Hello World (to quote a certain Mr Alan Wicker). I believe I can describe my readers as ‘World’, as I am certain that we have people in at least 3 countries reading this.
I have yet again been rather slack at writing this latest update, and that is not because we have been doing too much but because we have been doing nothing, and that has made me want to do even less. But now I am here to let you all know (and remind myself) of our most recent adventures - those of a couple of weeks ago now.
When I last left you, we were in Peel Forest, sitting in the sun and enjoying the birdsong and general peacefulness of the surroundings. We continued south the next day, and went to a huge lake called Lake Tekapo, with a tiny but gorgeous church - the Church of the Good Shepherd - on it’s shore. It was a beautiful setting, with views of Mount Cook and the Southern Alps in the distance. The church is lovely as well, but doesn’t take long to look around - literally a walk in, sorry for bumping into the other three tourists in there, and walk out. We made more of the lovely lake shore, taking copious photos of the amazing turquoise water (it is glacial water and thus has a large amount of rock powder dissolved therein, making it much more reflective of the sun’s light and the colour of the shy than your average lake water), as well as skimming many stones and acting like amateur ornithologists (i.e. taking photos of gulls). After an appalling coffee with appropriately awful service in the town of Lake Tekapo (not much thought went into that evidently), and the purchase of two superb and bargainous Merino beanie hats (one of which has barely left Nick’s head in the subsequent two weeks), we moved on to try and find a good camping location. We finally (after many a stop for photos of the Alps and the sunset, and both together) happened upon a good roadside location, which turned out to be the best place we have stayed in all our time in the van. We tucked ourselves away into a group of conifers, which offered excellent noise reduction and privacy from the main road only 30 feet away, as well as superb shelter from the very strong wind which was blowing that night. Not good enough shelter to cook outdoors, however, so we were forced into our first meal cooked entirely inside the Horny Ox. It turned out to be a great success (as photos will testify) - pumpkin, thyme and ginger risotto. Delicious. We had planned to accompany it with a beautiful, buttery, creamy Chardonnay that we had bought in Blenheim, only to find that we in fact had no corkscrew. Devastating. After much cursing of the false sense of security that a predominance of screw-top bottles gives the wine-drinker, we enjoyed our risotto just as much with a cask Merlot. Classy.
The next day we chugged off towards Mount Cook, very excited about the huge mountains with snow and everything that were getting ever closer. After a stop and a few hundred more photos of another, even more gorgeous, turquoise lake (Lake Pukaki), we made it to Mount Cook village. We had a rather poor and vastly overpriced lunch at the only café (any of you who have been to Mount Cook will probably have eaten in the same crummy place), and then set off for our walk towards the base of the mountain. We were initially a bit dismayed by the hordes of elderly Japanese tourists coming bombing back towards us, thinking that perhaps we weren’t going on such a taxing route after all, but they disappeared after the first hour and we could reassume the personas of extreme mountaineers. We succeeded in completing our walk to the end of the Tasman Glacier, and there was much excitement from a certain Mr Willmore at the sight of glacial ice floating in the river. We dutifully retrieved a piece of said ice and each ate a chunk, before it started to rain really quite hard and we set off back towards the village at a rather swifter pace than we had come up at!
That night we decided to spend the night in a motel, so that we could actually dry our clothes and have showers without having to dash halfway across a field in towels. We reassured the van that it was nothing personal and proceeded to feel extremely seedy staying in a roadside motel. We made ourselves feel slightly more classy by drinking the aforementioned Chardonnay (having discovered a corkscrew in the motel kitchen), and recreating the previous night’s risotto.
The next day, feeling as if we had certainly got our money’s worth of the motel shower (having spent probably a good half-hour in it each), we moved on to Oamaru. On the way we saw some Maori cave drawings (rather faint and indistinct, but nonetheless some of the oldest things one is likely to see in this part of the world), and, more excitingly, drove over the top of two massive dams. Quite a novel experience and one that we both found rather thrilling (many more photos were of course taken). Once we got to Oamaru, we wandered around the town a little, and admired some of the beautiful Victorian architecture, which seem mostly to be disregarded, with only a couple of these lovely buildings being used as hotels, shops or houses. The reason for Oamaru’s existence is the little blue penguin colony very close to the town. The little blue being very rare, they set up a few years ago a conservation programme, involving mainly controlled tourist viewing of the penguins (charging $15 a pop) and man-made burrows for them to nest in. Given that we had arrived at around 4 and the penguins only come ashore at dusk - about 7 - we decided to go for a bit of a walk along the coastal track while we waited. Two minutes after we left the visitor centre, we looked down at the beach and saw a huge New Zealand fur seal, which made us pretty happy (being about twenty times closer than at the seal colony). We walked further along the track and then went down to a small beach to look at the Pillow Lava - lava formations set into other rock which look like stones et in mortar. Very odd. Nick then went for a wee behind a rock and I walked a little further along the tiny beach to see what was what. I turned towards the cliffs at one point, just glancing around, and suddenly realised that I was about five metres away from a solitary yellow-eyed penguin! I was so excited and really it was all I could do to stay quiet and take fifty million photos while I waited for Nick to finish his wee. Once he re-emerged, there was much whispered excitement, further photo-taking (including me doing a spectacular penguin impression), and then we finally dragged ourselves away (after Nick had informed me that no, I couldn’t smuggle the penguin back to the van inside my coat). We then proceeded further down the track to another beach, where we came with five metres of two enormous fur seals (I did not even contemplate smuggling 200kg of seal back to the van, but did wonder whether they would mind me lying down and giving them a little cuddle…). More photos. We also managed to find many fragments, and a couple of whole, paua shells, which, although not to our taste, are pretty spectacular and have been added to the Jade collection for future use. After returning to the van and a cup of tea and a cookie or three to calm our excited wildlife minds, we decided to forgo the pay-per-view penguin bonanza that evening and instead revel in the memories our own private display. We therefore got back on the road and drove a short way south of Oamaru and spent the night in a bowls club car park. Glamorous.
After our night in the very accommodating bowls club car park, we made it to Dunedin. It was in Dunedin that we discovered quite how much money we had spent since leaving Furneaux, so the hunt was on for cheap tourist attractions (and a job for Nick). We spent several hours in the massive museum in Dunedin, looking mainly at a brilliant photography exhibition (wildlife and landscape photography of Australia, NZ, Papua New Guinea and Antarctica), but also at a (dead) specimen of the world’s biggest crab and some Maori exhibits. The next day we explored the (free) Botanic Gardens, and had a little picnic. We also went to, and walked up, the world’s steepest street (and that’s official, so says the Guinness Book of World Records). And yes, it was very steep (especially for us lazy and unfit traveller types). Gradient of 1:2.6 or something silly. And there’s a guy who has jogged up and skipped(!) down 30 times in a row every day for the last 10 years. Crazy. We talked to him, he did seem relatively lucid but there clearly has to be some underlying mental instability to do something like that.
And the only other thing to report from Dunedin was on our second night there, when we stayed halfway up Mount Cargill and the trowel had to come into use for a lavatorial crisis for the first time. Amy, I know you will find that amusing. Now that is not to be spoken of again.
After that, we made our way back to Christchurch and have been there since, seeking a job for Nick and generally hanging around in public places (mainly the library), trying not to spend money. This weekend, as no-one will be e-mailing Nick about work, we are going to treat ourselves to the excitement to going to the Christchurch museum. Woo hoo. And that is as thrilling as it gets right now, so please write to us to bring a little sunshine into our lives! It’s also getting bloody cold now, so camping is not as much fun sometimes (especially after we found that our mattress was going slightly mouldy with the cool damp air). And Nick says to say that will someone please post a comment on the blog (that doesn’t apply to Lucy, who has been the only one to do so thus far and are therefore in the good books)!
I shall go back to the impossible task of trying to warm my feet up now, so thanks for reading and lots of love to all!