Kiwiland - heading North again...

21st november
Drove from timaru to christchurch. Now, considering Timaru was a bit odd/dull, we had high expectations for Christchurch. Named after the college in Cambridge and one of the older towns in NZ. When we arrived at the campsite it was actually sunny, so we did what any good traveller does - make hay when the sun shines. Van doors open, books out, read in the sun. The culture can wait. It's not often the sun shines in the south island. I also went for a haircut... No, not like last time. This girl was an ex brummy who'd been in NZ for 30 odd years.


22nd November
After lounging around on the prior day, it was time to explore Christchurch. Now, we've been to some great cities in the world: London, Paris, Munich, NY, Chicago, LA, Portslade... New Zealand just doesn't do cities well, and whilst Christchurch is probably the nicest this country has to offer, it didn't amuse us for long. The highlight of the day came at dinner time. We'd not eaten out for a while, so decided to treat ourselves and respond to some cravings. We went to Pizza Hut and bought 2 large slab pizzas, garlic bread, wings and diet coke. $22. £7.50. £3.75 each for a stupid amount of food. Each pizza was almost 2 sq ft. I almost nailed mine and jo cleared three quarters of hers. I think it may have tasted better because it was so obscenely cheap...


23rd November
We spent a lot of time on the west coast of the south island which means we haven't had too much time on the east coast. But that's okay. There's bugger all there. As such, another day on the road driving to Kaikoura.

The only notable stop on the drive up was Gore bay. An absoloutely stunning bay with excellent surf and beautiful rocky cliffs...

Kaikoura is one of the world's marine life hotspots. One km out from the coast is a one km drop in the ocean floor which effectively means that you have all manner of whales, sharks and dolphins very near the coast. We walked down the beach and actually watched a couple of sperm whales arsing around from the beach. Pretty cool i'm sure you'll agree. We could have sat there longer and waited for more, but as it was day 1 of test 1 at the Gabba, we spent the afternoon watching the aussies knock seven shades out of our bowlers in a pub...

The whale watching trips are heavily weather dependent and so we had to decide whether to book one for the next day (with supposedly deteriorating weather) or make alternate plans. We made alternate plans and...


24th November
...got up very early to catch the morning surf. Drove in to town to collect a couple of boards and wetsuits and headed 20km up the coast to an excellent surf beach. Where it wasn't at all excellent. The swell was very very poor. A strong off shore was keeping the waves down. Absoloutely gutted, but we didn't give up. We continued up the coast looking for another beach, but it was no better. We returned to the shop with our heads hung low and somewhat dejected. Our plan of surfing in every country is looking at risk. Fortunately, we still have Raglan to visit. Considered one of the best spots in the world... For the rest of the day, we just drove up to Picton where we would get the ferry on the following day. Got there at a reasonable time, so watched the last session of day 2. Poxy aussies...


25th November
Earlyish start for the three and a half hour boat to wellington. Fairly uneventful. Waves up to 5 metres, but the big boat handled them well... The campsite is in Lower Hutt. Home of star wars' "jabba" perhaps? Appropriate as Jo thinks she's a bit of a princess Leah character and i've always fancied myself as a bit of a Han Solo hero type. It has since been suggested that I could play Jabba myself. Not funny. After dinner we went to the cinema and watched "Borat". Amusing enough...


26th November
Knocked about wellington for the day. Wello' is the capital of NZ (or Un Zud as it's pronounced here). As it's capital it contains the national museum Te papa. And it's free. Sweet. We spent about 4 hours in that bad boy learning about the history of it's geography and it's habitants. All very interesting. Joey excelled with bacon and pasta and a couple of beers for dinner.


27th November
Got up early to leave Wellington and crack on back up north. Oh, jo's lost her sunglasses and it's sunny so we divert to a shopping centre. Jo buys new sunglasses. Jo finds old sunglasses. My fault apparently. From here we drive to palmerston north - Student City! Maybe seven or eight students. It held our attention just long enough to nail lunch. One panini and one burger (no prizes for guessing who had which). From there, back on up the highway on the look out for the town of wanganui and the chance of some sort of water based activity on the wanganui river. NZ's longest navigable river. In the town of wanganui we managed to book a little excursion for the following day from pipiriki - 79km up the road. This would mean getting up at 7am to meet at ten. Too early for the slumbersome Hills. So, despite it being late, we got the miles under our belt early doors and spent the night in Ohakune only 25km from pipriki. A special mention to the random couple who knocked up a full roast in the campsite kitchen and managed to put a couple of roasties my way. Top drawer.


28th November
Out the door at nine to get to pipiriki by 10 for some Wanganui river excitement. Basically you jetboat 32km up the river through the wanganui national park to the bridge to nowhere. The river is flanked by the steep walls of gorges up to 80m high. These are draped in rain forest. Amazing waterfalls and rock formations everywhere. The bridge to nowhere is a roadbridge over the river but the connecting roads have long since erroded. After lunch we jetboated 19km back. I know what you're thinking, what about the other 13km? How did you get back? We paddled a canadian canoe through 13km and three sets of rapids. Joey upfront navigating and directing. Me in the engine room at the back. It was supposed to take three hours, but we shocked ourselves by doing it in 2hrs 10min. A combination of hard work and surprisingly good teamwork. Navigating the rapids was awesome fun as we both got soaked and even ran aground at one point. With all the excitement beforehand, the directors of "Hill & Hill Day Trippers Ltd" forgot to charge the battery on the camera and so only managed a few photos on a fantastic day out. In a press release later that day the directors blamed one another. An internal enquiry follows... Anyway, we rewarded ourselves with a delightful dinner of beef stir-fry. Veery-Niice as Borat would say.


29th November
The plan was to drive up leisurely to Waitomo for an adventure thing the following day. However on the previous night we'd been informed by another couple in the campsite kitchen (the ultimate meeting place) of another activity which occurred in Waitomo every day at 12:45. So with a 2 1/2 hour drive ahead of us, we left at 10:45 looking to beat the clock. I've never seen joey so excited. We got there at 1. Boo. However, the owner of the establishment saw the dissapointment in joey's eyes and put on a special demonstration of... Rabbit Shearing!!! It is perhaps the funniest thing ever. They are angora rabbits and their fur is extremely valuable. If they're not sheared every two months they die of heat exhaustion. I've never seen joey so happy as when she was stroking the little pup! I won't go into detail about the shearing as it looked a little unpleasant. They call it the bunny barbeque. Not nice. After relaxing at the campsite we took a quick trip out to Mangapohue Natural Bridge and Marokopa Falls. The former is all that remains of a collapsed cave. A huge limestone arch. The latter was one of the north islands largest waterfalls. With the limestone rocks, the falls had huge variety and character. It's funny, we've seen more falls in the last month than at any time of my life but I still don't tire of them.


30th November
The real reason that people visit Waitomo is caving. In particular glowworm caves. Us? We came here for black water rafting in glowworm caves. We are the gnarliest of dudes. Abseil. Walk. Swim. Climb. Waterfall jump. Waterfall climb. Tube. Climb. All in rivers through the gloworm caves. Awesome. Except due to 18 hours solid rain the caves flooded. We were tooled up. Wet suits. Harnesses. Helmet. Boots. Absailing training done. Half the group already absailed down in to the cave, when it was called off because the water levels were rising too fast. We were absoloutely gutted. We were looking forward to it since joey booked it a few days ago. We went to the cave museum and the "dry" caves for a half hour walk and then booked a slightly milder adventure for the following morning in caves that don't flood. It'll be at the expense of the surfing, but it'll be worth it as you can't do it anywhere else in the world. Whilst there has been a lot of rain in general, we've been really lucky that whenever we've done activities things have worked out. We were one of the few helicopter loads that made it up the glacier in that week, so we can't moan too much. Early night, ready for caving at 9!


Joey's musings:- well....in precisely 3 days time our work here will be done! As i'm sure Matt will agree we have had an amazing time here. We have braved the roaring 40s (latitude as opposed to age!) and subsequent weather to wholeheartedly embrace the outdoor lifestyle.....Hang on I hear you all say "Jo doesn't like fun!", "what did she do without Topshop", "where is the nearest Mac?", well if you'd have seen me trekking on the glacier, canoeing up rivers and riding the Shotover jet you would think I'd had a personality change (or too much valium!). I am sad to leave NZ and would love to come back - it's paradise....and a rainy, windy one at that!

Matt and I have had a great time together, despite being in a small van with no "cudboard under the wheels" to escape to. The campervan has been a good experience after all, communal camp facilities have enabled us to meet so many nice people from all over the world - and yielded a spot of food envy on my part too! Until now I have never slept outside or in a van so am pleased to tick that off before i'm 30!

Hope all is well with everyone....
lots of love, Joey xxx

P.S. My phone appears to be somewhat unreliable at times but Matt's is still fully functioning.....