Friday, January 28, 2005
Wining POHMs
Kat: Even if we were trying (which we're not), wine is dificult to avoid in NZ. Malborough is wine country, so after leaving Nelson we stopped at the lovely town of Renwick which has some 25 vineyards within a 5km radius of town. We hired bikes and wobbled from cellar door to cellar door sampling the pinot noirs.Next stop Kaikoura, for Bryan and Debs's second attempt at whale watching and our first. They opted for the plane and saw Sperm whales while we booked a boat trip for the next morning. The sea was still as a mill pond when we got up but a breeze picked up just before we checked in and by the time we set off it was decidedly choppy. Great weather for the wandering albatrosses we saw but rubbish for whale spotting! After an hour we turned back, by which time Mat had a distinct greenish tinge.
Bryan and Debs are cutting short their year in NZ to go back for Bryan's brother's wedding in March. They whizzed off to catch the ferry to Wellington on the 24th and have already reached Auckland to sell their beloved van :(
We're back at Christchurch where we were a month ago, having done a loop of the south island since then. Driving through the Waipara region we couldn't resist stopping at an apricot orchard to pick a bucket of fruit. Jane and Martin have kindly put us up (and put up with us) again. On Tuesday we met Kathy Young and her boyfriend Mike; Kathy's dad is building a house on the Banks peninsula and she and Mike are hoping to apply for residency here. Everyone's doing it!
Last night Jane and Martin took us to meet their friends Pete and Zeke, who own a small vineyard in Kaipoi. They're going to Europe from 9th May till 18th July and need house sitters. They cooked a fantastic 4 course meal but didn't need to sell the idea to us! It's a beautiful house, no work because it will be winter and (of special interest to Mat) 2 cats and broadband internet access. This is great because we've had enough aimless wandering. The rest of the year was looming without a plan, but now we have 3 months to fill before staying at Kaipoi then we'll probably go up to North Island. From here we're going back to Nelson, armed with our new laptop (!), in search of a place to stay and jobs - if we can remember how to do them!
Thursday, January 20, 2005
Lady and the Tramp (and Mat)
Kat: Spent a couple of nights in and around Hokitika for the start of a driftwood art competition on the beach and I finally got round to having my hair cut (about 6" shorter!)The road north of Hoki followed amazing beaches battered by the roaring forties. It also ran close to the railway line and twice we shared single track bridges - no signals, just listen for a train! Pancake rocks were impressive and inexplicable (like many coastal rock formations it seems), then it was through the Buller gorge to the north coast. We camped in Lyell, another gold-mining ghost town which at one point had six hotels and is now just a campsite. Possibly the most sandfly infested place to-date, we managed stoically (though it's hard to play Scrabble with gloves on). At Murchison we crossed NZ's longest swingbridge and Mat took the flying fox ride back.
In Nelson we contacted some of my family: Brandreth, Pauline and their boys Jack and Robert. Eleven years ago, when Jack and Robert were 4 and 2, they left the UK and sailed to NZ in their boat. They lived on the boat till they bought a house in Nelson five years ago. They're all very outdoorsy and persuaded us to go on a tramp in nearby Kahurangi national park. Tramping is a national pastime and the Dept. of Conservation maintains huts which anyone can turn up and use for a nominal fee. We chose the easy 12km Cobb valley walk which ends at Fenella hut and a swimming hole. We had glorious sun for both days but Mat and I could only cope with the 4.5hr walk each way - the others went for a 2hr diversion up a peak! It was a great adventure being so remote, but we definitely need more practice to keep up with the Herveys.
Sunday, January 16, 2005
Ice hike
Kat: The Fox glacier hike was fantastic - perhaps our favourite NZ activity so far! We borrowed boots and crampons and our guide Susan led us up the moraine at the side of the glacier onto the ice. We crossed crevasses up to 30m deep and passed moulin (water drilled holes which can be as deep as the glacier). The going was sometimes tricky but the amazing ice shapes and views of the valley were spectacular.Fox and Franz Josef are unusual because they're fed from large snow basins and the mountain range is so steep that they are very fast flowing - up to 5m per day - and react quickly to change. Most glaciers take hundreds of years for a change in input to affect the terminal; Fox advances and retreats a great deal. It's also rare for a glacier to descend to sea level and be next to temperate rainforest, which we walked through on the way back.
Bryan and Debs have continued south now after spending a couple of nights with us at lovely Okitika, where Mat and I weeded native saplings instead of paying camp fees. Would have been much easier if it wasn't for the gorse as we didn't have gloves! Gorse is another introduced species run amok, like the rabbits for hunting and then stoats to keep the rabbits down (they decimated the flightless birds instead). A few more nights on the west coast then we're out of this rainy insect-ridden place!
Monday, January 10, 2005
South Westland
Mat: Blimey, it's pretty around here, but pretty remote with it. We're travelling up the west coast along a mountain range called the Southern Alps, which isn't a bad simile at all. It rains a massive five metres a year here, so everything is green and covered in moss. The other thing that grows well is sandflies, which are a major annoyance since we're both reacting badly to their numerous bites. Unlike mozzies they're active all day and don't have any qualms about biting on the face, but they're more stupid (and so easier to kill).We stayed a night at Haast Beach which was ten kilometres of deserted sand and thousands of whole driftwood trees, then on to Fox Glacier, a small town next to its namesake. The campsite had the usual quota of sandflies but also thousands of mozzies, which somehow found a route into the car where the sandflies had failed. Today we went to Franz Josef Glacier, 20km down the road (they're ten a penny round here) and walked to the incredible terminal face of the glacier. Tomorrow we're doing a seven hour hike up Fox with Bryan & Debs, if they turn up - we're sat in a cafe waiting for them...
And they've just arrived!
Friday, January 07, 2005
Lake Wanaka
Mat: After the hectic extreme-tourism of Queenstown we've spent a very relaxing few days around Lake Wanaka with Ben & Vicky. We were staying at a lovely campsite next to a river just out of Wanaka town - lovely because there haven't been any sandflies. The ten huge bites on my right hand are slowly going down, so it's been nice to not get any new ones recently. Lovely also because the weather has finally come out of its sulk and is now gloriously sunny and very hot. We've been swimming in the river to cool off (and also wash off some of our camping scum).Yesterday we went to Puzzling World, well worth a visit if you're ever in the area and visited Treble Cone, Ben's local ski resort which doubles as a mountain bike track now in the summer. This morning we all went on the lake, Ben & Vicky in a kayak, and Kat and I on an Aqua Bike - a gigantic floating tricycle.
Today we're at the northern end of the lake at another campsite, this one with flush toilets and drinking water - we're excited! I'm also excited because I've bought a bottle of Milford, NZ's only single malt :)
Wednesday, January 05, 2005
She'll be right
Kat: A few curious Kiwi-isms which we've come across in the last month:1. Driving. On the whole road rules are the same as the UK, with a couple of oddities to catch you out. It's illegal and strictly enforced to park facing against the flow of traffic. When turning left, cars in the other lane turning right have priority, *unless* a car behind you is going straight on, in which case the cars turning right must give way. Kiwis love to assert their right of way knowing foreign drivers often forget.
2. Kiwi ingenuity a.k.a. eccentricity. Why would anyone dig a tunnel through solid rock to get to a beach, or build a narrow gauge railway up a mountain for an international pottery centre in the middle of nowhere?
3. "She'll be right". Kiwi mantra indicitive of adventurous national character and a country where you can't sue for accidents. It's an easy going but sometimes fatal attitude.
Otherwise, we've enjoyed a fantastic few days of sunshine and stunning scenery in Fiordland and now Otago. We took the Milford Sound cruise and did the luge in Queenstown. Now we're at Wanaka, waiting for Ben to join us at the campsite. It seems a good spot: next to a river and no sign of sandflies yet. Sounds far too good to be true ...
Sunday, January 02, 2005
Happy New Year!
Kat: We're camping in our car in a huge glacial valley near Milford Sound and there's no-one else in sight! Today it's fun: the sun shone, scenery is awesome and Mat cooked supper on a fire he built himself. Yesterday we were close to giving up.We drove round the coast from Dunedin through the Catlins, apparently beautiful but cloud cover was so low, visibility was generally below 50m. Spent a very damp and windy night near the most southerly point and it was still raining when we woke up yesterday. In Invercargill we had a cuppa with another of Mat's grandfather's friends, Diane, her dog Scruff and cat Jesse. Went to the Southland museum where they have a tuatara (like a lizard) over 120 years old! He doesn't move much.
Considered throwing in the towel but decided to press on towards Fjordland for New Year's Eve. Parked up at a campsite next to Clifden suspension bridge and rain stopped long enough to cook supper! Not sure if it's a reference to the place in Bristol - there's a gorge here too. There were flood warnings all over the south and Clifden's Waiau river was muddy, fast flowing and extremely high.
The weather's been much better today and the mountains are jaw-dropping. There are so many flowers - we drove through one valley filled with lupins! The only downside is the pesky sandflies, but I think that's part of the experience. If it holds tomorrow we'll see Milford Sound before heading back to Queenstown.