From Otekaieke to Queenstown in my Postman Pat mobile

Yes that's right, I've bought a car. Look - isn't it beautiful!! It's as old as I am, has no air con or CD player and chugs chugs up hills but apart from that I'm in love. There's room in the back to sleep/put a mountain bike and it drives incredibly well considering. And it was a bargain. I'm very pleased to have it as it'll make exploring the dusty nooks and dark corners possible, rather than sticking to the well tramped path. Just gotta find me a bike now.

Driving here is a dream as well. The roads are very straight and the scenery fantastic. This picture below is of "7 mile road" - just a prime example of straight roads. Need to make sure I don't doze off while driving...


Apart from that little piece of news, I've had a fantastic fortnight wwoofing at Otekaieke station with Jo, Tony, Zoe, Jess and Michael. I had all sorts of wonderful times there from Pig hunting to diving into Deep Stream on the sunniest evening to Comet spotting and Lasagne Bed gardening. I didn't get to do much of the hill country farming malarky, but did do a lot of weeding and vege gardening (harvesting the first sweet peas) and looking after two fantastic little terrors. I also got a nice visit from mum and dad - just when I thought I'd finally got rid of them, they said they were returning to Waitaki valley area, so we went for a nice wander up to Benmore and Deep Stream where dad fleetingly saw the biggest trout he'd ever seen.

The view from Benmore is fantastic (if you squint you can see Mt Cook at the very back I think.) -


Cows waiting for the comet to appear -

Smiling Jessy -


Jo and Zoe terrorising worms -


Michael heading up to deep stream for a paddle -


They are a very fantastic bunch of people. I miss them already - miss Jo's teasing and cooking, Jessy's smile and Zoe's roar, Tony's dust tracks up the road and Michael's wake up call! I may go back for a bit of sheep mustering some time...

But onwards, and most definitely upwards. I'm in Queenstown for the weekend and spent yesterday climbing Ben Lomond (1172 meters I think), which was fantastic.

This is the path up -

And the view from the top (doesn't really do it justice) -


The views from the top are just amazing, and then slowly tramping round the Moonlight valley footpath was very peaceful - (i only saw one other person on this stretch of the walk) - quite a change from the hubbub and boozing in Queenstown. It was a bit bizzarre walking along this unihabited valley and suddenly hearing screams - I couldn't quite figure out where they were coming from until I twisted round a corner and spotted bungy jumping ahoy. Haven't done a bungy myself - though very tempted it's soooo expensive. Cheaper thrills can be found elsewhere...

Dusky Trek starts tomorrow (

http://www.nzwalk.com/dusky-track.html)

. I'm off to prepare myself for mud, sandflies, 3 wire bridges, blisters, man eating monsters, falling meteorites..... See you on the other side!

Kaikoura wildlife

Oh dear. HAven't been near tinternet for a while. HEre's some wildlife photos of Kaikoura. It was a proper wildlife treasure trove. No pictures of seals, but they were probably the best thing. Full on scraps between big male seals and cute little seal pups.

One very well camouflaged oyster catcher. They're way more into bomb diving hear than in the UK.

The fastest moving star fish in the West

One sperm whale.

We have finally arrived in New Zealand. Hurray. Though the day we landed in Christchurch the temperature was only 12 degrees and the skies overcast. That, combined with the news that December had seen snow, sent a shiver down my spine… However, as with the ominous news of cyclones at Rarotonga, previous perversities with the weather have yet to reoccur. So far - apart from the morning that we landed in Christchurch – the weather has been pretty stunning. Phew.

Doom set in when we arrived in the late afternoon at our first wwoofing place – a lovely, slightly remote and very peaceful native bird sanctuary close to Little River on the Banks Peninsula. It turned out that they were not expecting us (despite the fact that I’d sorted out our stay some way back via email, and then phoned up the week before to say that we’d be arriving late afternoon… tangled lines? Dementia? Who knows). They were happy to let us stay the night in an old campervan/trailer type thing, but after that we were to find other fires to warm our cockles. Twas a bit sad because they weren’t terribly apologetic about it all, and not particularly helpful about helping us find alternative places to stay. So, especially given that we’d be up since 3 o’clock that morning, I was feeling a bit grumpy about our rough arrival.

Anyhow, we headed off to the local pub (The Forsythe Arms I think it was called) for some grub and a bit of an um and ah about what to do next. And the landlord and lady were incredibly sweet. They leafed through our wwoofing book filling us in on all the gossip about the various wwoofers in the area and making some helpful suggestions. They also advised me that, when going into a pub, either ask for a “handle” (500ml) or the smaller version, a “glass”. Useful info. So that cheered me up.

The next morning I spent a long long time ringing round wwoof hosts, but all of them are full at the moment as it’s the summer holidays, and a very popular time to be wwoofing. In the end we decided to give up and live it up for the next week – so as they say, every problem is an opportunity dressed in its work clothes… We headed for Akaroa, and bunked up in a lovely backpackers place called Chez le Mer in Akaroa for a couple of nights. This was a really cosy, homely, clean, well equipped (it even had an in tune piano, fresh herbs for the picking in the garden, and a sharp knife!), well informed, and friendly.

Akaroa itself, along with many other places on the Banks peninsula, is a very kitsch/quaint friendly little place, full of colourful flowers and funky cheerful shops etc. It is also an enclave of French quirks, with French street names, cafes etc and some people speaking French (although the predominant language is still by far English). There’s definitely an effort to retain some French identity, even though the French who settled here in the 19th century were quickly usurped by the Brits.

I’ve also had one of my best cinema experiences in Akaroa where I finally got to see “the wind that shakes the barley” at a 16-seater art house cinema. It was practically a personal screening! I’ve yet to find out exactly how the financed such a tiny little cinema.

The landscape and environment on the Banks seems much like the West Coast of Scotland or the Lake District. There’s elderflower just about to flower in the hedgerows, skylarks on the moors, sheep, sheep, sheep… But the similarities make the differences all the more marked. The colour of the sea is a very inviting turquoise (though the large creatures that lurk beneath counterbalance the invitation), and, strangely enough, I’m missing drystone walls from the landscape. Conservationists are trying to hold back the non-indigenous Gorse, but only from the paths to stop it prickeling people – it is not discouraged from growing on moorland where it’s supposed to encourage the regeneration of native species.

Today we’re leaving Akaroa to head up to Kaikora for a spot of whale watching via Hamner Springs where there’s some natural hot springs. Perfect for the rainy weather…

Will post nice pictures later as the tinternet here is sluggish.

If you pick a Paw Paw...

It was a mammoth journey getting here, but we are here and it is stunning!

Our flights started off fine and dandy. On your left is a picture of some sort of arctic tundra. I'm not sure where it is but it looks pretty cold.

But... on the last little leg - flying from Tahiti at dawn, our captain announced that there were technical problems with the plane, and that, instead of landing on Rarotonga as planned, we'd have to fly over it to Aukland, and then fly back to Rarotonga on a fully functioning plane. Gooooo Carbon Emissions!! This added another 8 hours onto our journey making time spent in the air 26 hours and a 36 hour journey altogether.

I was, needless to say, happy to be happily greeted with a lovely flowery garland when we finally landed on Rarotonga.

And it is such a beutiful place to be. No cyclones!

I've been getting into snorkelling - the fishes are mesmerising - there's such a variety from gem like fish that are only a couple of milimeters in size and bright bright blue, to larger ones florescently patterned and with a tendency to nip.

I was quite suprised by how mountainous the island is - yesterday we did the cross island route which involved 400m of near verticle ascent, and some pretty trecherous bits on the climb down. The view from the top was well worth it. According to our guide (a 67 year old character called Pa), the summit that we walked to was visited by the Dalai Lama a few years back because it is deemed to be one of 7 points of strength in the world. Here's a picture of mum at the top of the mountain.

Mum is delighted with the flowers here - hibiscus flowers (and many other plants too, but hibiscus is the only one I ever remember the name of - botanist I am not) line the roads, as well as Mango, Papaya, and Avocado trees. The occassional fruit that drop off make satisfying splats when run over by the oncoming bus.

The people here are incredibly friendly and warm hearted. It seems they appreciate living here fully. We were swimming in the pool of a waterfall the other day when a huge family came to swim too and they had so much fun there with everyone laughing and shrieking at the water and the oncoming bomb dives. And it is nice to see how their friendliness rubs off on the tourists. I hope it carries on that way.

Tourism is pretty much the main income for the whole of the Cook Islands. I read somewhere that it accounted for about 80% of their income. So there's lots of new building going on at the moment which is apparently causing some controversy with the old system of land ownership. Apparently only the locals are allowed land ownership (each family having a strip of land that goes from the sea inland to the steep mountains), but increasingly foreigners are buying property on these strips, which is then challenging the way in which the land is divided and distributed.

One more day on this beautiful island!