New ZealandCanterburyChristchurchCathedral Square43°31’52” S 172°38’8” E
April 12, 2018 in New Zealand ⋅ ⛅ 6 °C
We were told before arriving to New Zealand that it is quite like Ireland and when we arrived it didn't disappoint as it was lashing rain. We went up on a gondola up Port Hills to get a view over the city and the bay however due to extreme wind we had to get one of the last gondolas back down the hill as it was closing for the day. The view was stunning even if we only admired it for a few minutes.
The International Antarctica Centre was one of the main attractions that I wanted to visit while in Christchurch. When we arrived the blue penguins in the centre were being fed. The penguins were all injuried and couldn't survive out in the sea so were being minded and cared for in the centre until they were strong enough to go back out to the sea. Some of the penguins were fed in the water and others on the artificial beach area. It was funny watching the penguins dart for their food in the water and then shake their flippers from side to side when they were full. After that we got to ride in one of the vehicles that are used to transport people and food to the Antarctica base camp. It was a bumpy ride as we went up dunes and over logs but we laughed the whole way through the ride. In the centre there was also a wind storm that went to -18 degree celcius wind temperature and a challenge to see how long we could put our hands in ice water. Rob held his hand in the ice the longest (three minutes) so he got bragging rights. There was so much to do in the centre, it was really well designed and I would recommend anyone to go and visit.
The next morning we left Christchurch on the Transalpine Train. This scenic train journey took five hours to get to the west coast and to the town of Greymouth. During the train journey we went through valleys and farm lands, saw wide rivers, lakes and waterfalls and over mountains and bridges. The weather also changed through our journey as we started with rain, then had snow while on the mountains and finally arrived into Greymouth with beautiful sunny weather. It was the most amazing amazing train journey I've ever been on, just stunning scenery.Read more
New ZealandWest CoastWestland DistrictFranz Josef43°23’5” S 170°10’34” E
April 17, 2018 in New Zealand
When researching Franz Josef Glaciers we found out that the glacier hikes are weather dependent so it is advised to spend a few days in the glaciers area in case our prebooked glacier hike was cancelled. We arrived in the evening to Franz Josef village and the sun was shining so we were hopeful that the following day would be the same and our glacier hike would go ahead. That evening we walked along the valley floor to a view point of the bottom of Franz Glacier. Along the walking trail there were signs informing us of where the glacier used to decend down the mountain to. In the last 150 years the glacier has retreated at a much quicker pace than the previous 1,000 years due to the use of engined machinery and climate change. It was mad how far the glacier has retreated in such a short period of time. We got a lovely view of the Franz Josef glacier just as the sun was setting, this made us more excited about the glacier hike the following day.
However when we woke up the following morning it was raining and we heard that all of the glacier hikes were postponed for the day. We decided to go to another glacier, Fox Glacier, which was located thirty minutes away on the other side of the mountain. Similar to Franz Josef we walked the valley walk to the base of Fox Glacier, this is a larger glacier than Franz Josef Glacier and it decends further down the mountain so we could see more of the glacier from the valley below. Just as we arrived at the glacier the rain stopped so we got some very nice photos there. After lunch we walked through the rainforest around Lake Matheson. On a dry clear day there is supposed to be a stunning reflection of the glacier on the lake surface however due to the rain the reflection was not present. It was a peaceful walk nevertheless.
That evening after all our walking we decided to treat ourselves to hot baths. We spent an hour relaxing in 37 degree water, it was great.
The following morning we woke to the sound of helicopters flying overhead. We got excited that our tour would go ahead today. When we arrived at the tour base we had to fill in a health and safety form and then were gave boots, waterproof jacket and trousers and gloves. There was ten people in our group and it turned out that eight were Irish, we all laughed about how you can't go anywhere without meeting some Irish. The helicopter flight to the glacier took five minutes and there was a stunning view of the glacier below. Once we landed on the ice we put crampton spikes onto our boots and met our guide Laurence. Laurence brought us up through the glacier through cravasses in the ice. We learned about how glaciers were formed and also how the Maori believe that the glacier was formed by their demi-god sheading frozen tears for her lost lover. The most spectacular part of the hike was when we got to walk through blue ice. Blue ice is compacted ice that has no air in it therefore light can not be dispersed as it goes through the ice giving a blue colour. It looked so pretty. The hike was three hours long so was quite tiring but was worth every minute of it. I think that this adventure is going to be one of the highlights of the whole trip.Read more
New ZealandOtagoQueenstown45°2’5” S 168°39’30” E
April 20, 2018 in New Zealand
Caroline and I shared the five hour drive from Franz Josef Glacier to Queenstown and it was a beautiful drive. We stopped off at the Tasman Sea lookout, the Fantail Waterfalls, blue pools and Lake Wanaka.
Queenstown is the adventure centre of New Zealand so it took us a while to decide what adventures we wanted to do while we were in Queenstown. A hike was one of the main adventures that we all wanted to do however most of the main hikes are multi-day hikes and we didn't have the camping equipment or clothing for long hikes. Nevertheless we decided to hike Queenstown hill. It turned out to be steeper than we had predicted however, when we got to the top, there was a stunning view over Queenstown, Lake Wakatipu and the Southern Alps.
The next adventure was to get the gondola up a different mountain overlooking Queenstown. At the top of this mountain there are mulitple activities to do. You could mountain bike (Rob did this the following day), paraglide, hike trails and bungee jumping however we decided to do the luge racing. We booked three races, it was fun chasing each other down the hill. We were lucky to finish all three races because after we finished our last race the ski-lift which brought you to the start of the luge track got cancelled as it was too windy. After lunch we played a round of mini golf which I lost but sure I had to let the others win sometime.
Caroline and I wanted to go whitewater rafting while we were in Queenstown because it is supposed to be one of the best rafting locations in the world. There are two different courses the main one down Shotover river has grade three and four rapids. Due to overnight rain the main course was closed as the water was too high and dangerous to raft down it. They offered us to do the other course which had grade two and three rapids. We decided that since we were ready to raft we might as well do the other course. They used the Kawarau river for the rafting and there was four rapids. The first one we got to swim down which was fun and then the biggest one was the last one which had two big waves. It was a little disappointing that we didn't get to raft down the larger course as there is bigger rapids but it was still fun and I got to spend a good bit of time with Caroline which was nice.
That afternoon I drove to Glenorchy with Caroline and Ruben which is a small village further down the river. It was a nice scenic drive along the lake. The next morning I dropped Caroline and Ruben to the airport as they fly to the North island for a few days before heading home. It was sad saying goodbye to Caroline as we have had such a good time together in the last three weeks but we both have more adventures to do before heading home.
Rob and I booked a day tour with Go Orange to explore Milford Sound which is a fiord five hours south of Queenstown. The bus picked us up at 7am and we drove through the scenic surroundings. The snowcapped mountains looked beautiful in the sunshine. We stopped at a mirror lake which had a wonderful reflection of the mountains in the lake below. When we arrived to Milford we got on a cruise ship and sailed out through the fiord to the Tasman Sea. We sailed close to the waterfalls that were draining into the fiord and got wet from the water spray. The most exciting part was when we saw a school of dolphins swim by the boat. It was a long day by the time we arrived back to Queenstown but it was a great cruise of the first fiord that either of us have explored.
The next day we got dropped to Arrowtown which is 30km from Queenstown. Arrowtown was developed as a gold town as it was the first place in New Zealand that gold was discover in its rivers. We went to the museum and learned about how gold was drained from the river and how the town built up. Then we hired bikes and cycled the 30km back to Queenstown. The ride was stunning as we rode through fields and valleys and saw plenty of trees with their autumn coloured leaves. I found the cycle quite tiring though as we rode up and down hill. I can't remember the last time I cycled 30km but the scenery was beautiful so it was worth all of the struggle.
We are now finished our south island tour of New Zealand and tomorrow we fly to Wellington for two weeks exploring the north island. I loved the scenery of the south island it was just beautiful seeing the snowcapped mountains and autumn coloured leaves. I would love to come back for skiing here in the winter another time.Read more
New ZealandWellingtonWellington CityTe AroWellington Ferry Port41°17’28” S 174°46’37” E
April 22, 2018 in New Zealand ⋅ 🌙 11 °C
Wellington is apparently one of the windiest city in the world and to greet us to the windy city our flight had a lot of turbulence as we were landing which was not very nice. Once we picked up our Yaris car, that would hopefully transport us around the North island for the next two weeks we headed into the city to our hotel The Set Up. To see the sunsetting we headed up to the Botanic Gardens to get a pretty view over Wellington harbour. To get there we rode up the hill on the famous Wellington cable car. It was a lovely way to introduce ourselves to Wellington.
One of the main things to do in Wellington is a tour of the Weta Cave workshop. This was set up to product sets and props for films. It has been part of the production for many big films including Lord of the Rings, Avatar, King Kong and Narnia. The first part of the tour showed us how props are created from concept to being turned into phsyical props through various methods of manufacturing like molding, milling and 3D printing. The props are then individually hand painted so that the plastic or silicone props look real to be used in the filming. I loved seeing the detail in the different prostetic eyes that have been used in various films. The second part of the tour was a walk through of the miniture sets that are used in the production of the new Thunderbird series. The miniture sets are made of various pieces of junk stuck together such as a circuit board as a city landscape and toilet rolls as chimneys. We learned that every episode has a lemon squeezer somewhere hidden in the set because someone complained to the directors of the original series about a lemon squeezer that was used as a fan so the directors took that as a challenge to include one somewhere in every episode. I thought this was quite funny. The minitures look real when they are used depending on how the light is shone or where the camera is positioned. It was fascinating seeing how scenes are visualised and how some miniture sets had huge amounts of details while others that are used for widespan has less detail.
For the afternoon we headed to the Te Papa Museum where there was an exhibition explaining how the Maori people arrived and settled to New Zealand. There was also another exhibition commenorating Anzac day which is celebrated on the 25th April every year. It commenorates all the soldiers who fought at Gallipoli against the Turkish army during World War I. It was really interesting hearing the stories of how the battle happened by different soldiers. In the end, the battle was lost and the New Zealand and Australian armies retreated after thousands of casualties. I thought that this exhibition was well designed and I found it interesting to learn about this period of time.
The following morning we drove to Taupo which is five hours north of Wellington. On the way we stopped at the Rugby Museum in Palmerston North. This museum explained how rugby was brought to New Zealand from England and the political problems it had to overcome over the years. There was a conflict about weither to allow Maori people to play in the All Blacks Team and there was a debate about weither to go to South Africa for a Test series during the civil war. There was a lot of cool memorbilla from old match programmes to old jerseys and rugby balls. It was well worth the stop off.Read more
New ZealandManawatu-WanganuiRuapehu DistrictTongariro39°8’7” S 175°38’26” E
April 25, 2018 in New Zealand ⋅ 🌙 1 °C
The plan for the day was to do our first sky dive however when we woke up the sky was too cloudy for the skydive to go ahead. In a change of plan for the day we visited the Orakei Korako Geothermal Park which features hot springs, geysers and mud pools. It smelt like rotten eggs it was quite off putting but the sights of the bubbling water and mud was cool.
That afternoon as we walked along the lake front we met a man who did parasailing. Neither of us had done a parasail before but we decided that it would be a good alternative activity to the initially planned skydive. We were fitted with harnesses and life jackets before the boat sailed into Lake Taupo. When we were in open water the instructors set up the parachute and attached our harnesses to the parachute. We glided above the boat and water for about 10 minutes. It was enjoyable watching the scenery while gliding in the wind.
The following day we headed to the Aratiatia Dam to watch the gates open letting hundreds of litres of water cascade down the river rapids below. The gates are opened twice a day and are a tourist attraction due to the magnificent sound the water makes as it flows quickly down the river below. Afterwards we did Jetboating on the Waikato River which was so much fun. We drove to the Huka Falls and got sprayed by the waterfall and then splashed plenty of times as we did 360 turns on the water. It was class and a good way to get the adrenaline going.
The Tongario Alpine Crossing is a weather dependent hike over active volcanos in the middle of New Zealand. As it is nearly Wintertime here, we prepared for the rain and snow but hadn't expected the sunny beautiful day we actually got. We drove to the end point at 5:30 am and got a bus back to the start point just in time for the sunrise. As the sun rose up it lit up the volcano mountain that we would be hiking for the day. The hike up the mountain to the top took three hours, part of the hike was steep while other parts were gradual. However the hike up the mountain didn't actually seem as hard due to the beautiful scenery we could look out at as we got higher up the ridge. At the top of crater there was a lake the colour of emerald green which gave a stunning reflection of its surroundings in the sunlight. The hike down the mountain was long and tiring as the track seemed to go on for ages however we were delighted when we eventually arrived back to the car six hours after starting the hike. We were very lucky with the weather today and I think it made the hike easier as we could appreciate the beautiful surroundings.Read more
New ZealandBay of PlentyRotorua38°8’12” S 176°15’4” E
April 28, 2018 in New Zealand ⋅ 🌧 15 °C
On the way to Rotorua we stopped off at a quad biking centre to do our first quad biking of the trip. Neither of us had ever rode a quad bike so we had to have a quick lesson first to learn where the gears, accelerator and breaks were. Our instructor Karl then brought us out up through the fields on the bikes. We rode through streams, ditches, muddy forest trails and even got to chase sheep through the fields. The weather was lovely so there was a stunning view of the mountains that we climbed the day before in Tongariro National Park. We both really enjoyed the experience racing across the fields and accellerating up steep muddy hill which we may have gotten stuck in but this happened more than once for Rob so I got bragging rights.
When we eventually arrived to Rotorua we spelt the sulfuric gasses indicating the volcanic activity in the area and we understood why it has been labeled as one of the "rotten egg city".
We decide to go to the Redwood forest for the lights display that night. There was a bridge walk between the trees along with light decorations hanging from the trees. It was very pretty and quite peaceful too. We learned about how the trees were imported from California 115 years ago and grown in New Zealand. They can each grow over one hundred metres high. The following day we came back to walk through the trails of the forest. It was nice to see the forest in both the daylight and nightlight.
After doing a little bit of rafting in Queenstown I was keen to do more on this trip so I booked a rafting trip here in Rotorua. This rafting trip turned out to be much better than the previous one because we got to go down three waterfalls which was great fun. We also got to surf some waves in the raft so by the end of the trip we were very wet. I think we all just laughed the whole way down the river, the rafting was that fun.
The final thing that we wanted to do while in Rotorua was to see a Maori concert. The concert in Te Puia Maori experience involved some war dances, love songs and traditional games. At one stage they got us to come onto stage and thought us some of the dances. I was thought a dance using string bobbles as dance props while Rob was thought the haka war dance. We were not very good at the dances so it was quite funny watching each others lack of coordination. We also tried to learned some Maori chants too but couldn't pronounce any of the words well as the words are so long. We got a tour around the grounds which included the second largest geyser in the southern hemisphere however as the weather was so windy the spray just went sidewards so wasn't as impressive as the traditional pictures. There was also an arts and crafts college on the site that we were allowed to walk through and we saw students hand making the designs on all of the sculptures and jewelery, it was quite impressive.Read more
New ZealandAucklandGrafton36°51’24” S 174°45’46” E
May 6, 2018 in New Zealand ⋅ ⛅ 18 °C
The drive from Rotorua to Hobbiton was eventful as the roads were flooded due heavy overnight rainfall so it took ages to get out of the city. Eventually when we arrived to Hobbiton we were told off for being one minute late for our prebooked tour but then we were given tickets to the next tour fifteen minutes later so it still worked out fine. The tour was to a field that was used in the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings films for the Hobbit holes. Neither Rob or I were Lord of the Rings fans but it was cool to see the famous Hobbit holes. On the tour we learned that an artifical lake was added to the field to improve the set scene however while filming the lake was invaded by frogs so that when the actors were speaking there was frogs croaking in the background. Therefore a diver was hired each morning before filming to dive into the lake and collect all of the frogs so that there was no background noise.
Our plan after Hobbiton tour was to drive to Paihia in the Bay of Islands however as the drive was too far for one day we stopped over in Auckland for a night. It turned out that Arthur was in Auckland that week for a work conference so we met up for dinner. It was really nice catching up with Arthur even if we ended up going to an Irish bar for food. On the way to Paihia we stopped at the beautiful Whangarei waterfalls for a walk and then reached the Paihea just in time to watch the sunset over the coast.
The touristy season in Paihia was coming to an end so we didn't have a lot of choice in the cruises around the Bay of Islands. Nevertheless the cruise out to the "Hole in the Rock" was enjoyable especially due to the warm sunny autumn day. A lot of the islands in the Bay of Islands were initially inhibited by Maori when they arrived to New Zealand so we heard stories about this time in history. During our cruise we saw a school of dolphins including a baby dolphin and a couple of seals chilling on the White Rock which is called the White Rock due to all of the bird poo on it. Next we sailed to the "Hole in the Rock" which is actually an arch on one of the islands to get very pretty pictures. Normally the cruise boat is able to sail through the rock however as it was windy the captain decided that it would be better to avoid it today. I really enjoyed sitting up on the top deck of the cruise with wind blowing through our hair in the sunlight while viewing scenic islands and sealife.
The following day I was back on the bay, this time scuba diving a ship wreck. The Cantebury ship was the first ship that was made partically for New Zealand navy (before this New Zealand bought their navy ships second hand). It was artifically sunk in the Bay of islands ten years ago and it sits between twenty five and forty metres. Now there are plenty of fish living in the ship and coral growing on the side of the ship. We got lots of pictures which was cool. The second dive was at a reef where there was schools and schools of fish. It was so strange swimming through all of these fish without them moving away from us. We saw a stingray that was chilling out at the bottom of the reef too. The water was a lot colder than I have dived in before so we had to wear thicker wet suits. This colder water caused our diving bouyancy to change more often than when diving in tropical waters. Therefore it was harder to maintain the ideal diving body position but it was good to continue to develop my diving skills. The more dives I do the better I will get.
On our way back from Paihia we stopped at the Waipu caves to see glowworms. We waded in through the river that flew through the cave and saw hundreds of glowworms on the roof. It was very beautiful. We also stopped to do the Mount Mania cliff walk which took thiry minutes to climb up a cliff track for a stunning view over the coastline.
Back in Auckland we got a ferry out to Rangitoto island. This six hundred year old island is a volcanic island and is the most recent volcanic island to appear off the Auckland coast. We hiked an hour up the black lava rock trail to the crater of the volcano to get a great view of the Auckland cityscape. The final activity that we did in New Zealand was attend a rugby league game between the Auckland Vodafone Warriors and the West Tigers. The game is very similar to Tag rugby so it was easy to understand the rules. The Warriors won 26:4 so the home supporters were happy. We still prefer rugby union as the teams can build play up instead of only having five passages of play but it was good to watch a different sport halfway across the world. Next time we will go for an All Blacks game! There wasn't a lot to do in Auckland so we were glad that we did go up to the Bay of islands for a few days instead of lots of spending time in the city.
Overall New Zealand was amazing! There was so many activities to do here and a wide variety of landscapes to admire and explore. The temperature difference from the north island to the south island has been quite extreme as we wore shorts and t-shirts up north and coats and hats down south. Travelling by car was a little bit more expensive compared to using the tourist buses but the roads were so easy to drive on and it gave us an opportunity to listen to our Spanish podcasts. I personally preferred the south island due to the magnificent mountains in the area but I wouldn't say no to returning to either island. It is mad that we are heading to our third continent already but I'm looking forward to see how our basic Spanish will help us.Read more
