The Adventures of Jim & Rhonda

Ok, I’ll catch you all up on the last week in a minute. But first I must tell you about our afternoon on Thursday which has to be one of our cooler experiences so far.
We’d driven from Dunedin on the coast north to a little town called Omaru which is famous for it’s Blue Penquin Colony’s night march. First off though we stopped by where the very rare, yellow-eyed penquins nest in the hopes of seeing one. We’d been told they were very shy and odds of seeing them weren’t great. Imagine how excited we were when we not only saw 5 of them BUT one of them walked right up to where we were all standing and basically posed for about 15minutes! Just amazing as he did his mating calls and fluttering about.
Then it was time to head over to the blue penquins, also called fairy penquins since they’re really small. They have quite an amazing little community where they each have little homes, they generally mate for life and every single day one of the spouses goes out to sea to feed while the other attends the nest. At around sundown each night the penquins who had gone out that day come back in, walk up a little hill and go home to their mates. What is so amazing, as if that isn’t amazing enough, is that the spouse at home waits outside the nest and calls to the returning penquins. It was just so cool to watch them all walk up the hill from the beach and greet their spouse, some of them even doing a little happy dance upon getting back with their significant other. Then, in the middle of this, the full moon started to rise up over the Pacific ocean and was the most incredible bright orange. We’d never seen the moon rise from the sea like that before and was just the capper on a great experience.

So, before that… I think I left off in Queenstown. What a great town, we could certainly live there. We stayed 2 nights and then headed to the beach to Dunedin. Dunedin is about a population of 120,000 – quite a few of whom are students at the Otago University. It was unseasonably cold when we arrived….REALLY cold actually and with the windchill was around a high during the day of 42-43f. We bundled up and spent much of the first day wandering about town and then had tours of both the Cadbury candy factory (free chocolate! Oh yea), and the Speights brewery (and free beer! yea) Cadbury was fun, the smell of chocolate was almost too much though, I’ve got to say. I know, you never thought you’d hear me say it but I’m not sure I could work with that smell all day!
Speights was fun, interesting to see how they did their brewing and it’s pretty good beer. They don’t export at all so we hadn’t heard of them before but have certainly been drinking it for a few weeks now. After the tour a rather amazing thing happened… the tour guide said, “the taps are yours, you can taste all 6 or 6 tastes of one or whatever you want – and I dont’ really count how much you’re tasting”. Jim was in hog heaven! Free tastings all around.

The next day we headed out to the Otago Peninsula in an attempt to see the rare Royal North Albatross. They have a colony and they’re BIG birds… around 22 lbs with a 9ft wing span. Alas, no albatrosses were around but we did have an interesting tour of the old fort with some cool guns that dropped back into the ground…sorry, can’t think of what they’re called right now. After that we drove up to Omaru as I’d mentioned in the first part of the post.

After Omaru we headed back towards the mountains and up to Mt Cook National Park. We lucked out with a gorgeous, clear day and after having lunch in the village went for a hike for a couple of hours. This is a World Heritage area and you can see 22 of the 27 mountains in New Zealand that are over 2500m from the park. Much shorter overall than many places in the world but just seeing that really long mountain range all in a row is really amazing. We camped at the closest campsite to the mountain and actually used our camp chairs (it’s been too cold for most of the trip to really use them) to have a sundowner and watch the sun set over the mountain range.

Today, unfortunately, started out really windy and pretty darn cold. We were really lucky to have seen Mt Cook area yesterday when it was sunny and calm. We drove a short 1hr to Lake Tekapo where we’re spending tonight. It is one of the mountain lakes that is an amazing turqoise color due to some rock bottom glacier movements thousands of years before. I’ve never seen anything quite like it before. The color is caused by some sort of sediment from the rocks rubbing which causes clouding and reflects the light. I don’t get the whole scientific explanation but it’s really gorgeous.

Tomorrow we start heading back towards the coast to eventually end up on Tuesday in Christchurch and drop off Betsy, the campervan. Although it’s been fantastic I must say I’m looking forward to 3 nights in a hotel room:) 6 more days and we’re off to Australia and warmer weather.
Cheers – Jim & Rhonda

I realize that I haven’t done a good blog in some time so now prepare…. time to catch you up on the last week on the road with Jim & Rhonda!

Kaikoura was wonderful and gorgeous and we had such a fantastic walk..and good thing because we woke up the next day to rain and total overcast. If we hadn’t been there the day before we would have had no idea that there were even mountains on one side of town!
It was about a 3hr drive to Hanmer Springs along some very winding roads, as usual. Hanmer is another very scenic resort town. It’s set in a large valley but surrounded by mountains, some snowcapped. For everyone in the states it reminded me of the scenery around yellowstone. Our camp park was right next to mini-golf and a maze so we had a fun few hours playing around that area and after some housekeeping chores walked over to our reason for coming to Hanmer… the thermal springs. This is the only area of the south island with thermal springs and they have made a large complex with 9 pools of varying heat as well as 3 sulphur hot tubs, a restaurant, waterslide, etc. We spend 2 hours lounging in the different pools and it was fantastic, exactly what we needed!

Next morning we headed west across the alps to the town of Greymouth and then down the coast to a little town called Hokitika for the night. Along the way we stopped at Shantytown since Jim had never been to one of those restored gold mining towns before and bummed around a bit. It was ok. If nothing else a nice break from driving after a couple of hours. Hokitika was great. Right on the beach with lots of gallerys’, restaurants, etc. The camp park was right on the beach and it was a beautiful sunny day so we spent the afternoon playing on the beach, watching fur seals, and just enjoying the weather.

The next day yet another travel day…this time only 2 hrs down to Franz Josef to do one of the things we had really wanted to do in New Zealand – Heli-hiking on a glacier. Jim had never been in a helicopter and I’d never spent any time on a glacier so fun to be had for all! It’s outrageously expensive but absolutely fantastic…everyone should try to do it if they can. First they got the group outfitted in boots and then we headed out. After about a 10minute helicopter ride up to the glacier we were dropped off and given our talenz…what they call crampons, but more suited to just walking about. We spent 2 hours hiking with our guide, Cliff, around the ice formations, taking photos, etc. and then Cliff and a couple of crazy members of the group stripped off some of the layers of clothes , keeping their boots and talenz on, and jumped into a glacier lake! We would have done it except for the thought of wearing soaking clothes for the rest of the hike so we passed it up. Maybe next time? We spent 2 nights in Franz Josef, a cute, very small mountain town and then headed further south again.

We chose a longer driving day next to get all the way to Wanaka from Franz Josef. Again, crossing over the alps but this time heading east. More beautiful scenery as we passed waterfalls, deep gorges, and roaring rivers. Wanaka looks like a beautiful town, set right on the lake and surrounded by snow capped mountains (are you sensing a constant here on the south island ????) but we couldn’t see too much of it due to the rainy conditions. We decided to spend just 1 night since we didn’t feel like doing any of the day hikes in the rain. The park was walking distance to the little town, once again, so we bummed about town, got some dinner and went to the Cinema Paradiso – a renovated town hall made into movie theater where all the seating is old sofas, recliners, even an old bug convertible. They serve beer and pizza with homemade ice cream and cookies at intermission. We saw Blades of Glory, a very funny, super-silly movie and had a great time.

The next day, Sunday, first headed off to Puzzle World right outside of Wanaka… it was great, illusionist rooms, a huge maze, etc. Lots of fun. Next stop was the NZ military air museum with some interesting restored WWII planes, etc. Then a short 2 hr drive to Queenstown. Right outside of town we stopped for a great cheese platter and some wine for lunch at Giddston winery and then into camp.The Top 10 Creeksyde (yes, that is how they spell it) is a great location, walking distance to town and the gondola, nice facilites, etc. But, it was packed!!! We were quite lucky to get a spot and I can see why reservations are required for high season!
We spent yesterday afternoon wandering around town and checking everything out and then just ate dinner in the camper and had an evening in.

Today, Monday the 24th, we went out for breakfast and then headed up the gondola. We were hoping the weather would clear…it’s overcast and around 58degrees, but no luck. We had a pretty great view from the top, however, and then did a couple of luge rides…Great fun!!! Now we’re back down in town doing this computer catch up and tonight we’re out for dinner and a movie here in town. There is a very cool looking restaurant called The Cow that is a renovated 140yr old milking parlor we’re having dinner at. I think we’ll do one more night here in Queenstown and then we’ll continue our on-going discussion about whether we really want to spend 2 days and a bunch of money to go to Milford Sound for all of about 2 hrs or if we just bag it and head up into the lake district working our way towards Christchurch…we’ll let ya know what we decide!

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