Let's get ready to party!

Drove to Napier today via Taupo.  Both nice towns but no photos yet.  Plan is to take myself to the local celebrations this evening.  Unfortunately, the only way to get there is to drive myself into town from the campsite.  So a sober New Years Eve for me - not sure what the drink/drive rules are here but I'm betting they're fairly stringent.

Wine tours are apparently like anything else - you need at least 4 people to book one.  So I've left my name & number with the tourist office and they will call me if another group turn up and book that I can tag along with.  Otherwise I'm on a DIY visit of the vineyards, but again, driving yourself kind of takes the fun out of it!

So.  Happy New Year to everyone - wishing you all a fun filled, healthy & prosperous 2011.

Whakapapaita

So what have I done today?  Well I was very pleased to wake up and find that although I could tell I had walked yesterday, I wasn't as sore or as stiff as you might expect after a 12 mile high altitude walk.  Unfortunately, I couldn't manage a full days walk as the first thing I needed to do was drive to the nearest town (50km) and find a working internet connection to make sure my campsite booking for New Years Eve had been confirmed, which, fortunately, it had so I could head straight back to the campsite at Whakapapa!

One of the walks I'd had recommended to me was a track called the Whakapapaiti Track (pronounced more like fock-a-pa-pa-ee-tee).  This was 4 - 5 hours one way, starting 3 miles up the road from my campsite and coming out  right next to it.  Mainly downhill, unless you decided to start from the campsite and finish at the road :-)

Transport was of course the problem.  I didn't fancy a 3 mile road walk or hitching a ride and the campsite were not prepared to drive me to the far end of the walk.  So I decided that I would just have to do an "out and back", walk up the track from the campsite and turn around when I'd had enough.  I set off at 1pm with the intent of being back by 6:30 latest.  In the event, I was back shortly after 5.  I'd managed 8.2 miles but my legs were very tired and although there was no significant climb in the walk, there were various sections of track where you had to climb up some very big steps and my muscles were just running out of oomph.

Still, it was another lovely walking day.  No disasters so no need to call out the search and rescue teams....  and some lovely views of Mt Ruapehu on the way out (see below photo) and Mt Ngauruhoe on the way back to keep you motivated.

Tomorrow I will leave the Tongariro National Park and head over to Napier and Hawke's Bay for New Year.  I'm hoping to find a wine tour that I can book on to before I head up to Rotorua and the Bay of Plenty.

Tongariro here we come!

Wednesday 29th December was my agreed day for the Tongariro Alpine Crossing - a 20km hike touted as the best one day walk in New Zealand.  And my luck (and the weather) had turned - we were back to the blue skies, light winds and few clouds that promised a perfect walking day.

I'd decided to walk with a guide (Terry, from Walking Places, one of the only guides I could find who was happy to guide a party of 1, albeit at a single person supplement!).  I really am very glad I decided to do this.  Not that the path was difficult to follow or that there was a danger of getting lost - the last 2 days of bad weather meant that I was walking along with 3 days worth of walkers so the path was actually ridiculously over-crowded, and whilst challenging in places there was no terrain that I couldn't have managed alone.

However, what quickly became obvious was that while everyone else was simply walking the path and looking at the views, Terry was explaining to me how the landscape came to be the way it was, which coloured lava flows came from which eruptions, which plants were native or imported.....  Several times I spotted other walkers surreptitiously trying to listen in to our conversation :-)

There was no mistaking the fact that we were walking through a volcanic area.  After an hour or so's journey, we'd already left all plant life behind and were walking over cold lava and pumice.  High school lessons eat your heart out, this was geography in action!

Much to my relief, Terry did not propose we climbed up the 30° shale approach to Mt Ngauruhoe.  Not that I couldn't have managed the way up....but his description of the descent was a rather unappealing "The best way is just to lean forwards and run.  You're down in 15 minutes."  Instead, we continued on and at South Crater received another indication that we were in volcano region - all the previous days rain had soaked into the rocks and was now being released again as steam!  Even Terry stopped for photos, and as he said, if the guide is taking photos then it must be more impressive than normal.


Our final ascent took us to Red Crater.  Can't think where it got it's name from....  At this point we were 1868m (6128ft) in altitude.  This is approximately half as high again as Ben Nevis and is quite possibly the highest altitude I have ever walked at.

From here, there is a path up to the summit of Mt Tongariro, climbing to 1961m in height.  Unfortunately, guides concessions don't allow them to guide up that track so I had no option to do it.  This is because Maori culture consider the peak of a mountain to be a sacred place and do not want to encourage unenlightened people to walk there.

So instead we continued on and descended to the Emerald Lakes for a lunch stop.  The descent was a steep shale path, but not the slate shale that I am more used to - this was volcanic ash/lava/pumice all ground down, the texture was more like coarse soil or sand.  The slow way down was to sidestep, but the best method was to face forwards and just dig your heel in on each step.  I'm happy to say that I managed most of the descent in that way so made very quick work of it.  Unfortunately, I couldn't get a shot of both the descent and the Emerald Lakes, but I think this photo gives the general idea (and that puff of white in the lower left of the frame is not cloud - it's steam!).  The descent is the pale scar you can just make out on the ridge to the right of Red Crater.  And it's steeper than this photo makes it appear!

After lunch, another benefit of a guided walk became apparent.  We continued walking at my pace, with photo stops whenever I wanted.  Everyone else had suddenly started to calculate how much time they had before their minibus left the car park, and we were continually overtaken by walkers who realised they had to rush to make it on time.  Having had to do that myself on the Abel Tasman track a few days earlier, I really appreciated the freedom of knowing the transport would be there on our timetable, not someone else's.

We dropped down to the Ketatahi Hut - this was actually the first proper back country hut I had been to, so Terry was happy enough to stop for a few minutes and explain the facilities you generally find in these huts.  I'm still disappointed I didn't get to walk the Routeburn Track and overnight in the huts, it's definitely on my list of things to do if I'm ever lucky enough to come back to New Zealand.

After Ketatahi Hut, another new experience.  The official path currently winds its way though the Ketatahi Hot Springs.  This is more Maori land and again, land that official guides do not have concession to walk through as the Maori feel they can't have sufficient understanding to explain the land with full reverence.  So, the Department of Conservation have been working on re-routing the track to avoid the Maori land.  Apparently, the announcement came out just before Christmas, that although not finished, the new track was marked well enough that guides with concessions for the rest of the Tongariro track could now officially guide the full crossing.  If I had started my holiday in the North Island, I'd have been walking this crossing before that announcement and therefore would not have been able to walk with a guide at all.

So, gaiters on, and off we went (to the confusion of everyone sitting outside the hut watching us).  We were genuinely off-piste, following the occasional bamboo cane with pink tape.  Every now and then we would come across a partially built piece of track, but then after a few hundred metres we'd be back to the tussocks and waist high grass again.  Here we have Terry on the end of a piece of new track, and if you look closely at the skyline on the second photo, you will see a small scar on the land just where the main body of cloud finishes.  That's the end of the engineered track - everything from there was a case of forge your own way through.

I know I'm not the first walker to be taken that route.  But I think I can probably claim to be "one of the first".  It's certainly something to walk a track that hasn't even been built yet!

The rest of the walk was uneventful, but Terry was also happy to recommend several different route options for me to tackle on the next day, depending how my legs felt.  And since he volunteers for the local mountain rescue and would probably have been the one sent to collect me had anything gone wrong....he had an exceptionally vested interest in giving good advice :-)

All in all, a fantastic days walk that more than made up for the previous not so good day!

Wellington

[In order to maintain the continuity of one blog per day with the occasional one to spare.....this one was written and should have been posted on 28th December, but circumstances intervened!]

Well....here's hoping today can be classed as the worst day of the holiday.  Not that anything truly bad happened in the grand scheme of things, it's just not been a great day.  For starters, the storms battering the entire length of New Zealand kept my van shaking and me awake until easily 4am.  [post edit....having found out what happened on the Pelorus Bridge campsite I'd been on the previous night, I am now quite happy that I was only kept awake by high winds!!]

The plan for the day was to head in to Wellington from my out-of-town campsite, take in a few museums and then head up to the Tongariro National Park ready for the Alpine Crossing walk the next day.  A quick check on googlemaps on the ferry had informed me that it would take about 2 hours to drive to my next campsite, so a full day in Wellington seemed reasonable.

I'd also read in a guidebook that "parking spaces are as easy to find in Wellington as bad coffee".  Now although that comment can be taken either way, I decided it was probably an indication that parking would be hard to find and that I should consider the 45 minute train journey instead.  So in the midst of pouring rain and driving winds, I set off to the train station.

Error.  No trains into or out of Wellington.  Lines are being dug up for maintenance work.  But it's ok - there's a replacement bus service running to the same timetable.  Just wait out front.  Where is the timetable?  In the ticket office which is closed until the New Year.

50 soggy minutes later...I was on a bus into town.  I had re-considered driving but since the trains were out, I thought the parking situation would be even worse than normal.  I'd also considered abandoning the whole trip, but what else do you do on a seriously rainy day?  By the time the bus got into town, the rain had actually let up a little, which was a relief.  However, it was already midday so I decided to limit my activities to two museums:  Te Papa is *the* museum for Maori history and culture, and at the other end of the scale the Weta Cave experience I had been advised was a must do for anyone into sci-fi films.  Weta are the company who made the props and did the digital imigiary for such films as the Lord of the Rings trilogy and Avatar.

The Te Papa experience was very interesting.  I would have liked to spend more time there.  However, the wet weather had driven pretty much everyone indoors and the place was filled with kids who were screaming because they were running around playing games, screaming because their parents had told them off for running around playing games, or just screaming because everyone else was screaming.  I lasted 90 minutes and couldn't take any more so hopped on the bus to the Weta Cave.

A piece of advice for anyone travelling to Wellington.  Skip the Weta Cave.  It's really not worth it!  After a 30 minute bus journey out, the Weta Cave turned out to be a tiny shop selling memorabilia from the films, and a cinema where you saw a 15 minute promotional DVD talking about all the things they do at Weta (for info, they make props and do the makeup for things like orcs, and they do the digital work).  Then guess what - another wait for a bus, bus ride into town and get to the station for the replacement bus service as the trains aren't running.

6pm back at the car, I switch on TomTom and program in my next destination.  Shock horror - 4.5 hours driving, says TomTom.  That's a 10:30 arrival!!  That's not good, but given I was being collected at 8:30 the next morning, there was not a lot of choice, so off I drove.

The drive itself was uneventful.  Except for the one time my concentration slipped and I got pulled over by a cop who explained that I was driving too quickly and would need to pay a fine.  My mind had automatically slipped into UK driving speeds which are somewhat faster than New Zealand ones.  And up until now, I have actually managed to stick to all the New Zealand limits.  But in perspective, it could have been a lot worse and it is a justified fine - I was driving over the speed limit!

Finally reached the campsite around 10:30 (the last 6km of road were marked as "drive carefully - Kiwis crossing").  You can be sure I drove *very* carefully - all I needed to finish off the day was to accidentally hit and kill an already nearly extinct species of native bird!

Aaahhhh, I feel better for that rant.  Only problem is that I can't post the blog, as the WiFi on the campsite appears to be broken....

The Sound of Silence!

Apologies for the last few days with no posts - I've been in campsites where the WiFi has been broken so have been unable to connect.

This is just a quick post to say that I am still alive and kicking - walked the Tongariro Alpine Crossing yesterday in glorious weather - will post photos when I have more time.  Hopefully the campsite I'm at tomorrow night will have working wifi so I will start to catch up on my blogs then.

Only a week to go in this fab place :-(

Pelorus

I had decided to leave the Abel Tasman Park immediately after my walk on Boxing Day and head over towards Picton ready to take the ferry to the North Island on Monday.  The campsite I stopped at was a Department of Conservation (DOC) official campsite at a place called Pelorus Bridge.

In complete contrast to the Motueka campsite, this one was very basic, but in having "a" hot shower and kitchen facilities it was one of the better equipped DOC campsites.  After an early night and almost 12 hours sleep, I decided to spend some time this morning walking to see the Pelorus Bridge itself.  I'm still not sure what Pelorus is - I wondered if it was actually a corruption of Perilous.  But when I got to the bridge, it looked sturdy enough!

In fact, this bridge claimed it could take up to 10 people at once, and was decidedly less swingy to walk over then the bridge on the Abel Tasman track!

Having satisfied my curiosity, I continued on to the ferry terminal, taking the pretty Queen Charlotte drive that wound its' way along the coast.  Queen Charlotte Sound is very pretty - not as stunning as Milford or Doubtful, mainly because the land slopes as it rises from the sea.  But still one of those places you wish you had more time to stop and see.

As you can see from the photos, the glorious sunny weather of Christmas and Boxing day has departed and we are now back in the atmospheric murky drizzle.  So all thanks to Santa for his wonderful Christmas weather - two absolutely perfect days !

I'm now sat on the ferry to the North Island.  Having already payed for lounge access (free food, free bar, free wifi, no kids....ok, not free because I had to pay to get in, but you know what I mean) I am making the most of the food and allowing myself one glass of wine as it's 4 hours before I have to drive again.  And of course I am using the free wifi :-)

When I get to Wellington, I will be driving to a nearby campsite and then doing boring things like laundry and grocery shopping.  Tomorrow is free to look around Wellington, and weather permitting I will be doing the ten hour Tongariro Alpine Crossing walk on Wednesday or Thursday.

Roll on the North Island!

Boxing Day

Even if Calsberg did coastal paths, I don't think they could make one better than the Abel Tasman path.

The morning started with a blaze of sunshine turning the van into an oven by about 7am.  But that didn't matter as I needed to be up and about anyway.  After a short minibus ride to Kaiteriteri it was then time to get on the water shuttle and head up the coast to the start of my walk.  My plan was to walk about 10 miles of the coastal track, from Tonga Bay to Anchorage.  Unfortunately, due to a small mix-up in the time of my water shuttle, and the boat I was eventually on landing late....I was left with only 5 hours to do the walk.

Now you'd think 10 miles in 5 hours would be easy - that's only 2 mile an hour, after all.  And coastal paths are flat, right?  I mean, they just follow the coast.  Well - I have two answers to that.  Firstly, this coastal path was anything but flat - you'd climb up to a height, get some glorious views, and then drop right back down again to a perfect sandy beach with lapping waves.....    And therein lies the second answer:  I kept stopping to take photos and drink in the views.  No, I didn't paddle or swim, but I did have to walk fast to make up for all the time I spent stopped.

And just to prove I'm not making this up, here is a very small selection of the fabulous beaches, paths and coastlines I was walking.  If you're not jealous.....you really should be!

The beauty of this coastal walk is that every time you go around a corner, you see something different and something new.  Whether it's a waterfall, a glimpse of the sea, a stunning specimen of tree or fern....  I had been walking along thinking that my normal walking partners (dad, or the rest of the band) would absolutely love this walk.  Then the next corner revealed something new.

Now correct me if I'm wrong, Lynn, but I have a suspicion you'd have trouble crossing a long, high, swing bridge marked "Max 5 people at any time"?  And for the avoidance of doubt, the centre of the bridge was very swingy indeed!

After a few hours forced march, I had caught up on time enough to take one of the advertised side trips up to see Cleopatra's Pool.  I was imagining milky white water with a still, glassy surface, but thought in any case it would be worth a visit.  And it was.

For one thing, as I was walking up the track I saw either a cormorant or a shag (Dad will have to confirm which it is - the guides here seem to use both names interchangeably) sunning itself in the middle of the river.  He wasn't there for long so I was lucky to see him.

Cleopatra's pool when I got there, was actually a natural pool in the stream - Kim would have been swimming in a trice, it looked very inviting.  But definitely not milky white, so I'm not quite sure why it's called Cleopatra's pool.

One last photo - although I took about 60 in total so it has been very difficult to narrow down which ones to post....   This is the very definition of a coastal path.  The blue / green colour you can see on the left of the frame behind the trees.....that's the sea.  In sections, this path literally walks you along the edge of the land with a near vertical drop into the Tasman Sea.  Absolutely spectacular!

Happy Christmas!

Nothing exciting to report today - beautiful, sunny weather.  A bit of a chill on the breeze, but nothing to complain about.  A perfect relaxing day after yesterday's driving marathon.

Plans are looking good for the North Island - currently expect to have a day in Wellington, two days are set aside to get the best weather for the Tongariro Alpine Crossing (and a guide has been found so I will have someone else to take care of transport and tell me what I'm looking at :-)).  That leaves me heading to Hawke Bay / Napier wine region nicely for New Year, a detox in Rotorua and a few days in Auckland before I head home.

All I need now is for the snow to get so bad in the northern hemisphere that the planes refuse to fly and I get a few days / weeks free in Sydney or Bangkok on the way home.....

Made it!

Today was 100% driving, so no photos or stories, I'm afraid.  I left Wanaka at 8:00 this morning, and after many many lots stops for coffee, food and short strolls in more pouring rain, I've arrived in Motueka, on the edge of the Abel Tasman National Park.

It's not the worlds nicest campsite - I believe the term is "family friendly", so it's fairly sprawling and garish.  But it has a few advantages which made me decide to stay.  Firstly, it's walking distance from the beach, so tomorrow I can leave the van parked up and try and remember how to use my legs for long enough to go sit on some sand.  Secondly, it has a variety of services including transport to and from a section of the Abel Tasman Coastal Track.  So Boxing Day will see me getting a water taxi up the coast, walking a 14km stretch back again and picking up another water taxi back to the campsite.

After that, I'm sad to say, it will be time to say goodbye to the South Island, and switch myself to the North.  I'm currently hunting out guided walks for the Tongariro Alpine Crossing.  I'm sure someone somewhere must be going up between 28th December and 6th Jan.....  Fingers crossed that I manage to find them!

Hope you all have a warm and toasty Christmas (or at least that nobody's central heating breaks down at just the wrong time)!

Milford Sound

Another experience that won't be forgotten in a hurry - an overnight cruise on Milford Sound including kayaking in the pouring rain.

Wednesday dawned as wet and windy as forecast, and having run around and cancelled all my early morning coach rides to the start of the Routeburn Track (very good decision!), the lovely people at Real Journeys moved my Milford Sound cruise forward a few days. So midday saw me getting on a coach with my bags packed, ready to spend my first night away from my little spaceship.

The journey down the Milford Road is considered to be part and parcel of your Milford Sound experience.  The entire length of the track is dotted with viewpoints, small offshoots of track, and the occasional service area with toilets and an information board or two.  Our coach driver kept us entertained with stories - well, I say kept us entertained.  Most people on the bus (our party had a whole 11 people in it) were asleep by the time we were 30 minutes out of Te Anau.  He decided to fix that by making us all get out and spend 15 minutes walking a track through the rainforest to see a particularly spectacular waterfall called "The Chasm".  I couldn't get any decent photos of the waterfall itself, but I did get a nice one of the rain forest walk.

For some reason, I had always believed that rain forests were warm places.  I was roundly disabused of that notion on this walk as it was anything but hot & humid.  Apparently, this is what's called a temperate rain forest.  You get all the moss & plants and moisture, but not the temperature to go with it.



Having made it to Milford we had a short wait before boarding our boat - the Milford Wanderer.  By this time several other self drive groups had joined us so there were about 40 people on the cruise in total.  I was suddenly very nervous when I saw the boat had masts and sails as no-one had said anything about sailing.....but I was later told the sails are purely ornamental and that whilst they could be raised, you couldn't actually sail the boat with them!

We set off in the middle of thunder, lightening and torrential rain, verging on hailstones.  Forget calm water & mirrored reflections of Mitre Peak.  This was choppy, foggy Milford Sound in what we could politely term its' "atmospheric best".  The crew were certainly at pains to point out that the waterfalls were most spectacular in these weather conditions.  Besides which, it's only water, it won't hurt you!  Just occasionally, the cloud would clear and you would glimpse a view, then a few minutes later it would all close back in again.

One of the activities advertised on this particular trip was kayaking.  Suggested alternatives were a trip in the speedboat, or a swim in the Sound itself.  There was a certain amount of "you must be joking" from the group when they said it was time to go, but one hardy aussie did dive in to the water for all of 3 minutes before getting out and shivering.  I decided that since this was my only opportunity to kayak then I would just get in and get wet.  I am so glad I did as despite the rain and the cold it was fantastic.

I didn't get to take any photos as we were advised to leave cameras behind in the dry.  And admittedly we didn't get to see any wildlife as they were also presumably sheltering from the weather.  But after a 10 minute trip with a guide to make sure we could all just about handle our kayaks, we were allowed to stray within the confines of the large bay where the boat was moored.  And it's a completely different Sound once you're on your own with no engine running.



After dinner we had a rather unexpected activity - a trip right out into the Tasman Sea.  Ordinarily, we would have stayed within the relatively calm and sheltered confines of the Sound.  However, a mayday call being received from a small fishing vessel with engine troubles, reportedly close to the entrance to Milford Sound, all nearby vessels (i.e. us) were scrambled to the rescue.  Just as we reached the sea, a helicopter also arrived to help search for the vessel, and we spent a very tense 30 minutes scanning the horizon, trying to tell the difference between a boat in trouble and one that was similarly part of the rescue effort.  The huge swell on the ocean made scanning the horizon somewhat challenging but the experience of crashing through the waves certainly got the adrenalin racing.  Eventually, our search was called off as the boat was located some 200km further up the coast.  From reading the news reports, the crew were rescued in the early hours of this morning but spent the night stranded on rocks near the coast having had to abandon ship and had sleeping bags dropped to them from the chopper.

I'm sure I read somewhere that sunrise was the absolute best time to experience Milford Sound, so for some insane reason I got up at 5:30am to check for myself.  If you ever go out on this cruise......stay in bed!!  Admittedly there was so much cloud cover that you really didn't see sunrise.  But even so, the Sound in the early morning light is really no different to the Sound in the evening.  Except possibly colder.

Our boat took another turn around the Sound in the morning and we did see more wildlife this time - mainly fur seals and some sea birds.  Then, wet through and thoroughly cold and tired, we piled back on the coach to Te Anau.  My stated goal at that point was to get in my car and drive north until I found the sun!



Well, the sun came out around Queenstown.  I kept going until I reached Wanaka and have stopped here for the evening.  The combination of Christmas approaching and the usual "no trips for 1 person" mean that I won't be here for long - I think I will get an early night tonight, and tomorrow I will keep going up the west coast and do my best to reach the Abel Tasman National Park by Christmas Day.  Fingers crossed that by then, not only will the sun still be out, but the very strong, very cold winds will also have dropped.

Yikes - long blog!  Congratulations on reading right to the end :-)

New Plans....

The lovely people at Real Journeys are happy to let me switch my Milford Sound trip to the one leaving today.  So I've lost some money on cancelling the Routeburn track (although looking at the tops today, I can't find it in me to be sorry), but in actual fact I will gain a few days.

The new plan is to go down to Milford Sound this afternoon and do the overnight cruise, then I can spend a few more days making my way up the west coast rather than bombing it up like an insane person on Boxing Day.  So sad that I won't be waking up afloat on Christmas morning, but excited about my new options which are now Christmas in Wanaka.....Christmas at Arthur's Pass.....  Christmas on the beach in the Abel Tasman park.....   Hmmmm.  Christmas on the beach sounds good ;-)

Sandcastles anyone?

Wet, wet, wet!

Not that I'm expecting sympathy from anyone in the UK if I complain about the weather right now.....but today was definitely the wettest day so far in my trip.  And the windiest.  Plus, we do have snow here, too - look!

The good thing is that I'd already booked a trip to Doubtful Sound - if you're going to have a rainy day, may as well spend it in on a coach and a boat, right?  But even so, the best views were to be got from the outside sections on the boat, so I still managed to get myself drenched to the skin.  Still, it was worth it in order to see water being blown back *up* the waterfall.  And there were waterfalls aplenty, given the amount of rain.

The way our guide explained it, this part of the world is basically made up of solid granite plates that have been pushed straight up with the earth's movements.  So steep cliffs and no way for the water to soak into the earth + lots and lots of rain = spectacular waterfalls.

Admittedly, the novelty wore off after a bit, and the coach ride back was full of people with an attitude of "Oh look, another waterfall.  Meh."  But it was still a good day.

Now tomorrow is the start of my Routeburn Track experience.  Supposedly one of the most glorious great walks in  New Zealand for views.   However, given the current weather forecasts, (90kmph winds and serious rain), I have just cancelled.  I'm gutted, as it is the only chance I will get to do the walk, but I just couldn't face it on my own in those weather conditions.

So tomorrow will start off with me trying to think of something else to do for a few days, and rearranging the pickup point for my Milford Sound cruise as I will no longer be walking part way down the track :-(

Lobo

Several people have asked about my trusty campervan, so I took some photos whilst in the most scenic campsite so far (a basic DOC site in the Catlins).  The van is bizarrely named Lobo and as you can see, is painted so as to provide camouflage in precisely no situations.  Except possibly hiding in front of an Easyjet plane.  Or a Sunderland City Council website!

In size, it is simply a large car - if it hadn't been modified, there would probably be two rows of seats in the rear section, providing seating for maybe 5 adults, and some boot space.

As it is, one set of seats have been removed and replaced with storage boxes that make the bas of 2/3 of the bed.  The other 1/3 of bed can either be made up inside the van so as to sleep with all doors closed but no space left inside, or outside the van if the boot is left open.


The van does come with an awning that would hang from the boot and hooks under the van body, but I've not set that up yet.  Firstly, it's too heavy and complicated to manage on my own, and secondly the nights are still quite cold so I have opted for the warmth & security of the inside sleeping option.

 The van comes equipped with a small fridge that runs off the second battery (so I can only chill things for about 7 hours!) and a little shelf arrangement you can use for setting up the stove.  I also have some camping chairs and a table to set up for a luxury dining option!

Catlins

So much for trying to spend a few days in the wilderness!  One night and two daytimes was all I could manage.  To be fair, though, that was primarily because I missed being in the mountains.  I think I'm definitely more of a mountains girl than a coastal one, which is strange given where I live in the UK ;-)

The Catlins are very pretty - a mainly forested area along the southern tip of the south island. There were plenty of places of interest listed in all the guide books, so I was hoping to get some good coastal walks in along the top of rugged cliffs and crashing waves.  Well the cliffs and waves were there, but the coastal paths aren't.  All the walks I could find were of the "20 minutes to this viewpoint and back" variety.  I picked the nicest sounding one - Nugget Point,

a random one off a signpost - Jack's Blowhole,

and the southern-most point of the mainland - Slope Point.

Then I declared the Catlins as done and hotfooted it to Invercargill for lunch in the most southern Starbucks in the world.  Now how many people can say they've eaten there??

This afternoon I drove back up to the mountains and have booked myself in to a campsite at Te Anau.  With one evening and one daytime to fill before I start my Routeburn Track experience, I went in to the Real Journeys booking office.  This is the company I am doing the Milford Sound cruise with, so I thought I'd see what else they had to offer.

Result:  Tonight I am going to the Te Anau glow-worms caves, tomorrow I am on a cruise to Doubtful Sound which is much more remote and 3x the size of Milford Sound.  And I got a nice discount through booking several activities with them.  I nearly asked if they wanted to sponsor our band for a trip out..."Real Journeys cruises with Real to Reel Ceilidh Band".  Hmmmm. What do you think?

Dunedin

Well for a day with a slow start, today turned out pretty well!  I'm still in Dunedin.  The plan for today was to spend the morning and early afternoon looking around the city, then the rest of the day was to be spent on a wildlife tour on the Otago Peninsula.

Dunedin city centre is, to be honest, nothing special.  It's nice enough, don't get me wrong, but there was nothing really that I wanted to take photos of.  Maybe I didn't visit the right spots, who knows.  But for a city that is billed as New Zealand's answer to Edinburgh....  I spotted a statue of Robert Burns and one scottish shop, and spent the last hour before my tour sitting on the grass watching the world go by as I was fed up of walking around.

The wildlife tour was fantastic.  I'd been driving and walking around the area thinking that except for the scale of the landscape and the presence of various spiky plants / palm trees / ferns, I could be in North Wales.  Rolling hills, grasslands, sheep, cloud & rain.....  Apparently I'm not far wrong, as among other things, the grass in this part of the world was actually imported from Wales.

The Otago peninsula is home to a breeding colony for the Royal Albatross, so the first stop on our tour (pausing briefly on the way to see some Pied Oystercatchers, Paradise Shelducks and Black Swans) was the viewing ground for the albatross.  There was enough wind that some of the birds were out gliding.  You'd think they were just big seagulls until you saw them next to a gull, at which point you realise they are not just big, they are giant - up to 3.3 metres in wingspan and living up to 60 - 70 years.

From there, we went on to see (and get very close to) New Zealand fur seals, yellow eyed penguins, a huge sealion.  oh, and lots of sheep.

I'm going to head slightly south from here tomorrow and spend a couple of days in the Catlins - a coastal area renowned for rugged coastlines and wildlife.  This will take me more off the beaten track than I have been so far - inasmuch as I'm not expecting to find much (any) wireless internet connectivity.  That said, this blog is going to be late going up as the Dunedin campsite wifi is playing up again.  But all being well, and assuming I don't start suffering internet withdrawal symptoms or weather fronts that force me to change my plans....I'll be posting again on Tuesday from Te Anau.

Sorted!

No photos today as it's been a quiet day all round.  Quiet, but successful.  In Queenstown this morning, I managed to book all the activities I want to do next week.  So the plan is as follows:

Tuesday night: Camp in Te Anau.
Wednesday: Coach to Queenstown and start walking the Routeburn Track.
Friday: Finish the Routeburn Track, coach the rest of the way to Milford Sound and then get on an overnight cruise including kayaking on the Sound itself.
Saturday: Wake to see the sun rise over Milford Sound, finish the cruise and coach back up to Te Anau.

Can you ask for a better Christmas Day than that?

Having booked all that stuff, I then hot footed it over to Dunedin and will make my way back to Te Anau over the next few days, probably via the Catlins.

The bad news is that the weather has gone pants - low cloud, rain, the wind has dropped but it was blowing a gale before.  Hope this doesn't last long!!

Nature day

The problem I am finding with locating a guided walk to go on.....is that no-one does walks for 1 person. And there don't seem to be any open group walks that I can just tag along with.  So on to plan B.  The very helpful lady in the information site in Twizel provided me with a selection of well marked walking tracks that she was adamant would be safe for me to walk alone but also interesting & challenging.  She wasn't wrong :-)

I decided to walk up a track called Freehold Creek (the track ran up the side of the creek and occasionally crossed over it).  I started off full of enthusiasm and energy - finally, I was going to get to a top of some description on my own two feet.  Several hours later, I was humbled.  I had climbed solidly & steeply for 3 hours.  I was out of the forest and well into the bush.  But I could see that reaching any kind of top was just not going to be possible on a 1 day walk - the scenery is just too big!!

That's not to say it wasn't an absolutely stunning walk in it's own right.  The first few hours of track were through a beech forest, home to some allegedly rare (although there was no shortage of it around) mistletoe.  The creek was babbling away to the side, and when I got out over the bushline, I discovered that some thoughtful person had left refreshment for any thirsty walkers.

I carried on climbing for another 45 minutes or so until I reached a nice plateau with some stunning views, then turned round and got home in a depressingly (or reassuringly) shorter amount of time than it had taken me to walk up.

There was plenty of nature about today.  Now I'm not a bird person in general, but I can at least recognise the call of a lark when it is singing.  And when a small bird landed on a branch literally in front of my eyes, I knew enough to know that I hadn't seen one of these birds before.  I didn't have time to get the camera lined up for a shot, but memory and google suggest that what I saw was a Piwakawaka (and once you have googled this to get the picture, you will understand why I remember the bird so distinctly).

Finally, on the way back I heard this bird call repeated over and over and over.  I could never see the culprit, and google is not offering much help.  Does anyone know what bird this is?  I just hope it's not something I ought to know....

I'm now in Queenstown - not stopping for long but want to get some things booked up a few days in advance.  Still deciding what to do over the weekend - I have a hankering for a wine tour as the Pinot Noir region is right here.  Or I could head over to Invercargill or the Caitlins.  Time to do some reading up, methinks, before making the decision :-)

Stars & Mountains

Last night I went up to the Mt John Observatory and experienced one of their tours - amazing!  I have now learned the main southern hemisphere constellations (I had already spotted an upside down Orion's belt....) but we also got to look through several very powerful telescopes and zoom in on the moon, stars, clusters, nebulae....    We were shown how to see the cloud that is our own galaxy, how to spot other galaxies and we even got a complementary drink of hot chocolate.  And just to prove it....here is a photo taken on my very own camera (admittedly, I did not do anything other than hand my camera to the expert).  If you look at this photo in a darkened room so you can actually see the stars, you may recognise Alpha Centauri, Beta Centauri and the Southern Cross.

I went back to the observatory in daylight today as they have a telescope set up to allow you to look at the sun.  No photos, but exceedingly stunning to see all the flares pulsing away from the surface of the sun!

After that, it was time for a helicopter ride.  I felt a small amount of guilt at tagging myself on to a couple who had already made a booking, but as a single traveller there was no other way of getting on a trip.  Guilt receded when the other couple were late for their own booking, and vanished altogether when the pilot decided that I should sit up front with him for the first half of the trip.

Wow.

Flying in a helicopter was not scary in the slightest.  Noisy, I'll grant you.  But it barely felt like we were moving, although the instrumentation said we were doing 110 knots....   And the views!  Wow.  I have many many lots photos, most of which didn't come out at all and a host of video footage that I haven't watched yet.  But here is me standing at about 7000ft height, with Mt Cook and Mt Tasman in the background, and that dirty grey thing in the base of the valley is the Tasman Glacier.

And just to make you jealous, I finally got the blue to stand out properly.  This is looking over Lake Pukaki, with Mt Cook majestic in the distance.

Going to head to Queenstown tomorrow to book lots of fun things for next week, then will see what beckons for the weekend.  Possibly Invercargill / Caitlins / Stewart Island?  Who knows!  The world might not be my oyster, but the southern part of NZ certainly is :-)

Toto, I've a feeling I'm not in Christchurch any more....

Just a few more photos - my camera is unfortunately not doing justice to the scenery.  This was the view that made me (and every other driver on the road) pull over between Fairlie and Lake Tekapo - first glimpse of snow-capped mountains in the distance, and clouds rapidly receding.

Half an hour later and this was the view over Lake Tekapo.  Again, my camera is not doing justice to just how blue this lake is.  There are no words for the blueness of the blue.

No luck finding guided walks from here, so am doing a 2 hour sky tour tonight from the observatory, learning about the stars in the southern hemisphere.  And am booked on a helicopter flight around Mt Cook tomorrow.  We actually touch down and get to walk on one of the glaciers - I'm really very excited as I've always wanted a ride in a helicopter.

After that I will drive to Twizel and/or Mt Cook in search of guided walks!

Free wifi

I wasn't planning on posting a blog until this evening, but on the basis of never missing an opportunity to use free wifi......

I stayed in Christchurch again last night.  Met up with Pen & Alex Holland for dinner (Pen is the daughter of one of the band's callers) - after a few days of not really talking to anyone, it was nice to sit and have a good chat.  They also had a ton of advice to offer about touring and living in New Zealand as they have been here for two years now.

I'm currently mid-drive to Lake Tekapo - supposedly the best place to view the night sky (except that it is exceedingly cloudy today so not sure there will be a lot to see).  With luck I will manage to find a guided walking tour leaving in the next few days to introduce me to tramping in New Zealand.  If that doesn't come off then I will start looking at flights around Mount Cook / glacier landings / other exciting stuff.

The drive out of Christchurch was as tedious as Pen & Alex promised.  The Canterbury Plains are just flat and boring with a long straight road.  I did chuckle though at the signs at the side of the road.  In amongst all the "Fresh Strawberries", "Fresh Asparagus" and "Fresh eggs" offerings, was a "Horse Poo - 50c a bag".  Presumably this was also fresh, although to be fair that was not explicitly stated ;-)

Christchurch

Today's been my first full day in NZ and was always scheduled to be a city day.  Those of you who know me well, will be amazed to hear that I was the first campervan on the campsite to be up and about this morning.  In fact, I was showered, dressed, breakfasted and walking into the town centre by 9am!  It seems jet lag is good for something, after all :-)

It was easy to feel right at home in Christchurch city centre.  For starters, there was a scottish bagpiper playing outside the cathedral - the only tune he played that wasn't in our band set-list was Amazing Grace.  Then there was a scottish street-theatre act trying (relatively unsuccessfully) to draw the crowd in to interact with his show, and the very british-style town crier in full dress ringing his bell and starting his announcements with "Oyez, oyez, oyez."  Finally, there was a Starbucks on nearly every street corner.  Well of course I went in and had a latte - I think my own personal challenge may be to drink in as many different Starbucks's as possible :-)

Slightly more difficult to adjust to are the christmas decorations.  For some reason, a fully decorated christmas tree and models of santa and his sleigh look incongruous when surrounded by people in shorts and t-shirts!

This afternoon I decided to venture further afield but still in the tourist safety-zone, so I took the gondola ride up to Mount Cavendish and had a gentle stroll along some of the paths.  Visibility not great today as the cloud base is quite low.  But I took some photos anyway....this is looking out over Lyttleton harbour with the Banks peninsula rising to the left and the pacific ocean just in the gap on the horizon.

Now I need to decide where I'm going to aim for tomorrow.  Definitely time to leave Christchurch and I know I'm heading south.Time to start researching distances and campsites, I think!

TTFN.

Jet lag!!!

Just a short post right now to say that I have made it all the way to Christchurch.  On my final flight in I finally managed to get a window seat.  The final 30 minutes of the flight convinced me that this was absolutely the right holiday choice to make.

Flying in over the southern alps - I've never seen mountains like them.  Breath taking, awe-inspiring....the colours, the size of the peaks....  I had all my maps out trying to identify what everything was so I could go back and see it at ground level.

Fortunately, I managed a supermarket shop and all my unpacking / settling in to the van at the first night's campsite before jet lag forced me to shut my eyes.

Unfortunately, it's now 10:30pm and I am if not wide awake, well certainly not tired enough for a full night's sleep.  And I can't surf t'interweb for hours planning things to do as my travel adaptor is too big for the socket in the van so I can't plug my laptop in :-(

Still, I've never been one to have a problem sleeping for a long time so I'm sure it will all work out.  Will start sighteeing and taking photos tomorrow......

Day ?? - Sydney!

I have no idea what time of day it is.  Or even what day it is!  But I have made it to Sydney and have 90 minutes left until my final flight.  Strangely, you can't tell you're actually walking around upside down...

Sydney airport looks nice as airports go - I'll have a good wander about in a minute once my 15 minutes of WiFi run out.  Bangkok looked like it might have been nice too, but they only parked up the plane for an hour.  And given that they start boarding 45 minutes before the flight.....that gave about 15 minutes to exit the gate at the arrivals level and make your way up to the boarding level for the exact same gate.  Am sure it made sense to someone!!

Oh, and I've no idea what the temperature is right now either.  But the skies are blue, the sun is shining, and when we landed at about 6:15am it was already 18C :-D

Day 0 - Newcastle Airport

Aaand she's off!!  The first "proper" holiday blog is brought to you over Wifi from Newcastle Airport.  The rest of them might not be so frequent, or so long....don't worry :-)

It's been a fun final week in the UK - unusually cold weather, snow and ice has cause havoc with flights and had me convinced that my journey would start with delays and disaster.  Fortunately, the last few days have been much warmer so although my plane is currently showing as delayed, it's only a "normal" delay of 20 minutes rather than the hours it would have been had I flown this time last week.

I thought I had everything timed, planned and under control until two things happened presumably as a result of the extra cold weather....

Firstly my boiler started leaking - the engineer who came out this morning to fix it tells me it was because the pipe outside froze and stopped the boiler from draining.  So today suddenly had to include a swift trip to B&Q to buy pipe insulation in an attempt to stop the same thing from happening again.

Secondly, I suddenly realised that my monthly contact lenses had not yet appeared in the post and I had been relying on that delivery to see me safely around New Zealand.  Several frantic phone calls with the opticians later....and the lovely people in D&A had managed to find some spare lenses that I could pick up and take with me.

So many thanks to Lynn who dropped everything that she had planned for this afternoon in order to drive me to the airport via the city centre and make sure that I arrived in plenty of time for my flight.  And thanks also to Tracey, Simon, Lynn & Andy who are house-sitting, valuable item-sitting or otherwise being on call in case of more emergencies while I'm away.

50 minutes to kill until my first flight.  I'll finish this blog here, and hopefully the next post will come from somewhere more exotic than Newcastle Airport!