Blogs from New Zealand, Oceania - page 2395

Leaving Queenstown with our new bus driver 'Grumpy Pete', we drove to Te Anau, a small town that until the proposed tunnel from Queenstown to Milford is built, is the gateway to the Sounds. We stayed in Te Anau Lakeview Holiday Park, which was pretty accurately named.. After checking in, we got back on the bus and headed for Milford Sound. Arriving in mid-afternoon, it was quite cloudy but we hoped the weather would hold. We went on the Real Journeys catermaran along the sound towards the Tasman sea. It was a beautiful place with many waterfalls cascading down from the mountains each side. Once we arrived at the mouth of the Sound, the heavens opened and it was soon too wet to stay up on deck. Luckily the tea and coffee was free so Lin ... read more

Hello all you intrepid readers of Benji and Abby's blog. Here is the latest installment from the travelers. First off an apology from Benji: There are no stories about the cute kids I let you all down:( Okay now where have we been let's see: Well we tried to leave Tauranga the last location that we updated the blog from, only to find that Benji had leftthe lights on and killed the tiny battery that was in our van. We expected this would happen sooner or later so we quickly hopped in a cab and made3 it to an auto parts store just before closing. We purchased the correct size battery for our van and headed across a bridge to a little town called Mt. Marangui (actually a suburb of Tauranga). This town turned out to ... read more

After our fantastic time in Melbourne, we then went to visit our friends James and Kristen with their son George in Dunedin. Max and George hit it off instantaneously - George played the role of Max's older brother, which Max enjoyed immensely. Max slept in George's bottom bunk in his room, which he thought was very cool. We imposed on them for an entire week in their lovely house with a view of the sea. Dunedin is a beautiful city, with houses perched on the hills overlooking the ocean. In Dunedin, we went to the Discovery Center, wandered around the downtown and George Street, and visited the botanical gardens and a farmer's market by the well-preserved railway station. One of the highlights of being based in Dunedin is the proximity to some pretty wild countryside. One ... read more

Nya Zeeland har en ganska stor vandringskultur. Bland annat finns ett antal vandringsleder som kallas Great Walks (vilket aven var paddling pa Whanganui var). Nu ska vi ut pa var forsta Great Walk och vi har valt Heaphy track som start. Vi anlander sent pa eftermiddagen till "Brown Hut" som markerar borjan pa vandringen och vid vilken vi planerar att spendera var forsta natt. Stugan ar redan ockuperad av 7 tjejer i 14-15-arsaldern och en av deras fader. Vi ar glada att vi spenderar natten utanfor stugan i vart talt. Dagen efter borjar vandringen och vi klattrar sakta uppat pa en mycket lattgangen promenadstig. Vaxtligheten och djurlivet ar naturligtvis helt annorlunda och under vandringen traskar vi genom regnskog, gar over hedar och langs palmkladda strander. Vi traffar weka, en ickeflygande, brun, lite honsliknande fagel som ar ... read more

Got up and had breakfast in our room. We dressed, walked to town and spent a few hours on the Internet catching up on personal items, updating the blog and uploading photos. It took a while as it has been so long since we were in a place where we could hook-up the laptop. When we finished at the Internet café we walked out to find that the temperature had cooled off considerably. I felt a little chilly in my shorts and t-shirt. As we walked down the main street in Invercargill I enjoyed seeing all of the Christmas decorations and window displays, as we didn’t have any of these in Te Anau. Generally the Kiwis don’t seem to decorate for holidays like Americans do. We stopped at Thai/Saigon restaurant for lunch. I ordered an item ... read more