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  • Chad CarlsonNew Zealand south island
    Dag 5

    Day 5 Franz Josef Glacier

    26 februari 2017, Nieuw-Zeeland ⋅ 🌙 16 °C

    We managed to sleep in a bit this morning in hopes the cafe across the street would be open for breakfast. We didn't sleep long enough though, it wasn't open yet and no sign showing when it did. We continued south bound.

    Heather took her first try at driving, of course Chad was scared and tried, but didn't, keep his mouth shut. The west side of the island offers some amazing views of crashing waves and rocky coast line. We stopped Irimahuewhero viewpoint for some quick photos and then carried on to Punakaiki and had bacon (Canadian bacon) and eggs for breakfast. It was interesting to note how dead of a town Charleston was compared to just 45 minutes south where it has been just like your typical summer in southern Utah. We then did the Truman walk down to the beach, and a quick look into Punakaiki cavern while we waited for the tide to come in to see the Pancake Rocks and blow holes.

    Geologists still don't know exactly how the Pancake rocks were formed, many layers of ?limestone? And much more easily eroded material. With all the soft rock around, the ocean did a number on the coast line and created surge pools and "blow holes". The immense power of the ocean is best seen during high tide in a place like this, which we were lucky enough to be there for. It is quite hard to describe all that is going on, and equally difficult to capture on camera. Probably best described in person. We did capture a few videos though.

    We carried on to Greymouth where Siri knew where she was going, but had great difficulty getting us there (the grocery store) because she couldn't decide which road we were actually on. We got some groceries and drove south some more to the next roadside table and made a quick lunch. Further south we made another pitstop in Hokitika which apparently has the best Jade in NZ. We figured that it was just the typical tour bus stop for all the tourists to get their souvenirs so we got a couple. South bound again we suddenly came to a stop in the middle of nowhere. Apparently a large tree had fallen across the road so traffic was backed up for kilometers in either direction. The black signs you see along the road here saying "NZ roads are different, plan for more time" rings true again, even though these roads were straight enough you could get up to the speed limit most of the time.

    After our 30 minute delay we finally made it to Franz Josef with plenty of time to spare for our glacier hot pool experience. (Just chlorinated hot tubs the size of normal pools). After some time there and a refreshing shower we made our way a couple minutes up the road to the Rainforest Retreat Holiday Park. We got some laundry done and "made" some dinner while trying to plan what to do with our 4.5 open days coming up. We are trying to figure out how all the people here come and cook such elaborate looking dinners while we mainly open up packets of things to warm up.    Meer informatie

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  • Chad CarlsonNew Zealand south island
    Dag 5

    Day 4 Charleston

    26 februari 2017, Nieuw-Zeeland ⋅ 🌙 14 °C

    Another early start this morning to start our drive to Charleston for our Underworld Adventure. We had about an hour and a half of backtracking the route we took to Abel Tasman before we got on a new road to take us to the west coast. New Zealand speed limits are typically a limit, but a goal to try to get to for the most part. We did make good time, google maps said 3:30 and we were right close to that.

    Before getting to Charleston we stopped near Westport to go visit a fur seal colony. A short hike got us to the seal colony where Chad got to try out his dual purpose selfie stick/monopod for pictures of seals and seagulls. The hike also offered spectacular views even though we didn't quite have time to make it to the high point where a lighthouse was. We then finished our drive to charleston and had lunch near the beach at Constant Bay. This is a small bay where ships used to deliver goods to charleston when it was a gold mining town. They said it was ships up to 40 tons.

    The main event of our day was the Underworld Adventure. We showed up and were instructed in the application of our wet suits. Socks, boots, wet suit, wet suit jacket, life jacket, helmet. Chad looked quite fetching in his skin tight wet suit. We then boarded a bus and rode to the train. There was a neat train that took us through the forest to a path where we walked to a swing bridge. We picked up our tubes, which turned out to be child sized tubes (this comes into play later). We then met our guide, Tim. We climbed 130 stairs to the entrance of the cave. It was a hot climb up, but was a cool 11 degrees inside. There were really cool formations, and we hiked for about 1 hour in the cave, carrying our tubes. At one point we "stopped for a rest" and all sat down in our tubes, turned off our lights, and there were glowworms! They were so cool! We then proceeded on, over a small crevace, and then met a river. We formed a line in our tubes, and all linked up. Then we floated through the river, and at first we saw a small line of glowworms, but then it opened up, and the whole roof was covered in glowworms! It was surreal and so cool! The river was a little low, so when we got to the river (which was overwhelmingly green after the black and blue of the pure dark and glowworms), we had to wiggle and push our way through the rocks and rapids. The child sized tines meant that our backs and butts took the brunt of the bumping, as the tube opening was big, but the tube width itself was small. After our refreshing dip in the cool water we made it back to the bridge and boarded the train (run by our guide in his wetsuit) for the trip back to the bus, whilst waiting we were swarmed by the resident sand flies (i.e. Glowworm food), the local couple told us that the Maori believe that the gods put sandflies in the nicest places to keep people out. Lucky for us, this didn't work on us, as the glow worms were one of the closest things we've ever seen!

    We asked a local couple where the best place to watch the sunset would be and they directed us to fishermans rock. We had a quick dinner getting rid of all of our leftovers and took a quick shower before heading out to fishermans rock.

    Luckily we were able to decipher the kiwi's directions and eventually found the parking spot to the rock. (Not before multiple U turns and passing the same on the road at least 5 times) We grabbed our bottle of Chardonnay and quickly completed the short walk on the beach, scramble on the rocks, through the NZ flax forest and across the old concrete foot bridge to fishermans rock. The sunset and waves were quite spectacular, and we were the only people there which made it even better.

    We managed to stay up past 10 PM for the first time since we've been here.    Meer informatie

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  • Chad CarlsonNew Zealand south island
    Dag 4

    Day 3 Abel Tasman

    25 februari 2017, Nieuw-Zeeland ⋅ 🌙 16 °C

    We both had another good nights sleep and slept just about to our alarm going off. I bet in a couple days we will probably be ready to sleep in a bit.

    We arrived plenty early to Kahu Kayaks for our "Swingers Delight" tour, greeted by guides actually happy to be there! After everyone arrived and a quick van ride to the ocean we boarded the water taxi and got dropped off about 15 minutes later at Torrent Bay for our 4ish mile hike. We crossed a fairly long, somewhat unsturdy feeling swinging suspension bridge. It crossed a river that emptied into Sandfly Bay, we didn't go visit that beach, even though it looked amazing. The name was a great deterrent. Even with the ominous clouds most of the morning the weather held out for the duration of our hike and was starting to clear by the time we got to Bark Bay; where we had lunch (and Heather spent most of her time running away from curious bees)

    After lunch our same water taxi came to pick us up and bring us back towards town and drop us off at Watering Cove to fetch some kayaks and kayak around in the ocean for a few hours. Our cheerful Canadian guide, an older German couple, young Swiss couple and a young german girl joined us. Normally double kayaks can be a bit of a challenge for us, but these were true sit inside ocean kayaks with a rudder so steering was much easier. We paddled out to Adele island (not named after the singer we found out) to look at some New Zealand Fur Seals while our guide chastised seal gawkers for being closer than 20 meters of the seals.

    We were lucky that the tide and weather were perfect so we continued around Adele Island to a secluded cove which had a perfect sand beach. We beached there for a break as our guide made us mochas and hot chocolate. An hour or so paddle/float later we got back to the beach we started at, which now required an 800 meter walk to get back to the dock since it was low tide. They used old tractors to drive down onto the beach and into the ocean to retrieve the boats and kayaks and bring them back to the road. All of which were old Ford 7000s. They had to be pre 1980 because they drove them right into the ocean to get the boats loaded on them so anything electrical wouldn't survive.

    We then headed into town to get gas and some groceries for dinner. The Toyota van we have gets around 17mpg, which isn't bad, except that gas is around $nzd 8/gallon. It makes filling up a bit expensive each time. We got zucchini, packaged mushroom risotto and a white fish ????(starts with a T) ????for dinner. It all was delicious. We also noticed at the store that they have a ton of delicious sounding hard ciders here, we tried a passion fruit and strawberry lime cider. Both were quite tasty.

    As per our normal routine so far we were tucking ourselves into our cozy camper by 9PM.    Meer informatie

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  • Chad CarlsonNew Zealand south island
    Dag 3

    Day 2 Abel Tasman

    24 februari 2017, Nieuw-Zeeland ⋅ 🌙 18 °C

    We both slept soundly last night until about 530AM (going to sleep by 9PM might have had something to do with it!) and got up and had some yogurt, muesli and coffee, we were on the road by 730 for our supposed 5:45 drive Marahau.

    It is comforting to know that there is a road construction season in New Zealand as well. Traffic and two lane, twisty roads slow things down as well. Heather used the spaceship app to find a random waterfall hike, located by a spray painted blue arrow on a tree on the side of the road. It had a warning with cross bones and skull, with a warning for poison. We figured we wouldn't eat the poison pellets and proceeded on our way.A quick 15 minute hike up and we weren't disappointed. We finally arrived in Marahau around 230 in time for our afternoon horseback ride down the beach. Which may have been one of our strangest guides to date....

    We still don't know exactly how to describe this strange, weathered man. Upon arrival to his pasture, entrance marked by a Canadian flag (he was not Canadian, just liked the flag) we were greeted by an obviously unhappy man rolling a cigarette. He told us that we were early and not much else. We retreated to our van to change into more appropriate horseback riding gear. Another customer finally approached so we figured we could go back over.

    We don't know the name of this soft spoken, strange little man as he never actually introduced himself, but he was slightly happier to see us after his cigarette, and that it was now approaching the time that the tour was set to begin. A quick observation of our surroundings revealed a delapitated shack that housed the riding equipment, a run down trailer (which we assume he lived in) and an outhouse. Heather inquired about using the restroom before our 2 hour ride. He looked at her as if it were quite the inconvenience before he offered up his "long drop" (outhouse) for her to use. We got our helmets and assigned our horses. It was just us two, and a lady from Finland. Chad with little riding experience was last to mount his horse. The strange little man offered some advice, to paraphrase, "Don't hold onto the saddle horn, pull on the reigns the direction you want to go, and kick your heels to go, you'll figure out the rest"

    The strange little man got his horse out, and climbed onto him, bareback. We were on our way. This is about when the perplexing rambling began. Comments from the strange little man about "if this were free, it wouldn't be worth doing" and "I don't get paid to talk to you, I just get paid to keep you safe" started things off. As he became more comfortable with us his conversation got more animated.

    We both understand guides getting comfortable with clients, but it is usually after a couple of days. This guy, became comfortable enough within half an hour to completely remove what little filter he had. He let the true cowboy come out, swearing like a cowboy (or sailor?), and letting us know how he felt about lots of random things. The insight that he delivered was quite eccentric, and very abnormal for the typical tour guide. He had plenty of conspiracies that he felt the need to let us know about, rather than inform us of typical (actual)history and natural things that we were experiencing.

    Overall he kept us safe, which was his only job.....He let Heather and the Finn trot/gallop on the beach. He took our camera and took some good pictures, along with some very random pictures. On our way back to his "pasture" we had to ride our horses on the streets, by this point he must have been tired of riding bareback for 2 hours so he was walking alongside his horse, randomly stopping and looking into vehicles parked along the road. We got back to his pasture and proceeded to desaddle, rinse, and put away his horses for him.

    This being our second day in New Zealand we felt obligated to tip, so we did (even though it is not expected at all, which we figured out later). He was as grateful, in a strange way. Neither of us still know exactly what to think of him. Probably the worst guide ever, but I (Chad) would recommend going on a tour with him, just for the strange experience of riding a horse with this Kiwi Cowboy.

    Then we drove the 2 minute back to our Holiday Park for the night.

    "The Barn Backpacking Holiday Park" is a bit more rambunctious than the park in Christchurch. The holiday parks have so far been about like a KOA. We made spaghetti and meat sauce which was delicious, and got our lunches and everything ready for our boating/kayaking/hiking tomorrow.    Meer informatie

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  • Chad CarlsonNew Zealand south island
    Dag 1

    Day 1 Christchurch

    22 februari 2017, Nieuw-Zeeland ⋅ 🌙 16 °C

    After 12.5 hours on our "economy skycouch" which was more like 5 minutes of cuddling in a recliner; we figured out how to get some sleep. It wasn't a problem for heather after being mostly awake for the previous 24 hours, and Chad taking Benadryl and melatonin, we arrived in Auckland mostly rested.

    Word of advice for NZ customs, bring clean shoes, or don't declare that you've worn them outside. after an extra 10 minutes of NZ biosecurity cleaning our shoes we were rushing to the domestic terminal for our quick hour flight to Christchurch.

    Fortunately we made it, and our luggage nearly beat us to our carousel. Heather thought the taxi driver had an assistant as we were walking up as he got out of the right side of the car to help us with our things, however that is the side of the car you drive on in NZ.

    A few minutes later we arrive to pick up our spaceship beta 2s. After a quick check in and driving "test" (which was 4 left turns(the easy ones)), the guy told us to grab a couple camping chairs and table for no cost and be on our way.

    We made our way to the Christchurch botanical gardens with Heather navigating and clenching the door handle around corners. After a quick stop for tea and coffee, with angry seagulls, We found the heather garden among other interesting flowers,foliage and trees.

    After lunch we headed to "The Warehouse" (Walmart) for some towels and a SIM card for our phones. Then on to the grocery store to stock up our 10L fridge for a few days.

    We arrived at the North South Holiday Park before most other campers (and unscathed from Chad's first driving experience on the "other" side of the road) so we were able to get a fairly nice spot with a picnic table and not have to wait on taking a nice, hot, 6 minute shower.

    After cooking some makeshift fajitas for dinner on our van stove we are counting down the minutes for the sun to go down so we can finally get some great horizontal sleep.    Meer informatie

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  • Chad CarlsonNew Zealand south island

    Leaving SFO

    21 februari 2017, Verenigde Staten ⋅ 🌧 10 °C

    After a 4.5 hour layover, a couple drinks and changing into comfy pants were just about ready to board our Air New Zealand 777-300 and check out our "economy sky couch"!

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