New Zealand Travel Diary Part IV

The next couple of days saw us heading south-east, ending up on the Otago Peninsula just east of the city of Dunedin. On the way we stopped to see the wondrous Moeraki Boulders. They lie on a beach at the tide line, and their creation process dates back sixty million years, when they were part of the sea bed. When the coast lines eroded they popped out and that’s how you get to see them now. They reminded me of the Giant’s Causeway in Northern Ireland in that both look completely manmade but are not.

Further south, the road from Dunedin onto the Otago Peninsula snakes along on the level ground, hugging the coast line very closely, which can be a bit dizzying, but quite breathtaking as well.
We had hoped to be able to visit an albatross colony, but unfortunately the birds were nesting that week, and all tours were off. Oh well. We ended up spending a lovely chilled-out shopping day in Dunedin town, which has the most beautiful train station I have ever seen. The name of Dunedin comes from the Gaelic name for Edinburgh, and the Scottish influence is unmistakable – even if we did end up having lunch in an Irish pub called Craic…

From Dunedin we headed west, towards the Fiordlands region. Given the weather in this area, we were trying to decide whether it would be worth our while going up to Milford Sound or not, or if we would be better off spending more time somewhere else. We ended up going for it. The Fiordlands is the 2nd rainiest area in the world – 6 m per year on average.

There are many fiords in the Fiordlands, but only two of them are currently accessible, and only one of them by proper road (Milford Sound – the other one is Doubtful Sound). The road goes from Te Anau for 2,5 hours along some of the most stunning scenery – which says a lot, this being New Zealand. This mountain looks to me like someone put flour on top and then blew on it.
In Te Anau, we had booked ourselves on a 1,5 hour cruise of Milford Sound, which was really great, although, once you got out further into the fiord, the wind picked up considerably. The landscape was majestic, sort of how I imagine the Norwegian fiords, just without all the lush vegetation. Waterfalls, waterfalls, waterfalls everywhere. We did see some blue sky in between the light showers, so our weather luck did not desert us. Yay!

We headed straight back towards Te Anau after we got off the boat, and ended up camping at Deer Flats halfway, at a gorgeous location in a little forest near the Eglinton River. But I think this is a story best continued in Part V……

New Zealand Travel Diary Part III

Okay, so this is not going to be a wordy post, because I want to give the pictures room to speak.

So, accompanied by the seemingly neverending line of the Southern Alps, we headed deeper into the heart of the South Island. Then we turned a corner and I had to pinch myself. This is approximately what we saw (this is obviously taken after we had left the camper and gone down to the shore). And no, I didn’t edit this in any way, the water is like that. The intense colour is due to light-reflecting micro-organisms or something along those lines in the water.

From Lake Tekapo we went along the turquoise canal that connects Lake Tekapo and Lake Pukaki. I think it’s part of some hydro-electric scheme or something, which is very cool. We were heading to a camping spot on the eastern shore of Lake Pukaki. As the journey progressed, we could see part of Aoraki Mount Cook appear to our right, across the canal. It was shrouded in cloud, but that cleared later on and remained completely clear. It’s quite a lovely mountain, and I took many many MANY pictures of it.

Aoraki is the Maori name, and the combination of the two names is increasingly used for the mountain. When we came upon the lake we turned right along the shore. Pukaki has the exact same very intense turquoise colour as Tekapo, but here there were more rocks and less flowers. Not that it wasn’t absolutely stunning! I think Lake Pukaki/Aoraki Mount Cook is probably my favourite place of all that we went to.

We found the camping spot after only one false turn, which turned out to actually just be a wee detour. It was breathtaking. We were sheltered by a few trees (mostly birch, and a couple eucalyptus), and had an open view of the lake and mountains. Below us was a very rocky (I guess I could call it bouldery) beach, behind us evergreen trees. We had dinner outside, as per usual, with lake-cooled lovely Mac’s Sassy Red brew.

The sunset needs no further words.....

And, I got up in the middle of the night and sat for a bit on the moonlit shore – and took a couple of pictures of the moon above. The big boulder I sat on, was a fast favorite because it had little steps and holds seemingly carved into it, so it made a great seat for more than one person.

Then of course, I got up early too, being WAY to excited by the beauty of it all to sleep properly, and sat on the big boulder to enjoy the sunrise (this picture is from before sunrise).

New Zealand Travel Diary Part II

We had a road trip planned for the South Island and to that end had rented a camper. This is a very common way to travel around NZ, and I can definitely recommend it. It gives you a lot of flexibility and the chance to experience nature first-hand. There is something quite magical about waking up in the middle of the night – and looking out the window at a sky full of bright stars over some incredibly beautiful landscape, no city lights, no lone cars going past, no other humans in sight. And then, once you start missing showers too much, you find a camp site and enjoy the mod cons for a bit before heading back into the wild.

I was amazed how quickly the camper came to feel like home, and I missed it when we returned it back in Christchurch. It brought back a lot of good memories from camping trips in my childhood *sigh*

The first night we spent in the middle of nowhere, and it was glorious. Well, we spent it beside the location used for the city of Edoras in the Lord Of The Rings movies – a hill called Mount Sunday. I had brought my elf dress and elf ears, not wanting such a prime opportunity for playing dress-up to escape me, and we had a lot of fun with the Elf Photo Sessions (yes, we had more than one, because we arrived in late afternoon, so had to wait for the light to be right on the mountain the next morning to take more pictures). The landscape is exactly like you see it in the movies, except for all the fences around the fields. There are mountains all around, many of them with snowy peaks.

We saw the moon rise over the hills and bathe everything in a silver glow, giving the mountains long shadows. It was quite simply magical, as was the beautiful and very starry sky. If you watch the Two Towers, there’s a night scene where Aragorn is smoking outside Meduseld, and Legolas comes to join him – that’s what it was like for us as well. I woke up very very early and could not get back to sleep, so I took one of the chairs out and sat opposite Edoras, writing my travel diary (of which the present post is not a transcript), and watching the sunrise. Pure bliss….

The glittering icing on the cake would of course have been to actually climb Edoras, but you have to ford a couple of streams to get there, and we were not equipped for getting wet feet, and also, we had plenty of other places to go and see. I did see what I insisted were people on top of it the evening before, which did puzzle me, because they wouldn’t have been able to get down before full dark. Stefano said they were earthquake markers, and of course that’s exactly what they were. :)

From Edoras we went back down the 48km gravel road to Mount Somers and a proper road, and headed a bit south and then west, towards the spectacular landscapes of Lakes Tekapo and Pukaki…..stay tuned for Part III.

New Zealand Travel Diary Part I

I’m not going to give a play-by-play account of the 3 glorious weeks I spent in NZ. I’m not bothered writing it, and you probably would not be bothered reading it either. Anyway, enjoy!

New Zealand is beautiful – this much I knew before going, both from seeing movies shot there, and from other people who had been. I still was not prepared for exactly how amazing it really is! Add to that our luck with weather – we had great sunny days, except for my trip to the North Island, where the weather did play havoc with my nerves due to its influence on whether I would be able to walk the Tongariro Crossing or not. People are genuinely friendly, and willing to chat to strangers and ask where you are from etc. I had to get used to the accent, and I didn’t get enough exposure to be able to understand everything or to tell the difference between an Aussie and a Kiwi accent. One of the best bits about it is that there are no big hairy nasty spiders (biggest reason I will never go to Australia) – there are only a couple of poisonous ones but they are rarely seen and they are not necessarily lethal. I didn’t go bush-walking more than I had to, because I didn’t really want to tempt fate and be one of the rare people to see one of the above.

The worst and best thing about NZ is the distance you have to cover to get there – bad because it’s an awful long and miserable journey, good because it means NZ has great potential for retaining a primeval quality and not be completely overrun by tourists. The trip there was alright, because I managed to catch a couple of good naps – I have great difficulty sleeping on planes, and had acquired some valerian root tablets in Frankfurt, but they didn’t really work. The best bit was when we were landing in Sydney and flew over city centre, including the Opera House, which of course has special significance for me as a Danish person (it’s designed by Danish architect Jørn Utzon). I had hoped to see it, but had also thought it would probably be too good to be true. But it wasn’t! What a way to start the holiday :)

Customs processes upon entry into NZ are very thorough – you have to declare if you are bringing a great variety of things, including hiking and camping gear. If you say you are bringing any of these, the items will be submitted to an inspection. In my case I had ticked the box for hiking gear, and so my boots had to be unpacked, and yer man took them away for cleaning. They had been really muddy from the visit to the soggy Lake District, and I had cleaned them before packing, but not the soles, so yer man did that and gave them back to me in a new plastic bag and sent me on my way.

It was surreal to walk around in summer clothes and sunglasses, and be looking at Christmas decorations on the lamp posts and in the supermarkets. Christchurch is a lovely city, and is not given the moniker Garden City as a joke, it really is full of beautiful gardens, and huge garden centres. You can tell that it’s a sparsely populated country – all the houses are big and sprawling, with gardens, all the streets are wide, and the general feel of the place is more similar to the US than the UK. Once you get out of the city, to the west you have the wide Canterbury Plains, bordered by the gorgeous Southern Alps, and to the east you have the hilly Banks Peninsula. There are lots of tall and dense hedges around the fields, to prevent soil erosion, and you should see the water systems they use, they can be as long as a soccer field.

The city centre of Christchurch does have a very British ambience about it, think Oxbridge. The Arts Centre is beautifully built and looks like a cross between Magdalen College and Hogwarts. We took a canoe trip up the Avon, along the edges of the Botanical Gardens – this is one of the old-fashioned punts that you can also take, if you don’t feel like flexing your own muscles.

I was booked on a trip to swim with dolphins in Akaroa on the Banks Peninsula, and we had a glorious day for it. Getting into a wetsuit was great fun, and so was the trip out on the bay to look for the dolphins, in a wee boat that could go fairly fast. The dolphins we were seeking are called Hector’s Dolphins, and are among the smallest and rarest. We did find a few, but they kept disappearing on us and didn’t seem very interested in playing, so we didn’t get to actually swim with them. I was not as disappointed as other people, I had a brilliant time anyway, and I am glad that we at least got to see some of the beautiful wee creatures up close.

More to come in Part II, and there are loads more pictures on Facebook......

Lake District Weekend - BethAnne's Birthday Celebrations

Of course I couldn't sleep properly the night before I was flying out. Anyway, flight to Manchester was uneventful, except for the gorgeous sunrise visible from the plane not long before landing. I went down to the train platform at Manchester Airport and set about figuring out how to get to Windermere. As far as I could remember, last time we had gone direct, but we didn't. And of course I had not bothered to check out what the usual routes were, ie. where were the stations I could connect from. At any rate, I asked an official-looking train person, and he helped me out. Basically, a train to Barrow-in-Furness would've brought me quite close, but it branches off into a dead end and does not actually go to Windermere. I didn't know that last bit at the time, I just recognised the name. Anyway, the train was supposed to have come by the airport, but was late and therefore did not. We were told to jump onto the next train that stopped at Manchester Piccadilly (they all do, I think), and from there jump on the Barrow-in-Furness train. So I did that, off into the blue. At Manchester Piccadilly there was a map of train lines for the region, including the Lake District, so I could pick out the route to get to Windermere. So, instead of going for Barrow-in-Furness, I took an earlier train to Preston, and from Preston I got on one for Windermere, and arrived there about 2pm. It was a lovely crisp and cool autumn day, absolutely beautiful. I had a few bulletins from the others on their journey by ferry to Holyhead and from there by car northward.

Found the Archway B & B easily enough and sat down for a chat with Jenny. Later on, I went for a ramble up to the nearby viewing point of Orrest Head, where we had gone last time as well. Of course I went the long way around, having not really listened to Jenny's directions... Pia knows it all, right...... It had rained quite heavily and I mean HEAVILY the day before so there were lots of new little rivers and lakes all over the place. Didn't really bother me that much, wearing hiking boots, the weather stayed pretty, and I was just rambling around, still being in that sort of mood where I don't care where I go, as long as I know I can't get totally lost. So, this resulted in me climbing the same field twice (it slopes up towards the summit of the hill), from different directions, getting just a tad muddy, and generally taking the very long way around, before I finally stood on Orrest Head - just in time for a glorious sunset.

The others were due to arrive at 5pm, and I had just left the summit at this time, but didn't think they would mind me making the most of the day that was in it. And they didn't, because they didn't get there until 7pm :D Dinner was scrumptious and great fun was had by all - I was the first one to go to bed, late nights and early starts catching up with me finally.

Saturday it rained. All. Day. I swear, it did not let up for even 5 minutes. So what do you do then, when you're marooned in one of the most beautiful regions in England? You go to a pencil museum! In Keswick. It was actually really cool - they had the world's largest pencil there, and some very interesting facts about pencils and graphite. Graphite is one of only two forms of pure carbon - the other is diamond! During WWII they made hollow pencils for pilots and others, to carry escape route maps and tiny compasses! How cool is that? Afterwards we wanted to go see a nearby slate mine, but there were too many deep puddles on the road, so we turned back to Windermere, not wanting to get stuck or risk the car breaking down.

Thankfully, on Sunday, the weather cleared for our birthday girl! I couldn't sleep and went for a pre-dawn walk down by the shore of Lake Windermere to the viewing point of Queen Adelaide's Hill. The shore was a bit further inland due to all the water, but did not cover the path, so I had no problems. On the hill, I waited for the sun to come up and set autumn-clad trees on the farther shore on fire, but before it could get free of clouds, they all gathered very quickly and it started to rain. Fortunately, it was only a wee shower - I took refuge under a tree - and so I waited some more, until I had to be getting back in time for breakfast at 10am. Of course, on my way home, the sun came out and bathed everything in golden glory. Where were you half an hour ago? Hrmf.

Anyway, the weather did stay clear, and we went for a lovely walk around Grasmere, including a brief visit to Dove Cottage (where the poet Wordsworth lived at one time) in search of a geo-cache. Unfortunately, the cache itself was not there, it was only a clue to its whereabouts - 7 km away, too far by half. At the end of the walk we had to cross a completely flooded field, which was actually great fun, and did include hopping from grass clump to grass clump, and jumping over deep ditches. Took us only 45 minutes, but noone fell or got wet above their calves, so that was fine. The autumn colours were breathtaking and we even had a couple of rainbows peeking through a couple of times.

On Monday, we went to the Aquarium of the Lakes, at the lower end of Lake Windermere - it was a beautiful day. Nasty surprise at the aquarium; they had added some very exotic animals to the exhibition since last time (when it was all local wildlife), including a big hairy South-American spider, and some adorable mamosets (tiny tiny monkeys). BethAnne thankfully caught me before I, unsuspecting, had a closer look at the spider cage (seriously, I would've screamed), and the mamosets proved a most excellent distraction. We watched the mother come down to pick a single grape from the keeper's hand, comparable to a melon in our hands, whereas the father stayed in the upper far corner of their cage, with the two wee babies on his back. They were the size of mice, if not smaller. Soooo cute!

On the way home we passed the flooded Bowness harbour - swans were literally swimming in circles around the little ticket huts. And then, it was nearly time for me to get the train back to Manchester in order to catch my flight back to Copenhagen. Next time, I'm climbing Scafell Pike :)