More Wine Tours

Now on our way off the south island, we stopped in Bleinheim for a couple of nights to sample some of the world famous Marlborough wines, particularly the Sauvignon Blanc, their most famous export. Having eschewed an organised wine tour as being too expensive, Andy nominated himself as driver and, rather foolishly, we set off straight after breakfast yesterday morning. Having driven around a bit to survey what was on offer (and to let our cornflakes go down as we weren't feeling quite ready to launch into the wine) we chose our first stop, Nautilus winery. As soon as we had tasted two or three wines we got our tastebuds "in" and managed to forget it was only an hour since breakfast... Four wineries later and we were well into our stride. We chose wineries from the small boutiquey "Huia", manned by a very knowledgeable Czech girl to the huge "Cloudy Bay", probably the most famous winemaker in this region. We could see why - it was there that we were seduced into buying a 40 dollar bottle of "Te Kako", a delicious oak-aged Sauv. At Cloudy Bay we were told that the largest winery in the region (and the oldest, although its only 30 years old), Montana, had a cellar tour starting at 1. It being 20 to, we drove as fast as our little van could take us and got there just in time. The tour was really interesting, and an extremely knowledgeable and friendly lady showed us round the crushers, the giant storage tanks and hundreds of oak barrels, finishing with a tasting of four different wines. The winery can store an incredible 20 million litres of wine every season, and exports much of this to the UK. We did our bit for the local economy by buying two more bottles. Having worked up quite an appetite we then repaired to the Mud House, yet another winery which also has delicious local food. After a huge sharing platter and cup of rosy lea (having had quite enough wine by this time - six wineries before lunch!) we felt we had done justice to the wines of the Marlborough region. Heading back we detoured via the cinema for a soporific showing of "The Queen" (verdict - very good). Back at the ranch we checked email where I found out that I am soon-to-be gainfully employed again, RDA Llanfynydd have offered to have me back on my return, thank goodness. So thats one of us with an income, the only problem being keeping two people on a salary of 5.35 an hour.... By the way thank you Mr Blair for increasing minimum wage by a whole 30p since I left! This called for a celebratory dinner, so it was tinned spaghetti on toast all round!

Dolphins at Kaikoura

Whale watching in Kaikoura

The spectacular Noodle shows off...

Thar She Blows!

Well we've just done about the coolest thing you can do in this hemisphere, rivalling the Orangs and whatever Asian toury chat you can get up to there...we've seen whales, people!
Taking our leave of all things frozen, we left the west coast and Tommy took us in his safe hands across the Southern Alps. On the way we stopped by Hanmer Springs to dip in the sulphurous springs (my excuse for the smell anyway) and rectified our leaky bed situation; we are now the proud owners of a foam mattress, to pay for which we have had to put off plans for a treat of sleeping in a real room and bed. We also took on board our first hitch hiker, who added to the long list of odd Israeli people we've met and made us go through the emotional drills of making room in the back for her. We're pretty good at it now, so any more hitch hikers out there can standby for the Flying Cerise!
Having made it over to the east, we're now based in a town called Kaikoura, Maori for "Good to eat bird feathers", a corruption of the intended "good to eat crayfish" which is the region's speciality. Having eaten our own body weight in Oz lobster, we weren't interested in that, though; it was the sea mammals we had come for and disappointment was not to be our just desserts (sorry).
We'd booked ahead for Whale Watcher and rocked up for the 0930 departure with a coach load of the usual septuagenarians. The water was millpond again and we had heard there were cetaceans in the offing, so all was well with the world. The company runs a very slick operation, using new turbo-powered catamarans, hydrophones to listen for the whale sonar and well-trained guides who know good stuff and tell you; none of your Buddha-shaped caves here! As promised, we got around 4 miles offshore and loitered on the edge of the oceanic canyon at the end of the continent, a favourite place for lots of sperm whale bachelor herds. The sonar noises tailed off, but we were told this was a good sign and meant the whale was using a high-pitch sounding to pick a place to surface...
Suddenly there was a call that he had surfaced; and guess who had seen him first? That's right, Capt Ahab Bochenski! Usually specially wildlife-myopic, Rach was looking right at him when he blew and was soon deluged by tottering tourists and their trained cameras. I missed him but in fairness had taken up a position making sure none of the Jap tourists got out any of their picnic-size harpoons to get up to their usual tricks...
Our first whale was called Nick and hung around for around 10 minutes, blowing mucus all the while, before diving, allowing us to go and seek out another of his kind called Noodle (he usually stays for 2 minutes flat but today loitered and gave us a great tail show as he dived).
Time was pushing so, sated with our sightings, we headed off for the usual glimpse of a seal colony only to be given more treats; a huge pod of dusky dolphins, gambolling around the boat and jumping into the air, and even a circumpolar wandering albatross, largest wing-spanned bird in the world! The tour was fantastically well run, complete with on-board CGI films of the animals we'd seen and virtual underwater tours of the canyon we were sailing over.
All in all we were feeling a little PWS (pleased with selves) on our return and so treated ourselves to a slap-up seafood lunch of mussels and scallops with local vino (hence the writing style of this post), although I think we overdid it with the mud pie...
Next stop, after we've slept this lot off, is Blenheim for some wine and then maybe we'll have to see what the North island has to offer...

Franz Josef and Fox Glacier

Another walking destination now - the twin glaciers of Franz Josef and Fox, about 21km from each other. It was a long drive here from Wanaka, made longer by an hour's round trip in the opposite direction. We only noticed we'd gone wrong when the road ran out and we weren't in Fox yet... Then found ourselves on entirely the wrong page of the map. If the road had carried on I think we'd have ended up back in Milford before we'd have noticed! Too much singing along to the stereo...! It was raining and miserable when we got here yesterday so we mooched around town, had a couple of drinks and went out for dinner, to save us having to cook in the rain. This morning the weather was much better so we set off (two hours later than the rest of the town as we couldn't be bothered to get up) for the big pile of ice that we had come so far to see. Our original intention was to take a four hour hike up to the glacier - until we realised you could actually drive up to the glacier and cut the walk down to an hour and a half. Well, why spend all that money on a van just to wear out your shoe leather? It was still quite a march up to the glacier, over a rocky riverbed. Andy slipped through the safety barrier as many people seemed to be doing to get closer to the glacier, I took the opportunity to rest my legs. It was certainly impressive. It moves at a rate of 1m a day apparently, uncommonly fast for a glacier, and until 1983 was retreating - its now advancing again. No idea why (Andy might know). after that strenuous activity we drove to Lake Matheson and had our lunch then an hours walk to the viewing platform for Mount Cook, which unfortunately was wreathed in cloud. The lake itself was very pretty although an odd reddish brown colour. Last but not least we headed to Fox glacier, where we contented ourselves with a five minute walk up to a viewing point from the car park.

Lake Matheson and Mount Cook on a a nicer day...

Kids and Water...They Love It!

Too many days of loitering in Queenstown without doing something "xtreme dude!" gets a man feeling antsy, but bungee just wouldn't cut it. I'd been meaning to try the sport of canyoning for a while and as luck would have it the town of Wanaka is meant to be a base for one of the best places to try it. As a result Tuesday morning found us on the road at an extreme hour leaving Queenstown ready for me to join a group and go up then down Big Nige, the Niger canyon running off the Southern Alps. Leaving Rach after the recommended hearty breakfast, we threw ourselves into a van for the 40 minute drive to the valley floor, grabbed a load of very heavy wetsuits and safety kit and clambered uphill. Already I was grateful not to have tried to persuade Rach to come, without contemplating what was in store once we were wet. The girl in question was in fact in the middle of a maze in Puzzleworld, and we had agreed that if she was not there to meet me at the end of the day I would follow the trail of crumbs and find her...

Canyoning is essentially the sport of finding your way down a steep river course with rope, descender and a dose of madness and allows you to relive of all the fun things of being a kid; water, height and bravado! Once we had donned thermal vests, thick wet suits, booties, wetsuit hats, helmets, shoes, jackets and climbing harnesses, we were overheating and dying to get soaked. The 5 of us in the group, led ably by our guide James, scrambled, slid and jumped our way down the 4 hour course involving regular and forward abseil, diving down chutes and jumping from waterfalls up to 13m high! The trip ended with a death slide across the gorge to get down for tea and medals, completing an exhilarating day where we were all allowed to push our own envelope with safety, saw some stunning hidden scenery and learnt more of kiwi history and geography. Those blokes back home standby to get roped in for some good wet playtime!

On a lesser note, the rigours of travel have started to play hell with our camping gear. With a leaky mattress, rips in the chairs and a cooly bin suffering from early global warming, we fear our procurement policy is coming home to bite us in the ass! Hey-ho, on on!

The "Xtreme" maze at Puzzling World. Actually very hard to find your way around, with lots of lost kids and befuddled old folk to be navigated as well.

Queenstown

We've now arrived in the extreme sports capital of New Zealand, itself the extreme sports capital of the world, where all those with a death wish can hurtle, plummet or leap to their heart's content. As we are now extremely brassic (and I have no interest whatsoever in doing anything "extreme") we have confined our activities so far to heading up Queenstown hill in a gondola, shopping and maybe a little bit of hiking. The most extreme thing that has happened here so far in fact was Andy getting his little finger caught in the van door two nights ago (right on the nail - ow!). He was doing an admirable job of not swearing - in the words of our next door neighbour he "damn near jumped over the gazebo"! You will be heartened to hear that I kept a cool head in the crisis, obtaining torch, loo roll, savlon and a plaster and instructing Andy to hold his finger under the cold tap ( I was secretly quite excited to be using the first aid kit for a proper emergency and not just my endless mossie bites). Anyway the next day he was recovered enough (except for an odd need to go to the loo every five seconds, attributed by Andy to "shock") to head up the gondola, where the view from the top of the gondola was lovely. More entertaining were the efforts of the gondola staff to make it seem like an extreme sport for oldies, even offering to take your picture as you sat in the plexiglass bubble - ooh the excitement! At the top we had a drink and did a bit of souvenir shopping, including the purchase of our new travelling companion, who will be sitting on the dashboard and reading the map for the rest of our trip. He's a little hot now in his snazzy fleece hat and scarf, but I think he looks very cute. After all that excitement we decided on something a little more sedate, and went to see a real life Kiwi in the Kiwi and Bird Sanctuary. They are very odd things - their feathers are more like hair, they have nostrils on the end of their long beaks and marrow in their strong leg bones. Apparently they share more characteristics with mammals than they do with birds. Something that will make the ladies wince (and maybe the men!); the size of their eggs relative to their body mass is the equivalent of a human giving birth to a 3 or 4 year old... More weird fauna from Oceania! If it was Aussie, it would have giant fangs and claws tipped with poison, so I suppose we should be thankful...! We also saw various other birds of the small, large, green, brown and ducklike type (sorry Kes!) - as you can see we have a few years to go until we are fully fledged twitchers... More interesting was the Maori cultural show, where we saw a traditional haka being performed and were even coaxed into "Heads, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" Maori style! We rounded the day off with dinner and drinks with a friend of mine, Gemma who (and she won't mind me saying this!) is even more of a bum than me. She is managing a hostel over here now, preparing for yet another adventure next year when her and her boyfriend Ben will be sailing a 26 foot sloop around the South Pacific for 5 and a half months. Better watch those sharks! Ben is obviously completely mental and sailed this boat to New Zealand all the way from Mexico - much of it on his own. Enjoy guys, send us a postcard!

Milford Sound

We have finally made it over to the west coast of NZ, where the weather is thankfully hot and sunny, with none of the rain that this area is famous for - they have an average rainfall of 6 metres a year! We spent two nights at Te Anau, preparing to head off into the wilds for a bush camp, as we didn't feel we were getting the full camping experience by staying on plush caravan parks (silly us). We initially headed out to Doubtful Sound, an extremely remote area just to the south of Milford Sound. Unfortunately in getting away from it all we had got a bit too far, and the road out to Doubtful was terrible, then it emerged that further down it had fallen away completely in a landslip. We gave up that idea and instead went north towards Milford, finding lots of much more accessible camping spots on the way. Our site was idyllic, by a place called Cascade Falls and it even had long drop toilets, the height of luxury. Within minutes of stepping out of the van we realised why most people opted for a holiday park in a nice town - we were greeted by hoardes of sandflies. They are incredibly annoying small black flies which swarm all over the Fiordland (spelling mistake the Kiwis, not mine) area, nibbling on anyone in their path. As usual, I got eaten alive whilst Andy sustained one or two minor bites. We attempted to ward them off by making a big fire (and we just like big fires) however as the area is also so wet all our wood was rotten and damp and our fire a paltry sight. Nevertheless we soldiered on and managed to produce a more than passable dinner of snags (sausies), egg, beans and the crowning glory, instant mash. Delish. After throwing this down our necks we did the washing up in record time, chased all the while by the irritating sandflies. After a lovely quiet, dark nights sleep we were ready to continue on to Milford Sound. We had been more or less assured by our map that there was at least a small town at Milford. No, absolutely nothing there at all. There is a lodge, which luckily had a spot available for us to camp, and a cafe/pub, and thats it. We spent yesterday afternoon kicking our heels and trying to avoid sandfly infestation in the van (the man who invented Raid deserves a medal). We signed up for a trip sea kayaking this morning, and then resolved to get the **** out of dodge... After a hideous nights "sleep" - that van is the antidote to sleep - we rose at 7 this morning and drowsily set off to the Sound. We were soon awakened by the incredibly beautiful scenery, at its best in the clear sunshine. The paddle was lovely and relaxing, the Sound like a mill pond. We splashed about and took photos for a couple of hours and were kept well informed about the history, the formation and local folklore concerning Milford Sound by our English guide, Rosie. Another girl who deserves a medal for living in a shack of a caravan amidst the sandfly hoarde for 18 months now. Without warning, the wind suddenly picked up and soon we were battling against the waves to get back to base. At times it was quite unsettling and I made sure Andy heard about every wave which broke in my face and dripped down my arm... we managed to get back to shore without mishap or major falling out, apparently quite a feat in the double kayaks which are also known as "divorce kayaks"! We'd had a great morning but could make no secret of our keenness to get back to civilisation. We jumped into the van and hot footed it back to Te Anau as fast as he could carry us. Too exhausted to be bothered to cook tonight, we're looking forward to a nice (but cheap!) meal out.

Scenery around Fiordland National Park, with Andy swimming in the first one...


Tommy in action


Our Valentine's Day meal, the inaugural use of the new camping stove


Our new home

Looking stylish!

The Flying Cerise

Introducing Tommy the Racing Stoat

Safely arrived in wet and miserable Christchurch, a haven for old people and the ideal place to film Antiques Roadshow, we set about getting mobile. After speaking to Matt and doing some vague economic justifications, we have purchased his 1983 Toyota Townace (pronouced townachay, you know) with a mere 250,000km on it and raring to go but for a few loving touches...
He then dashed off to Wellington on a promise in his new used (if you know what I mean) Toyota Surf Ute, and we've since spent a couple of days (and used all possible tourist time in Christchurch) turning Tommy into our home, spending literally pennies on the essentials to let us survive for the next 6 weeks. Key to this process was the discovery of the Warehouse chain of stores, with knockdowns on their knockdowns and a corporate love of melamin and cheap Chinese imports. Thus we are furnished and packed to the gunnels with a full complement of chilly bin, barbie, crockery, mattress, pillows, chairs and even a gazebo for a disturbingly small sum and created a new addition to the fleet of dodgy vans touring this land. The coup de grace, apart from the registration plate GR8TCU which Matt has left with us for now, has to be the home-made curtains that we sat and fashioned for5 hours. Let's just say they used to be towels, they cost not a lot and they are cerise. Yes, cerise.
Day one on the road and, to the sound of our knockdown CD collection, we've blasted all the way down to Dunedin where the Scots must have been ecstatic to settle, as it's bloody freezing and desolate, meaning that not even the insulation of our curtains could keep us warm last night! They can have their Burns statue! On the way down we passed some great scenery as you'd expect and lots of towns claiming to be home to the biggest this and that. One that was true was Geraldine's claim to own the World's largest jumper, which we could have done with last night, so we duly saw it and admired their mosaic of the Bayeux Tapestry, made from knitting machine cog teeth and with liberal additions for missing sections and hidden puzzles. Very impressive, maybe you had to be there. The 3 of us are now quitting the chilly east coast and heading for the Milford Sound, where the weather is meant to be better and we can immerse ourselves in some outdoorsy stuff. Watch the news for reports of a Flying Cerise!

New Zealand

We are now in what was originally to be our final country, New Zealand. After spending a day puttering about in Sydney, recovering from the heat of Uluru, we headed off on our Quantas flight into Wellington. All was pretty straightforward, apart from the usual customs debacle, which Oz and NZ seem to really go in for. They are so careful about importing disease into the country (fair enough, I suppose) that you have to declare EVERYTHING. Walking boots are taken away and cleaned, tents unpacked and any food item is thoroughly checked. It was at this point that Andy realised he was in the embarrassing situation of having to declare a bottle of 100% fat free salad dressing. Not a very manly thing to be caught smuggling in to the land of the Maoris, rugby union and tramping through mountains and forests... The customs officer managed to swallow his laughter and kindly did not part Andy from the beloved dressing.
After a very brief stay in the YHA in Wellington, of about 6 hours, we were up and out by 7am to catch the ferry to the South Island. It was a really long and tiring day - the ferry didn't arrive until 11.30 and then we got a train to Christchurch which was horribly late and didn't arrive until 8pm. The Kiwi rail authority makes the UK look like commuting heaven. We suffered through around half a dozen pathetic excuses for why we were stopped or doing 5mph; the communications were down and the driver had no mobile coverage, there'd been a lightning strike, a derailing, one of the road crossings wasn't working, there was a Kiwi on the line (okay I made the last one up)... Eventually we were met in Christchurch by Matt, a friend of Andy's from Kabul who kindly picked us up. We are buying his Toyota van off him today, which we are going to, with his help, kit out to give us accomodation and a means of transport for the 6 weeks we are here. Photos of our new home to follow....

The Red Centre

With heavy hearts we packed our bags and headed off to Ayer's Rock to see a big orange rock. The flight was via Alice Springs and as we came into Ayer's Rock Airport was had a great view of Uluru from the plane window - impossible to miss as its the only mark on the landscape for as far as the eye can see. Uluru is serviced by Ayer's Rock Resort, a collection of hotels and shops situated half an hour from the monolith and run by a single company. It has a strange feel to it and it must be an odd place to work, hundreds of kilometres from the next town. All the accomodation is outrageously priced because of the monopoly so for the first time this trip we found ourselves in a dorm room. We were only four, but it was quite awkward as we were two couples in a tiny room, in two sets of bunk beds - it felt like you'd gatecrashed the other couple's private room. We got settled in, and found the bar and the supermarket in quick succession. We booked our tours for the next day and had an early night ready for our sunrise tour the next morning. Up at 4.40am, we climbed onto an air-con bus with a million others and made our way out the uluru in the dark. Set up with a stool each, a cup of tea, biscuits and a view of the back of someone's head we settled in to watch the sunrise. Andy took lots of pictures and wandered around a bit, I sat on my stool and stared at what can only be described as a bloody big orange rock. With the sun firmly in the cloudless sky we joined our next group of around 12 people for a journey to The Olgas (why isn't Uluru called The Uluru?), a collection of 36 rocky "bubbles" which rise to around 500m from ground level. By 7am it was already hot, but as we were in the Valley of The Winds the edge was thankfully taken off the heat a bit. The flies were also out in force - I don't think you can imagine unless you've experienced it; five flies at a time determined to crawl in your eyes, your mouth, your ears and up your nose. It drives you MAD. Despite this we had an enjoyable 3 hour walk with an interesting guide who gave us a lot of information, and an even more interesting bunch of travellers. Out of 12 we had one girl who, in buttcheek-revealing hot pants and a bikini top was rather eccentrically dressed for a 3 hour hike in searing sun, a Canadian guy who was in total denial that he belonged to - shock horror! - a tour group and ran about 100 metres in front of everyone else, a lady in her fifties with flip flops on (we were in rough, rocky terrain) and language on her that would shame a navvy, and the obligatory couple of Japanese, a law unto themselves at all times. Andy and I hung back on the return journey with a lovely English couple in their seventies, doing remarkably considering the length, terrain and heat of the hike. We were finally delivered back to our lodge hot, dusty and sweaty at 11.30am, by which time the temperature was pushing 41 degrees. We had a lovely couple of hours in the pool, before leaving again at 4 for a nature walk at the base of Uluru and wine and nibbles whilst watching sunset over the rock. By this point I had a crashing headache from being out in the heat all day. However we really felt like we'd made the most of our only full day in The Red Centre. All we needed was a cool shower and an early night in our air conditioned room, bliss!