We've been in New Zealand for just over 3 weeks, and now sit in Queenstown, the "Whistler" of New Zealand. Since we wrote last, we headed out with the Smith's Kombi and ventured south on the North Island. First stop was Kawhia beach, where you are supposed to be able to dig holes in the sand and find a natural hot spring which fills up your hole and voila- a hot tub. We dug and dug, but no voila... Oh well, the beach was beautiful, despite having a layer of skin sandblasted from our legs from the blowing sand... and despite the hail storm, but we just waited that out and then dried in the sun! From there we headed to Waitomo, where there are over 900 caves hidden in and around the fields. We did some adventure caving in a couple of them, which had us abseiling (Kiwi for "rapelling", from what we can tell) down 30m waterfalls and crawling through cracks that were mostly submerged in water. Not for the claustrophobic! In these caves are tiny little "glow worms", which are actually maggots with glowing poo. They don't have bums, so they incinerate their waste which lights up like a little blue dot which then attracts their next prey. Quite a system...
Anyway... we then trundelled our way further south, and into the center of the island to Lake Taupo. Taupo was created from a volcanic eruption (as are most things in NZ) that was about 250 times larger than Mount St Helens, and 100 times larger than even Krakatoa, making it the largest eruption ever- fortunately it occured before NZ was ever inhabited by humans. Despite the interesting history, Taupo didn't have much to offer us, so we pressed on to Tongariro National Park, which was some of the most beautiful area we'd seen yet. The mountains there "played" Mordor and Mount Doom in LOTR, and if you have seen even a glimpse of the movie, I'm sure you can see the resemblence! The Tongariro Crossing is a 17km walk that passes through this mountain range, and is billed as New Zealand's "Top One Day Tramp", so we decided to tackle it. Now that we've completed it, we really can't see what Frodo and the gang were compaining about :) Although we didn't climb to the top of Mt Doom ourselves, you certainly could have. There is so much walking to be done in this country...
From Tongariro we headed to the west coast to circle Mt Taranaki- another movie star mountain as it played Mt Fugi in The Last Samurai. It stayed veiled in cloud most of the time, but we managed to get a quick glimpse of it as we drove by in the rain and fog... We then cruised down the west coast to Wellington, where we met up with Lincoln (the Smith's son) who kindly put us up for 2 nights and toured us around Windy Welly. It's a beautiful city, and there is lots to keep a person occupied for days. We decided to go to the observatory, and had a little lesson on the Southern Sky which, as usual, left everyone overwhelmed by the enormity of space!
Wellington is where you catch the ferry to the South Island, which we did early on the 15th. The ride is 3hrs long, and looks pretty similar to our own ferry at home. In fact, despite my best intentions to sightsee, I spent most of the trip sleeping :) We walked off the ferry and picked up our 12 seater mini bus which we drove down to Christchurch as a mutual favour for Stephen's brother and ourselves. Cam is getting some nice experience driving a variety of vehicles down here!
In Christchurch we picked up our rental camperwagon which we have for 2 weeks, and headed south for our next family stop- Brian and Diane Miller, in Dunedin. Brian is Helen's brother (and therefore Cam's 2nd cousin once removed). He also happens to be a South Island expert and a photography buff so he shared a bunch of his valuable information with us, on both fronts.
Speaking of cameras- we had a near "fatal" accident with our own camera recently. After leaving a laundromat with too much in our hands, we piled everything in our car and set off toward our campsite. About 10 minutes down the road Cam pulled over to take a picture, and couldn't find the camera. He realized immediately what had happened- he'd left the camera on the roof of the car, and we'd driven away (you know this happens more than anyone likes to admit...). We sped off down the road to retrace our steps, with Cam trying to decide between driving off the road and ending it all, or carrying on to what we thought would be a futile search for our baby :) About 3 minutes down the road we saw our laundry soap lying on the centerline, so we pulled over and I jumped out to get it (because laundry soap is really important...) and as I was running back to the car wondering why we had bothered to stop, a truck pulled over and asked if we were OK. I quickly explained that we had left some things on our roof which had fallen off, and he said "You didn't lose a camera, did you?" and held up our camera! I started to cry with relief, and Cam offered the guy a reward, which he of course turned down saying "You're alright, Mate". To top it off, the camera is basically unscathed- a scratch on one corner (it was in it's carrying case), but no damage to any of the inner workings. (I'm pretty sure I saw Cam snuggling the camera to his chest that night in bed) So- we've crossed two lives off for our camera- let's see if we can get it home...
Anyway... with our precious camera in hand, we spent two days in Dunedin, and then set off to the west coast to see Milford Sound. It is a beautiful area, but rings a lot of home. Fortunately we like home :) We spent a couple of days wandering around out there, and then last night made our way to Queenstown, where we are now. Tonight we will head north to a little town where there is some more walking to be done. Seriously- so much walking. When we get to Thailand, if it can't be done in flip flops, it ain't gettin' done.
We have another week before we have to return the camperwagon to Christchurch, then we have two weeks to get back to Auckland before flying out to Thailand. Busy busy busy :)
Hello to everyone back home- and you'll all be happy to know I'm wearing my long johns to bed, in New Zealand, in the summer...
Bye for now,
Kristin and Cam.
