I hate snakes!

We flew into Brisbane to be greeted by two smiling couples, one to give us the keys to their car and the other the keys to their house.  A gentle drive then up to Noosa, which is a very refined seaside resort just getting ready for their annual surf championship: lots of old and cookie guys from Hawaii and California in evidence. 

Suffered 2 days of torrential rain at the tail end of a cyclone, 30cm in 24 hours!  The weather must drive the wildlife for shelter too, inside the house Glenn had to beat to death a spider the size of a saucer and the next day mete out the same treatment to a bloody snake (he hates snakes).  Queensland still has more things to kill you than anywhere else on earth……But we left the Koalas alone and were fortunate to get this close up of one right at the top of his tree.

Then flew down to Sydney for a few days of hospitality in the suburbs with our next exchange hosts before going down to their house in beautiful Jervis Bay.  Managed to meet up again with Sue’s cousin, Linnet and her children and got to the Opera to see Turandot –amazing to be in fantastic seats  just 20 feet away from the tenor when he was belting out Nessun Dorma (Take note Les Mis - NO AMPLIFICATION).  Ferried about on the harbour to go and see Manley in the northern suburbs, a refined example of Victorian seaside in OZ.

Jervis Bay certainly has white beaches every bit as good as the Whitsundays, with lots of white coves linked to each other through a bush walk.  Rather like Dartmouth in UK provides great surroundings for sea-learning, so the Ozzies teach their cadets in these superb bays, their buildings can just be seen in the distance in this last shot.  Also got fairly close to a (pride?) of Roos, no you don’t go to the bush to see them, you go to the local golf course.  They seem to like the lush and tender grass there.  The big male looked as if he could be quite aggressive and the 2 females with Joeys in their pouches were really sweet.  But rather like a group of Meerkats, they kept a close eye on the photographer and swivelled their necks round to follow every step.  They are also on many of the suburban lawns around here at dusk and seemed totally unfazed by people like us just 10 feet away (albeit secure in their car….)

Tomorrow we dine in a tree house restaurant (!) recommended by our hosts in Sydney, some more walks on this beautiful coast and then on to Hong Kong (again with some great recommendations from the Sydney gang) and home….Glenn forgot to mention that on an evening sortie to look for kangaroos yesterday, we were stopped by the police for a random breath test.  Thank god there’s been no vodka martinis here!  All clear, but the rental car was shown to be illegal sporting an out of date licence!  Just our luck – but the cop was ok and after phoning the company discovered that it was registered - they had just omitted to affix the new disc to the car.  Good start…

Everyone here says the weather is ‘cold’ as its now autumn, but for us it is just bliss to be warm and with little humidity.  The beaches are almost empty and walks almost wild so we are in heaven.  The contrast with the city and the seaside is very marked, but we are looking forward to a final blast of shopping and night life in HK next week.

We're saying Farewell to NZ again

Just before we finished our trip in the camper we took a ride in a RIB off the beach at Hahei to look at the amazing Cathedral Cove and drive into sea caves (the world's second largest, see below for the world's number 1) and volcanic blowholes.  A great trip but then Glenn stubbed his little toe on the stern boarding ladder (see above) and he thinks it's broken, anyway it hurts!


So we're in this beautiful house on the lake at Rotorua and Glenn's furious because he can't do the white knuckle ride on the Tutea Falls nearby, which involves falling down a 7m waterfall.  This picture has been pirated so that he can remember what might have been.

 The other disappointment was that he wasn't able to use the Laser sailing dinghy on the lake especially after Sam the owner had gone to some trouble to locate the missing tiller extension to make the little ship all shape again after some time of non-use!  But Sue really loved the hot tub on the deck overlooking this lake........

But we did manage to hobble around the Redwoods Forest (yes, all originally imported from California around 1900)

So we said goodbye to Rotorua again and its black swans on the lake and made our way up to our next exchange in the beautiful (sorry, we are running out of adjectives) Waitakere Hills to the west of Auckland and to a fab ecohouse in this national park on top of a mountain.  Bush in every direction and yet on one side the Tasman Sea and on the other side of the ridge, sweeping views over Auckland.  See the house at:
http://www.homeexchange.com/show.php?id=165999

Here, we are in a special area  not well known on the tourist route.  The little we have gleaned so far leads us to suppose that this may well be the best yet.  Brad was waiting to give us an induction tour of this eco-home and he is New Zealand's only professor of (in?) Leadership.  Joline and Darl (American by birth, but living and working in the university at Auckland alongside Brad) have created a stunning house perched on a ridge with distant views of the west coast and the sea.  Contemporary but with a ‘grand designs’ twist of thick stone block interior walls, polished cement floors, interesting levels,  picture windows on all sides to bring the glorious outside in and – a real treat; a sauna with a decked outside shower area and a bathroom with a picture window to give the impression of bathing in the bush.  The skyline is graded downwards with huge flax plants, an olive grove and the ever-present manuka (tea tree) trees with their spindly trunks making a crooked trellis against the far-reaching skyscapes. There is a raised vegetable garden and beautifully tended lawn areas with seats everywhere, swinging chair, verandah with mattresses and a paddock with sheep and goats to talk to if we get bored…. You can walk right into native bush from the garden on a couple of trails with more stunning views we are told


From here Glenn decided that he just had to do another of the world's top dive sites at the Poor Knights islands about 23km off the coast from Tutukaka (2.5hrs north of Auckland) but he still says that Fiji is his all-time favourite.  But he did dive into the world's largest sea cave, reputed to have been a hidey hole for a Jap sub in WW2.


On the way at Whangarei was a pretty set of falls

Otherwise, Sue had a quiet Birthday and has enjoyed the sauna here and the beach and bush walks and we were lucky to find an Indian restaurant for the celebration nearby at Titirangi.  Here we have also met up with some new exchangers who are coming to us in November and us to them in......?


On Friday we are being entertained by some "city" Aucklanders who have already been to La Vallée and they have asked us to stay over and then they'll kindly run us out to the airport on Saturday for the next hop over to OZ.  At Brisbane Airport we are being met for a group hug involving collecting the keys to use a beach house at Noosa (north of Brisbane) from the owners and collecting a car to go there in lieu of an exchange from another couple who have already been to stay at najac....


Watch this space!

We're back in heaven!

     

the start of a new month already and more bad news, our dear friend Michael has died.  How we shall miss him at les Combes….

Where were we now when we last left off?  Yes, stuck in the airport hotel at Nadi.  We took a ‘sailing boat’ (old scow) trip on our extra, extra enforced day in Nadi to get away from the hotel and see one of the pretty mystery islands at the beginning of the Mamanuca chain.  The island is a perfect circle of palm and rainforest with a white sand beach and a coral reef.  A covered bar and eating area and some hammocks.  The day improved our spirits with a snorkel in the warm sea, a good lunch plenty of cold beer and Fijian singers. 

But heh, losing it does help and we have been refunded 800Fiji by the airline and finally got away from Fiji to Tonga for just 2 nights and one day.  What a lovely simple beach resort it was and how sad we were not to have been able to have our full week there.  A cold beer, a stunning ocean view and smiling Tongan staff and we were partly restored to normality….  Only one other family there so we spent our ‘day’ walking the beach, snorkelling and just lying in hammocks (that’s us on Tongan hammocks) listening to the surf.  In the night it rained heavily, but not enough to stop our return to the airport – this time a civilised airline – Air New Zealand .  It felt like coming home to arrive in Auckland just 3 hours later.

Et in Arcadia sum! 

Steph and Stu were waiting with a name board and handed over Joline and Darl’s car to us.  They are the neighbours of the couple who are staying in La Vallee while we are away.  The deal is that we have their car to drive to Rotorua for our visit with the exchange couple with the camper van and then bring it back and spend a week in their home at Auckland for our last week in NZ.  So after a few days in Rotorua with Kath and Sam’s in their beautiful home we took off in this huge van with so many mod cons it reminds us of living on CHICA without having to worry every night whether the anchor will hold……  It is a joy to be here in a temperate climate – just 24C and NOT humid~!   So far, we’ve done the beautiful East Cape area and now send this blog from the heart of the Coromandel peninsular, which is pretty much one huge nature reserve.  Yesterday we did an epic 4 hour tramp along the remotest part of this coast, with a 1.5hr transfer each way on gravel roads (our camper can’t and won’t go there). Quite a few “alternatives” from the sixties never made it further away than here.

 Most nights we were ‘free-camping’ (not on camp sites’ and only feet from the crashing surf of the Pacific.  Often the only people for miles and it was hard to gauge the length of the beaches.  Hard, golden sand great for long, long walks in the surf, after climbing over banks of driftwood  – not just the odd branch, I mean tree trunks, logs, twisted roots – all bleached in the antipodean sun.  A wood sculptors paradise and indeed we saw many an ad hoc artistic arrangement in our rambles.  The towns, if one can call them that, resemble the wild west; mostly wooden with verandahs and tin roofs.  Here the shops and signs display the Maori language alongside English and there were one or two places where we felt distinctly unwelcome.  Dusty little hamlets appear in the clefts between these endless emerald hills, the mountains clad with Manuka and tree ferns and round every corner another glimpse of the blue pacific and its noisome surf.   Te Aroroa – the land of the long white cloud – so aptly named as the cigar-shaped cumulus sit in serried ranks along the ridges.  One memorable evening we ate with a young French couple travelling in the opposite direction.  They had met on the internet only a couple of days previously and were sleeping in the car (they’re young).  Melissa approached us to ask if we would like to share the fresh fish they had been given.  Spurred into action we broke out the BBQ, chairs and table and set up a veritable feast right on the seashore.  The Hoki was delicious and their company envigorating.  It was good to speak French after so long without and they were relieved not to have to speak English! Turns out they have been through Najac, so, small world. The East Cape is a wild and wonderful place to visit and we have many recommendations for anyone wishing to go there.

We need to be back in Rotorua in a couple of days, just as soon as we’ve dug our own personal hot water thermal bath on the beach at low tide.  You can’t move a mile here without hitting a volcano but the locals all seem quite unfazed.  Shame about Christchurch though, they’re still getting hit.

We hear the temperature in Najac is down to -7C today and falling and that Dorset and Devon have had snow.  It still feels strange to be in the sunshine in February.

Nous ne regrettons rien!

It's raining, hallelujah!

Our house in the jungle and a few other pix

8 hours and the loss of a day in time we arrive in Fiji.  The dateline crosses here so we left Hawaii at 8 Friday morning and arrived at 3.30 Saturday afternoon!  The first thing that hits is the humidity.  A stop-over in Samoa where we stand in the aircraft doorway to ease our legs and breathe in the heat prepared us, but not for the crashing thunderstorm – and the ukulele band - on arrival in Nadi.  From the air we could see how lush the islands are with the classic turquoise waters inside the coral reefs and the white sand ringing the rainforest.  The driver of the shuttle to the hotel (where we have to wait overnight for the hopper plane to our island) obligingly detoured to a shop for us to buy water and then also gave a local a lift on the way.  The hotel has all mod cons, but a short walk along the highway to look for somewhere to eat reveals this as a small oasis in a more primitive setting.  On a site of market/supermarket we found a bakery with food and enjoyed a delicious Chinese/Korean style meal served by a gentle Fiiian with flowers in her hair. Here we get more for our pound than in US with 2.6 FJ$ to the £1 and prices less than in US in general.  We took the afternoon flight on an 18-seater (!) rubber band job from Nadi to Savusavu on Vanua Levu, the second largest island where we have a home exchange planned – with no idea what we are going to except that Andrea will be at the airport to pick us up! Glenn thought that De Haviland stopped making air craft after the second world war Mosquito bomber but this “TwinOtter” proved us wrong (unless of course it was pre-war!); we were the only 2 passengers and sat up behind and between the two pilots so they can’t have made any money on this 1.5hr flight.  It was a stunning flight over the reefs and lagoons.

It is cyclone season and we arrived with an unsettled forecast but nothing could prepare us for the battering humidity.  The house exchange we had was in a pretty rainforest setting just 200m from a lagoon but the incessant rain and the greenery provided the humidity and also blocked all breeze from the house.  The house was stifling hot with its tin roof and we spent most of our time on a mattress on the veranda under a mossie net with a fan blowing on us.  There was, actually, nothing to do and nothing to see and only a few km of surfaced roads.  In the end we hired a rent-a-wreck with air-con and spent as much time as possible in it.  The mossies and ants couldn’t get at us in there either – Sue reckons the mossies were well-prepared for our British Army spec deet, loved it and told all their friends.

The House “Boy” and his daughter were very sweet and took us to see their village.  There is a particular etiquette necessary in all villages.  One must not wear hats or sunglasses – it is disrespectful to the village elder who is the only one allowed to wear a hat.  You must find someone to present you to the elder and buy a gift of the local brew sold in coconut shells to give him after which you will be allowed to visit!  You must not pass in front of someone sitting, only behind; must not sit with your legs straight out in front, but bent to the side or cross-legged – in particular not to have the soles of your feet facing the ceremonial cup or the elder!  You must learn the greetings too and, as in many places, it is impolite just to go up to someone and start asking questions, you must greet them properly first.  Whilst we were there, a group arrived from the Cousteau Resort and we had a bit of ethnic dancing by warriors and maidens and then the kava ceremony.  We won’t go into the kava but Glenn was offered some, it’s a bit like swamp water, but browner, and it wasn’t until 2 days later that his bowels gave out, so maybe it wasn’t that after all.

The only place to escape the humidity was underwater and Glenn did 4 dives, 2 of which were 30miles out by dive boat to a protected marine park and it was the best dive of his life.  Red Sea, Caribbean, Great Barrier Reef are all rubbish compared to this, shame it’s so far to get to but probably also the only reason that it is so beautiful.  Even so, the dive operator took out people who really weren’t up to it and they started kicking the coral fans to bits – but these were good customers so, hey, hell…. The current on the last dive a real challenge and Glenn has reef burn along both inner forearms where he had to hang on to the reef for grim death and watch the world get flung by.  It’s going down gradually- the reef burn that is.

If you are ever tempted to fly with the local joke monopoly airline Pacific Sun, don’t.  Now we know where “coconut airways” went to in the sixties.  They started cancelling us 2 weeks before we got here and now they have cancelled 4 flights, they don’t inform you even though they have all our contact details.  When they do fly, they announce (only after take-off) that the plane was overweight (Fijieans tend to be on the large size and they weigh you here with the luggage, thankfully not “speak-your-weight”) and that they have left 100kg baggage behind, of course it included ours.

Today is Friday, we lost our onward flight to Tonga last Tuesday and have been festering at an airport hotel (at least the bedroom is aircon and we are loath to leave it) for today’s flight (yes, cancelled).  We might get away tomorrow but have lost 4 of our 6 nights on Tonga and even if we get there, it will be just for 1 day.  Suddenly our next flight from Tonga to Auckland is looking very civilised.  We’ve been lied to, fobbed-off, refused all help with meals, accommodation and transfers.  Today  did it for Glenn and he marched backstage to the airline offices and cornered  its most senior person here in his office for an hour and gave him the option of listening or calling the police.  It took an hour to recount all the woes and at the end the manager quite agreed that they were all imbeciles and said that even he was looking for a new job.  He is trying to get us 1500 bucks to replace our extra outlay but don’t hold your breath.

I think that we are expanding our “places to avoid list” such as SE Asian cities with the Pacific Islands.  You can see why Captain Bligh had his work cut out here.  It’s such a shame because the average Fijians are so friendly and genuine.

Bula Vinaka for now…..

Westward Ho. Around the World in 80 Delays.

Brief comments on the above photos:

-         Glenn (in his dreams) on his first surf lesson close to the world-famous “Pipe”.

-         The portions are enormous, the arses are AWESOME (no, folks, this is not Sue) and it took an hour to get this ‘gal out of the railings

-         The sunsets are enormous and just plain AWESOME

Its only the 12^th day of the new year and already in the past 2 weeks we’ve taken 3 flights, 2 hire cars and this is the 9^th different bed we’ve slept in!

Leaving on Boxing Day at the start of our big trip was difficult for me as I lost my Dad just 3 days before Christmas.  Apart from the shock, there was the emotional pull of wanting to be with family, but we decided to carry on as my brother will be arranging the funeral

The long haul flight from Heathrow to LA was the most comfortable we’d ever experienced.  Air New Zealand premium economy is amazingly high spec and has now spoilt us for the future!  By comparison United Airlines from San Francisco to Honolulu was c***.  The plan of flying west has really worked and we’ve not experienced jet lag so far….We met Glenn’s son Tim at the Radisson hotel in LA as planned, but all was not well with him.  He had a really bad dose of food poisoning and his journey from Mexico to be with us had been fraught with complication.  Nevertheless we set off for San Diego the next morning – trial by fire on 7 lane highways in a small (by American standards) hire car surrounded by huge trucks vehicles that looked like they came straight out of cartoons.  Installed in our first motel we left Tim to recover and went in search of the ocean.  We watched the sun set into the Pacific at the end of an old pier with fishermen and families vying for space in the dilapidated wooden café selling clam chowder and tacos with chillies and cheese. We took a drive through suburbia on the way back to the motel and marvelled at the excess in Christmas lighting.  Already noticing the waste in packaging and too large portions of food (everyone needs to take out a doggy bag it seems), we now wondered at the cost both to the pocket and the planet in the burning of so much energy.  Not only Christmas lights, but all the commercial signs and gas flares illuminating walkways to restaurants just abound everywhere in the cities.

Tim recovered enough to be able to do a tour of the Midway (aircraft carrier) in San Diego next day with his dad while I took a tour bus of the city.  In fact Glenn quips that already on this tour he has been on an (each is “AWESOME”) aircraft carrier, the last of the great battleships the “Mighty Mo” USS Missouri and a submarine and Sue has eaten a lot of ice cream – so all are happy!

SanFran was memorable for its good weather for the time of year and we did all the usual things.  Glenn ate crab. And more crab. He went up and down every Switchback on every Cable car (poor, sad thing) and I went shopping (yeehah).  We then visited with (notice how we are stumbling into the vernacular) Sue’s  sister-in-law and managed to start leaving stuff behind, in which will probably become a repetitious and senior feature of this trip.

Onwards to Hawaii and Waikiki beach.  We write this from our 17^th floor condo (we think it is called Benidorm Towers) but somehow it isn’t Benidorm but if it is, it has ATTITUDE!  It is as beautiful as they say so that we won’t bore you.  The pix speak a thousand words.  It is full of great WWII ships (Glenn made me put that in).  Some above water and, sadly, some underwater……..  But the Americans do do things well at their visitor sites. 

We move on into the 3^rd world tomorrow and may lose internet for a while.  Those lovely people in Fiji have already moved one of our flights and cancelled another, so we are not best pleased and the weather looks like unrelenting warm rain for the entire stay in what is, of course, cyclone season.   It’s not all plain sailing but Glenn reckons it won’t affect the diving too much so he plans to get seriously wet anyway.  Aloha from Oahu…

PS from Glenn:  did I mention the great ships!!??  PLEASE, PLEASE someone ask me for more pix of them!

Farwell to the "Land of the Long White Cloud"

South Island has not only been dramatically better weather-wise than we were led to believe but also fulfills the promise that nothing can really prepare you for the beauty, the splendour, all the superlatives you care to choose.  I know we look a bit battered above (11 days of coach travel does that to you, especially with 06.00 wake-ups every morning....!) and a bit world-weary but, honestly, there is nothing comparable which we have so far seen in our short lives.

We have done all the active bits that Glenn's head for heights will allow and watched all the bravehearts throwing themselves off bridges tied vaguely to an elastic band and running off cliffs with a handkerchief and a  ridiculously young but strapping and blond Kiwi tied to their backs.  Why more don't die remains a mystery, but I'm sure my travel insurance wouldn't have permitted it (that's my let out).  But we have variously done insane jet-boating thru wafer thin chasms, white water rafting (I don't think I'll ever do it on that "pussy" Aveyron river again), sea-kayaking, lugeing down mountains and loads of other stuff that all leaves you with a gigantic and stupid grin from ear-to-ear.  Glenn's Bucket List is getting ever shorter as he ticks off gliding in the most beautiful spot on Earth.  There's just 2 things left he's having trouble with so if any of you have any ideas, the input would be appreciated:  (1) Play the guitar like Mark Knopfler (2)Fly a Tomcat off a Nimitz-class carrier (back seat would do).

You can be on the most beautiful beaches in the world and then an hour later be awed by the snow on Mount Cook.  You can stick your finger in the super-heated vent of an active volcano and then go walk on a glacier.  You can stroll in glorious rain forest with tree ferns ten-a-penny (and, hey, no snakes, no spiders, no crocs) and then stand under a waterfall in spooky Milford Sound and the watch the blasted sandflys drown. You can see a Maori ceremony and then watch the whites massacre a haggis on Burns night in full tribal regalia (the whites, not the Maori).  I'm not going to go on about it because it mostly defies description.

Yes, we'd like to come back.

There aren't many people here and we seem to have met most of them.  That's also an advantage with House Exchange and the family we are staying with in their gorgeous house high in the hills above Christchurch are typical of the unfailing helpfulness, friendliness and humour of these "can-do" pioneering people.  If there is one complaint it's that you can't whip a map out on any street without every other person coming up to you to ask if you need help with the way.  And they're not trying to sell you anything.  Glenn's managed to leave all 3 phones and simcards in various houses and boats along the way (head still in the clouds, silly grin, silly man) but all have been reunited via the Grand Plan here in Christchurch.  Why don't they make a mobile that takes 3 simcards?


Yes, I know it's a bit far.  But, Hey, (notice if you will the use of the acquired vernacular) whether you are shattered after a 10-hour plane ride or a 20-hour one, there's not much difference.  And if there's anyone who says they'd like to get out to somewhere like rural France but where they speak English, then we can recommend New Zealand to you.  The only condition is that you like lamb.  Glenn is in heaven.

Back slowly towards reality tomorrow via the delights(?) of Bangkok and the usual day-to-day worries of how to fill the last few empty weeks in April in the houses.  Then we've got to start being nice to people again.  Oh, well, it will all seem like dreamtime............

Harrison Ford and the Craters of Rotorua

OK. So it stopped raining. We went for a walk between showers in the Wahine national park – the foot of the Tararua mountain range south of Masterton. No-one told us there was a swinging bridge; the longest/highest in NZ, 300m above a stunning gorge and about 200m long. Glenn’s worst nightmare - he broke out in a sweat just approaching it. Heights don’t bother me, so I went first and waved encouragement from the other side. He started out gingerly, but unfortunately more people arrived and crowded on behind him making the movement worse (now he understands the sign on old bridges “soldiers break step”)….anyway he made it, we had a great walk and crossed it again later.



You know you’re approaching Rotorua by the unmistakable stench of rotten eggs in the air. The drive was superb, if long, going from lush valleys to high desert plain – good skiing country in the winter – round beautiful lake Taupo and arriving in the capital of living volcanic craters. How amazing to see steam coming from odd clearings in the woods, geysers shooting up and mud fumaroles glooping in profusion. Even the local park had fenced craters doing their stuff among the flower beds.



Our motel had its own sulphurous plunge pool tapped directly from the bowels of the earth. A constant 40C and smelly. I braved it twice a day - it did wonders for the psoriasis and the aches and pains. Trouble is, no-one mentioned it turned silver jewellery black instantly! Luckily it cleaned up ok. Spent so long deciding which Maori cultural event and hangi (meat cooked in a steam pit) to go to that we didn’t do any – saving it for next time. We met several couples from the home exchange site with a view to staying at their houses in the future. All delightful, but one or two with boats/jetties/campervans in spectacular waterfront positions . Glenn had arranged a series of meetings so we had coffee, tea, lunch and two dinners to attend which rather cut down on our cultural visits, but we did spend a whole day in Waimangu thermal park, one of the newest geothermal parks (The last eruption in 1976). We had it almost to ourselves as we wandered down the cinder paths coming upon amazing formations, colourful deposits, steaming pools and miniature volcanic eruptions. The best and brightest was the blue pool in the photo. A crater which overflows and feeds the trickle of a stream below heading out to lake Rotorori. The colour is due to the suspension of silica particles in the water, plus sun and a blue sky helps. The temperature of the stream and the various lakes and ponds is above boiling point, so although they looked tempting a quick finger test is enough to discourage. After a 2.5 hour stroll we came to the lake surrounded by panga tree ferns. A flock of black swans glided on the, now, cool waters and the cicadas were deafening. We caught an old 50s bus back to the car.



The rolling green of middle earth (hobbitland again) gave way to the coast at Napier, finally. So many miles of beautiful scenery, native bush, sheep, cattle and rivers; over the rackety bridges, reminiscent of Madison County, but without the coverings, and through the small townships and villages with their clapboard houses and churches also with an American slant. The sea front is long, golden and delightful. Shaded areas, picnic tables and BBQs. Manicured gardens everywhere and an art-deco town like a movie set stacked up against the rocky promontory – row upon row of pastel frontages with curved corner windows and wrought ironwork.



Back at Masterton, Jeanette and Phil had laid on a party for us! All their friends and children seemed to be there to greet us and everyone had brought a plate of food, except us!!! It was a great send-off (I even got invited to join their book club evening with a group of 13 delightful and interesting women). Next morning it was a 5.30 start to catch the train to Wellington and the Interisland ferry to Picton on the “mainland” as the South Islanders call their part of the country, for the start of the next phase…..



The crossing of the Cook Strait was thankfully fine and as the boat wound its way through the stunningly pretty fingers of Queen Charlotte Sound we could see that this was probably going to be the best scenery of the trip. Our transport was a clapped-out old Nissan, but then it was a cheap rental at £20 a day. It did have air-con and it was automatic, so no complaints there. We stopped off at Havelock and the ‘Slip Inn’ right on the quay for some really delicious food and wine – greenlipped mussels and cold white wine. Judy and Tom who kindly put us up for a few nights in Nelson, are the parents of some more home-exchangers with whom we will stay for a few days at the end of our south island tour. We took a water taxi to Bark Bay in Abel Tasman national park. The little cove was so pretty and inviting that we decided to have our picnic and swim before the long walk to Torrent Bay. There were just a couple of German backpackers playing a yukele when we arrived, but by the time we left there was a flotilla of sea kayakers who also thought this was a nice quiet bay….the water was warm, blue and deep, however, and we had some shade from the rocks above a little freshwater stream so the setting was idyllic and, for once, the weather was glorious. Finally dragged ourselves away and began the hike. And what a hike! The trudge was all through sub-trop bush with masses of tree ferns for shade, but there was a lot of uppy/downy stuff and we didn’t seem to be getting very far as we kept seeing the same scene every time we broke cover round Sandfly cove. Finally we emerged in Torrent bay and collapsed into the cool water to await the last water taxi back to Kaiperiperi. It’s hard to properly describe such a beautiful place as there are so many here, but it seems that each one just gets better and better. Today we completed a very small section of the Queen Charlotte track which, again, has shade from those amazing tree ferns with ‘to-die-for’ views at every turn. We both are amazed at the lack of people, given that this is such a destination. We rarely see more than one or two others on our walks. One elderly American today asked us about the tree ferns as she had never seen any before and said ‘isn’t this just the most beautiful country in the world?’ I have to say we might need to agree with her by the time this trip is over.



We’re now back in Picton spending a quiet evening before our train journey to Christchurch tomorrow and the start of the 11 day organised tour of the rest of South Island. On our way back from Nelson we stopped at the Highfield Estate vineyard and had the most wonderful lunch with a wine tasting and a very fine bottle of Pinot Noir. Having missed lunch at another winery due to this mornings walk, we made sure we got a meal at the ‘Toot and Whistle’ – a pub near the train station of course. One of the strange things about this place is that if you leave it til late to find a restaurant you are often disappointed. Not because they have no room, but because they are closed! Everyone seems to go to bed at 9p.m. Twice now we have gone without supper due to lack of interest…… will make sure we pack a picnic for tomorrow. Now, about that glass of wine…….