City Break in Sydney

Due to over runs in Latin America and then New Zealand, meaning that we didn't have much time or money available for visiting Australia, we stayed for just 2 nights in Sydney.

We stayed in Kings Cross, took in the sights, enjoyed the food, shopping and architecture, saw some crazy flora and fauna and were surpirsed by how much we liked the place, then jumped on a flight to Singapore

Meat pie, mash and mushy peas at the famous Harry's Cafe de Wheels, a Sydney institution.

Nicky is a pie chomper.

The Southlands

The 1st place we went to on way down south was Moeraki, with its strangley perfectly round boulders

Dunedin, in the south east of the island, was the first big city in a long while. It was nice to be in a big place, and the Scottish connections were interesting. Nicky loved this antique cloths shop bearing her family name. I loved the proper Cadburys chocolate after months of ropey stuff in South America. We also had our first drinks in a while at Speights brewery and spent a morning at the swimming baths. A cheap way to get clean after a week washing with wet wipes.

After Dunedin we set off down the spectacular (how many times have I said that about NZ?!) Catlins Coast. We treated ourselves to a few days in a cool little cottage in Curio Bay, right on the beach. Check out our view from the bed in the morning.

The waves crashing on the peninsula at the end of the Bay were incredible, and the petrified forest beyond it proved to us that fossilised trees could be impressive

Moody.....

Sadly there were no dolphins playing in the surf as there are at some points in the year, and worse still we had blue penguins nesting under the building. The young are noisy little buggers, it was comically loud all night. They sounded like a drunken bag pipe player most of the time, but let out massive squawks like donkeys once in a while. We were lucky enough to catch a glimpse of these shy little creatures one night, by sneaking to the windows, switching teh security loght on and then watch them get a little startled and waddle off to their burrow as quick as their little legs could carry them

Down the road, we visited Slope Point, NZ's furthest point south.

and on a chilly morning visited some beautiful waterfalls

Stopping for sausages, just obeying the sign Officer

A trip to South island wouldnt be complete without a trip to Fjordland. We did the obligatory bus through national park then cruise on Milton Sounds combo from Te Anau. Some of the most beautiful spectacular scenary I have ever seen in my life.

After visiting the Sounds we headed a little north to Queenstown, where I did a pair of bungy jumps (a 241 voucher meant it was rude not to) at the original Kawarau Bridge site. The photos are of my second jump, when I dipped into the ice cold river below.

The chilly view from the top. There was sleet and snow that day.

The view down, 43m to the river.

Nicky watching on

The video is of Nicky being a little alarmed watching the 1st of my 2 jumps.

Nicky had to drive the leg from Queenstown to Lake Wanaka, because I was still full of adrenaline after the jumps and getting so cold. We parked up in a fancy caravan park for the first time, called Aspiring Motor Park, and then spent a day waiting for weather to clear up (who ever heard of too much snow to open up a resort?!) and then had 2 days boarding at Cadrona. It was frighteningly cold up there, the freezing fog iced up your hair, but it was worth enduring the chill for the quality snow and loads of powder.

Crazy iced up pigtails and Shackelton-esque beard action
After the snowboarding we had to raced back up to Queenstown to drop of the campervan and complete the massive anti-clockwise figure of 8 we had done of the south island.

Our time in New Zealand was defined by a devotion to a morning started with tea and porridge, with MacOaties being our brand of choice,

(NB - Nicky apologises whole heartedly to all family and friends for her comedy Scots accent)

and a sense of massive joyous freedom tempered by the demands of living in the back of a van

Down the west coast

We had one of our best days so far on our trip, when we woke up in Charlston on the west coast. We started the day by donning some crazy wetsuits, flipper gloves and caving gear and headed down some limestone caves. Then we hopped into some massive inner tubes and serenly floated down an underground river, staring at the glow worms on the roof above (sadly impossible to take photos), then came out into the light and raced down some rapids.
Check out http://www.caverafting.com/ well worth a visit if you're down that way

Nicky was fairly adamant that we visited Cape Foulwind, for the photo op alone, but I'm glad we went there as the violent sea and a storm coming in as the sun went down was spectacular.

Cape Foulwind

A long way from home
After drying off and warming up, we made our way down the rugged coastline to Punakaiki, home to the 'Pancake Rocks'.

The cliffs are made up of layers of sedimentary rock that have weathered at different rates, hence the 'pancake' formations. The cliffs have also been weathered in such a manner that the sea has carved out caves that have fallen in, so the tide rushes in and shoots upwards and outwards in blowholes. It was very impressive, and quite intimidating. Like the earth was an angry beast snarling at you. The 'Sudden Sound' blowhole was our favourite, but we ran out of memory to film it, so have a look on youtube.com

Below is a film of the the 'Chimney' blow hole at Punakaiki, featuring a strangely unimpressed sounding commentary

We managed to avoid the penguins, but wished they'd had similar signage for the over efficient traffic police, who love nothing better that jump out on foreigners in vans. I picked up a 630NZ$ fine for being 49kph over the limit. Now this does sound bad, I admit, but the circumstances didn't deserve the frightenly large fine. Its 100kph limit on the open road in NZ, about 60mph, so I was pottering along a nice wide straight stretch of single carriageway, when all of a sudden the road turned to a temporary surface and a 30kph (practically walking pace) limit was put in force. I didn't want to drop the anchors on the gravel, and the road was wide and straight so i let my speed drop quite slowly. He zapped me at 79kph soon after entering the 30 zone and insisted that seeing as he'd zapped me, he had to issue the ticket. No recognition of the situation at all. More strange was this Barrytown Policeman's suggestion that we shouldnt bother paying the fine, because we were leaving the country soon and wouldn't get caught. Not the best thought out plan, given that we were in a hire car, and they do checks on you when you leave the country to see if you have any outstanding fines to your name...

Next stop were the Franz Joseph and Fox Glaciars, beneath the mighty Mount Tasman and Mount Cook, before an amazing drive down the beautiful lake Wanaka

Franz Joseph

Fox

Parked up alongside Lake Wanaka for the night