New Zealand

Well, apologies blogreaders. You must have been very bored if you have checked this site for the past few weeks. We have been dashing around NZ and Oz and have sadly neglected to update the blog. So here is a belated post about what we have been up to.

The North Island

After we sad a fond farewell to South America we flew to Auckland for the next chapter of our tour. This bit of the trip, as many of you know was not in the original plan, as we were going to fly back home after leaving Santiago. But the guy in Trailfinders did such a good sales job on us that he managed to sell us onward tickets to NZ, Oz, South East Asia and the Transmongolian. However we are also trying to rush back to see Baby Cox no. 2 (who is due in mid April) so, we have been travelling around at the speed of light to fit everything in.

We arrived in Auckland in the middle of the night and jumped straight in a hire car and beatled it up to the Bay of Islands in the north. I had great fun getting to grips with an automatic, and nearly caused quite a few incidents as I couldn't stop trying to accelerate and break at the same time. We went to Whangarei and bought some camping stuff and we were amazed at how helpful and polite everyone was. We then drove on to Paihia which is a great beach side town where we had fish and chips and settled in for a night near Harura falls. After some pretty upmarket living (or spending) in Chile we decided to rough it a little bit in NZ and camp. So I cooked up a storm on my brand new stove (chorizo stew - none of that instant pasta muck) and we sat and tried to locate the southern cross (unsucessfully) in the night sky. It was bliss.


The next day we set off on a sailing adventure aboard the R Tucker Thompson a big old ship built by the very same Mr Thompson in his own backyard (he must have a big place), which he has sailed round the world several times. Ben helped set the sails and we sailed around the bay for the afternoon.

As we only had a little amount of time in the North Island we decided to drive through the night to Napier which is south of Rotarua. Napier is a nice town which was destroyed by an earthquake in the the late 1920's, so it has a very art deco look about it. We arrived in the morning to find the whole town was dressed up as flapper girls or gangsters for the annual Art Deco Weekend. They had a great air display and lots of tea parties on the sea front. So we of course joined in.

Next we headed to Tongararo National Park to walk the Tongararo crossing. This walk takes all day and you see some fabulous scenery along the way. The National Park was the setting for the filming of Mordor from Lord of the Rings, and as soon as you start the trek you can see why Peter Jackson chose the location. It is quite an eery place, and I half expected an ork to jump out of the bushes at any moment. It is quite a steep climb up to the first look out which is from the south crater. It gives you a great view of the volcano. Can't remember the name now which is a bit annoying - but it is quite a new one (relatively speaking) and so it still has a cylindrical shape.

From the south crater you walk up further to get a really good view of the red crator, which is a huge cone which still has steam rising from the centre so if you touch the ground it is hot.

After Tongararo we went to Rotarua for a bit of white water rafting on the Katiuna river.
I was a bit nervous as I am new to it, but once we got going I really enjoyed it. There was lots of shouting and paddling like crazy people. We went down a 7 metre drop on Okere falls which is lots of fun but you get pretty wet. Luckily (or not) for us, we were grouped with a bunch of lads from the NZ army, who were definitely full of testostorone and couldn't wait to tip out of the boat. But to my relief we just about managed to stay afloat. Me and Ben are in the second row.

After Rotarua we headed back to Auckland and spent a night in town before flying off to Christchurch for the second part of the trip.

The South Island

We arrived in Christchurch and picked up a car to head up to Kaikora in the north. (As a quick aside a few of you may be sad to hear that our own beloved Hyundai milkfloat has gone to the great wreckers yard in the sky after Lind wrote it off a couple of weeks ago.)

Kaikora is a mecca for marine wildlife so we thought we would go any do some whale watching. It is possible here as there is a shelf which means the sea floor suddenly drops to over 3000 meters only a mile from the coast, so you can see whales which would normally be much further out to sea. You can also swim with dusky dolphins there but apparently you need to book it before you go so I was a tad dissapointed when we arrived and couldn't get a space. Anyway, the whale watching was brilliant. We were out on the water for about 3 hours and saw 3 sperm whales. They are really amazing creatures.

We also got the chance to see about 50 dusky dolphins whilst we were out on the boat. They were swimming in pods right next to the boat, and jumping in and out of the water. It was a really great day.

On the way back from Kaikora we stopped off in Christchurch to watch the NZ Blackcaps play the West Indies in a one day match at Jade stadium. Ben wasn't too keen on the fact you couldn't take your own booze into the stadium but he cheered up once the match got going. I was quite happy as I managed to liberate a free blackcap hat from a small unsuspecting boy, so I was very pleased with myself.

We headed on to Franz Josef glacier on the west coast the next day, going through Authurs Pass at dawn which was an amazing sight. The valley filled with mist and we drove through just as the sun was hitting the mountains.

We arrived at Franz Joseph for our helihike which involved taking a helicopter ride up to the top of the glacier and then hiking on the ice for a couple of hours.

The views from the helicopter were stunning, as you could see all the way down to the bottom of the glacier, approx 6kms away. The glacier is moving at quite a pace (about 1 metre a day currently) and our guide told us that a small plane had crashed on the glacier a long time ago about 5km's up and it had only taken 6 years for the wreckage to move all the way to the bottom.

We were suited up with boots, clamp-on talons for the ice and Gore-tex jackets and we even got an icepick each which was very cool. The divided us up into groups and took us up. The climb really wasn't that bad. Although we did have to clamber few a couple of ice caves which are a bit slippery. All too soon we had to come back in the copter. But it was definitly one of the most memorable things we have done on the trip.

After we left Franz Joseph we headed to Dunedin to see Lucy who owns a rock pub there, so we spent a couple of boozy nights there, listening to the locals at 'jam' night, before heading back to Christchurch to fly to Adelaide.

Tigs x