Pony trekking, or as the horses say "Not Again!"

We left Winton and drove to Dunedin (which is Scots Gaelic for Edinburgh!) Dunedin was quite beautiful, and extremely steep! After checking the guide book we were not sure we could find a place to go pony trekking. We found a place which looked excellent, we met our guide Cheryl who was as mad as a hatter but was so lovely.

Lorna got a horse called Trolley, who was about 16 years old and about 14 hands high, I got a horse called Ginger, who was 21 years old and about 16 hands high (you could say I looked up to him!)

So we had a brief instruction on getting on and off the horses etc, we then set off to the beach with our horses, Cheryl and Tigger the dog. To be honest, the horses knew exactly what they were doing and were they had to go so they did not require much directing.

On the beach we saw a Sea lion lying in the sand, he was a massive guy, bigger than I expected. He did not really move other than to keep a beady eye on us. We also saw a Fur seal which was cute, just as the horses passed what looked like a log on the beach, it reared up and yawned. It really did look just like Amy!!

We finished up with the horses and then drove to Omaru, but we did not reach it time to visit the penguins. So we just stayed overnight and go ready to hand the van back the following day.

Ever See a Cow Bungy Jump

Ever see a cow bungy jump? (how do you think milk shakes are made!)

After leaving Fox we decided to head to either Wanaka or Queenstown (depending on our timing.) We made good time and got to Wanaka by lunchtime, again in keeping with our luck this holiday we found an excellent place to eat (again with the portion control). We found a place called Puzzle world, which to be honest was a bit disappointing, but I did get to help out and hold up a building which they were renovating!



The place had lots of optical illusions, which were reasonably cool, but they could have put a bit more effort into it.

After leaving Wanaka and more driving we arrived in Queenstown, it looked like a lively place. Well they did invent modern bungy jumping, but I could not understand why people in such a beautiful place acted like lemmings and threw themselves off bridges (even if they had elastic tied to them)

We had planned to go pony trekking in Glenorchy, but after completing a long drive down from Fox we decided that we would just like a day mooching around the shops. So we spent the day mooching around Queenstown, shopping and generally eating and drinking coffee in nice eateries.

We moved from Queenstown to Winton to stay with Dave and Jo (who we met in Rarotonga). Dave and Jo have a dairy farm with 1000 cows (mooooo!), they have three kids, Alex, Liam and Chelsea, all of whom have more energy than the Energiser bunny and run out of it just a quickly.



On Saturday Dave took us down around the south coast of NZ, and we made to the most southerly point without reaching Antarctica and bizarrely it was warmer than at home when we left!! We covered about 250-300 miles and saw lots of fantastic coast line.

Heli-Hiking, more Heli less Hiking!!

We have now the ability to add the photos from the Dolphin watching, and surprise, surprise those guys are not easy to catch on film (thank god for digital)

Dolphins racing our boat, those guys are seriously fast



We told you they were quick, and getting the jumps on film was next to impossible

We left Kiakoura and drove to Greymouth - give it a miss.

Having departed slightly later than expected from Greymouth, we were slightly limited in our choices of activities for that day. Being the intrepid people that we are we decided to go on a heli-hike. I know that it is a bit of a cheat, but it does cross two things from our to-do list in one go (and we will continue to justify it to ourselves in that manner), well, hiking was always going to be a bit of a stretch for us!!

So anyway, we paid a man to fly us to the top of the Fox Glacier and land on the snow field at the top, it was much more civilised! It was fab, the views were out of this world and we were so high we were in the clouds!! We took piccies and threw the obligatory snowball, well, its expected and than we got back in our chopper and headed down the Franz Josef Glacier, were the polit took us over a rather steep ridge and Chris nearly lost the camera.... but only nearly!!

Our Chopper


A view from the chopper


Chris and his mountain (or so he thinks, Cook beat him too it!!)


We then had lunch and headed to the small but perfectly formed town of Fox Glacier, where we are now and are staying for the night, and strangely, today has been the warmest sunniest day of them all!!

Us at the Fox Glacier Interface

Swimming with Dolphins (in the very cool blue ocean)

Ok first thing's first, who is the anonymous person wanting to see semi-naked pictures of me??? Depending on who it is, they can be supplied!!!!

So we left Wellington, wishing that we had a bit more time there, and caught the Interislander ferry to Picton.

Picton reminds me a lot of Stranraer, only much prettier and with an excellent cafe (ok so perhaps it does not remind me of Stranraer)

We then motored down to Kiakora, which we mistakenly thought was just a single street. We arrived there under the cover of darkness, so you can see our mistake! We decided to go out for a drink in the so called best Irish bar - for those of you that know, they were playing a DVD of Barnbrak - who knew such a thing even existed...? And then to up the tempo, we got Rod Stewart, but by then we were beating a hasty retreat!

So the following day, we went swimming with wild Dusky dolphins!! That was fun!!! We were given wetsuits, masks, snorkels and flippers and sent on a very fast boat to were the dolphins were playing. It was an amazing sight, there were about 400 dolphins in the pod and they were swimming and jumping and racing the boat.

It was really cool, basically the boat overtook the dolphins, then sounded a horn and we all piled out like mad things. We then had to try to attract the attention of some bored dolphins.
This consisted of either
1. Diving down
2. Turning in a fast circle
3. Making noises through your snorkle
or all of the above. what a sight we must have been, fifteen grown adults trying to bark like seals through their snorkles, you could almost see the dolphins laughing.

When you did get their attention, the way they looked at you was really amazing. It felt like they were studying you, perhaps if they had hands they might have poked you too!!

When we first dived off the boat, it was really cold. I know they tell you it will be cold, but blimey they really were not kidding.

After a couple of swims they took the boat into the pod and we got to attempt to photograph them jumping. (Really all we got were lots of pictures of splashes)

We can't put piccies on the mo as this pc was invented about a million years ago so will update soon. We are in Greytown at the minute and heading for Franz Josef tomorrow, so warm clothes all round!!

Napier to Wellington

This getting up early lark is not easy, we hit the road around 9:30am this morning to head down to Palmerston North.

First stop on the way was the National Aquarium, this was very cool. They had some fantastic displays with some very big fish.

We saw a massive crocodile (by our standards), I think the most impressive thing about him was his tail which looked very muscular.




There was an underwater walkway (one more thing to tick off my wish list), we walked through it twice it was so cool. There were shoals of fishes, manta rays, atleast 5 different types of shark.







We then drove like mad things down to Wellington (where we are now) and will get the ferry to Picton tomorrow. Wellington looks very nice and we could probably spent another half a day here but we wants to motor down to Kaikora to see whales and swim with Dolphins (hopefully!!)

Everything here in Wellington has an Art Deco feel to it, like Napier but it seems to have a lot more life (Well it is the capital city!)

We did forget to say that we saw Hukka Falls which although is not a big waterfall it does seem to shift a lot of water. Very Pretty.


Anyway going to now, need more alcohol!!

Thermal Venting and Exercising Prawns

So our first stop was in Rotarua, it means something along the lines of two lakes but I have forgotten the guide book to look it up.

It is a really cool place that experiences lots of geothermal activity, (to save grabbing the dictionary, that means steam vents, mineral pools and geysers). Lorna managed to navigate quite well, bar one "scenic" detour (we are stillnot sure who's fault it was as she did give me the option to turn around, but I was sure she could get us back on track quite quickly, not after an hour). To be fair, Chris was exercising the male, 'no, we AREN'T lost' role very well...

We grabbed lunch in sulphurville (very smelly), but we have found why Penny is so lazy. She apparently runs a fine eating establishment when we are not looking (we know that it belongs to Penny, not just by the name, but also the poor portion control).



The Thermal park was cool, there were lots of geyser's and mud pools and all that sort of stuff, but really what can you say about them - they looked wierd, smelt bad, spouted water 20m in the air and were like nothing we have ever seen!! Hey, where else can you go and sit on a rock that is hot enough to fry an egg? (Except Iceland...)






So we stayed in a campsite that was to flies, what Alfred Hitchcock was to Birds (Defiantely not for the fainthearted)

We then made our escape and headed to Lake Taupo, which is the largest volcanic lake in the Southern Hemisphere (or so the guide book says)

On the way we found the Prawn Farm (yes this is not a typo) - who knew such a place actually existed? So naturally, we felt obliged to stop and see what that was all about. It basically does what it says on the tin, it farms prawns and then the visitors eat them - it was a lot of fun and the prawns were tasty!! See for yourselves ...



We were allowed to feed the baby prawns, it was so weird they swam and crawled all over your hand in the water. (Dennis you would have loved it)



So after all that excitement we decided nothing could top it so, here we are, a few hundred kms later in an internet cafe. Chris has finally stopped twitching but I am slowly losing the will to live, so we will go and leave you wanting more (maybe...)

New Zealand Adventures (The story so far...)

We landed in Auckland after passing the date line (and losing a full twenty two hours, who needs a De Loren!!)

New Zealand border control have even less humour than American ones, but they do have way cuter sniffer dogs. Luckily we were not the ones being sniffed( but they did catch a guy on our flight, so although the meat stash was found, I got away clean!!)

We arrived at Kirsten and Matts and were greeted by their dogs, the puppy managed to get so over excited she peed on Chris's foot, but hey, its all good fun! After that, KB and I sat down to a glass of wine and Chris proceeded to try and fix her laptop, which has been broken for about two years - no surprise there then! (He reliably informs me he DID fix her laptop and there was no 'try' about it).

Chris forgot to lift the voucher for the RV, so we had to spend about 90 minutes treking around suburban Auckland to find a place to print out the voucher ( who would have thought finding an internet cafe would be so difficult?) But we picked up the RV and after spending a second night with K+M to pack we set off on our NZ adventure first thing Thursday morning (yes it actually was first thing, 8am who knew we could manage it)

Rarotonga the land of "liquid sunshine"

Lorna and I slept pretty much all of monday, and it was fab. We got up on monday evening and found that the restaurant in Castaway was closed, so we decided to go for a wander and find somewhere to eat. It was during this excusion that we discovered "Island Time" everything on the island pretty much shuts down after seven in the evening. We eventually found a restaurant, but the food was nothing to write home about, (but bizarrely - we have...)

Tuesday was pretty much a lie about and do nothing day, but we did meet a couple from London, Ken and Caroline (more people to join the London crew!!) they were travelling the world. We also met a couple from NZ, Dave and Jo who we are going to visit in Invercargill (we have them both to thank for our jam packed schedule).

The highlights of our week in Rarotonga were

1. A 4X4 safari tour, which was class, the interior of the island is very lush and green (well it does chuck it down at night, and sometimes during the day) It loked a bit like Jurassic Park and they had saved some giant mozzies from then especially for us!!






2. Sailing on a Tri-maran, which Chris was enjoying until he managed to attempt to swallow half the South Pacific and then he proceded to turn white and go very quiet, which isn' t generally in his nature! True to form, we also got very sunburnt that day, but Chris is actually a bit brown now....shocker!! (but he will be back to white soon as he is now peeling!!)



3. Drinking in an locals bar, Caz (the 'handyman' from Castaways) took us to the Roadhouse on our way to dinner. It was an interesting experience, it had no actual floor covering so we were just standing on the mud, but the drink was cheap and wet and cold.
we stayed much longer than we planned to as it was good fun, so when we got the restaurant, Caz was kind enough to tell the restaurant we had all been on "Island time"

Other than that we did what we said we would, eat and sleep. Rarotonga is a strange little place, it looks very colonial and definately not for hardcore party animals. However it is lovely and we were both very sad to be leaving, but hey, onto places and adventures new...

First Posting (again)

Well this is a second attempt at this blog after a pretty poor effort of password picking.

We have arrived in New Zealand safe and well, we are currently staying with Kirsten and Matt in their lovely home.

We set off from London on Sunday, the flight to LAX was on a 747 which was class. We had a row of three to ourselves (saved on the upgrade option!!), but if I had of moved faster I could of had a row of four to sleep on. The flight had on-demand movies and games to play, so I did not get a lot of sleep.

We were delayed in London by three hours so the time we would of had in LAX was spent running through the airport to catch our connecting flight. Which was not the greatest experience in my life.

We arrived in Rarotonga after travelling for 36 hours and crossing every westerly time zone possible before hitting the date line. I was a little bit tired and grumpy!!!!

Next Blog: Rarotonga