3rd December 2009 After a very sound night’s sleep, no doubt brought on by the vast amounts of pure New Zealand air we breathed yesterday we were all set to explore another of fiordland’s sounds. Milford Sound is the more touristy of the two fiords with numourous operators offering a variety of cruises. It is also smaller than Doubtful and younger in terms of the glacier which formed it. It is one of NZ’s biggest tourist attractions with over half a million visitors a year. ...
1st December 2009 A travelling day today, getting ourselves from Kingston to Manapouri, ready for the Doubtful Sound trip tomorrow. It wasn’t a great distance to cover, only about 2 hours or so, but it took us past Te Anau, so we stopped off there for a look around, and to book some accomodation for tomorrow night to return to after we’ve been to Doubtful Sound. Te Anau is a fairly small place, and there isn’t a great deal here - a few holiday parks, supermarket and outdoor clothing shops seems to be about it. It really is a town to base yourself in to go and explore the Fiordland area. We had a look around a few of the outdoor clothing shops, and seeing as it has been so cold of late, and that we’re out on boats a lot in the next couple of days, we kitted ourselves out with a couple of Merino wool t-shirts - hopefully they’ll be warm! ...
30th November 2009 Queenstown is surrounded by the soaring heights of the Remarkables mountain range and the meandering coves of Lake Wakatipu, but is mostly famous for being NZ’s adventure capital, dreaming up ever more weird and wonderful ways for you to throw yourself off stuff and interact with your (albeit spectacular) environment. Unfortunately, we’ve had another cloudy and fairly cold day today for our trip to Queenstown, so initially the views of the mountain ranges were shrouded from view by the low cloud. ...
21st November 2009 A grey day greeted us when we opened the curtains this morning. We could hardly make out the cranes along the docks and certainly couldn’t see the other side of the harbour. Obviously a day for indoor activities, so we made our way to the Wellington City Museum. A former bond store where goods were stored before shipping, the first area we entered had been restored to look as it would have done in the 1800s. ...
22nd November 2008 Time for us to leave the North Island and take the early morning ferry to Picton. The ferry we caught used to be called the Pride of Cherbourg (you could still read its name on the side) and is the biggest passenger ferry in New Zealand. After such an early start we spent most of the initial part of the journey catching up on some sleep, but once the ferry started to move into Marlborough Sounds with its spectacular scenary and lush green backdrop we moved up onto deck to take a look. It was a brief look though since the weather hadn’t exactly warmed up since yesterday! ...
24th November 2009 Our first night wasn’t a roaring success. We had parked the van on a slight incline without realising and spent most of the night with our feet slightly elevated making it a little uncomfortable. Also because we were undercover, we were much more sheltered than we would normally be, so found that we were quite warm in the night. However, at least today was sunny and we were planning to head south down the west coast and find somewhere a little more remote to stay the night. There are several Department of Conservation campsites which have toilet facilities but little else and are set in some wonderful locations. ...
20th November 2009 Wellington is quite a compact city, not unlike Cardiff. After a wander around the centre this morning to find the information centre and some internet access, we took the city’s historic Cable Car up to the beautiful Botanic Gardens which overlook the harbour. The Botanic Gardens cover 25 hectares and are a unique landscape of protective native forest, exotic trees, plant collections and seasonal displays. We arrived at the top and took in the view over the central business district from the Cable Car station, before making our way to the Cable Car museum. This small museum details the history of the cable cars that have transported people between the harbour and hills in Wellington for over 100 years. It also has a fully restored original cable car known as a ‘relentless red rattler’ and a fully restored grip car. It also showed examples of private cable cars that people use to get to their homes on the hills. ...
19th November 2009 There’s something old-fashioned about travelling by train, something reminiscent of past times. Not the mad-dash commuter trains of the UK, but long, slow journeys where the train gently rocks its way through the countryside and the journey becomes the whole point rather than just a prelude to something else. New Zealand only has three cross country lines and only one on the north island, the Overlander from Auckland to Wellington. ...
16th November 2009 We left Hahei for the last time this morning to once again head for Cormorandal Town. This time we took a more direct route across the mountains. Whilst this was mainly an unsealed road, the route was much quicker and offered different views to what we’d seen yesterday, climbing and snaking as it does through native bushland. We were also able to stop at Waihu Falls, a small waterfall up in the mountains, which was in full flow after heavy rain last night. ...
10th November 2009 After yesterday’s disappointing weather which prevented us from doing the Alpine crossing we woke up this morning to a glorious day - typical! I’d been thinking about doing a skydive for a while - something which had been brought back to the surface again after chatting to a guy in Hamilton a couple of days ago who had done one in Taupo. He raved about how great it had been, and it turns out that Taupo is one of the cheapest places you can do it. And we just so happened to be passing that way this morning. I’d already decided which of the three operators to go with, so we called in there about 10:10 this morning, to find that they had some slots free on the 10:30 flight. There were two drop heights available - 12,000 feet or 15,000 feet. Someone we met on the rafting day yesterday had recommended doing the 15,000 foot one as you get an extra 15 seconds or so of freefall, so that’s the one I opted for. With the decision made it was off to get kitted up, meet the guy who was going to be my tandem and board the plane. ...
9th November 2009 Originally we were planning to walk the Tongariro Pass today, reputedly one of the best one day hikes in New Zealand, however, the weather was against us, with low cloud and rain showers. So we needed an alternative for the day. This morning, we took a short walk along the Tongariro river in Turangi, a town which is the self proclaimed trout fishing capital of the world. There were a few fishermen out searching for the trout, which are plentiful in this lovely river. ...
7th November 2009 A slow start this morning as we’re in Hamilton for a couple of nights and everything we want to do is very nearby. A five minute walk away from the hostel is Hamilton Gardens. We headed here after breakfast and after being given some pointers of things to look at by the very helpful lady at the information desk we made our way into the gardens. We started in the Feature Gardens, which are made up of a number of different showcase gardens from around the world. These started with a very Zen Japanese garden, following onto a traditional English garden with wide boarders and quite wild planting. ...
6th October 2009 Up and about early this morning to a beautiful day. It had been raining hard in the night which seemed to have cleared the air and the day was looking promising, which was good news as we had a long drive ahead of us from Kaihu right down to Hamilton. We attempted to finish the jigsaw puzzle over breakfast but failed, so left it for Rachel and Claire to hopefully complete. ...
5th November A fair old drive on the cards today, to reach Henderson Bay we had driven up the east coast, so to get back down south we wanted to travel the west coast which is supposed to be wilder and more savage than the east. John at the hostel had told us about a small car ferry that crossed the Hokianga Harbour from Kohukohu to Rawene, and besides saving us some travelling time going round, this seemed like a fun thing to do, so we weaved along snaking moutain roads to catch the midday ferry. ...
30th October 2009 After our chat with Trystan last night we decided to extend our car hire until 19th November as it is just easier to get around by car, it also gives us access to some of the smaller and more intimate hostels which are a little more off the beaten track. Unfortunately we have to return the car to Auckland, but this also gives us the opportunity to take the train to Wellington, which is something we had wanted to do, but didn’t think we’d get the chance since we’d miss too much in between. So actually this way we get the best of both worlds. ...
31st October 2009 We were woken early this morning by the sun streaming in through the French windows which lead from our room directly onto the deck. A sunshine breakfast outside followed. Since the weather was so nice we decided to follow the river walk up to Whangarei Falls, reputedley the most photographed waterfalls in NZ. Starting at AH Reed Kauri Park we walked along the treetop boardwalk among the ancient and massive Kauri trees before following the river up to the falls. The foilage alongside the river contained a lot of ferns and yukkas that we would see in gardens back home. ...
25th/26th October 2009 Attending church on a Sunday morning is something of a Rarotongan tradition. Each of the local churches welcomes the tourists to come into their morning service and listen to the wonderful Maori singing, followed by a feed at the community centre. The church we attended in Titikaveka was a lovely building built in the eighteen hundreds, the pulpit area was filled with local flowers and the windows were plain looking out onto the lush green hills behind. The church is a perfect square representing the fact that before God there is no colour or creed, simply human beings. The singing was superb and truly raised the roof and true to form I got quite emotional when they started (it’s something about choirs!). The entire service was conducted in Maori, apart from the lesson which was spoken first in Maori, then English. After the service, the Church secretary thanked a few special guests for coming, one of which was the Queens Representative on the Cook Islands, so we’d been at church with royalty (well almost!). ...
27th October 2009 After a good night’s kip at the SKylodge we walked 5 minutes up the road to a cafe to grab some breakfast. The weather is a bit of a shock here this morning, quite cold and windy, and by the time we’d had breakfast and got back to the hostel to get our bags it was raining - just like home. We caught the bus into Auckland downtown before switching to the the Link bus service to get us out to Parnell where we are staying for a few nights. ...
28th October 2009 The weather was looking much better today so we decided to make the most of it and get up early and catch the first ferry across to Rangitoto Island. Rangitoto sits just off the Auckland coast and is a unique volcanic island with a fascinating landsacpe of rugged lava crops, native bush and sandy coves. These days there is no permanent population living on the island and it is a public nature reserve. ...