Helen and Randall on the road

Arriving late into Auckland on Friday night after a rather too leisurely morning at River valley, we landed on Sid and Judith (Randall’s uncle and aunt) with all our baggage then they and Keith (Randall’s cousin) took us out for an evening curry in Titirangi, then home to Sid and Judith’s for another bottle (or so!) of wine and a more-complicated-than-it-should-have-been attempt to Skype ‘big Randall’ (Randall’s dad, Judith’s little brother).

The next morning we had a mad rush to get the van cleaned and dropped off before midday, then Keith met us for coffee and drove us to Greenhithe where he dropped us at Adrian and Rachel’s for lunch. Adrian is an ex colleague and friend of mine, so it was great to see him again and to meet Rachel, Charlie and Edward (no pics though…fail!). After an amazing roast lunch we headed to Gav and Joyee’s for dinner and a catch up before a reasonable early night as then next morning Gav was swimming the Auckland Harbour Crossing:

It’s a 2.9km swim and people swim it REALLY fast! There were around 1300 participants so it was pretty busy:

Still, we managed to catch Gav on his way out of the water: Happy Face!

Then Keith, Judith and Sid joined us all for brunch:

Sorry Sid – you don’t get out of the photo THAT easily!

After which, at Judith’s insistence that we did ‘something cultural’, we left Judith and Sid to break their way OUT of the car park they had broken INTO, and Keith took us to the Auckland Contemporary Art gallery:

I rather like this ‘Flower Chandelier’ work. Choi Jeong Hwa, Flower Chandelier – Auckland Art Gallery.

Then it was time for Keith to take us back to Sid and Judith’s as were were having a family dinner. Of course, the Hargis-Perrey-Lewis axis are a shy retiring lot so it was a subdued affair..

The lovely Joan (neighbour and friend)

I feel short!

Some assorted pics of River Valley Lodge – go there if you ever get the chance:

Stay in a luxury ensuite cabin:

Hot tub and sauna action:

Cold shower (for post-sauna) and spa for massage, yoga etc.

Cross the river on the flying fox:

Messing about in neoprene:

Hanging around in the cozy lodge:

and using the cozy facilities (named after flintstones characters…this is Dino:)

hanging around in the communal areas:

eating:

Jamie the chef and his Freddy Mercury Mo’

or just hanging out with the fantastic people:

The lodge to lodge trip is a scenic (ie no white water) two day rafting trip downriver from River Valley, stopping off for the night at Tarata Fishing Lodge. We were guided by Anupam, old friend from when I was 18 in India with Charlie:

The boss!

Hiking to the Waterfall

Under the waterfall:

Randall goes all the way!

Hello Charlie!!

After some more picturesque drifting with Anupam doing all the work (I think we paddled fewer than 30 strokes all day!) it was lunch time. Obviously we were expecting a brown bag lunch, so this was all a pleasant surprise:

Randall is the little dot in the middle!

Then we had a bit more scenic drifting with the odd bit of paddling (and one moment where Anupam had to get out and push):

before arriving at Tarata’s beach, where the handy four-wheel-drive mini-jeep was waiting for us to hop into and drive up the hill:

where we arrived at the glorious Tarata Fishing Lodge and checked in to the ‘River Retreat’, a two bedroom cabin with hot tub and veranda overlooking the river:

There’s the raft, just pulled up out of the water!

Oooh the fabulous hot tub (and the chilled bottle of Sauv Blanc left in the fridge for us)

The ensuite corner bath, from the verandah and from inside. Huge sleigh bed with not one but two sets of dressing gowns, one for getting wet after climbing out of the hot tub and one for lounging around doing leopard impressions in:

or indeed random Star Wars impressions:

Apparently my light sabre noises are rubbish.

Randall and Mr Perkins the daschund puppy.

After dinner in the homestead, a fantastic night’s sleep in the river retreat, and breakfast in the homestead again (made by the fabulous Trudi), Steve took us around the lodge grounds, with a visit to the ‘Treehouse’, a four bedroom mini-lodge, and a demo of his home-designed ‘possum plucker’ for taking the fur off the possums he kills – possum trapping being one of the many strings to his bow. (Eel-catching, river management, fishing trips and ‘bullshitting to tourists’ being some of the others!). Possums are a pest in NZ and it is practically a civic duty to kill them (unlike in Australia – from whence they were introduced…thanks Aus!…where they are protected). The market for the fur is relatively recent though and supplied entirely from possums that would have been killed anyway – they are not farmed or cultivated. The fur is super warm and mixed with the local merino wool for socks, hats, scarves etc, but I am saving up for a possum-skin blanket. Mmmmmmm super soft and warm.

Finally it was time to get back on the river, which was brown and high not like the crystal clear meandering waters of the day before, because the river we walked up to the waterfall the day before had burst its banks because of localised overnight rain.

There was someone on the flying fox as we passed the Gravity Canyon getting towed up after the 100mph descent…brrrrrrr!

All too soon we reached our destination 11km downstream and it was lunchtime again, this time a bit more inventive:

Then Tom appeared and it was packing up time:

…then the drive back to the lodge, hot showers, and a huge roast dinner. Nice.

The sundowner ‘sunset’ horse trek was a bit on the cloudy side so the sun only made the occasional appearance, but Lizzie spent time explaining the principles of ‘Natural Horsemanship‘ to us, and getting us to work with our horses so they understood our commands, and teaching us how to work with just the rope halter as they don’t use bit, bridle and reins.

Randall forgot to bring his cornflour to his audition for Fields of the Nephilim.

Poncho and Helen

Oooh…what’s in the saddlebag?

Fizzy booze!

Strawberries and cheese and biccies!

Cheers!

The Hikoi was a hike to the summit of Mount Aorangi on Maori land, so led by Richard the Maori guide and his sidekick.

First step was crossing the river from the lodge:

Wheeeeeeeeeeeee!

Then up the steep slope and through the forest, learning about the flora and fauna as we went:

Just brilliant. The pics speak for themselves but a big ‘Yay’ for mad Derek the guide 🙂

Smiley faces before put-in

Derek and his merry paddlers

Grade two rapid and first casualty as Luke fell in (check the last pic):

Next up:

Then into the grade fives:

Smiley faces after the drop!

And the next:

Yes, I am in fact underwater at this point.

And we’re off to Foamy:

Then a final dunk under the waterfall before back for hot showers and lunch!

Blenheim, for such a small town, has an incredible Aquatic Centre so I got to go swimming and then we had coffee and cake:

Mmm…carrot cake and a bowl of mocha…

We also managed to swap our damaged self-inflating mat and buy loads of other goodies at the local Kathmandu.

Sadly we had to work for the whole of the next day for our French clients…at one point we heard a REALLY annoying mobile phone ring, and we both looked around for some time to try and find it before looking out of the window and realising it was the ice cream van! I had to run after it to acquire this rather splendid Mr Whippy for Randall:

Luckily we still had time the next day for a winery tour as Blenheim is in the Marlborough Wine Region:

Hunters Wines

Allan Scotts and Framingham

Bladen, and Wairau River (where we ate lunch); Randall with the lovely Colleen, our guide and driver.

Colleen told us about two Welsh guys, Selwyn and Roy, who had come to NZ for the Rugby World Cup, and had printed out song books especially, so they could lead everyone into song wherever they were…I think they became minor celebrities over the course of the RWC, so here is Randall with Colleen’s copy of ‘The Selroy Songbook’ with its selection of rousing songs in Welsh, English, Italian, French etc including most National Anthems and The Haka. Fantastic.

After a nap we headed to Picton for the ferry crossing to Wellington (slightly rougher than on the way over) and a somewhat rubbish night in the Wellington Waterfront Motorhome Park.

Lovely Lake Tekapo. Well, really, lovely Peppers Bluewater Resort with the fantastic bathroom and the enormous comfortable bed where we spent a significant part of the 3 days, aside from when we were in the Restaurant, eating.

Lake Tekapo itself is rather lovely and deserves a mention though. It’s in a huge basin surrounded by snow-capped mountains, but with one 1300m mountain next to it, Mt John. As there isn’t much around and the tall mountain ranges keep out light pollution and a lot of the weather, the night sky is the clearest and most extensive in NZ (possibly in the southern hemisphere), so a  number of universities collaborate on the Mt John Observatory.

We hiked up to the Observatory but (typically) it was cloudy so we forswore the guided tour in favour of coffee and cake in the tiny but spectacular Astro Cafe instead:

As it turned out we missed the first turning for the hike up to the observatory and ended up doing the 3 hour round trip ‘scenic route’ that followed the lakeside then climbed steeply round the back of Mt John to reach the observatory, although it did mean we got a round trip instead of re-tracing our steps, so Randall (birthday boy) was happy.

The beautiful blue colour of the lake is a result of the Tyndall Effect on the lake which is essentially a suspension of ‘rock flour’,  very finely ground rock, ground from the sides of the mountains by the glacier at the source of the lake.

We skipped the ‘Alpine Hot Pools’ after I discovered they were chlorinated (Randall allergic) so instead revelled in our fantastic wet-room shower then brought forward our dinner booking, stuffed our faces with yummy food and fizzy wine, then stumbled back to our huge bed.

Wednesday – a long driving day, Franz Josef to Queenstown – was inevitably sunny again. Beautiful journey, even if the brakes and steering did start to go on the van on the hairpin bends.

This is the stunning view down to Queenstown. We knew it is famous for crazy extreme sports, people throwing themselves off, down and out of things, but we really weren’t prepared for the quite astonishing alpine scenery.

It is an incredibly beautiful place, a  bit like the Italian lakes but 10x more spectacular.

Stunningly clear water with snowy mountains in the background. And Randall.

In the evening we drove to Arrowtown to see a film (The Guard, a very good film as it turned out, but somewhat secondary to the cinema itself!) at Dorothy Browns, a tiny independent cinema with beautiful decor that serves cheese and wine:

Go here! It’s brilliant!

Thursday was a boring work day, then Friday was a real treat: we’d decided to fly to Milford Sound instead of driving the 4.5 hours each way trip, so at 9am we were collected from our camp site and driven to the airport where we met Captain Teri Muirhead who flew us to Milford Sound in this tiny six seater Piper Cherokee Six:

WOW! Having thought of it mainly as an idea for saving time on the journey, we realised JUST how spectacular the landscape was as we flew over and through snow-capped mountains and along lakes and rivers:

It’s quite hard to get the perspective from the photos because EVERYTHING is so huge, but on that bottom right one, the little white speck on the sound is a 3 storey cruise boat.

These videos give a slightly better idea of what the flight was like (the second is turbulent in parts!):

And this one:

The cruise on Milford Sound itself was also beautiful, and our tickets included a buffet lunch which slightly bizarrely was served immediately on boarding. At 11.15 am. Oh well, it’s Lord of the Rings country so nothing wrong with second breakfast, I suppose.

Once again, the little white speck on the first picture is a 3 storey tour boat.

We spotted some fur seals snoozing and generally chilling out like aquatic cats:

They warned us that the boat went ‘quite close’ to this waterfall. That would be *under* the waterfall then. I took that last pic and dived for the doors, but Randall stayed out for the whole thing and got completely soaked from head to toe.

Fjordland Crested Penguin. Apparently very rare.

On the flight back we flew along part of the Milford Track, a famous 5 day walking track that ends at the Sound. I was impressed (nod to Lewis père) that she said ‘we don’t fly over this bit, because if you’ve been walking through beautiful countryside for 5 days to get to the Sound, the last thing you want is to hear planes buzzing over it’. True, that.

After a swim at the local pool in the afternoon it was fish and chips while sitting watching the lake (or hot dog and chips in Randall’s case):

Hot dog NZ stylee. Ew.

then a work call, followed by a pint in the Pub on the Waterfront, then bed.

Saturday was motorbike time for Randall:

Then lunch in the fantastic Bob’s Weigh cafe, and off to Wanaka for a night.

Randall was so fed up with sleeping in the camper van at this point that we ‘upgraded’ to a ‘cabin’ (double bed, bunk beds, small table & chairs) which turned out to be this charming pink colour:

At least we had time to do laundry and charge all our electrical items before heading out to the main reason for coming to Wanaka, the

“Cinema Paradiso“:

Wine, food, CAKE!! And comfy sofas, beanbags and an old Morris Minor for that authentic ‘at the drive in’ experience.

The next morning I had a lovely swim at Wanaka Community Pool before we started the drive to Lake Tekapo, passing through the charmingly named ‘Twizel’ on the way.

On a freezing cold and wet morning we turned up at the Franz Josef Glacier Guides centre to get kitted out for the full day trip. We were issued with boots, socks, waterproofs and crampons and then bussed to the entrance to the glacier national park from where it was a half hour hike to the terminal face of the glacier:

We volunteered for the ‘fast’ group and ended up with the lovely Tubs and his pick-axe, for cutting steps when they had moved or melted from the previous day or when we needed to go ‘off piste’.

A word about crampons: they are bloody marvellous. The ice on the glacier is like oiled glass, there is no way you can grip onto it and walking on it would be impossible, but with crampons as promised by Tubs we ‘stuck to the ice like velcro’. Fantastic! With crampons and a pickaxe we could go pretty much anywhere as we could walk on most surfaces, and where it was too steep Tubs could cut steps:

Randall and Tubs, our guide, talking about ice and geology.

Squeezing through a narrow crevasse:

After getting to about 800m up, nearly at the main snowfield, we had a quick sandwiches lunch as it was incredibly cold and wet, then started the descent via a different route to take us through an amazing ice cave about 6 metres long:

Then down to look at the cave at the terminal face:

Hi-Five!

At this point we were VERY wet and cold, as the ‘waterproof’ jacket and trousers weren’t. Luckily, the trip we had paid for included access to the Glacier Hot Pools so after dumping the gear back at the base we hopped in our van and drove up the road, gave the guy at reception his easiest EVER upsell (Him: “you can upgrade to a private pool with a private heated dressing room and shower for 24 dollars” Us: “Okay!”) and plopped into a heated outdoor spa pool for 45 minutes. Nice.