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.