Happy New Year

Hope everyone had a good Christmas and New Year and 2011 is treating you well so far!

Kerry started a new job with an environmental consultancy firm in September, seems to be going well so far! In fact, we've ended up working together for a couple of weeks carrying out land assessments following the earthquake in Christchurch in September.

We spent a very enjoyable 2 and a half weeks on the South Island over Christmas and New Year. We sailed over on Christmas Eve and drove all the way down to Aoraki Mount Cook, stopping in Kaikoura to pick up a crayfish (rock lobster) for our Christmas dinner! Kaikoura is the place in NZ for crayfish, and since we were driving through it seemed like a good excuse!

Christmas day was a beautiful sunny day, so we did a fantastic walk from our campsite to Mueller Hut. There had been some fresh snow overnight so it was great to be walking in fresh snow and warm sunshine. The hut is in a spectacular setting, with great views to Mt Sefton and Mt Cook itself. We were watching loads of small avalanches down the faces of the mountains across the valley.










Fortunately the campsite we were staying in had a cooking shelter, else our Christmas dinner would have blown across the campsite in the gales! So we had a delicious summer platter with nice cheeses, parma ham, olives, sun-dried tomatoees, crusty bread and of course the crayfish and a nice bottle of wine (Kerry's work Christmas present was 6 nice bottles of wine - dare say they didn't last too long!). Was great - all the other campers were looking at us with such envy as they tucked into their boring pasta and sauce! We camped here for 2 nights...until the gales got too strong and we hastily pulled down the tent and drove down to Alexandra, Central Otago where it's always sunny! Indeed it was!

We then went down to the Catlins in the far south, where there's lots of empty, wild beaches, sea caves and impressive waterfalls. Saw several sealions and some yellow-eyed penguins on some of the beaches as well as a cool petrified forest...geology geeks again!


We spent the four days around New Year on Stewart Island, an hour's ferry ride off the South Coast. It's a beautiful island, with loads of pristine rainforest and beaches. We did a 3 day walk on the Island - one of NZ's "Great Walks", which was really good. The first and last days in particular were really nice, through rainforest between small coves. We stayed in Department of Conservation huts, normally very basic, but the one on the first night had just been renovated and was really quite nice - apart from the mosquitoes buzzing around your head all night!
Supposedly Stewart Island is the place to see kiwi in the wild, but unfortunately we didn't spot any. We ventured out at night a couple of times, but with no luck. We did spot plenty of mud though! Stewart Island is famous for it's mud, evidently we barely scratched the surface, but was pretty gloopy for a good few kilometers!


The second night was New Year's Eve. It was good to have spent the previous night with the same people in the first hut, so we already knew each other a bit. Almost everyone had brought some wine to celebrate New Year with, and even without electricity, it's so far south that it still wasn't properly dark at midnight.

The evening we finished the walk we met up with some of the people we'd stayed in the huts with for drinks in the one and only pub on the Island. Also tried local natural oysters which were surprisingly nice! Sailed back to the mainland the following morning on a rather rough crossing! Spent the whole hour concentrating on the horizon! The boats are only small catamarans that seat about 50 people, and the swell was about the same height as the boat...! We were watching the albatross soaring around the boat as an attempt to take our minds off the rough ride!

From there we drove to Fiordland and did a two-day sea kayaking/camping trip on Doubtful Sound. It as a beautiful location, and very remote so much quieter than the more famous Milford Sound. We had two days of perfect weather, light winds and blue skies - incredible for Fiordland (the area receives about 10m of rain a year, so 2 consecutive days with no rain at all is pretty lucky!). Ben was complaining that the good weather meant there was no atmospheric mist to make moody photos! The only bad thing about it - the sandflies! Little buggers! They're tiny little flies that give you the worst bites! And there's so many of them! Put your hand down towards the ground or reach round some vegetation and it turns black! Not nice!


We hadn't planned our route after the kayaking so we could wait and see what the weather was like across the country. Managed to avoid most of the rain by heading up to Queenstown and then Arthur's Pass. Did a bit of "caving" - it's a marked footpath that a tiny bit of crawling, scrambling, ladders and traversing round pools, but was quite fun! Rented a bach (holiday chalet) in Arthur's pass for a couple of days - it was nice to be able to spread out a bit more than in our little tent! And a very good excuse to cook lots of nice food in a kitchen rather than do our best on a camping stove!



Had a bit of time to squeeze in some wine-tasting in Marlborough on the way back and arrived back in Wellington on 9th Jan...after another pretty rough ferry ride! And then had a huge shock to the system going back to work the following morning!

Shouldn't complain too much though, we get a bank holiday weekend next week! So we're off on holiday again! Will be going up to Hawke's Bay on the east coast of the North Island with a few friends to a music and beer festival and to do some more wine-tasting. Fingers crossed for a sunny rest of the summer so we can make the most of all the events that go on in Welly.