Travel Tales

Jean and Barry finally left on Friday 19th April – a week after they had originally intended, although their departure was not without its trauma.  Apparently, so they discovered after queueing for an hour to check in, they were not a priority so they would have to wait until Saturday or maybe Sunday for the next flight.  Luckily Ian and Diane were on duty for the airport run and  returned to pick them up, but at the last minute went back into departures to leave their landline number and asked if there was no way J&B could get on the flight, only to discover that there was a stand-by list, to which they duly added their names and lo and behold were called to board an instant later.  Jean contacted us when they got home to say there were in fact about 50 empty seats on the flight and Barry took advantage of that fact and had 2 dinners!

Despite tension regarding the uncertainty of their return, we still managed to have a good time and went on a couple of exploratory excursions – one to Lake Vinuela and the lovely village of Periana, which was full of quaint streets, an olive oil factory and traditional bars.  The other excursion was to Granada, which is now only an hour away because of the new roads.  We went to the Albayzin area and Barry managed to get me up many steep hills, which, had Dan been leading, I would have refused point blank to do.  The view from the top of the old Arab quarter was spectacular – across the river to the Alhambra, with the snowy Sierra Nevada in the background.  We then descended into the old Christian quarter and visited the Capilla Real – Royal Chapel, which only charged 3.50 euros to get in and had amazing carved screens and original medieval religious paintings, some by Boticelli.

Sunday was Day of the Resident in the centre of Nerja, when different organisations have stands and information about what they do.  Apparently we can join the Lions if we are willing to pay them 100 euros each per year and undergo a rigorous interview process.  We were asked if we wanted to adopt a puppy, but settled on taking home a money box to fill up.  The Town Hall stand had a brochure on day and evening activities they run – mainly for women, such as yoga, pilates, painting etc – which I’ll definitely be looking at in more detail come September.

We also enrolled on the electoral register – the ‘padrón’, which allowed us to join the sports’ centre and get reduced rate activities.  Consequently, on Monday we did half an hour in the gym followed by half an hour swim – all for 2 euros each.  The results are not yet obvious, but hopefully given time …

Whilst we were at the Town Hall we asked if there was anywhere we could help out, either as interpreters or classroom assistants etc.  The upshot was that we had a meeting today with a woman who works in both the secondary schools in Nerja and who might want to employ us in some capacity in the future – paid or unpaid.

John Appleton (our fantastic kitchen/bathroom/floor fitter) and his family are here in Nerja at the moment and we have already done one tapas tour with them and another is scheduled for tomorrow.  We are then off to Coín for the orange festival, I have just bought the obligatory pom-pom flower for my hair and Dan has bought his matador outfit!  Pictures will be available on youtube later!

Friends and eruptions

The weather continued to be nice for quite a while.  We explored a bit more – going for a long walk with Mick and Magdalena around the once abandoned village of Acebuchal, up in the hills.  We then found the waterfall about a 30 minute walk from our apartment.  The wardrobe doors were eventually finished and the single beds installed, ready for Jean and Barry’s visit.  Sunday we caught up with Dan’s former colleague Alistair, which involved another visit to the Brazilian bbq.  Followers of the Rancho grill will be shocked to learn that Dan has now replaced it with the electric frying pan and lid to grant greater flexibility to terrace based cooking!

Jean and Barry arrived on Monday 12th and we whiled away the time pottering around Nerja, including a visit to the market, a paella on the beach and a tapas night out.  We also visit Almunecar for a wander around and some shopping.  On Thursday we all drove over to Coin to stay with Ian and Diane for the night so that we were nearer to the airport to drop Jean and Barry off on Friday.  This was all planned before the volcanic eruption in Iceland and the subsequent airtravel chaos.  Jean and Barry’ flight back was cancelled so they managed to rebook the 2 remaning seats on the Ryanair flight to Bournemouth on Monday 19th .  Today – Saturday 17th, the Monday flight has been cancelled as well, so they have now managed to rebook for Friday 23rd April – their 5 day visit will have lasted 11!  They are still in Coin with Ian and Diane, but will transfer back to Nerja on Monday – it’s called ‘share a friend’!  Today was also very stormy, with torrential rain and thunder and lightning – it was like some horror film in which various evil forces contrive to isolate 6 friends in a mountain retreat – very spooky!

We caught up with Antonia and Adrian and their daughter, Susana, who live in Fuengirola.  Antonia lived with us for a year in 1984-5 when she was the language assistant at Borden and Maidstone Grammar.  It was lovely to see them again.

I have also been remiss in updating everyone on Ben’s condition.  We’re really please to report that his colitis is now in remission and that he has regained his pre-illness weight and fitness and is leading a normal life, which is fantastic.

Dan is working hard on his tapas tours idea, designing posters and handouts of useful bar phrases.  Hopefully by the next blog there will have been some customers, although all the good intentions stated in the last blog have not yet come to fruition – oh well, there’s always ‘manana’!

Back to the sun

Here we are again in sunny Spain.  We drove down  and stayed just outside Poitiers the first night – opposite Futuroscope – but other than that it was uninspiring.  We spent the second night in Burgos, very near the heart of the city, and, despite being very cold, it was lovely – lots of gothic architecture.  So lovely in fact that we hope to stay there on our way back in July.  We stopped at a service station in Jaen to refuel and have a cup of coffee and ended up with 2 extra passengers squashed into the back seat amongst the new duvets and sheets.  They were 2 English university students doing a charity hitchhike to Morocco and were grateful of a 3 hour ride to Nerja.  We even managed to  top up their mobile phone on the in-car charger.

Nerja greeted us with its customary sunshine, despite the fact that it seems to have rained almost non-stop for the last 3 months.  During the last week we have been to the beach twice – one of which was a nudist beach, we’ve never seen so many places to park our bike!  Needless to say we kept everything firmly (I use the term loosely) covered up. We’ve also tried out a couple of new restaurants – one a Brazilian bbq, offering unlimited amounts of different barbecued meats for a set price – fantastic for the Atkins diet!  We have also caught up with the yr 10 school trip.  It was great to meet up with the teachers and see some of the kids, most of whom we had taught between us.  However, it didn’t make us feel envious and it was quite nice to walk away at the end of the day without any responsibilities.

We are also painting again – this time a different set of wardrobe doors, in anticipation of friends visiting in the near future and a new set of single beds being delivered.

We are aware that we need to integrate a bit more into daily life and plan to start putting out feelers for teaching the odd English/Spanish class or starting up Dan’s tapas tours.  We also plan to join the local sports complex and do some exercise to tone our bodies for the next visit to the nudist beach!

Tokyo titbits and a yen for more

Woops, it seems there are no words!  Will try to add them now!

So here we are in Tokyo.  Our first impressions started at the airport where we booked on the bus to the hotel.  There were 3 buses due at different times at our bus stop so we queued in lines parallel to the pavement and moved forward a line when each bus had left.  Tickets were checked several times and as the bus pulled out all the ticket checkers and luggage handlers bowed.  This happened at every stop along the way.  The bus driver was wearing very smart white gloves, which he changed for woollen ones when he knew he was going to have to get the luggage out himself.  The office workers were all scurrying to work, lots wearing white mouth masks and nearly all dressed in very dark clothing.  I think the most colourful we saw was beige.   On arrival at our hotel room we had fun with the toilet which has several controls for washing various parts of the lower anatomy whilst seated – temperature controlled water too!

Our first sortie was into freezing cold rain, trying to negotiate our way to a metro station – there are not many concessions to English speakers here.  We asked a couple of people if they spoke English, but they just giggled nervously, then targeted a young city-type and – bingo!  He accompanied us to the metro station, helped us buy a ticket and took us to the platform.  He obviously thought it was quite funny that we had no idea.  We had been told the stations were numbered so when we saw 190 on the tube map we thought that was the number of the station we had to get off at, but apparently it was the price of the ticket – he thought that was hilarious. Anyway, he waved us off and we managed fairly well.  Unfortunately it was just too damn cold and wet to do much so we took a chance at a station eatery where there were plastic representations of dishes in the window with prices, then there was a machine with pictures of those representations so we played a kind of snap game to find our chosen dish. Then you put money in the machine, get a ticket and take that inside to get your meal.  We managed quite well and what appeared was mostly what we were expecting!

Happy hour at the hotel is between 5 and 9 pm so we had to try the gin and tonic which did not disappoint!

Day 2 was bright and sunny and we bought a one-day travel card for the underground, which at first sight looks really complicated, but we soon got to grips with it.  We went to the fish market area and also visited a temple which was in full swing of a service with lots of dignitaries, lots of incense and banging of drums, but was interesting to watch.  Outside there was a woman dressed in full geisha outfit, no idea why,and she seemed surprised that we wanted to take a photo.

We then visited the enormous Senso-Ji temple complex which was really commercialised and not as good as the one we had stumbled across earlier. We visited “electric town”  in the Akihabara district where there are hundreds of shops selling the latest gadgets and also girls dressed in strange schoolgirl/maid outfits promoting various shops.  It seems they are emulating characters from the very popular Manga comics. The young men sport a hairstyle very reminiscent of Paul Weller in the 1980s – very ‘busby’-like and probably based on the Manga characters as well.

For lunch, we ate some sort of noodle soup with chopsticks – needless to say much slurping was required! In the evening we ate in a very small restaurant to some amusement of the locals. There was only seating for about a dozen people and we had to perch on stools just across the counter from where a delicious meal was prepared with great panache by two bandana-wearing young chefs.

Day 3 was sunny again and we caught the metro to the Tokyo central region where the Imperial Palace and all the government buildings are located.  There wasn’t an awful lot to see – just a moat and sandy park with fountains around the outside of the palace.  The guide book recommended an area called Kagurazaka which is low rise and more old-fashioned.  It was a great area, much more relaxed than central parts, with lots of small shops.  We even managed to find a sushi restaurant, which Dan had been longing to try.  Again we were a novelty, but we managed to suss out that different coloured plates circulating past us had different prices.  I’m a bit of a baby about anything raw so it was quite a stressful experience for me and not one I would particularly like to repeat, although Dan enjoyed it and said he would like to do it again, but not with me!

Our final visit was to the Tokyo tower – an Eiffel-type construction which gave fantastic views over the city.

So we have come to the end, after five and a half weeks on the road.  It has been amazing and of the 4 places we visited we would love to revisit parts of Australia – maybe Melbourne and drive round to Sydney; lots more of NZ; Hong Kong was amazing but we would probably consider we had ‘done it’; Tokyo has been good, but has not really whetted our appetite for more of Japan.  Maybe we were jaded by the time we got here.

So we are now at the mercy of the BA cabin crew and their imminent strikes, but hopefully that won’t happen until we get back to England.

Things we have learnt about NZ

Apologies Phil and Jen if these are not accurate – please feel free to correct  and anyone else feel free to add to the list!

1. There are seemingly no motorways
2. There are 4 million inhabitants – 3 on the North Island (2 million in Auckland) and 1 on the South Island
3. There are 40million sheep (there used to be 70 million before Britain joined the EU)
4. There are 100 million possums – they are NZ’s biggest threat to nature and are currently being targeted with 10/80 – a pesticide about which there is substantial outcry
5. There are no poisonous creepy crawlies
6. The legal driving age is 15
7. A man can drink ¾ of a bottle of wine in 90 minutes and still be under the alcohol limit (a woman can drink half a bottle)
8. Many of the rural communities have to send their kids to boarding school for secondary education
9. They are thinking of changing the national flag, maybe ditching the Union Jack and using a typical NZ emblem.  The kiwi is the obvious choice but is not thought to be a good role model – it stays in the dark and eats insects.  Another possibility is the silver fern, currently worn by the cricket team..
10. Fox Glacier is 14 kilometres long and is advancing by 1ft a day
11. The top of a glacier is called the ‘neve’ and the  bottom is called the terminal face
12. Dense bush regenerates itself even on bare rock: first moss, then small ferns which create humus for bushes and trees to grow
13. Lake Taupo and many other lakes are in fact volcanoes which have blown their tops
14. Doubtful Sound is so called because Capt James Cooke (explorer and cartographer) saw the entrance but was doubtful that he would be able to sail back out because of prevailing wind and tide conditions
15. The rugby team are called the ‘all blacks’ ,the football team are called the ‘all whites’, and the cricket team are called the “black caps”
16. The moko is the facial tattoo formerly sported by Maori men (the women used to have their bottom lip and chin tattooed)
17. NZ suffered a massive earthquake in 1931 which razed Napier and Hastings to the ground
18. Cadbury’s have a factory in Dunedin and produce marshmallow-filled small Easter eggs
19. NZ TV is pretty dire
20. The NZ wood pigeon is greatly admired as it is the only bird capable of swallowing the largest seeds to help the regeneration of the tropical forests
21. NZ cafés make excellent coffee and the cheese is excellent too!

Up, up and away

Our next journey was from Te Anau to Queenstown: of course the weather cheered up and was sunny most of the way.  We drove through deer farms – the new type of farming to this area.  Sam had warned us we may not like Quenstown, but we absolutely loved it as it was so vibrant compared to a lot of the other one-horse towns we had been in and it was great to see so many young people as we had been following a bit of a grey trail in the last few days.  We took a ride on the cable car for a great view over the town and lake Wakatipu, then drove along its shores to the end, where there was the lovely, peaceful township of Glenochy.  In winter Queenstown is a big ski resort, so is busy most of the year.

The next day we carried on towards Haast, on the Crown Range, which is the highest sealed road in NZ.  We stopped en route in Wanaka – another busy resort town around Lake Wanaka, another meat pie – probably the last!  We drove on, stopping to do a tropical forest walk, across a I’m a Celebrity type bridge to see the Blue Pools.  Haast is really not very interesting and is not worth a night’s stay in our opinion, but we did have a lovely walk along a secluded beach, strewn with large pieces of driftwood.

The next day’s journey was to Fox Glacier through dense forested banks with occasional glimpses of lovely beaches.  Fox township at first looked pretty boring, but we followed a signpost to ‘the glacier’ where we did a 90 minute round walk to the terminal face of Fox glacier –  it was truly amazing, with just a few poles stuck in the screedy ground to show the path and no officials around to shout at you if you didn’t follow the path. It  culminated in a breathtaking view of the ice blue and white of the end of the glacier.  Whilst we were taking photos, pieces of the ice fell off creating a tremendous boom.  It was an ‘at one with nature’ moment.

Later on we went to Lake Matheson, the lake famous for its mirror images of Mts Cook and Tasman – again there was a long walk around the shores, through dense rainforest at times, but with amazing clearings and viewing platforms to get those all-important photos.

Our motel for 2 nights was unusual in that the hosts were very hands-on and invited the guests to their lounge for an early evening drink and laid on their own menu for dinner, which we decided to accept.  We sat at the dining room table with 2 other guests whilst Dave – mein host – cooked in the domestic kitchen in full view and Lea (rhymes with bee, not beer), meine hostess, dispensed the drink. All the while they were joining in with the conversations and telling us about their lives (Dave was an ex-chicken farmer!) and at the end of the meal they sat down with us and chatted on.  They convinced us to do a helicopter flight over the mountains and 2 glaciers – ie Mts Cook and Tasman and Fox and Franz Josef glaciers, so at 8.20 the next morning we boarded a very small helicopter with 3 other people and took to the skies for a unique experience, landing and getting out for 10 minutes at the top of Fox glacier.  The sky was perfectly blue, not a cloud in the sky.  Back on the ground, it was off to see Dave and Lea again for a cooked breakfast with 4 other guests

We decided we should see the Franz Josef glacier from the bottom as well, so did another 90 min walk to get to the terminal face – probably not as good as Fox, but still stunning.  Then we stopped off at some hot pools to soak our weary legs. There were 3 pools at 36, 38 and 40 degrees, in the open air and it was a very relaxing experience.

Our final leg, after almost 5 weeks on the road, was a short drive to Greymouth where we dropped off the car and boarded the Tranz Alpine train to Christchurch for one night before catching our flight to Sydney and then immediately onwards to Tokyo.  The train journey was very relaxing, but we’re probably suffering from scenery fatigue and glazed over for some of the journey. 

Christchurch is a very English-style town and somewhere that merits more time than one evening.  Needless to say, we have finished off our NZ experience with a very nice meal of boneless rack of lamb – delicious, just like NZ.accompanied by a bottle of red produced at one of the wineries we visited a couple of weeks ago in the Hawkes bay region.  We feel we have only dipped a toe into all that this country has to offer; as someone we met on the way said: we are ‘posh packers’ i.e. ageing backpackers!

Water, water everywhere …

Cigarettes: 0                                                    Meat Pies:2

Units of Alcohol: Several                               Calories: Infinite

We weren’t looking forward to the drive down to Dunedin (Gaelic for Edinburgh) as it was destined to last for 6½ hours and was mainly through the Canterbury plains, which were flat and full of sheep.  However, there were a few gems along the way which made it go by a lot faster than we expected.  The first stop was Oamuru, where the houses were made out of the local limestone, unusual for NZ where the majority of houses are made of wood and clad with wooden weatherboard.  Timaru was our next stop – a real gem architecturally as there were several grand buildings built in mock Venetian style, with impressive columns in the front.  It was also the place for our virginal experience – the ubiquitous meat pie.  We chanced upon an artisan bakery (possibly German in origin!) but they made the most fantastic meat pies – we had steak and cheese and there surely can’t be a pie to equal them.  The pastry was exquisite and the meat inside was so tender and plentiful.

Moving on south we stopped off to view the Moeraki boulders, which are naturally created concrete boulders which have been washed away from the sea cliffs and now lay along the shore.

Dunedin was a great city and the place of the first NZ university, established by its early Scottish settlers.  As we checked into our motel we were informed that we had arrived at the end of ‘orientation’ week – aka freshers’ week.  Most of the students we encountered and heard over the next two nights seemed more disorientated than orientated!  There are several imposing buildings in Dunedin, especially the railway station, which apparently has been listed as one of the top 100 buildings in the world.  We also discovered Speights Distinction ale, which is now our favourite early evening drink.

Just outside Dunedin is the Otago peninsular, a wildlife haven of sea lions, albatross, penguins and great walks and views.  We managed to see a sea lion basking on the sand, but not the others.

After Dunedin, we headed on to Invercargill, intending to visit the bays along the way, known as the Catlins and famous for scenery and wildlife.  We couldn’t understand why we saw several cars just parked along the coast with their passengers just staring out to sea.  However, as we drove along we were stopped by an environmental protection officer who told us not to go down to the beach as there was a tsunami warning because of the Chile earthquake.  Chile is about 8500 kilometres away across the Pacific Ocean, but there is nothing in between.  The only advice he could offer us was ‘if you see the sea recede, head for high ground!’.  So our route was a bit restricted because of the bays being blocked off. By the time we got to Invercargill the temperature had dropped about 10 degrees and it had started to rain.  Invercargill looked a bit depressing, it was Sunday evening and we had to put the heating on and get our jeans and trainers out.

It rained all night and we set off in our warm clothes on the next leg to Te Anau, the heart of NZ’s fiordland on the west coast, famous for its spectacular scenery from organized cruises along the ‘sounds’.  It was lunchtime when we arrived, and so, dear readers, we sinned again and headed for the nearest pie shop to try yet another variety – venison for Dan and steak and mushroom for me.  We shall both be the size of a house when we get back to England, we’re already the size of a bungalow!  In the afternoon we went to the small cinema in town to see a locally produced film of the region shot by a helicopter pilot who realized he had such an exclusive view of the landscape that he wanted to share it.  He even built the cinema to show it in, and it was a beautiful film of lakes, waterfalls, wildlife and mountains.

The day of our trip to Doubtful Sound arrived grey, cold and wet and thus it remained for the entire day. We travelled first by boat, then coach for a look around an underground hydropower station which powers an aluminium smelting plant in Invercargill 150 miles away.  Then it was back onto a boat for a 3 hour cruise through the fiordland.  Apparently we were lucky it was raining as the waterfalls were spectacular and they are produced exclusively by rainfall, unfortunately the penguins and seals decided to stay indoors.  Still never mind, we’re already talking about the next time we come and what we will visit or revisit.

Language Matters

Yesterday, Lesley plucked up courage and took control of the steering wheel for a time and in exchange she has condescended to my tinkering on the keyboard to make a small contribution to the blog.

As language is a thing close to our hearts, I thought it might be relevant at this stage to give a quick run down of things that have struck us on our travels. There seems no better place to start than the Maori language, which after many years of decline is beginning to undergo a renaissance. There are TV stations in Maori, some English place names are now known by their Maori name and the language is now taught in schools throughout New Zealand. Will we see a situation arising as with Welsh and Catalan, I wonder?

 Early European  settlers were the first to transcribe the language and did so with just fifteen letters of the English alphabet (the five vowels and ten consonants). This throws up some interesting combinations, none more so than the “wh” in Maori which is pronounced as an English “f”. Therefore place names such as Whakatane and Whangaroa are pronounced Fokatane and Fangaroa, respectively (whucking whunny iwh you ask me!).

Place names in Maori tell their own story, eg Aotearoa (Maori name for NZ, meaning Land of the Long White Cloud) Akaroa (long harbour), Whakatane (to act as a man) and the one that worries the most, Urewere (burnt penis). I hope we are talking sun damage and not barbecues!

As for the modern Kiwis, that is another story. We should have known when we first met our Auckland friends in Faversham and Jen (pronounced Jin) strode into a local pub and demanded “a table for sex” that we are divided by a language in common. Basically, an English “i” is pronounced as a Kiwi “e” and viceversa. So, I didn’t get too alarmed when Phil (pronounced Phel) announced he was thinking of putting a dick in his garden.. Then again, sometimes they seem to compress many vowels entirely, so you get fshnchups (fish and chips) as a takeaway, or you cook your own having first visited a whtfshop (wet fish shop).

If you are of a nervous disposition, or if your name is Ben, Sam or Emily, please avert your gaze now!  Lesley and I have just had some hokey pokey, (but don’t get too concerned as it’s only Crunchie type honeycomb)!

Sometimes it’s easier to talk to a Spaniard!

Southern Highlights

The ferry crossing went very smoothly and we landed at Picton, picked up a new rental car and set off for Blenheim – a town in the Marlborough wine producing areas.  This time we decided to visit just a couple of vineyards independently – Montana, because it is the most widely known in the UK, and Saint Clair, which was really nice wine.  Unfortunately there was a rather snotty English couple in the last one and the woman was making copious notes about each wine, when Dan said he thought one of the wines had more flavour than the previous one she said, very haughtily, ‘not more, just different!’.

The motel rooms are amazing and put English hotels to shame.  They are like 4 star hotel rooms, spotlessly clean, have microwaves, fridges, tea and coffee and if there is no hob there is always an electric frying pan. In addition there are guest laundry facilities.

We only had one night in Blenheim and headed on to Kaikoura – which means crayfish meal in Maori, so we had to sample the famous crayfish lunch at a roadside kiosk.  Crayfish here is the size of a lobster except they don’t have front pincers, just long legs.  It tasted just like lobster really.  On the journey we stopped several times to see the fur seals which were basking on the rocks, they were really cute.  We decided to self cater for the night and bought a fish called ‘rig’ from the nearby supermarket, apparently it’s also known as lemon fish, it was delicious.

The next leg of the journey was to Akoroa, (which means long harbour in Maori) an idyllic little harbour town  on the Banks peninsular.  It was a steep climb and then descent into the town, but we stopped at the top of the range of mountains before our descent and looked down on the glorious view of emerald green water and huge volcanic mountains rising from the shores.  Akoroa is one of the most beautiful places we have ever been in the world – very reminiscent of Annecy in France – in fact it has a strong French influence as a colony of French immigrants settled here in about 1840.  We went for an after dinner walk on the first night and ended up looking in at the small cinema opposite our motel, where 2 women were trying to drum up 2 more people to watch the film as 4 is the minimum required, so we duly obliged and they bought us a drink!  We saw a very sweet Italian film called Marcello, Marcello – Dan could even follow the plot!

We have been out on another nature spotting harbour cruise and saw hector dolphins (the smallest in the world),  white flippered penguins (also the smallest in the world), and more seals.

Time to move on again to Dunedin …next blog!

Notes from the North Island

 

It took about an hour to get out of Auckland – the maps we had were not very detailed, but eventually after stopping at 2 petrol stations to ask directions we found the right road.  We decided to follow the Pacific Ocean highway towards our destination of Coromandel.  As the name suggests, it followed the coastal road around the top of the peninsula. The views were fantastic along the way – long sandy beaches and mountains covered with pines and ferns. Coromandel was a gold mining town during the late 1800s but is now a sleepy little town, with a small private railway and pottery to visit – usually you get fantastic views from the top of the railway, but again the cloud came down and there was nothing but mist to be seen. A missed opportunity?

The next day we set off for Rotorua, a  town with a rich Maori heritage on a volcanic plain with natural geysers and hot springs. We had planned to stop at Hot Water Beach, where you can dig a hole at low tide and sit in the hot water, but unfortunately it decided to pour with rain, so we stopped at the nearby café and had a hot cup of coffee!  We could smell Rotorua before we saw it as it reeked of sulphur.  Our motel accommodation was amazing, with our own outside hot tub, which most of the motels in the area seemed to offer, as the town’s hot water system is heated naturally by the hot springs.  We saw the Pohutu geyser which erupts about 10-20 times a days to a height of about 20 meters; then went to the ‘Devil’s Gate’, where we saw the hot bubbling ground of the natural thermal springs, which are over 100 degrees Celsius and look like vast Martian wastelands. The only plant that grows is the Manuka shrub, from which tea tree oil is extracted and Manuka honey is made. The mud produced is also supposed to have great cleansing and pain-relieving properties.  In the evening we went to a Maori cultural show of traditional dance and warrior haka. We also had a Hangi, which is a meal of chicken, lamb and two types of potatoes all cooked underground (supposedly – but there were about 400 guests!). After the meal we went for a trek in the forest with torches to see glow worms.  It was obviously a bit of a tourist trap, but very enjoyable nevertheless.

On our next leg of the journey southwards we were heading towards Napier and Hastings.  We travelled through areas containing more natural springs, passed lake Talpo –  which was made as a result of a volcano blowing its lid off and sits in the remaining crater.  We also made a slight detour to visit the Haku falls, which were a brilliant shade of turquoise.  We stopped off at Napier, which is famous for its art deco buildings, which were erected after the devasting earthquake of 1931.  It made us realise that we have so many art deco buildings in England that we don’t give a second glance  – old cinemas for example.  We hadn’t been able to get accommodation in Napier as it was the weekend of the art deco festival, so we were booked in a few miles further south in Hastings, which had some art deco, but otherwise was unremarkable.

 We went on a half-day wine tour the next day as this area – ie Hawkes Bay – is the second largest wine producing area in NZ after the Marlborough estates.  We were on a minibus with 2 Germans (unfortunately the bus driver made a joke about Colditz!) and a group of 11 Aussie and Kiwi friends, celebrating a 60^th birthday. They were on a full day tour and we picked them up after lunch, so they were quite raucous by then.  We visited 3 vineyards and had an average of 5 tastings in each – most of the Aussie/kiwi group buggered off to a pub in the middle of it as they were dying for a ‘man’s drink’ by then!  The bus driver persuaded us to spend the evening in Napier instead of going back to Hastings so that we could see the evening festival and he even arranged our transport back to the motel.  The evening was fantastic, with most of the inhabitants dressed up in 1930’s costume and a range of vintage cars on show. There was also an aerobatic display featuring Spitfires and a free open-air concert. 

Saturday we drove down to the capital city, Wellington, our last town on the north island.  It is known as ‘windy Wellington’ because of the strong winds which can blow.  It’s a lovely town, with great energy and modern buildings.  We took a ride on the cable car above the city and walked back to town through the Botanical Gardens and saw the famous “Beehive” parliament building.  Sunday we spent the day in the brilliant Te Papa museum, which amazingly is free.  There was lots on the history of NZ and its natural flora and fauna and an earthquake simulator.  In the history section there was a special exhibition on the Scots who emigrated to NZ during the 1900s, which was really interesting. 

So now we are crossing the Cook Straits to the South Island and hoping that the journey won’t be as rough as we have been warned!  Strangely enough the ship we are on was formerly the Pride of Cherbourg from the Weymouth/Cherbourg route.

The whole journey so far has been stunning, a bit like being on a Disney film set in parts with various special effects scattered around.  We also strike up conversations with random other tourists of various nationalities and discuss where we’ve been and where we are going, quite unlike normal British behaviour.

You may have noticed an absence of gastronomic descriptions in this part of the blog, this is mainly because we haven’t really eaten anything out of the ordinary – we’ve self catered a couple of days – supermarket fish and frozen veg; had a very nice Turkish kebab and a good Mexican meal (Dan was happy as he could show off his Spanish!).

Sorry no pictures – NZ internet options are too limited at the moment.  Will try to update later.