Route 77 to Eyjafjallajokull

The roads out of Lake Takepo towards Christchurch didn’t look all that inspiring on the map, as they all seemed to merge into urban areas the closer we got to Christchurch, so when we saw a sign for ‘Scenic route’ we hedged our bets and went for it, we did after all have 10 hours in which to get to the airport!

This turned out to be a great idea, as the roads was once again, lovely! The sun was shining, and there seemed to be barely another soul on the road. Slowly but surely though as we drove up towards Mount Somers we started to encounter first small pockets of towns and then a greater increases in the urban sprawl, but it’s great – their version of populated urban areas, is our definition of countryside :)

We started following the course of the Rakaia river towards Christchurch and took this at the lovely Rakaia Gorge…

But bit by bit we were reeled into the city and towards the end of our fab holiday. We stopped off at a book shop for Suz to get herself some more reading material for the plane, and somehow found ourselves in the biggest shopping mall that we’ve seen in the islands, then carried on towards the airport to drop the car back off, before waiting around for our flight at 6.00 pm

We checked our bags all the way through to LHR and then waited once more for our flight, and were actually pretty relived when we took off towards Auckland and our connecting flight to LAX. LA was fun though, first off they tried changing our seats on us on the plane (I was having none of that though, and made a nuisance of myself until the ground staff conceded and let Suz and I have our already confirmed seats back again – don’t cross a tired, grumpy and travel weary Tom, is all I can say!). Then as we were backing out of the gate, they announced a slight delay in take off, as apparently a volcano in Iceland was spewing ash, so they didn’t really want to fly over it, and were re-routing across the Atlantic.

Many hours (and in flight movies!) later, we hit the ground in LHR, and I was wondering why the sky around the airport was so quiet, usually Heathrow is buzzing with air traffic, it wasn’t until we pulled up to the gate and I phoned Lou that she let us know how lucky we had been – we’d landed at 11.38, and the UK closed it’s airspace to all traffic at 12.00! We’d squeaked in by 20 minutes! As we got into the arrivals area, all of the boards had nothing but ‘Cancelled’ messages all over them! Phew!

As we came into the arrivals we had another nice surprise, Abby and Carly had made us nice banners to hold at the exit for ‘TOM & SUZ’, brilliant :)

So back now, weary and in need of a shower, before we both try to stay awake and head off the jet-lag, though not sure how successful we’ll be!

What a wonderful holiday though, an amazing place with great people and scenery, can’t wait to go back and do all the bits we missed!

Lake Take a poo

This morning dawned quite wet and rainy still, but Queenstown didn’t seem to mind! It set off on it’s rush hour (about 10 minutes worth) and then carried on about it’s business!

We decided to try to find the ford in LOTR where Liv Tyler washes out the riders, as apparently it’s in Arrowtown just outside of Queenstown, but it’s really hard to try to remember the scene and match it to the actual scenery, especially as there was no big pointer saying “Liv Tyler wos ‘ere” or anything!

Suz thinks that this was it though, and if it isn’t, I’m still blaming her!

We then set off for Mt. Cook to end up at Lake Takepo for tonight, but as we set out, the rain started coming down in earnest, and at times it looked like the end of the world was nigh! By the time that we got to the turn off for Mt. Cook, we couldn’t see over the next rise, and therefore wouldn’t be able to see anything of the mountain, so we carried on going until we hit the lake, which was an amazing colour, but still being lashed by the rain.

It took until around 5.30pm for it to clear, at which point we were able to get a few snaps of the lake and surrounding mountains…

the Lake was beautiful, the town not so much!

Can’t believe that it’s back home time tomorrow, we’ve had such a great time here, and it’s so beautiful! So, back to Christchurch tomorrow and then on a plane :(

Rain, Rain, Rain!

The cabin last night was beautiful, and Milford Sound was amazing, but the rain was hammering down, a great soundtrack to fall to sleep to.

In the morning the lovely little stream outside our window had risen significantly! Compare this to the one last night…

Milford had come alive though, all of the granite cliffs were littered with waterfall after waterfall, it was amazing! We were a little scared that the road may have been washed out though on the way back through to the tunnel, but it was ok!

Once we cleared the Homer Tunnel and were heading for Te Anau the rain started to ease, until we were once again driving along in nice sunshine, with the occasional smattering of rain, and making good time for Queenstown.

The clerk at the Milford Lodge had recommended a place called ‘Fergburger’ in Queenstown as somewhere that did world famous burgers, and hw wasn’t wrong – the place had a queue of people at it and was rammed but the burgers were, excuse me, awesome!

Once we’d ticked that off the list, Suz and I headed up to the Queenstown SkyRide, a cable car that overlooks the whole of Queenstown and Lake Whakatipu, and gave great views (as well as kicking off a bit of vertigo)…

There were of course the usual maniacs doing bungie jumps and ‘sky swings’ from up here, but it turns out that the end of the rainbow is actually right here in Queenstown, both Suz and I thought this place was great!

So to round the evening off, after having done all that we could in one afternoon, we went to see the film ‘Kick Ass’. Once word. Brilliant! Highly recommend, but bring your sense of humour!

Think we’re off to Mt. Cook again tomorrow, only this time, we’re going to the other side :)

Scary D’oh! and then into Milford fjord.

Suz and I got up extra early this morning to beat the rest of the crowds into Milford Haven, and it was still a beautiful day, though the clouds were threatening…

There is only one road to Milford Haven, and it starts at Te Anau, threads it’s way up to Knobs Flat (te he!) then into the surrounding mountains, before diving through Homer Tunnel, and man is that one scary tunnel! It was started in the 1930’s or something and is just amazing – carved straight through the heart of a mountain for no other reason that we can see than to reach a really pretty part of the world. The tunnel is hacked straight from granite and not polished off, or made smooth with concrete or anything and is all the better for it. It also dives straight down and emerges in the valley leading to the sound.

Once we got to the foreshore, we jumped straight on board a scenic cruise that takes you around the Sound (actually a fjord), and it was well worth it! The sun was still out, and the mountains on the sides of the fjord were amazing!

The boat then made a quick diversion to the right hand side, as apparently there were some dolphins there, which we weren’t meant to come within 30 metres of, so we let them come to us instead!

These were either Bottle or Common, as both exist in the Sound, but they were much bigger than the Duskie’s that we’d seen at Kaikora, brilliant fun to watch!

One of the famous peaks is ‘Mitre' Peak’ here in the Sound, and it porportadly looks like a bishops mitre…

The Maori have another name for it, which is something like ‘upstanding manhood’, most amusing!

As we sailed further out, listening to our guide tell us all about the geology of the region, as well as the flora and fauna, the sound was getting rougher and much, much windier as we approached the mouth and the Tasmin Sea, great fun!

  We then turned back and headed down the right hand side of the sound where there were a couple of the permanent waterfalls (the other 1,000 or so only appear after rain, something that happens a lot in Milford, as they get over 6 metres per year!), including Sterling, which apparently makes the ladies appear 10 years younger if they are touched by the spray…

All of the women immediately ran to the bow of the boat, which the captain then obligingly parked under the fall, excellent fun watching all the girls getting drenched!

We then came back past the underwater observatory, and back into dock, still bathed in brilliant sunshine, it was lovely!

After that, we went back to the Milford Lodge to check into our room, talk about lap of luxury! Check this as a view from inside our cabin…!

However, it has just started to rain (or monsoon!), so it will be interesting to see the same picture tomorrow morning!

Fox, Cook, Gold & Te

Today was a bit of a long stretch, as we were aiming to set off early from Franz Josef, and hit Te Anau this evening, as it’s a good launching point to get to Milford Sound early the next morning. Sounds like a good plan except for the fact that it’s somewhere in the order of 500 Km and I really didn’t want to miss any of the great scenery in between. We therefore hit the trail early on and were rewarded straight away with some truly stunning sights.

First off we stopped to take some snaps of the mist rising off a stream with the foothills of the latest range behind it…

really lovely stuff, but it wasn’t long before we hit the Fox Glacier, neighbour to the one at Franz Josef, and although we weren’t going up to see this one, the mountain that powers it, the famous Mt. Cook was clearly visible and there is a great lake called Lake Matheson that gives a stunning panoramic mirror view of the whole scene…

After being overly friendly and cheerfully annoying everyone, we set back off heading towards Haast – a mammoth stretch down the West Coast through some really wild ‘hills’ with Knights Point only having connected up the roads from the south around 1963. From there we headed inland towards the Haast Pass and into Mt. Aspiring National Park. This whole area being a shielded valley that stretched for miles is wine country, and whilst being a bit boring on the scenery side of things yielded vineyard after vineyard, right up until we hit Lake Wanaka and then Lake Hawea, a beautiful clear lake with power boaters doing laps on it!

After stopping for a brief picnic, we carried on down through Cromwell, where I simply couldn’t resist trying my hand at panning for gold in the canyon!

Apparently there was a gold mine here, and allegedly people actually find gold flakes in the silt, but all I found was a lot of quartz. All very pretty, but I wasn’t going to be able to retire :(

Onwards then to Arrowtown and through Queenstown to Lake Wakatipu, this place looked more Med than N.Z.!

It wasn’t long before we had Te Anau in our sights, a really nice little town with real facilities set besides Lake Te Anau, the largest lake in the South Island, so we found our lodgings for the night, went out for some nosh and then crashed out ready to get up early to go visit Milford Sound, can’t wait!

Ice Ice Baby!

Wow! Today I got to fly in a helicopter flown by a mad Scotsman up to a glacier that moves up to 5 metres a day! Franz Josef is pretty unique in that it’s a glacier that descends into a rainforest, which is great for the temperate explorer like myself! Mmm, warm weather!

Suz and I jumped on board the heli hike at the town itself and then our pilot Jamie, took us right up the glacier, swooping from side to side and banking steeply to show us the various parts like the top, a huge cascade and a plateau of crevasses.

Once we’d giggled our way up midway of the glacier, we were dropped off onto the ice to await the second party before we went for a bit of a hike around. For some reason all of us there had forgotten that ice can be really slippy, either that or there is something different about glacial ice, ‘cause we all had real problems staying upright! Fortunately we had all come equipped with crampons, so our guide Thai showed us how to put these on, which immediately made things totally better, and allowed us to tromp around with no problems! And what a view!We’d been dropped onto a plateau with a cascade not to far from us, so we were able to look up the glacier and see some great shapes being carved out by the cracking and tumbling glacier, and the colours were all shades of blue and white!

Once the second group had joined us, we set off on a really gentle hike about the plateau, until we came to a compression cave, formed when two differently moving parts of the glacier collide in slow motion and lift to form a cave underneath. Inside the ice is that really glacial blue, almost like a darklight. We’d made friends with a Danish lady called Stine (as in the latter part of Christine), who decided to see if licking a glacier would get your tongue stuck…

Apparently it tasted of water. Who’d have thought! This is Suz inside the cave…

Weird light, but it was beautiful. We kept listening out for a large thunder-crack to see if a large section of ice would calve off the top of the ice fall and crash down the base of the fall, but although we heard some ominous cracks, nothing large fell, most disappointing as we were bathed in bright sunshine on the glacier. I was really enjoying the crampons and jumping about being an arse whenever I could, for instance…

More Edmund Blackadder than Edmund Hillary :)

The sun melts the surface of the glacier each day, and by night re-freezes most of it, so you get all sorts of weird lakes, run-offs and sculpted landscapes up there, it has to be seen to be believed, it was wonderful

But along with all the larking about, our guide was there to stop us from falling into crevasses which can open up, we stepped across some that were more than 40 metres deep!

We must have been up there for a good 2 hours or so, it was brilliant as it wasn’t a ‘drop off, have a quick five minutes and then back down again’, you really got to play around on the glacier itself and have a good explore before the helicopter came to pick us up again.

The pilot was brilliant, and made the flying just as much apart as the hiking, excellent stuff! So we rounded up the experience with a coffee with Stine who was going the way that we’ve just been.

Next – onwards towards Queenstown and Te Anau!

Down the West Coast to the glaciers

Reefton was quite cool, the sun had been shining all day, and at night there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, so as a consequence the stars were out in force! There is no pollution here, and as it’s at the bottom of the Pacific, it’s about as far away from anywhere as it could be, as I think was Reefton, so the Milky Way was painted brightly across the middle of the night sky, and the Southern Cross was blazing, fantastic!

We got up and had a nice breakfast in the lodge where we were staying, before trundling on down the highway towards Franz Josef and the glacier heli-hike that we are scheduled on for tomorrow. The day was glorious sunshine once again, which bodes well for tomorrow, as the helicopters won’t fly in bad weather.

Had to take snap of some of the oddities along the road though, there seems to be a large number of people who keep ageing hulks around on their properties, slowly rusting into oblivion, but this guy was up to something with them…

Some great old examples in that eclectic line up!

Further on down the line you could tell we were getting into glacier country, as there were multiple streams / rivers that we started to cross, each of which had amazingly clear water running down it – unbelievably clear.

We stopped at Lake Ianthe, as again, it was bright sunshine and the lake was sparkling invitingly! I had to go dangle my feet in off the small pier!

It was a little chilly, but lovely!

I’m still stunned by how lovely the scenery here can be, and when I stopped to go panning for gold (yeah right) from the gold bearing quartz rock washed down in the rivers, Suz snapped off this shot up the river to the valley and clouds that went into making it…

Unfortunately I didn’t strike it rich, but I was only ‘panning’ for 5 mins, although this is gold country :(

Just around the corner though, all of these glacial streams met up and created a river of just the most astounding colour…

It really is that blue, I promise you! As you can probably tell though, we now weren’t far away from today's destination – Franz Josef, so the final picture from today is he great cabin in the trees that I was so looking forward too..it’s lovely!

Right in the pods!

Well we landed ok, somehow having used up and entire day travelling from Sydney to Christchurch, which as far as I can see is actually just down the road!

Jumped in the rented Carolla-mobile, found the motor lodge for tonight and crashed out to sleep, the exciting life of a Global Blog Trotter, eh?!

Today though, we bundled up the coast for a 10.30 appointment at Kaikoura, a really cute little town which appears to have enough there to be fun, plus it’s bounded on one side by the pacific, and on the other by some amazing mountains that were permanently shrouded at the top in clouds:

but although the scenery was stunning, I was waaaay too excited about what we were really here for – whale watching! Kaikoura has the privilege of being right on the pacific, and has a peculiar piece of geology which means that about 1 km from the shore, the bottom of the ocean drops away to over a kilometre deep, in fact there is a deep sea canyon that runs right by the shore. As it’s in New Zealand there is a clash of currents that rise up from this canyon, where the Antarctic cold waters meet the warm Pacific currents – this causes an upwelling of nutrient rich waters, which in turn makes loads of great stuff for all sorts of whales to feed on, both krill and squid.

So we jumped aboard one of three purpose built jet boats, and hammered it out to sea, which was more than a little bit rough, but both Suz and I massively enjoyed the ride (lots of the others on board were hurling into their little paper bags!)

We were actually really lucky, as there was a Sperm whale already spotted at the surface as we steamed up, so they cut the engines, and gave us the rare privilege to get really close to one of the giants of the world whilst it spouted at the surface in preparation to dive…

Amazing! How cool is that, huh?! After a short while at the surface spouting, it then arched its back and dived to the abyssal depths, whilst everyone on board snapped away to try and capture it fluking, my camera was just saving a previous series of 15 shots though, so all I captured were the final moments…

So near and yet so far!

We thought that was that, we’d seen a whale so back home we go, but nope – the best was yet to come! There is loads of other wildlife in the bay, so we raced back towards shore (more giggling from Suz and I, more Technicolor yawns from everyone else!) dashing past floating albatrosses, until we saw about 200 fins racing towards us to greet us!

These were a single pod of about 200 Dusky dolphins, and they were obviously well fed, as they were soooo playful! They raced into our bow wave, then jumped all around the boat for ages, playing tag, rolling, leaping and generally looking like they were having a fabulous time!

And then they were joined by a cheeky Fur seal, who was obviously enjoying the attention and having a general brilliant muck about with the dolphins!

All I can say is thank God for digital cameras and large memory cards! I took zillions of snaps! And I shall bore you all with them later!

We were on a real high from seeing all of the wildlife, it was totally amazing! But we must press on, as apparently there’s quite a bit of New Zealand left to see, and see it I must! So we then jumped back in the Corolla-mobile and hot-footed in right across the country over the Lewis Pass and the mountains that dissect the country in two, and headed for Reefton, which apparently holds the honour of being the ‘Town of Lights’ – it was the first place in the South Island to receive electric lighting! (I didn’t dare say ‘In 1985 – joke!’, as I think the locals may have killed me!)

The Blue Mountains

So on our final day in Sydney, Lee decided to torture us, as Jane was still feeling a little under the weather, so we headed on out to the Blue Mountains, and Katoomba.

The train took a little while to get there, but it was well worth it…

I’m rapidly running out of superlatives, huge amounts of sky, vast stretches of almost pristine forest stretched out on the valley floor – amazing!

So the guide book reckons that there is a 2 hour walk from Echo Point to the Leura Cascades, and that it’s an Easy to Medium 4.5 Km, should be a breeze.

The view was excellent, and then the path went down. Then up, then down, we kept surfacing at the cliff face to take more pictures…

and guided by our intrepid leader

we soon made our way around towards the falls, past flocks of cockatiels

Once done here, we headed back up, up, up the path once more, sweating in the heat and headed back to the extraction point, but took the opportunity to snap off a few more photos of the falls as we looked back…

This place was amazing, but seeing as we were rapidly melting, we opted to go back to the train and head back to Sydney to turn back into humans again.

Tomorrow we leave Lee, Jane and Sydney and head back to the South Island of N.Z. Wheeee!