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Bay of Islands: Soooo excited
Posted by Squiffy on March 19th, 2009
Well, I promised to write something nice today, so it’s lucky we have arrived in the Bay of Islands, a place for which I have genuine enthusiasm. The sun is out, I’ve just eaten a big ice cream and we have a week of water-based activities planned. First up tomorrow, which I’m very excited about, we are chartering our own yacht for two days. All around the world we’ve looked for yachts to hire, and, until now, have found nothing. Happily for us, the price is good and the weather forecast is even better. Although perhaps I shouldn’t get too excited, the boat is only 20ft in length so will be like a dinghy with a roof. Plus, I’ve just looked at the charts for the area and it looks like scary navigation — lots of rocks and shallow water to avoid. Eek.
If we survive that and haven’t spent all our money on boat repairs or sea rescue, then we are planning to dive on two wrecks (hopefully not the wreck of our yacht), and Dave will be doing his PADI Advanced diving course, to allow him to go to wreck depths. That is, assuming the predicted cyclone doesn’t hit before the weekend.
So, all’s good. Apart from the bank balance of course. Tally Ho chaps!
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Driving New Zealand: Roadworks and rain
Posted by Squiffy on March 18th, 2009
Just so you don’t think travelling is all great, I want to share with you our more dreary days. Driving through New Zealand can be a frustrating experience. Whilst we used to cover up to 750km a day on the open road in Australia, we’re lucky if we can do 200km a day here. Why? Firstly, many of the roads are twisty, hilly roads with one lane bridges and occasionally, and for no obvious reason, they turn to gravel tracks. The ‘fantastic scenery’ from these elevated roads should make up for these slow, windy drives, but unfortunately, the pouring rain we experience at least for an hour or two most days means that a heavy grey mist masquerades any chance of seeing wonderful views. And just to top it all off, NZ seems to be a nation of roadworks, where orange cones and 15 mph speed limits are found even more frequently than in the UK. Aggh.
Rant over, I promise to write something nice tomorrow.
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Waitomo Caves: Black Water Rafting amongst the Glow Worms
Posted by daveb on March 17th, 2009
Before we get to the caves, I’m going to collapse a few days journeying into one paragraph here. From Wellington, we travelled to the Martinborough wine region. I won’t write too much about it, because–in truth–it’s not that good and the cellar doors charged for tastings, which miffed us a bit (it wasn’t obvious that this was the case). We returned to Wellington to spend an afternoon at the Te Papa museum, which Claire likens to a miniature version of London’s Natural History Museum, with a focus on New Zealand, obviously. Highlight of the visit was the exhibit of a recently caught Colossal Squid, which was indeed big. Northwards, Squiffy hated me for opting to take the twisty, gravel road that follows the Wanganui River, instead of the straighter, faster highway which would take us to the same place much faster and without the travel sickness. Nevertheless, at least one of us enjoyed the drive!
Waitomo Caves are essentially famous for one thing: Black Water Rafting. Upon doing a little research, we discovered that the term “Black Water Rafting” was probably a New Zealandism, i.e. sexing-up the name of an activity to sell more tickets. In all probability, it should have been called “Underwater Lazy River, like at Wet n’ Wild with Glow Worms and it’s Really Cold Too”. Even with the more appropriate title, it still sounded like fun and so, after setting our expectations suitably low, we handed over our money and donned our classy caving gear: two thick wetsuits, a thermal fleece if your name is Squiffy, white wellies, rugged shorts, helmet, headlamp and rubber ring (the “raft”).
After performing a test waterfall jump in an open river, we set off towards our cave. The entrance was quite tight, which did little to ease Squiffy’s claustrophobia (remember what happened in Florence?) but once inside, the cave opened up a bit. The rest of the afternoon was spent sixty-five metres underground, jumping backwards off small waterfalls, floating along in our rafts, clambering across the terrain, gazing up at glow worms and, well, become increasing cold and wet. Very cold, in fact.
I’m glad that we lowered our expectations before the experience, as this allowed us to fully enjoy the day for what it was. We were really pleased that we did it, but probably equally pleased to have a hot shower afterwards!
(Apologies: we were not allowed to take our camera into the cave, so unfortunately can’t bring you any underworld photos on this occasion.)
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Wellington: Ahoy, civilisation!
Posted by daveb on March 16th, 2009
We left the south island in a bit of a hurry and a bit of a strop. On reflection, maybe we should have hung-in for a few more days in Picton to do a great wreck dive and get some yacht sailing in. Squiffy wouldn’t have typed that last sentence — she’s had it with the south!
Anyway, here we are in Wellington, the capital city of New Zealand. The rain has cleared up significantly, it’s a human-sized arts and culture city which takes its coffee seriously and there’s plenty of people around — in short, it’s glorious! Long gone is the wet wilderness with only sheep to talk to! It’s funny you know, almost everyone I’ve spoken to prefers the south island to the north, but right now we’re both feeling happier to have crossed the Cook Strait. Funnier still is the fact that I named this blog “Escape the City”, and escaping the city is what the south island is about in every way. Perhaps I should have named the site “Escape London City to a Slighter Smaller, but Still Vibrant City” dot com.
The small bummer is that the nearest campsite is a little way out of the centre, which is always the way with camping and cities. All the hostels in town are expensive or full and there’s nowhere to safely leave the car. But it doesn’t matter at all because we’re back in civilisation again: there’s traffic jams, queues at the checkouts and we can hardly see the stars at night for the light pollution — and we’re loving it!
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Picton: Rain stops play
Posted by daveb on March 13th, 2009
The world’s largest passenger ferry shipwreck is sunk just off the coast of the south island of New Zealand, near Picton. As a scuba dive, it sounds like a really cool dive. The local dive companies will even take people into the dining room/ballroom to see the drinks bar, screwed-down tables and the chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. As desperately bad luck would have it, we’re not going to get to see it on this trip as the weather’s too bad.
Rarely, there’s a yacht charter company in the area who hire out their boats for a single day at a quite reasonable price, so we thought that we might do that instead. Except the the winds over the next few days are forecast to change direction and speed from about 20 knots (force 5) to 35 knots (a near-gale force 7!) so we decided against that too.
In retrospect, I guess that we could’ve hung around for a few days for the weather to clear, but hacked-off with the persistent poor weather we’ve suffered in the south, we drove straight to the ferry terminal and booked a boat headed for the north island leaving within the hour.
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Blenheim: Too much water, drink wine
Posted by daveb on March 12th, 2009
Folk in Ballarat, Australia, use the phrase “save water, drink wine” rather a lot. Perhaps they should bung the south island of New Zealand a bunch of money to pipe them some of the rain that we’ve experienced whilst here. Problem solved. We’ve now in Blenheim in the Marlborough region, one of the finest wine producing regions in the New World. Except this year’s harvest will likely be a washout.
Our plan was to hire bikes and ride between the various cellar doors, supping their wares as we go. However, it’s raining again. Quite heavy too. So instead, as designated driver it was my job to drive Miss Daisy around the vineyards. Good job too: Marlborough’s predominantly a white wine region, and that’s really not my thing so I was quite happy to stay sober. Save for the poor visibility over the vineyards towards the mountains (which I imagine would have granted lovely views on a good day) and the wet dashes between the car and the cellars, we had a nice day chatting to the local producers and I took particular pleasure in observing Squiffy’s increasingly overcompensated sobriety-act. Squiffy by name, squiffy by nature!
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Hanmer Springs: Photos for photos sake (and cash of course)
Posted by Squiffy on March 11th, 2009
If you’ve been following this blog since we left home over nineteen months ago, you’ll probably have noted the many photos of us sat in thermal springs around the world. I love going to open air spas with a view, and taking a few photos to remind me of the location. And recently, I like to take a photo just because I can: fortunately for us, Dave bought me a water-proof camera before we left home, so I could capture our many in/on water experiences. I’m glad he did. It means we can beat the ever-present activity companies who try to sell us pictures of us doing anything and everything. New Zealand: It’s getting ridiculous! I will be the first to admit that I have bought photos of me falling out of a raft on the Zambezi, or microlighting over Victoria Falls. But I do not need a ludicrously priced, posed picture of me about to board the Christchurch cable-car, or sat in a hot pool. I can get these shots myself! I was amazed to find that even our helicopter on the glacier had a photo printer on board. Aside from the cost, it makes us angry because of the amount of paper and ink wasted. For every image captured, the activity company will print out an information pack, containing at least one large photo, two postcards and some details of your ‘experience’, rather than showing you your picture on a digital screen first and asking if you want it printed. There are so many companies doing this all day everyday that there most be some environmental impact. How many people actually buy them at a cost of between $20-40 (Americans and Japanese aside!)?
Please let me know if you have ‘official’ photos of you about to board a ferry, sitting on a beach, or doing some other fairly routine activity. I need to know who’s fuelling this obsession. Until then, New Zealand, as ‘the world’s greenest country’, you should be considering the uneco-friendly consequences of your profit fuelled actions.
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Reefton: The Miners’ Hut
Posted by daveb on March 10th, 2009
Still buzzing from our helicopter flight and glacier landing, we pointed our diminuitively-sized “microcamper” (read: small estate car) towards the thermal baths at Hanmer Springs. The water at Fox and Franz Josef is a curious, yellowish colour and so with the childhood phrase “don’t eat yellow snow” ringing in our minds, instead of filling our flask we agreed to stop for a coffee at lunchtime.
Us being us, we couldn’t just stop at an everyman cafe an sup our way through a foamy cappuccino though, could we? Oh no; Squiffy spotted a “quaint” place called The Miners’ Hut in Reefton and pulled over, citing this as being our coffee-break venue for the day. Without writing a complete chapter, it’s going to be quite difficult for me to describe the venue, nor the resident staff.
The old, decaying wooden miners’ hut sat to the side of the open-air corner lot, in which seating benches encircled a charcoal stove, which was keeping water in the handful of blackened pots hot. To one side, a bearded gold prospector, complete with battered leather hat, talked me through some of his most prized nuggets, panned from the nearby riverbeds. I couldn’t stop looking at how dirty his fingernails, beard, clothes, his all, were. His partner in grime, poured Squiffy and I a cup of coffee-sludge and insisted that we have a nibble on his home-cooked scones, which were cooked on the central stove — on a griddle, of which the chef was most proud.
We supped our coffee as one of the blokes read out the current gold price from the newspaper, whilst the older shared with us the possible fact that some people hang anvils off their body parts; “because they can”. Stranger still, it wasn’t absolutely clear how this place generated any income. Or whether income generation was even a goal. Rather, it almost seemed like a council-created space to home the now out of work gold prospectors of old to share their stories and quirky ways with the constant passing trade of tourists. (The gents later informed us that there was a coin donation box, should we feel that way inclined. But “no worries” if we don’t.)
Curious for the numbers, as always, I asked how many tourists came through their gates. “Only about twenty thousand”, said the beard sarcastically, “in the eight years we’ve been here.” With puffed lips, I nodded back in admiration for the big-digit thoroughfare that they had hosted. It was only after getting back into the car that I worked out that twenty thousand visitors over eight years worked out to less than seven a day!
Still, there’s one coffee break that I shall not forget in a hurry and I say “good luck and keep doing what you’re doing” to the entertaining bearded fellows running the joint.
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Fox & Franz Josef Glaciers: Snowball fight atop a mountain
Posted by daveb on March 9th, 2009
The rain followed us from Queenstown to Wanaka, where we spoilt ourselves with two nights in a well priced, rather nice ski lodge just out of town. Rather than get even more wet, we rejoiced in the shelter that four walls and a roof provide and caught-up with our blogs. Next stop, Glacier Country.
We set up camp at the Fox Glacier township, perhaps the home of Fox’s Glacier Mints, perhaps not (there aren’t any polar bears here). After night had fallen, we headed out for a forest walk to see the local glow worms. Along the way we picked-up three Japanese fellows would had quickly given-up any hope of navigating the forest with nothing more than the light from their mobile phone. For twenty minutes of my life, I wore the trousers and was indisputably the leader, as I had the torch! My torch, however, wasn’t all-that-and-a-bag-of-peanuts and so the one dim spotlight between five of us made for an interesting trek. Not as interesting as the single-file, hand-holding tour group of “more mature” folk who were navigating the forest trek in complete darkness. Averted their sensitive eyes from the end of my torch, they reasoned that after their eyes had adjusted to the darkness that they’d be able to see more glow worms. Passing them in the opposite direction, I wished them good luck in navigating the narrow foot bridge just ahead…! Of course, I was joking–there was no bridge–but my work was done as their confident strides had now turned into baby-steps.
The next day, we were rewarded which a glorious weather-slot in which to levitate in Da Vinci’s flying machine over the two local glaciers: Fox and Franz Josef. This country’s a bit mad: a few days ago I’m sure we were punting down a river, swimming with dolphins, standing on a deserted beach, cruising through fiords to sea, jetboating down a narrow canyon — now we’re stood atop a mountain, throwing snowballs at each other!
Following the good advice of some travel buddies that we met in Lake Tekapo who shared with us some secrets for getting the most out of a glacier helicopter flight, which I shall now share with you. Firstly, on the surface of it all four helicopter companies offer the same routes for the same price. All of them will discount from NZ$195 to NZ$180 without strenuous bartering. One company however, Glacier Helicopters, offers further discounts when pushed further. In fact, we were offered a ‘free upgrade’ to the next most expensive flight, a saving of NZ$150 for us as a couple — now we’re talking. Secondly, nice guys finish first: after establishing the nationalities of your fellow passengers, hand back and allow the others to board the chopper first — they’ll be ushered into the four rear seats, allowing you and your lady friend to be helped into the two front seats, with the best views right next to the pilot. You’re wondering why you need to ascertain the nationalities of the fellow guests? As our travel buddies said, some nationalities don’t follow polite British etiquette, meaning that all bets are off: in this case, position yourself first in line and create a diversion by pointing backwards and shouting, “was that a helicopter that just crash-landed?!” Immediately start run-walking towards the front seats.
Naturally, I’ve added “become a helicopter pilot” to my list of Things To Do Before I Die; not least because, I’ll never have to worry about getting the front seat ever again. Claire’s added “get the cute, apparently unmarried pilot’s telephone number” to her list…
Claire just wants to add – the helicopter flight was amazing, especially as we had the front seats, and after landing on the glacier and playing in the snow I had a big beaming smile on my face. The luge has been knocked into second spot on my list of top NZ experiences.
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Queenstown: Threatened to be a bit of a wash out
Posted by Squiffy on March 6th, 2009
Since leaving Dunedin, it’s been a few days since we’ve seen a place with much life. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Queesnstown was a buzzing alpine town, set between a lake and pine tree covered mountains. It had plenty of restaurants, shops and internet cafes to keep us entertained, and the only let down was the campsite, basically a car park, where we could reach out and touch the neighboroughing car.
Queenstown is heralded as New Zealand’s adrenalin capital. On offer are a range of aerial, waterbourne and land-based activities, the most famous being the first commercial bungy in the world (which Dave debated about for ages then didn’t do. Again). After undertaking a plethora of adventure sports in Africa, ranging from rafting to microlighting to paragliding, we didn’t feel the inclination to repeat any of the activities, and instead chose to ride the Shotover Jet, ‘the most exciting jet boat ride in the world’ (DaveB says: Watch the video on their homepage to see this amazing boat in action). The experience is a high speed jet boat ride through a narrow canyon, in which you come within half a metre of the canyon walls and engage in 360 degree spins. We got nicely wet and enjoyed the ride, which was fun but not scary. Whatever efforts the skipper made to get us wet, he could not compete with the weather. It rained for the entire 3 days that we spent in Queenstown, putting a dampener somewhat on our enjoyment of the adventure capital. Still, it gave us an excuse to browse the shops, surf the internet and have lunch out (well, more accurately, lunch in, by the fire). Desperately trying to find indoor activities in which to partake, we stumbled across the indoor mini-golf centre, a grand creation with 18 creative holes. My favourite was the ‘ski’ hole; after our first shot our balls were scooped up and carried up in a miniature chair-lift before being released at the top of a mini mountain to come rolling down. Yes, I’m easily entertained!
And thankfully, on our final day the wind eased up enough to allow the re-opening of the luge. I’m a big fan of any kind of device which allows me to rush down a mountain on by bum, and the luge did not disappoint. After taking the gondala (cable car) up to the observation deck, we donned a helmet and hopped on to the chair-lift, to be delivered to the start of the luge track. Our first ride of the day had to be on the beginners track, and we were asked to prove our competence before being given a ‘luge license’, essentially a black stamp on the back of our hand. Scenic track conquered, we advanced to the main track where we got up a decent speed and I smiled the whole way down. Considering I finished the experience with a nutella crepe from a stall next to the gondola, this was my favourite thing in NZ so far :o)
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