The end of the Rainbow

Sadly, our time in New Zealand is drawing to a close. It's been a fantastic holiday and we have already begun planning the kinds of things we'd like to do when we come back (a guided Milford Sound walk, a full day caving in Waitamo, an overnight cruise in Doubtful sound to name but a few!). It's hard to describe how relaxing and beautiful the whole holiday here has been and I am so glad that we decided to skip Cambodia and Laos to have an extra couple of weeks here!

At the end of the last blog entry, we were in Dunedin, and had just spent the night in the Kiwi's Nest, a hostel which is up there on our list of 'worst hostels in the Antipodes'. We decided to spend a second day there to check out the Otago museum, as I wanted to see just how big a Japanese spider crab really is (they have one as an exhibit)! I had read about it when I was about 8 in the 'Childcraft' or 'Mindcraft' - can't remember which - books that we had, where it mentioned that it had the body the size of a basketball, and it's front pincers were up to 2 metres long. The one they had probably wasn't quite that big, but it was big enough not to disappoint! Whew, I wouldn't want to come across one while diving, I can tell you! Although, I'd probably have more luck seeing one then bloody stone fish - a species which I still doubt actually exists.

After that, we checked into a fairly anonymous motel and went for a game of squash (and we are now the proud owners of our very own squash ball, which the squash place made us purchase!). Sue didn't manage to win a game, but handled the repeated losses with good grace, although she was lucky that one of the times she threw her racquet at the wall it didn't rebound and split her head open. And I'm sure that some of her phrases were educating the people playing in the court next to ours!

The following day we went up to Baldwin street, the steepest street in the world, for a walk, and wow - if you lived there you would have calves of steel. A bit of an ordeal! After that, we hit the highway and drove to Christchurch, where we stayed at a nice hostel called the Foley Towers. After we cooked some dinner and had a game of chess, we went into town in search of some Christchurch night life. We ended up following the same route through the city as we had the last time we were there with Charlie and Dee, and had the same difficulty discovering anywhere with a bit of life. At one stage we walked through Cathedral Square and were entertained by a glue sniffing mad man as he attempted to kick down the huge door to the Cathedral while shouting 'Open the Door!' in a plaintive voice. He insisted that it was 'Part of the Treaty' that he be allowed to enter. Quite entertaining, in a slightly unsettling kind of way, but he was quickly bundled off by the police. We eventually found a reasonably nice pub which was buzzing - there were 5 other people there, but it seemed to be the most lively place we could find. Well, we had passed another bar, but it had a huge sign outside saying 'No gang paraphernalia', which didn't really inspire confidence.

The following day we went out to the International Antarctic Centre near the airport, to get a sample of what life would have been like had our applications with the Australian Antarctic Division not been rejected. It was a fantastic little place, which we started with a ride in a Haggland snow mobile thingie over an obstacle course which included hills with 45 degree slopes, a crevice, and most worrying of all, a three meter deep pond! The Haggland handled it all with ease, although we were a bit worried when it nose-planted into the pond and we sat there with water coming up to the level of the windows while it's amphibious equipment slowly deployed! Great fun though!

The exhibition also included a 'storm room' where we could get a sample of what life would be like during a 'Weather Condition 1' storm. It was very cold, with wind chill dropping the temperature down below -20 degrees. Thankfully they gave us big jackets and gloves, but even so, phew, it was cold! There were about 20 people in the huge room with us, but Sue and I were the only ones who sought refuge in the igloo made of fresh snow . The rest of the exhibition was also good, but was mostly stuff I already knew, as I've got several books and DVDs about Antarctica to accompany my dream of going there for a few months (maybe even a year to 'winter over' through the six months of darkness!).

After that we went back into Christchurch for lunch and a stroll around their Arts Centre, which was one of the few things we liked about Christchurch. It was full of things like a potter making bowls, jewelry makers etc. Fortunately, I managed to strong-arm Susan out of most shops whenever I spotted her making her way to a cashier with her arms laden down with goods, and her credit card screaming for help from her handbag...

From Christchurch, we had a leisurely drive up to Kaikora where we were planning on going whale watching. We spent the night in a lovely hostel, then found out the next day that the whale watching trips had all been cancelled due to the weather. It was quite windy, but it was a lovely clear sunny day, so we spent it walking around the cliff tops and sea lions colonies just to the south of the town. It was gorgeous, with the sun glinting off the blue blue sea and snow capped peaks behind the town. Great stuff, but I preferred our experiences with the seals at Waipapa and Slope point when we were the only people there.

From Kaikora we drove up to the heart of the Marlborough wine region where we had decided to treat ourselves to a couple of days staying in a cottage on a vineyard, something we hadn't ever done before. It was a lovely place, surrounded on all sides by vineyards, so we booked ourselves a wine tour for the following day and settled in for a nice meal and a bottle of wine. The following day, we went on our wine tour and were a bit disconcerted to find that all of our fellow wine samplers were American! They all turned out to be very nice, and we had a great day sampling wines a plenty. Since the region is most renowned for it's whites and in particular it's Sauvignon Blancs, we tried many whites which was a nice change from our usual preference for reds! That evening we were invited by our hosts to the main house to sample some of their own wines. They were a nice couple, but he was a scot from Aberdeen who is an expert at everything, including soccer, shinty and badminton and has degrees in law, accounting, history, english and about fifteen other things. His litany of self-praise was a bit overwhelming, and unfortunately, by the time we managed to extricate ourselves (when he paused briefly in explaining how he had redesigned their drainage system to be the best in the region by going to the loo), it was dark and we weren't able to fully enjoy our surroundings by having dinner on the front deck as we had planned. Ah well, it was a lovely meal nonetheless, and accompanied by a delicious Chardonnay.

The following day, we had our breakfast (yummy eggs florentine with wilted rocket, hollondaise and ciabatta bread!) on the balcony which was gorgeous. From there, we drove up to Picton to get the ferry back to Wellington. The crossing was lovely, with perfect weather and flat seas. We checked into the YHA, a lovely purpose built hostel in the middle of the city and then went off in search of lunch. It took a while, but we eventually got fed and so we went to the Embassy Theatre (the biggest screen in the southern hemisphere!) to see 'Sideways' which had been reccomended to us by all of the Americans on our wine tour. It was a good film, but I think I might have enjoyed it more if I hadn't heard so much hype about it before hand. Afterwards, we spent ages looking for Orlando Bloom's seat (they showed the Return of the King premier there and have little plaques next to the seats that the stars sat in!), but couldn't find it so had to make do with Aragorns . Afterwards, we went back to a great restaurant we had gone to before for a slap up meal and then went back to the hostel for sleepage.

The following day we had a lazy morning around Wellington and then started the long drive up to the Tongariro National Park, also known as Mordor in a little known book that I think has been made into a film. We were planning on doing the Tongariro Crossing, renowned as New Zealand's greatest one day walk. Unfortunately the forecast was for fog, rain and limited visibility, and even more unfortunately, turned out to be correct for the first time ever! What followed was a bit of an ordeal as after the halfway point, the clouds just opened up and we were quickly soaked through to the skin. To make matters a bit worse, both my knees started to complain loudly of abuse and it was quite hard to walk down hill as I had to stop frequently to let the pain die down enough to continue! I think I really did some damage to myself in the city 2 surf 14k run last August!

We arrived back at the hostel, sodden and miserable but brightened up when we were told that they had a spa exactly for people like us! Wuh hoo! It was 41.5 degrees and worked wonders in warming us up! Afterwards we couldn't face cooking so we went to the pub next door for some yummy food and a couple of pints while we watched the rugby. We had an early night that night, as we had gotten up at 0615 to catch the bus to the start of the walk.

The following day, we went to the village of Whakapapa to go up Mount Ruapehu (when you next meet us, ask Susan to say it for you ), the largest active vulcano in New Zealand. It is a ski area during the winter, although we were horrified by the number of sheer cliffs that litter the 'ski fields' - and were unsurprised to find that they had absolutely no beginner slopes when we found a map of the ski slopes. We got two chairlifts quite high up the mountain - above the snow line in fact, and then did a somewhat gruelling walk up to the 'Skyline Ridge' where we had a view out at the surrounding country side (very Mordor like!) and the peaks of Mount Tongariro and Mount Ngaruahoe (which was Mount Doom in the films - with a little bit of digital enhancement). There were some spectacular views but it was very cold once we stopped moving so we didn't linger too long up there.

From there, we drove to Waitamo, for our last touristy stop on the New Zealand leg of the trip . After losing patience with the incompetent staff at the Kiwi Paka hostel (where they kept sending us to non-existent double rooms!), we moved to Juno Hall, which is a lovely wooden hostel nearby. There are 20 commercial cave trips in Waitamo and it is really hard to pick a trip to do as they all sound pretty much the same. Thankfully, the dutch girl behind the counter was very helpful and found reasons to discard all brochures except two - 'The Legendary Black Water Rafting Company' and 'Absolute Adventure caving'. Absolute Adventure was mostly about caving and didn't include tubing, so we went with the other company and were not disappointed! We got kitted up in wetsuits (with lovely fashionable white wellies!), helmets (with lights) and abseil harnesses and then drove out to the cave entrance - just a hole in the ground in a field. First we abseiled down 37 metres into the cave and then adventured ourselves around the place, climbing up through waterfalls, going on a flying fox to get through one tricky bit, swimming through freezing water, wriggling through really narrow crawl spaces, etc. It was great fun, and certainly one of the highlights of the trip.

After the trip, we zoomed up SH1 to Auckland (stopping at Hamilton for some coffee) to visit my aunt Rosemary. We took her out for dinner last night to a nearby Thai restaurant and had a really nice time with the assistance of a lovely South African Cab Sav/Merlot (she shares your fondness for Nederburg, Dad). It's great to catch up with far-flung family members as it's fascinating to hear opinions and memories about various other family members..................*GRIN*.......

It's really sad that this is the end of the kiwi leg of our trip as it has all been just so amazing. Last night we made some top 5 lists of our favourite parts of both New Zealand and Australia and mine were something like this:

Australia:
1. Driving a campervan the length of a continent from Darwin to Adelaide.
2. Climbing Ayers Rock.
3. Chilling out in Margaret River for a few days.
4. Litchfield National Park
5. Grampians National Park

New Zealand:
1. Diving the Poor Knights islands marine reserve
2. Fiordland National Park
3. Cape Reinga
4. Catlins
5. Marlborough Wine Region

That said, it's all been so amazing, that for New Zealand at least, I have trouble narrowing the list down to just 5. Ah well, the next stage of 'Plan See The World' is two weeks on a beach in Thailand, so I shouldn't feel too sorry for myself!

Hope everyone is froody,

Marty