Buenos Aires

We ended up staying 9 nights in Buenos Aires, another huge metropolis, but once again one that has millions of cool bars and restaurants, although like Santiago they tend to be quite spread out across a number of little ´villages´, a bit like maybe Rathmines or Ranelagh at home, kinda! We would have left a couple of days earlier, but we ran into a long weekend, and it might have proved difficult to get accommodation in our next port of call, Colonia in Uruguay, as apparently it's very popular with Argentinian tourists at the weekends. I didn't mind at all though really, as I really like Buenos Aires, or BsAs as it's often abbreviated.

But staying longer in Buenos Aires meant more time to see the huge number of sights around the city, and of course to sample more of the great restaurants and bars. Most of the cool bars could be straight from Paris or Spain I suppose, but the atmosphere everywhere is great, as socialising seems to be a big part of life here.

It also meant that we could meet up again with a local guy we met one night in an Irish bar, Sebastian (he was wearing a Rangers soccer jersey, so of course I had to set him straight!). The locals tend to head out on the town very late, so the Irish bar actually had the most life and buzz to it when we were strolling about early in the night, i.e. about 10pm. After meeting Sebastian, the night turned into a bit of a bender, getting back to our hotel (Hotel Espana) eventually at about 7am.

A couple of days later when we returned to the hotel there was a package waiting for us. At first I just thought it was fresh towels or bed sheets or something, but when I checked properly it turned out to be a freshly baked cake. Obviously we thought there was some mistake so Sarah checked with the guy on reception, but it was definitely for us, and after a bit of broken Spanish and sign language it turned out to be from Sebastian (although there was no note). It turned out that he had gone to a party the night before and had baked 2 cakes, 1 for the party and 1 for us - now how friendly is that!?


We arranged to meet up with Sebastian a few days later and he took us on a bit of a walking tour of the city, showing us a couple of cool places not even mentioned in either of our guidebooks. He also brought mate (pronounced mah-tay), which is the national drink of quite a few South American countries and you see people drinking it all over the place, especially in Uruguay, although weirdly you can´t order it in any of the cafes or bars. It´s basically a kind of bitter tea, but was really cool for us to try it with Sebastian, as it´s such an important part of South American culture, but you really need to hook up with a local to try it. I thought it was nice straight away, although Sarah didn´t take to it really (even with lots of sweetner added).


The next time we met Sebastian he brought us out of the centre on a local bus to his favorite local restaurant, a parrilla, which is one of the national styles of Argentine cooking - basically a big BBQ or wood fired grill with lots and lots of meat. It was great food of course and the atmosphere was great (although Sebastian thought it was kinda quite). He also snook off and paid the whole bill before we were even presented with it, which was rather cheeky, but was warmly appreciated of course.


We returned the favour a few days later in a nice restaurant in San Telmo (recommended by Enda´s Tracy in fact). We´d spent that Sunday morning visiting the San Telmo street market, which was more impressive, and bigger, than I was expecting, and then we hired bikes for a few hours. We met up with Sebastian again after a bit of a logistical mix up and toured around the parklands that buffer the city from the sea front, and then he took us on a bit of a cycle tour around the city (including popping into a cool art musuem for a quick look, although I got to introduce Sebastian to the Philippe Stark designed hotel, the Faena Hotel, that I'd read about somewhere. It is really impressive, although the bar is ridiculously expensive - A$33 for a small local beer that is normally A$5 (that's like paying over Euro 30 for a Guinness in Dublin)).

We finally said goodbye to Sebastian later that day. He´d been incredibly generous every time we met him, but saying goodbye he actually gave us his mate cup and the silver straw, a cool Reservoir Dogs postcard (Sebastian is a huge movie buff) and a mad photo of the huge tattoo across his whole back! Hopefully we´ll get the chance to return all his great hospitality if he ever gets to Ireland.

A city the size of Buenos Aires has lots of great restaurants of course, but Casa Cruz on Uriarte, in the posh Palermo district of the city, was probably the best meal I've had on the entire trip so far. The place had a brilliant atmosphere, and although it was very upper class it wasn't too snooty or anything (waiters were all wearing smart uniforms, but most of them were wearing sneakers and jeans under their formal aprons). We had cocktails at the bar before being seated, a starter to share, I ordered lobster (not a whole one, but still plenty), while Sarah had the rabbit and a bottle of lovely Argentine wine, all top-notch grub and all for about Euro80 - amazing!

Earlier that same day we'd checked out one of the fanciest hotels in the city (Palacio Duhau Park Hyatt), and it was extremely stuck-up - Sarah felt very annoyed when we left, as all the staff seemed to be looking her up and down (we did look quite out of place in our backpacker touristy clothes), but she was made to feel very uncomfortable indeed. It was weird actually, as I felt quite uncomfortable too, which was probably the first time that's ever happened - I think it's the first time I've encountered a place that is completely over the top in terms of it's snobby-ness, and I didn´t think the hotel was particularly amazing in any regard either.

So anyway, most of our time in Buenos Aires was spent strolling around the city (or getting the odd local bus or metro), and exploring the many museums, gallerys, churches, plazas, etc. We saw a couple of tango demonstrations on the streets of the more touristy places (like Caminito and San Telmo), and did a cool tour of the Boca Junior soccer stadium. The stadium was a bit rundown really, but it's such a famous club (mostly because of Maradona, whose image is all over the area, but also Gabriel Batistuta), and it was quite cool to get a tour of the pitch, press room, changing rooms, etc.

So when we finally left the city it was a quick taxi ride to the swish new ferry port and a short 3 hour boat trip across the Rio de la Plata to the lovely old town of Colonia in Uruguay.

Mendoza

The bus journey from Santiago to Mendoza needs, by necessity, to cross the mighty Andes - the worlds second highest mountain range. It was a stunning bus journey I have to say, and made all the more enjoyable by the bus being very modern and comfortable, and the roads were in great condition (a big contrast to the only big bus journey I did with Hanno on my last visit to South America - it was a pretty horrible 36-hour trip from Santiago to Bolivia on a clapped out banger of a bus).

The customs stop at the Chile-Argentine border was at a high pass in the mountains, and we got the chance to walk about for a bit in the snow and have a little snowball fight. The scenery all around us was magnificent (including fleeting views of the mightiest of the Andean mountains, Aconcagua), and I was really regretting not having the opportunity to go snowboarding, as the season wasn't due to begin for a couple of weeks yet.

So arriving in Mendoza city, we tried to ignore the usual touts and we just headed to the nearest hostel (although we were kind of 'assisted' by this 'auld guy with no English that we thought was just chancing his arm by looking for money for showing us the way, but who turned out to really work for the hostel, and didn't look for any money in the end!). Yet again it turned out to be the best deal in town (amongst all the places we subsequently checked out anyway), and so we ended up staying 4 nights.

Again, Mendoza is another town I really like, although not as much as Santiago. We stuffed our faces repeatedly at all-you-can-eat places that had brilliant food (they are quite common here), strolled about as usual (the modern art gallery was particularly impressive), we had a 1-hour tour of the large city gardens (in Spanish!), followed by a nice stroll around the artifical lake with numerous rowers rowing about, as they tend to do (apparently the lake irrigates the entire park, which was all man-made on desert soil, or something).

One of the days we took a day trip to the local vineyards, about a 1-hour local bus journey away. After walking to the first vineyard and having just one tasting, we hired bikes and cycled to the main town centre for some lunch on the pleasant square. Then we headed off to check out a few more vineyards, but only one was open, and again we only had one tasting (although the girl was great, and gave us a pretty informative private tour of the winery). Another day we got another local bus to the famous Argentine vineyard of Concha y Toro (Mr. Mullins' favorite apparently), and had a nice relaxed tour of their operation, followed by a tasting and then we just relaxed in their nicely done wine bar (as all the poor tour group people got herded back on their bus).

So having 'done' Mendoza and a couple of it's main wine regions it was time to hit the capital, Buenos Aires.

Santiago

So we arrived nice and early in Santiago, and after having to take a wee wander to find Sarah's rucksack (someone had removed it from the carousel), we ignored the usual taxi hustlers outside arrivals, I got out some local money from an ATM and we hopped on the local bus to the city. From there we hopped on the metro (which is brilliant in Santiago, although often very crowded), for a couple of stops and then checked in to our cosy hostel.

At first, as usual when you arrive in a new country, you have no idea what a good price is for things, so initially I thought our room was quite expensive, but the place was lovely, so we took it for the first night. It turned out to be a fantastically good price in fact, as every other place we checked out was significantly more expensive, and nowhere nearly as good a location. This was all very convenient, because we ended up staying there for the best part of two weeks.

Most of this time was to allow Sarah to complete a 6 day beginners course in Spanish, consisting of an intensive 20 hours. Again we were in low season, but of course that provides many advantages - in this case, very small class sizes for Sarah, often having the teacher all to herself - i.e. private lessons.

Each night we'd eat out and stroll around, and I really liked Santiago - it has a brilliantly lively feel to it, with loads of funky restaurants and bars, and everyone seems to eat out too, which was something missing in many places we'd visited. All the food we had was great, although we did both have a bit of tummy-trouble for one night after eating in one of the city's better restaurants (only the second time for the whole trip so far, the other time being Kenya).

When Sarah was in classes I'd stroll about the city, checking out the museums, galleries, parks and hills (including going up the cable car to San Cristobal Hill which I'd done with Hanno 8 years ago, and which has great views over the whole city and the snowcapped Andes mountains).

One of the afternoons, as I was having a wee rest and a read of the guidebook in the huge main cathedral, the place started to fill up, and then a big 'show' started (I had no idea what was going on, it all being in Spanish). Basically about 300 priests walked two abreast up along the length of the church and congregated on the ´stage´, followed shortly thereafter by a procession of the big-wigs, including what I assume was the bishop or arch-bishop, who was all very grand, solemn and very important-looking of course. Then what seemed a fairly typical catholic mass kicked off and I left shortly after, not understanding a word of what was going on. But I was strongly struck by the pomp and ceremony, the solemn self-importance of it all, and especially the fact that not a single women was involved in the entire procession - something just felt very wrong and sexist to me about that single fact. The choir singing before and during all this was truly mesmerising though, so it wasn't all bad!

When Sarah's course was finished we had a day trip to the coastal town of Valparaiso. It's a funny town really, as the Lonely Planet rightly points out. Downtown is grim and grimmy, and not a little threatening, especially at night. But up in the neighbouring hills (where we stayed for one night), was a really charming district with brilliant little higgledy-piggedly streets and lots of individualistic cafes, bars and restaurants - and of course great views of the town below and the sea.

But we only decided to stay the one night, as the town is quite small, and you can walk around it quite quickly. So the next day we got the local bus to the next town up the coast, Vina del Mar. This is Valparaiso's much cleaner and greener neightbour, but of course it lacks the distinctive character of the the former's hill districts.

We spent the morning and early afternoon strolling around pretty Vina del Mar, checking out some of the lovely gardens, the impressively modern casino and hotel, a restored colonial house (in a very opulent French style, but disgustingly gaudy and ostentatous I thought - how did people actually feel 'superior' living in these places back in the day?).

When we got back to Valparaiso we headed back up to the main hill district for a fancy lunch at a highly recommended restaurant run by a 'mad' French guy. The city is littered with loads of cool old lifts and funiculars to help people get up the many hills, and so of course we took the funicular. The restaurant was packed, and we had to wait a few minutes in the short queue outside, but we were soon seated. It actually turned out to be another disappointment really, but apparently the chef is notorious for experimentation, and maybe we just happened to arrived for one of his not-so-successful experiments.

Strolling back to the bus station to get our bus back to Santiago we passed a place the guidebook highly recommended, and after peeking my head in the door, I was mighty disappointed we hadn't had lunch there instead of the French place - it too was packed, but seemed to have a fantastic atmosphere and a completely mental interior decorator - loads of glass shelves packed with trival and tacky bits and bobs.

I also took a wee detour to check out one of the more usual escalators in the town, the Polonia. You pay your few cents and walk through a long horizontal tunnel to a lift, which then ascends straight up (I think all the other escalators move up steep slopes), straight up through the solid rock of the hill, and then up through a square tower. You get out at the top of the tower to great views, and walk along a gangway to the hill district itself. It seemed a rather run-down area (well, very run-down in fact), and so we didn't linger long before walking straight back down the hill to where we'd started, and then straight to the bus station to head back to Santiago.

Next morning we got to bus to Argentina - first stop, the wine region of Mendoza.

Auckland

So we only had a couple of days in Auckland before our three month holiday visas ran out. After a rather exhausive trail of the hostels looking for somewhere that would allow us to stay in our van, we eventually found a place, but on a wickedly sloping road. After a fair bit of deliberation we decided to give it a go, and in fact it turned out grand. We were in a nice part of the city too.

Didn't do too much over our two days - strolled about one day, popping into the impressive National Musuem, and watched the cultural show. I saw the same show the last time I was in Auckland, but as I remember it was free then, and much more impressive. Maybe it was because it was low season, and there were very few people for the show, but for the big finale, the Haka, they only had three lads, and so had to flesh out the performance with the three ladies. Needless to say, this wasn't anything like as impressive as the last time I saw it, as then they had a full complement of big, scary, imposing looking warrior dudes. Ah well, the rest of the museum was good.

We checked out the landmark Auckland tower of course, the SkyTower. Didn't bother paying to go up it though, as we'd had great city views the day before from the top of Mount Eden (which has a pretty cool, albeit small, extinct volcanic crater). Didn't bother with the sky jump thing either, as it looked a bit tame really. I thought the SkyWalk thing looked pretty cool though - trust the New Zealanders to come up with that one (given that there have been similar observation towers all over Europe for many decades).

I was looking forward to some pretty fine dining in Auckland, and we'd taken note of two places that were highly recommended by the in-flight magazine on our way to New Zealand. One of them, Satya, an Indian restaurant, turned out to be literally two doors down from the van rental company's office, so we went there for a big lunch after dropping our van back (the guy there was brilliant - he immediately gave me a refund for getting our first puncture repaired, said no problem about our lost picnic table, and various other bits and pieces - it was great to get to experience a genuine ´no quibbles´customer service). But the restaurant was quite disappointing really, and we were the only customers for lunch.

The second recommended place was a disappointment too - Live Fish on the harbour waterfront. It was an expensive place, although pretty cool in that they select a live fish from their tanks and they present it to you before preparing and cooking it. But the place was pretty grim really (although popularly patronised by local Chinese), as it's a working fish market during the day.

We got a bit of a scare on the morning we were due to fly out of Auckland though, as Sarah noticed that the van had another puncture (making one puncture at the start of the trip, and one at the very end). After a bit of a panic, I rang the rental company to see if they'd pick it up, but they couldn't do that, we'd have to sort it out ourselves. The big problem seemed to be the mad slope of the road that the van was parked on - but with a bit of help from the hostel owner guy (forcing some broken paving stones under the tyres to prevent a roll-back once I'd jacked up the van), I managed to change the wheel. The rental company were good too, in that they didn't require us to have the puncture repaired before dropping the van back, so that meant we weren't in a mad panicky rush to get the van back (they shut for the day at midday, it being low season now).

So after lunch we strolled back to the hostel and waited for our pre-booked taxi. It arrived on time, but then the driver refused to accept the booking voucher I had paid for and received from the New Zealand tourist office (iSite) the day before (he claimed his company didn't deal with the iSite booking system). After a bit of arguing I had to pay him again, otherwise he was going to just leave us there. At the airport I explained the situation at the iSite office there, and they accepted their mistake, and told me they'd refund my credit card (they didn't, but after 3 or 4 e-mails they finally did process my refund!).

Other than those minor annoyances, everything else went swimmingly, and the flight to Santiago in Chile was really smooth. We finally got individual TV screens in the seat in front (the first time on this trip), so after watching a few movies I conked out for a good bit. Originally we had four seats to just the two of us, and we could have probably slept quite well, but then a girl moved into the far seat and so I was all scrunched up. The independent American movie Juno, by the way, was brilliant, I'm looking forward to seeing it again.

So after a very pleasant flight we arrived in Santiago in the late morning.

Rotorua

So after a bit of a dodgey detour we get to Rotorua (I wanted to take a more scenic route rather than the direct route, but then realised we were quite low on fuel, but of course we just about made it!). First stop was a petrol station of course, and as soon as I open the door of the van I was struck by the strong smell of sulphur - the whole town is built in a terrifically active thermal area - a city centre park and even some of the town gutters have steam pouring from them, it's mad!

A quick trip to the local tourist office shattered my hopes of reliving one of the highlights of my last trip to New Zealand - the scree run down the inner rim of a volcanic crater. Apparently, due to damage caused by uncontrolled access, your only allowed do it now as part of an orgnaised tour group. Needless to say, I consider the thought of tour groups as rather repulsive, so I just give up on the idea (although I reckon if we'd had more time to spare we could have just made our own way out there and just done it regardless, like I did last time - but anyway, it's just a pity Sarah didn't get to experience it).

I cooked the last of the Thai curries for New Zealand that night and the next day we just did the guidebook's walking tour of the city. After the walk we visited the famous Polynesian Spa (where I'd been with Hanno, Keith and Bebhinn last time). The spa has been updated since my last visit, but I seem to remember the pools being hotter. Anyway, after a good 'auld soak we rushed up for dinner at the fancy Bistro 1284 restaurant, apparently the best in the city - and mighty impressive it was too.

We contemplated staying another night in Rotorua, but that would have left us very tight on time in Auckland, so reluctantly we left and heading up North to our final destination after 3 months in New Zealand, Auckland.

More time in Taupo

The next day was absolutely beautiful, with another completely clear blue sky. So I decided to do a recommended local hike up a far more reasonable mountain (only about an hour to the top). Sarah wasn't up for it (although I tried to explain the benefit of doing a short hike the day after such a huge one), so I had the whole hike pretty much to myself, including the summit with the usual fantastic panoramic views. Along the way up I passed an amazing profusion of Tui bird song, and had to take a short video just to capture the audio. There seemed to be millions of the beautiful birds all warbling away, and I got a great close up view of one of them belting away. After having a lovely leisurely lunch at the summit it was back to the town to visit the local museum, before heading to one of the local Irish bars for dinner and a well attended pub quiz - no prizes for us this time I'm afraid.

The following day beckoned with fantastic weather again, and so this time I really fancied renting bikes. Sarah was a bit reticent at first, but relented and we both had a great day riding around the whole area.

First stop was to have a quick look at the local bungy jumping setup, which was quite quiet but had a lovely setting. Then on to the very impressive Huka Falls just outside the town, after getting a little bit lost on the cycle track. We then continued along a pretty good bike trail alongside the river to a power station (with a fantastic lookout along a forest track (Sarah didn't bother with that short little detour though!)), and then we came back down the far side of the river, stopping off at the quirky prawn farm for a lovely big lunch of fresh prawns, obviously enough. Next stop was the nearby volcanic activity centre, which had some good short movies and displays about the regions many volcanoes, before heading back to the hostel just as darkness set in.

On our last morning in Taupo we popped into the local museum (which has an impressive Maori war canoe, which the attendent told Sarah was a 'waste of space', as it took up valuable art space!). Then it was on towards Rotorua, stopping off on the way at a very impressive thermal area. You need to get a short ferry across the river and then just stroll about at your own pace. Lots of lovely pools of bubbling mud, and steaming vents all over the place, mad mineral formations and a fabulously clear cave pool where you literally can't see where the water starts, it's so pure.

Tongariro Crossing

One of the highlights of the whole Taupo region is a big hike - reportedly the best one day hike in all of New Zealand - the Tongariro Crossing. It involves trekking through spectacular volcanic landscapes with sulphuric lakes, picture-perfect volcano cones, seriously sulphurically-stinky steam vents, lots of snow and ice, and really wild, untouched wilderness (the main volcanic peak here was used as Mount Doom in the Lord of the Rings movies, and it's active - i.e. still steaming away). The only thing that could have stopped me doing this hike was severe weather, so we went straight to the tourist place to check out the weather forecast and the various options for doing the hike. (Some good pictures here.)

Apparently most people book a tour, which means they bus a group of people to the start of the trek, guide (i.e. herd) them all the way along the trail, and then pick you up later in the day at the other end. Naturally enough I didn't like the idea of this at all, as it forces you to stay within a group, and the worst part is you have to follow a guide and wait for the slowest person in your group - which can be a nightmare of course. From experience I know a guide is never required on these hikes, especially on one of the most heavily trekked routes in New Zealand for goodness sake! The whole idea, to me, of a long, tough hike in the wilderness is the freedom to be able to do your own thing, stop where and when you want, explore off little side tracks, and basically to just make it up as you go along.

It would also cost NZ$100, which they tried to tell us was a great price, as the normal winter price is twice that. The Winter price is because you need a guide with Alpine experience and you'll probably need crampons for the snow and ice - but the weather looked good for the next couple of days, and there was no fresh snow on the hike, so the Summer price was being offered. But of course, that also implied, at least to my way of thinking, that you had no need for a guide at all, and that you also wouldn`t need any specialist equipment.

Anyway, I really didn't like the sound of this tour thing at all, and after a bit of a chat with the really friendly girl in the tourist office she informs me that we could just drive ourselves to the start of the hike, hike over half way along the track to see all the scenic highlights, and then head back the same way to our van and just drive ourselves home. This sounded just the ticket to me, and after a bit of debate with the Negator (who expressed a multitude of the usual fears and worries), we decided that we would just do our own thing.

One of Sarah's worries, which we'd heard from a couple of people, was that the car parks were not safe at all. But I simply heeded this warning by packing up all the stuff from the van into our ruckpacks (it seemed that I hadn't even seen my rucksack in over two months, as it had been buried under the bed in the van), and then storing the rucksacks in the safety of our hostel. The idea was to leave the van practically empty, with all the curtains open, and so make it clearly unworthwhile to break into.

So our plans set we got up early the following morning, 7am, made sandwiches and had a big breakfast and then headed off on the one-hour drive to the start of the Tongariro Crossing route. When we arrived and were about to start hiking we suddenly realised that we'd left all our food behind!

As we were leaving our hostel Sarah had left the bag of prepared food and snacks on the front seat of the van, but had then gone to the toilet. As I got into the van I looked at this bag and thought it was our general food bag (because I saw the breakfast stuff, sandwich making stuff like mustard and mayonnaise, etc., stuff we wouldn't need on the hike, and so I put it back into a cupboard in the hostel kitchen (since we were removing everything from the van so that it looked well and truly empty)).

So after much recrimination, swearing, and thinking we might have to abandon the hike for that day (and the weather looked perfect, which only made things worse), I started rooted about the van for any kind of food at all. Luckily I found some instant noodles buried away, and having our own cooker in the van meant I could easily and very quickly cook up the noodles. Feeling very much relieved, I packed up the lovingly cooked noodles and off we headed on the hike.

There isn't much point in describing the hike itself in detail, just check that website I pointed to already. But needless to say it really is stunning. The weather was intermittently cloudy, but we had lots of time, so by simply waiting at each location for a few minutes the clouds would inevitably clear and the full splendor of the scenery would be revealed. Interestingly though, at one stage as we were just sitting waiting for the clouds to clear, the group of people on the tour that Sarah had initially wanted to go with passed us by. As I had thought, they were an unwieldy big group being gentally herded by their guide, and so passed by the short stretch of trail quite quickly. Only one of their group waited behind with his camera though, and he was the only one of the whole group to see the spectacular view as the clouds cleared - everyone else on that tour missed that particular viewpoint completely, poor sods!

Having plenty of time, we also took the side trip up to the Tongariro Summit itself (I don`t think the tour groups take that option at all). This was a bit of an adventure in it's own right, as we took what seemed to be a shortcut path straight across the ice along a steep slope (we'd passed 3 English hikers coming back that way). But after Sarah had a scary wee slip (she wasn't in any real danger though, as we'd seen 2 of the 3 English guys deliberately slide down the same slope on their arses for a laugh!), the footsteps in the snow seemed to disappear. I think it was just getting a bit late in the day, and the previous footsteps were filling in with wind drifted snow, so we just turned back and took a different route to the summit. After a bit of a linger at the windy and chilly summit to soak up the vistas, we turned back and started the long hike back to the van.

It's an easy enough walk, mostly on the flat, but just very, very long (since we`d actually walked over halfway aong the entire trail and then turned back, we were actually hiking further than everyone else taking the guided tours). We were both pretty exhausted when we got back to the van, but it had been a truly fantastic days hiking. Driving back to Taupo I decided we well and truly deserved a stop-off at the local hot thermal springs.

This was possibly the most relaxing thing I've ever done, given the exersion of the day's hike - the naturally hot water was instantly rejuvenating, and I could feel my muscles being soothed immediately. But then a very friendly guy (not an employee, just another punter), came over and told us not to put our heads in the water (which I'd been doing constantly). He pointed out the rather indistinct warning signs posted around the place which did indeed warn of 'Amoebic meningitis', but they really were very subtle to say the least! Apparently the disease can only enter your system through the ears, so all you have to do to be safe is keep your head out of the water. He told us he'd complained himself the last time he'd been there that the warning signs were far too easy to miss, but they'd done nothing about it (and their website makes only a very passing reference to the issue). Anyway, heeding that warning (all natural hot springs have the same possible, but highly improbable, problem), I felt great afterwards, and getting back to the hostel I had a lovely dinner of the sandwiches we'd prepared that morning!

Arriving in Taupo

So as we arrived at the outskirts of Taupo we took a short detour to visit the skydive centre where myself and Hanno had spent 5 days when we were travelling 8 years ago. The place hadn't changed all that much, although it does seem to have expanded a fair bit. Taupo is now regarded as one of the skydiving capitals of the world, and it wasn't hard to see why. The airport has three skydiving operations (there were 2 when I was last here), and the main one has a plane going to 15,000 feet (the highest legal jump altitude in the world), and taking 8 tandem jumpers per flight. All that is pretty impressive, but when I was looking at the credentials of their jumpmasters (the guys you get strapped to when you do a tandem), they were all amazingly experienced - a couple were national champions and the most experienced guy had an incredible 15,000 jumps! Anyone in Ireland with over 1,000 jumps is regarded as a SkyGod. So feeling just a tad out of my league there, we drove on to the town proper and got settled at the nice Burke's backpackers.

We stayed 3 nights in total, just relaxing the first night watching 'Blades of Glory' (which I was surprisingly impressed by). The second day we did the mighty Tongariro Crossing, which will take an entire entry all of it's own...

Getting to Napier

So we kinda thought we might make it all the way to Napier on our first day out from Wellington, but in the end I was using the Internet for most of the morning, and so we only managed to leave Ray and Amanda's place by early afternoon. It meant we wouldn't really get too far before dark, and so we decided to just stop off at the town of Greytown, while we still had daylight to have a look around.

The town itself is very small, but lovely and 'arty'. We very quickly and easily sorted out where we'd stay that night (a very basic campsite with just one other camper van), and then went back to the town for a coffee and a read of the paper in a really cosy little cafe. Then it was a drink and some free pool in the famous Greytown Hotel before heading back to the town's other hotel, the White Swan for a lovely dinner (they had a '2 for 1' offer that night, so the place was packed giving it a nice buzzy atmosphere).

One of the reasons I choose to stop in Greytown was that it is very close to another New Zealand wine region, Martinborough. So the following morning (after nobody ever showing up to take any camping fees from us), we drove to the town of Martinborough and did a few walks through some local vineyards before doing a tasting and having a gorgeous lunch at the Alana Estate Winery.

Then we drove on towards Napier, but only made it as far as Waipara. We'd stopped off along the way at a wildlife rescue place that is helping to build up the numbers of native Kaka birds and that also had a Kiwi enclosure. Being nocturnal creatures, the enclosure was in darkness, but once your eyes adjust we got fantastic views of the two resident kiwi's as they foraged around. At one stage (Sarah had gotten bored and wandered off), one of kiwis came right up to the glass front of the enclosure and was poking around literally millimeters from my face - you literally couldn't ever get a better view of these shy creatures, it was great!

So our campsite in Waipara was actually a little scary. It was quite run down and seemed to be a bit like an American trailer park, where people live full time. There was a group of pretty rough looking Maori drinking and playing a dice game in the kitchen as I was cooking, but they were really friendly and tried (unsuccessfully) to explain the rules of their game to us as we ate dinner.

Next morning we explored around Havelock North and Hastings, just South of Napier. Another nice small town that has the look of lots of money, and a great lookout from the big hill that dominates the town. It was actually very cloudy as we drove up the hill, but of course, with a bit of patience it all cleared up lovely.

After the lookout we stopped off at a honey farm, which I thought was brilliant. Loads of information on bees (they really are mad yokes altogether), with transparent hives so you watch them working away, and of course lots of honey tasting. Naturally I bought a slab of honeycomb, which takes no processing at all, it's just straight from the hive, and therefore the cheapest and in my mind the tastiest (although at home, is honeycomb more expensive than blended honey? If so, then I now know that it`s a total rip off).

So we finally arrived in Napier after taking 3 days to get there (I think Ray told us it was a 4.5 hour drive!), and after getting settled in Wally's we strolled about the town for a bit. That evening we just cooked in the well equiped kitchen and watched a DVD in the large comfy common room.

The next day we hired bikes and rode up to the town's lookout point to view the small working port and the long stretch of beach front. Then on to the neighbouring area of Ahuriri, where we took refuge from a downpour in the waterfront hotel before heading back to Napier and getting caught in another downpour! But no matter, for after dropping back the bikes the plan had been to go straight to the neighbouring outdoor hot pools - which were brilliant. I think I stayed there for about 4 or 5 hours in all, just constantly alternating between the hot pools, the cold pools, the steam room and the sauna (Sarah had headed off early for a haircut).

One of the highlights of Napier though was a great Indonesian dinner. Apparently the restaurant has been there for 20 years or something and has a great reputation (although the owner guy is now trying to sell it, as he has a new family and wants out of the restaurant scene). It was the first Indonesian meal we've had on this trip and was a nice change - and I was well impressed with it's authenticity.

The next morning we popped into the local museum, which has a great display about Napier's famous earthquake in 1931 that practically destroyed the city (and the guy at the desk asked us if we'd felt the earthquake that had occured at 3am the night before - apparently it was quite a big one, and had woken him and lots of other people, but we never felt anything - probably due to the fantastic suspension of our van!).

So after the museum we were off to Taupo.

Wellington

So the ferry journey from Picton to Wellington was a very pleasant 3 hours indeed, and we arrived spot on time. Ray was waiting at the Wellington ferry terminal for us, and we picked him up and headed straight back to his and Amanda's house in the not-too-far-away-at-all suburbs. We had a great night catching up over another great home-cooked dinner thanks to Amanda, with myself and Ray burning the candle at both ends.

Ray and Amanda were off to Auckland for the weekend the following morning, so after Sarah dropped them to the airport (only 15 minutes away), we had the house to ourselves for the weekend. On the Saturday we packed up Ray and Amanda's bikes in the van, drove down to the coast (it's a vicious climb back up to Ray's house), and spent the glorious afternoon cycling along the lovely coastline and back around to the van via the North of the city.

When Ray and Amanda got back from Auckland on the Monday, Podge had arrived from Ireland for a week's work in the city. I was cooking that night, so I cheekily took it upon myself to invite Podge around to join us, and another late night was had.

Over the two weeks in Wellington that myself and Sarah invaded poor Ray and Amanda's tranquillity we all rotated turns in cooking (Podge taking his turn too, producing a great Mexican banquet). I think we only ate out in Wellington 3 times, and two of those times were when we went to comedy shows. We'd timed our arrival in the city well, as the Wellington Comedy Festival was in full flow. Amazingly we didn't need to book in advance for the shows we saw (imagine that at the Dublin theatre Festival, or the Kilkenny Comedy Festival), and apart from the odd wayward performance I was well impressed with everyone we saw - including two female Maori comedians, both of whom were the best female comedians I've ever seen.

On the days that I did check out the city itself, we had a tour of the parliament in the famous beehive building followed by lunch at the famous backbenchers pub across the road. I also checked out the impressive Te Papa museum twice, the second time meeting Podge in the atmospheric cafe.

But of course, it eventually came time to move on, as we`d spent two and a half months in New Zealand by this stage. We only had another two weeks left on our holiday visas and so we needed to get a move on to see a few of the highlights of the North island (it seems strange writing this that most people`s idea of a complete long holiday, ie. two weeks, could seem incredibily restrictive after you`ve been on the road for a good while). Anyway, our initial plan from Wellington was to make it up to Napier, but of course, true to form for this entire trip, it ended up taking us three days to get there...

Picton

On our way to Picton from Nelson we stopped off at the tiny town of Havelock, which has an apparently fairly famous restaurant, well cafe really, called the Mussel Pot. We booked a table for a bit later and then headed across the road to the nice Scottish pub, the Clansman, but the dinner wasn`t anything amazing at all really.

Due to the stopover though, it was dark when we wanted to continue on towards Picton, so we didn`t bother taking the scenic Queen Charlotte route. But over dinner we`d met another diner who told us about a great restaurant down by the marina in Havelock, so the next day we drove back via the fantastically scenic mountain route and had a brilliant seafood chowder at the Slip Inn.

On the way back to Picton after lunch along the same route we stopped off at the best viewpoint, positioned the van so that the side door when opened faced the wide open sea view, and I could just lie back on the bed, sip a chilled beer and soak up the panoramic vista in front of me (while Sarah sat in the front reading her book). It was simple moments like that that were certainly one of the overall highlights of the whole New Zealand trip for me - having the freedom of time, and having our own van that we could stock up with food and beers, and then whenever an amazing view came along we could just park up, sit back and soak it all up for as long as we liked. And of course, New Zealand provided plenty of opportunities to do just that.

Anyway, we had a few days in Picton before our ferry trip across to the North island, so we just chilled out at the Sequoia Lodge Backpackers (with more free chocolate pudding, free decrepit bikes, a lovely roaring fire and an outdoor hot tub that I only used once). And then before we knew it it was time to get the ferry across to Wellington and meet up with Ray and Amanda.

Nelson

So yes, Nelson is yet another lovely small town (in fact I don`t think there was a single New Zealand town I didn`t like in some way). After another wee bit of a search to find a place that would let us sleep in our van we found the Tasman Bay Backpackers, another wonderfully comfortable backpacker place, this time serving free freshly baked chocolate pudding every evening.

They also provided free bikes, and good ones too, so needless to say we used those to explore all around the town for a couple of days. The first day we checked out the impressively large local weekly market, had lunch out by the quite airport right by the sea, and then visited the pretty cool WOW museum. Sarah headed back to the backpackers while I went for a spin outside the town to the old Mac brewery (now closed), and then rode some great cycle tracks back to the town centre to explore all the back streets, and finding the jewellers given the job of creating the actual rings in the Lord of the Rings movie!

Another day we used the bikes to check out the local Sunday flea market (and getting free hotdogs at a car market promotion we just happened to be passing - little did the really friendly car salemen know of my feelings with regard to cars in general, but their sausages were lovely!), then the local micro brewery and musuem at Fosters place (which had a cool old aircraft you could crawl all over).

Had the best Indian dinner I`ve had in New Zealand at the newly opened Indian Cafe restaurant, which we just stumbled into, followed by a good night in the Mean Fiddler Irish bar (again it just happened to be an Irish bar that had the most life at that time of the evening, and we had a really cosy spot right next to the wood stove too).

So after the few days chilling out in Nelson it was time to bounce on to Picton, from where the Interislander ferry departs for the North island.

Abel Tasman and Farewell Spit

Motueka is yet another lovely little town, and it does live up to it's reputation as an arty town (without being pretentious, being more grungy I suppose). We got our first real rain during our stay here, but luckily we were staying at another great backpackers place, the Laughing Kiwi. They had a no-TV policy, something I thought was great, and gave the place a much more relaxed but lively feel to it, as opposed to everyone just sitting around staring at the idiot-box (at one stage some guys started watching a DVD on their laptop in the common room, and the owner came along and told them they'd have to watch it in their bedroom - cool).

The place had a little music system, but they had a fantastic collection of chilled out music, and with the cosy atmosphere of the communal kitchen, warm central heating and the chilly rainy night outside, it all made for a great setting.

But really, we were waiting for the weather to clear up a bit before heading up to the Abel Tasman national park to do a famous one day hike. So when the weather did clear we drove up to the park and booked a water taxi, which basically after a short tour of a couple of landmarks in the area (Split Apple Rock and a small seal colony), drops you off at a beach and you walk the track back to your starting point (the full track is another multi-day Great Walk).

Yet again, another fabulous hike in New Zealand, this time along beach strewn coastline, and of course most of it through the obligatory forest. It was a long day though, and it was great to eventually get back to the cosy van, and it didn't rain all day.

Because the hike took the whole day, we decided to spend the night in the tiny town of Takaka near the national park. The town tries to nuture a reputation for organic eating and we ate well in a cool vegetarian restaurant.

The owner of the backpacker place we stayed in was a nice Scottish lady, although she seemed a tad tipsy as we left for the evening, and was completely plastered by the time we got back from dinner and a drink in the local pub (that had live music that night). We settled up with her for our accommodation anyway, after politely refusing to join her and her husband and their mate for a few drinks. The next morning she completely forgot about the money we'd settled up the night before, thinking she still owed us change - all very strange.

That morning we drove up to the tip of the North island to visit the huge sand spit known as Farewell Spit. It was pretty cool exploring around here, as the wind was ferocious (and I love strong winds, even though I'm a cyclist), and it was a lovely clear sunny day. The sand on the extensive beach was getting blown all over the place as fastmoving wisps and it was cool getting sandblasted as you walked around (strangely the sand never seemed to lift any higher than ankle height, so it didn't blind you or anything). We spotted more seals lazing about the many rocks, and explored a couple of big caves, all very remote and wild.

We had lunch at a very stategically positioned restaurant that offered great views along the length of the spit, and had a mighty powerful telescope to view the unusual small forest and lighthouse at the very tip of the spit. So after lunch we drove back down along the coast to the major town of Nelson.

Greymouth

So for the next 2 nights we stayed at the Neptune in Greymouth, an old hotel turned now into a backpackers. It's a small enough town with not much going on really, it's most famous industry being the Monteiths brewery.

The first night we had dinner in a recommended restaurant, Frank's, that had a real Tibetan chef (as opposed to a fake one - later he came out of the kitchen wearing the full Tibetan monk robes, and had a shaven head and everything - cool!). So I had to try the momo's, which were lovely. There was a dance night organised for later that night, so we hung around. Unfortunately it was very poorly attended, so we were a bit embarrassed for all the dancers, but they put on a great show regardless. I think the dancers came from various different dance schools in the area as there were very different styles of dancing, so it was all pretty cool really.

The next night we booked the brewery tour, which had a good few people on it. It was the usual brewery tour I suppose, and the guide was good, even though he'd only started the week before (he was well into his fifties I reckon). He was a tad lax in terms of his controlled dispensing of the free beer at the end of the tour though, basically leaving us all to help ourselves, and he seemed to forget that there was supposed to be a time limit! He was a good 'auld codger though, as he started telling myself and Sarah his life story over his third or fourth pint (another one of those somewhat sad, or lonely, or something, characters I've encountered throughout New Zealand).

After the tour we were bused to a nearby pub for a cheap BBQ and more pints, but it was a quite enough night (a Sunday I think), and we got home early enough. The next day we bounced on to the hippie hangout of Motueka on the northern coast of the South Island.

Franz Josef Glacier

In Franz Josef we stayed at a cool backpackers place called Chateau Franz, so cool in fact that we ended up staying a few days just to relax (or maybe it was because of the free soup every night).

The town is much larger that Fox and so gets a lot more tourists, but at least it has a lot more life to it. Again we did all the local walks, which as usual were all brilliant, and again we walked up to the terminal face of the glacier itself. This time we basically followed the path of a guided group of tourists as they prepared to actually climb up the glacier with crampons and ice picks (we were having lunch as they started to pass by). Again I was struck by how horrible tour groups are, as the group was huge, maybe 30 people, and you could see the ones at the front of the group having to stop and wait for the ones at the back, and everything seemed to move agonisingly slowly - by the time we'd finished our lunch they had just started walking up the steps cut into the ice of the glacier.

Again it was an awe inspiring experience to touch the face of a glacier, and I kind of felt sorry for the masses of people who never ventured past the 'Extreme Danger' signs (the physical condition of some of the people on the guided walk up the glacier itself, who had to pass these same signs, made it patently obvious that once you had an ounce of common sense you were perfectly safe
- they simply wouldn't run those trips otherwise).

Both Fox and Franz Josef glaciers have various options for guided trips on the ice itself (for which you need equipment, and someone experienced with you - even I can appreciate the sense in that!). The options are half-day tours, full-day tours and heli-hikes, where you get flown high up the glacier in a helicopter, explore around a bit and then flown back down. I certainly didn't fancy the walking tours after what I'd seen when we'd been to the face of the glacier, so I decided on the heli-hike. This, naturally, was by far the most expensive option, but I reckoned it might be a once-in-a-lifetime experience (which it was I suppose, but in the end I thought it was overpriced compared to the other options - NZ$360 each).

I reckon the flight up along the glacier, flying over these huge pinnacles of towering ice and then landing a little lower down on a relatively flat section of ice was indeed an amazing flight, but it was a very disappointingly short flight, only 10 minutes or so from takeoff to landing (and I spent most of it trying to take photos and video footage when I should have been savoring the view properly).

Once on the ice we had a short wait for the next chopper load of people, and then we all put on crampons. I'm not really sure why, but walking on ice with crampons has been on my ambitions-wish-list for ages, so it was great to get another one ticked off. They really are amazingly simple, but amazingly effective inventions (thanks to the French apparently). One minute your slipping and sliding around in your boots, then with crampons on your as steady as a rock, and I was surprised that they take no getting used to at all, and they don't feel clunky or anything. So off we trekked with our excellent America guide, basically just exploring around the place really. We had an hour or so following our guide and following in the steps he'd chop out of the ice with his huge ice pick, and he found a small ice cave and a pretty big crevesse. In places the ice is a famously beautiful blue (explained here), and so made for some good photos.

So at that stage we'd pretty much done all we could do on the glaciers, and after a couple of more days just chilling out in the town and the backpackers watching movies we moved on to the next town, Greymouth.

Fox Glacier

We arrived at the town for Fox Glacier quite late in the afternoon after a long drive from Wanaka, but found cheap accommodation easily enough at the local campsite. The next day we basically did all the short hikes in the area, including getting right up close and personal with the glacier itself. Both Fox and Franz Josef glaciers are famous because they are so accessible, especially Fox - the walk to the terminal face from the car park is only 15 minutes or so.

Many of the walks and hikes offer fantastic views of the glacier, and pass through lovely lush forest, but of course the highlight was standing right beneath the face of the very monster itself.

Again my favorite aspect of New Zealand culture came into play here, as although they do have a sign saying 'Extreme Danger' and a bit of string to fence off the glacier itself (about 200m metres from the face), it's quite clear that you can approach the glacier if you want to. I decided to wait for a bit first at the 'fence' though, and we ate our sandwiches sitting on a rock. Whilst there I saw a few people pop under the string fence and walk right up to the glacier (and I did notice one of them, a girl, touching the glacier and posing for photos while standing directly under a large overhang of ice, which I thought was a bit stupid of her). So after my sandwich I decided to make my own way to the glacier, while Sarah waited nervously at the 'Extreme Danger' sign.

Obviously I was very careful as I approached the glacier, and I made sure to ford the small glacial stream quickly (as there's always a danger of a strong surge apparently), and I never stood anywhere where an ice fall could affect me, and of course I didn't make any attempt to acually the climb the thing (apparently some epsilons do, and so it's not hard to understand how 'accidents' happen). But it was such a truly humbling experience to stand at the very foot of a 20m (or however high it is), high wall of craggy, jagged rock and ice. Part of the uniqueness of the experience for me was that I couldn't help but think of the glacier as a huge living thing, as apparently it's advancing at the rate of a meter a week (that's fast apparently), and so it's constantly shifting, morphing and creeking, with the constant sound of melt water dripping everywhere. I suppose I could sum it up by saying it was a very elemental experience, and was definitely one of the big highlights of the whole trip so far.

When I got back to Sarah I was raving a bit, telling her what an awe inspiring experience it was, and that if she wanted to I'd take her over to the terminal face of the glacier - genuinely though, I was very careful not to coerce her, as I knew she was nervous. She agreed to give it a go, and so I basically just retraced my steps, and we took a few photos of course. When we got back to the 'fence' she was delighted with herself, and actually apologised for being so nervous in the first place - but it really was nice to have shared such a powerful experience.

That night we went for a drink with a really nice German girl we met at our campsite, Annya (after playing toy soldiers (with my VB 'tank'), in the campsite kitchen with a couple cool kids on holiday wih their parents from Picton - the eldest kid had the weirdest way of prononucing 'Pict-ton' that I still can't get it out of head). Anyway, Annya was actually carrying out research into one of the world's only mountain parrots, the Kea, the same critters that tried to eat our deck chairs at Mount Cook.

The town that services tourists for Fox is tiny, so after 2 nights we drove up to the neighbouring glacier Franz Josef.

Arrowtown and Wanaka

The town of Arrowtown is just a short drive outside Queenstown on the way to Wanaka, and we stopped off there for the morning and early afternoon.

It's a lovely wee town alright, but as the guidebook rightly points out, it's all rather posh with fancy craft shops and expensive cafes and restaurants, and all very neat and tidy. It did have a cool quirky cinema though that looked very impressive with it's huge luscious drapes and chandeliers, and they seemed to play a lot of arthouse movies (well they do describe themselves as a 'boutique cinema'), but of course we didn't have time to see anything there.

After strolling around the very small town centre we explored the old Chinese Settlement, an old mining area that I thought was very well presented and quite poignant.

After that we did a hike past another 'Lord of the Rings' film location (where the Nazgul dark riders are washed away by the raging river), which continued along the lovely river trail up into the hills and past a famous miner's hut (now just a ruin). It turned into quite a long walk actually, but passed through some really gorgeous scenery, and yet again we had the entire hike all to ourselves.

When we got back to Arrowtown we had a nice lunch in one of the little cafes and a drink before heading off again towards Wanaka.

We arrived at Wanaka in the late afternoon and settled into the camp site on the outskirts of the town. Wanaka markets itself as another one of New Zealands adrenalin centres, but in the off season it too was rather quite (although we'd missed their famous 'Warbirds over Wanaka' international air show by just a couple of weeks). But of course it's got another famously scenic location, and the highlight of our stay there was climbing the impressive Mount Roy.

It was a full days hike, and although the gradient to the summit was quite shallow, the climbing was just relentless. Eventually we made it to the top, after numerous stops to rest and to just take in the ever improving views as we got higher and higher. We had a well deserved packed lunch at the top, from where the views were literally panoramic and fantastic in all directions, although a local guy at the summit told us we couldn't quite make out Mount Aspiring due to distant cloud cover, but we could make out the lower reaches of it's glaciers.

That night we had a quick and tasty dinner in a tiny little Indian place and then relaxed in Wanaka's quirky Cinema Paradiso and saw 'American Gangster' sitting on comfy sofas (the Morris Minor was already taken!), and had a drink at the interval (we could have ordered dinner).

Another day we did some more serious hiking to view the Rob Roy Glacier in Aspiring National Park. This time the going was much easier, as there wasn't much climbing involved. Again, all the usual superlatives apply to the views and the scenery, and we had no problem finding a secluded spot for our lunch at the main viewing area, and so sat staring at the huge hanging glacier eating our sambos, hoping in vain to see an ice avalanche.

One funny little incident (which I sure Mr. Mullins will find somewhat familiar), was as I was standing right in front of an information panel reading about the glacier, this Israeli tourist guy just walks right up in front of me to photograph the same panel, and thereby completely blocks my view. He made no gesture of apology, no 'excuse me', nothing, and it wasn't as if he could have thought I was looking at anything else either. I was pretty disgusted, but not quite amazed, as I've travelled enough to have encountered a fair bit of this kind of behaviour. I know stereotyping can be a very dangerous thing to do, but I'm finding it harder and harder not to do it with Israeli's I've encountered while travelling, which of course is a great pity. Anyway, I let the guy know that I thought he was being very rude, and he got the point.

On the way back to Wanaka we stopped off to have a look at the Diamond Lake, and then as the daylight was fading I decided to risk a quick jaunt up the adjacent Rocky Hill. It turned out to be a much easier climb than I thought, so we had loads of time to get back to the van before dark. At the top of the aptly named Rocky Hill we finally got great views of Mount Aspiring, which really is an impressive looking peak.

So after Wanaka it was time to head to the first of New Zealands most famous glaciers, Fox Glacier.

Queenstown

So for our drive to Queenstown we again had beautiful weather, and our stop this time was to see the steam train the Kingston Flyer. We arrived at one of the train´s termini to be told that it wasn't due for another hour or so, so we just had lunch and continued on. But it turned out that later we passed the other termini just as the train was about to set off. So we just hung around for a bit and soon enough it was time for the train to literally build up steam and head off on it's journey. This was the first time I've ever seen a real steam train actually working, and it was a lovely sight, touched off, of course, with a few very noisy departing toots.

The road into Queenstown itself was another stunner - travelling up alongside the lake with the Remarkable Mountain Range on the other side. The town is famous for it's scenic location of course, but I have to say it really is completely justified.

The town also has a reputation as a major party town, but it was actually very quite while we were there, it being low season now I suppose. It's still a lovely town though and we stayed at a great hostel (Southern Laughter), so we ended up staying for quite a few days (although it was difficult to find a place for our first night, so we stayed at the expensive motor park).

We ate a couple of times at the famous Winnie's (where I had the best pizza I've tasted outside of Italy), and the Bunker, which was a lovely place with great staff, but overpriced I reckon.

We walked up to the top of the gondola ride, which was nice as it passed through nice forest. At the top we marvelled at the panoramic views. Then, of course, we had to have a go at the luge. I'd done a luge last time in New Zealand, but it was Sarah's first time, and it was a good laugh. Then we just hung out having our lunch at the huge restaurant there, that offers great views over the town, the lake and the paragliders (and raising my eyes to heaven at the 'auld guy next to us who couldn't understand how anyone could be 'mad' enough to do paragliding! For pity's sake, everyone I've ever met who has done a paraglide (including myself), describes it as a very peaceful, slow, relaxing experience (after the initial rush of takeoff I suppose), and each would have a hard time justifing the experience as an 'extreme sport' - it is called para-GLIDING for a reason).

Another day we drove out to Glenorchy, as it's supposed to be a lovely drive, and a lovely area (and we picked up our one and only hitchhiker - a German guy heading out to start the Routeburn Track, another one of the Great Walks). But it rained pretty hard that day, and the views along the drive were quite restricted, and the rain continued after we arrived. We just did a short hike around a lake, and then dried off in a nice little cafe before heading back to Queenstown.

The rest of the time we just chilled out around the town, or back at the backpacker place watching videos and having free soup in the evenings. And then it was the short hop to our next stop in the nearby town of Wanaka.

Glow worms

On the road to Te Anau from Milford Sound we again stopped off at a couple of little tidbits. One was a stroll along a boardwalk to the Mirror Lakes, so named for their stillness and position that reflects the distant mountains. The second stop was a pretty cool chasm with a raging stream blasting through it. Naturally I had to take a detour down the steep sides of the chasm to check out the restful pools at the bottom - a tour bus had arrived at the chasm just before us, so I took the detour to try and avoid them. Strangely none of the tour group decided to take the same detour!

On arriving at Te Anau we sorted out accommodation at the local Top 10 campsite, and I went for a stroll about the small town as Sarah cooked dinner. Then it was back to the lake side for our 9pm ferry trip to the glow worm caves. Our ferry boat was super modern and so flew across the lake in about an hour. It was a wonderfully clear night, and the isolation of being out on the lake made for a great star gazing opportunity.

The tour of the caves was very good, although the cave system is quite young, and so not very extensive, although it does have an impressively powerful stream running through it (which carries the hatching larvae and stuff that the glow worms feed on). The highlight, of course, is the actual little boat ride deep inside the cave to see the glow worms themselves. They are a beautiful sight, just all these tiny pinpricks of dull green light. You have to be very quite and not move about so as not to disturb them (the boat is pulled along by the guide, no motor or anything), so it was very peaceful.

One aspect of the glow worms that struck me on this trip was how difficult it was to actually focus on an individual worm's glow. Unless I really concentrated, the pinprick was actually more of a small blur. What struck me was the similarity to the explaination given to me by an astronomer at the observatory back in Tekapo of why the milky way looks so blurry. He explained that the milky way is actually made up of billions of tiny pinpricks of star light, but that our eyes are not good enough to focus on them individually, and so the whole affair appears as a blurry cloud (god might have been good at building human eyes, but he wasn't that good). It seemed to me that the glow worms' tiny, faint glow appeared as something similar, although I could be talking complete rubbish!

Anyway, after the cave trip they show you a video about the lives of the glow worms, which I thought was really impressive, although they are pretty disgusting critters in a way. Then it was a quick trip back across the lake and home to bed.

Next day, Queenstown.

Milford Sound

I reckon the drive to Milford Sound was probably the single most stunning road I've travelled in all of New Zealand (and of course I kept thinking how much better it would have been to cycle it). Unfortunately we were in a bit of a rush, as we wanted to get to the accommodation before dark, so we didn't have as much time as I would have liked to stop and stare.

The backpackers at Milford was a brilliant place with a huge, very comfortable common room, and a good kitchen. So after a nice dinner it was an early night, followed by an early start the next morning. As Milford Sound is located in a national park, there isn't much development in the area, and most people just bus in for the day and bus back out again.

We arrived down at the harbour where all the boats depart and checked in for our tour with Real Journeys again (which we'd booked back at Manapouri). This time we only booked a short two hour tour, as Milford is much smaller than Doubtful, and can be seen easily in that time.

This time we had far more constant rain, but as all the blurb says, that just makes the waterfalls all the more stunning. Actually I reckon that's just wishful marketing really, but we were lucky enough to have enough clear breaks in the weather to get both the powerful waterfalls and have clear views of the towering cliff tops.

The highlights of this trip, apart from simply looking at Milford's signature Mitre Peak, were probably manoeuvering the boat right up against the shear cliff walls as they tower 1000m straight above you, or moving the boat right under a huge waterfall - fantastic. Although the boat trip was much shorter, and the Sound itself much smaller in overall scale, I reckon Milford is more visually stunning than Doubtful Sound.

Since the boat trip was quite short, we had time once back on land for a stroll along a couple of short trails, before driving back down the Milford Road towards the town of Te Anau to catch our night tour of the glowworms.

Manapouri and Doubtful Sound

Unfortunately on our way to Manapouri and Doubtful Sound the Clifden Caves were flooded. These caves are another great example of the Kiwi attitude to life I reckon, as they're referred to as 'Common Sense Caves'. By that they mean that you make your own way to the caves, and your own way through them - i.e. there is no tourist centre there, or any form of support, safety backup or security. You just bring your own common sense and a couple of torches each, and crawl into and along the caves on your own - brilliant. Or least I reckon it would have been brilliant, but the recent rains meant that the cave system was too dangerous (although if I'd been there with one of the lads I probably would have at least checked them out a bit first). But the caves were a short detour from our route, so we just decided to head straight on to Manapouri.

Manapouri is a very small town, and really just acts as a gateway for travelling into the Doubtful Sound (apparently more correctly called a fjord, but there you go). So on arrival we checked out a couple of the operators for tours to the Sound, and after chatting to a really helpful guy I decided to go with the main operators, Real Journeys. He persuaded me (along with a hefty discount) , to go for the overnight option, meaning you get to sleep onboard the boat that takes you into the Sound itself, and thereby get to have much longer exploring the area. He also told us of a free campsite just outside the town, so that made our rest point for the night.

So the next morning (after giving a guy at the campground a push start), it was back to Real Journeys and aboard a fast boat to take us on the first part of our journey across the beautiful Manapouri Lake. At the far side of the lake we boarded a bus for the short trip to the departure point into the Sound itself. This trip was gorgeous in itself, stopping at mighty waterfalls, and lookout points.

On arrival at the other side, Deep Cove, our ship and crew waited. I must say I was very impressed with the quality of the ship, it was all very plush and extremely comfortable, and within half an hour of boarding the food started to arrive. Why is it that on any kind of cruise, even this one day cruise, they throw so much food at you? Anyway, it was just a 'snack' of huge freshly baked muffins, so obviously I had to have three!

There isn't much point in me describing the whole trip really, the website probably describes it much better than I could anyway, but needless to say it really is a spectacular place. It was great to just cruise peacefully along the Sound with it's towering cliff faces, nipping back into the ship for a hot chocolate or coffee to stave off the cold or the intermittent rain (this area is one of the wettest places on earth, but we were lucky to have mostly clear skies).

Later in the afternoon we did the kayaking for an hour or so, which was really nice (not as good as kayaking in Halong Bay in Vietnam though), followed by jumping off the ship into the freezing water for a bit of a wee swim (I was quite surprised by the number of people who actually did the swim, as it was pretty cold).

A couple of times we had dolphins chasing the ship, playing in the bow waves. Apparently environmentalists now think that the bow waves of ships interfere somehow with the normal behaviour of dolphins, so whenever they are spotted frolicking about, the ship has to slow down until they go away. It seems a bit strange, but it still made for some great views, as the dolphins put on quite a good show.

The crew were all brilliant and very approachable, you could even go into the bridge and chat to the captain any time you wanted. The only small quibble I would have about the whole trip would be the environmental officier guy. His job was basically to inform us all (over the very clear, but inescapable, intercom system onboard the ship), of all the flora and fauna as we cruised by, along with telling us some of the local Maori legends about the area, and he was very good at all that. But he had the rather annoying habit of repeatedly telling everybody of how 'amazing' the scenery was, or how utterly 'magical' the waterfalls were, and kept saying that if anyone was still indoors, to get outside immediately to appreciate the beauty and wonder all around us. I mean if people weren't interested in getting out on deck to actually look at what they'd paid to see, then that is indeed rather sad, but it's their loss, and the repeated calls to 'get outside and see this unique landscape' just became a bit annoying to me. But like I said, it was only a small quibble on what was overall a brilliant trip.

So after a huge, and delicious dinner chatting to a few English travellers (including a really cool and funny couple from the North of England who were cycling all over the world), there was a slideshow presentation by the environmental officier guy. The show was quite good, although the best parts were the cheeky kids at the very front that kept interrupting the presentation, or answering his questions for the audience with silly answers. He actually got quite cross with one of them at one stage, which was the funniest part of the whole show really, as he was a bit too 'cool' and slick, and I reckon he fancied himself a bit too much, and so the cheeky 10 year old kid brought him down a notch or two!

After that it was bed, and a very early rise the next morning for a needlessly huge breakfast and to explore another arm of the Sound, and eventually to head back to the bus. The guy we booked the tour with had thrown in a free tour of the Manapouri power station, something I was really looking forward to in fact. So after waiting around for a bit for the tour group that were seeing only the power station, and exploring the local area a wee bit, we boarded another bus and drove over 2km into the mountain itself to the power station deep inside. Although the shear feat of engineering involved to build the station really is quite amazing, there isn't that much to actually see, as the turbines are quite small and simple looking, and the whole operation is now completely automated.

So then it was back across Manapouri Lake to pick up our van, and then it was on to the far more famous, and accessible Milford Sound.

Stewart Island

The ferry from Bluff, where we'd left the van in security parking, to Stewart Island only took an hour, and was a nice smooth crossing on another lovely day. I got to see lots of albatross flying about, mostly trailing fishing vessels looking for scraps.

On arrival we checked out hikes and bike rental at the tourist office, but the island has very few roads and most of them are very steep, so bikes didn't seem a great idea. So we dropped our bags at our hostel, which was really just a local guy's house. There was nobody there when we arrived, but the front door was wide open, and a note told us which room was ours. The whole place was pretty run down really, with dirty dishes in the kitchen and a half eaten breakfast left on the kitchen table. Our bedroom was pretty grim too, but actually when we got back later that evening we were told our room had changed and our new room was lovely, and had a fantastic view of the harbour.

So we spent the whole of that first day hiking a few of the island's short trails, and they were lovely, passing through deserted beaches and native forests. The island is famous for it's bird life, including the best opportunity to spot wild kiwis apparently, although you need to get well off the beaten track for a chance to spot them. We did come across a group of three weka's though picking away at a small carcass, and at first we did think they might be kiwis, as they're quite large and flightless.

That evening we had a great seafood dinner in the main hotel at the harbour (there aren't many choices really, as the island's harbour town of Oban is very small), and had a drink or two chatting to a nice local guy who was originally Samoan, and who had the weirdest cackling laugh.

The next morning started with drizzly rain, and we got chatting to an English girl Rachel staying at our hostel. She was a pretty serious tramper (New Zealand term for hiking), and had already completed the island's Great Walk (New Zeland has 9 famous multi-day hiking trails). That hike took her 5 days, where you have to carry all your own water, food and cooking equipment, with just basic huts along the route for shelter. I'm always impressed with people like this girl who head off on their own on such adventures, and she told us specifically of how those hikes had really improved her self-image and self-confidence - no lying down and just accepting all the usual dictates of the 'Machine' for her (i.e. get a job, settle down, have kids, blah, blah...) - fair play to her I reckon. I really like the idea of coming back to New Zealand one day to specifically hike a couple of the more famous Great Walks (I've done half-day treks into a couple of the Walks on this trip, but you all the equipment to tackle a full Walk).

Anyway, the drizzle seemed persistent, so after visiting the small but interesting local museum and having breakfast with Rachel, we were going to try and change our return ferry journey to an earlier time. But after breakfast the weather had cleared up a good bit, and so we decided to do some more hiking instead. Again the trails were lovely, this time getting great lookout points out to sea, and back along more deserted beaches.

Then after collecting our bags and using the internet for a bit, it was the late afternoon ferry back to the mainland, grab the van and drive back to the Southern Cross hostel in Invercargill for the night before moving on towards Manapouri.

Invercargill

So after a quick lunch stop at Niagara Falls (a tongue-in-cheek reference to a local stream, but actually a nice organic-food restaurant), it was on to Invercargill, a town than is often the butt of New Zealander jokes (a bit like Kerryman jokes back home I suppose). It was a small, quite town for sure, but I still quite liked it.

We stayed at the lovely Southern Cross hostel (after a bit of haggling about staying in our van). I was looking forward to a nice Indian in a local recommended restaurant that night, but it had closed down, so we just had a nice dinner in the neighbouring Speights (one of New Zealand's brewery chains).

The next day we hired bikes and rode about 10km outside the town to a nearby biking area that had a number of dedicated cycle trails through a native forest. Having negotiated most of the trails there we popped into the nearby fancy Cabbage Tree restaurant, and we had a great lunch there before heading back to the town and following a heritage trail all over the town centre (which was made much easier and quicker by having the bikes). When we got back to the tourist information place that we'd rented the bikes from, it was closed.

We'd already booked ferry tickets for Stewart Island the next morning, but luckily the tourist office opened early in the morning, and when I dropped back the bikes they appologised for telling me the wrong closing time. We still had plenty of time to drive to the ferry departure town of Bluff and catch our ferry.

So next stop, Stewart Island.

The Catlins

As with each of our journeys from one place to another in New Zealand there were multiple stopping off points along the way - it's just a constant reminder of the endless profusion of natural wonders of this country.

This time it was the Nuggets and the Curio Bay petrified forest (very reminiscent of the forest we saw in the Namibian desert in fact), both fascinating but short stops.

We stopped for the next few nights at the tiny town of Owaka, staying at Thomas' Lodge. This was actually an old hospital converted to a backpackers. It was owned and run by a really nice English guy named Craig, although, as Sarah rightly observed, he was a bit of a David Brent character from 'The Office', i.e. nice but a bit sad, and not very funny although he tried hard! He wasn't around when we arrived, so we just parked the van and I started cooking dinner. I was half-way through when Craig arrived back, quite drunk after popping into the local pub up the road for 'one' drink, but he was really cool and relaxed and chatted to us while I continued cooking. It was kinda low season, and the sprawling hostel was quite empty, so I think he was quite happy to have the company really. He seemed quite lonely, and seemed to drink quite a bit during our short stay (something of a repeating pattern I've noticed in the smaller New Zealand towns).

So we got quite chatty with Craig and the next morning he offered to give us our two night stay for free if we just helped him out a bit by making up a few beds. We offered to help him out for nothing, but really I don't think he needed the money anyway (as we got to know him a bit over a few frames of pool, and he showed us some of his home movies, it transpired he had multiple properties in multiple countries). So effectively that marked my debut as a chamber maid, and I was getting quite good at it by the end (I think we only had to make up five beds!).

Over our four days at Thomas' (we stayed longer than our originally planned 2 nights of course), we visited just about all the attractions of the lovely Catlins area. In the north we hiked to numerous waterfalls, my favorite of them all was the McLean Falls, reached through what I reckon was the most beautiful forest I've ever been in. The uniqueness of many of New Zealand's forests (from my experience I mean, not a botanist's or anything), comes from the density of the verdant, spongy moss than can cover everything - rocks, tree trucks, branches and the entire forest floor. It just gives the forest a fantastic atmosphere I think, something I've never seen anywhere else.

We also hiked around Lake Wilkie, and got numerous expansive sea, beach and bay views. We stopped for a drink at the very nice Whistling Frog restaurant, where they happened to be spit roasting a pig, but we didn't have time to stay for dinner that night, so that particular wish-list item remains unticked!

Another highlight of the Catlins was a full day river walk. It had been recommended, and hyped up a bit, by Craig and a couple of locals and involved following a taxi (driven by friendly local Doug), to the trail's end point in our van, then being driven in the taxi to the start point, from where of course we'd walk along the trail back to our van to drive ourselves home. It was a lovely walk alright, although over-hyped I think - but maybe I'm just getting spoilt. It was marvelously isolated though, and we only met a couple of other people for the whole day, and having our lunch in the sunshine by the river was a real treat for sure.

As we left Craig and the Catlins area heading for Invercargill we stopped off at the Cathedral Caves. These are mighty impressive, very high and deep natural sea caves and are only accessible at low tide. Even then you still have to wade in a bit, but it just means you carry your shoes and go barefoot (which I always prefer anyway of course).

Dunedin

On the way to Dunedin we stopped at a couple of Maori rock art displays (not a lot to see though). We also stopped along the way at the Moreki Rocks, which were really cool natural rock formations littered along the beach. There were loads of these huge big perfectly spherical rocks, some of which had split open as the sea was in the process of eroding them away completely.

Arriving in Dunedin town we headed straight to the closest Top 10 campsite (I had gotten a membership card, so you get discounts there, although they still tend to be the most expensive campsites!). The site had a swimming pool, but I only used it once as it was very small, and was really only for the kiddies.

The campsite was quite a bit outside the city, and would have meant getting buses into town every day, so instead the next day we drove around the hostels asking if we could park in their carparks and use their facilities. Eventually we found one (Pennys Backpackers), and it turned out to be a great place, (only NZ$10 each per night), and so we ended up staying there for a week. It was the first place we'd stayed that offered free internet too, although you'd often have to wait to get a machine, and the connection was quite slow.

So all in all I really liked Dunedin as a town. The backpackers we stayed at was so cool and relaxed that it was great to just stroll about the city during the day, checking out museums and the like, and then back to the backpackers to cook dinner, maybe watch a free DVD or two and catch up on the internet.

We did have a bunch of our food stolen one night though - apparently some stranger guys had come back with a resident guy during the night, and had been asked to leave. It seems they stole a load of food from the communal kitchen just out of spite - very annoying and fustrating for all the people that had stuff taken though.

So probably the highlight of Dunedin was actually Paddies Day. For some reason, unbeknowst to me really, the whole town just really gets into the whole thing. They don't have a parade, but loads of people were walking around (mostly from pub to pub), dressed as leprachauns, wearing green wigs, with their faces painted and carrying green 'Kiss me I'm Irish' balloons! The town's heritage is Scotish, and Protestant Scottish at that, and it doesn't have many Irish connections at all (according to their own museums anyway), and so it all seemed a bit strange. The town is a big university town though, so I suppose most of it is just students having another excuse to go on a bender. Anyway, I thought this was all great, and all the bars were packed - especially the Irish bars of course.

Towards the end of our stay in Dunedin we managed to motivate ourselves enough to explore a bit of the area, and took a full day exploring the Otago Peninsula. First stop was actually in the city itself where we walked up the steepest street in the world - Baldwin Street. It's a bit of a gimmick really, but is genuinely the steepest residential street (disputed of course), with ordinary houses along it's length, and tourists walking up it and taking photos (and a nearby shop issuing 'certificates' for god's sake!). Obviously that stop didn't take too long, and the next stop was just outside the town itself and the top of the hill overlooking the city, Mount Cargill.

The usual brilliant views, and another great cloud-free day, and so we had a lovely relaxed lunch in the van while lying back on the bed and just staring out the van door at the gorgeous sea views. After lunch, while Sarah waited in the van, I did another short hike to the nearby 'organ pipes', a natural basalt rock formation much like the Giants Causeway in Antrim (now the third such formations I've seen), before heading off to explore the rest of the peninsula.

Further along we stopped off at lovely private gardens, and then on to the gardens and walking trail of Larnach Castle (with more great views of course). At the very tip of the peninsula is an albatross colony, but it was mighty expensive to do a tour, and though reluctant, my intuition told me not to bother coughing up just for the chance of seeing the birds. Later we heard from another tourist that it was indeed a ripoff, as the staff there knew there were no birds nesting at that time of year, but still took tourist's money even though they saw nothing. And later on I saw loads of albatross as we sailed across to Stewart Island anyway, so that all worked out quite well really!

Towards the end of the day we headed to another penguin viewing spot, yellow eyed penguins this time. You could pay for a guided tour, but that seemed ridiculous to me, as we had our own van and so we could just make our own way to the public, and free, viewing platform. As with the blue penguins, you can never predict when they're due back to their nests after feeding all day at sea. I had no problem waiting for them, although I could tell Sarah was getting impatient, but after about an hour they started to arrive back onshore. We got much better views of these guys than the blue lads we'd seen previously, and we were very lucky that another tourist beside us lent us her very powerful binoculars (she and her husband had been waiting for nearly 4 hours I think!). They really are so cute waddling along and hopping up onto the rocks, but at this stage it was getting dark and so after watching 5 or 6 returning penguins we headed back to the city.

So eventually it came time to leave Dunedin, and so reluctantly we headed off for our next port of call, the area known as the Catlins.

Twizel and Oamaru

So we just stopped for one night in the small town of Twizel, having a nice salmon dinner, and a pretty early night. The next morning we had a look at another Lord of the Rings film location (the site used for Pelennor), and stopped at a couple of hydro-electric power stations to marvel at the engineering (although the big one with a visitor's centre, Benmore, was closed for maintanance).

We also stopped at the cool clay cliffs, a natural rock formation eroded into towering pillars of sandstone and carved gullies and canyons, the elephant rocks (used in the movie Narnia apparently), and then on to Oamaru for a couple of nights.

So Oamaru is nice wee town, with a small harbour worth a stroll around. We stayed at the Top 10 campsite beside the lovely main gardens of the town (that had a proper croquet pitch that had the rules of the game and everything, so now I'm mad keen to try the game properly).

In the 'historic' district we popped into a mad, eclectic gallery run by the friendly owner guy and his artist wife. He was very chatty, but came across as a bit lonely and sad I thought (and his eyes were a quite red and blurry, and there was a faint smell of alcohol from him), but he was a cool 'arty' looking dude. Also in the town was a more formal gallery, that had a brilliantly scary work called something like 'The Cross of Christ', by some famous guy!

One of the days I hiked up and around Observation Hill just outside the town (Sarah just waited at the bottom of the hill in the van), which had great views of the sea, and was a lovely forested coastal walk.

The town also has a resident blue penguin colony, but it was way too pricey for admission to that, so we just drove down the road a few kilometres where some local person told us we could see them for free. After a bit of a wait (you never know what time exactly they will return from their day feeding out at sea), we were rewarded with a distant view of a couple of the cute little critters waddling ashore.

So then it was off to Dunedin after a quick stop at the town's famous cheese factory, Whitestone Cheese, and of course to sample their wares.