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!

Back on the road...

After a day of searching around, we found our future campervan last Monday at the local car market in Christchurch, a 1985 converted Toyota HiAce van with an interesting if somewhat bright paintwork... suffice to say I don't think we'll ever lose our van in a carpark! It took a few days to get it ready for us to take - it needed a full service and a few other things doing to it, but by Wednesday of last week it was officially ours!

And we were good to go.

Our first port of call was Akaroa, a little French settlement, a 1.5 hours drive east of Christchurch. The windy mountain roads were a challenge for Charlie (we named our campervan...) but he managed it and got us there safely. We spent our first night in Charlie that night, parked up near some public toilets near the iSite - it was certainly cosy with the 3 of us in our campervan bed, but it meant we got to keep warm... perhaps sleeping in our van during the winter months wasn't the best of ideas!

After Akaroa we headed back to Christchurch for a few hours to sort out a few things and then it was off to Lake Tekapo, the drive was beautiful - snow capped mountains lead the way to the lake, which we arrived at just as the sun was setting. Our 3rd night in the van was absolutely freezing, so we decided that we'd opt for a hostel the next night on Mount Cook, a fantastic idea considering the fact that the 3 of us hadn't showered since we left Christchurch 3 days earlier and when we arrived at Mount Cook Village, there was a good foot of snow on the ground. Hot showers, a full kitchen to cook in, being able to spread out in bed... the luxuaries of hostel life were not lost on us.

After Mount Cook we headed back towards the coast, stopping at a few little villages along the way (little being an understatement, Twizel was a village that was meant for demolition in 1984 and Omarama has a population of 360) before arriving at our current location of Oamaru - a quaint little historical town with beautiful old buildings and is famous for its blue and yellow eyed penguin colonies. Earlier today we visited the Whitestone Cheese factory and of course had a sample of their produce. The Whisky factory was unfortunately closed today but we did get to see some penguins of the blue and yellow eye-ed variety, which more than made up for it.

Tomorrow we leave Oamaru and head further south in search of more penguins, chocolate and beer.

Back to being unemployed... and loving it!

So after much eating, drinking and being merry on Friday night, myself and Stacy left our home of the past month or two (just over 5 weeks for me, about 2 months for Stace) and all the friends we'd made while staying at Leeways Backpackers in Blenheim to head back down to Christchurch to meet up with Holly! It was sad leaving Leeways, we'd both had many a memorable moments there and we really didn't want to have to pack up all our stuff (and there was a lot of it!) but it was definitely good walking into our new dorm room to be greeted by a familiar smiling face!

This morning we began our hunt for a campervan, as yet we've not found anything but there is a potential in the pipeline... Fingers crossed!