Hokitika Day 2

Wonders never cease, because the next morning the sun was shining.  It had started raining while we were at Shantytown and had rained on and off all evening.  The forecast was a solid weekend of rain but we had already booked our cottages so we decided to risk it.  We had been told by one of the guides at Shantytown that the area gets 3 metres of rain per year.  Soggy.

We got up and organized pretty quickly because we had to head for the main reason we came to Hokitika.  To go to the National Kiwi Centre.   We arrived shortly after it opened,  just in time to help feed the eels.  Yum.  Some of the eels here are 120 years old.

The kiwi enclosure is kept in the dark as they are nocturnal creatures and no photography is allowed.  Having said that, one of them was pretty active while we were there and we got to watch her foraging around for about 10 minutes before she went to hide.  Apparently we were pretty lucky to see this much of one of them.  So, courtesy to google and mac screen shots here is a picture of one. 

They are about the size of an average chicken and with no real wings and those little legs you can see why they are endangered.  Their biggest enemies right now are domestic cats and dogs.  Stoats are an issue as well.  All three of these predators are not native to New Zealand and have decimated the Kiwi population. 

After watching all the critters we headed into town and did a little shopping and getting some souvenirs for our friends back home.  

We then took a stroll on the beach,  Adrian and Natasha did a good job of getting wet (chilly) and we all did some rock collecting.  

Then off down the road, we ended up driving all the way back to Greymouth because there are no gas stations between it and Hokitika which meant we had to go (again) on the freakiest bridge I have ever been on.  

Did you figure it out?  The TRAIN tracks run down the middle of the bridge!!!  ACK.  They are in the middle of construction of a new bridge so the cars and trains get to share. Gave me the heebies. 

On our drive back over the pass we had a couple of stops.  One was to help a fellow who got his truck stuck in a riverbed.  Then another truck came along and he got stuck too.  Finally the big deck truck came and got everyone out...

Natasha and I had fun waiting in the van singing Corb Lund's song.  Now the blog has a soundtrack!

So after the good ole boys got hauled out we headed on our way and then had to stop to rescue a hedgehog from getting squished as he was trying to cross the road. 

 According to Adrian his name is Carl. 

The rest of the drive home was fairly uneventful except for Matt deciding to amuse the kids by honking at fields of sheep and making them run away.  That is the problem with sheep, they are very dim and if one starts to run they all do.  Oh well they got their exercise for the day.  All those grass calories and all. 

Hokitika, Greymouth and Arthur's Pass

For Mother's day we decided to drive to the west coast for the weekend.  Actually Mother's day had nothing to do with it.  But it sounds good.

We dragged the teenagers out of bed (much moaning and groaning) stocked up on ginger beer and biscuits and hit the road.  The younger two were up and raring to go.   Arthur's pass is the name of the little village and park in the middle of the pass and is locally used to refer to the entire road that passes through the Alps to the other side.

We left Ashburton and headed to Methvin (near Mt Hutt where the skifields are I'm sure there will be lots of discussion about that once they open on June 9th if we get some snow that is).  Then following directions from Matt's hunting buddy, Greg, we ventured off the beaten path onto some non-maintained roads (even google maps will not include them in the directions, though you can see them if you zoom in).  One of which was appropriately named ZigZag road because that was the course it followed up the mountainside.

So where the two little dots are together we got off the main drag and took the short cut via Lake Coleridge and Mount Olympus. We joined up with the purple route near the "g" of springfield.  I'm not sure if it saved us any time but the scenery was beautiful.

  Our detour:

After we joined onto the proper road (haha proper road I kill me) the temperature took a big drop from the mid 20's to about 4C.  Twas chilly.  One thing about New Zealand, they take potty stops seriously.  There are well marked public toilets all along the route often with accompanying hiking trails.

Further on the pass we met up with some Kea birds while looking at the gorge (ack) that we had to drive through/around.

Kea birds can be very aggressive and have been known to tear a car to bits.  However, these ones were pacified with ginger biscuits (even though we were not supposed to feed them but we had to get them off the van somehow).

Almost all the way through the pass we stopped in Jackson and had lunch.  After talking with the bar-man we changed our route slightly and headed a bit north to Greymouth and Shantytown.  Shantytown is a restored gold mining village / tourist trap.  It was a fun thing to do for the afternoon as the rain clouds were moving in.  We took a ride on the steam train and the driver let Luke and Jamie ride up front (not sure if they were allowed to drive??)

(I cannot get this picture to rotate, if you know how tell me please) 

After our train ride the kids panned for gold!  They each found some flakes (no nuggets, darn) and had a cool souvenir.

Just as we were finishing panning for gold the rain moved in and we headed out.  But Matt had a surprise stop planned at Garth Wilson Jade where he bought me a greenstone pendant.

Mine is like the centre one. It is two Koru (ferns) meant to represent the two of us together. Garth is a member of two Maori tribes from the west coast, the Ngati Mahaki and Ngati Waewae.  New Zealand greenstone or Pounamu is Nephrite Jade and is very hard and must be carved with diamond tools.  By New Zealand law all pounamu belongs to the Maori and only these two tribes are allowed to fossick for jade.  But if you find a jade rock on the beach that is ok, you can keep it.  You should never buy a jade pendant for yourself, it should be given to you by someone else. 

We finally got on our way to Hokitika (the original destination) and found our cottages. 

We stayed at Shining Star Cottages which were right on the beach.  We had two cottages in the same little building, one for the boys and one for the girls.  The kids loved it as the cottages had CABLE.  They had been feeling a bit deprived in the TV department and enjoyed a quiet evening in our own space with two televisions to chose from (though at one point different people were watching the same show at the same time, yeesh).  

After a bit of R&R we took a stroll to the Glow Worm Dell,  which is a little fenced off path just across the road from our cottages where you could see the glow worms.  This was way cool and everyone loved it but the photography did not live up to the moment. 

Glow worms are little creepy worms that create fluorescence to lure other insects to their hanging sticky threads so they can catch and eat them.  But they are pretty at night, when you can't see the rest of them. 

Day 2 coming up...

Auckland Weekend

While Natasha was here, she and I left town (and Matt and the kids) and flew to Auckland for the weekend.
I let her do the planning because there were several things she really wanted to do which could only be done on the North Island.

So, we booked a couple of cheap flights and headed out.  I had a Friday off so that worked out well we got a 6:50am flight out of Christchurch.  We got reprimanded by a check in agent at Jetstar because we showed up about 30 minutes before the flight left.  Isn't that perfect timing? We just had carry on bags and walked into the gate just as the flight started to board. Works for me.  (Actually that makes me anxious as hell, Natasha thought it was great.)  The flight was good and Natasha had a window seat and got some great views of the mountains as we flew north.

We then landed in sunny and warm Auckland and picked up our rental car.  A little Nissan Sunny.  Small, easy to park and no guts.  There was not much passing going on with this vehicle.  When one pushed the gas on a mountain road it got louder but not much else happened.

Our first stop was Sylvia Park  a large partially open air mall.  Getting there was a bit interesting.  I had done some google maps and printed them off but Auckland and Google Maps are not quite cognizant of each other.  More on this later.  Thankfully, my trusty crackberry has a satellite gps and maps function.  This proved to be very useful through our trip.

Once we made it to the mall the 1st priority was coffee and a snack.  Yes, I did have coffee already but more was required.  Then we shopped a bit had an early lunch (we were up at 4:30am)  and shopped some more.

For any of you who know Natasha...  if you go shopping with her take a good book.  You will need it while she is trying myriads of items on.  And comfortable shoes.  Perhaps a chair...
But I digress.  I did a little shopping myself *gasp* including a new wallet (no purse) and a Haka rugby shirt for Luke (which he is wearing now actually)  Sideline... the Haka is the traditional Maori dance that the All Blacks - New Zealand's rugby team - does before it plays every game.  Luke's shirt has all the motions and words on the back.  Just his style.

After the mall we headed to the Auckland Bridge.  To jump off.  Not me.  Just Natasha.  I watched.  That. Was. Enough.  Plus I did have to climb on the bloody bridge just to watch.  Ick.  For those of you who don't know me well,  I don't do heights.  I ski, going up on the lift or gondola scares the daylights out of me.  I climbed a climbing wall once on a cruise ship, I just about peed myself.  Climbing the underside of the Auckland bridge on those little metal stairs you can see through (to water 40m below) is NOT GOOD.

But, before we got there Google Maps failed us.  Completely.  Told us to exit on Franklin St.  Franklin St does not have and exit from the highway.  It does not even cross under the highway.  It dead ends about 20 m before the highway.   So we drove over the bridge (because at that point it is the only way you can go) consulted the crackberry (which uses Google maps too?? go figure) discovered where we went wrong and went back - over the bridge again.  At this point Natasha was getting a little too good of an idea of what she was getting into.   In Auckland (as everywhere in NZ)  there are lots of streets that have multiple names and are the same street.  Street signs reflect this but maps don't.  It gets really confusing at times.  After 15 minutes of driving in circles we found the place. Whew.

The jump she did was 40 metres and she did the greatest scream.

I hope the video clip works.   She actually has the professional video and pictures taken by the bungee company and they are great!

After the big jump we drove over the Auckland Bridge (again) in search of shopping malls, but the "great outlet mall" in the brochure was a big disappointment. Under renovations and not much there. Sigh...

We hit the road again and promptly got caught in rush hour traffic leaving the city.  No biggie by Ottawa standards, moving about 30-40k with a bit of stop and go.  But after living in a little town where we have a rush 15 minutes between 5:05 and 5:20 it was a bit of a shock.  (Sidebar:  it was funny how many local people in Ashburton warned me about driving in the big city of Auckland and how horrible the traffic is.  It was not that bad and unlike in Ottawa everyone drives the speed limit, just that left hand side of the road thing) .

We were on our way to Whangarei.  Now, as I said before Natasha planned most of this trip.  And in her defence it does not look that far on the map and we were on the the #1 (main) highway.  BUT... this is New Zealand and once you get out of town it turns into a twisty turny road that does have an official speed limit of 100km/h but 60km/h is more like your average.  Plus there are lots of signs well lit up stating that people die on a regular basis on this road (nice...)

So well after dark we rolled into Whangarei and found our hotel.  By this point we were pooped.  After a visit from the hotel cat and shooing him out of our room we quizzed the hotel lady about where to eat.  Getting back into the car (argh) we headed into town to Reva's for a most excellent seafood dinner.  I'm not sure if I mentioned this before but there is no tipping for meals etc in New Zealand.  If you do you get some pretty astonished looks.

1st night we were all tucked into bed by 9:45pm.  Good thing too because the next day was heading to Tutukaka for surfing lessons!

I peeled Natasha out of bed (teenagers) and we hit MacDonalds for a greasy breakfast and use of their free wifi.  Then it was off to the coast.

Tutukaka was about a 30 minute drive from our hotel and we met up with Mat at the Tutukaka Surf Experience which is his business he runs with his son.  We then drove to Sandy Beach to where the water was warmer than the air to learn how to surf.  There was only one other person in the lesson, Thomas who was from France and was very happy to learn Natasha was fluent in french so they did some chatting. 

Surf lessons are a blast!  We had 8-9 foot foam covered boards.  Apparently longer boards are easier to surf on and the foam covered ones protect you from nasty bruises when the waves whip them into you side on.  We spent the entire morning at the beach.  Natasha caught on very quickly and was a pro by the end.  I actually got up to standing once and rode a wave in and stopped after that because I was exhausted and did not want to hurt myself (been known to happen).

Mal caught a pix of me just as I had jumped off the board...  But I was standing up! I have witnesses.

Natasha the PRO!

Big boards eh?

After that we went for lunch and more shopping.  Actually I was the shopper this time and got a couple of new bathing suits and a dress.  I think the difference between Natasha and I is that she shops and I buy.  Go figure. 

We then underestimated driving times (again) and head north (it does seem strange that the farther north you go the warmer it gets) to the Glowworm Caves. 

There are caves and places all over New Zealand to see the glow-worms but the caves here are totally pitch black in the daytime so you can see the worms at any time of the day.  These pix are not mine, you are not allowed to take photos in the caves plus there is no way my camera is capable of this. 

We did our tour with 5 Japanese girls who were very disappointed they could not take photos once we were in the glow worm area. But they took pictures of everything else. 

The cave entrance. A little bit eerie. 

After the caves we stocked up on gas and junk food and hit the road back to Auckland which took us about 3-4 hours.  Thanks to the trusty crackberry we found our way to our hotel.  Which was good as the battery was just about toast.  Those satellite map linkups suck it dry.   I had booked this one via Travelbug which is a NZ website kind of like HotWire.  So we landed a 4 star hotel with a restaurant (no more driving tonight) for about $100.  Sweet as!  

I'm not sure which we appreciated more the super hot shower or dinner.  Might have been the wine too? I had wine, Natasha had a Mojito, the drinking age in NZ is 18 so all was legal. 

The next am was very dull as we just had to return the car and board out plane.  We were early this time and had breakfast and an excellent coffee at the airport before heading back to Christchurch.