Marlbourough and the Hot Springs

The drive down from Nelson through Marlbourough is a long line of wine country. We spent the first bit in Blenheim. The city itself is nothing much to look at but the surrounding area is full of great wine, an area most known for its Sav. Blanc. Either way they all had huge ranges all open for tasting for frizzle! Grove Mill and Highfield estates both had art galleries in their tasting areas and were part of water conservation projects; grove mill through their protected marshlands on property and Highfield with their special lable fundraiser. We spent luch walking through the area at grove mill looking for the frogs their logo was designed after but had no luck. My favorite of the day, and the only good reds along with great guwutztraminer and Riesling, not to mention another great gallery space and beautiful views. We also got much better at the whole tasting thing sharing glasses and pouring out the stuff we knew right away wasn't worth buying. Turns out you can taste a lot more that way, go figure.
From their we went to Kaikoura for whale watching and kayaking but the weather turned south so we tried our luck west into the mountains up in Hanmer Springs, said to be some of the best springs in NZ or at least most fancy. It was nice after a couple days of hiking and awkward sleeping arrangements.
of course the next day, when we were planning on some great hikes in the area the weather got nasty again so naturally we headed to Waipara for more wine. His was supposed to be some of the best wine in the country, and they were nice, but our love of red kept us thinking Wairarapa was better. Still they had some great whites and huge selections, the largest being Mud House where they had at least 4 different tastings for each category from sav. blanc to Merlot, ridiculous.
At the end of all the tasting, en route to Christchurch we found a reserve near a river to car camp at. We finally re-organized the car and found we had 13 bottle of wine we'd bought on these excusions and thats just what we hadn't drank since, so we decided it was time for a break from our expensive little habbit until we can at least drink some of it and create more storage...

Nelson and the Abel Tasman Coastal Track

Our first week on the south island and despite nasty forecasts we ended up with sunny yet delightfully cool weather.
We spent our first day driving from Picton to Nelson. Nelson is a lovely town but we decided we really wanted to be "out in the bush" so we took the long windy mountainous dirt road up to French Pass. French Pass is up in the sounds right up at the north peak of the south island. The views are amazing stretching far out across the ocean over forest, then grazing land and forest again until you turn the corner at the far end. All of a sudden the ocean in front of you is studded with islands and sailboats and at the very end of the road a tiny settlement and a Department of Conservation camp site on the beach in a small cove. We were greeted by the husband of the sites keeper and his surprisingly familiar accent. He was a cute old ex-pat from Sunnyvail CA who after 20 years in Australia moved to this small "town" in New Zealand where he could sail his boat and his wife had a simple job that provided them with all the basic necessaties. Our site neighbors were living at the DOC camping grounds in a trailer and caught and gutted their own fish every evening, just in time for us to watch while we set up our tent. About half way int o cooking dinner we realized the whole area was filled with all these brown flightless birds with quite a curiosity for our stuff. It turns out that they were weka and if your not careful they get into your car, your tent, your food, anything, and that they will steal anything tasty or shiny. Cute.
The next night we headed up to the Abel Tasman. We spent the night at a campground at the end of the road by the trailhead and took a water taxi up to the top of the track in the morning. We started the day by hiking to mutton cove. It was one of the most amazing beach areas i have ever seen and far enough away from civilazation that no one was there except 3 other hikers taking a lunch break. As beautiful as cathedral cove but without all the people. From there we hiked down to Waiharekeke where we spent the night. We didnt have much of a choice really because the next portion of the trail was under water, a quarter of a mile of beach you can only cross at low tide and you can never cross without getting wet.
The campsite on a beach but so full of sandflies we had to stay practically in the smoke of the fire to avoid getting eaten alive. We shared the site with two groups of three Israelis, two Germans and a girl from New Jersey. Everyone went to bed ealry except us and three of the Israeli boys who also had no where to be until low tide the next day.
We got to the crossing two hours early, which really turned out to be more like three hours early because im too short to cross before the tide is almost all the way out. lame. The sun came out though and we spent most of that time in the water with a fun woman on holiday from London. When we finally decided to cross we spent half the distance waist deep in water an inch or so from soaking our packs before finaly making it to the other side and all but collapsing on the beach. Lucky for us someone bought an unprotected little parcel of land srrounded by the park and its own beach and turned it into a self sufficient cafe, hotel with great coffee and fresh baked goods. A dissapointing run in with the modern world in what was supposed to be the wilderness, but in the end a welcome one if only for the coffee and beer. The next two days of the hike were up and down through the hills and across beautiful beaches and coves until we made it back to where we camped at the trailhead. It was unbelievably georgious and unforgettable, no wonder some 30,000 people do it every year.
After getting cleaned up we decided to go back to the other side of the sounds and drive up the Queen Charlotte road to the peak of Queen Charllote sound. Another amazing drive and like most it was the most beautiful at the end where we camped in a family owned sheep grazing field lined with the beach of their private cove. It rained all the next day so we decided to avoid the ocean - sadly missing out on the easy picking of mussels at low tide- and watched the family sheer their sheep instead. Cool. They fill this big old barn - same one from the early 1900's with tags from the sheerers as far back as 1921- with sheep, keeping the lambs seperate from the ewes. The sheeres each have a station with electice sheers and one of the sons of the owners would fetch them a lamb. The sheerer then puts it on its but with its arm pinned behind its head and begins sheering in a very specific pattern; belly hair first, butt last and everthing else in between. The belly hair is kept seperate because its too fine and can only be used for things like socks, and the but hair is done last so they can throw it out while the rest gets swept into a pile and shoved into a machine to be packing into bags that can then be shipped off to the wool broker. Ok well its more interesting than it sounds, and we got to join a family at work on their ranch.

Wellington and the Martinborough region

From Wanganui we made our way down south. We had organized a little couch surfing in Lower Hutt near Wellington but we had a couple days to kill in between and what better way than with beach camping and wine tasting?
We headed out to a reserve of a cape in the south, east of Wellington. The campsite was in a canyon next to a dry lake bed across the road from a beautiful black beach. The next morning we got up and prepared ourselves for a long day of drinking in New Zealands only red wine area and there fore our favorite!
We made it through three wineries before we had to take a break for lunch to avoid aaron buying ridiculous amounts of wine, and to avoid me well just falling over.
In the afternoon we headed down to Wellington and spent the first of several days downtown. Cuba street mall is their version of pearl street and its full of really artsy stores all very indy with local screen printing and stuff like that so of course we spent a while wondering down there before making our way to Lower Hutt to meet our second round of Couch surfing hosts. We stayed with two brothers, Li and Rumi and Li's girlfriend Michelle. The boys are both in forestry management and they also do a lot of wood work so their house had lots of cool in progress pieces around and their garden was beautiful.
Their backyard connected with a path through the woods that meets up with a small town across the bay from wellington. it was really steep but only took about an hour and we used it to get into town. While we were waiting for the ferry we even got to see a family of Orca's in the bay!
We spent mos of the second day wondering downtown upset at how everything was closed on sunday's and the streets were empty. It made a nice day for exploring the waterfront area though and going to Te Papa, their national museum.
The waterfront is a really awesome area with functional art all along the way serving as a diving board into the water, a crazy bridge and a kayak practice area of sorts where we got to see a sting ray. Te Papa is some six levels and we spent almost the entire day in there and it wasn't enough to see everything. We got stuck in this crazy interactive center where you could take movies and pictures of yourself or off the internet and post them on these big walls in the museum with these funny little wands. Aaron was giggling for like an hour.
Our last day in the city before boarding the ferry to the south island was spent on the trolley and in the botanical garden. We nerded out and spent a good bit of time in the cable car museum reading about the history of cable cars and their influence on public transport in wellington...
anyway.
The ferry over was uneventful but it delivered us into Picton around 11pm and we spent the night in the car in a park parkinglot...

New Plymouth and Taranaki

WE HAVE PICTURES! check the old posts to see some highlights.

New city and new batch of stories and adventures to relay. We are in Wanganui at the moment staying at some friend's house that we found on a whim. I guess with only 4.5 million people, you're bound to run in to someone that knows how to get a hold of someone you are looking for.
New Plymouth was nice. The second day of couch surfing took us on another early morning wake-up-walk, this time through Pukekura park. Neat park with a lake and big grass amphitheater on which we lazed away a late morning. The park had a great view of the real highlight of the trip to the region, Mt. Taranaki / Egmont.
We spent 2 days wondering how in the hell a 9000 foot cone came to pop itself straight out of the ocean (anyone who has the privilege of seeing our slide show will be able to tell as we have about 50 shots staring straight up at it). Once we wrapped our minds around it a bit, we were left to wonder at the rest of the mountain's impressive traits. Without really any time to realize it, as you ascend, you go from jungle to forest to alpine tundra in less than an hour, and in some spots you can hit all three as you wind around crossing from ridge to gully.
We camped at a picnic area the first night, however we made the mistake of pitching the tent almost directly under a tree that was dinner for a possum for a couple of hours, so I sat awake just waiting for him to get curious and drop onto the tent, which thankfully never happened. Strange little creatures they are. Their calls sound like a mix between a pig and someone trying to start a motorcycle.
The next day (after sleeping in) we hiked up as far as we could without crampons and ice axes on a nice 3 hour loop. Then drove down and around the base of the mountain and back up a different side and hiked over to Dawson falls. The falls were neat, but on the way we stumbled onto Wilkie's pools, which were a series of smaller falls with neat little pools and slides. We dipped our sore toes and cooled off, which was definately a nice change of pace considering what we have been doing.
Back in the car and on to Wanganui. We stayed last night at a little family run KOA-style campsite. Nothing special except the lady that ran the place might be the most helpful person in New Zealand. Lieschen went in to get a tent spot, but the lady was afraid it might rain so she gave us a cabin for the tent price. Then when she came to check on how we were doing I mentioned rowing and trying to find the boathouse (I figured I would try to find Bob and Jenny from there for those that know what I'm talking about). Turns out her daughter rows, not for Bob, but she called someone she knows who happened to be talking to Bob at the time, got his number, let me use her phone, and made sure I had gotten a hold of him. So here we are, out of the rain staying with Bob and Jenny. Luck is awesome.

Tongariro crossing and MOUNT DOOM

ahhh we had heard that there was a lot of Lord of the Rings stuff in NZ whatev. but on thanksgiving we got to see the mother of them all Ngurahoe or in laymans turms MT. DOOM.

after spending the night at a campsite in the middle of nowhere we headed into the tiny mountain town of National Park. We caught the 7:30am bus to the trailhead with like thirty other people and arrived just before eight. There were tons of people at the trailhead and we were soon informed that somewhere around 6000 people do the Tongariro crossing every day- and you could tell. My favorite group that was out there was a group of what looked like 10-12 year olds with their teachers and parents getting ready to do the 20km walk- i was just so impressed that they were out there ready to take it on and it made me think of camp. sigh.

The crossing takes you up through the saddle inbetween Tongariro and Ngurahoe and then back down the other side through sulfer lakes and eventually rainforest at the bottom. You could see Doom from the trailhead pritty clearly and we made it to the first hut in about 15 min walking straight towards the mountain, and we made it to the saddle in about an hour. There is no actual trail up Ngurahoe and once we got there we found out it is because its actually a giant black sand dune with snow on it. So the climb up was was really a crawl/scramble up a steep slope of sand- at least that meant we got to slide on the way down.

we had lunch at the first crater, exhausted by all the sand before heading the rest of the way over the saddle and across the ridge to the other side. when you cross you can the red side of Doom as well as the immensely red rocks of the red crater. Standing there you can really understand why they chose this location for Mordor. Its all a crazy rock landscape and the sulfer everywhere makes the ground warm in spots, and just the other side where the lakes are it turns the beaches and sand a mustard yellow color. Its really spectacular!

The decent was where it got tough because just when you think your almost there you have an hours walk through grasses and tundra and then another hour through rainforest. But you can hear running water almost the whole way and its a nice change from the cold alpine air in the saddle.

Afterwords we made it back in one piece, even though we had to wait on the bus forever for two jackasses that actually had just decided to hitch a ride back to town. We then drove from the park to New Plymouth which is a town of about 70,000 people on the west coast (in the knobby part of the North island) that recently won best town under 75,000 in the world! And so far its not bad. The coffee shops are nice, the beaches are crazy long and black with good surf and there are boardwalks and nature walks everwhere you go.

New Plymouth is also our first go at couch surfing. we are staying with a lovely woman named Jan who moved back here after 17 years in Dunedin and parts of Australia. She is full of energy and even got us to go on a beach walk with the dogs at 6:30am!

tomorrow we head for Mt. Egmont. YAY!

Taupo and the Waitomo Caves

We are stuck in Taupo at the moment. Our great car made it 1000km before tunring into a not so great car. Pressing the gas to hard blew the line out of the power steering pump. We then lost the belt and have been without PS for the past 24 hours, all fine and good really, except now it just won't start. Even after Aaron yelled at it and kicked it.

on a good note we did a short hike to the Huka falls today. they were really cool. The water was so pure it was this light blue colour with the white foam of too much water crashing and rushing through a small space. really beautiful.
At the beginning of the hike just as you go over this bridge you notice the water going under is steaming, it turns our that it is a free thermal pool area right where the hot water meets the river. There were tons of people there all day, but we decided not to go in.

We spent the afternoon kayaking lake Taupo. The last stretch of 400m or so got really windy and we got to play in the white caps fighting the waves and getting splashed! it was so much fun!
We paddled the coast some 3km to the Mauri rock carvings done on a small cliff. The carvings are extensive depictions of different local and national Mauri myth, and the main large face depics a cheif that is watching over the people on the water to keep them from drowning.
You can see Mt. DOOM from there as well as a good portion of the rest of Tongariro national park and several other smaller closer volcanoes. The lake was formed by a series of volcanic eruptions the most recent being 1800 years ago. the closest one looks like a pregnant woman on her back with her son floating behind her. In Mouri legend she is said to be the lady of the lake, a princess who escaped a masacre on one side of the lake by swimming the 4 miles or so across to the other side with her son tied to her back.
Our guide was brittish so naturally we had high tea and the end in a nice park/ launching site.

yesterday we spent the day in Waitomo where some of the most extensive caves in New Zealand have been made safe for tourists. the first cave we did was called glow worm cave and rightfully so. First after a short walk through stalagtites and mites you get to a cathedral with wonderful acoustics where many choirs and local artists have performed. Then as you get deeper and closer to the river everyone piles into a boat and you start to see little twinkling stars everywhere. There are so many in the main chamber that the first people to go through the caves there actually thought it was the night sky, but it was really thousands of glow worms. They glow darker as they get older and bigger and before the become insects. Another really cool thing was that they hang tons of silk strands from their nests like spider webs to help them catch insects. The strands are so pritty and they glisten in the little amount of light you do get in the cave. it was just awesome. The second cave had both glow worms and crazy formations. My favorite part about it was the curtain formations formed like stalagtites but flowing down such a line that they actually start to look like fabric coming of the walls. There were also tons of fossils and other crazy formations caused by the river that flows through. The second cave was called Ruakuri or two dogs in Mauri after the wild dogs that were found living in the cave entrance when it was first discovered in the 1800's by a lost Mauri hunter.

The next thing on the list is to do the Tongariro crossing as soon as we get the car situation settled. Send us your happy thoughts.

back to Auckland

We took our first trip out on our own over the last couple of days. Straight east of Auckland is the Coromandle Peninsula. There is a bunch of water in the way, so the drive takes a while. We left Sunday and drove to a couple of can't miss beaches. Hot Water beach is exactly what it sounds like. At low tide, you walk out on to the beach and dig a hole that fills up with water from a hot spring back in the rocks. You really have to experiment with different spots to get just the right tempreature otherwise you end up scalded or cold. Also went up to Cathedral Cove. About a half-hour walk from the parking lot takes you down a cliff to a beach where the water has carved out a huge tunnel between 2 beaches. It was really spectacular. White cliffs with royal blue water, and very few people.
We have also finished our first official tramp. 2 days up to the Pinnacles (neat little mountain in the middle of the Coromandle national park). And as it turns out, backpacking is really hard. At least the carrying all your shit part is. The last couple hours of day 2 was all down hill with a thirty pound pack and brand new boots. My dogs were barkin'.
We stayed at a campsite near the hut on trial. I had heard hut and thought of a modest little one room shack, with a few nice touches. The place was amazing. 80 beds, showers, a massive kitchen with sinks and gas stoves. great big decks with picnic tables and benches. It was kind of a bummer we had the place to ourselves. It would have been fun to see what the place is like when it is full on a busy summer weekend.
The next day we drove out to the tip of the penn. to (what looked like on the map, the little town of) Port Jackson. Turned out to be little more than a beautiful little campground. No town to speak of other than a couple of farm houses. Getting there was a bit dodgey. The dirt road was narrow, and wound around very steep hills/cliffs that ended in the ocean, so it was a slow go. The rewad was a spot on a 2 mile streatch of beach in a beautiful protected cove with steep hills all around us. We had a fire and cooked some crappy pre-packaged chicken soup (all we had with us unfortunately) then watched the waves until it got to dark.
Today we had lunch at a little cafe in the town of Coromandle (great mussle chowder) before getting stuck in traffic on the way back to Auckland. We are now waiting to get back into Cassy and Rich's house, killing the time trying to figure out where we are going to stay for the next few weeks.
We're doing Thanksgiving tomorrow with Cassy, Rich and a bunch of their friends. Lieschen will surely have plenty to say after that is through. We should probably have a batch of photos up soon as well.

oh joy a phone!

our new phone number is

021 0277 0113

and it gets free incoming calls so for all of you out there that have skype it's not free but it is still a fairly cheap way of imediate contact. oh hurrah!

most eventful weekend ever!

ok so cassy and rich took us out to indian friday night and it was the spiciest but bestest - yeah i said bestest- indian food! yum.
then i passed out and aaron and rich went out with rich's friend danny.
Satuday morning we got up and went to the backpacker car lot to find a car and low and behold we did! it is a 1992 honda accord station wagon! we think it will fit the larger party during christmas with a little squeeze and be perfect for our adventure!
we then went to the little farmers market and tried all the localy made olive oil and bread before going to get BURRITOS, yeah Kodi i said Burritos, for lunch beofre heading to the beach.
The beach was amazing! its called Piha and it is a vast black sand beach with cliffs and 2 caves, one that goes through to the other side with water crashing through it. we went around the side at low tide and there was a tidepool that was like its own little swimming pool heating up in the sun, much warmer than the ocean. We walked around on the sand burining our feet for a little bit trying to get a look at the more inland area and then explored the rocks looking at all the 11 legged star fish and clusters of tiny muscles. the beach stand had these crazy good fries too that were thick cut and dipped in vinegar, yum.
after the beach and the beautiful hour drive back we headed to Cassy's work friends house to meet up with some people for a roller derby game. Before we left we had a snack of french fries wrapped in buttered wonderbread and dipped in a sweet catchup just called tomato sauce.
the roller derby was really cool, the local league is called the pirate city rollers and we watched the semi final match between the Mascara Masacre and the Blackheart Bruisers. The Bruisers won by a large margin - their jammer was by far the most skilled player out there and their bashers much more agressive and agile on their skates.
today we are doing more trip planning and prep. while Rich and Cassy prepare for their trip home.

First day in New Zealand

we arrived at 5:30 this morning after losing a day and made it through customs unscathed.
we are still trying to work out the phone situation but it looks like either way it is expensive over here - sorry there probably wont be many calls home.
we will post our new number here as soon as we get one.
Cassy and Rich live right downtown and they really like it here. it is really comforting staying with people from home that have answers to the millions of questions we have been asking.