Curiouser and Curiouser…

We are currently seven hours into our 12-hour coach journey from Wellington to Auckland. The coach has broken down once – about 45 minutes into the journey and we waited one and a half hours for a replacement, which has put everyone else off schedule apart from those (like us) who are going all the way. Oh well…

Our last post saw us anticipating the delights of the oversized burger that is the Ferg Burger, plus copious amounts of alcohol in downtown Queensland on a Friday night. Neither disappointed. The burger, while huge, was extremely tasty and well worth the wait and, at $12 (£6) each, value for money in the extreme.

Having stuffed ourselves, we went hunting for bars run by friends of Holly and Emily – not one, but two – and they were right next door to each other. As much as we tried, they would not take the proffered payments and we did consume, well, quite a lot. Thanks Claire and Chris for your hospitality and generosity and a big ‘shout out’ (how hip am I?) to BarUp and Barmuda. If you’re ever in Queenstown, look them up.

Feeling slightly muggy, we set off next day for The Catlins National Forest. It was a beautiful, if slightly hairy, drive through the primeval forest, up and down some very bendy and steep unsealed roads, but Mog was equal to the task, even if Gillie had a few buttock-clenching moments. We wanted to see the rare Yellow-eyed Penguin at Curio Bay and we did, but it was a bit chilly so we left them to it and parked by the side of the road for the night.

Have to mention the wealth of orchard-stalls by the side of the road during this day’s drive. We stopped and filled up with all sorts of healthy fruit and one nice gentleman, with more tattoos than teeth, gave us a $6 box of Greengages (which neither of us had sampled before) for free! How good is that!?

The next day was a delight. A waterfall crawl as well as a couple of unexpected delights. Not only was the weather perfect, but we took our time and meandered through the Catlins. First up was Niagara Falls (I kid you not) – NZ’s (possibly the world’s) Smallest Waterfall. A short walk followed this to McLean’s Falls – the tallest in The Catlins. After that we found the treasure that is The Lost Gypsy – a ramshackle gallery of hand-made automata and weirdness all made by Blair, a wanderer and free spirit who made everything from junk and found stuff and it’s great!

Another beautiful lunch spot then on to Matai Falls – again very picturesque - before finding the wedding-cake falls known as Purakaunui, apparently the most photographed in New Zealand and no wonder.

On our way out of Owaka, we came across Teapotland. I kid you not. A front garden filled with over 1200 different teapots and 57? Fairies. This was too good to miss, so several photos later we went on, camping again by the side of the road in Kaka Point.

Amid growing excitement, we made our way next day to Dunedin and a much-anticipated injection of culture. The wind had changed to a southerly, so it was freezing, but we arrived at our campsite and caught the bus into town. This was the middle of the Dunedin Fringe Festival. There was one show on Monday night and one more show on Tuesday. So we bought tickets for both. The first was a two-handed dance piece which was suitably entertaining, but with a very annoying soundtrack – ‘Take My Breath Away’ kept coming back like indigestion.

Not to worry. We had a treat lined up next morning – Andy’s birthday – a trip to Cadbury World in the centre of Dunedin. Yum yum. Then Guinness and lunch in The Craic (Irish pub, in case you didn’t realise) followed by the cinema – Second Most Exotic Marigold Hotel, which was charming, then a one-woman show about her granddad’s memories of WW1…then dinner with live music and more ale. A pretty special birthday in all. Many thanks for all the lovely messages from friends and family.

Bit later than usual getting up next morning!, but then off to Twizel (pronounce it how you like). On the way we stopped at Shag Point, because we could. The weather had become lovely again and we made good time, finding ourselves with time to kick back by Lake Wardell free campground.

One of many of the true highlights of the South Island is Mt Cook/Aoraki, New Zealand’s tallest mountain. We hoped for good weather and we got it in spades. A short drive took us to the car park next morning and a four-hour round walk in glorious sunshine followed. The clarity of the air round there makes everything look like it is computer-generated heightened 3D – absolutely mesmerizing. After all that wonderfulness, it was back to the same free camp for pie and beans and even more beauty – the night sky around Mt Cook Aoraki is the least polluted in the world according to the people who know and we were lost in wonderment trying to count the galaxies, milky ways, constellations and stars that night in a cloudless sky. We made it to 13,247,986,256 before it became too cold and we went to bed.

We got lost next day trying to find an interesting route to Aoraki. But they say the best way to see a country is to get lost in it. I don’t agree, but we found another beautiful lunch spot, before finally chancing on the right road and a stunning drive over the mountains to the lovely Aoraki, which apparently tries to make the most of its links with the French (a French ship was the first to land there, but then JC (James Cook) turned up and fucked ‘em over. Heigh ho.

The weather once again had us sitting and lounging in shorts and t-shirts all afternoon, before a stroll down (and a lung-busting climb up) to the village for Happy Hour (or three).

Back to Christchurch, Airbnb Sunday night and then the bus to Picton for the ferry Monday, where we were met by Steve, middle bro, for a couple of days’ R&R at their home. Once again many, many thanks for your kindness and generosity Steve and Kathy and we’ll all try to make it to Cropredy for August 2017, where we’ll Meet on the Ledge.

The South Island of New Zealand is a place of stunning contrasts and outstanding beauty. We were lucky enough to get brilliant weather and have taken over 600 (unedited) photos so far, to go with the 1200+ edited photos from Australia. We drove 4067 km, stayed in 17 campsites over 21 nights and paid for seven (plus two DOC – state-run camping areas – v cheap). We saw some amazing things and look forward to continuing the excitement in the North Island, as well as watching New Zealand beat whoever (hopefully Australia) in the Cricket world cup on Sunday. Bye for now…

PS About the Cricket World Cup!!!!  I bet you’ve all forgotten about it now that England have disgraced themselves again.  Well if you missed the game between NZ and South Africa on Tuesday, you missed a treat!  Kathy and I were on the edge of our seats, Andy and Steve were quite interested as well… Fab game, NZ won by the way as you may have gathered from the above.  I can’t believe I’ve just spent 5 minutes of my life thinking about cricket!! 

Obviously Andy and I have been joined at the hip for tooooo long (actually it was six months last Saturday since we left the UK)…Wow!  We’re really looking forward to exploring the north end of the North Island, only three hours to go now on this marathon journey.  (We’ve just been through Cambridge after bypassing Plymouth and Hastings!) The landscape here is so different to the South Island, let’s see in three weeks how they compare.  We can’t believe it’s Easter next weekend, as the leaves start to turn here and there’s an autumnal nip in the air.  Isn’t life topsy turvy??  Bye for now.   Love Gillie   xxxx

Curious plumbing at Queenstown camp kitchen

Curious falls

McLean's Falls (not curious)

Curious automata at the wonderful Lost Gypsy

Not curious, but beautiful Purakaunui Falls

Us at P Falls

Quite nice - curious knees?

Just like this photo of Mt Cook Aoraki

Akaroa - view from the camper

Teapotland - very fucking curious!

Yum yum

Another selfie - this time with MtCook Aoraki (what else?) in the background

Our breakfast view. That's Mt Cook Aoraki by the way...

Curious big fish

Majestic, Magnificent, Magical

Millions more words beginning with M could be used to describe this amazing country. We have been zig-zagging across and upanddown and there’s a ‘wow’ around every corner.

Mornings have largely been beautiful (except for a couple of notables…) and Tuesday 3^rd saw us set off along the Alpine Road to whale watch in Kaikoura – where we were lucky enough to see Sperm Whale, Dusky and Hector’s (very rare, apparently – especially with young) Dolphins, blue sharks and a small pod of three Orcas – Killer Whales, which are actually dolphins - quite stunning.

Many mornings I’ve woken up on this trip and had to switch on the internal GPS to locate myself, so waking up on the Pacific coast next morning, literally three to four metres away from a seal colony was quite magical. They were close enough to touch, but we believe they have quite a bite!

Motorways and main roads generally are far better maintained in New Zealand than even the most important highways in Australia, so our next drive, although very winding and hilly, was a joy. Proper driving in awesome landscapes brought us to Nelson that evening after driving across Queen Charlotte’s Drive. Still the weather was lovely.

More sunshine greeted us the following morning as we drove up to Farewell Spit. It was literally like being in Barbados as we sat out for lunch by a beautiful lake after iced drinks in a lovely little café overlooking the spit.

My, oh my, didn’t it rain that night. We were woken at about 3 am thinking someone had turned on a giant hose and aimed it directly at us, with about five people trying their best to overturn Mog. They didn’t succeed, but the rain continued for a few more hours, before the sun came out again as we approached Westport – a forgettable little town, but reached via the beautiful Buller Gorge, which would be even more stunning if there weren’t so many fuckin’ sandflies!!!

Mighty winds and rain greeted us the next morning where we were camped by the furious and raging Pacific. I really feared for the camper (and its inhabitants) during this meteorological onslaught. But, once again, it cleared quite early and enabled us to take one of the 10 most beautiful coastal drives in the world – the relatively short Great Coast Road from Greymouth (as its name suggests) to Franz Josef and his Glacier, via Punakaiki, or Pancake Rocks – fascinating limestone, well, rocks, where I discovered that my trusty waterproof was no longer so trusty. Or waterproof.

Mog had a long drive that day, so we rewarded ourselves with dinner and drinks at the campsite restaurant – fish n chips, bangers n mash, beer and wine for $33. Can’t be bad. We really felt like backpackers. But. We were the oldest there by at least 30 years!

Marching up to the glacier the next day in glorious sunshine was quite wonderful, seeing lots of lovely waterfalls and geology on the way. Then we headed off for a DOC (dept. of conservation) campsite south of Haast. Stopped at some magical waterfalls on the way, made even lovelier due to the recent deluges. Every camping spot and places we’ve stopped for breakfast or lunch has been mind-blowing in their beauty (not sure about grammar in that last sentence).

Moving on, we went a short distance, but a long drive over the Crown Ridge (magnificent – the highest sealed road in New Zealand) and stopped for a couple of hours in glorious (again) sunshine by the side of Lake Wanaka (no, not a misprint) for a rest as we had been doing a lot of kms. We camped that night by the side of the road (again) south of Queenstown, where we treated ourselves to a new variation on the camp-cooking menu – bangers and beans. A satisfying night…

Milford Sound is one of the must-see places in New Zealand and to that end we drove a long way, stopping to marvel at the Blue Pools and camping that night in a tiny DOC campground at Lake Gunn. Assailed again by sandflies.

Milford Sound is one of the must-see places in New Zealand. Sorry, couldn’t think of how to start this paragraph. Beer needs drinking. We drove last Wednesday to catch the early boat and watched the sun coming over the mountains as we cruised along the Sound.

Mean, moody and magnificent.

Milford Road is quite splendid in its 120 km length from Te Anau to Milford Sound and offers stupendous sights both ways – each direction giving a different perspective (obviously!). On the way back, my brother had warned me to look out for Mordor and we duly found the view across to the mountains of the same name. Very exciting.

More glorious sunshine greeted us as we drove into Te Anau where we stopped for the night and soaked up more rays. Yesterday we drove into the

Metropolis that is Queenstown (see that?!), where we walked along the lakefront and are planning this evening (Friday) to sample the delights of the FergBurger – apparently a legend in these parts.

More from Gillie anon. enough to say, we haven’t reached Dunedin yet, so you are spared my observations on New Zealand’s fringe theatre and arts scene for the moment.

Milford Sound is one of the must-see places in New Zealand – oh no, I’ve done that bit. Lots of love – please send any news. Pissed off about England rugby, but no idea about cricket; last match we knew about was the Black Caps’ narrow thrashing of the Aussies – is it over yet?

PS. Andy has just put ‘Massive Attack’ on the ipod, it’s Friday evening and I’ve got a very cold glass of New Zealand wine within reach, so all’s well with the world!!  We are celebrating two weeks of fabulousness in this amazing South Island, it really does not disappoint and we do feel as if we’re on holiday even though we are lucky enough to call this our ‘life.’ 

Queenstown is lovely, a hip and trendy place amongst all this wild and wilderness, certainly a land of contrasts.  A very dear friend of mine has asked whether we are missing anything after nearly six months on the road.  Andy and I had a good think last night (and we really did have to think!)  We came up with 1. Our own bed..(we’ve lost count of how many different beds we’ve slept in…Together, I may add!) 2. Meeting up with our family and friends for a good old chinwag.  (It was sooooo lovely to meet up with Joan and Alex in Christchurch for a 6 hour lunch!) 

So there you are, you’re ALL missed!!  We’ll raise a glass to you all in downtown Queenstown tonight before we hit the road again tomorrow, back into the ‘bush’.

Take care all      love and kisses   Gillie  xx

PPS had a bit of a sesh last night, thanks to Holly and Emily's friends Claire and Chris at BarUp and Barmuda respectively!! It was great to see them both.

PPPS For LOTR/Hobbit fans, it looks like a location shot at every turn!!

The tail shot

Orca!

Sarah - well what else would we call her/him?

Swing bridge Buller Gorge. Gillie was cross at me for swinging too much!!!

Is that an elf in the trees?

Pancakes

Glorious weather at the glacier

Maybe I won't wash my hair

Not a bad place for breakfast

Or lunch

Or dinner

Or breakfast

No, it's not Barbados - it's Farewell Spit!

Well-earned downtime at that famous typing error, Lake Wanaka

Magical Milford Moment

On the Road again again (again again again aga…)

It’s 6pm Monday 2^nd March and I’m sitting by our new (rented) camper, named Mog (saving extended nomenclature until we buy in USA) having a cup of tea and looking at spectacular mountains. No beer, it’s Monday (!wtf???)

We had a fantastic last week in Sydney. Highlights were a lovely seafood platter at the Watson’s Bay Hotel, courtesy of Emily and Holly’s friend Aaron, fish and chips at Doyle’s famous fish and chip (what else?) restaurant, a wonderful churasco barbeque at Holly’s restaurant (check out my unbiased review on TripAdvisor!), a memorable last night with Holly and Emily at a great Spanish restaurant called MoVida, prior to which we enjoyed bubbles on our 13^th floor balcony at the hotel in Surry Hills paid for by Avios! And a yummy brunch with Holly at a trendy café in Surry Hills where I heard Tom Waits’ ‘Somewhere’ on their playlist – raptures!

After a number of interesting moments, we made it without any real dramas to Kingsford Smith airport, where we dropped off our hire car and checked in for our flight to Wellington (they wanted to make sure we had flights out before they let us on the aircraft, though!).

It was great to see Steve and Kathy at the airport and Steve and I spent a memorable few hours that night seeing off 24 bottles of Heineken…

We spent a great week in Wellington, where Steve and Kathy showed us around some of the local area, including Weta Cave – the workshop where many of The Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit characters, costumes, props and sets were brought to life. I was tempted to buy a Gandalf staff, but sadly they were all sold out. The weather was uniformly gorgeous and one of the highlights was a trip to Kaitoke Regional Park, where we went to the remains of the set for Rivendell (read the book or see the film if you don’t know what I’m talking about).

After a great week it was up at the crack of sparrers’ last Friday to get the ferry across the Cook Strait – one of the most beguiling ferry crossings in the world. Once again, the weather was beautiful and the Strait was as much like a mill pond as you could hope a stretch of water between two oceans to be. Didn’t spill my coffee, anyway. Our coach to Christchurch took us along the east coast where we saw loads of seals and some very blue seas. Back there tomorrow for whale watching.

We stayed at a very pleasant Airbnb in Christchurch, near the city centre and went in to see the ongoing regeneration of the city on the Saturday morning. New Zealand’s second largest city was pretty much flattened three and a half years ago and the work to restore it is moving on apace, but it’s going to be a while yet. However, the spirit and friendliness is very much evident.

Needless to say, New Zealanders were very exercised by the impending cricket match in the afternoon, against the old enemy – Australia, not England (for a change) - and we met up with our friend Joan and her son Alex from Fleet to enjoy pizza, beer (lots) and talk (also lots) as they are in the middle of a massive trip, taking in Egypt, Jordan, Cambodia, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Peru, USA and St Lucia – a pretty eclectic selection of countries, but very exciting, so we had lots to catch up on.

(In case you didn’t know, New Zealand blew Australia away for 140-odd runs, then just managed to squeeze over the line with one wicket left. The last six runs were achieved with one glorious blow, though).

The pick-up time for our new camper was delayed as someone had crashed it the day before (!), so we didn’t set off until about 4.30 – and immediately went the wrong way! Only for a couple of hundred yards though. We drove across the most glorious mountains over Arthur’s Pass and arrived in Greymouth as the sun was setting for our first free camp in NZ.

Today we drove back across Lewis Pass (because we could) and are camping in Hanmer Springs before our re-scheduled whale watch in Kaikoura tomorrow. Some slight jiggling of the schedule may be necessary, but we aim to get to Dunedin in time for some of the city’s Fringe Festival as I’m having withdrawal symptoms from a lack of culture – of any kind, so may have to gorge ourselves for a couple of days. If anyone’s been to the Dunedin Fringe, would welcome any tips.

Next blog won’t be so long coming (I hope) and may contain some weak and feeble efforts at arts criticism (or not…)

‘Nuff said about England’s capitulation to Ireland in the 6 Nations…

PS. Gillie here!!  It’s so hard to believe we are about as far away from the UK as we can be as I sit here surrounded by sparrows pecking at the grass.  We worked it out that when we are in California we will be 19 hours behind the girls and that Hawaii is 23 hours behind New Zealand…weird isn’t it?

Anyway here we are again on the road, doing what we should be doing and not wining and dining in the fleshpots of Sydney, Wellington and Christchurch.  (Or spending hours negotiating IKEA with the girls, which we loved really and they bought some great stuff). We’ve actually got a shower AND a loo in this camper, we don’t know which to use first as they are within inches of each other!! 

We are really looking forward to seeing this amazing country at a slower pace than Oz, maybe, just maybe, I’ll get my paints and pastels out of my rucksack and create a masterpiece.  The scenery is breathtaking, the mountains so high and the sea the most fantastic colour of turquoise I’ve ever seen. 

On our bus trip to Christchurch we spent about an hour travelling along by the edge of the sea, watching seals swimming and sunbathing on the rocks.  The weather here has been hot and sunny all the time!!  We brought our big boots, thick jumpers and heavy duty rain gear for this section of the trip...Fingers crossed!!

Hope you all are well and looking forward to the approaching Spring and the lighter evenings.  We still love hearing from you, so please keep the comments coming in.  Take care…luv us  xxxxxx

Last night in Oz - it was a very small balcony!

Steve, Kathy and Gillie. Oh, and some trolls!

Help - flattened by big rock...

On Wainuiomata coast - a bit windy!

crossing the Cook Strait

Our first free camp in NZ - not bad

A result of the IKEA trip - Holly's bedroom re-imagined

A lovely meal at Watson's Bay Hotel!