On-the-Road Tales

Stopped off at Nelson Lakes to do a walk. Lovely place. Mountainous and rugged. We moved onto Buller Gorge which is split into an upper and lower gorge. The terrain is a bit rough and the roads are basic. Most of the bridges are single lane since there is not alot of traffic in this unpopulated stretch. The gorge narrows in some places and the driver showed us how high it floods during particularly bad storms, completely submerging roads. The people are really at the mercy of weather in this part of the world. We stopped off at Buller Adventure and I signed up to go jetboating. Again – a crazy invention only a kiwi would think of. A farmer wanted to get up to check out his cattle in an area of a shallow river. So he designed a boat sans props that worked off a pump thrust system – these were up out of the water so it could run on as little as 3 cm of depth. The concept took hold and soon it was being produced in NZ. Tourism people recognized the potential to spin tourists around with the directional thrust and thus I was forking over money to go skim over the water.

We loaded into the boat on a farm and Doc, the skipper, got into the tractor and pulled us the 15 minutes down to the river bank. We cruised 22 km up the river while Doc pointed out fish and relayed various historical facts. Then we raced back down doing 360 degree skids and turns, narrowly avoiding rock walls, and submerging under waterfalls – successfully drenching most of us.

We continued on that day and pulled into Bazils in Westport for the evening.

We boarded the ferry that would take us three hours across the Queen Charlotte Sound to the south island. It was full was full of little ports nestled in and out of groves of trees and mountains. We disembarked in Picton and went through to Nelson, Fern Lodge. An English girl and I hiked up to the “Centre of New Zealand”. Someone, somewhere decided this is the center of the islands so we needed to visit it and take an obligatory photo.

Since it was the Saturday before Easter ,I set out to find an Easter Vigil Mass. I asked around for the Catholic Church and was directed, more than once, to what turned out to be Anglican Cathedral. Not the same thing. I had not really thought about it before but I am guessing NZers are not so into religion.

This town is the gateway for Abel Tasman National Park. Supposed to be a great walking and kayaking park but I did not have time to explore this trip.

Lovely little city. Checked out the Parliament building in the shape of a beehive. In recent years, the Prime Minister, several key government members (Supreme court justice, atty general, governor general) and the most elder Maori representative were all...women ... [Continue reading this entry]

River Valley is renowned for its Grade 5 river rafting. White water rafting has always been on my 'list of things to do before I die' but I was never quite able to cross it off for one reason ... [Continue reading this entry]

Since the walk was cancelled, I did not wait for my bus and went away in the morning. There are busses every day so you are constantly switching drivers and people - not necessarily a bad thing. We did ... [Continue reading this entry]

Got picked up by the shuttle and went to the Blackwater Rafting Company. Sounds like whitewater rafting except there are no rapids and no boats. This activity involved going underground and sidling through caves by crawling, jumping and ... [Continue reading this entry]

On through to Waitomo. Decided to take advantage of the sunny afternoon and go for a hike. I ran into a friend form the bus a NYer standing steadfastily on the path. I knew he had set out quite ... [Continue reading this entry]

Motored along the coast and got to see some islands that through geological testing they have recently figured out were blasted from a volcano hundreds of miles south in the middle of the country. Apparently when Taupo erupted, in ... [Continue reading this entry]

I had only a vague idea of what I had gotten myself into when the big green Kiwi bus swung by to pick me up. NZ is made up of two islands with a good distance to cover on ... [Continue reading this entry]

I left Tahiti just after midnight on a Thursday and arrived in Auckland, NZ on Friday morning. I would have gone on thinking it was Thursday had I not overheard someone discussing the oddness of losing a day. ... [Continue reading this entry]