Queenstown

Queenstown is the extreme sports capital of New Zealand, maybe even the world, where you can skydive, bungy jump etc. We were not feeling so adventurous and besides, all these extreme sports cost a fortune! We took the gondola up the mountain and rode the Luge; afterwards we played crazy golf.

We spent a day at Deer Park Heights which was used for quite a few scenes in all of the Lord of the Rings films. There were also lots of cute and some not so cute animals there.

We bought a gold pan in town and went panning for gold in the Shotover River, but with no luck.

Milford Sound 23-24th January 2007

Another must do in New Zealand is a cruise around Milford Sound. The drive to Milford Sound was possibly better than the cruise.

The scenery was stunning, we stopped off lots of times along the way. There were wide grass filled valleys then we went through the divide into the rainforest. It was not a tropical rainforest but all the trees have a thick covering of moss and lichens, they get on average 7 metres of rain there a year. We stopped at the entrance to the Homer tunnel, in one place snow had fallen straight off the top of the mountains and a steam was flowing through the ice creating a tunnel and lots of ice cold air. This is also a spot to find Keas, they hang around the car park and tear everything apart like the monkeys at longleat.

Coming out the other side of the tunnel the road wound down into the valley with hundreds more waterfalls flowing straight down the almost vertical sides. There was alot of cloud around and the waterfalls seemed to just fall from the cloud. We also had our first NZ encounter with the dreaded sandflies!

The next morning it was a bit more cloudy for our cruise and we had some rain but it is a beautiful fjord.

The Otago Peninsular

We visited Dunedin and the Otago peninsular, stopping off at the Moeraki Boulders on the way; the weather wasn't so great. The boulders are concretions that formed in the mudstone and, when the cliff gets eroded, they fall out onto the beach.

Near Dunedin we went to see the rare Yellow Eyed Penguins - there are about 3000 adults left. It was fantastic; the chicks are now quite big and were waddling around comically. Some were still fluffy whilst others had lost almost all of there chick fluff. They weren't really scared of us and we got pretty close to them. As we walked further out onto the headland we almost tripped over a couple of fur seals lazying around on the grass.

The next evening we went to see the Albatrosses flying in after a day at sea. They were huge but a lot more difficult to photograph.

Flight around Mount Cook and the Glaciers

We spent a couple of days at Lake Tekapo and Steve even managed to swim in the turquoise glacial lake.

A must do is a scenic flight over Mount Cook and the Fox and Franz Joseph glaciers so we went up in a tiny six seater Cessna plane. The views and weather were fantastic but as we turned away to head home it got quite bumpy and we both felt sick.

After leaving Lake Tekapo we drove to Mount Cook village and spent a couple more nights there, we did some walks to the glacial lakes and to view the end of the glaciers. One lake had lots of small icebergs in it and we spent quite alot of time sipping tea on the terrace of the Hermitage Hotel as it was free refills!

New Zealand 10-16th January 2007

We left sunny Oz and after a three hour flight were in New Zealand. It was 13c and drizzling. We spent a few days in Christchurch then picked up our micro camper and drove to Akaroa.

The next day we visited my second cousin once removed, Jonathon and partner Deborah which was nice. I haven't seen him since I was about 7 years old. He sends his love to the family esp Olive, Gay, Glenda & Glyn.

Helen caught a cold almost as soon as she arrived in New Zealand, I think we were quite tired out as people have mentioned in their comments.

We drove 60km up the Rangitata valley and only passed 3 people and a load of cows, sheep and deer; the sun finally shone. Some of Lord of the Rings was filmed up here. It was very peaceful and we had a nice picnic.

The wild flowers are out and they are fantastic; the roadsides and lakesides are filled with Verbascum, Salvias, Lupins and Foxgloves.

Sydney 3-10th January 2007

We stayed in the dodgy red light district of Kings Cross, as it was handy for selling our car, internet cafes and public transport (honest!).

Once we had sold our car we visited Sydney harbour; it's quite a fantastic place. We walked around the opera house, over Sydney harbour bridge (we had previously driven over the bridge) and took a cruise around the harbour.

We visited Taronga zoo and saw the usual animals plus a Platypus, Tree Kangaroo, Red Pandas and Orangutans.

Our last day in Australia was spent on Bondi beach, we had a lovely day bodyboarding and people watching. The surf was huge.

Our Car

We weren't sure whether to buy or rent a car for our time in Oz. We were lucky to find EJ on the internet. She needed $1000 of work to get through the safety checks so we got her for $600. She was a 1989 Mitsubishi Magna. As she had a double mattress in the back we were able to sleep in the car saving $$$. We had no problems other than the petrol guage didn't work! We did over 5000km from Cape Tribulation to Sydney and the Blue Mountains and also spent Christmas & New Year in the car.

We acquired quite a large amount of stuff during our time in Oz and we're not quite sure how we are going to get it all in our backpacks to fly to New Zealand!

Selling in Sydney wasn't such a nice experience, we knew there was a car market in Kings Cross but not that it was in an underground car park! To top it you had to stay with the car to get any chance of selling it! There were lots of other cars and people there and we dropped her price at midday in the hope of seeing some of Sydney before we left!

At about 3pm we sold her to 4 Irish backpackers (300$ profit) and waved her off which was sad but nice to get out into the daylight!

We enjoyed having EJ so much we have rented a similar car for our New Zealand leg of the journey.

Blue Mountains and New Years Eve

Although it would have been nice to see the fireworks in Sydney on New Years Eve, we couldn't face the crowds & traffic and so headed up to the Blue Mountains instead.

We were quite high up (for Australia) so a lot of the time was spent in the clouds! The mountains were very scenic and we enjoyed a bit of a rest.

On New Years Eve we went out for an Indian, it was the first proper meal out we had had since being in Oz. It was very pleasant but was supposed to have a fantastic view with the sun setting-all we could see was cloud!

We did get some nice weather and saw the Three Sisters and other great views and went walking. This is the area where they rediscovered the wollemi pine thought to be extinct for 65 million years. We saw one that had been propagated in the Scilly Isles.

At coff Harbour on the way to Sydney we visited the pet porpoise pool and I caught Steve being kissed by another female as shown in the above photo!

Christmas 2006

Itwas the first time for both of us that we had been away for Christmas. We enjoyed not having to run around doing Christmas shopping.

We booked ourselves into Flat Rock tent park just outside Ballina. It was a wild and windy site with two lovely unspoilt beaches.

On Christmas Day after opening our three Christmas cards we headed off to the beach. We went bodyboarding in the morning which helped build up our appetites. For Christmas dinner we took a disposable BBQ and had chicken and bacon in rolls; we also had ham, profitoroles, Baileys, wine and Lindt Lindor chocolates...Mmm.

We played our only christmas song Wham's "Last Christmas" quite a few times. The evening was spent sat in our tent which wasn't quite so much fun. The weather held out and was nice all day until 7pm when it started to rain.

On Boxing day the weather wasn't so good so we bought some much needed clothes in the sales and watched the film, Night at the Museum.