West Coast and Glaciers Dec 29th-31st

When we arrived on the south Island, we really didn't know which way to go. We were torn between exploring Nelson at the top of the island (supposedly a very easy-going place to enjoy beach life) or to head down the west coast while the weather was still good. In the end the choice was made for us, as I (Andy) missed a crucial turning for Nelson, so that was that. From that point on , every traveller we got talking to , asked us if we'd been to Nelson yet, as it was so great. But no we on a mission, and it was taking us South. After passing Westport, we stopped for the night in a little bed and breakfast place in the middle of nowhere, which happened to have a pub next door. It was the kind of place where the music shuts off as you enter, under the stern looks of the locals. Actually, at second glance, it turned out that everyone was really friendly, and we had a lovely evening. It was Lara's 1st birthday, so we celebrated that, and then had an early night (well all except me - I stayed up blogging) because we wanted to do some early morning seal-watching the next day, as it turned out we were 5 minutes away from Tauranga bay, one of the largest colonies of New Zealand Fur seals.



These are beautiful animals, and we all enjoyed watching little seal-groups (looked like families to us, but unlikely) do their stuff on the rocks far below, not knowing that just a week later, we'd be far far closer to the next seals we saw. Even Dorka (not normally terribly interested in things that can't talk), was transfixed and took millions of photos of them.



The afternoon's drive brought us further south, and on the way we stopped off to view the mysterious pancake rocks at Punakaiki. They're very beautiful, as the soft rock has been eroded into castle towers ot perhaps odd skyscrapers -but the photos don't really convey the full impression of coures. There was great little tourist centre (as they all are in NZ) with info about these odd flattened rock formations and the blow holes that spew huge amounts of water when the tide is right.


We stopped a little before the galciers at a place called Ocarito, a huge swamp that has amazing meandering waterways best explored by canoe. Dorka, being the experienced canoe-hero went off for a day's paddle, while Lara and Emma and I spent the day in a wonderful little summer cabin, (probably our best accommodation of the whole trip,) trying to get video of Lara learning to crawl. (she was fast) Outide it pored with rain all day, and I kept expecting to see Dorka squidging back to us. Meanwhile the canoe hire guys had decided to pick her up in a motor boat, but she impressed them with her stroke (or something like that) and they decided to let her keep on if she wanted to. She did, and returned hours later, totally soaked to the skin, but triumphant. There wasn't much to see, but we include a photo of it anyway....

After this the weather stayed awful for days, well most of the next 2 weeks actually. We had read and heard that it rains a lot in this part of the world - that's what makes glaciers, after all, and here there are 2 massive ones! But somehow, we hadn't really realised what a dampening effect it could have on our spirits, especially when 90% of the attractions are outdoors things.



Luckily, when we stopped in the little town of Franz Joszef, at the foot of the glacier of the same name, we picked a campsite that was starting to fill up with other families now, and that kept the little ones busy so Dorka and I could take it in turns to do the glacier walk. I got the morning when the sun poked out from behind the clouds, Dorka got the cloudy version (but at least it wasn't actually raining for those 3 hours!)

The glacier hikes here are, like all NZ activities, faultlessly organised. You are issued with everything from boots to jackets. As long as you turn up in underwear and a hat, you'll be ok, then your personable guide whisks you to the trailhead by bus, and then on up into the river valley and eventually up onto the ice itslef, literally hacking steps into steep ice-cliffs using a massive axe. Walking up a glacier is fun, you get to wear crampons (those steel spider things that fit around your boots) and kick your way up ravines and over humps and lumps until you reach your goal. Our goal was just to reach the older blue ice and take the obligatory blue ice photos (it IS very pretty) before turning back, which we did after about 2 hours.

Even though it was New Year's Eve, it was a hard job staying awake until midnight following all that climbing and trekking. Funnily enough, it wasn't worth it. There were a few cheers from the camp, as the clock struck midnight, and I think someone even let off a firework, but then by 12:03 it was silent again. This marked the beginning of 2009, which meant the beginning of the last month of our trip - the last 15 days actually, so now the race was on. We had places to get to...

Whanaganui and the ferry

Speeding down to reach our ferry to the South Island, we discovered some beautiful scenery in the Whanganui area, mostly by accident. One of the nice things about travelling without a fixed itinerary is that if something takes your fancy, you can stop and take a closer look. Dorka spotted a kayak rental place advertising trips along this river valley she remembered reading that it was something special, so we decided to have a go. We had to take an organised trip, as the river is quite fast and strong - the normal method is to take a ride on a jetboat upstream (with the kayak stuck on the back of the boat) and then paddle back down. It was our first time in one of these machines, and it was great fun and very fast, even though our guide Tom insisted this was the gentle version for our kids. While we waited for Dorka to catch us up, I listened to Tom's tale of how the Whanganui river had been a major trade route just a hunded years ago - it was funny to think of great big paddle steamers chugging along this narrow waterway, as we sped along.

We had a lovely afternoon, but we rather unbderestimated the time, and when we finally got though our compimentary hot chocolate (I love tour companies in New Zealand - they always know that the little things count) it was time to push on. trouble is, it was getting late, and the narrow winding road around the top of the valley ( and the heart-stopping views) caused us to go very slowly. We were hours away from Wellington, so we just started looking for a place to stay (another advantage of travelling with no fixed plan) We heard that there might be rooms at a local nunnery, and though it was really hard to find- (we almost gave up and drove on into the night!) we eventually found ourselves in the wonderful peaceful house - it really was run by nuns, though they lived next door. Our neughbours were new Zealanders from Auckland travelling to visit relatives, and they also had a little girl Emma's age, so all was well. We ate communal food, and our new friends made a huge list us in great details places we should visit in the south. We all slept in 2 huge dormitories, you know - the sort where you know you're disturbing 12 people when you creep out in the night to visit the loo, and every door creaks like a horror-film sound effect.

Looking back, I see that this was one of the loveliest places in our trip -We should have worked out a way to stay, but we had to get down to Wellington for the ferry, and we didn't want to miss it, so we dragged Emma away from yet another new mate, and trogged on to the big city.


Arriving quite late, we grabbed a quick evening stroll and a meal out in the heart of Wellington, a very hip town, and our jump off point for the South Island. We didn't realy give this town enough time, but we'd used up our extra night by stopping in Whanganui,a nd the ferry ticket was for the next day! It was late when we arrived back at the hostel, so we repacked quietly so we could make a smooth start in the morning. (How wrong we were!) Early in the morning. Dorka and I took turns nipping down to put things in the car, and finally the only thing left in the room was Emma, still fast asleep in the upper bunk of our small hostel room. We agreed that i should try to carry her out, hopefully stioll asleep. I should have got help, but I thought I could do this alone, I almost got Emma down safely, but then lost my balance and spun into the open door, which caught emma solidy on the top of her head, so she woke up screaming, which was bad enough, but whenI rwched Dorka, she noticed that Emma's hair was covered in blood. What a mess- of course Emma was scared at the sight of her own blood, but she was very quiet and very good, wheas Dorka and I became Mr and Mrs panic. We'd like to check out now, and could you please get us a band-aid, or perhaps an ambulance? The cut looked wose than it was, so we pressed on, with me carrying my child down the sreet in her blood-spattered pyjamas like something out of a war movie. In the car we changed her and then took her straight to the nurse on the ferry, who checked her out and reassured us it was nothing serious.


Panic over, we could head up on deck to wave goodbye to North Island. The first sight of the South Island is pretty amazing too, as you travel through the fjords of the marborogh sound - where huge mountains plune straight into the sea, and the ferry take a seeminly narrow path through the towering rocks into the port at picton. Hello South Island!


To see the whole Whanganui collection, click on Dorka and Lara!

Wanganui

Lake Taupo, December 23rd-28th

We had been searching for a good place to spend Christmas. We wanted to slow down and stay in one location for a while to enjoy the holidays. Lake Taupo is a huge, and I mean really huge, volcanic lake almost in the middle of the North Island. The town is strung out along the shore, so everyone has a lake-view. I don’t blame them, the view is phenomenal, and when the sun goes down over Mount Ruhapehu on the far shore- wow!

It was quite odd to see the town in full Christmas mood – artificial snow in the shop windows, decorations and seasonal music everywhere. We wanted to have a christmas tree, but that seemed not only impossible but also environmentally naughty. We opted to build our own „tree” out of 3 fronds from a huge bank of ferns growing near to Huka waterfalls. We got a few odd looks putting them into our car, but what the heck, a Christmas tree somewhere was saved, right?
At „home”, back at the campsite, a lovely little Kiwi Camper campsite at the top of the town with great facilities, we made our own decorations out of crepe paper we’d bought specially. They probably wouldn’t win any awards, but it was a fun family activity, making them and hanging them up. We had to raise the whole creation up on a high table to prevent it from attack by Lara – who had just learned to crawl, and was starting to get into everything.

There was a barbecue on Christmas Eve and so we got to meet some of our neighbours. They were a nice group. It’s interesting that in New Zealand, everyone tended to assume we were local, maybe a Hungarian expat family now living in Auckland, but on holiday now. Almost everyone else was! we hardly met any tourists like ourselves, who had flown all the way there for a holiday. Santa made an appearance at the barbecue and the kids went nuts. Emma followed him all over the campground devouring handfuls of sweets. It was a bit naughty of us, but we just let her enjoy the moment.

Santa must have come to visit again that night because on Christmas morning, our cabin was full of presents. We spent a happy few hours playing with our new stuff, before heading off for an afternoon walk. (We had decided to have Christmas Dinner in the evening time.)

We visited Orakei Korako, a thermal park about an hour’s drive away. It was very odd, but very nice. The whole complex was reached by crossing a Lake, and then we climbed down into caves and up to lookout points over rainbow coloured rocks, evil-looking smokeholes and pools of bubbling mud. On the stroll back to the boat we got talking with a really nice Brazilian family, almost the only other true tourists we ever met!

It was a lovely way to spend an afternoon, but by 5 o clock, we were all hungry, so we drove home and prepared for our big feed. Dorka had the unusual idea of having Christmas Dinner as picnic-style by the lakeside. It was a full three-course meal with chicken, vegetables, gravy, sauces and Christmas pudding with brandy butter, so it was not the easiest thing to transport by car, but we managed it and had a lovely meal and a lovely view.

On the 27th, I, Andy, had planned something special – a day away mountain walking by myself, as there was a famous walk across nearby Tongariro national Park, which was supposed to be full of Craters, lakes and lots of other great volcanic sights. it was actually Dorka’s idea, and it really worked out well. The kids were relatively easy to look after at the campsite, so as soon as the weather report looked good, I arranged a lift out to Tongariro National park. I used a sort of mountain shuttle bus, so I could have transport at both ends of the 17km track. The setup was very strict, and I had to start at 6am in order to be down at the lst bus by 4pm. It was a beautiful track, crawling through valleys and passes up to lakes and even passing right across several old craters. On the way I made the rather unwise decision to make a detour and climb up Mount Ngauruhoe (2287m) This was possible, but the weather never really cleared enough to show me the famous Mount Doom view (this was the mountain used to represent the Lord of evil in the Lord of the rings films a few years back. All I could see though, even from the summit, was a lot of rock and cloud and more cloud. The extra detour meant that I fell behind time for the bus, so I had to run the rest of the mountain. It was pretty strenuous, but the scenery whenever the clouds cleared for a few moments, was spectacular.
Click on the volcanic lake below to see more photos of our lakeside Christmas!

Lake Taupo

Waitomo and Rotorua

Waitomo, as all the guides and guidebooks tell you, comes from the Maori words Wai (water) and Tomo (Cave or hole in the ground) and there are hundreds of rivers and caves and rivers both surface and underground in this area. It is famous as the main place to see glow worms; the dark, wet conditions are perfect for them, so these caves are full of them. These are insects that light up in the dark caves to attract flies and moths, which it traps and eats. What you see, as your boat takes you gently downriver in the dark of the cave, is a wonderful ceiling full of countless glowing lights, some brighter (hungrier ones) while others are more dim. It feels magical and secret, as it is pretty impossible to photograph.

These caves have transformed this sleepy little village into not just a first-class tourist attraction, but also, in typical NZ style, into an extreme-activities mecca. This is the place for abseiling, rock climbing, rafting. I had already done the other two elsewhere, but I wanted to try the so-called black-water rafting. Dorka was super and took the kids to play while I had an afternoon of that. The raft is actually more like a child’s rubber swimming-ring – it’s the inflated inner tube of a tractor tyre, which you carry down into the cave, then sit in with your bum hanging down while you hope for no sharp rocks beneath you. The water is mostly deep and cold, but dressed in a full-length wetsuit, you can last the hour underground without getting too chilly. There is just as much time climbing over rocks than floating, but it was all great fun. I also saw millions of glow worms here.

Another thing we saw in the dark here, was a kiwi, the flightless bird that really is a symbol for the whole country. They are about the size of a goose, but with no neck and a really long beak. They only come out at night through, so we couldn’t take any photos.

The next day, we all went to the nearby Aranui Limestone Caves, which was a lovely little trip. There were only 8 of us on the tour, so we were able to take our time and really enjoy the millions of tiny stalactites and towering stalagmites and narrow columns where the two had connected. The guide took lots of extra time to show us cave crickets and other special sights, and because there were no life-cycles to affect here, we could finally take photographs.

We left the caves behind and travelled to Rotorua. We had read that this is really the place for the true Maori experience, but we didn’t really find that ourselves. It was nice enough; we managed to get a cabin in a holiday park, and Emma made friends with a girl her own age - sadly this didn’t happen too often on the trip, so spending time in Rotorua with Sunny, a little girl on holiday from Australia, was one of the highlights of the trip for her.

We made an excursion to nearby Te Wairoa, a village half buried in volcanic mud in a huge eruption in 1886. It’s worth knowing that Rotorua is right in the heart of a massive strip of volcanic activity.
Two things were fascinating about the buried village: one is that tourism was already the norm in the 1880’s, but the thing that people came here to see then is gone. It was the great pink and white sinter terraces, a series of volcanic terraces, like rows of bathtubs arranged one after the other reaching from a river of boiling water down to a lake. The lower ones were great for bathing apparently, and the whole thing was incredibly beautiful. But now it’s at the bottom of the lake.

The other odd thing was a perfectly straight row of huge trees in the middle of the village. This was, they say, a fence made of cut branches (aspen or poplar I think) that were half buried in rich volcanic mud, and about half of them sprouted and grew up as trees.

It sounds pretty unlikely, but some plants can grow this way, so maybe it’s true.

We ckecked out the waterfalls nearby before heading back to Rotorua. En route we lounged by Blue Lake in the afternoon, then headed home to be ready for our Maori evening.

This took place at a local Maori village called Te Puia. I’m not sure if people actually live in this village all year or it’s merely a tourist trap, but it certainly was smoothly set up.
After our Maori guide welcomed us to the village, he took us across to see the formal challenge issued to our tour-group’s designated chief for the night, a German chap named Thomas. There followed about an hour of songs, with plenty of opportunities for us to go up on stage and look foolish. The highlight was of course the fierce Haka warrior challenge, now made so famous by the New Zealand All-Blacks rugby team. After all the dancing came a hangi feast. This was supposedly meat and veg cooked in an underground oven heated by stones, but it seemed like any other banquet food really. There were large amounts of everything and we had hardly eaten that day, so we ate like crazy. After this was a short trip to the thermal pools and geysers on the other side of the village, then hot chocolate and back to the car park. This was all OK and as I said, very smoothly carried out, but somehow it all seemed a bit wooden and mass-produced.

The following morning we had a deadline to meet. I had read that at the volcanic park Wai O Tapu, the Lady Knox Geyser erupts at exactly 10:15 every day. That seemed worth checking out, so there we were (arriving at about 10:13) to see the ranger add some carbolic soap to a smoky hole in the ground. This is how the geyser was discovered apparently, some field working convicts were washing their clothes in a hot pool and the soap caused a chemical reaction, which led to an eruption. It must have scared them half to death, because the eruption we saw reached about 15m high and looked pretty fierce. After a few minutes of gushing water though, the novelty wears off, so we carried on to see the rest of the volcanic park, which was great. Dorka loved the multicoloured champagne pools and Emma enjoyed collecting pretty rocks.
On the road to Lake Taupo, we stopped off at a thermal pool complex so we could all enjoy ourselves in the water. By the time we finally got to the Lake, it was getting late. Thankfully we had a reservation, so we knew that despite the peak season, we had a nice place assured for our Christmas break.

Click on the cave photo below for the whole album!

Waitomo & Rotorua

Bay of Islands, December 15-20

We had been looking forward to this part of our trip since the very beginning. Many people had told us how great it was, so we had some high expectations. We stayed in one of the many hostels, or as they say here, to assault my basic grammar, “a backpackers”, in the middle of the town of Paihia. The Pepper Tree backpackers had a massive, well equipped and always-busy kitchen and two lounges, one of which was next to our room. This gave Emma and Lara somewhere to play, and it was also a nice place for to work on the blog and have adult talks instead of just going to bed at 9pm. The hostel’s other big attraction was free use of their bikes and sea kayaks. Sea kayaking was another of our unrealistic dreams of New Zealand- paddling happily between icebergs and groups of whales, each with a child on our lap perhaps? Of course, in reality Dorka and I ended up kayaking separately, while the other one babysat, but it was still nice to get out and about, and paddling between the many islands was lots of fun.

Since before this trip, we had been looking forward to Emma swimming with Dolphins, but it turned out to be prohibited for little ones, so instead we took a tour boat to just look at them. This was great. We got right up next to a pod of dolphins three times, and were able to look right down at them from a few metres away. These were bottlenose dolphins, about 2m long and very beautiful. They were also completely wild. The captain was quite an expert, and explained that they were never fed by people, the boats could only approach if the dolphins were not feeding, and that no more than 3 boats at a time could “park” next to them. It was all very regulated. Of course they could swim away at any time, so all the time they were with us, they were probably as curious about us, as we were about them. The trip also included the famous “hole in the rock”, an island with a massive hole right though the middle of it. But the journey there was so bumpy that everyone had trouble concentrating on this marvelous sight.

On a wet and windy Thursday we walked over to the Waitangi treaty grounds. These were pretty well presented, but still not too much fun. There was quite a good Maori singing show though. We forgot to tell Emma what to expect so she was a bit alarmed by all the men shouting the Haka challenge. In case you’ve never seen it, this is warrior challenge where the Maori scream scary words and make strange faces to scare off their enemies. Emma could do quite a good impression of this, complete with wide, rolling eyes and a poked-out tounge. You can see a lot of tounges and wild faces in the carvings too, which were all over the Maori Wakas (war canoes) and the maraes (meeting houses).

On our final morning in Paihia, we decided to have a go at Parasailing, where brave souls dangle from a parachute, attached by a strong cable to a motor boat, which pulls you along. We kept Lara down in the boat of course, but Emma and Dorka went up with the parachute to a height of 900ft or nearly 300 metres. That is extremely high. Emma had a wonderful time, though Dorka was so worried about Emma that she could hardly enjoy it. I also went up, and let me tell you, the view is great! It does feel awfully exposed at first, with absolutely nothing beneath your feet, but you soon get the hang of it!

Now we turned and began our long route south. This would eventually take us onto the South Island and down across it until almost the southern tip of the country. On our first day though we went a little too far perhaps. We took a little detour to view some Kauri trees, which are hard to find south of this region. These are famous for their size and age. Though not as large as a giant redwood, they are still massive trees. The ones we saw were only 300 years old, but they were easily 3 metres in diameter and I would guess 50 metres tall, though actually we couldn’t see the tops clearly in the dense jungle. They towered straight up for about 30 metres before the first branches, which is what made them so popular for ships beams and masts when the first Europeans came. Unfortunately, this led to a huge logging industry that almost drove these magnificent trees to extinction.

Back on the road, we pushed on all the way to the Goat Ísland Marine Reserve. This is an island just a few metres off shore famous for the sea life around it. (Interestingly, the name come from the fact that goats were released onto the island to breed and multiply, to make a source of food for sailors who might be shipwrecked there. How’s that for forward thinking?) The snorkelling itself was unfortunately not very good. There was so much plankton in the water, that it was like swimming in swirling soup. Sometimes there were clear bits and I found myself surrounded by multicoloured fish, but most of the time it was just (fish) soup. Dorka and the girls stayed dry and warm on a glass-bottom boat, which is (as the name suggests) a small boat with a glass bottom for those, who want to see the beautiful marine life without getting wet, but saw even less than I did! But Lara still had a great time climbing and crawling around the boat.

Even though the snorkeling wasn’t very good, we had a very special experience at the Goat Island: Emma was so fascinated by the traditional tattoos of a Maori man, who was just diving there, that she asked Dorka to get talking to him. They had a lovely chat, and at the end they said goodbye in the traditional Maori way: by touching their noses together. This ritual is called sharing the breath of life.

Auckland, New Zealand Dec 11th-14th

Well, we were sad to say goodbye to Australia, but excited to say hello to New Zealand!
We knew that we’d be returning to Auckland again to fly home, so we only spent a few days here now, and most of that was devoted to admin work, such as rearranging flights and also trying to buy a car for the large amounts of driving we expected to do in NZ. We had a bit of a scare when a car we had agreed to buy, turned out to be not what it seemed. We checked with the registration, and found that it didn’t belong to the guy selling it, which means he was probably a dodgy car dealer/stealer. Anyway we decided to avoid it (even though it looked lovely, and was cheap) and go for a long term car-rental instead.

The other highlight of Auckland was my birthday (Andrew’s), and the 40th too! We had loosely planned to celebrate this with a bungee jump, and here we had the perfect opportunity. There is a massive tower in this city which boasts the ultimate jumping experience. I did it and they’re right, it is amazing.


This top heavy tower stands way above the rest of the city’s skyscrapers, and has a jumping platform some 192 m above the hard concrete. (For purists, it’s not technically a bungee jump at all, because you are attached to a vertical wire, to stop you blowing back into the tower or off into somebody’s office, and this wire also slows you down as you approach the ground.) But for me the difference is somehow not-so-important if you still need to step off a perfectly good building at a height where cars and boats look like toys. Perhaps the best moment of the trip so far was arriving on terra firma in a slightly wobbly state, to be hugged by my proud daughter.

Soon we were back on the road again, this time heading North to the Bay of islands, before our big southern adventure. Just an hour North of Auckland, we passed an unexpected treat – the Hundertwasser toilets in a tiny little town called Kewarawa. We love the freakish architecture of Friedrich Hundertwasser in Austria, and it turns out that he lived out his final years in this quiet corner of New Zealand, and found time to create some amazing roof gardens, and probably the most eclectic WC in the world. Apparently he was such a fan of this country, he even designed a new flag for New Zealand, which would represent the Maori culture more then the old commonwealth imagery of the present flag. It was never accepted, but here it is in all it’s glory.

Side note: If you ever want to capture a photograph of a constantly- moving flag, be prepared that it will involve at least 100 attempts, 10 minutes, 8 megapixels, and several impatient family members.