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Published: March 3rd 2006
Pingu and kiddy
Very rare yellow eyed penguins on South Coast of CatlinsMr. Galbraith says;
First a quick joke i thought up to start the lesson.
What does Star Trek's James T Kirk call his poo........
Captain's log!!!!
Well welcome to another edition of our log, blog or
spawnblog (Tony Clark 2005) and its been far from brown and sticky as we have now finished 9 weeks of amazing New Zealand and rather sorry to leave. After all the excitement and excesses of Christmas/NY and meeting of friends along the way we certainly gone "Back to School" and knuckled to a whole raft of subjects so please PAY ATTENTION!! yes, you at the back who has just visited to look at the photos.
Biology. We've got an abundance of Zoological specimens to you to view, e.g Dolphins, Whales, Penguins, Albatross.
Secondly History. To me at times it felt like World War 2 with NZ as the staging ground. In the South Island (around Milford Sound and Queenstown) it all went Pearl Harbor with Japanese invading in swarms of suicidal bus loads. Then at other times more in the North when it felt like ze Germans where coming. And I thought i would just be loads of UK tourists here.
Gert Big Albatross
In Dunedin. My look at that wing span, although not as good as a condors! Third subject for study is Geology&Geography. My just look how mighty forces of nature have created New Zealand's landscape, with all kinds of glacial, fluvial glacial, volcanoes and earthquakes sights.
Flora and Fauna, well gosh there are some gert big trees (Kauri over 2000 years old) and ferns all other the place.
Music. Well we had a great time at the mini Glastonbury festival and the kiwi do have a good music scene although a little bit behind the times.
Further more there will be extra curricular blog for the more sadly studious of you regarding the Art of Film-making and its relation to popular literary Fantasy epic of Lord of the Rings.
Please remember there is a class tutorial with a fun slide show which i expect all students of this blog to attend when we get back.
Right class dismissed but remember your homework is to read Miss Burton's more detailed essays below."
Miss Burton says;
"Wotcha! Thanks all for your comments to our last blog, seems like everyone enjoyed the sugar pic!
It's been a while since our last blog, as we wanted to put everything from the remainder
Sperm Whale
Big Nick was his name apparently of our NZ travels into one entry to avoid you all nodding off but it is rather tricky as we've done so much!
Alert - boring itinerary stuff: Essentially since our last entry we travelled to Mount Cook, then down the rest of the east coast of the South Island, down the Catlins coast (a long drive along wild and empty beaches and lots of cool wildlife), on to the Milford Sound for an overnight boat trip, then Queenstown, then back up to the Fox Glacier, then Kaikoura (whale watching), then up again to the North Island to see lots more Lord of the Rings stuff (yes we are GEEKS!), do the Tongariro crossing (more hiking and yes, again we are GEEKS), go to NZ's Glastonbury (v v tame compared to lovely old Glasters) and finally ten days chilling on beaches in the north.
Right you can carry on reading now, hopefully that is the last of the boring itinerary stuff, clearly it only means something to peeps who have been here and, if they have, they have done all this before anyway so it is soooooo last expedition, darling!
We've seen lots of animals! New Zealand Sea Lion
He got a bit annoyed me standing so close, i must smell. But not as bad as he does. We've seen loads and loads of wicked wildlife in NZ, and that was even before we went to the festival! After Christchurch we went to Akoroa, a really cool little harbour-side town. They have lots of pods of Hector's dolphins living in the harbour, and we went swimming with the little tinkers. They are the smallest kind of dolphin (1.5 metres) but pretty big close up! We saw loads of them and managed to follow a few round, which was a great experience. Also they have lush fish n chips here. Mmmmmmmm. Not dolphin burgers I hasten to add!
We saw some bigger, bottlenosed dolphins from a cruise we took on a big catamaran around the Bay of Islands, they were about 4 metres so much bigger this time, and they were jumping out of the water and stuff so it was AMAZING to see them! I legged it into the water to try to swim with them but they were having none of it, but I did hear their noises under the water, all clicks and stuff. V cool.
Further down the east coast of the South Island, the weather is quite cold but made up
for by the cool wildlife, we saw Royal Albatrosses (massive but nowt compared to condors in South America - I reckon a condor could easily waste an albatross in a fight!), where Rick got a king of birds size reminder of the day on his head, rare yellow eyed penguins nesting and coming out of the sea onto the beach at dusk, and massive (but not as big as our Uruguayan) sea lions.
We also went whale watching at Kaikoura and saw two sperm whales breaching and diving back down. Sadly I was totally crap and managed to miss all this with the video camera but Rick did well with the camera - see below.
Finally, we actually saw a live possum, rather than the road kill variety, on our penultimate night, as we were staying in a hostel called the Treehouse, which was, as you have no doubt deduced, built up in a forest and so surrounded by cool critters (and vicious mossies!).
We've seen / climbed / trekked / helicopetered up (what a cheat!) lots of cool scenery The South Island is just about the coolest place to see amazing scenery ever!
Bottle Nose Dolphin
Diving Header!!!!!! It's been regurgitated by volcanoes, scored and gouged by glaciers and pounded by the ocean and so has loads of cool different types of scenery to see.
The Catlins coast, on the east coast where we saw loads of wildlife, is really rugged and coastal. Mount Cook and the Southern Alps are spectacular, snow capped peaks, reflected in smooth glacial lakes. We then travelled up to Milford Sound (which is actually a fjord, as it was made by a glacier, Sounds are made by rivers. Apparently), and took an overnight boat trip there. It was lovely to be there after the crowds of other tourist boats had left and we were left sailing alone along the beautiful, deep valley left by the glacier. The weather was lush so we saw the postcard views of the Sound, and then in the morning (after a heavy night of boozing and poker) the Sound was all misty and brooding so we saw two views of it.
Queenstown is overshadowed by the jagged Remarkables mountain range, which were used as the backdrop to lots of the Mordor scenes in Lord of the Rings (GEEKS!), whilst the Fox glacier (which we took a
More Dolphins
More Dolphins than you can point a harpoon at! helicopter to get up so we could get to all the cool stuff like ice caves and lagoons that you miss if you do a day hike) is a maze of blue-veined crevasses, roaring water holes (which our guide told us, if you fall down, you break your hips on the sides then suffocate under the water) and blue caves.
After the rugged South Island, we visited Rotourua in the North Island, which is a hotbed (yeah good pun) of geothermal activity and stinks of eggs but has cool geysers and crazily-coloured lakes of sulphuric water, and then escaped to the purer-smelling Coromandel peninsula, which is green and beachy, and Northland which is a beach paradise, basically.
Gosh, we've done lots of cool stuff So we've mentioned the NZ Glasto festival, which was held on a beach so v cool setting (beats Glasto mud and sinking stages I'm afraid), however it did lack Disco Dan and all our other Glasto goers and so was a bit tamer than we are used to! We saw a couple of English acts, the Cuban Brothers (naked break dancers) and Hexstatic (v cool visuals) and also the band topping
View of Lake Tekapo
Mt Cook and Southern Alps in background the NZ charts, Fat Freddy's Drop (average). Was all v cool but can't wait for Glasto 2007!
We also did a cool one day hike (billed as the best one dayer in NZ), the Tongariro Crossing. You clamber up an hour's worth of stinking vertical cliff face and then, once your vision has recovered from a red haze, you realise you are between the summits of two massive volcanoes, then cross to another which is active and smoky, then come across some lush emerald green lakes. Lots of peeps don't get to do the crossing as the weather can be stink up there, but we were dead lucky.
We also did a one day river trip, kyaking down the Whanganui river. Essentially the river has scored a reallt deep valley into the landscape, which is too steep to walk alongside, so the only way to see it is to go along the water. It rained solidly for the first half of the day, which was a bit miserable, but then the sun came out and dried us up and the scenery was fantastic. All of this was overshadowed by the comedy of Rick falling in as we got
back into our kyaks after lunch on the bank, which was particularly amusing as he had been taking the micky out of me for nearly falling in two minutes before. We were with a group of Germans who were doing a three day trip, and at lunch we heard a shreik from the water's edge, one of them had accidentally untied all their boats (which contained their tents, food and clothes for three days) and they had all floated off! One guy had to dive in, fully clothed, to recover them whilst this useless girl who had untied the boats stood o the bank watching. I don't know if they ever made it!
We've also mentioned our catamaran cruise, basically tropical paradise of snorkelling, dolphins swimming alongside boat, BBQ on beach, yes you get the picture (oh by the way did you hear it was the coldest winter for ages back in the UK? Yes, thought so. Hah!).
So now we are in Melbourne, and will be in OZ for almost 3 months. Am looking forward to encounters with a range of this country's life snuffing wildlife, like killer spiders and snakes, saltwater crocs which will make a
Moeraki Boulders
Big random boulders and a beach. All honey combed in the middle a bit like a crunchie. meal of you in like one metre of water, box jellyfish and sharks. However I am excited about going to see the Neighbours set and going to see Dr Karl Kennedy's band at the pub. Hmmmmm.
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Bunny
non-member comment
WOWWWWWWWWW!!!! I wanna be there!!!! You guys look yum!!! Take care, love xxx