We've had quite a busy time since out last update, with it being the middle of summer...not that you'd think it today in the pouring rain and cold winds!
At the end of November we did a three-day canoe trip down the Whanganui River (the longest river in NZ) with Heather and James and Will and Alex (Ben lived with Will in Canada a few years ago). Was good fun, if a little knackering on the arms! Plus it rained a lot and we got eaten alive by sandflies! But we managed to take lots of beer/wine/gin in the canoes (easier than the walking weekend a while before!), so that made it all the more fun. The last day had quite a few rapids, so we got drenched - but fortunately didn't fall in/capsize!
Then the last weekend of November Kerry's parents came out to visit. They were in NZ for a bit over 3 weeks, but we only saw them for 4 1/2 days. We met them in the central North Island to walk the Tongariro Crossing, over the volcanoes. Unfortunately the beautiful clear skies that we had first thing in the morning didn't last and we were covered in cloud most of the way over the tops, and clinging on to rocks so we didn't get blown into the crater! We even had to sit down and wriggle a bit of the way down on our bums cos it was so windy we thought we were going to get blown off the narrowest bit of ridge! How embarrassing! But we still got to see all the main volcanic features (craters, lakes e.t.c.) that it's famous for. Then they spent a weekend in Wellington with us...in the rain!
Ben's parents came out to visit just afterwards so we met them up in Auckland for a long weekend. Ben took Richard for a trip on an America's Cup yacht around Auckland Harbour...Kerry and Wendy found a cafe in the sunshine to pass the time more smoothly! Then we drove over to the Bay of Plenty, staying in a lovely B&B just outside Tauranga. On the Sunday we had a day at Te Puia geothermal area in Rotorua where we could be geology geeks! There's a couple of geysers, plus loads of bubbling mud pools and boiling springs. Very cool and not as smelly as we were expecting it to be!
Finished work for Xmas on 23rd December after numerous BBQs (definitely seemed a bit odd having such summer Xmas celebrations!) and met Wendy and Richard off the ferry (they'd been in the South Island for a week or so)....and saw a little blue penguin swimming around in the harbour! Christmas Eve we went over to our local wine region over the hills, to taste plenty (and get a couple) of yummy wines for Christmas Day. Spent Christmas Day in Wellington...sadly it was a bit windy to go to the beach, so had to settle for a picnic in the botanical gardens. Seemed to be the place to go, there were lots of families doing the same thing...but walking back through the city centre in the afternoon felt like a ghost town! Just like London in "28 Days Later"!
When Wendy and Richard left on 27th, we went down to the South Island for a couple of weeks holiday. Had a great time travelling down the East Coast to Dunedin, across to Queenstown for New Year (staying with a friend's family in Arrowtown) and then back up the West Coast.Sadly we had pretty crap weather so didn't see much of the mountains, but saw plenty of wildlife along the way like yellow-eyed and fiordland-crested penguins, fur seals, sealions, albatross, weka (a species of supposedly rare NZ bird that they thought was extinct a few decades ago - obviously they didn't go to South Island campsites!) and some huge (1.5m across) stingrays. But much to Kerry's annoyance - still no dolphins!
When we say bad weather, we mean it! It might not be as cold as in the UK right now, but we had a metre of rain in a week on the West Coast! Nearly had to spend a night in the car as we got stuck on the one and only road up the coast between 2 floods (thankfully they cleared it about 6.30pm) and couldn't walk up to Fox Glacier because the path had been washed away. At least the clouds had cleared enough so we could actually see them! Funnily enough we gave up on the camping and retreated to cabins/hotels instead! One thing that was fine to do in the rain - gold panning! Not that we found very much! We decided it was a bad thing being geologists, cos we could identify all the shiny bits we found as other minerals and not gold!
After a week we decided we'd had enough of waiting for the weather to improve so escaped to Abel Tasman National Park in search of some sunshine! And sure enough, we found some! Thankfully! Walked the southern half of the Great Walk there, really pretty coastline and not as busy as we were led to believe it might be considering it's the middle of the school summer holidays here.
Just means we'll have to go back for some more holidays to see the South Island in all it's (occasionally) sunny glory!Back at work now, though next weekend's a bank holiday for us so will hopefully get away somewhere.
Hope that 2010 has started well for you all, will be good to hear how your Christmas went.
Bye for now!
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