Wellington (again), New Zealand.

Since we´d already been to Wellington, we made just a quick stop on our way through to check out a filming location for Lord of the Rings. Its a scene from the first movie where the hobbits are on the road trying to escape the dark rider. Froddie shouts "get off the road!¨. We found that road, but couldn´t see the tree. Maybe the tree roots were added in the studio, or maybe we didn´t look hard enough! Well we put in a good effort anyway with another nearby tree...

Recognise the scene?

Nelson, New Zealand.

Nelson. I'll put these little maps in since my route map is now in Chile!

Nelson was a great little town. Probably one of the places in New Zealand that I could consider living in. Very sunny, nice cafe culture, by the sea, and rather chilled too.

Nelson claims it has the geographical center of New Zealand. It was conveniently located at the top of a hill! We made the journey though. Lovely views.

Geographical centre of New Zealand.

Reena almost at the top of the hill

There was a playing field right next to where we parked our van. It claimed to be the site where the first rugby match was played in New Zealand.



There was also a kids playground. How could we resists the swing?!



For those of you who might be interested in how a camper van works, here´s a couple of photos.

Our bed.

Our kitchen!

Fox Glacier, New Zealand.

From Queenstown we headed towards the famous glaciers on the west cost. We stopped again many times for photos. One stop became a bit of a nightmare... We got stuck in the gravel! Who knows you can get stuck in gravel?! First it was mud, then ice, now gravel. I never really understood why people would drive 4x4 vehicles, particularly in cities, since they have a tendency to kill more children, but out in the country their use becomes blatantly obvious. Marty (our van) was quite a cosy home for us, but he was absolutely useless on the NZ roads!

Stuck in the gravel. We thought laying sticks infront of the tyres might have helped, but it looks more like we're trying to start a fire!

In the end we had to flag down some passers by to help us out. The first car had a couple inside. When we saw the guy he was a pretty burly looking bloke, and we thought "Yeah! He'll know how to get us out." Nope, and when we found out his name... Fabian, I thought with a name like that he's destined to be a bit of a girl when it comes to that sort of thing! So we had to flag down another passer by. Paul was the next chap. As he pulled up he had a dog in the back, a huge firearm in the passenger seat and a fag hanging out of his left hand. Hmmm... glad it was day time and we had Fabian there (for whatever use he would be!). Paul stepped out of his jeep with his wellies on - he looked the part. He was going to get us out! He calmly walked over to the van and took a look under the vehicle. He grabbed Fabian's tow rope (yes he even had a tow rope...), showed us where to hook it up, then pulled us out! Yay! Free of the gravel! Simple when you know how.

Fabian, Jo and Paul

This was the view we stopped for.

On to the glaciers...

The two main glaciers are the Fox Glacier and the Frans Josef Glacier. The Frans Josef is more famous, from what we understand as only better marketing which also made it more expensive to going hiking on. We chose to go hiking therefore on the Fox Glacier. It was a half day hike with one hour on the ice.

To get to the glacier we had to walk through the rainforest. It was about an hour walk up and down some steep hills, but it was worth it.

View down the valley.

In the rainforest.

Getting closer to the glacier.

Before we got onto the glacier we had to strap on our crampons! This was the first time I had used these before. They're massive spikes you attach to the bottom of your boots to stop you sliding all over the ice. They're quite effective.

Walking on the ice!

Me!

Looking down the valley while still on the glacier. To the right you can see a 'mulan', a tunnel down through the ice that the rain and melting ice will flow through.

The Fox and Frans Josef glaciers are two only a few glaciers in the world that are advancing. Most are retreating due to global warming. Apparently New Zealand experiences the opposite due to the El Niño and La Niña effect. The Fox is advancing at a rate of about 20cm per day. Not bad!

Queenstown, New Zealand.

Looking cool!

We spent our time in Queenstown getting snowboard and ski lessons...

Snowboarding is fun, but you spend a lot of your time on your bum! Very difficult when you're new to it.

Snowboarding at The Remarkables. Cheesy name...

Skiing on the other hand is sooo much easier. Didn't fall once!

Skiing at Coronet Peak. We were in the cloud most of the time.
Chocolate cake for my birthday!

Yum!

Milford Sound, New Zealand.

We were told to watch out for the roaring waterfalls that flow right by the road on the way to Milford Sound. We got quite a different sight. All the waterfalls had frozen over leaving these long dangling icicles. Pretty cool.

Waterfall of icicles

Reena took me on a cruise on the Milford Sound for my birthday. What a lovely present!

Me

This part of New Zealand gets between 7-9m of rainfall per year. The largest 24 hour downpour over last year was over 500mm! With over 200 days of rain each year we were lucky to get sunshine!

Mitre Peak - one of the highest mountains to come straight out of the sea.

Europeans incorrectly named this area as a 'sound' around 150 years ago. It's proper name would be a 'fjord'. The mountains were created by the erosive forces of glaciers. Sounds are created by rivers. Fjords have 'U' shape valleys, and sounds have 'V' shape valleys. At least that's how I understood it!

Waterfall seen from cruise boat.

New Zealand's closest point to Australia.

We had dolphins swimming around the boat! Quite difficult to get a photo...

The Maori name for New Zealand is 'Aotearoa' - its meaning 'The land of the long white cloud'. We saw some!

Cool clouds.

Curio Bay,New Zealand.

Sunrise at Curio Bay

We stayed at a great hostel in Curio Bay. The above sunrise was the view from the couch I slept on. There was also a stove which we eventually got started. All we had was damp timber. Not fun. There was also a gorgeous little cat called Lily. She decided that my pillow would make her a comfy bed at about 3am! She craved human attention.

Curio Bay is right down on the South East corner of the South Island, in an area called the Catlins. Its quite a rugged coast line. We wanted to visit this particular bay because we had read about the petrified forest you could walk around at low tide. We weren't disappointed.

Curio Bay at low tide.

It didn't look at all that spectacular when we first arrived, but it wasn't until we started looking closer that it got rather interesting. According to the Lonely Planet, this area used to be a Forest in the Jurassic age. Over time the forest, which was covered over by something or other, had eventually turned to rock.

A tree stump turned to rock!

You can just see the little log

This log is a little more obvious

You could count the rings on this one! I couldn't believe it was all rock!

This one looks a little squashed!



We continued on our journey to Milford Sound. This was near Riverton. You can see Stewart Island to the south.

Sheep! More fields like this and I could start believing there are 40 million sheep in NZ

Dunedin,New Zealand.

The train station in Dunedin. There are quite a few lovely old looking building in Dunedin.

Dunedin was a short stop too. We had to visit the Cadbury's Factory. We got lots of chocolate samples! I must say though, New Zealand Cadbury's is not as good as British Cadbury's. Its not as smooth or as tasty.

We again went on the hunt for penguins on the Otago Peninsular, but we didn't see anything. This isn't the time of year to be looking for them though...

According to the World Guinness Book of Records the steepest street in the world is in Dunedin. Its 1:1.26.... or something like that. It didn't look as steep as I was expecting.

Baldwin Street - this photo was taken half way up the hill. It was a lot steeper at the top!

I had to have roast lamb!

Oamaru, New Zealand.

The round boulders at Moeraki not far from Oamaru.

We never intended to spend more time than one night in Oamaru, but we met some great people there that night and one night became two. When we first got there we were desperate to find a shower and kitchen. We turned up at the closest hostel and explained our situation. The manager let us use the shower and kitchen for free! Lovely. There was also a log fire in the lounge, which made a welcome change to the freezing van...

They all taught me to play this dice game. Very simple yet very fun!

Mike, the chap furthest on the right, offered to show us around the next day. We took him up on his offer and had a great day! Our first stop was to the Round Boulders at Moeraki. They're these big round rocks plonked in the middle of a big stretch of beach. Mike seems to think that no one knows how they got there... We didn't go up to the visitors centre since it cost $2. It seemed better to take Mike's word for it.

Reena and Mike on the boulders

Reena and I

We also went on the hunt for penguins and seals... No penguins though. We got up too late!

A vicious seal

Mike was an interesting chap. He was only 23 but already two degrees, had surgery over 20 times due to surfing, snowboarding and who knows what else (and was about to go in for a nose job and cheek implant because he had recently smashed his face in with a surf board - you could see that his face wasn't quite symmetrical...), and was the breakfast radio DJ for Oamaru! He looked about 30, but you could tell he was younger from the enthusiasm he had for life. You don't find that so much in the older people you meet - where does it go?!

Mike was determined to light a fire on the beach so we could sit around, eat our fish and chips and melt marshmallows for desert. Yum!

We stayed that evening to watch the masquerade. It was pretty creepy actually watching them waltz through town.

The masquerade

That night I lost my mobile phone... Im usually so careful with things like that and was so annoyed at myself. Anyway, Reena tried to call it but there was no answer and I couldn't hear it ringing... No hope. A few minutes later, Reena got a call. It was guy named Paul who was ringing for my phone. He heard it ringing in the hostel lounge. He had to turn the place upside down to find it! It was underneath a sofa cushion in front of the fire. Cheers Paul for your honesty! He joined us for the journey down to Dunedin the next day.

We charge 6 cents per kilometre for any additional passengers - not bad eh?! Anyone want to join us?

We took Paul to see the boulders on our journey south.