Blogs from New Zealand, Oceania - page 2314

Forgive me the cheesy title. Unsurprisingly, the brainchild of Brandon, the effervescent, cowboy hat-sporting Arizonan I had the pleasure of meeting on the Kiwi bus, it actually sums up the white-knuckle ride that was Queenstown rather aptly. I'm ill at ease when people write off popular destinations as 'tourist traps'. The Costa Del Sol, Kuta and Cancun are all pidgeon-holed in this way but I certainly don't subscribe to the philosophy that mainstream equals bad. It's like when everybody loved Keane (the band, not Roy or Pako) when they first came to the fore; a little quirky, a little different but as soon as this translated into success in the charts it was 'thumbs down' from the 'I wanna be different brigade'. My guess would be that none of these types ever made it to Queenstown, ... read more

En route to the springs stopped off for a coffee at Mt Lyford Lodge (the largest log cabin in NZ). Lovely building - we both thought it would look great covered in snow with a roaring log fire on the go! Arrived in Hanmer Springs ready to get into some serious relaxation - stayed at a nice hostel called Le Gite. The whole pool/spa area is outdoors and the mineral pools are heated. The hottest pools were the sulphur pools, which are heated to 40/41 degrees - very nice - if a little smelly! Great Tapas in the evening. On the second day walked in Hanmer Forest Park along the url=http://www.doc.govt.nz/Explore/002~Tracks-and-Walks/By-Region/010~Canterbury/Hanmer/103~Long-Walks.aspDog Stream Waterfall Track. There and back took around 3 hours. Spent the ... read more

Me again... Financially not good, but as long as I remember to think in pounds not dollars it's not so much of a disaster in the scheme of things. It's little consolation to be told that the car could sell for $4500 in September but now $1800 is a good offer! Anyway, to get some certainty and to preserve my sanity (what is left of it) I am accepting the offer and will get the cash tomorrow (and try not to get mugged on my way to a bank or Foreign exchange place). It's worked out that I would have been better off renting a car, by about 500 pounds or so, but not to worry.... too much, what's done is done and all that. And I've put a car on the road in better condition ... read more

To date, miserable weather has prevented us from doing our intended exploits in Taupo. 100kmph winds and snow at 1200m has meant that our planned hike across the Tongariro Crossing (between two large volcanic peaks) has been cancelled for the past three days. Also failed to skydive (bad weather - not incompetence) on Tuesday, so we opted for a leisurely 16km trip from Taupo to Huka Falls taking in the Craters of the Moon. Huka Falls is NZ's largest volume waterfall with 270m3 squeezing through a 15m gap every second. All very technical - it's a lot anyway... True to current form, it poured with rain on our trip out. Seems the weather predictions have been back to front so far (good weather on south island and wet and windy in the north island). Let's hope ... read more

Have been sampling lots of random activities since I left the Stray bus (maybe those teenagers were a sensible influence after all!). First I went to glaciers and played in big spiky shoes at crawling round and walking on ice. Got a helicopter up there which was also very cool. In Wanaka I've just been going mental and did mountain biking round the lake (soooo beautiful) - the tourists were all pointing at me like I was some some of local mentalist. Then did a bit od walking. Then learnt how to rock climb. This was amazing. I wore my spiderman watch especially and was trying very hard to be as good as spiderman himself, but I think it was more a job of hanging on for dear life. Especially on this massive boulder we had ... read more