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Published: February 7th 2009
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NZ Part 1
Hi everyone.
I'm sitting on a campsite in Queenstown, sipping a cold beer in the evening sun. Superb!
Gem and I arrived in New Zealand about 11 days ago. Our arrival was not so happy as we were in trouble at the airport for violating bio-security. We'd accidentally brought an apple with us from Australia. We'd been really careful; I'd even bought a sponge to wipe the mud from our tent, knowing that we weren't allowed to take anything organic in with us, but we'd forgot about the apple. Luckily we narrowly escaped a $200 fine.
So all in all not the best welcome to New Zealand but we quickly got out of the airport and collected our car to drive up to Hanmer Springs.
The following day we visited the thermal pools, although Gem hated the smell of Sulphur wafting up from the 60 degrees C water! Next top for us the was Abel Tasman National park, which was beautiful. We did a 16km walk along the Abel Tasman track and visited 'Split Apple Rock'. The whole place is just gorgeous: beach after stunning beach, forest and cliffs. I loved it.
We then headed back to Christchurch to meet Gem's Mum and Dad. We stayed in a nice hotel for the first time in ages. The bed felt very soft after our 6 nights of camping. Pete (gem's Dad) and ·I collected our 6 berth campervan from the airport and after we finally managed to get all our stuff in it we headed out over Arthur's pass to the west coast of NZ. We stayed in a small place called Hokitika and went to look at some glow worms that night. I attempted to photo them but that proved impossible. All I got was a black photo of the black of night!
Moving south we went to the glaciers and Pete and Carol took a helicopter flight up to the top of the snowfields (I was very jealous after seeing their photographs of Mt Cook and Tasman).
Today we headed to Queenstown and past the Karwarau Gorge where I decided to jump of a bridge with a piece of big, bendy string around my ankles. I have always thought I'd like to do a bungy and after not doing it last time I was here I was determined not
to leave wishing I had. I'll admit it was a tiny bit scary when I had to jump but the fall down was great, but of course, all over way too fast. I don't think I realised I was even falling apart from the rush of air past my ears. Getting my head dunked in the river at the bottom was refreshing!
Hopefully we will make our way up to Kaikoura next where we'll go and swim with dolphins for Gem's birthday.
My Mum is going to be very jealous!
Part 2
Well we have now made our way across the date line and headed into South America. We had a Thursday that lasted 40 hours which was a little strange but haven´t done much in Santiago since arriving. I seem to have neglected my blog a little so I´m going to try and catch up a bit!
Kaikoura was great, and our last stop before we headed back to Christchrch with Gem´s parents to see them fly off to Australia. We had saved Kaikoura until just before they headed back as it was Gem´s birthday and she wanted to swim with the Dusky dolphins
and see the whales on the day. She was very lucky as the weather settled and she got to do both. The sea was very choppy and Pete and I felt a bit sick. Gemma on the other hand felt fine and was eating biscuits and drinking all our free hot chocolate. (Funny considering how even if I drive a bit fast she instantly feels sick and I must slow down immediately!) The dolphin swimming was amazing. The water was very cold but we had good wetsuits on. We were told to splash around, dive down and make lots of noise as that makes the dolphins want to play. I found that barking like a dog was quite successful and one dolphin stayed with me for ages. I think I saw 8 at once with me whilst swimming at one point. Fantastic animals.
As I said, we drove the campervan back to Christchurch and dropped off Gem´s parents at the airport. They excitedly flew on to Australia and we went up to pick up another hire car from Apex. I was pretty pleased with myself as the last time I had dropped off the previous car I had arranged
a one way deal to Auckland, with ferry included, for a bargain 10 pounds a day. Happy, we then headed back to Kaikoura (yes again!) to spend the night on a Top 10 campsite.
We caught the ferry the following day to the North Island and stopped in Wellington for about 2 hours. It proabably deserved longer than that but NZ isn´t about seeing cities as the countryside is amazing. We stayed at a small place called Otaki before heading up to Mt Taranaki the following day. I did a small walk there but it was too windy to head up the volcano. There was still a lot of snow on the summit, but that won´t impress anyone in the UK at the momenet will it!
I was a bit annoyed that I missed out on walking up Taranaki so as an alternative, to calm my itchy feet, we headed over to the Tongario crossing and I decided to head up Mt Ngauruhoe. It looks like a proper volcano and I think it was used as Mt Doom in Lord of the Rings, although I guess it was tarted up a bit for the film as there was
no lava spewing out of it. Disappointing. The walk took me about 5 hours, but it was bloody hard going. Eventually I made it to the crater rim. It was so windy I got blown over a few times and so decided to quickly descend before I ran out of skill / luck and got blown in! I had met two Brazilians on the way up who had recommended I climb up the old lava flows as they were more stable than the gravel scree on the steep sides. I should have warned them about driving too fast on the gravel roads as on the way out of the park we met them standing next to their smashed up car after losing control on the loose stuff. Luckily they were both ok and I thanked them for pointing me the right way up the volcano.
Gem and I then headed up to Rotorua and the geo-thermal areas. We paddled in some very hot springs and looked at bubbling mud, all the while inhaling the lovely eggy sulphur! Gem does not even like eggs so she was not a fan of the place.
Over the next couple of days
we went up the Coromandel peninsula and then to Auckland. We abandoned our tent on the final night, which has served us well, and booked into a hotel. We gave our Ford Focus back to Apex hoping they wouldn´t notice how filthy it was after all the gravel roads and the huge stain on the back seat that had appeared, I suspect from one of Gems wine spillages, not that she would admit it!
Which brings us to Santiago. It is lovely and warm here and South America has a nice feel to it. We´ve met a lot of fellow travellers who have stories of being robbed, (yikes) but mainly in Brazil, and we are not going there.
The plan, as it is, is to head up Chile and into Bolivia. We will then start a month of volunteering on the 24th, teaching english in Sucre to children and adults. Gem is going to try and work in an orphanage as well. We are both looking forward to it and it will be nice to settle in the same place for a while. Our friend Hannah is then coming out to meet us on the 18th of March
Star Fish
Abel Tasman NP and we´ll head up through Bolivia and Peru before flying home on the 23rd of April.
I´ll try and get NZ pictures up soon.
Allan
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