It has been a while!!

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Wow so much has happened in the last few months (or is it only weeks?) since we last uploaded a blog it is hard to know where to start?

Right have just checked; it turns out that we last left you at Te Anau in the south island during our month long holiday October/November last year! I have just found this on the lap top which hopefully fills in a few gaps (we never posted it, sorry!):

‘Jo here! My sister has requested another blog so i thought I’d update things a bit - it’s been a while hasn’t it?! So we last left you in Te Anau... From there we headed to Milford Sound (the Lonely Planet tells you when to set off to avoid being stuck behind all the coaches but we mostly were slowing the coaches down so that really wasn’t a problem!). The drive over is really dramatic, we stopped for a walk up to Key Summit which is the beginning of the Routeburn track (one of the ‘Great Walks’). The view from the top is meant to be fantastic but it snowed for us instead!! Good walk anyway.

We didn’t quite appreciate our surroundings at Milford until the clouds cleared later in the evening - wow! Lots of snow capped mountains in every direction... We decided the best way to see all this and the fjord itself would be by kayak and we weren’t disappointed. Our guide with Rosco’s Kayaks knew loads about the wildlife and natural processes in the area (i was especially impressed by the tree avalanches!). There were times when it was really peaceful floating about on the water just taking it all in - mostly though, there was the constant drone of little planes taking people over the fjord. The kayaking was a definite highlight though!

After another night in Te Anau we headed to Queenstown, we’d hoped to stop on the way but there really doesn’t seem to be much to do! The scenery was once again fantastic, especially driving along the edge of Lake Wakatipu with Queenstown in the distance. We pretty much carried on going through Queenstown to Glenorchy at the head of the lake. We also picked up our first hitcher! An irish lady heading up to one of the huts on the Routeburn track (yep the other end of the one we started on the way to Milford) and seeing as we were planning on camping pretty much at the end of the track, she certainly had the luck of the irish!! She still had a good couple of hours walk from where we left her though so quite a journey. We actually went up the same way the next day and it was a really good walk - maybe one day we’ll do the whole thing!

That night we watched some rugby game (we’ve seen a lot of rugby, it’s all become a bit of a blur!) in the local - i was mostly watching the fancy dress party people who were doing the rubix cube thing! The next afternoon we went horse riding’

Apparently we also did some other stuff during our time down south. An annotated checklist is attached {this was to be expanded by me at some point, obviously i never got round to it so it remains as a list! JB}:

1. Queenstown - walk up to gondala thing, luge (it was really good fun, if a bit kiddy friendly)
2. Mum and Alan! (Yes they were there too!)
3. Rafting (Was also good, but we did not get wet or fall in. I think our guide / captain was a bit too experienced and the fact that he was wearing everyday clothes rather than a wet suit indicated that he had no intention of falling in either!)
4. Crazy golf!! (Jo is officially a Craze-o-golf-aphile, twice in two days is surely some sort of an addiction {but you do really have to do the indoor one - ski-lifts for your ball!! JB})
5. Arrowtown (A town full of arrows)
6. Wine, puzzle world, aeroplanes (We went to quite a few museums - my favourite was the puzzleworld)
7. Wanaka - fancy campsite (Jacuzzi with some Germans - Not as weird as it sounds)
8. Rob roy glacier, gravel road (Yes it was a very long way of the beautiful black stuff - was it worth it? Probably, the walk was fantastic!)
9. Drive Wanaka to Haast (the Haast pass is an incredibly scenic road - we also had nice fish and chips in Haast)
10. Haast to Fox Glacier, - beach (I think we broke up the drive with a bit of a look at a beach with temperate rainforest - it was cool)
11. Frans Joseph, glacier walk, rain! (the glacier is pretty spectacular)
12. Drive to Greymouth -raining! (Not a lot to add to that)
13. Crazy ‘campsite’ in greymouth, brewery, ‘BBQ’. (Greymouth is very grey. When it is raining you cannot beat a brewery tour followed by indoor BBQ. The best bit being that the brewery tour was very short and the tasting session very long!!!)
14. Arthur’s Pass. (Wish we could have seen it in the sun! What we did see was spectacular and amazingly our misfiring camper van made it up all of the slopes!!!)
15. Hanmer Springs, lovely. (Nuff said)
16. Christchurch - family bbq, John’s birthday, Shona {the second very brief meet up with Shona, hopefully will get another one in before we go. JB}, gondola, packing. (Lots of wonderful dessert courtesy of Hayley Thompson)
17. Back to Auckland
18. Showing mum and Alan around - Rangitoto {volcano just off the coast that you can walk up and see for miles. JB}, Mission Bay {Mmm fish and chips. JB}, Waitakeri ranges {hills to the west of Auckland with lots of trees for mum to see}, North Head, Granny’s cousin (I think they enjoyed it. They took us out for a seafood meal on their final night. Everyone enjoyed it but my stomach that night was rather less keen!! )
Eh, what happened next? We went to work at BMW and Ernst & Young respectively (sounds pretty good when you write it like that! We got to know Auckland a bit better and liked it more in the sunshine We went to the beach at Christmas at Raglan. We have pictures of ourselves wearing Santa hats on the beach! I almost killed Jo on a ‘short’ walk inland which took us over seven hours to complete (so, so sorry!! {hmm, yes ) The campsite we stayed at had a earth oven, so we were able to roast our tea on Christmas day and do homemade pizza on boxing day.

We attended a 20 20 Cricket match in Hamilton. It was absolutely heaving. Not sure everyone was watching the cricket though; at one point one of the Windies’ players made a cracking catch on the boundary rope. Everyone cheered, but not for the player. There was a guy in the crowd wearing a Borat Mankini!

We went to Hobbiton, in Middle Earth; it is also quite near Matamata in New Zealand. Was not sure whether it would be worth it, but it was absolutely brilliant!! I know that I am a geek, but I loved it. How many people can say that they have stood in Bag End? Well actually about half a million, it is a popular tour.

We spent New Year with Brendon and Zoe in Auckland. They now have a spangly new front yard for BBQs and entertaining. Realising that it would be the perfect location for a pot plant, we parted ways with Robert, our trusty, err, plant. I think he will be very happy in his new home. It is a fair question to ask why we ever thought taking a pot plant (of unidentified type) camping was a good idea; not sure that I have a particularly conclusive answer to that one.

In 2009 we have already been caving in Waitomo. It is pretty cool to abseil down into a cave; I thoroughly recommend it to anyone. It is even cooler if that cave then ends up being lit up by glow worms.

We then headed down to New Plymouth, which is officially the best place to live with a population of between 25,000 and 75,000 inhabitants. How that has been assessed is still unclear to me, but it does have a really nice walkway along the front of the city, giving great access to the beaches and obviously it has the very impressive Mount Taranaki on its doorstep. It is so impressive infact that it is able to stand in for Mount Fuji for Hollywood; if any of you have seen the Last Samurai - it was New Zealand, not Japan.
We resisted the urge to climb to the top of Taranaki, the most climbed mountain in New Zealand, but we did complete one of the overnight ‘tramps’ in the fantastic Egmont National Park (the mountain is in the park - it makes more sense when you realise that Egmont was the European name for the Mountain, but it has since reverted to its Maori name). We are definitely getting fitter and both really enjoyed the walk. The DOC does a fantastic job of looking after the tracks and the huts both in this park and all over NZ. The huts are cool (there are apparently about 900 in total over NZ) and make life so much easier, removing the need to carry tents with you. We splashed out and bought annual passes ($90, about 35 quid), so there is now no excuse for not doing more of the tracks.

We have now moved a little further round the coast to a place called Wh/Wanganui (??). Maori was written down by the English and is normally phonetic. One of the main exceptions to this is (amusingly) ‘Wh’ which is pronounced ‘F’; I am not the first person to suggest that this was an attempt by the slightly prudish Victoria settlers to avoid place names with rude words in them. Anyway, apparently Whanganui is the exception and is pronounced as it is spelt, but the river and the town are respectively spelt with and without the ‘h’. Confused? I am.

The traditional form of transport round these parts 100 years ago was by paddle steamer, with Wanganui being a busy port for produce brought down from the Waikato in the central North Island. Well a group of people have gone to the trouble of refitting one of the original ships (possibly taking the word refitting slightly too far; it sounds like only one or two of the bolts are original) and it now operates as a tourist boat. Possibly the holiday activity of a slightly older couple (hey, we were pretty tired), but we took a ride on the boat this afternoon. I actually quite enjoyed myself!

Next we’ll head up the Wanganui river and maybe do a spot of Kayaking then it’s off to meet up with Brendon, Zoe, Fay and Neil to do the Tongariro Crossing which should be pretty stunning if the weather is good.

Right now we are having some bargain corn on the cob and pondering spending tomorrow on the beach doing not very much!

Hope all is well with everyone - send us your news!!

Lots of Love, JT and Jo xxx

PS. We are currently planning the next stage of our adventure, having booked flights home via South America. We arrive in Santiago in April and fly out of Buenos Aires in June so if anyone has any tips for what we must see please let us know!!

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