farewell friends

Sabrina and I dropped Natalie and Christina off at the Christchurch airport for their noon flight – sad! We had a great time with them, and hopefully we didn’t wear them out too much…it was definitely a jam-packed two weeks. We took Sunny back to Nelson, stopping for a little while in Kaikoura to see the seals. The tentative plan is to leave Nelson on the weekend and head ~40km north to find orchard jobs until Christmas, when we’ll be back in Nelson. Neither Sabrina nor I is really convinced we’ll be able to last doing apple thinning, so we’ve also been picking up the job sections of the local papers to see what Plan B could be.

christchurch

We arrived in Christchurch last night, and discovered that the one time we consciously decided not to book a hostel ahead of time was the only time we’ve ever run into one full hostel, let alone a city full of them. So, we finally ended up in a kind of run-down motel/hostel, centrally located but without much else going for it. Obvious solution: spend as much time in the city as possible to avoid hostel. We spent today souvenir shopping at the Arts Centre and a couple other shops near the central Cathedral Square, then went out to a ‘farewell dinner’ at an English pub (after striking out at several other restaurants which looked better on paper than in person…).

gutbuster

On our way out of Dunedin, we stopped by Baldwin Street, the steepest street in the world with an average gradient of 1:3.41, and the steepest section at 1:2.86…for all you engineers out there. After a few minutes of deliberation, we took poor Sunny up the hill – there wasn’t even any debate about us walking up! She just barely made it…it was one of the free adrenaline rushes to be found every now and then just a tiny bit off the beaten path in NZ. Going down was just as interesting as up, and turning around at the top probably takes top prize. Somehow Christina’s managed to pull the short straw on driving – the one-way rail/car bridge, the one-way one-kilometer unlighted rock tunnel in Milford Sound, Baldwin Street…

There’s a ‘gutbuster’ foot race up and down Baldwin Street every year. It’s not on my fairly lengthy NZ to-do list.

speight's

We booked a Cadbury’s/Speight’s tour combo package, so our next mission after chocolate was beer. Speight’s is the unofficial beer of the South Island, and the main factory’s been in Dunedin for ages, as they’d say around here. We miscalculated the time/distance factor w/Cadbury’s, and arrived halfway through the tour, but still got to see the only commercial kauri wood gyles in use today – beat that! Oh, okay, so maybe the sampling at the end was the highlight, especially since we got to pour out own.

cadbury world

We arrived in Dunedin last night and rested up for today’s activities. First up: a tour of Cadbury World, guided by purple overall-clad workers, very Wonka-like. I’m fascinated by any kind of assembly-line factory viewing, so I would have been satisfied with just that, but we also got lots of samples along the way. We also saw a 2-story chocolate waterfall – impressive, but kind of messy.

jetting around qtown

We stopped in at Queenstown on our way from Milford Sound, and Christina and I went on a jetboat ride on the Shotover River. I’d wanted to go on a jetboat for a while, and it came pretty close to living up to my high expectations. We bounced around on the surprisingly rough lake for a little while, then headed out to the river and maneuvered around sharp curves and through ankle-deep water for 50km round-trip.

After the boat, I met up with Trish (from the Lemon Tree in Blenheim) while Sabrina, Natalie and Christina tried to go on the gondola/luge, but it was out of order for the day.

milford deep

Included in our cruise was a visit to ‘Milford Deep,’ an underwater observatory. We descended 10 meters of stairs, starting from a floating platform, and ended up in a room with 360-degree views of the sound, including gardens of endangered black coral – that’s what’s in the picture, even though it looks whitish. The gardens are on pulleys, so if the salinity gets too low from rain around the 10m mark, they drop the gardens down.

moody, magical milford

When we arrived at the wharf to catch our cruise, it was rainy and gray. We were lucky, though – shortly after boarding, the first patch of blue sky started to peek out, and by the middle of the cruise it was mostly nice weather all around. We cruised around the sound, and out by the opening into the Tasman Sea.

sea lions! dolphins!

The Milford Sound cruise lived up to its expectations – in addition to the penguins, we saw a sea lion colony and a bunch of dolphins. Unfortunately we were all so excited about the dolphins that none of the pictures actually came out, but we did see some.

penguins!

I got to add to my penguin checklist today – species #7, I believe, after the Antarctica/S. Georgia trip earlier this year. This one’s the Fjordland Crested Penguin – the rarest penguin species in the world, with only about 2000 left. We saw two of them in different locations, and this one put on a show for us, hopping in and out of the water and diving close to shore.

go chasing waterfalls

I think I’ve seen more waterfalls in the past two days than I have in the rest of my life put together - really. On our way into Milford yesterday, there were waterfalls every few hundred yards for about 15-20 kilometers. Today, we went on a Red Boat cruise on the sound (with, incidentally, an excellent barbeque lunch!), and saw even more…very, very close up. Close enough to get quite wet, but at least they warned us ahead of time.

wanaka

We’re covering some serious ground today – we made a mid-afternoon stop in Wanaka, where we booked Milford Sound cruises for tomorrow and called to warn our hostel we’d be arriving late – they weren’t thrilled, but we can’t exactly stay anywhere else since Milford’s far, far removed from all civilization.
So, we’re off to Milford now, passing by Queenstown and Te Anau en route.

one-lane rr bridge

There’s a ridiculous number of one-way bridges here, which are scary enough on their own. But here’s a new twist – a one-lane car AND train bridge. Oh, and just to make it more exciting, it should be pretty long. Long enough so you can’t see to the end to see if another car – or, God forbid, a train – is coming in the other direction. And just for bonus points, let’s not have any signals/gates either!

Welcome to Kiwi-style driving, Christina…

bluebridge

Next stop: the Blue Pools. This is the only place I actually stopped last time; I saw the signs for the two waterfalls we just visited, but was on a mission to find a campsite before nightfall (status: failed). Anyway, after some serious convincing that it would be worth the 25 minute return walk, we headed out to see the Blue Pools. We conquered the swingbridge, but unfortunately the rain made the pools kind of murky, spoiling the effect somewhat. Still, the colors were nice.

fantail falls

This is Fantail Falls – I actually know the name for sure this time. As you can see, it is now raining even harder. We were already soaked from the first stop, so the subsequent ones aren’t causing too many complaints…and these falls are only about 2 minutes from the parking lot, so that’s nice.

Anyway, Objects In Picture Are Larger Than They Appear – as mentioned, it was raining, so we weren’t really up for the trek across the flats to get closer to the falls.

thunder creek falls

The girls are being good sports – I’m driving this stretch, and I warned them in advance we’d be stopping at all my favorite photo op spots along route 6…this one is, I think, Thunder Falls. There are a ton of roadside pull-offs with great views just a few minutes down a trail, and this was the first one we encountered. It’s raining pretty hard today, which is not great for the walk, but it does makes it look like we’re trekking through real live rainforests.

fox glacier

No, that’s not the glacier – just an ‘iceberg’ melting near the parking lot. We just stopped by here on our way out of the glacier region, and I was once again amazed by the brilliant blues and greens of the…puddles in the parking lot. Seriously. Okay, so they’re a little big to be considered puddles, but they were definitely in the parking lot. For a picture, see my Picasa albums (lotuselise99).

franz joseph

Sunny coasted into Franz Glacier Township on empty, and we filled up just in time at the exorbitant price of NZ$1.92 per liter. We had enough time to do the Peter’s Pool walk to see the glacier before it got dark. Everyone’s kind of on strike about walking after Tongariro (Sabrina’s vicariously sore), so I ‘might’ have underestimated the distance when I told them about the walk, but it only took about 10 minutes and I think everyone agreed the view was worth it.

We’re staying in a nice self-contained unit at a hostel here called Glowworm Cottage. We’re too tired to go check and see if we can find any of the little namesake critters, though.

nelson market

We rolled into Nelson around 10 this morning, and I took Christina and Natalie to the Bead Gallery (10,000+ kinds of beads!) to get bone pendants, paua, jade, greenstone and other NZ souvenirs. I dropped them off at the city market after the bead gallery, and Sabrina and I worked on getting rid of some stuff from our backpacks – we left some stuff at her friends’ place, the same ones who are car-sitting for me.

Sabrina & I picked up Natalie and Christina on our way out of Nelson. Our plan is to drive down the West Coast to Franz Joseph Glacier tonight.

sunny

Our rental car is a Nissan Sunny, and since we need to talk to her to encourage her when she’s trying to go up hills or passing other cars (she apparently doesn’t have a very big engine, and is very loaded down with all our stuff), we’ve taken to calling her by her name.

Check out Sunny’s packing job – it’s one of Sabrina’s hidden talents. In the back seat, we have two more daypacks, plus all our travel books & brochures and maybe even a bag of food.

We got super insurance on the car – anyone can drive it, and there’s no deductible for any damage – so we’re all set for a very big adventure!

wining in marlborough

We picked up our rental car in Picton this morning, then lost about an hour trying to get the back window fixed at the rental agency’s garage (no luck). Today’s plan: wine & food. I volunteered to be DD for the day since I lived in the area for about a month when I was doing vineyard work. It turns out Sabrina knows “Winery Row” better than I do, but I did score points as a tour guide with the boutique chocolate factory (w/samples, of course) and Prenzel, a distillery with unlimited tastings of liqueur, dessert sauces and various flavored oils and dressings.

We hit about seven or eight of the ~25 wineries along Rapaura Road, then I drove my sleeping passengers out to the vineyard where I worked in Seddon. Natalie woke up to see it, and feigned interest – I’ll admit it, it looks just like all the others. It’s crazy to see the difference from August; the fields are a fluffy spring-green blanket of new leaves now.

After a pub meal, we relaxed at Watson’s Way, a great little hostel in Renwick, and shared a bottle of Summer Riesling from the Wairau River winery – my reward for driving!

movin' on

I’ve had a lot of fun on the North Island, but I’m really excited about showing off ‘my’ South Island to the girls. We went back and forth about ferry vs. plane (they’re about the same price) and settled on the ferry at the last minute. We were pretty lucky with the weather, and the crossing wasn’t too rough, but it was a little too cold and windy to really enjoy the view from anywhere but an inside lounge.

We’re planning to spend our first day in the Blenheim area, then head around the island counter-clockwise, heading as far south as Milford South and then up to Christchurch. We’re picking up a rental car in Picton, so we’ll be on our own schedule and plans are pretty loose – it’ll be fun to see what we end up doing!

Happy Thanksgiving to all those back at home! Enjoy your meal – we tried to get a turkey to make our own US-style feast, and the cheapest one (smaller than your average chicken) was $55!

te papa

We spent this morning at Te Papa, the national museum in Wellington. I’m not really big on museums, but it was still pretty interesting and I could even have spent some more time there. It’s well done, with interactive exhibits on a wide range of topics – natural history, Maori culture, arts and industry.

welly

Our bus pulled into Wellington in the late afternoon, and we checked into the Base Wellington hostel (associated with ACB in Auckland). Sabrina knew one of the people working at the front desk, so we got upgraded to a ‘girls-only’ floor with an Aveda gift pack, hotel linens and free champagne…not the hostel experience we’ve been used to for the past week or so!

After checking in, we followed our tour guide (Sabrina, who spent August & September in the city) to Mac’s Brewery and took the cable car up to the botanical gardens. We had dinner at legendary Burger Fuel (I liked the fries, but the burgers weren’t as amazing as I’d heard) and headed out on the town later on with some of Sabrina’s friends and people from our bus.

gumboot throwing

We had a long drive from National Park to Wellington today, with a ‘cultural stop’ along the way. Every other town in New Zealand tries to lay claim to being the World Capital of _________, and today we stopped at the World Capital of Gumboot Throwing. I don’t even remember the name of the town, so it’s not really great branding. Anyway, we each had to try our hand at gumboot throwing before our driver would continue on.

tongariro tramping

Natalie, Christina and I decided to do the 18-km Tongariro Crossing hike despite (or, in my case, because of) the warnings of the guide that it would be a grueling one. When Sabrina, Lucy and I were on our road trip down to Wellington, we drove up the mountain roads near the park, but it was in the dark so we had to make do with a photo in front of a poster of the park at our hostel. This time, we went for the real thing.

The first half of the walk – the uphill part – wasn’t too bad. At the top, we had a great view of the Emerald Pools (photo – note all the teeny tiny people by the pools, and you might get an idea of how steep parts of the trail were!), which we enjoyed for a few minutes until we discovered there was no good way to get down. We had to half run and half slide down the steepest part of the mountain. After that, we trekked through some snow while sweating in shorts and t-shirts, then pulled out our extra layers when we got soaked with cold rain a few kilometers later.

Then…about 5K of gradual downhill track, just steep enough to really screw with our knees. We realized halfway through this section that we’d misestimated the distance left, and had to really book it in order to get back before the bus left us there. We arrived just as it was pulling away – good thing, since the only place we had cell reception was up at the peak and no one wanted to run back up there!

Sabrina did a short sightseeing flight over the crossing, and looked for us while her pilot told her how crazy we were to walk instead of fly.

We’re staying at an awesome brand-new hostel which was built as ski staff lodging. The main building has, appropriately enough, a cozy alpine ski lodge feel to it, and a big flat-screen TV which is currently being used to show off all the Stray skydiving DVDs.

skydive taupo

Sabrina and Natalie are still buzzing from their skydives six and a half hours ago – Natalie was the first to go at 12,000 feet and Sabrina jumped out at 15,000. They both sprung for the DVDs, so we got to live vicariously through them without spending all that money! I’d love to go skydiving sometime, but in the middle of a three-month unemployment stretch is probably not the time to do it.

Christina and I stayed behind in Taupo and went for a walk, got food for dinner, and just relaxed at the hostel.

Small world: on the Stray bus to Taupo, I was talking to a girl from Nottingham whose boyfriend was a lawyer at Capital One’s UK office up until a few months ago.

mud monster

The first half of today was spent in Rotorua, where Sabrina and I wandered around town and went shopping while Natalie and Christina went Zorbing and to the Polynesian Spa just as Sabrina, Lucy and I did on our visit in late July.

I stopped by the town’s central park, which I’d missed last time since we got here in the late afternoon. It’s a great free activity, with thermal soaking pools, bridges over steamy lakes, and bubbling mud pits. The boiling mud was hypnotizing to watch.

hangi & hongi

After Waitomo, we headed to the much-hyped Stray Maori Cultural Experience in Maketu, hosted by a Maori man known as Uncle Boy. We’d heard great things about it from our driver, so everyone on the bus opted for the overnight activity which would include a hangi (traditional earth-oven feast), haka (war dance/chant ) lesson for the guys and poi lessons for the girls (the white ball-on-string things in the picture are poi), and an overnight stay in a ‘marae,’ or Maori meeting place.

Things began alright, with Uncle Boy demonstrating the hongi (‘sharing breath’ nose-touch greeting) and welcoming us to his place. Then it all went downhill. He told us how we weren’t really at a marae, we were just at his money-making tourist accommodation! Uncle Boy shared all sorts of gems throughout the night – how he tries to talk anyone considering any sort of multi-cultural marriage out of it, why he thinks Maoris should stop wasting their time learning their ‘dead’ language and go for Mandarin or Cantonese instead, how he threw out all of his wife’s belongings when she went to Australia on vacation and doesn’t understand why she’s angry, how he evades taxes, and that he makes all the dancers volunteer their time each and every day without providing them any part of the NZ$65 each of us paid.

The scary part was that it seemed like everyone except the four of us thought the whole experience was great and loved Uncle Boy. I’d love to chalk the group’s obliviousness up to translation problems, but since half our group is from the US or UK, I don’t think I can.

spel(l)unking

We arrived in Waitomo, in King Country, around midday. Natalie, Christina and I opted for the ‘Spellbound’ walking & boat tour while Sabrina went off to wait in vain for the quadbike adventure people to show up.

The first cave we went in was a glowworm cave. We turned off our headlamps, and constellations of blue glowworms appeared on the ceiling of the cave, then we went on a silent, dark ‘boat ride’ on the underground river. I’m not sure what I was envisioning, but it wasn’t an inflatable boat propelled by our guide moving her hand along a rope strung across the ceiling of the cave. It was cool, though, and an unseen roaring waterfall somewhere ahead of the boat’s path added some suspense.

The second cave we went into had a bunch of bones in it from animals that had fallen through the tomos, or holes, from the land above. Some were domestic animals, but we also saw the remains of a moa, a bird about twice the size of an ostrich, extinct about 2,000 years ago.

Unfortunately, we got back too late from our adventure to see the angora rabbit shearing show down the road, but we got to see some videos of it later on from members of the bus group who made it there.

flying fox

We’re staying at the Raglan Surf School Hostel, and since none of the four of us are doing a surfing lesson or wanted to do the walk (we’re tired from yesterday’s hike), we decided to play on the hostel’s flying fox and ropes course. This flying fox (zipwire) is a little more impressive than the one Sabrina, Lucy and I found near Taupo. We’re practicing it now so we can try it out later on tonight – it’s apparently fun in the dark, too, especially since there are glowworms here.

After several rides each on the flying fox, we headed up the hill to the low-ropes course. We beat all of the segments except the telephone-pole-suspended-by-wire one…grr.

hangin' loose in raglan

Today’s main destination was Raglan surf beach, apparently home of the or a world-famous left-hand surf break. A surfing lesson is on my NZ to-do list, but it’s still cold out, so I will not be finding out what that means today.

in hot water

Stray is definitely living up to its claim to be a company for active travelers…kind of not really the best thing at the moment, since none of us got much sleep last night, but I guess we’ll appreciate it later. After Cathedral Cove, we headed to Hotwater Beach, which is apparently one of several beaches with the same name and, presumably, similar thermal properties.

We all pitched in (some more than others, I was one of the lazier ones) to dig a big hole in the sand, which filled up with water so hot we had to add buckets upon buckets of cold seawater to make it bearable, and even then only parts of the pool were ‘habitable.’ Sabrina tried to verify the bus driver’s claim that you could cook shellfish in the hot water vents, but no luck there.

Back at the hostel, our bus driver cooked us all a delicious barbeque. Not surprisingly, the four of us crashed earlier than most of our busmates.

cathedral cove

We stopped at a fresh fruit & vege stand along the way, one of the benefits of being on the North Island – there’s a bigger variety of stuff grown here, and it’s ready earlier in the season.

In the afternoon, we reached our hostel in Hahei, threw our stuff in a room, and Natalie and Christina and I set off for Cathedral Cove.

The cove is named after a huge natural limestone arch, but the weather wasn’t great when we were on the beach, so this picture from the (rather strenuous) walk down turned out better than the ones down below even though it doesn’t show the arch.

strays

Sabrina managed to win all four of us free North Island bus passes with Stray, through a weekly trivia contest in Wellington. She’s won it six times in total, and I’m pretty sure the company will be looking for a new location soon so she can’t continue her streak!

Stray’s one of a few ‘hop on, hop off’ backpacker bus companies, where you can stay on the same bus for your whole trip if you want to do it in the minimum number of days, or just catch the next one if you want to stay longer anywhere. We’re relatively short on time - Natalie and Christina have exactly two weeks for both islands – so we’re staying on, and doing the North Island in seven days. We’ll be going to some places Sabrina and I have already been, and some new ones. Today’s first stop was Mt. Eden, an extinct volcano that affords 360-degree views of Auckland. The weather’s not great today, though, so the collapsed volcanic cone itself was more impressive than the urban panorama.

visitors

Natalie and Christina were confused when they saw us at the airport at 5 am this morning – we’d given them very careful instructions about where, when and how to meet us in downtown Auckland. They got through customs so fast we almost missed them – guess we’re used to things taking a bit longer in the States.

We took the SuperShuttle into downtown Auckland, sharing it with several very chatty examples of the type of American tourist that makes us tempted to claim Canadian heritage more often than we already do.

The shuttle dropped us off at ACB hostel, which, if you’re a faithful Counting Sheep reader, you’ll remember as my first ‘employer’ in New Zealand – where we started our housekeeping jobs on my 26th birthday.

We camped out in the TV room to repack our bags (Natalie was playing Santa Claus, bringing us stuff from our parents and things we’d ordered online) and catch up some more sleep, then we had breakfast and headed outside to meet our bus.

cheapskates

On our flight up to Auckland, Sabrina and I were debating the merits of various area hostels when one of us jokingly proposed just staying in the airport to save money. And that is why we are sitting in the nearly-empty Auckland International Airport at 1 am. Our flight from Nelson arrived at 4 pm, and we wouldn’t have made it into the city before the IEP office and most stores closed, so given our general aversion to Auckland and aside from the bed/shower thing, there wasn’t much of a reason to go into the city.

We killed the first hour visiting every rental car agency at the airport, searching for deals for the South Island. The next hour was spent at the iSite calling all the little rental agencies. We people-watched for a few more hours, then I made a McDonald’s cheeseburger & seaweed wrap (better than it sounds, actually) since it was the only place still open. TV watching and DVDs on my computer came next, and I think it’s finally just time to try to get some sleep, so we’ve staked out a place in the lounge behind the sushi restaurant. There are a couple of other backpackers sleeping there, and nobody’s even pretending they just happened to drift off – we’re talking sleeping bags and all, here.

flatting

I went over to see Sabrina’s friends’ new flat today. It turns out it’s right behind a set of flats that Arvind owns – if only I’d known that, I wouldn’t have gotten so lost trying to find it!
Their flat is great – two stories, and backing up to council property so it’s all open space behind it. They even have a little waterfall and pond on their back deck. Only problem is, it’s unfurnished, right down to the lack of a refrigerator (at least the light bulbs are still there).

halloween part 2

As I was leaving the hostel, I realized I’d lost my car keys. I wasn’t sure if I’d taken them with me when I went into town, and thought it was easily possible that they’d fallen out of the fairly shallow pockets of the hoodie I’d been wearing. We searched the room and didn’t find them, so I called Jane and told her what was up. Fortunately the first thing I did when I got my car was make a copy of the only key, so the original was at Pujjis. I was more upset about the thought of losing my keychain and the luggage/computer keys on there, but nothing was irreplaceable, I just felt bad about making Jane bring the key by. She was coming into town in the early afternoon, so I decided to wait until then to get it from her.

Sabrina, Anne and I went for a walk in town and stopped by the two bars we’d been to last night to see if they had the keys, but they weren’t open.

Jane came by, dropped off my key, and I headed straight for the locksmith to get another copy made. Of course, right after I got back to the Pujjis Sabrina found the keys underneath the bunk bed…but it can’t hurt to have a couple of spares.