The end is in sight of my NZ adventure...

So... I've finally made it back! My minor hiatus from the blogging world (although I can't really say I was much of a contender to begin with...) has ended and I'm back with avengence. I'm even trying to get my travelblog up to date, and thats no mean feat, since I'm nearly 2 years behind with that! Its become a bit of a running joke between myself and Stacy, but I'm confident that I can get it back on track, though it does look like I've got a lot of computer time ahead of me!

Just over one week to go and I’m leaving New Zealand. I can’t believe how quickly my time here has gone. More momentous than that though, in exactly 2 months time I’ll be arriving back to England! After nearly 3 years away it’ll certainly be strange going back home, but at this moment in time I’m very much looking forward to it. As much fun as the travelling has been I’ll be glad not to live out of a backpack anymore, have a nice comfy bed to sleep in again (although I currently do have a bed to sleep in, I spent most of the last 3 weeks sleeping in a tent with not much in the way to cushion my poor body from the uncomfortable lumpiness of the ground and for my last week I’ll be sleeping on a sofa… though can’t complain cos it’ll be free!) and a range of clothes to choose from each morning – who would have thought I’d turn into such a girl?!

My current location is an organic farm about an hour outside of Auckland. Having given up my room in Auckland when myself and Stace went on our last adventure around the North Island for 3 weeks about a month ago, I knew I’d be coming back to Auckland homeless so I decided to go work on a farm for a week in return for accommodation and food. Not a bad deal when you think about it and it has certainly been a fantastic experience for me. Some might say enriching and enlightening! Wish I had done more of it while I’d been in NZ, but at least I got a chance to experience some farm-life. Its not actually as you might imagine, cows and sheep mooing and baaing in the background with the odd chicken clucking. Its actually a collective farm, owned by 8 individuals who mainly farm crops, although there is livestock on the farm but not so much of it. Alas, haven’t had the chance to realise my newly developed life long dream to milk a cow, perhaps I’ll find a cow to milk when I get back home to the UK?

Most of my chores have been on the land owned by the lady I’m staying with, helping her tend to her gardens and her own veg patch but I did get to do some pear picking in the collective pear orchard the other day. Only having to work 4 hours each day to earn my keep, I’ve had an awful lot of spare time and its been great being able to catch up on some reading (I’ve just finished reading Bangkok Tattoo and Bangkok Haunt by John Burdett) as well as letting my fingers loose on the piano in the house. As much as I miss the big city bustle, I could get used to the quiet life.

And on that note, time to get some sleep as I’m up early tomorrow to continue with my weeding! More blog soon.

Trekking, aka Tramping and Volcanos

Its been a busy week and a bit since we left Wellington last last Sunday (the 23rd) and headed north, for Ohakune, where you can do the Tongariro Alpine crossing. However, we soon found out that at this time of year you can only do the walk guided, so we opted out. Maybe later in the year as the weather warms up I'll go back and do it, but for now, we made do with a few walks around the base of the mountain.

From Ohakune we headed over to Taupo, with its magnificient lake and adrenaline packed activites like jet boating and skydiving! Our first day there was somewhat overcast and rainy so we opted for some whitewater jetboating action, since it didn't matter if it rained or not, we were going to get wet! Thankfully our second day brought blue skies, which meant skydiving was on! I'd done a skydive before, on my previous trip to New Zealand about 3 years ago, but that was only at 13,000ft... this time I jumped from 15,000ft, longer freefall and more time to panic! Was pretty amazing though, certainly a good way to make you feel alive!

After the adventures of Taupo we had a few calm days in Napier, a very art deco city with some fantastic buildings and then it was off for some more tramping (the NZ word for trekking or hiking) and amazing views at the Te Urewere National Park.

Gisborne was our next big port of call, a little town which to me was very reminiscent of Blenheim, perhaps it's because Gisborne is also another large wine region in NZ. It was nice to have a look around, wasn't really too much to do as it was too cold for any watersports, but when we come back later in the year hopefully there'll be a lot more happening!

We worked our way up the East Cape, through many a bay and little village to our current location of Whakatane (pronounced Fa-ka-ta-ne) where we've spent the last 3 nights. Incidently, we've now spent our most nights in a row in Charlie, last night was our 7th night, he's certainly been good in helping us save on accomodation costs!

Yesterday we did a tour to White Island, home to an active volcano! The boat ride there and back were a little bumpy, but worth it for the walk around the island to see the steam billowing up from vents in the ground, bubbling mud pools and looking over the crater edge to see a bright green steaming lake! Certainly not what I was expecting!

We have just under 2 more weeks of travelling around the North Island and then it'll be time to say goodbye to Holly, who's returning home. But for now, we still have her with us and there are plenty more adventures to be had.

Moving on to the North Island

Our arrival onto the North Island at Wellington was a bit of a shock to the system... cars everywhere, big tall buildings, an abundance of traffic lights! After the remoteness of the South Island at times, it was strange but at the same time really nice being back in a big city again.

After spending an hour or two driving around the Wellington area trying to find somewhere to park for the night we decided on a hostel instead, after spending the last 2 nights at the hostel in Blenheim, poor Charlie must think we're neglecting him!

Wellington was beautiful, we were lucky enough to have some great weather while we were there, sun shine and blue skies. The Cuba Street area of downtown Wellington had some great shopping - which of course we all indulged in. After just a day I found myself really liking Wellington and thinking it could be a place I could possibly live in!

The Te Papa Museum, New Zealand's National Museum was a great way to spend a morning, and we spent an afternoon over at Somes Island, doing a few walks around the island, oohing and ahhing over cute little lambs and just soaking up the sunshine!

The Glaciers and the West Coast

Charlie was fixed and ready to go the afternoon of my last post and we left Wanaka pretty much soon after he was done, heading towards the little village of Haast, where we spent our first night in our newly fixed van.

Haast doesn't really have much to report about, they've spilt the area into 3 sections; Haast Township/Village, Haast Junction and Haast Beach, in my opinion they should have put the 3 areas together and maybe have had a decent sized village out of it. But hey, thats just my opinion!

From Haast we headed north towards the glaciers. Fox glacier was first, which we got a really good view of. I had done a 1/2 day glacier walk on Fox glacier a couple of years back so we decided to do our own glacier walk on the Franz Josef glacier instead, which is where we headed to that same evening. The rain was still following us unfortunately but our 1/2 day glacier walk on Franz Josef the day after was absolutely wonderful, the weather cleared up for the second half of the walk and we got some stunning views of the glacier and the surrounding area.

We passed through the West coast of the South Island pretty quickly, it was still raining - pretty heavily at times and the towns of Greymouth and Westport didn't really have much to offer other than a petrol stop!

We took the Lewis pass across the South Island, stopping off at Hamner springs for a soak in their thermal hotpools before heading to Kaikoura, where we saw even more fur seals and saw a sperm whale and the most dolphins I've ever seen in my life when we did a whale watching tour. I'll try and get some pictures up of the dolphins/whale when I can.

And now we're back in Blenheim, back at the hostel myself and Stacy stayed in when we were working here, just passing through for 2 nights to catch up with some friends who are still here, get some washing done and in Stacy's case, getting her fix of baking done before we head to Picton this afternoon for the ferry to Wellington. North Island here we come!

Milford Sound, Skiing in Queenstown and a sick Charlie...

Right, time to do some blog catch up and due to current circumstances (which I'll get to in a bit), seems like now is a good a time as ever! Be warned, this could be a long one...

So we got to Invercargill a little over 2 weeks ago and spent most of our time there chilling out and relaxing after exploring the Catlins. The rain we first encountered in Christchurch earlier in the month seems to have caught up with us here and we were quite happy sitting in cafes hiding out from the rain.

After 2 nights we left Invercargill for Te Anau, the wind and rain unfortunately following us and booked ourselves into the YHA there as Te Anau don't seem to like people camping out in their campervans overnight. We did a day trip over to Milford Sound from Te Anau, decided against driving there ourselves since the roads were pretty bad, I don't think Charlie would have made it up those mountain paths, especially with snow chains on!

Our Milford Sound cruise was pretty amazing, I'd been before and it was nothing like the first time I went, an evening/overnight cruise which meant that after the sun went down you really couldn't see anything! It was a bit misty which meant that the largeness of the sound was lost on us, but we did get to see fur seals, dolphins and albatross!

The weather wasn't about to let up and it seemed that during our last night in Te Anau, there was another minor earthquake (there had been one the night before apparantly), as well as more rain, which meant that the Glowworm Caves were definately off the cards. So onwards to Queenstown we drove, arriving early in the afternoon of the 1st August.

We stayed in Queenstown for a total of 9 nights and 5 of those days were spent skiing at the Remarkables and Coronet Peak which were amazing. The last time I'd been skiing was nearly 10 years ago when I was still in school so the lessons I had for the first 3 days were definitely needed and by the time we left last week I was just about to do parallel turns and blue runs without too much falling over and losing control!

The last time I was in New Zealand about 3 years ago I was too chicken to do a bungee jump, and I'm afraid to say, I still was this time around! Stacy did the Nevis Bungee, a 143m drop from the middle of a suspended platform, however that wasn't for myself or Holly. We did compromise and do the Nevis Arc though, the world's highest swing, which was amazing!

We left Queenstown 2 days ago for our current location of Wanaka with the plan of just staying for one night and then heading up to the glaciers - we still haven't decided whether we're doing the Fox or Franz Joseph Glacier. However our plan was foiled somewhat when Charlie died just as we arrived into Wanaka, seems like his gearbox has collasped...!!!! So for the last 2 nights we've been camped out at the garage thats fixing him and spending our days hiding out from the rain (its still following us) in cafes or as in the case of yesterday afternoon, puzzling world!! Hoping Charlie will be fit to go by this afternoon, or tomorrow at the latest and then we'll be good to hit the road again!

The wilderness of the Catlins

We left city life in Dunedin and swapped it for the wilderness of the Catlins Coast, the southeastern corner of the South Island thats still very remote and wildernessy, last last Saturday the 25th July. We found out how remote and wildernessy it actually was when we passed through villages of just a few houses and shops and when we realised our mobile phones were out of action for the entire 3 days it took us to travel though, though that wasn't really a big issue for me since I rarely get any text messages or phone calls these days *hint hint*!

Our 3 day tour of the Catlins Coast took us past some beautiful coastal scenery and we stopped along the way at many beaches and other places of interest. Tunnel Beach was one of our first stops and probably one of my favourites, a secluded beach that was accessed through a tunnel (a very apt, if not so imaginative name). We also stopped at Slope point, the most southerly point of the South Island and the Manuka Gorge Tunnel where we saw glow worms! Another one of my favourite stops was at the Petrified Forest by Curio Bay, where part of a forest was fossilised, certainly something you don't see everyday!

The Catlins Coast is known for its rare wildlife and we did get to see some more Yellow eyed Penguins (I'm beginning to think they're not as rare as people make out, we've now seen loads of them!) as well as a fair few Fur Seals. No Sea Lions though, much to our dismay, though we thought we saw one but it turned out to be a rather shapely rock. Maybe we'll get to see some on the North Island...

We made it to Invercargill last Monday and after 3 days of living in Charlie while we travelled through the Catlins, it was certainly good to get back to town life (can't quite call Invercargill a city), hot showers and warm beds!

Penguins, penguins and more penguins!

We left Oamaru on Tuesday and headed down the coast towards Dunedin, stopping at Moeraki along the way to see the famous boulders in the sea (though I think it would have been more impressive at low tide...) and for a spot of lunch. We were soon discovering that shops and restaurants don't like to open on a Monday or a Tuesday... which meant that we didn't get to try out Fleur's place in Moeraki, a restaurant recommended in the guidebook that was good for fresh seafood. Ah well.

We reached Dunedin in the late afternoon of Tuesday and found ourselves a new home next to the waterfront (and public toilets), I'm getting quite used to the whole living in a campervan! Although dusk does pose a slight problem for us, a few hours every evening when we're at a loss for things to do. Most of the time we huddle together in the campervan cooking dinner and then maybe read, but our little lantern isn't so bright so that idea is usually our last resort. Lately we've taken to watching movies on my laptop while snuggled up in our sleeping bags, definately the way forward. As Holly put it, we need more options to 'kill dark time'.

Our first day in Dunedin was spent doing highly touristy things, such as visiting the Cadbury factory (chocolate galore, though I must say, NZ chocolate really doesn't taste as good as UK chocolate), walking up the world's steepest street - it really was quite steep and tasting our way through the Speight's brewery beer range.

Yesterday we took a little day trip out to the Otago Peninsular which is famous for its penguin and albatross sightings. Also found on the peninsular is NZ's only castle... if you can call it that! But it did have a turret, so I guess it qualifies. We didn't get to see any Royal Albatross when we went to the Royal Albatross Centre, but at Penguin place, we did get to see a few blue penguins in nesting boxes and were mega lucky enough to watch around 6-10 yellow eyed penguins come up from the sea, at one point we were only 3-4 meters away from one!