Home Sweet Home

We are home with no travel problems like we had on the way out. Liz and John kept our car while we were gone and gave us curb service when we returned, complete with a 'Take Away' (that is Kiwi for Takeout) Shepperd's pie, which I already ate, yummy. We covered a good part of the north island and only a small part of the south island, the two islands are very different, but both worth visiting. We drove about 3400 kilometers (about2100 miles) and trampped in both tropical rain forests and snow covered mountains. For those that care, gas in NZ is about $1.60 NZD/liter or about $3.65 USD/gal, most autos use diesel which is about $1/liter or about $2.30 USD/gal but there is milage tax you pay on diesels but it is still less than gasoline. Currently the NZD is worth about 0.6 USD, so it is a good time to travel to NZ, the people are extremely friendly and the country is easy to navigate. Overall we had a great trip and we hope you enjoyed the pictures, we only posted a few of the roughly 800 pictures we took. Work tomorrow...yikes. Fred and June

Saturday, 16May09, Waikaretu – Port Waikato - Auckland

This morning we toured the Nikau caves, which is way off the beaten path of typical NZ tourists. The more popular caves are in Waitomo, but from what we have heard they are very much commercialized, a typical tourist spot. The Nikau caves are just amazing, but I have no pictures. As a side Emily wants everyone to know that the Nikau palm tree is the most southerly palm tree in the world, there are many around Waikaretu. Our guide, the owner of the property, Phillip Woodward, discovered the caves as a child with a friend in 1953, he bought the land in 1978 and opened the caves to the public about 15 years ago. I have no pictures because you literally have to crawl on your hands and knees, through 6 to 8 inches of water in places. Phillip strongly suggested you leave anything you can’t hold in your mouth behind, I am glad I listened. The trek through the caves is about a kilometer, takes about 1 ½ hours and you will be wet and dirty when you come out, but is it worth it. The stalagmites, stalactites, and glow worms are spectacular. We really enjoyed the caves, and our hosts went out of there way, as usual, to make us welcome. They suggested we take the scenic route along the coast back to Auckland, which was one place they filmed ‘Lord of the Rings’, again the scenes were breath taking, I took pictures but they are nothing like the real thing. We are now in Auckland airport, departing here at 7:15PM NZ time (03:15AM ET) and we will get home at 10AM ET about 31 hours travel time L .

Friday, 15May09, New Plymouth to Waikaretu

This morning we headed up to Egmont National Park hoping to get some views and hiking of Mt Taranaki. Unfortunately, the weather had other plans. We did get in a hike of about an hour when we had to turn around because of a river we did not think we could cross without getting wet. It rained pretty hard last night and the creeks are gushing. The hike was pretty damp, the vegetation around Mt Taranaki is like rain forest, there were lots of steps and ladders on the trail, they obviously put allot of work in the tramping trails. When we returned the visitor center was open, which is beautiful, so we discussed our plans with them and they pretty much said we should not try to hike up with the current weather situation and our probability of getting any views was slim to none. So we set off for Waikaretu where we booked a B&B for the night. The drive was pretty rainy so even though there was some nice views, we did not stop to take any pictures. Waikaretu is in the boonies, even for NZ, we took several gravel roads barely wide enough to pass a car over mountains to get here, but we are here. The town does not even have a store, a gas station or much else. It has a small school that looks like a house and a café that was just constructed last year. We booked the room with them, the owner is the sister of the owner of the first B&B we stayed at when we arrived in NZ. Tonight they are having a fund raiser at the B&B where we will have dinner, the whole town is coming, they are expecting 30 people J . We are here to see the Nikau caves, we will have to fill you in on that tomorrow.

Thursday, 14May09, Picton to Wellington to New Plymouth

Today was mostly a travel day, we took the InterIslander ferry, from Picton to Wellington, it was a another ‘fine’ day. The Kiwi weather forecast often says ‘fine’ which means fair weather. The ferry ride is quite spectacular, when you leave Picton, the ferry has to negotiate about 30 or 40 kilometers between the islands on the north end of the south island which are very beautiful on such a nice day. We even had a pod of common dolphins come swim along the ferry for a bit. The total distance from Picton to Wellington is around 100 kilometers. We took the 10AM ferry which gets you to Wellington around 1:30PM and we set off for New Plymouth. The drive from Wellington north was scenic, it is darn hard to find any bad scenery in NZ. We are now in New Plymouth, we will do some short treks around here in the AM and then move onto Waikaretu where we hope to do some spelunking on Saturday before we head to the airport.

Wednesday 13May09, Blenheim

Today we got up bright and early and headed to the Makana Chocolate factory, that took about 5 mins, not exactly what we were expecting..if you are ever in Blenhiem, pass on the chocolate factory. So from there we cruised around and checked out where all the vineyards were and found a good place for lunch. We spent the afternoon visiting the vineyards of Marlborough country, it was a good time, we pretty much had most of the tasting cellars to ourselves and I had to restrain myself because they encourage you to taste all their wines which could easily get to your head. June and Emily had a good time. Drinking age in NZ is 18 and only one place even asked Emily for ID and when she said she was with her parents they didn’t even want to see it. A bit different than the states. We are now in a hotel in Blenhiem and are booked on the 10:05 ferry from Picton to Wellington tomorrow, from there we will make our way north to be sure we are in position to make our Saturday afternoon flight out of Auckland.

Tuesday 12May09, Kaikoura

Our morning got off to a slow start, the ocean was rough and the whale watch was cancelled. We put our names on a wait list for a later departure and kept our fingers crossed. In the meantime, we walked around the Kaikoura Peninsula and saw a NZ fur seal colony. There were a lot of them sunning them selves on shore and we got really close, but boy did they stink! We walked along the high cliffs and once again got lots of pictures. We also did some souvenir shopping while waiting to see if the whale watch would depart. It was cancelled 2 more times but we finally left on the 2:00 boat and it was well worth it. We saw lots of birds, like the Albatross, and three sperm whales which was two more than most excursions see. They are so large and when they dive down it is fascinating to watch. We decided to head up to Blenheim for the wine tours on Wednesday.

Monday 11May09; Hanmer Springs and Kaikoura

Hey all, this morning we did some horse trekking at Hanmer Horses in Hanmer Springs. Going into the horse farm we had to cross two streams (fords) with the car, this is why you never buy a rental car, It has been raining here for a few days and it was a wee bit exciting crossing. The weather was sunny and crisp, the ride was nice thru the country with great mountain views, nice pics. From there we headed for Kaikoura, where Emily spent a week during her semester and swam with the dolphins. We are staying at a bed and breakfast on a point along the peninsula in Kiakoura. The family used own the entire peninsula and have thousands of sheep, today they have 100 acres, 300 sheep just enough to do shearing demonstrations twice a day. We attended one of the shearing demo’s, it was interesting and we learned a bit about sheep, Uncle Earle would be proud of us. We are on stand by for a whale watch tour tomorrow AM, if that does not work, we will just do some walks around here and walk out to the seal colony on the end of the point.