Kia ora,

Well well well... it's been a while hasn't it? Our poor little blog got neglected as we busied ourselves with getting jobs, settling into the Wellington lifestyle, catching up with old friends, finding some new ones, sampling the local wines, and before we knew it we were careering towards christmas with not enough time left on our visas! So off we popped to the doctors for a medical (we're now both proud owners of a chest x-ray each), scraped a pass in that category and trotted off to immigration to see if they want us. As it turns out our sort are in high demand so we are now in the lucky position of being able to stay longer than we originally asked for, if we really want to. All being well we'll be here at least another year.

Since the last update we've also had visits from Mr & Mrs Rhodes, Ms Kentish and Mr & Mrs Hird, we've been on holiday to Tauranga, Auckland, Martinborough, Taupo and Oz, and have spent a great deal of time in our favourite bars, a lovely wine bar and the very homely Welsh bar.

Work is... well, it's work isn't it? But Dave has been lucky enough to land himself a job at a company called Intergen, who are a great social bunch and a really good company. I'm at Stats NZ, also a good social crowd - happily landed myself in a team of people who enjoy the odd vino and more than the odd morning tea! I have just got a temporary promotion, so all going very well for me too.

So that, in a nutshell, is us. How about you? How the devil are you all? and what have you been up to? What are you up to for christmas/new year?

You will note that most of you haven't had a christmas card from NZ dropping through your letterbox. That I'm afraid is the result of the combined efforts of hallmark and NZ post to bankrupt anyone not smart enough to work out that christmas is not all about the birth of santa, as we thought, but about diddling us out of our hard earned cash. So apologies to you all for lack of paper-based greetings, but hope this last minute blog will be sufficient to let you know we're thinking of you and missing you all.

I must get off to bed now but can't sign off without saying huge thanks to Hassan (and all contributors) for our leaving video. You may have heard the traumas of me not being able to get it to work, and believe me I've persevered! Fate dealt me a great hand this christmas though as Santa delivered me an early gift in the form of a laptop and as luck would have it, it's been the only piece of technology that seems to want to play the cd! It really was great to watch - emotional at times, but very funny too! So thanks one and all. Please keep the news from home coming - it's great to hear what everyone is up to.

Anyway, enough from me. Hope you all have a safe and happy Christmas, and that the new year brings you the willpower to stick to your resolutions!

Lots of big love to everyone from us both.
Meri Kirihimete!
xxx

Going up west
24th February-11th March 2007

Sorry it's been such a long time since our last posting - things really have been busy for us, what with getting ourselves settled, receiving visitors, starting work, etc, which we'll tell you all about later. And we also had problems with our internet connection, but that's a long story that I really won't bore you with, ever! So I'll just tell you what we did in the west coast of South Island for now and update you with more Wellington news soon, save to say we've got a flat, I've (Nat) got a job at Stats NZ, and Dave is temping at the Land Transport agency and has a lot of promising interest from graphic design companies. All going good so far!

Settle yourselves down with a big mug of tea for this one, it's going to be a whopper.

So... the West coast - it seems so long ago now, but we're already committed to revisiting the lovely Te Anau, which was our first port of call, and the gateway to Fiordland. We stopped there mainly because it was the best point from which to visit Milford Sound, and we're so glad we did - really beautiful lake, lovely little town, and the best cinema in the world (we think)! Here's the history part: some guy made a film called Ata Whenua (Shadowlands), a short film showing the sights of Fiordland, and built the cinema to enable him to show his work, which still gets shown pretty much on an hourly basis every day. Later in the evening they show regular films too. The great part about it, we discovered was the huge wide seats, with room for your glass of wine and cheeseboard, and an intermission so you can pop out to top up on food and drink.

The next day we went to Milford Sound, and at this point we would like to say a MASSIVE thanks to all our friends who got us the travel vouchers for our leaving present. We wouldn't have been able to afford this without you guys, so cheers!! We had such a brilliant day, despite the rain and wind. The coach trip through the stunning scenery of Fiordland was amazing, and boat trip on the Sound was great. We spent a lot of it stood out the front battling the elements like it was some kind of fun-park ride, while everyone else sat indoors in the warm. Having spent years laughing at the Cox girls for the amusing gems that pop out of their mouths sometimes ("how do you know when you're in the shade?" , "lets just wait and see how the sand lies..", "this car has four pedals", etc), we thought nothing could surprise us, but were frankly gobsmacked at one girl on our boat who didn't seem to understand what was going on at all - here's a few of the comments we remembered:
"Why are we going up and down?"
"Is the water really black?"
""are we flying?" (obviously she took that bit in Titanic a bit too seriously)
"I've never been on a boat before" (no, really?), followed shortly by "I don't get seaskick" - based on what experience?!

Mel & Laura, I'm afraid your title is well and truly stolen.

Fiordland gets an average of 7m of rain per year (200 days of it!), so most visitors see it in wet weather, which is apparently the best way to see it, so in a way we were lucky with the weather. Also, another little factoid for you is that Captain "not-so-clever-now" Cook wrongly named it Milford Sound, whereas it is, in fact, a Fiord and not a Sound. Perhaps that's why he was more cautious when naming Doubtful Sound. If you're interested, the difference is that fiords are carved out by glaciers, whereas sounds are valleys formed by rivers. You can't tell me this blog isn't educational...

After Te Anau we set off towards Queenstown. And if you've seen the pictures I don't need to tell you how pretty it is. Apparently it's not a big favourite with the Kiwis as it's a bit touristy, which probably explains why we liked it so much as there was plenty to keep us entertained. Loads of good restaurants, great scenery, and a cable car (always a winner in our books - especially if you get conned into buying the dodgy photo and postcards of yourself in the cable car at the end). But our first port of call had to be the wine tasting shop which is like a more civilised version of Vinopolis. You charge up a card at the counter, then go around popping it into machines which dispense your chosen measure of wine into your glass. There are armchairs to relax in, wine magazines lying around to read, and staff on hand to help and advise. As you might have already guessed, we spent a considerable amount of time and money in there.

The next day we decided to have some fun at altitude, and there was plenty to do at the top of Bob's Peak, including bungy jumping, paragliding, luge, and the obligatory overpriced souvenir shop and restaurant. We decided to head off up in the cable car to have a go on the luge but got waylaid at a very crazy golf! Now, I hate to admit this, but we've played crazy golf a fair few times since we've been here, and have become something of a pair of nerds on the subject, and could probably have named our favourite places for a spot of putting action, but they all paled into insignificance when we stepped inside the caddyshack indoor crazy golf centre. This place put the crazy in crazy golf - it really does have all the bells and whistles: rockets taking off, music playing, flashing lights, etc. one hole was even set up like a ski slope, and takes your ball up in a miniature chairlift before depositing it at the top of the "ski-run".. genius! And to top it all off, the last hole (called the Candy Factory), dispenses a lollipop when you finally pot your last ball.

After all that craziness the luge had a lot to live up to. You could pay for 1, 3 or 5 goes, so we opted for 5 goes, hoping we'd like it enough to get past the first go. Dave took to it very well, throwing himself round the course, hurtling over the hills and round the bends looking like he was born to do it. I sadly was not 'at one' with my cart and couldn't take the bends without feeling as if I was going into a roll, and despite my attractive regulation red helmet, I was still a bit nervy and became the token 'screaming girl' on the course, shrieking each time my kart went a bit too fast. Still, it could have been worse, there was one woman who was pootling along the course like she was out for her sunday afternoon bike ride. We unfortunately kept coinciding our turns with her and had to keep attempting overtaking manouvres, but I think my "AAAAARRGGH" was generally a good international language for "I'm approaching, please move over". Still, it was all good fun and we were sad when we came to the end of our fifth go, even though there was a suspect smell coming from somewhere at the end of the track, like someone had not enjoyed their ride quite so much....

Whilst walking back from the luge we spied the paragliders taking off, and after watching a few of them I commented that it looked easy... (me and my big mouth!)... so I let the paraglide men and Dave talk me into it. I paid my money and got myself hooked into my 'seat', which made me look and feel like a toddler with a full nappy as I walked, so when I was instructed to run as fast as I could for the takeoff, I looked at him like he was mad. But actually its surprising how easy it is, even with the weight of the pack dangling from me - you just run until the ground disappears from beneath you (I should mention at this point that I was attached to a professional and his parachute). We floated down over Queenstown and the lake, and by this time it was nearing sunset, so the colours and the scenery were incredible. In fact the only disastrous bit was the landing... the guy told me what to do and how to get myself ready to land standing up, but we managed to find the one and only wet patch of grass in the whole field and skidded and tumbled our way to a halt. While I was getting myself untangled and unstrapped from the gear I watched others dropping softly out of the sky, in what I assume is text-book style landing, upright and on two feet, and began to feel a bit embarrassed about the grass stains on my legs and rushed off to get in a gondola on my own to go back up to where Dave was waiting in the bar at the top for me with a mug of cold beer - perfect! I definitely deserved that beer.

The next day we went for a walk around the park and gardens, where I'd heard there was an ice rink somewhere. Dave surprised me by having already worked out where it was and subtley led us in that direction. I had the pleasure of being the only person on the ice - good job too as I spent most of my time just trying to stand up - a far cry from the elegance I'd managed to muster when having lessons a few years ago. Unfortunately Dave decided to allow me to skate alone, as his last experience of ice skating involved him slipping over in a huge puddle of freezing water in mid-winter in London. Once bitten...

That night we ate in a fab restaurant by the water, whose only downfall was the pushy manager. We've tried our hardest not to laugh at some of the stronger accents here, but when we heard the manager describe one of the desserts to a customer as "uck-skwuzzut", we only just managed to stifle our sniggers behind our napkins.

Leaving Queenstown we headed north to Haast for an overnight stop. We don't talk too much about this place, beautiful though it was, as the YHA wasn't a good experience and we didn't stay longer than we needed to! After Haast, we went off towards the glacier villages of Fox and Franz Josef, making a slight detour in search of the Fiordland Crested Penguins, but we were out of season, apparently.

Putting my disbelief in the physics of helicopter flight to the back of my mind, we booked a flight to see the three main glaciers (Fox, Franz Josef and Tasman) and Mount Cook. The 40 minute trip included landing on a glacier and a quick frolic in the snow, which was a good novelty in mid-summer. Despite the turbulence causing Dave to feel very ill and me to think we might crash into a mountainside at any time, this was one of our best experiences here, and the sights, colours and sheer size of the glaciers were awesome.

We had planned our last week in South Island to be something of a mini-break, from all the hard work of sightseeing, and to relax a bit before having to think about work and flats etc, so spent a couple of days in Motueka, determined to soak up the last of the summer sun on the beaches of Abel Tasman. As luck would have it, it rained the first day, but the next one was a scorcher, so we spent the day lazing on a beach as planned. We followed this with a couple of days in Nelson, to reacquaint ourselves with city life, before heading back to Picton to get the ferry back over to Wellington, sadly an end to our travels for a while, but not an end to the blog... loads more to tell but will do that another time. In the meantime we'll try and get some photos of our new place on the flickr.

Oh, and just one more thing: well done to Laura, Kev, Allan & Nosh who all did the marathon, we were very impressed with the times, even though we still think you're all a bit crazy.

Animal magic
12th-23rd February 2007

I'm not sure whether the East coast of the South Island is supposed to be famous for its wildlife, but it really should be.

Firstly there's Kaikoura - renowned mainly for its large population of Sperm Whales (in the sea, not around the town), but Kaikoura is also known as a good place for dolphin spotting trips and has more seals than you can shake a stick at. Not that you would shake a stick at one, they're actually quite aggressive and will let you know in no uncertain terms when you get too close for comfort. As you edge towards them, camera in hand, they eye you suspiciously, then raise themselves up as tall as they'll go (which is surprisingly tall actually), then their last warning is a loud sort of "hurumph", at which point, we discovered, it is best to start backing away. Anyway, our main reason for being in Kaikoura was to see the whales. Everyone we met on our travels, including our trusty friend the Lonely Planet, told us that this is THE place to go whale-watching, so we arrived there and straight away booked ourselves on a trip. Now, turn to page 457 of your Lonely Planet guide to NZ, does anyone see any mention of the potential hazards of whale watching? Of course not... Nobody tells you until you've paid your money and booked the trip, that the sea off the Kaikoura coast has a notoriously bad swell, which on the day we arrived for our trip, carried a 'seasickness warning'. Undeterred, we purchased seabands and ginger tablets and set off in the appropriately named boat "Paikea" (meaning "Whale-rider" - although we were reassured that whales never resurface underneath a boat so the actual 'riding' of whales was a near impossibility). Ten minutes later after hurtling over waves higher than the boat itself, we both looked kind of pale. Another five minutes later Dave was looking a colour I've never seen him go before and was staring ominously into his complimentary (and tactfully-named) seabag. I did the dutiful loving partner thing and screwed my face up, turned my back and put my fingers in my ears. By this time he'd gone... well what I can only describe as 'waxy-looking'.The crew helpfully told us: "if you're feeling a little seasick, try to focus on the horizon - it tricks your mind into thinking you're on land". Now this is a good idea in theory, except for the fact that on the way up a wave, all you can see is sky, and when you're going down the other side of it all you can see is sea... in fact the only time you can see any sign of the horizon is the millisecond the boat is on top of a wave! As it happened, both of us kept a firm hold on our breakfasts and despite feeling rougher than the sea, had four stunning whale-sightings, and even managed to get some of the obligatory tail-shot photos as the whales went in for a dive. Definitely worth it, but probably a once-in-a-lifetime trip!

After Kaikoura we went to Christchurch and had co-ordinated our visit with a couple of Dave's cousins (Peter and Conor), their partners and a few friends - was great to see them all and we spent a couple of good evenings with them and in various Christchurch bars, bars, bars and restaurants.

Continuing the animal theme we visited the Antarctic Centre, which was really good fun. Had a close-up encounter with CC the little blue penguin - and very cute she was too. It took all my strength not to pick her up and cuddle her. Also got to experience an Antarctic storm in a room that had real snow, and best of all a slide made out of ice!! We were of course the only adults on it, running up and down the steps that had a 'no running' warning on them, and battering small children out of our way to get our turn, but as we left we noticed other people starting to get up the courage to go on it, so we like to think we started something there.

Next we visited Oamaru, and more penguins. First of all we went to watch the yellow eyed penguin colony, or what we assumed were yellow-eyed penguins anyway - we were that far away they could have easily been more cormorants just having a laugh at our expense. Afterwards we went back to have a special behind the scenes tour of the Little Blue Penguin colony... to erm... find out what they do once their evening show is over (presumably stepping out of full penguin make-up and costumes and back into cormorant clothes). Later on we watched them all come back from a day's fishing to feed their babies. This was a real treat, and again, I had to be restrained to stop myself from following any of them back to their burrows or running off with the fluffy babies.

After Oamaru it was on to Dunedin. Lovely place Dunedin... home of NZ's Cadbury's factory and Speights brewery! As we had a bit of wildlife fatigue by this time we decided to forego all the various seal/albatross/cormorant, and even penguin tours on offer and went for the Willy Wonka tour - unfortunately no comedy stories of us falling in vats of chocolate, or watching squirrels sorting nuts, as nothing much seemed to be happening in there at the time, but the lady did very enthusiastically explain to us how they get the chocolate buttons inside the easter eggs.... yes, given enough time, most people may have been able to work that one out for themselves, but we didn't want to steal the lady's thunder as she seemed very excited to be sharing that little secret! We didn't get around to doing the Speights tour, and also missed seeing the worlds steepest street, but I'm sure we'll be back sometime for those treats!

After having 'done' the East Coast, it was time for the mountainous treats of Fiordland, but as the drive was going to be quite a long one we decided to stop off along the bottom coast of the South Island for a night, and stayed in the very picturesque Colac Bay, with its beautiful wide surf beach. It's a shame we hadn't booked ourselves in for longer as we could have spent a few days just enjoying the scenery.

As Dave said, "What a lovely bottom NZ has!". I couldn't have put it better myself.

Sound as..
1st-12th February 2007

After a brilliant few days in Wellington we booked our ferry trip to the South Island. Having heard all sorts of horror stories about the crossing we were slightly nervy as we drove aboard the Blue Bridge Ferry. We needn't have worried though - the crossing was fine and we arrived in Picton feeling none the worse for our trip. In fact the last hour of the trip, cruising down the Marlborough Sounds was beautifully calm and we enjoyed some pretty impressive scenery.

We were reliably informed by our lonely planet guide that the north part of the south island is well worth spending some time - and they weren't wrong. We'd already booked a night in Nelson, but on arrival there decided to stay a bit longer as it was a good base to explore from. Amongst other things, we did a trip on a contraption called a Skywire - which was a ride across a 1.6km wire strung between two mountains, the first half of which is freefall - which surprisingly wasn't too scary, despite the strange feeling of the return journey, which began with a backwards freefall. On returning to the starting point the guy shouted down to us to ask if we enjoyed it... so we shouted back to say yes thanks, great fun.. etc etc.. then he asked us to do him a favour and press the green button in front of us... oh how trusting we are.. Dave pressed the button and suddenly off we sped again, freefall across the valley. Still, we didn't mind too much and enjoyed the second trip as much as the first. In fact my body must have thought I'd not had enough excitement for one day so, following Dave out of the mountaintop cafe, I chose a different door from him. Unfortunately for me I chose the one that wasn't actually a door, but a solid glass pane. Ouch. Spent the rest of the day with a throbbing face and Dave giggling like a loon while trying to be sympathetic each time he recalled the 'thunk' sound of me hitting the window.

A far less dangerous sport than the Skywire was our boat trip to the Abel Tasman National Park - we took a boat from Nelson that took us up the coast of the park, past loads of beautiful bays, mini islands and we even managed to spot some seals along the way. Stopped in Awaroa Beach for a lovely lunch and bumped into some germans we'd met back in Mangawhai, so lunched with them. After lunch we had about half a hour before our boat trip back so we quickly headed to the beach for a swim. Kicking off my shoes I had my first real unsettling insect experience. I came face to face with a squashed cicada. Not sure whether I'd trodden on it earlier and then transferred said squashed insect into my shoe, or it had been lurking in there when I put my shoe on, but whichever way it was I was certainly a bit queasy at the thought! If you don't know how ugly these insects are, feel free to do a google-image search and then I'm sure you'll understand my pain. I also took a picture which you'll be able to enjoy on our flickr site, should you feel the urge.

Finally managed to persuade Dave and his sprained ankle to do some walking so he suggested a gentle two day hike along part of the Queen Charlotte track (the whole track should take 5 days). The first day was only 5 km but was a very tough steep uphill followed by an equally tough steep downhill, but we were rewarded at the end of our first day with throwing ourselves off the jetty at Resolution Bay where we stayed the night in a little wooden cabin with no electricity and only a friendly chicken and a bottle of wine for company. We really enjoyed the novelty of the chicken that kept wandering in while we were cooking dinner but then it pooped on the floor and spoilt things for itself. Luckily for the chicken we decided against including it in our carbonara. I also had to quickly get over my arachnophobia as a lot of eight-legged visitors had taken up residence in our cabin with us. With no electricity and no communication with the outside world we managed to entertain ourselves by playing cards and charades (Dave impressing himself with his own interpretation of "My Left Foot"). The second day was a much easier 10km walk to Endeavour Inlet. This walk was nice and flat with plenty of lookout points, and the night's accommodation was much more luxurious, with a bar, restaurant and proper electricity! These luxuries were wasted on us as, totally exhausted, we were in bed just before the sun! Next day we were up bright and early for our boat pickup and had a fab trip back, seeing some rare hectors dolphins on the way. We didn't realise how lucky we were to see them until the people sharing our accommodation with us that night told us they'd paid that day to go out on a trip specifically to look for them and hadn't seen any. We resisted any childish urge we had to point and laugh and shout "sucker!" at them...

All that walking was enough healthy activity for us... next stop Marlborough Wine Festival!
Quite frankly it was just a posh excuse for a booze-up, and an expensive one at that, but we had a really good time sampling all the wines and enjoying the live music. We couldn't tell you which wines were the best, but I'm sure they were all lovely. My highlight of the day was catching the lady at one stall at the right time and getting more than the taster measure of bubbly than I paid for. Dave's was sweet-talking the Deer Farm ladies into a bonus venison sausage.

Much though we'd have loved to have spent the next few weeks in the wine regions there were some penguins further down south awaiting our visit, so we had to drag ourselves away...

Waitomo, New Plymouth, Wanganui and Wellington
23rd-31st January 2007

I wish I was a Glow worm, a glow worm's never glum, how could you be unhappy when the sun shines out your bum?

... so the poem goes... I'm not sure how you'd tell if a glow worm is smiling or not, but it was well worth checking them out just to see. So, on our way to New Plymouth we made an overnight stop off in Waitomo to see the famous glow worm caves, which were definitely as spectacular as billed. We donned the regulation comedy helmets and entered the caves, all silmultaneously blinding each other as we figured out how best to angle the head torches, and set off in pursuit of these famous larvae. We weren't disappointed. Peter, our guide, loaded us all into his inflatable raft (thankfully more sturdy than it sounds), and instructed us to turn our torches off. We then drifted gently through the caves for over a half hour in the darkness until our eyes became accustomed ... and we saw hundreds of thousands of glowing larvae bums. Once I'd got over the claustrophibia and the irrational fear that the cave was suddenly going to fill with water, we were, as the tour promised 'Spellbound'. Definitely a must on anyone's itinerary.


What Mountain?

After leaving Waitomo we drove towards New Plymouth in the hope of seeing the spectacular Mount Taranaki (or Mount Egmont, depending on which guide book you read). Unfortunately, as luck would have it, we were under a blanket of very heavy fog (I believe, at about the same time as the UK was experiencing its first powdering of snow - except it's winter there), so our view of the mountain was non-existent, as we couldn't even see the car in front of us, let alone any scenery. Still, it didn't matter we were there for three whole days, and you can hardly miss the thing, we thought, it's about a mile and a half high! ... oh what a pair of fools we felt when after 3 days we still couldn't seen it. But since I took the trouble to learn all about it anyway, here's some stats for you.. so, as I said, it's about a mile and a half (a little over 2.5km) high, and it is about 350 years since it last erupted - apparently it's long overdue another eruption so my ears were peeled for any distant rumbling sounds, although I'm kind of thinking if it did go off, the distant rumblings would be heard in somewhere like Invercargill, and the sound in New Plymouth may be a few decibels higher... more of an ear-drum-perforating "bang" I guess. We did get to see it in postcards, and film format, as we watched the Last Samurai in the park one evening, which was apparently mostly filmed in NZ, and features quite a lot of footage of the Mountain. So that was pretty special, as Mount Taranaki was (supposedly) in the cloudy distance behind the screen.

We also drove halfway up it, in a foolish attempt to see the top, thinly disguised as a trip to see Dawsons Falls. Dawsons falls was actually the biggest waterfall we've seen since we arrived so it was worth the drive anyway, and we actually got a few minutes to ourselves to watch it before we were joined by others. On our way out of the area I kept a constant vigil in the rear view mirror in case it appeared, but all we saw was the base... still, it ws a pretty impressively wide base, so we used our imagination as to how high the peak was.

Wanganui

We stopped briefly in Wanganui, but as we were headed to Wellington to look for jobs we unfortunately only had one night there. Still, it was a great place, and we happened to be there the day they had some sort of motor boat racing on the river, which was lucky for us. We also got in an elevator up the hill (disappointed to find this wasn't an escalator as we were accidentally informed by the guy in the hostel), still, some good views from the tower at the top and well worth the dollar fee instead of climbing the hill! We really liked Wanganui so intend to go back there at some stage to investigate it a bit more.

Windy Wellington

We had been warned of Wellington's windiness, but really you don't quite believe it until you get there. The guidebooks will also inform you of certain man-made wind tunnels. I doubt any of these were intentional, but they certainly do exist... there you are, happily striding along a street in the glorious sunshine, when you round a corner and ... whooshf! you're halfway up the next road without meaning to be. Suffice to say, we spent most of the time with hair like Freddie Boswell.
Still, despite the crazy gusts, we totally loved Wellington and definitely hope to settle there for a while. Had a couple of chats with people about jobs and it all looks very promising so far, so keep your fingers crossed for us!

Next installment coming soon...

Heads up
16th-22nd January 2007

Before we set off down south we headed up to Auckland to see Ian and Tracy (Dave's bro and his girlfriend), before Ian went back off to sea on his Naval duties. As we were up that way, we decided to go a bit further north just to see what the fuss was about. We didn't quite make the Bay of Islands, but did get as far as Mangawhai and stayed in a lovely little backpackers hostel at Mangawhai Heads. The photos of the beach looked so lovely, we decided to spend a day just relaxing by the water, so chose a lovely spot on the estuary just around the corner from the crashing waves of the surf beach. As we were paddling around in the shallows, we saw two birds on the opposite side that looked like they could possibly be penguins. Now, bearing in mind that I'm not a strong swimmer, I thought it might be silly of me to attempt to swim the estuary just on the off chance that this might actually be my first chance at a penguin encounter, but spurred on by Dave offering to swim with me, I decided to go for it, just to satisfy my curiosity. The tide was coming in fast so we had to swim against a fairly strong current to get there, but eventually we made it to the other side. Clambering out onto the sand bank, exhausted, we made our way stealthily towards the "penguins"... only to find they were actually some sort of Cormorant, just stood there, in a sort of penguin-posture, pretending to be penguins. But I guess we'd always have wondered if we didn't try. That evening we had a lovely dinner at a bar/restaurant there, which had a piano-playing chef, and a comet to boot.

All in all, Mangawhai was a great experience, just don't mention the cormorants.

Carry on up the Coromandel
9th-13th January 2007

Our first trip away from the home comforts of Tauranga was very successful, if you don't count the weather!

Since we're total novices to the travelling game we thought we'd do just a nice little trip around the Coromandel Peninsula to gently introduce ourselves to the world of hostelling and (eek!) living on a budget. So.. we consulted maps, joined the YHA, booked rooms, etc. basically made sure we'd prepared ourselves fully. So imagine our disgust when we sat down to watch the weather report just 5 minutes after we'd completed our bookings... they had forecast rain for the whole week we were up there. NOOOOoooo! It seems that when we moved here we brought the British summer with us!

As it happened, it didn't rain all week, but some of the beautiful scenery we'd been promised whilst driving along the coastal areas was hidden under a dense layer of cloud and fog. Still, we managed to see the funny side though and arrived in Whitianga in good spirits, so keeping the theme going we went shopping for some more good spirits. After dinner we got chatting to the other inmates, all of whom were friendly and welcoming. 3 bottles of wine later we staggered to our room and fell into a drunken coma, waking the next day howling like dogs due to sore heads, but were dragged out of bed by the scorching sun and half of the hostel who we'd managed to offer a lift to Cathedral Cove to in our inebriated state.

Cathedral Cove was beautiful, and under the rules of good vs bad karma, we had to do a gruelling 45 min walk to get to this little section of paradise. Luckily it was a really good walk, and well worth the effort even though the waves were particularly viscious that day and had a nasty ability to remove swimwear without warning. Later that day, we found ourselves at Hot Water Beach, where the tourist guides will tell you to "hire a spade, dig a hole and wait for hot spring water to bubble up from underground, then sit in your own self-dug spa bath". Simple eh? ... hmmn. . not as such... The reality goes a little more like:
- take a group of 10 people and hire the 3 remaining spades from the shop,
- admire the vastness of the beach and how lucky you are to have got there so early.
- spot the seething mass of spade-wielding tourists on the horizon
- curse yourself for being so naive
- find a space amongst the throng and start digging your hole
- discover you're digging in the wrong place
- dig another hole,
- burn your feet because you're in the spot that all of those in the know are avoiding
- dig another hole nearby and sit in 2 inches of lukewarm water
- watch in disappointment as your sand-wall crumbles and your water disappears into the massive hole the germans next to you have dug.
- sneak into their pool
- look smug til a man in budgie-smugglers digging a hole next to you throws sand all over you.
Anyway, you get the point... it was chaotic, and nothing like we pictured in our minds eye but very good fun anyway.

Waving a sad farewell to our first hostel we set off along the 309 road through to Coromandel Town. We'd been informed that the 309 is an experience... 14km of gravel road (or, "metal" as they inexplicably call it here), but with some sights along the way (waterfalls, scenic lookouts, and thelike) the most amazing of which was Castle Rock. I think the idea is that you're supposed to park in the car park and scramble to the peak for a peek, but we parked in the car park and ate last nights pizza looking out at the view. That was adventurous enough for us intrepid explorers!

So.. after many stops along 309 road we finally reached the rather lovely Coromandel Town. Really not a lot going on, but they had some lovely pubs, and we had a great time at the Lion's Den Hostel and definitely could have done with a few more days there. I insisted we visited the Coromandel Smoking Company to purchase some of their legendary smoked mussels but wimped out at the last minute - those things are just too ugly to eat! Instead I opted for a piece of smoked Orange Roughy - which when I asked the lady what it was like, she helpfully pointed out the picture of the fish, as it would have looked were it not gutted, skinned and presented in fillet form.... helpful, but not really what I meant.

We also went on the Driving Creek Railway, which is something else that Coromandel is famed for. It's basically a railway that was built by a potter for getting his clay (and wood for the kiln) down from the mountains but he went a bit potty (see what I did there?) with it and kept adding more and more extensions, just for fun, it seems.. so now it's mainly used for tourists. A one hour trip on a miniature train took us up into the hills with some amazing views from the "Eyefull Tower" at the top.

After Coromandel we headed down towards Thames. The less said about this the better really... lets just say we should have heeded the advice not to bother with it!

After Thames we headed back to Tauranga via the Karangahake Gorge to do a walk, but as is our luck it was raining too heavily and not having our cagouls with us we didn't want to embarrass ourselves amongst the professional walkers with our sandals and animal-shaped brollies. So we opted instead to have a cup of tea and piece of cake in the Talisman Cafe next to the car park. If you ever have the good fortune to be passing by the area, take my advice and stop there for a piece of Lemon Meringue pie!

Next stop Auckland...

Elusive dolphins, friendly donkeys and busy bees
Hippy New Year (as I believe they say over here)
Hope everyone is well and that you all had a great Christmas and new year. Also I hope the foggy weather in the UK cleared up and that the sun is shining as much as it is in Tauranga. It's actually very hot here at the moment which is making my head a bit fuzzy so you'll have to forgive any spelling mistakes and typing errors!
Anyway, just a quick [read: novel-length] update on what we've been up to over the festive period. First of all there were the worlds shyest dolphins - we attempted a trip to swim with the local "common dolphins", of which there are some 50,000 in the area. That's FIFTY THOUSAND... do you think we could find any? After about 3 hours of searching we finally got a call from another boat to let us know that they'd seen some, and we promptly headed back at breakneck speed in the direction we'd just come from. When we finally located the pod they were too busy eating to play with us, so we didn't get much interaction going. Still, it was a good boat trip and it was nice to actually see so many. We'll try again another time, just because we were disappointed not to have the hilarious experience of struggling into wetsuits.
We have been trying to get to Rotorua since we first arrived here, but various factors have interfered with our plans and we only just got there in the last week, but it was worth waiting for. Rotorua is the place to go if you're interested in geysers, bubbling mudpools and Maori culture. Absolutely loved it despite the fact that it's probably the eggiest smelling place we've ever been, but will definitely go back here as we really only saw one part of it (we haven't even zorbed yet!). If you read no further than this, please visit our flickr site just to see the picture of Dave with the Maori guy from a concert we watched.
Continuing on our run of bad luck with the local wildlife during our visit to Rotorua we were shown into the 'kiwi house' by our guide, and were informed that they simulate a reversed day and night-time in there so that tourists visiting during the day could see these nocturnal creatures up and about. Of course, they were asleep, all we saw were some feathery bundles curled up by the glass.
Our latest animal interaction experiences have been far more successful though. On wednesday we went to see some waterfalls and noticed signs for an animal park nearby, we popped in, grabbed a bag of feed and set off on the path as directed by the lady in the shop. Here we encountered all sorts of exotic creatures... Deer (direct descendants of deer imported from Richmond park), Shire horses (one of them a direct descendant from one of the best studs in the UK), and a donkey (probably a direct descendant of Blackpool's finest). Still, we had fun, and I even had a lengthy conversation with a cockatoo. Not as funny as the parrot experience in Bunbury wildlife park (those who witnessed that one will understand) but still amusing nevertheless.
We also encountered pigs, goats, sheep, emu, and a very agressive Ostrich, who didn't like Dave being near his women.
Following our successful creature experience on wednesday, we decided to go and test our luck out on the local bees, and the best place for that is obviously a honey factory. Near the hilariously named town of Te Puke (where one of the local leaflets invites you to "Taste Te Puke!") is Comvita - a visitor centre for the local bees. Well, not actually for bees, but for to see the bees.. you know what I mean. Anyway, it's not the place to go for a whole day out, but interesting for a short visit. We were disappointed not to find people dressed in comedy bee suits, but this was a serious honey place for serious honey-lovers and people interested in all sorts of other bee-output. I could have stayed longer and even left a note in their visitor book asking if they had any jobs, perhaps I'll go back another time and see what they can offer me (preferably chief honey-taster). We ate our bodyweight in honey samples, bought a jar of manuka honey in the shop and went away happy.