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Published: February 15th 2008
Blue Penguin
This little fella was rescued after being hit on the head by a speedboat.Before we left Asia behind we had a couple of nights in Bangkok. It's a great city with lots going on and lots to see, hustle and bustle, shiny new buildings, shiny old buildings, freeways, flyovers, skytrain, river traffic, bars, go-go bars, neon signs, temples, palaces, markets, malls, parks....Bangkok has got the lot. We'd already seen the most of it on a previous trip so this time we gave the sightseeing the miss and just got well hammered instead. We negotiated our way past some of Bangkok's seedier sights such as the many western grandads with their rent-a-Thai-girlfriends and Pat Pong's very unique version of ping pong (!) and found ourselves in the super cool Bed Supper Club nightclub where we partied hard by really dancin and taking in some tasty cocktails for our refreshment.
When we finally arrived in Christchurch (South Island) we found ourselves suffering from a wee bit of culture shock. It was quite scary really because there was hardly anyone there - New Zealands 3rd largest city was rather empty - the streets almost silent! It was rather like a scene from one of those horror movies where everybody has eaten everybody's brains and there's not
Antarctic buggy thingy
We went for a right good ride in that thing many people left. We were going to find a Policeman so we could report the horror - 'Excuse me sir all brains eaten, people all gone, arrrggggghhhhhhh' - but fortunately before we did that we realised that there really is hardly any people in New Zealand. (NB we we were suffering from a little jet lag...!) A life of living on a crowded island of 60+ million people and then a couple of months travelling around even more crowded India and SE Asia doesn't prepare you for entry to a country around the size of Britain but with just over 4 million peoples living there. In New Zealand you can walk down a pavement in a straight line without the need to change trajectory or dodge mopeds, traffic jams haven't been invented yet, even in the city it's quiet and there's loads of open space - it's great!
We hung around Christchurch for a couple days to shake off the jetlag (we're 13hrs ahead of the UK now) and find our feet in NZ. It's a pleasant place - clean and tidy - nice buildings - nice parks. It took us a little while to get used to the
In the chill out room
This shot was taken just before they turned the chill on and took us down to -25 degrees! fact that people stop for you at pedestrian crossings over here. In Asia, drivers assume that pedestrian crossings are just pretty road decoration placed there by the kind road marking men when they have some paint left over. The first time we stood at a crossing a bus jerked to a halt for us - we looked at the driver in horror - what an earth is this crazy guy doing stopping in the road like that we thought - we didn't quite know what to do - is this just a trick to get us into the middle of the road so that he can run us over easier?? Culture shock again.
We visited the Antarctic center which was great fun - we had a ride in a special buggy thing with caterpillar tracks that they use out there in the Antarctic - they took us up and down some crazy steep inclines and they demonstrated it's floatability by riding us across a little 'pond' with the caterpillar tracks paddling us along. We've all been to nightclubs with chill out rooms but the chill out room at this place was really chilled - minus 25 degrees to be
Head of Catering
The head of the catering department gets to work on a couple of cheese and tom butties precise - they dressed us in big warm clothes and then created storm conditions for us by taking the temperature down to -8 and then adding a wind chill factor to take us down to -25. We also saw some rescued blue penguins - very cute!
After a couple of days we picked up our campervan and headed off into the interior - to Aoraki Mount Cook, the biggest mountain in New Zealand at 3754m. There are over 22 peaks over 3000m in the Mount Cook National Park and on a good day it's a spectacular place to be. We were really lucky with two fantastic days. We enjoyed good views of Mount Cook standing tall with loads of snow on it's top, we also saw numerous glaciers and turquoise lakes. We did a trek on a hot clear blue sky day up through the Hooker Valley from Mount Cook Village up to the glacier fed Hooker Lake - it had big chunks of ice floating along it.
Then we headed back to the East Coast to Oamaru to see some penguins. Oamaru is a bit special because within 15 minutes walk of the town center (in slightly
Head of Transportation
The head of transportation keeps on truckin different directions) are two penguin colonies - i.e. the Yellow Eyed and the Little Blue Penguins. The two types of penguin operate to different schedules so you can have a good butchers at both of them in the same day. We first went to see the Yellow Eyed ones, these chaps are around 6-8kgs and they're a bit rare, only found in NZ's South island. We went to a viewing place on the cliffs and were treated to views of penguins going out to sea, penguins coming back to land and penguins climbing and descending very steep cliffs (quite comical at times). One chappie waddled past right in front of us. The little blue ones are the smallest in the world at only 1kg but these guys are seriously tough, they get out of bed before sunrise and then go swimming for around 15hrs (!!) before coming back home after sunset for a well earned rest. They're very tourist friendly these one's because they come to shore around the same time at the same place each evening - so predictable that the people of Oamaru have built a grandstand to seat 350 spectators....! You have to be quiet and no
cameras are allowed as you'd need a flash and that wouldn't be very good for the little fellas -after all, the last thing you need after a 15hr swim dodging Killer Whales is 350 numpties flashing at you! So we sat there quietly watching around a hundred knackered penguins coming ashore in rafts of 15-20 on their bellies and then scrambling up the shore to their beds for the night - again, very cute.
From Oamaru we headed right down to the south coast of the South Island following the coastal road all the way which was very picturesque and super dramatic to say the least. Even by NZ's standards this part of the country is very sparsely populated. We spent a couple of days checking out the forests, cliffs, caves and deserted beaches. It was really quiet down there with more animals to see than people. We stopped off at a couple of places to watch seals doing their thing. We also stopped off at the only bay in the world with resident dolphins - a whole load of rare Hectors dolphins living in there and we were lucky enough to see them swimming and jumping around and
Out for a walk
Janine gives a wave from a bridge whilst doing some trekkin in Mount Cook national park what not! Just as we were about to pull away from the dolphins a very handsome sea-lion all of a sudden appeared right in front of us and posed pleasantly for pictures! :-) We didn't even see him get out of the water (we were obviously paying too much attention to the dolphins). It was as if he was saying 'Hey up check me out dudes there's more than just dolphins in these ere waters you know'. Dolphins and sea-lions right in front of us and we hadn't even needed to get out of the campervan!
We then headed north and west to Milford Sound which is actually a Fiord and the 2nd rainiest (7m of rain a year!) place on the planet. It's well known for being an exceedingly picturesque and dramatic place to be and it's pretty much on everyone's NZ itinerary. We spent a few days around there hiking in the mountains, kayaking around the fiord and taking a boat trip too. We've been super lucky so far in NZ with both the weather and with the wildlife and Milford Sound was no exception. On our hike up to "Key Summit' we were rewarded with amazing
Janine Steve and Colin the capervan
Parked up for the night on a cliff overlooking the pacific. Colin has a fridge, microwave, two gas rings, a big bed, a sink and most importantly .........a DVD player clear views of the surrounding mountains and on both of our two days on the water we saw seals and dolphins (racing and jumping along with our bows on our boat ride) and got great views of the Fiord.
The weather here has been generally warm, sometimes proper hot and sometimes a wee bit chilly. If we're in an out of the way place and the night sky is clear then the stars are super amazing. We didn't realize it before we came but they have a lot of earthquakes in NZ, happily its mostly small ones but that said a fairly big one just rocked the internet cafe we're sat in right now! Each evening we take on a Krypton Factor type challenge and convert our mobile kitchen unit into a bedroom - this involves the pulling, pushing and slotting in of various bits and bobs before we're finally rewarded with a large double bed. It's pretty good exercise for both our brains and bodies and we're quite good at it now and it's only collapsed from under us on two occasions. We're supposed to be learning Spanish to help through South America but unfortunately our attention has
Baldwin Street
This is the steepest residential street in the world and its in Dunedin. It has a gradient of 1 in 2.86 or 35%. been diverted towards the large pile of DVD's we picked up from a very nice man in Bangkok - crickey, he didn't half sell us em for a good price....!
We're currently in Queenstown, the adventure playground of NZ or even the world. It's a nice town by a big lake and surrounded by big mountains. Think Ambleside but with loads more trendy restaurants and bars and there's loads of adventure opportunities on offer if you've got loads of money to go with it. You can do all sorts of things here, white water rafting and kayaking, mountain biking, parachute jumping, canyoning etc etc and of course it's the home of bungy jumping and you can do loads of that too. It's a ski resort as well in the winter. We decided to get our adrenaline fix by going Jetboating on the Shotover river which was great fun. We traveled incredibly fast down the river in a boat with two massive bad boy engines through narrow river canyons and around bends and what not. On several occasions we thought the boat was going to hit the canyon walls and on a few other occasions we thought it was going
Deserted Beach Moody Sky
Just one of many deserted beaches on south islands south coast to be our heads that got it! - all very exciting stuff. The clever boat drivers can even do 360 degree spins and we did lots of em - our chap even managed to pull off a 540 degree spin for us as well.
To say we're enjoying NZ would be an understatement - in the campervan we've camped under glaciers, on a cliff overlooking the Pacific, beside a mountain lake etc etc. The scenery along every road we've traveled on has been fantastic - we find ourselves stopping (very!)regularly to take piccies - this place is just jam packed with stunning scenery of all different types - cliffs, beaches, fiords, alpine mountains, lakes, rolling green hills............and we've only been here a couple of weeks..........Int New Zealand brilliant.................
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