Cold but beautiful New Zealand

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Hi Guys and Girls,

So sorry we haven't been in touch for so long, but as we explained previously, it has been so hard finding the time when driving a campervan around New Zealand, and mostly stopping off in campsites for one night and then moving on again.

Last night, we drove in to the town of Kaikoura on the East coast of New Zealand's South Island. We are sitting in the campsite preparing to go Whale watching. The sun is shining, huge snow peaked mountains behind us are defining this beautiful bay. Kaikoura is particularly special because its bay is so deep, and there are around one hundred resident sperm whales living around the bay, as well as pods of dolphins, sea lion colonies and orca - needless to say we are very excited about the next few days.

We last wrote to you from Magnetic Island on Australias humid East coast - wow, that seems like such a distant memory now!

We slowly made our way down the East coast on the well known Greyhound Bus, passing through Airlie Beach, Agnes Water and the town of 1770, (named after the year that James Cook landed in Oz), Noosa and then on to the city of Brisbane. We had some good times and experienced some wonderful hostels, REAL Australian wildlife, inside and outside of our hostel room, and changeable dramatic weather. We experienced a rather heart pounding 5.2 on the richter scale earthquake in Airlie Beach one afternoon where the ground shook and swayed, the rocks rumbled and it lasted long enough that we were able to talk about the fact it was actually a proper earthquake whilst it was happening - a very strange experience, one that we will never forget!

Agnes Water will go down in history as the place where Barrie finally learnt to surf, a great experience for him Coming from a surf community down in St Ives Cornwall, he was slightly lacking in the skills that made him a REAL Cornwall lad, so where better to learn than in an Australian surf. It was cold and raining and the waves were pounding this famous surf beach. He wiped out (fell off his board to those not in with the surf lingo) at least thirty times and then (cue angelic voices, cue sun beams through the clouds) - he stood up, balanced, stepped sideways, legs spread, and stayed on the board all the way to the shore line. He was seemingly so proud, and everyone in the surf group clapped. Apparently he stayed on the board a number of times afterwards, but as Marieke wasn't present to witness such an act, there is no evidence to his claim, and one can only speculate.... there is also no photographic evidence of this standing on the board malarky, so one can only assume he did.

Barrie's 'successful' surf lesson inspired us to take on body boarding down the coast - particularly in Noosa. Marieke got stuck in, generally getting wiped out in the huge waves. On one particular occassion, she didn't come up for ten seconds or so, and when she did (after coughing up an obligatory mouthful of sea water), it was without her bikini top which was around her waist, giving the pubescent surfers an eyefull and a life time of memories.

Once we got to Brisbane, we found it a was a vibrant, clean and smart city. The public open spaces were magnificent and we felt lessons could be learnt back home about providing such excellent amenities for the public. Free BBQ's, well designed open public pools, wooden river walkways, separating cyclists and pedestrians, it was great. We did a lot of walking and exploring in the city in amongst the skyscrapers and also in the Botanical Gardens where there was an abundance of wildlife - a fair few GIANT spiders and VERY large lizards. We also made the decision to fly down to Melbourne from here, cutting our Austrailian journey short, adding a bit more to New Zealand and also onto South America.

A few days laiter we flew down to Melbourne, and experienced an even more impressive city. We stayed for five days or so in a wonderful old hostel/house/hotel/guest house (it didn't quite know what it was) called St Arnaud, somewhere between the beach suburb of St Kildea and the city of Melbourne. This old guest house was like a maze of long corridors and each floor appeared to be different. We honestly found a different way of getting to our room everytime we left the reception desk! It was like something out of the Harry Potter movies, with spooky paintings where the eyes moved, speaky floorboards and antique furniture in every corner which were there one minute, and gone the next. During our time here we walked the city and experienced the parks. We even found a spare couple of hours to see the Royal Wedding on the big screens in Federation Sq. The Aussie's appeared to be more patriotic than the Brits and they were cheering and sobbing away! It was a great wedding and well worth watching.

Besides exploring the city, from Melbourne we took a coach out to the Great Ocean Rd - what a drive along one of the best stretches of coastline in the world. Although now we have experienced some of New Zealands coastline, the Great Ocean Road has a bit of competition at a 20th of the price! We saw the true power of the ocean, huge waves battered the coast and with magnificant views around every bend. The highlight of the day was probably standing and admiring the '12 Apostles', eight (the other four had recently fallen into the ocean) huge blocks of limestone, standing by themselves and petruding out of the ocean just off the coast, it was a beautiful site. We also experienced many other geoglogical wonders as well as some interesting rainforests that day - where some of the biggest and tallest trees grow, some where five hundred years old and over 90m tall.

Marieke also got her one big wish... she hopped on the legendary official 'Neighbours' tour bus and headed for Ramsay Street! For the record, Barrie stayed in the City and read his book in the museum gardens...geek. Meanwhile, Marieke immersed herself in everything 'Neighbours' for a few hours.

So we left Australia on 1st of May 2011. It was fun, but it wasn't so much fun that we were dying to stay there. The East coast of Australia was a lot like England in its Culture and particularly Cornwall in its landscape. Also, due to the money we were bleeding every day, we just felt it was time to move on and experience something different..............and fast!

Whilst travelling this Country, we stayed in Hostels every night, and this was a highlight in itself. We met so many different people from all walks of life; from travellers, workers, alcoholics, down and outs, couples, singles, people from all over the globe - such a wide variety of people with different stories to tell, this really added to our experience.

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New Zealand is beautiful and epic. We don't believe anyone who visited here would think otherwise and we thoroughly recommend visiting this wonderful country once in your lifetime. Just make sure you come at the right time of year. Due to its location in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and close to the South Pole, the weather is REALLY changeable. We have missed some wonderful scenery and some of the biggest mountains due to cloud, rain and fog. However, when the sun does shine, it makes the scenery that much more spectacular and special - oh and travelling from SE Asia and Australia we are finding it really is cold here. Really cold.

We had decided long ago to hire a campervan and explore New Zealand on our own terms. We flew into Christchurch - a sad wreck of rubble and such a sorry story. The whole of the city centre had been fenced off due to the recent devastating earthquake. They were still looking for bodies buried under the buildings when we were there. The destruction was plain to see, even on the outskirts, where bridges had split right down the middle, churches looked as though they had imploded and an eery sense that we were in a war zone prevailed, along with the evacuation of thousands of residents. Parts of it were like a ghost town.

After a couple of days staying in a quirky retro little hostel called Chester Street Backpackers (where they had the back of a 1950's car petruding from a brick wall in the garden - when you open the boot a BBQ pops out!) we picked up our 'Jucy' Campervan in Christchurch. She was quickly named Besty (you have to pronounce 'Betsy' in a northern accent, it sounds better!) and the excitement began! Our road trip we had dreamed of was very close, we just had to sign on the dotted line..... however.... Marieke was informed that her driving license had expired last November, leaving Barrie to drive the 4000 odd kilometres on his own - thank you Marieke! We headed out of Christchurch and out into the most picturesque of scenery - Lord of the Ring's country. The only problem was that we couldn't see anything on the first day!

The roads were pleasantly long, winding and desolate - old Betsy snaked along the side of wild rivers, giant boulder clad green hills and white capped mountains. Heading to the centre of the South Island we stayed at Lake Tekapo and then onto Wanaka, where we experienced some wonderful weather and great scenery. At this point, Barrie was bored of 'the beard' and so decided to rid of the beast, but Marieke had convinced him to keep a handle bar moustache - he's still not convinced it was a good look!

Our journey took us through the Catlins and the small estuary town of Riverton, where the weather changed for the worse - we hardly saw anything of the Catlins due to the appauling weather - the highlight of both places though were the wonderful camp sites we arrived at in the evening - the peace and tranqulity, the log fires, the table tennis matches and the cosiness of it all! It was still a bloody cold walk from the warm communal living room to cold old Betsy.

We headed north from here and spent some time in the wonderful alpine town of Te Anau. Where we then drove on one of THE great roads up to Milford Sound which itself is consistantly voted as one of the most beautiful places on earth - it was a joy to be there, amongst the majestic scenery - and the weather turned out fine!

A few days in the infamous Queenstown followed. A town of beauty, built amongst the Southern Alps on the edge of a large lake. It is the official adreline capital of New Zealand and really has a great vibe. We both wouldn't say no to living there! Marieke booked a Paragliding flight and Barrie booked up for a 13,000ft Skydive over the lake and mountains on the following day. Alas, it wasn't meant to be and on the following day it was deemed too windy - we were both gutted and disappointed as we'd built up the adreniline and courage overnight. We settled instead for a horse riding trek in a valley beneath one of the mountains used in the LOTR's films (the start of 'The Twin Towers' when Gandalf fights the Balrog). It was so nice as our two horses 'Warty' (Barrie's horse) and 'Sparky' (Marieke's) were generally well behaved and took us through deep valleys with towering mountains on all sides. Barrie had not been anywhere near a horse in his life, and was actually quite wary of these powerful animals. His horse 'Warty' was very clumsy at times and within five minutes of the trek we had to cross a fast flowing river.... Warty tripped, stumbled and swayed waist deep in the water, Barrie struggled to control the horse with Marieke shouting to tighten the reigns - at one point Marieke thought Warty might end up on top of Barrie on the river bed, it was a vert tense moment.

We made our way up the west coast after the horse trekking adventure, a little saddle sore, and savlon could not fix the pain this time. We spent some time at New Zealands great Glaciers - Franz Josef and Fox, great, ancient rivers of ice carving there way through solid rock - it made us feel very small, particularly as the walls of rock surrounding us would suddenly create a mini landslide - a dangerous unbalanced and inspirational landscape. Barrie's handlebar, by the way - now history.

We made our way up the West Coast and it rained so hard we couldn't see any of the Southern Alps, but we saw the most amazing wild oceans, it really made us feel like we were at the end of the world. The ground shook through the night as huge waves thrashed at the rocks a few meters away - again, it made us feel quite small and insignificant. Betsy took us across country to Kaikoura, this wonderful little coastal town, where we look forward to spending a few days Whale watching and trekking the hills.

We are sorry if this entry seems a little rushed and lacking in detail, but we have had to condense around seven weeks of travelling and adventure into a small amount of words. We are looking forward to exploring some of the North Island next and in particular, trekking up 'Mount Doom' and other LOTR's sites. We leave New Zealand on the 24th May, and are very much looking forward to the next part of our journey - South America.

Only two and half months to go now until we return to the UK. This camping lark is really making us realise what comforts we are missing from home, especially as it is so cold outside! But the whole experience is making us realise that we can live without, and it's a real eye opener.

We hope you are all doing well wherever you are in the World

Love Marieke and Barrie x

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