Advertisement
Published: August 29th 2011
God it’s a long way to Bangkok never mind New Zealand. Bangkok was worth the stopover though, partly to rest and also enjoy/endure the 36 degree heat. We met some incredibly helpful and friendly Thai’s and some others who would sell their own Grannies to get you into their taxi or buy just about anything you can think of and loads of stuff you haven’t.
Another 14hrs of fun in the air and we landed in Christchurch minus our bags which followed us in on a later flight. ‘Welcome to New Zealand’, they all said at the airport, followed by patronising sympathy that we were coming to watch Scotland in the rugby world cup. It was all in good fun, but I still felt like going back there after the All Blacks were beaten a couple of days later by the Wallebies and pointing out that we beat Australia last time out against them - so up yours!
The weather here has been great with sun and temperatures at around 18˚ but we are constantly told that this is unseasonably warm and it is due to plummet to 6˚as we head south to Invercargill, anyway its given us a
great start with some good sightseeing trips. The highlight for me so far was the couple of days we spent at Mount Cook walking in the foothills surrounded by towering snow clad peaks complete with glaciers and ultramarine coloured lakes. The equivalent of “Munro bagging” over here is to pick off the peaks at over 10,000 feet!
We moved on to Queenstown which is the adrenaline junkies capital of anywhere, people keep dropping out of the sky in Para-gliders, Bungee-jumping, swinging across canyons and all sorts of wild stuff. We on the other hand took a sedate and very nice cruise down the lake that the town is built around.
Our plan next is to go to Milford Sound on the West coast and then make our way to Invercargill for the first game on the 10th. Forecast is cold and possibly snow so we are keeping an eye on our gas cylinder and the snow chains handy.
I have to take issue with Alan’s comments earlier about the weather. True that during the day the weather has been great, basking in sunshine at about 18˚, however at night the temperature has plummeted to around 2-3˚, unfortunately
the thermostat on the gas heating on the van is broken and we cannot run the heating during the night. This has lead to some very cold nights huddled beneath the blankets, mist breathing forth from our mouths. For those of you who are familiar with camping/campervans Al and I prefer to ‘wild camp’ in far flung places where there is no electrical hook-up.
We are waiting for the rental company to send the part to a local garage to replace it for us and we have every faith that this will happen before the snow arrives!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.064s; Tpl: 0.013s; cc: 15; qc: 29; dbt: 0.0314s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb
Gadget Woman
non-member comment
Cold here too!
Hi folks Glad you've arrived safely. Yes Bangkok is a long way, especially when you think of it as a stop over to break the journey. Photos are great especially the glacial lake which looks fantastic! Hope you get the heating working soon. It's be pretty cold here and I actually put the heating on yesterday, as got too cold to concentrate on the Sunday papers! It might have helped had we moved off our backsides! You missed a good day on Saturday with the Dunning 500. I managed to sell 4 of my mounted photos and some junk. Jan & Jacky did well too and dressed up (see photos on facebook), unlike me in just a witches hat. The rain managed to hold off until the end and there were loads of folk in the park with plenty of stalls. Manged to get Joe, Caroline & Andy in the stocks but unfortunately no tomatoes to hand! By the way you didn't win anything later at the Duck Race (neither did I). There was music in the Dunning later with Jim, Joe and Ray creating a great atmosphere. Anyway hope all goes well and Scotland win at the rugby (not that I really give a ....!). Take care and happy travelling! Sx