is eating them all?!
On our way out of Dunedin Joe and I took a brief walk up the world's steepest street (hard work!), and then drove on north to Moeraki. We had been recommended to eat lunch at Fleur's Place, an amazing
fish restaurant, and a favourite of Rick Stein, and of Joe who disgusted the children with his smoked eel (complete with face). We went for a walk after and I nearly stumbled over a yellow-eyed penguin and came very close to lots of seals - the wildlife is so abundant and so amazing! We also visited Moeraki Boulders but nearly got caught by the tide, as well as managing to wreck camera number 3!
The next day we went into Oamaru town to see the lovely historic, cream stone buildings as well as buy yet another new camera! The Tourist Info Centre recommended we stop at Elephant Rocks on our way to Twizel which was a great piece of advice - the rocks are huge, limestone formations where some of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe was filmed. We had the place to ourselves (and it was free!) and ate a picnic lunch sitting on a rock with the stunning views all around us - wow!
The next morning, we were blessed with a beautiful clear day for our trip to Aoraki/Mt Cook where we took the Tasman Lake Walk with great views of the mountain and
some cool icebergs. Really glad we did it then as the next day was very cloudy and rainy so we drove across to Tekapo without stopping. Unfortunately it was still cloudy when we visited the world famous Mt John Observatory so we decided not to waste money on the star-gazing tour but relaxed instead in the hot pools, created by heating what comes out of freezing water for the local ice rink - clever! On our way out of Tekapo we stopped at the Church of the Good Shepherd and also the town of Geraldine where somehow we managed not to find the world's largest jumper!
We then drove across Arthur's Pass, viewing yet more amazing scenery, in particular the Otira Viaduct , which was even worth being attacked by several keas for! (apparently they like eating the rubber on the car). The next day we headed back east over Lewis Pass stopping at some little known hot pools at Sylvia Flats - very pretty, lovely hot water, free and all to ourselves again, apart from the thousands of sandflies which eventually drove us away. We arrived at Hanmer Springs in the early afternoon and hired bikes for the
kids to ride through the forest there. The next morning we climbed Conical Hill behind the town, and on Saturday we visited the hot springs which Hanmer is famous for. It was freeeezing outside so we quickly worked our way up through the pools to the 40deg one (lovely) before heading across to Christchurch (after several photo stops for yet more stunning scenery on the way).
We stayed for a week with Warren & Sherryn Shapcott in Christchurch where we had a really nice time despite the weather which had definitely taken a turn for the worse. While we were there we went to the Antartic Centre and experienced a "storm", saw some more penguins, and had a ride on a Haaglund - an all-terrain vehicle which can tilt to 40deg, travel over a 2m gap and float - even I was quite excited! We also went to see Sherryn's mother's salt and pepper collection - she has over 3,000 sets collected over 26 years! Other trips included Christchurch Museum, Science Alive and a climb up the Cathedral Tower (now of course sadly damaged by the earthquake this February).
From Christchurch we drove across to Banks Peninsula (still
raining) where we were due to visit Suky - a distant cousin of mine. On the way we stopped somewhere called The Giant's House, created by a local lady who has produced amazing sculptures of people, a piano, boat etc, all covered in lovely colourful mosaic tiles collected from all over the world - very Gaudi-esque. Suky showed me the family tree her mum had researched and we enjoyed vegetables from their garden and eggs from their chickens. We tried to explore the area a bit but it rained all the next day too so all we managed was a little museum where, on learning that people only used to bathe annually, Bella remarked "I'm not being rude, but wouldn't they have smelt?"!
Eventually it was time to leave the South Island via Christchurch and Kaikoura, and a quick drive around the Sounds before catching the boat from Picton for a slightly rocky journey and arrival at a wet and windy Wellington...
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