Hamner Springs

We drove into Kaikoura under a cloud. We had been looking forward to this place for ages, because here our trusty Lonely Planet guidebook told us, we could possibly swim with dolphins (a special event that coincided with Dorka’s birthday.) The weather was not on our side, and no sooner had we checked into a hostel, then we learned that most trips were cancelled due to storms over the next few days. We went for a sunset hike down around the rocky cliffs at the southern end of town, where we saw loads more New Zealand Fur seals. This encounter was of a FAR closer kind than previous one. One big old fellow was sitting on a rock with about 8 humans in a ring around him snapping away merrily. I could see his teeth when he yawned, so we kept the children back a little way. These seals seemed to be used to humans, but in a positive way - they just ignored us completely!

The following morning we had a little family meeting and decided to leave Kaikoura. With no dolphin swimming, there seemed to be nothing to keep us. We had heard of a resort with warm springs in the town of Hamner springs a few hours inland, so we went there, and ended up staying several days. It was the first week of January, (Emma had just turned 5 and a half, as you can see) , it was holiday season, and the campsites were all full. We stayed a little way out of town (mistake) but the quite surroundings allowed us to start to prepare for the end of our trip. We cleaned the car and our kit, tried to get our photos in order, and just generally hung around.

One very positive point was that Dorka soon got a call from Kaikoura, that the weather had shifted, and a boat might go the next day, so she drove to the coast again while the girls and I had a day at home. (the campsite was 2 miles out of town, so we couldn’t realistically get there even.) She came back soggy but excited many hours later, with tales of huge pods of dusky dolphins frolicking all around her. It sounded great, though we have no photos of that unfortunately.

We played crazy golf, a first for Emma, which she loved and then we all had a soak in the hot springs. We enjoyed huge meals, and took a drive up to a lookout/make out point above the town and chatted about going home. Somehow, the mood of the trip had changed, and we could all feel it. It might seem dramatic, but 3 months is a long time, and this nomad lifestyle had become the norm for us, and now we had to start planning things for “afterwards.” First though we still had Christchurch to go!

Most amazing sights never seen!

Top 5 things we can’t show you:

1. Waimtomo Glow worm caves in New Zealand– the amazing underground fungus maggots were quite a site, a thousand little spots of light across the roof of the huge caves, but it’s all a dark greenish glow our poor little camera could never catch.

2. The Penguin tour in Bichenot, Tasmania. Emma and I stayed up late to see the tiny fairy penguins scuttle out of the water and waddle up the beach, easing carefully right past our silent tour group and off into the night towards their various dens. They have sharp eyes for seeing at night so flash photography would have blinded them, poor things!

3. Dorka swimming with Dolphins in Kaikoura, New Zealand. Dusky dolphins may be smaller than Bottlenose dolphins but they make up for it, but milling together in huge pods of 200-300 dolphins. Dorka said when she swam among them they were everywhere she looked. The rest of us, and possibly the camera battery, were not there at the time...

4. The Kiwi House in Otorohanga, NZ. This was an awesome little bird park, the highlight of which was of course seeing active Kiwis. These are kept in a specially darkened "reversed" room, where they have the lights on at night and off in the day, so we could view them in comfort at a civilised hour. It was a great to see these large birds digging and stalking about, but it was all pretty dim, so not really camera-friendly.

5. Blackwater rafting underneath Waitomo (again). This is another activity that takes place by torchlight – where you crawl around in caves with a tractor tyre inner tube which you can occassionally stick your bum in and float along with. Trust me , it's much more fun than it sounds, but no place for a camera...

Mount Cook

After a long drive up through the mountains, we couldn’t quite decide whether to risk taking a detour to see the mighty Mount Cook. We did just that of course, but on the way we passed through a tiny town where we filled up with petrol (only just made it, and the towns here were few and far between!) and had a meal in a fantastically kiddie-friendly restaurant, which proved hard to leave. The girls had just begun to play nicely together (a rarity) and we felt they had been cramped up in the car for so long, we could hardly bear to tear them away. The hostel we stayed in that night was the YHA in Twizel a little town built to house workers at a hydroelectric power station, some 60 kilometers from the mountain itself. It was funny actually, because we were hunting around for a hotel, when Dorka shouted that she could see a YHA Hostel logo; Emma asked if she had to pretend to be four years old again. You can see we taught her some important life-lessons here. (For shame, for shame!)

The next morning, bright and early we headed for the mountain, but it was already too late, and starting to cloud over – we learnt that you had to be pretty lucky to catch this mountain in good weather, and we had no such luck! We did do a little walking though – up the path a few kilometers to a lovely spot overlooking a glacial lake. It looks like a big muddy puddle in the photos, but we were high up above it, and each of those chunks of ice floating in the puddle was as big as an office block! Emma and I clambered over rocks, while Lara slept peacefully on Dorka’s back. We headed back to little Twizel for the night, but we came back again the 60 km next morning, hoping once more for a glimpse of Mount Cook.

No such luck – just clouds. We had a lovely view of the clouds though, from the famous Hermitage hotel, a massive structure complete with coffee shops and a restaurant, and even a little museum, which Emma explored by herself while her parents enjoyed some hot chocolate.

After waiting around all morning, and some of the afternoon too, we finally got moving North and East towards the coast. This was one of the epic drives of the trip, through mountain passes and down arrow-straight empty highways. Stopping only to pick up sandwiches, we headed on under an amazing sky. None of us had ever seen such clouds! They rolled and billowed like a child’s drawing and burned with all shades of orange and pink and later purple. As it got dark we found ourselves far from anywhere, so we started asking at each hotel we passed. None had any vacancies, and we began to think about simply driving in shifts all the way to the coast (another 4 or 5 hours away , but then we’d arrive there in the wee small hours, to do what?) In the tiny silent town of Mt Hutt, we found a tiny hostel, where the owner wasn’t even home, but one of the other long-term lodgers showed us around and gave us a room. It was all a little surreal. This unreal feeling continued when, just as we were easing the two sleepy kids into bed, an old fashioned air raid siren went off next door for a couple of minutes. So much for bedtime! (It turned out that this was the call for the local part-time fire brigade boys to come in for a fire-drill or whatever.) This was the weird end to a weird day, well actually the end was sipping tea in front of the telly and listening to tales of sheep shearing in Australia, while we waited for the host to arrive. It was great.

Funny Things we saw on our Travels

This is a mixture of photos we promised to put on the blog trudging back along highways to capture hysterically funny roadsigns, but then it grew into all kinds of things from the trip, that made us smile, really.

Wanaka 1st January 2009

Our arrival in Wanaka was a little damp, but we had a great time here later. There had been a dismal rainstormy drive through what was purported to be some of the most amazing scenery in the country. (The bottom quarter of the mountains was beautiful, all else was cloud!) When we finally arrived at Lake Wanaka in the early afternoon, we were confident of finding a good campsite or something as we had everywhere else. We needed cheering up, so we squandered our afternoon in "puzzling world" on the outskirts of town, where we lost ourselves, (quite literally) in mazes, optical illusions and puzzles for hours. It was great, but when we finally rolled into town around dusk, we were a little surprised to find that it was completely booked out. As a hiking resort town, there were only really the two extremes of accommodation and we couldn’t afford the luxury end, so it was the grand tour of Wanaka’s hostels for us. It is worth mentioning that hostels in New Zealand (and for that matter in Australia too) are fab. Absolutely head and shoulders above the European average. They normally are clean and businesslike, with laundry and cooking facilities, and most have some huge central common room for hanging out in. Oh and they are called „Backpackers” by the way. E.g. „I stayed in this great little backpackers in Melbourne.” Through some really world-class pleading, Dorka managed to convince a hostel/backpackers manager to bump a reservation (looked like they were never going to show anyhow) and give us a room. It was tiny, noisy, freezing but much more comfy than the car, which had seemed to be our most likely place to stay at that point. With the hostel as our base, we explored the lake, ate subway sandwiches by the shore (ate half, dropped half) and planned our hike for the next day. All our plans were cancelled when we realised the next day(after bumping down a rough track for 20 km of rough track) that the trailhead was still another 10 km away, but we would need a 4x4 to cross a river to continue. We sadly jolted our way back down the bumpy 20km, but soon afterwards, as it was actually sunny and dry for a change, we decided to stop and try a short hill walk. It turned out to be a heavy hike of around 4 hours that took us to the summit of Rocky Mountain, which had fantastic views over the lake, and featured lots of pretty hillside meadows a la „sound of Music”. Dorka provided the comic relief on the way down by falling over spectaularly three times in about 3 minutes, the last time she actually rolled right through a hedge (Thank goodness, no injuries were sustained, as Lara had just been moved and put on my back!)
All in all, this was one of our favourite walks, and perhaps one of our favourite days of the entire trip. It was bitterly cold at the top but there were great views. As we walked we told stories and messed around and generally enjoyed being together. Lara was in the Liliputi backpack carrier for several hours and loved it, Emma was collecting stones (shown, right, by order) and was full of fun, and Dorka was full of bruises, but triumphant, so we were all happy. I'm not sure how much of all that comes across in photos, but we took a million snapshots that day - here are some of the highlights.

Milford Sound

Milford Sound, the stunningly beautiful fjord down at the south end of the South Island, is a funny little place.

For one thing, it has some of the most awful weather in a land of already unpredictable weather. I think they average about 50 fine sunny days a year and the rest are less suitable for taking a boat trip to see the crashing waterfalls and the mountains rising straight up out of the sea.

For another thing, it seems impossibly low-key. There is a Milford sound town or village, but it doesn't really suport tourism. Harvesting something (lobsters, mussels perhaps? some sort of seafood anyhow,) is the real industry here. I think they have one (permanently-full) hotel and perhaps a dozen houses for ships' captains and hotel managers and cannery plant officials. I think I also heard that the local fish-canning factory manager was our boat captain, actually. Whether this is a drive to save on housing, I don't know...

For another point, it seems incredibly far away from everything else. To get to Milford Sound you have to drive for two hours from the nearest town, which is exactly what we did. I know this is the sort of drive some Americans make to pick up their newspaper in the mornings, but for me it seemed amazingly isolated. We stayed in Te Anau, in fasct we stayed for whole wet day, before attempting the drive down. It didn't help. We got one of the other 305 days, and couldn't really see the full splendour of Mitre peak (well, the bottom part of it was pretty splendid...)

but apart from that it was still a lovely trip. The 2 -hour drive down (2 hours!, that's like staying in cambridge or somewhere, to visit Big Ben!) was actually lovely, chock-full of glacial valleys and chuckling streams. In one place we even came across a vast meadow of wonderful, tall plants with bell-shaped flowers (sorry, botany never was my strong point) and had to stop for ages getting cute baby photos. It was also pretty easy to see the local wildlife - Keas are large mountain parrots and these guys were everywhere. very sweet, but I've heard their beaks are made for chomping though lamb-bones, so I suppose a scrawny finger like mine would offer no great resistance. This last came to mind when they landed on the car-roof demanding to be fed.

Finally down at the water's edge we entered the hangar-like ship terminal, and arranged a cruise. This was a a little dimal at first, but actually we got right up close to (NZ fur) seals and as for the watefalls, the captain actually nosed the boat underneath one or two until the water was thundering right onto the bow. It was all very dramatic. Due to the weather, the mountain peaks were lost to us, but the steep, smooth cliffs falling straight into the water are pretty impressive by themselves. After cruising for a while, enjoying never ending refills of hot chocolate (nice touch, that - the kiwis are so good at this sort of thing) our time was up, so we exchanged the boat for our car (we tried walking a little but found that apart from the famous Milford Track, there was really nowhere to go,) and headed home to Te Anau. This moment of turning North was the last turning point for us. From here onwards we were headed home (even if we still had a couple of weeks left.)

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...