Category — New Zealand

Hello all,

We are now in Australia!

We were quite sad to leave NZ because we both had such a great time there – I have actually fallen head over heels in love with the place!

We spent our last few days in Christchurch in a camper site in the back garden of a hostel! Sounds weird but the location couldn’t be beaten… just a short stroll down to the city centre and the riverside. Christchurch is a really pretty city, so we spent a couple of days just walking around it. It has a Wagamama’s – yum yum! The weather wasn’t all that great. Bit sunny sometimes, bit drizzly sometimes. We drove around the Banks peninsula for a day, but it was a grey, cloudy day so we missed out on the crater rim view. However, we did have a nice lunch by the shore, sipping on hot choc out on the deck.

Bye bye NZ….

Highlights were:
Abel Tasman – just beautiful. Wish we could have stayed a month.
Queenstown – bungy and skydive. Celebrating our bravery afterwards.
Imagining the lifestyle – after visiting Matt’s Aunt, a 25 year NZ’er.
ALL OF IT – just jaw droping scenery at every turn.

Lowlights were:
A few grey and rainy days on the South Island, meaning we didn’t get to see some beautiful places properly, if at all, and at their best.
My trainers going astray and breaking my second pair of flip flops!
LEAVING – can Australia live up to it?!

We’ll see…. the first few days have been fun. We have been staying in a great hostel in St Kilda, Melbourne. It’s a very cool district with a great beach and nightlife, and a short tram ride from the city centre. Melbourne is a gorgeous city – there are really grand buildings, both old and new, everywhere. The food and shopping are fantastic. I can see why you spent so long here Steph!

On Monday we went to a Neighbours night and met Karl Kennedy (legend), Steve and Miranda (not legends but nice enough). A wicked night; highly recommended. Karl sings with his band for a couple of hours at the end, and they are actually pretty good – all Killers and Kaiser Chiefs type stuff – so we got down with our bad selves after too much gin and beer. 

The next day we paid a visit to Ramsay Street – aka Pin Oak Court. Had to be done, and I think it was worth the 1.5hrs each way on the tram! Very surreal. It’s tiny and we felt like weirdos hanging around as it’s a normal residential street.

We have now picked up our campervan – decided we enjoyed the freedom of it and don’t want to spend all our time either sat on or waiting for a bus. Time will tell if it was a good decision.

Yesterday we drove the Great Ocean Road. There are a few pics in the gallery.

Laters x

For all of you who find it hard reading our blog, sat at work… you may like this one a little more – it’s been raining and cold this last week!

Following our adventures in Queenstown we had a relaxing day in Te Anau, before our trip to Milford Sound. We had booked ourselves onto a 3hr cruise in the morning so had to be up early to make it in time. The clouds tried hard to ruin the views, but overall didn’t diminish the experience. The cruise was very good and so was the food!

Next day, and the heavens opened – for 2 days solid!
We drived through an area on the south coast called the Catlins, which is usually one of the best areas in NZ. Unfortunately the constant wind and rain did dampen our spirits, so we drove through in a day, though not without seeing a wild penguin and a fossilised forest.

Dunedin is the largest city in this area and we spent a day there, visiting the Cadbury’s factory and the steepest street in the world. A large number of Scottish settled here, and they obviously brought their weather with them!

Next stop was the Mount Cook region, home to New Zealand’s highest mountain. We had a great few days, visiting the Sir Edmund Hillary Museum, walking close to the base of the mountain and also seeing a few icebergs. Thankfully the rain relented long enough for us to actually see the peak.

Tomorrow we head for Christchurch and the last part of our NZ adventure.

On reaching Wanaka we stopped by Puzzle World, a kind of museum of illusions, including a 2 storey maze. They had a room that demonstrated the technique that was used in Lord of the Rings to make the hobbits look smaller. It was a cool place.

That night we went to the movies, but not in your usual cinema. In Cinema Paradiso, you sit in proper comfy old sofa’s! There is even a car in the room, which you can sit in to watch the movie! You can order full meals to have during the film, on a tray on your lap. They serve up big hot cookies straight from the oven during the interval and also make their own ice-cream, which
was lush. We watched Australia with Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman. Rach loved it.

The next day we left for Queenstown, the adrenaline capital of the world and a place I had been looking forward to. On arriving we checked into our campsite and went on the gondola up Bob’s Peak. We had 2 rides on the luge at the top, with me winning both. Rach wasn’t too happy with my Schumacher style over taking move in race 2! We had a nice lunch up there and as always the views were amazing.

The next morning we had great weather, which was ideal as we were doing our thrill rides, a bungy jump for me, and a skydive for Rach.
I am pleased to say we both survived and loved our experiences.

My bungy was at the AJ Hackett Nevis site, and at 134m high is the 3rd highest in the world. The adrenaline rush was amazing and I definately want to do another. Here’s the proof, but be sure to check the videos page.

A few hours later and Rach was being strapped up for her 15,000ft skydive. The weather was perfect with hardly a cloud in the sky. she says the intitial roll out of the plane was just incredible, dropping so fast with the ground just rushing up toward her. She had 60 seconds of freefall! Then once the parachute opened, she said she stopped screaming obscenities, and managed to take in the views of the mountains and lakes for the 6 or so minutes gliding back down to earth. Afterwards we went out with some other skydivers for celebratory drinks, and ended up getting smashed on the tea pot cocktails in the World Bar (cheers for the tip Rob!). We continued  into the small hours on a great pub crawl, meeting lots of cool people.
We didn’t want to let the adrenalin die down, so also did a jet boat ride through a canyon the following day!

We are now in Te Anau and are visiting Milford Sound tomorrow, spending a fortune but loving every minute of it!

Our west coast tour was brief but as we have come to expect from NZ – beautiful. At Punakaiki we saw the pancake rocks and blowholes, part of the sea ravaged coastline. Pretty cool as far as rocks go!

Also at Punakaiki we walked along a gorgeous river to the Fox River Caves. They are in the middle of nowhere so they are not attended, there’s no road, and no guides – you just have your own little exploration! It took a couple of hours and at the end Matt and I nearly had a little falling out as he had only brought one torch along and it was out of battery! Luckily for us our trip was not wasted as another couple who were better equipped came along after a while, and so we followed them in. Apparently there are over 200m of caves but we only made it about 20m in because it was quite scary and the footing wasn’t very easy.

The next day was Valentine’s so we went to Hokitika and Matt bought me a handmade jade necklace in a Maori design. We did another walk called Okarito Trig up some hill. Not fun! Too steep and all giant sized steps. It was a great deal of effort for a disappointing view at the top! Views were of Okarito Lagoon and in the very far distance, Franz Joseph Glacier. In the same day we walked to the Franz Joseph Glacier – 200m from the terminal face. We didn’t do the hike onto the ice as unfortunately it was a bit pricey – can’t do it all, boooo. We stayed in a nice campsite but it was invaded by the Kiwi Experience coach so the bar was heaving with horny 18 year olds
(not very romantic!). Luckily we were booked in for an Indian down the road which was very tasty!

Next stop was Fox Glacier – not as impressive as Franz Joseph but you can get much closer – 80m from the terminal face. Take a look at the pics – it is very surreal standing in front of a glacier on a lovely hot sunny day!

We drove through more stunning scenery – which I will never tire of – in Haast Pass. Then it was on to Wanaka and Queenstown – I will let Matt cover that one!

Laters x

Happy Valentine’s Day! Hope you all got at least 1 card!? I didn’t – but then neither did Matt!

Our first stop after crossing over to the South Island a week ago was at an awesome beach near Nelson called Tahuna Beach. We had a relaxing day walking round Nelson market and watching grown men play with parachute sized kites on the expansive beach (I don’t get it?!).

The next day was my favourite of NZ so far – we got a sea taxi up to Onetahuti Beach, and walked back to the amazingly beautiful Torrent Bay, via the equally stunning Bark Bay. These string of bays were along the Abel Tasman National Park.

We soaked up sun, sea and sand before grudgingly getting our speedboat ride back to the caravan park at Kaiteriteri. This beach was also gorgeous but we left the next morning for Blenheim (I wish we could have stayed there a month).

Blenheim was our base for a wine tour around the Marlborough region. Although Matt and I are usually red wine drinkers the majority white wine tastings of the day were all very tasty; the spittoons remained unused. We can now swirl, sniff and swill with sufficient confidence to appear as if we know our wines.

A really great day including fabulous food at the Montana winery, and I did manage to head back with a couple of bottles of my favourites from the day.

Next stop Kaikora, which I am very sad to say was a bit of a disappointment. It wasn’t helped by the fact we had bad weather and the campsite we stayed in was a dump (it has 5 stars?!). We decided against the swimming with dolphins trip because of the weather and went with the whale watching. We saw 4 whales which is apparently twice the average viewing. It was pretty cool to see a whale but at the same time not as impressive as I had imagined because you only see the area of their backs around the blowhole then a flash of tail before they disappear off to the deep again!

Since leaving Kaikora we have crossed over to the West Coast via Hanmer Springs and Maruia Springs. We had planned to visit both thermal pools for comparison, but as Hanmer was heaving, we passed it by and headed straight to Maruia. We thoroughly enjoyed our hot soak, outside in a rocky pool at the bottom of a valley overlooking Maruia River, and thankfully we had minimal company! We camped at Maruia that night and had an irritating introduction to sandflies, which are much worse than mosquitos.

We are now cruising down the West Coast – but I will save that for the next post.

Laters x