Hooray For Visitors

On our way back into Wellington for the weekend we were finally able to meet up with Barb and Murray, who are friends of Laura and Mike's from when they were living in NZ. I had met them once before when they were travelling in Toronto, so I was looking forward to seeing more familiar faces. They had us over to their house for dinner, which was just north of Wellington. We had an amazing meal with great company and we were sad that we had to cut it sort of short, but we had to pick up our special visitor at the airport. It was so nice of Barb and Murray to have us for dinner and it was so nice to catch up with them again!

Next, it was off to the airport to pick up PAIGE!!!!! Our friend from undergrad, Paige, was in Nelson doing some work for her PhD and was able to sneak away for a weekend and come meet us in Wellington. We were super pumped to have her come visit, so we could show her Wanda and a bit more of NZ, other than Nelson.

We picked her up and dropped all of our stuff off at our hostel and went out on the town for a couple of drinks and to try and watch some Olympics. We were in luck. We found an Irish bar just around the corner from our hostel that turned on the Olympics for us and we were able to watch Canada win 3 medals! We also got to catch up with a great friend who we hadn't seen in ages!

After a couple of hours we decided to head back to the hostel and get some sleep because we were going to wake up really early to watch the Canada-USA hockey game. Unfortunately, we were in a 6 person dorm that night and one of our roommates was a snorer. And not just any snorer, but the worst I"ve ever heard! Dave and I both tried to wake him up, but we was KO'd. It was probably the worst sleep I've had in my life because I honestly thought he was going to die.

By 5:30 we were all awake and ready to find a TV showing Olympics hockey...that was way harder to do then we originally thought! We ended up in an internet cafe, where we streamed the game live online. There were a couple other people in the internet cafe at the same time and I swear they were all there all night long gaming. It was kind of crazy to see. But, the 3 of us settled in and watched an awesome game. GO CANADA GO! It was a great way to start the day, with an awesome win!

Go Canada Go!

 

After the hockey game was over we had some coffee, showers, breakfast and then made our way to a little wine region just outside Wellington for the night. The drive there was good - the three of us in the front of Wanda, rocking out. When we got there we were able to settle into our little room before heading out wine tasting. At our second winery we managed to run into Gina and a few of her friends. I did know she was going to be there (she was the one who recommended Martinborough), but I didn't expect to be able to find her so easily! I think we went to about 6 wineries that day and had some delicious wine. By the end of the afternoon we were ready for another coffee and a little rest before heading out for dinner. We had an awesome Thai dinner with some more wine and then made our way back to our room at the caravan park. When we got back Paige was able to Skype with her BF, Toulch, so we got to meet him. I'm not sure if he'll remember much of the conversation because it was 2am after a night out drinking for him, but it was nice to have a chat with him.

The next morning started off a little rocky - not only because of the wine hangovers, but also because Paige couldn't find her visa. We searched the room again, looked all over the caravan grounds and then Paige went to ask the front desk if anyone had turned one in. And once again Paige has a horse shoe up her butt, because apparently the cleaning lady for the caravan park had found the visa on the side of the road heading into work that morning and picked it up. And if you could have seen/heard/felt how windy it was that morning, it was amazing that it hadn't blown away!

After our morning excitement we took Paiger on a bit of a drive around. We went to "the Pinnacles", which is a beautiful spot where they filmed a scene from the Lord of the Rings. We did a little hike around and saw some beautiful sights before heading back to Wellington. Once in Wellington we took her up the Mount Victoria lookout before dropping her back off at the airport to head back to Nelson.

Us in front of the Pinnacles

 

It was so awesome having a visitor from home. I don't think either of us thought we would while we were away, but it was such a nice surprise and we had an amazing weekend!

After we dropped Paige off at the airport we went back into Wellington and met up with Dave's cousin, Kristen, who lives in Wellington. Unfortunately her boyfriend Ronni couldn't make it because of work, but it was nice to meet up with Kristen at least. We had a nice coffee and chat and got to catch up on life since it has been a few years since Dave had seen her.

 

The next morning we had to do a Warrant of Fitness on Wanda. In New Zealand, on all cars over 6 years old, you have to do a WOF every 6 months to make sure they are road worthy. And, of course, we had to do one on Wanda just a week before we were trying to sell her...bad timing! We didn't think there would be many issues with her; she had driven so nicely for us for almost 2 months. It took a couple of hours for the WOF to be completed so in the meantime we went to Te Papa, which is a free museum in Wellington. It was awesome! We spent a few hours there, checking out the exhibits - so many of them were interactive, it was pretty cool! Then we got the dreaded phone call...

Apparently, Wanda had some rust on her A-frame and the windshield wipers were streaking so she failed her WOF. The guy said not to worry about the windshield wipers because he could change them for $8 for us. But we had to see a panel beater about the rust before he would pass her. So, off we went to a few panel beaters around the city. The first person we saw told us that he thought the rust was worse than visible and that it would cost $1500 to fix it. The next guys we went to said he could do it for $800. By now we were starting to feel really depressed! We decided to try one more place just to compare. This is when our angel came - Dave the Panel Beater came to our rescue and said he could touch it up for $100 and sign off on it because he understood that we didn't want to put a lot of effort or funds into it if we were just going to sell the car in a week. We said SOLD and he finished the car the next day for us!

While we were waiting for the work to be done we went to WETA, which is the studio where LOTR was made. We got to see a little movie about the making, as well as go on a tour to see some of the neat way they create the magic.

Bert, From The Hobbit

By the next day we had Wanda back, her WOF passed and we were off again from Wellington.

Off to a new part of the country to explore!

Thanks for reading

xoxo

Just call us Hobbits!

We made it safe and sound to the start of the Tongariro Crossing at 7:20am and started our long but amazing day. The hike started off pretty easy - what a trick! After a half hour or so of boardwalk you hit the "Devils Staircase". It really was like walking up to hell. Just when it looks like you are about to finish with the stairs, you turn a corner and there are a hundred more stairs to climb. It felt like it would never end. The joke of it was, once it did end we decided to do something even harder!!

In the book, The Lord of the Rings, at the end Frodo and Sam throw the ring into Mount Doom to destroy it. Well, in the movies, that scene was filmed at Mt Ngauruhoe, which is in the Tongariro Crossing. So, it has become pretty popular for people to summit the mountain. This was one of the main reasons that Dave wanted to do the Crossing, so off we went. It was one of the hardest climbs I've ever done. It was basically scree the entire way up, so for every step you take forward you pretty much slide the same distance back down the hill. It was hard, but it was totally worth it. The view from the top was amazing - we had a great clear day and you could see pretty far. Going down was wayyyyyyy easier than the climb up. We basically just slid down the scree all the way and it took us about a quarter of the time to get down as it did to get up. And now we can say that we have climbed Mt Doom!!!

Exhausted and not even at the top yet

 

When we were going down the mountain we started hearing people higher than us yelling "rock" so we looked up and saw this rock, about the size of a beachball, falling down the hill. It missed us by a little bit but there were 2 more people further down the hill from us who weren't paying attention. We joined into the "rock" call and managed to get the attention of a girl - she got out of the way and the rock flew behind her. But further down the mountain there was a guy sitting down resting and he wasn't hearing us. Everyone started yelling louder because the rock looked like it was going right for him. At almost the very last second he finally looked up and leaned forward as the rock flew just behind him. Honestly, if he hadn't leaned forward, that 30-40 lb rock, flying down the mountain, would have hit in right in the side or in the head. He was soo lucky! It was really scary, but it definitely worked out for the best.

The rest of the crossing wasn't nearly as hard as the Devils Staircase or Mt Doom, but it was just as spectacular! There was the Red Crater, which is a huge red crater from a previous volcanic eruption. It was very pretty! Then you walk a little further and find the lakes. There was the Emerald Lake and the Blue Lakes. These are beautifully clear little bodies of water on top of these mountains that are pretty much just rain fed. Some of their colours were so vivid and beautiful! The last couple of hours of the hike were a little boring to be honest. You are just walking through bush, which is beautiful, but both Dave and I were in so much pain by the end that we just wanted it to be over. One of my hip flexors was screaming by the end of the day and both of Dave's knees where bothering him. We felt so old by the end of the day. It was a long day - almost 9 hours of hiking - but it was totally worth it. It was so beautiful, and challenging!

Red Crater, Ngarahoe and Mount Ruapehu in the background

We stayed in a little town at the south end of Lake Taupo that night, called Turangi. We had showers, ate and slept for 12 hours that night. We were both totally gassed after our big day on the Crossing. From Turangi we drove to Rotorua because we had a few activities planned there. We stayed outside of town for 2 nights, which we were happy about. We weren't too impressed with the actual town of Rotorua. It felt a little unsafe to us, but everything we did in and around the town was awesome.

We had one full day there, and we managed to pack a lot in. We started out with some whitewater rafting down the Kaituna river. This is known in New Zealand because you go over a 7m waterfall during the trip. Neither Dave nor I have ever done whitewater rafting, so we were both a little nervous about the thought of a 7m waterfall, but it was awesome! We were in a raft with Stevie, who was the best tour guide in the company. He has worked for them since they opened pretty much and he was so awesome. We felt completely safe with him and he made it really fun and interesting. He was a Maori guy also, so he added a lot of Maori culture into the day. That was probably one of my favourite parts of the day. They start you off nice and slow and you only go over 1m and 2m high rapids, while they teach you a few skills. Then the big one comes. I was terrified about falling out of the boat and getting trapped underneath the raft, but we successfully made it over without our boat flipping at all. Since we were in Stevie's boat we always went first into all the rapids. So we got to watch the other 3 boats go over the waterfall. One other boat made it successfully. Another boat flipped completely and everyone fell out and started flowing down the river. We got to help rescue them, which was fun. In the 4th boat, they made it over fine, but one woman basically wasn't holding on at all, so she bounced out of the boat. It was kind of hilarious to watch actually, but she was a little terrified so we had to help get her back into her boat also. Since we didn't fall out, Stevie decided to flip the boat over on us so we could try getting back into the raft. It wasn't so bad when you know it was coming. He also let us swim down a few small rapids and play in the water a little bit also. All in all it was an awesome trip!

That evening we also did a Maori experience just outside of town at the Tamaki Village. It was a whole evening, where they pick you up and bring you to a rebuilt Maori village where you learn about different parts of their culture - games, music, dance, the Haka, and the main event, the hangi, which is a meal prepared underground on hot rocks. There were probably 4 buses of people that made their way to the Tamaki village. Each bus was supposed to pick a man to represent their bus, or "waka", at the village as Chief. After a minute or two of complete quiet on our bus, Dave volunteered. So, he was known as Chief Rawiri (Maori for Dave) for the rest of the night!

The night started with a welcome ceremony. The 4 Chiefs from the different buses all had to stand at the centre of the entrance way to the village during the ceremony. It starts with 4 men from the village coming to challenge the visiting Chiefs to make sure that they come in peace. This involves some spears and tongues and bulging eyes...they caution you before you arrive not to smile or mimic or laugh during the ceremony because it is seen as a sign of disrespect. It was really interesting to watch and the Chiefs did a good job so they let us enter the village. You then spend an hour or so learning about how the Maori used to live. From there they put on a show of different cultural dances, songs and stories. All of this was topped off with an amazing dinner. We had such a fun night and Chief Rawiri did an excellent job representing our waka! On the way home on the bus Dave had to chat at the front and tell everyone about himself and sing "I'm a Little Tea Pot". Then it turned into a huge sing-a-long the rest of the way home with Dennis, our bus driver, leading the way. It was awesome.

One of the maori warriors at the opening ceremony

 

The next day we made our way over to the east coast of the north island to a town called Napier. It is known because of a huge earthquake that happened in 1931 that resulted in a fire that destroyed the town. The town decided to rebuild in the style of the 1930's, rather then rebuild the way it had looked before the disaster. So, now it is known as the Art Deco capital because a ton of the town is built in that style. Our timing was pretty awesome also because once a year they host an Art Deco weekend, where thousands of people come to the city in old cars and dress like flappers and pretend like their living in the 30's. It was so cool....I really want a flapper dress now! hahaha. We did an art deco tour of the town, then went to an antique fair and then just spent the rest of our time there people watching. It was so amazing to see how into the theme everyone gets. They say that if you're not dressed in costume, then you will feel like the person who is left out.

Everyday Napier

Unfortunately we didn't get to stay the whole weekend - it would have been so much fun to experience it and have an excuse to buy a costume. But we had a very important visitor coming to Wellington for the weekend and we had to make our way there...we were really excited!

The Fellowship...

We left Wellington and decided to make our way up the west coast of the north island. My sister and her husband spent a year working and travelling in New Zealand in 2005-2006, so they had a ton of contacts for us. We decided to head out of Wellington and make our way to New Plymouth to visit their friends Craig and Toni and their kids Hunter and Jaimee.

Our first day driving up the west coast wasn't very eventful. We spent a few hours in the car just trying to cover some ground and make it close to New Plymouth. We did stop in a little town called Otaki for an hour or so because it had tons of outlet stores and I couldn't help myself. We ended up at the Kathmandu and the Icebreaker outlets. Dave and I both limited ourselves to one item, but man it was hard. Almost everything was 50% off or more and it was all so pretty!!!

From Otaki we found a place to stay. We decided to try our hand at freedom camping so we looked into a few different free campsites that had public toilets on site. We found one that was a little off the main road and it had a toilet so we were set. We made dinner and we were starting to get ready for bed when this random car pulled up. I didn't hear it, but out of nowhere Dave said he heard someone walking around outside of our van and sure enough we looked outside and there was a man roaming around. Dave got out and started to make conversation with him while he pretended to be getting water for us. The man said that his dog ran away in the area earlier in the day and he was just looking for her - a golden lab named Goldy. The fishy part was that he wasn't calling for her or whistling or anything dog like. We offered to take his number and call if we saw a dog roaming around but he said he was just going home quickly to pick up some stuff then he would be back to spend the night. He left and we were totally freaked out. Needless to say we decided to move our van. So, here it is close to midnight and we are trying to find a place to stay for the night. We did and we quickly went to sleep!

The next morning we woke up and made some friends with the other couple staying at the same site. They had sold their house and moved into this wicked bus that they converted to a campervan. It was massive and had these amazing real hardwood doors on the bus. We had breakfast with them and then we were on our way.

The rest of our day was spent driving the rest of the way to New Plymouth. We got to drive around Mt Taranki. Unfortunately, it was a bit of a cloudy day so we couldn't see the top, but it was pretty neat to see this flat landscape with this massive cone shaped mountain in the middle of it.

We made a few other stops at little towns and beaches along the way then ended up in New Plymouth with Craig, Toni, Hunter and Jaimee. They were such a sweet family and so nice to have us stay with them. We got to play with the kids a bit before bed (Dave was heavy into a cricket match with Hunter until he had to go to bed), then we had adult time and ate dinner and watched the Olympics. It was awesome!

Craig and Hunter

 

The next day was a Wednesday, so obviously everyone had to go to school and work. Dave and I had a bit of a lazy morning sleeping in and watching the Olympics. Then we made our way into town and did some shopping and sightseeing. We got to see this bridge that was built in 2008 and won Best Bridge award that same year. It is a nice bridge...it looks sort of like a wave and if you look from one end to the other on a nice clear day, it frames Mt Taranaki, which was pretty cool to see!

Our night pretty much consisted of the same thing - playing with the kids before bed, then dinner and Olympics afterwards. It was so awesome to get to know Craig and Toni. They were super nice and welcoming and we had a great time visiting.

The next morning we decided to head out of New Plymouth and continue our adventures in Matamata. We said our goodbye's over the breakfast table and then started our trek across the island. But first we had to check out Pukekura Park - something both Craig and Toni recommended we did before leaving town. We are really glad that they highly suggested it because it was awesome! It was this huge park right in the middle of the city that had so much to offer. It had this awesome cricket pitch with the stands build right into the grassy hillside that surrounds it. It had tons of ponds and walking tracks, waterfalls, a cafe, a stage (where Craig and Toni got married) and a fernery. The woman at the cafe suggested we stop by there. It was a beautiful greenhouse with so many ferns and flowers in it. Just gorgeous. We were sad we couldn't stay longer but Matamata awaited.

You see, Dave is a Lord of the Rings fan and they filmed quite a bit of those movies at a specific location in Matamata. Hobbiton, the Hobbit village in the movies, was filmed on a farm just outside the town. Originally, the sets were made of crappy materials because they were supposed to be torn down at the end of filming. But, because of bad weather, they never were. People in the area were watching the LOTR movie and noticed a familiar background in a 3 seconds clip and they were able to guess which farm it was filmed on, so they went knocking on the owners door. This started a massive tourism business for this family. When Peter Jackson started filming the Hobbit movie, they decided to tear down the old crappy set and build a brand new replica of Hobbiton with better materials that would last over time. They have now set up this tour business, that shuttles hundreds of people through in a day to see the set from the movie.

We managed to get ourselves on one of the first tours to leave the next day, which was an excellent idea because by the end of our tour there were so many people there it was crazy. It was actually a pretty cool thing to do. I am not a LOTR fan - I haven't seen all of the movies or read any of the books, but I still loved the tour. This town that they built was so real and lifelike - the hobbit holes, the Green Dragon bar, the party tree, etc. It was all so real! And to hear some of the hilarious stories from our guide. Like, they use a program called CGI for a lot of the effects in the movie - but apparently, making shadows is really difficult to do with the program so they made a huge fake tree out of individual leaves brought in from Taiwan and wired to a fake tree base to make a real tree shadow that was seen for 3 seconds in the film. The amount of money and detail they put into this franchise is unreal!!! The best part of the tour was getting to have a drink in the Green Dragon pub that they have remade to look exactly like the pub from the movie. We had a beer out of these great old steins and it was awesome. Such a cool day.

Bag End... No big deal

 

From Matamata we decided to make our way down to Taupo because the weekend was supposed to be beautiful and somewhere along the way I had agreed to go skydiving there....ahhhhh! On our way into town we checked out the Huka Falls. It was a little underwhelming because it isn't so much of a huge waterfall as it is a very powerful one. But it was neat to see none-the-less. Then we arrived in Taupo and I spent most of the day hoping that a huge storm would roll in the next day so I wouldn't have to be a chicken and backout. Unfortunately, we woke the next morning in our caravan park to clear blue skies and a gentle breeze - apparently the perfect weather to jump out of a plane and plunge to your death. I was absolutely terrified, but it was always something on my bucket list and now I had the opportunity to do it, so I did. They barely gave you any training - all they taught you before letting you jump out of an airplane (attached to a skydive master, of course) was to keep your head back, your legs bent and hang onto the harness when you are leaving the plane. That's it! Then they suited us up and off we went into the airplane.

Since this was going to be the one and only time I would ever be jumping out of an airplane I decided to get a video of it. My dive master, Marley, got to interview me along the way and he video taped a lot of the dive, which is hilarious to watch now. I swear like a sailor...such a potty mouth!! But seriously, the first instant when you are suspended outside of the airplane was terrifying, as was when Marley started loosening straps once the parachute opened for a 'more comfortable" ride down. Other than that it was just surreal. You sort of felt like you were falling but you didn't really feel like you were about to die. All in all I'm glad I did it, but I never need to do it again. And you will all die laughing at me when I show you this video when we're home!

We are heading to Tongariro National Park tomorrow to do the Tongariro Crossing...fingers crossed for more nice weather!!!

xoxoxox

Wellington 7s

We made it safe and sound to the North Island on Thursday, February 6 and we were super excited for the weekend we had in store.

We are lucky enough to know a few people in Wellington so we had a chance to sleep in a real bed, inside a house for a couple of nights (sorry Wanda). Our friend from undergrad, Gina, lives and works as a physio in Wellington and she was nice enough to invite us to stay with her for the weekend and tag along to all the festivities with her. It was so nice to see a familiar face in New Zealand when we got to her place!

Thursday night was a lot of chatting, catching up and meeting Gina's boyfriend, Danny. Gina made us dinner, then took us on a tour of the city. Since it was a nice night we went up Mount Victoria to get a view of Wellington. It was so neat. We made it just in time for sunset and we got to see all of Wellington from a perfect perspective - a 360 degree view of the city. After sunset we got some gelato and walked around the water front. We capped off the night with a beer at a crazy bar that has over 101 different beers to choose from. My chocolate stout was awesome!

Friday was such a crazy day. It started out with playing barbershop. We spent over an hour helping Dave cut off his beard and all of his hair! It was so weird to see him all clean shaven and cut short again. And it was even crazier to see how much hair actually came off his head!

 

After Dave was all prettied up we made our way over to one of Gina's friends houses to get all dressed up and ready for the rugby 7's tournament. Apparently it is tradition that everyone going to the tournament dresses up in costume for the whole weekend. People go all out on these costumes and there are even prizes for the best ones. Gina's friend Nick planned a costume for about 12 of us - we were all wearing berets, stripped shirts and a handkerchief, but with Kiss makeup...can you figure it out...we were French Kiss. So clever! I was a little lame and bailed on the face full of make-up because I wanted to represent Canada a little bit. My mom sent me with these hilarious Canada flag sunglasses so I wore those and instead of being French Kiss, I was French Canadian.

After a BBQ, some drinks and, of course, the costume prep, we started to make our way to the stadium. EVERYONE was dressed up! It was wild. Everywhere you looked there were the Super Mario Brothers, or a SWAT team or Batman, Robin, etc. It was hilarious! Everyone slowly makes their way to the stadium via all the bars and restaurants along the water front - apparently, the actual rugby games aren't the main entertainment for the weekend. We did eventually make our way to the stadium and we got to see some pretty amazing rugby. Canada killed it on day 1 and won their pool 3-0. The games went until almost 11pm so we pretty much just made our way home after that because we had another day full of drinking ahead of us tomorrow.

Saturday is definitely the more popular day to go to the 7's so we were up early and getting dressed back in our costumes, having another BBQ and more drinks again. Unfortunately, Canada had a terrible draw for the quarter finals and had to play New Zealand...boo, we lost :( But, New Zealand did go on to win the whole tournament and Canada definitely made them work for it, so as far as we're concerned, Canada came second :)

I have never seen something as crazy as the stadium on Saturday night. It was packed full of people, all dressed in costumes, all wasted singing and dancing and cheering for New Zealand. It was a pretty awesome experience! And we got to see a Haka, which was cool too!

 

After the tourney was over we made our way to the bars. We hit up a few and did our own little bar crawl before finishing at a bar called Chicago, which had this huge outdoor dance floor set up. Seriously, there were thousands of people there (still all in costume) busting a move. It was awesome. I think this place was Dave's highlight of the night because he met a Cook Islander named Dwayne, who was maybe one of the largest men I have ever seen. He was jacked and strong and he had rhythm!!!

Sadly, we are getting old so we had to go home after Chicago. We walked home via this massive street party on Courtenay Place. They shut down the whole street and everyone just goes to different bars. It was so busy and so hilarious to see.

Needless to say we were a little slow moving on Sunday. It took us about 5 hours to do anything productive. But we did manage to do some laundry and go to the gym. We spent the rest of the night just being lazy, eating dinner and watching the Olympics - GO CANADA GO!

From here, we were not too sure what our plans would be. We did want to see some family friends in Wellington, but because of poor timing we could not meet up this go around and ended up leaving and driving north to check out some sights. We knew we would be back around a week or so, so for now it was time to explore again. Life on the open road :)

Thanks for reading

xoxoxo

Our Last Few Days in the South Island

After Able Tasman we had planned to make our way over to Blenheim and the Marlborough region and a well known wine area in the south island, then to Kaikoura and finally finish off in Picton before our ferry to the north island.

The Marlborough region was amazing! We stayed at a little hostel in Renwick for the night so that we could rent some bikes and go on a wine tour without having to worry about driving. What a great idea that was! We spent about 5 hours on the bikes and made it to 6 wineries and I can tell you that we were not riding in a straight line on our way back to the hostel. All of the wines were awesome, but the region is definitely known for its sauvignon blancs, which were delicious. Dave continues to like chardonnays, but really I just think he likes almost any wine that has been aged in some oak.

A view from the side of the road

 

The next day was one of the most beautiful days we have had weather wise so we decided to visit one more winery on our way out of Blenheim because it has a tower on the property that you can climb and get 360 degree views of the wine region - all the grapes and the mountains and the clear blue skies...it was gorgeous (and the wine tasting there wasn't bad either :)

From Blenheim we made our way down the east coast to Kaikoura. This is what I had been looking forward to most on our New Zealand adventure so I was pretty excited that we were finally making our way there. Dave was also looking forward to this part of the trip, mainly because it was Super Bowl Monday here and we stopped off at a local bar to have a few beers and catch the Seahawks demolish the Broncos. Not the best game but it was well worth the stop. We spent the rest of the day in Kaikoura, checking out the town and checking in for our dolphin swim for the next morning. Then we drove a little north of town and stayed at a free campsite for the night. The sky was so clear and the stars were amazing, but we had to go to bed relatively early because the dolphin swim was booked for 5:30 am the next morning.

Right off the edge of the boat

Totally worth the early morning wake up! We were on the boat heading out to the ocean and the wild pods of dusky dolphins just in

time for sunrise. Right after the sun had completely risen, we saw our first pod of dolphins, and in we went to the water. It was probably one of the coolest things I have ever done in my entire life. There were 16 of us in the ocean swimming around with hundreds of dolphins and they actually interact with you. If you sing under water and swim in circles and dive down it attracts the dolphins to you and they actually come over and take a look. If you get their attention enough, they swim around with you for a little bit until you bore them again. It was so cool! We got so close to so many dolphins! We did 4 dives in total before heading back onto the boat to change and have some hot chocolate. While we were on the boat we got to hang out and watch over 200 dolphins playing around with each other. They were jumping and flipping and twisting. They were swimming with the boat and racing the boat. There were even seals and albatross joining in on the fun. It was such a cool morning! Definitely one of the highlights of the trip so far for me!

The rest of the day we spent napping pretty much, hahaha. We did go to a seal colony just south of Kaikoura and saw a sheep shearing show before saying goodbye to the area and driving back north.

We spent our last day on the south island in Picton. We went to the gym, drove a bit of the Queen Charlotte Scenic Drive, walked around town and enjoyed the sunny weather.

Sadly, our time on the south island had come to an end. We were definitely excited to get to Wellington and the North Island for the rugby 7's tournament, but we didn't want to leave the south island. It was so beautiful and amazing to explore - 5 weeks just wasn't enough time! Oh well, I guess that means that we'll just have to come back... :)

Off to more adventures in the north island!

xoxo

Able Tasman

That sure did live up to its hype! The Able Tasman is so beautiful, and best of all, we got great weather pretty much the whole time! The company we booked the kayaks through had another couple doing the exact same trip as us - a young couple from California (Julia and Richard), who are also doing a year of travelling. We spent most of the trip with them and had a blast.

We started off on Friday, January 29 in Motueka and drove to the launch site in Marahau. After a quick kayak lesson from a guide, we were ready to go. We started by taking a bit of a detour from Marahau to the split apple rock at Kaiteriteri beach. It is a huge rock in the water that looks like a split apple. It was pretty neat.

Split Apple rock

From there we made our way up the coast to our first stop for the night at Anchorage Beach. Most of the kayaking was pretty neat - nicely sheltered and calm, with seals and birds along the way. We stopped for lunch on a little beach that only had 2 other people on it. The sand was pretty and white and the water was clear and blue, so of course, Dave swam! After lunch we unfortunately had to tackle the "mad mile" of kayaking. This is one of the main areas of the kayak that isn't sheltered, so it is much more rough and choppy. IT WAS TERRIFYING! I thought I was going to die (of course I was over reacting, but I was scared!). The waves were big and coming from all different directions. If Dave wasn't in the kayak with me I think I would have had a panic attack. Thankfully we made it safe and sound to Anchorage Bay and I will never do much open, rough water kayaking again in my life!

We made it to Anchorage pretty early in the day so we spent the rest of the afternoon on the beach with Julia and Richard. It was great because Dave had someone to play with and Julia and I just suntanned and chatted. We finished the day off with dinner and a camp fire with a few other people from the camp site. It was pretty neat to sit around with 10-15 different people and compare travel stories and find out neat places to go and see.

Day 2 started out nice and relaxing and while we were loading our kayak one of the coolest things of the trip happened. I was looking out into the water and saw this dark shadow skim across the bottom. It took me a minute to figure out what it was but there were 4-5 stingrays in the water just swimming around. It was so cool to see them in the wild just playing with each other and hiding in the sand on the bottom.

Can you see the stingrays?

Luck was on our side and high tide was around 10am so we left Anchorage at 9am to make our way up a river to this neat place our guide told us about called Cleopatra's pool. Everyone who was hiking the trail walks right by it, but you can only reach it by kayak at high tide. It is a pretty neat little rocky area in the river that has a natural, mother nature made water slide. We were able to tie up our kayaks and go for a little walk to the area and actually slide down this water slide. It was a little painful because not all of the rocks were totally smooth, but still really cool to try!

The waterslide

 

From Cleopatra's pool we made our way back onto the open water and up towards our kayak drop off point at Onetahuti Bay. We saw tons more seals and a few neat rock formations on our way there. We spent a couple of hours at Onetahuti and had some lunch and a swim. Once we dropped our kayaks off we had to do an hour hike to Awaroa to make it past a tidal crossing at low tide. We were making such good time that we decided to stop off at the Awaroa lodge for a nice cold beer. It was such a nice treat after kayaking and hiking to sit down with an icy beer and relax for half an hour. We successfully made our tidal crossing and made it to our campsite for that night at Waiherakeke Beach. The tidal crossing was pretty interesting though - most people walked around the bay to the smallest part and crossed there, but we were all getting pretty tired and didn't want to have to walk any more than necessary so we just walked straight across and got so much water and sand in our shoes! None of our shoes were dry by the next morning even with a fire!

We taught Richard and Julia how to play Euchre, had some dinner, another fire and then hit the hay because the sandflies and mozzies were terrible. They were so bad that I woke up in the middle of the night with a huge fat lower lip. I think I must have been bitten in my sleep in one or two spots because my lips were huge and I always swell up and react badly to these bites. It took almost 2 days for the swelling to go down and in the meantime I had Angelina Jolie lips!!

Our last day was supposed to be a nice relaxing hour long hike before our water taxi pick up at 3pm. unfortunately, when Richard and Julia woke up they realized they couldn't find their camera. They spent a couple of hours retracing their steps and going through their bags over and over, but no luck. Julia was pretty bummed for the rest of the day. The last part of the hike was good but we were happy to get it over with so we could just relax on the Totaranui beach and read. Our water taxi came to get us at 3pm and took us back to our cars. The water was pretty rough on the way back but otherwise
the trip was pretty cool. We got to see more stingray and seals and we even saw a few blue penguins swimming in the water - they are sooo fast!

Able Tasman was awesome and we were lucky enough to get more great weather. Except for some wind and bugs, it was great. After we got back to our cars and had some dinner and followed Richard and Julia back to a camp ground and had some drinks and snacks with them around another fire. They were such a nice couple, we hope we'll cross paths with them again in our travels because they are also going to the north island and then to Australia and SE Asia. So, we'll see...

Thanks for Reading

xoxoxo

West Side

One of the best things about a multi-day trek is the meal you can justify eating once you get back to civilization. From Glenorchy we hopped in Wanda and made our way back to Wanaka for the night. We did some laundry and then went out for a dinner at a local restaurant that serves local beer. We pretty much ate our faces off and got drunk pretty easy. But it was delicious and well deserved if I do say so myself!

From Wanaka we spent the next few days making our way up the west coast of the south island. We didn't have to be in Nelson/ Able Tasman for almost a week, which gave us a lot of time to meander our way through the cute little towns and stop at all the attractions that we wanted to.

Our first day we did quite a bit of driving, but of course, we stopped along the way. The weather wasn't that nice though, so we didn't feel that bad spending most of the day in the car. We stopped at a few waterfalls; Roaring Billy and Thunder Creek. We also stopped by a few little towns; Haast and Makarora. We spent that night at a DOC site in Lake Paringa. Again, we spent most of that night in the car because of the weather and the sandflies...we still hate sandflies!

The next day the weather wasn't that much better but we still managed to see some cool stuff. It was 'glacier day'. There are two glaciers in the Southern Alps of the south island that pretty much enter the neighbouring towns. Glacier hikes are big business here, but we were too cheap to do one so we just walked to the bases of both glaciers and did some other short hikes around them to check out the area. The first one we saw was Fox Glacier and the second one was Franz Josef Glacier. They were both pretty cool and it was neat to see how much they have receded over the past few years. Since the weather wasn't that great we decided to spend the late afternoon at the glacial hot pools in Franz Josef. There were 3 large pools of different temperatures and we just spent a few hours being lazy and enjoying the warmth after a cool, rainy day. It was awesome.

The weather finally turned by the next morning so we back tracked a little to Fox Glacier. There are a few great vista points in the area where you can get good views of the alps on clear days, and since the previous day was cloudy and rainy, we retraced our steps a little. It was totally worth it. We started off at Lake Matheson, which is situated at the most perfect spot where you can get a photo of the alps reflecting in the water on the lake. Then we made our way over to another area where you got a great panoramic view of the alps. The clouds started to roll in at that point so we didn't get the best photos but we did enjoy our morning tea/coffee in the sunshine with a pretty nice view.

The view from Lake Matheson

 

After our morning back in Fox Glacier we continued our trip up the west coast and stumbled into the cutest little beachside town called Hokitika. Hokitika is mostly known for it's rich supply of local pounamu or jade. The area is so rich in it that every other store in the town seems to be selling it in one way or another. But we were also in luck because the sun was shining, and there was the "Drift Wood and Sand" festival happening all week in Hoki. One part of the festival is people building sculptures on the beach with driftwood from the ocean. There were some pretty elaborate ones - it was impressive. We spent a little time wandering the beach and checking out the sculptures and the rest of the town. One of the best things we saw was a pizza restaurant called Fat Pipi's. The name was just hilarious! We then made our way to the Hokitika gorge. This place was beautiful!. It had this amazing colour of blue water, which was gorgeous and there weren't many people there so it was nice and quiet and peaceful. And there was a swing bridge, which was kind of fun too! We finished the day off watching the sunset on the beach with a bottle of wine.

We spent the night at a DOC site at an old mining town just outside of Hokitika, called Goldsborough, then made our way back to Hokitika the next morning. We started our day off at the local gym, which had great hot showers, then we checked out a local market, and more of the Drift Wood and Sand festival. Todays festivities included people dressed in costume, golfing on the beach and getting wasted. Unfortunately our time was up in Hokitika and we kept on moving up the west coast but we really liked the cute little town.

The following day, we were excited about what was in store for us, as we were going to make it to Punakaiki, which is a little area of the coast where the rock has formed in a way that it looks like layers and layers of pancakes. So, of course, they have been named the 'Pancake Rocks'. It is so interesting how the rock has formed this way and apparently they aren't really even sure why it happened. They think it was because there were layers of limestone deposited at different strengths and the weaker layers have eroded faster then the stronger ones causing this formation. They are pretty cool. There is also a huge blow hole here that is apparently pretty spectacular. Unfortunately, we were there on a day when the ocean was pretty calm, so even at high tide, there wasn't much happening at the blow hole.

The pancake rocks

 

Our last day on the coast we spent in a tiny town doing one of the coolest things either of us has ever done. We were in Barrytown making our own knives with Steven and Robyn. Our friend CP recommended the place and it was so awesome! Steven and Robyn are this old couple who retired to Barrytown and started this knife making business almost 10 years ago and it has become very popular. Steven started out making knives years ago as a backyard hobby and just decided to turn it into a business as a way to retire early. You start the day with a piece of carbon steel made from black sand from Auckland and you forge the steel yourself and flatten it out into a knife shape (what really happens though is that you do about 10% of the shaping and then Steven comes along and works his magic and really makes it start to take shape). After that you spend the rest of the day making a handle out of Rimu wood and Australian brass, shaping and sanding the blade and the handle until you end up with this gorgeous knife. It was such a cool thing to do and totally unique. Thanks for the recommendation Ceeps! And during the day you can also do some axe and ninja star throwing when you're bored. So fun!

No big deal - we made those!

 

One of the girls who did the knife making with us was Judith from Holland. She has been backpacking around NZ for 4 months and had to start making her way up to Auckland to fly home in a week, so she ended up catching a ride with us up towards Nelson after our day of knife making. It was pretty hilarious having 3 people sitting in the front seat of Wanda, but it was nice to be able to help her out a little since most of her travelling is done by hitchhiking. We drove together up to Westport that night, then spent the night there and ate at this restaurant with massive portions. Honestly, you would have thought you were in a restaurant in the States the portions were so big. The next day we kept on trucking and made it as far as Nelson with her. We were stopping here because we were heading to Able Tasman National Park in a day, and Judith was going to catch a bus to Picton for the ferry to the north island.

One our way from Westport to Nelson we made one cool stop at the Buller Gorge, which has New Zealand's longest swing bride (110m). It also had a little side bush hike to the Ariki Falls that we decided to do...bad idea. First of all, Dave and I were wearing flipflops (not the best choice for footwear). Second of all, it had rained the day before so it was pretty muddy. We did pretty well for most of the walk, except for some muddy feet we were okay. That was until we hit one steep decline and I slipped and landed on by butt in a pile of mud. And to top it all off, the Ariki Falls were not impressive. I wouldn't have even called it a waterfall! Very disappointing!

We spent the last day in Nelson just preparing for our 3 day trip in the Able Tasman. On our way to Motueka, the town where we would be started the trip from, we came cross another cute little town called Mapua. We stopped in for the afternoon to have a look around and have lunch. We ended up at the Golden Bear Brewery, which is a little craft brewery run by a guy from California. We sampled a few beers and then were on our way. Mapua was a sweet little town with cool little shops and a nice spot to stop for an afternoon.

Then we were headed to Able Tasman for 2 days of kayaking and 1 day of hiking along the coast.

Thanks for reading

xoxoxo