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Published: January 2nd 2011
We have made it back to Nicole and Chris's after driving till 2:30 am. It was New Years eve here, but seemed to be on the quiet side on the roads. Other than right around Auckland and a few other big towns, things are pretty quiet here in NZ.
In parts of the south island, we could drive an hour and pass 2 cars. It was definitely busier coming back on the ferry since the whole country is on vacation till after New Years. Nicole and Chris both have 3 weeks vacation over the holidays.
Some of the things that happened why we were traveling:
Christchurch earthquake They had another 4.6 aftershock on the day after Christmas. That is Boxing day over here and is similar to Black Friday for us. It shut down most of downtown and knocked some pieces off buildings. They decided to repeat Boxing day the next day so everyone could still get 80%!o(MISSING)ff Christmas cards and video games.
150 year storm While we were in Queenstown, the South Island had a 150 year storm blow through. It hit the North part of the South Island pretty hard. There
were landslides all over the place and it closed a bunch of roads for a few days. On the way to the ferry, some of the already narrow roads were down to one lane. They seem to be pretty good at dealing with these things as they had roads back open pretty quick.
So we left off at Milford Sound. If any of you ever get a chance to come to NZ, Milford Sound is the one place you cannot miss. It was simply awe inspiring. I probably would of booked an overnite boat (expensive, but worth it) if I had known what we were in store for.
The road on the way in is just jaw dropping amazing. It was raining and since the mountains are so steep, we passed at least 500 waterfalls. Absolutely amazing. I will put in a bunch of pictures and leave it at that.
From Milford Sound we headed up to Lake Hawea via Queenstown and Wanaka. This area is full of lakes, mountains and adventure sports. It is the area where Bungy Jumping and River Jet Boating started.
We were heading up to Chris's Uncle Steves house for
Christmas. He has three kids, Grayson, Abie and Max. They were great (I will try to refrain from "heaps")fun and really excited to see Chris and all of us. They had a nice tree all decorated and lived on a beautiful mountain lake right next to a pub. What more did we need.
We met a few of Steve's mates. Albert brought over a quarter of a lamb he recently slaughtered. And we even played a game of indoor Rugby after a visit to the pub. It was really a lot of fun using the Christmas tree as one of the goals and nothing was broken!
The 3 kids are ages 7 to 13 and were just fun to be around. We took them all to Puzzling World, where they kicked Saskia, Eli's and Nicoles butts in the maze. We then went to this great playground in Wanaka with some of the coolest spinning rides you could ever got nauseous on. All of us managed to fly off one ride or another.
On the 28th we actually managed to get up and leave around 7 am. By now we were getting good at packing 6 people, luggage
Max's feet after the Barbecue
Everyone goes barefoot in NZ. You can go in stores or anywhere without shoes. I guess we won't die afterall!and food into our van. We headed to our next house which was in Hokitika on the west coast. We passed through some beautiful gorges on the way to see two Glaciers.
Glacier #1 - Fox Glacier Due to all the washouts, the access road was closed. So on to:
Glacier #2 - Franz Josef Glacier We managed to hike in to the other side of the stream that flows out of the Glacier. We were still probably 1/2 mile away so the Glacier seemed pretty small. But when looking close, we could see groups with guides hiking up to it. If I were to venture a guess, the face was probably 100' high. It was the first Glacier I had ever been too and I was bummed thats as close as we could get without hiring a guide.
This Glacier is actually been getting bigger since about 1970. It moves at about a meter a day, which is a speed demon for Glaciers. Still pretty cool to see. We hiked down another trail to a swing bridge over the river coming from it. There were huge chunks of ice and boulders flowing down with
it making a muffled crashing sound.
Since we were all soaked from the rain we decided to head to some hot pools. They were in the little town of Franz Josef and were just what the doctor ordered. Perfect way to warm up.
We headed from there up to Hokitika to the next house we rented. Peter the person we were renting from also owned a hotel. He was telling me that so many roads were closed, none of his customers could get to Hokitika to stay that night. So it was good we had two days to stay put and let them clean up.
Hokitika was a nice quiet small town. They had a big river that emptied into the ocean not far from where we stayed. It was a place where a ship every 10 weeks got stuck on the beach during the gold rush. The west coast of the South Island had a pretty sizable gold rush in the 1860's just like the US. We still saw quite a few small gold mining operations all around town. From what I understand, anyone can still prospect as long as you use equipment of less than
5 hp.
We went and walked the beach and found all kinds of stuff washed up from the river. Driftwood, stumps, dead deer and cows, chairs and lots for logs and rocks. People were driving 4 wheelers up and down the beach looking for good booty.
From Hokitika we headed back up to Nelson to stay so we would have a short drive to the ferry. It was the first hotel we stayed at. With 6 people the rental houses had worked out great. They were way cheaper ($330 nz for 2 rooms at the hotel, about $250 US) than the hotels and way more comfortable.
We managed to make the ferry. It was a little closer than I wanted due to the road problems, but we were fine. The weather on the crossing was perfect and we were able to see penguins in the sound as we pulled out.
Saskia and Eli decided to stay in Wellington for a few days. We dropped them off at a house where they had Couchsurfed before. From there we drove about 9 hours straight back.
We had a really great time on our adventure. We saw some
incredible sights and met some great people on the way. At times it was trying to be such close quarters with 6 people all the time, but we are still talking. It does feel good to be back at "Home". We don't have to pack everything in the car and drive 4 to 5 hours to the next place.
So our plans are too relax and spend time with Nicole and Chris. Not do too much, just maybe some beach and barbecue. I (Bruce) am flying back to Florida on January 12th. Dianne and Saskia are going to Thailand and then on to see Diannes host family in the Netherlands.
I feel some need to be productive and from what I can tell things are just beginning to show some life in the US economy. My plan is to go live in Florida for a while and buy a fixer upper and try to make a little money at it. I have always enjoyed working on homes and my feeling is we are at the bottom on home prices.
Dianne will be back to Florida sometime in February. Then she will get a full time job so
I can kick back and relax some more (only kidding).
Saskia is applying for Au Pair jobs in Europe. She has some leads and will probably stay behind when Dianne comes back.
Eli is staying in NZ for the time being. Since he has a one year work visa, he might as well take advantage of it.
Nicole and Chris are staying behind. Nicole still has 2 semesters of University to finish. Everyone wish her luck since this is probably the hardest part of the 4 years.
We all hope everyone has had as great a year as we have. And we really hope 2011 turns out to be even better. Just remember that even with the recession, we still have it better than 90% of the people in the world. So count your blessings, make some good New Years Resolutions (That matter and you can keep) and I will raise one more Monteith's Radler Bier (good beer with a little lemony taste, quite refreshing) hoping you all stay healthy and we meet up again in 2011.
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Rock Fiore
non-member comment
Happy New Year!
Thanks again for the great pictures. We're looking forward to seeing you back in sunny Florida, aka Paradise! Especially happy to know you'll be our neighbors too! Maybe we can create some future adventures. Best, Rock