New Zealand - On Route to Milford Sound

The road to Milford Sound winds up though the mountains, with a huge drop next to it and inclines that had Ben wishing for a two-and-a-half gear as we chugged along. Freezing fog added to the drama of the place and there was a lot of stopping to admire views and venturing along tracks to find lakes, waterfalls and a forest which felt like it was enchanted. It seemed as if fairies were bound to come out to play if we just sat quietly for long enough!



It's really cold now. We're wearing practically all of our clothes all at the same time! Marge (the campervan) found it all a bit much this morning and we had to push her into the sun and let her warm up for half an hour before she'd start! I know how she feels, at night when we're all tucked up in our duvet it's fine, but in the morning it's really hard to get out of bed and midnight wees are a nightmare!

New Zealand - Catlins Coast - Curio Bay

I just went to have a shower but the door was locked because "a sealion was trying to get in there"! It really does feel like it's us on their territory and not the other way around, which is the way it should be. So this sealion is just wandering around the campsite - cool :0)



There's a 'petrified forest' in one of the bays where a forest has quite literally (in the correct sense of the word) been turned to stone. Ben however confused all the other tourists looking at plant fossils (which are really rare apparently) by standing holding his jumper over his head and taking photos of seaweed! It does look kind of spacey though, so at least I didn't think he was mental :0)

It's an incredible place. There are often little hector dolphins in the bay but we haven't seen any because it's a bit rough for them today, which makes me a little bit sad. But the sight of the waves crashing onto the rocks kind of makes up for it. I've somehow managed to resist the compulsion to run into the spray (proving that it is no longer the case that whenever I'm near the sea I can't resist getting soaked right though to my knickers, which my Dad tells me was always the case when I was little - mind you the water's bloody cold!)



One side of the campsite is all jagged cliffs with crashing waves and the other side is swathes of golden beaches. There's no chance of a grumpy guy with a scary-looking dog telling you to be quiet, so I thought it would be the perfect place to hold - Geekfest Goes Down Under - what do you think?!

New Zealand - Catlins Coast - Top Track

Heather:
We're now travelling along the south coast of the South Island, so we're really far south! It's pretty remote; a couple of hours drive to a supermarket, no mobile phone reception, very few places to buy petrol. Farming and tourism seem to be the only industries. We've hardly seen another soul.



Most of the hiking that we've been doing has been on tracks managed by the Department of Conservation, so they're really well looked after, sign-posted and kind of difficult to lose. So we decided to do something a little bit different. We did a two day walk called the Top Track, it was over private land on much rougher terrain and was a bit of an adventure :0) We had a booklet with instructions to follow and the way was marked with all sorts of brightly coloured way-markers, including old wellies on sticks, I felt like we were on a treasure hunt! The walk took us along deserted beaches, through forest, along cliff tops and over farm-land (I got a bit scared by the cows), then to our treasure... the Top Bus! An old bus that had been dragged to the top of a hill, that we spent the night in, before walking back a different route the next day.



Ben:
There are more photos of the Catlins coast here

New Zealand - Dunedin

The European New Zealand settlers demonstrate their lack of imagination, yet again, in the development of a city which is, this time, supposed to be Scottish. Well, there are lots of old buildings (which is pretty rare for New Zealand) and the weather's crap, so I guess it is a bit similar to Scotland! There's really very little I can say about the place, it seemed nice enough but it was Sunday so it was completely deserted.

We ended up spending most of the afternoon in an Internet place, because it was cheap! But the experience has slightly damaged me. It was like being in a teenage boy's bedroom! It was full of boys with poor personal hygiene, lacking social skills, who clearly don't get out much, playing computer games. I felt like I'd been transported to 'Teenager World' and was completely invisible because as Ben put it "geeks don't notice girls"! Using the toilet was quite a traumatic experience too but I think that's enough about that.

New Zealand - Otago Peninsula

Yellow-eyed penguins are one of the rarest types of penguin in the world and... we saw them! We went into these hides which looked like something from World War I and got really close to these penguins who were just standing under trees looking scruffy! They moult at this time of year and so can't go in the water for a few weeks until all their old feathers have fallen out and the new ones have been coated in some sort of oil that they produce to make them properly waterproof. Hence the standing around under trees looking scruffy! Bless them :0)



We saw little blue penguins too, but to be honest the sight wasn't quite as impressive as they don't come ashore until dusk, by which time all we actually saw were little dark shapes waddling up the beach! We did see a huge sea lion though, which is different to a seal because they're bigger, the males dark and the females light in colour. They have flatter noses and walk differently plus they have external ears (see I do learn some things, just not about boring old rocks!) Unfortunately by the time Ben got his camera out the sea-lion had decided he'd had enough and hauled his ass back into the water and swam off. He did get some shots of the huge endangered albatrosses that flew overhead though :0)



Obviously there's been more hiking too and it all seems to finally be paying off as both Ben and I have had to make new holes in our belts to keep our tatty old trousers up - whoop whoop!!

Ben:
There are more photos here.

New Zealand - Moeraki Boulders

Heather:
Back to the coast again and on to Moeraki Village. We passed through the strange town of Oamaru on route, which had one street which seemed to be a bit of a time-warp with old buildings, traditional crafts and people in Victorian clothing whilst the rest of the town was tatty and smelt of sheep poo!

Moeraki Village, for some reason, has loads of Welsh street names. It's a bit weird walking down Cardiff Road and seeing signs for Tenby and Glamorgan Street. But that's not why we're here. It's all about the boulders! There are these big round boulders on the beach here. I think this is going to be another one of those occasions where Ben's photos are going to do a better job at painting the picture than me. Basically there are these big spherical rocks caused by some boring geological process that I can't remember (I just asked Ben and his description of "some sort of stuff crystallizes and forms them in certain conditions" probably isn't much more help!). Anyway they were fun to play on and make for some pretty interesting photos :0)



For the last few days we've been "freedom camping", which basically means that we've parked up over night in spots without any facilities (it's allowed believe it or not). It saves money but means we haven't had a shower for days! It's a bit like when we were working at the festivals, except then everyone else smelt too! I've started to fantasize about being clean. We bought some cheap DVDs from the supermarket and are planning to watch them on the laptop. I love how all this makes me appreciate the things I usually take for granted :0) It's funny how in the course of a few days my perspective on what constitutes luxury can change from spa pools to running water and electricity!

Last night I woke up in the night and I could hear the weirdest noise. It was a sort of whirring and sounded like it was coming from all around the van. I started to worry it might be a spaceship! I had visions of a flying saucer hovering over us. Rather surprisingly though my reaction was to refuse to look out of the window because I didn't want to be like one of those nutty Americans who claims to have been abducted by aliens! As it turns out it was a train, but I think I learned something about myself :0)

Ben:
There are more photos here!

New Zealand - The Southern Alps - Mount Cook

Mount Cook is New Zealand's tallest mountain (3754 m) and no we haven't climbed it! It's actually not as big as some of the mountains that we trekked through in South America but these mountains are really rugged. They're capped with snow, which doesn't seem much higher up than we are (but that's probably some sort of illusion of perspective) and don't forget that it's Autumn here now, so this snow has stayed put all though the hottest Summer in decades.



We headed off for a days hiking in Mount Cook National Park in our boots, hats, sunscreen etc and had our waterproofs, lunch and water in our packs . But I must admit that my conviction that we were well prepared was slightly shaken when the fist thing we saw was a memorial. It was covered in little plaques describing the tragic deaths of ALOT of people in the park we were jaunting off into! All over New Zealand there are these big road-signs with a kind of swing-o-meter indicating the level of risk of fire in the bush on that particular day, so we're pretty used to seeing those, but this is the fist time I've seen one to indicate the risk of avalanche!! Hmmmm bit of a worry, but the risk is low at this time of year, so completely by chance we're here at the right time - phew!



Our hike took us among glacier topped mountains, over swing bridges, through bush and over scrubland before leading us to the glacier at the base of Mount Cook, where a lake was filled with mini icebergs. Now that, you've got to admit, is cool :0) Now we're parked next to a lake with the reflection of Mount Cook in it and Ben swears he's going to get up early tomorrow and take some photos. He's also promised that afterwards he'll drive the van to the nearest loos a few kms away with me still in bed (naughty!).