It’s been a great week for me, as we’ve done almost zero walking! I think when I said to Laura that I was “done with walking” she thought I’d finally cracked, so instead we’ve had a rather relaxing time of late, in preparation for a lot of relaxing whilst we’re in Fiji.

After the very enjoyable Cathedral Cove and Hot Water Beach we headed all the way up to the peninsula’s main town, Coromandel Town.  We thought there’d be more there, but to be honest it was just an average small town (although I did get an exceptionally good Hot Chocolate, made with hot milk and a stick of chocolate in it melting. Yum.) There really isn’t much in the Coromandel at all in the way of towns and stuff, but there’s lots of nice views and beaches.

We’d originally planned to stay up there for a night but as there didn’t seem to be much there we decided to head back down to Whitianga, but not before visiting The Waterworks, a weird but very fun activity water park (that’s the best I can describe it). It had a ton of interactive things, normally made of recycled car parts, which usually involved playing with water.  There were bicycle water guns, trick showers that soaked whoever was pumping the water (me!), boat racing and much more. It’s really hard to describe, but we had a lot of fun.

Human Mouse Wheel. With fallen human.

Flying bike!

As if the day wasn’t already fun enough, Laura then suggested we go play mini golf! She knows I love mini golf, and this is only the second time in the trip we’ve gone.  It was an absolutely excellent course.  For those wondering, Laura was leading in the 9th but I came back with gusto to win by about 4 shots (although I almost bottled it on the last hole).

After these antics were complete, we headed to Whitianga, a lovely little seaside town on the east coast of the Coromandel.  On the first night we went for a lovely meal by the docks with lots of wine and beer and just had a really nice night.

The next day we wanted to find a beach. Whitianga isn’t actually that far from Hot Water Beach (10km), there’s just a lot of water in the way which means to drive involves going the long way round and Vanatar guzzling extra fuel.  There’s a local passenger ferry that continually goes from one side of the estuary to the other which we’d heard about, so decided to take as there were meant to be nice beaches on the other side.  We were ecstatic to discover that the cost of the ferry ($12 total, about 5 quid) included a free coffee or tea at a local coffee shop on the other side! Worth it for that alone.  The coffee shop was about a 20 minute walk but was a really nice, locally run shop which served excellent chocolate Baileys cake.  A little beyond that we found Cooks Beach, a beautiful long sandy beach which had about 4 other people on it for the whole length.  There were nice big waves to jump around in and we brought lunch and kindles and made a really nice day of it.

We enjoyed it so much that the next day we caught the ferry again, got another free coffee, before this time heading past the beach to Mecury Bay Estate- that’s right, we were back on the vineyards! Well, vineyard singular, as it’s the only one in the region.  Although it was an hour walk from the ferry it was worth it, as the wine was lovely and the platter delicious. The walk back seemed much quicker after tasting 5 wines and drinking 2 bottles :).

Before calling it a day in Whitianga there was only one thing left to do; “The Lost Springs”.  Not quite as dramatic as it sounds, it’s another set of thermal hot pools.  Although a tad on the pricey side, we got a day pass and got to spend the day sitting in nice hot geothermal water of different temperatures and sunbathing (I managed to burn. Oops.) Exceptionally relaxing and a great way to cap off a few lovely days.

Unsurprisingly we’re now back on the walking, but I’ll let Laura tell you about that in the next post 🙂

Well it’s been fun week or so!

As the gallery Laura put up shows, we finally got to see Dolphins! We spent 4 nights (our longest stay anywhere) in Kaikoura, mostly because the weather was so beautiful and we had a great spot in the park for kicking back and relaxing. The town had lots of cafes and restaurants (all of which are shut on Monday, which we had selected for date night.  Managed to get Fish and Chips at least).  The main purpose for our visit was to go whale watching; the area is famous for it’s marine life, due to a steep continental shelf only 3 nautical miles out.

After about half an hour of searching (co-ordinated with the other whale watching boat and a helicopter) we finally found a Sperm whale.  They can hold their breath for 2 hours and dive really deep, then they come to the surface to reoxygenate before heading back down.  It was really amazing to see something so massive in real life, even though in reality we only got to see a small fraction on the surface.

We’d managed to find the whale so quickly that it meant we then had time to find a pod of dusky dolphins, which I think both of us enjoyed even more than the whale.  They were showboating for us, diving in and out of the water together and just having good fun.  We even got to see a couple of baby dolphins to top it all off.

We still had more time after this, so they then took us to a bird watching area where we got to see, amongst other things, an Albatross.  They’re very rare, and pretty massive. Fortunately Laura kept hold of her sunglasses this time.

We were sad to say goodbye to Kaikoura but the call of wine was strong; we got to go back to Marlborough, but the east coast side.  As the Sauvignon Blanc capital of NZ we were both very excited.   Unlike the previous places we’d done our cycle-and-wine combo, there’s no dedicated cycle paths there which means that we were cycling on the roads.  This was mitigated by the fact that most of the cellar doors are within close proximity, but it meant that we didn’t enjoy the cycling.  We made up for it with more wine of course.

This was our record haul, with about 7 vineyards covered in the day including Cloudy Bay which is one of our favourite wines from when we were in HK.  Although all the wine was very nice, there weren’t really any standout places.  It was still a lovely day of cycling and wine though.

We moved our ferry up as we’d been progressing through the island quicker than expected, so the next day we chilled out in Picton before boarding the ferry up to the north island and driving onto Martinborough, yet another wine region.  Famed for it’s pinot noirs I wasn’t expecting much as I’m not a big fan of the reds but by the end we both agree it’s the best wine area we’ve been too. The vineyards are close enough together that you can walk between them, and the quality of wine was consistently amazing.  All the people running the cellar doors were really passionate and not just reading a script, and we had our best meat and cheese platter to date at a vineyard which sells exclusively on-site; unavailable at the shop and run by a husband and wife team.  I can confirm that it was the best day of all by how hungover we both were in the evening!

We’ve got an action packed couple of days ahead filled with canoeing in Whanganui National Park and hiking the Tongariro Alpine Crossing.  I’ll be ready to drink again by the end of it!

The views just keep getting better and better. I don’t understand how. NZ has definitely wrecked all walks and scenery in the future for us because we’ve been spoilt so rotten.

After Dunedin we headed over to Mt Cook, the tallest peak in NZ at 3724m.  Fortunately it’s not something you can walk up, but it has plenty of walks around it.  We camped in a simple but beautiful DOC (read: cheap) campsite and used it as a base for 2 or 3 walks, the main one taking us to a lake with actual icebergs in it! Small icebergs, but they count.

As you can see from the photos, the views are incredible.  The way the cloud rolled over the peaks and formed a roof over the mountains was something I’ve never seen before and created a really beautiful effect.

Desperately in need of a shower (they tend not to have them on DOC campsites) we then barrelled on to a town called Geraldine.  As you can see on our travel map we’ve been covering big distances each day in the last week, which has cost a fortune in fuel but we’ve packed a fair amount of walks in. There’s not a huge amount else to do around this neck of the woods to be honest, as significant towns are few and far between.

We had intended to use Geraldine as a base to go and do a significant day walk at another mountain, Mt Somner, but once we’d gotten there we discovered our guide book had massively undersold the nature of the hike; the path was steep, poorly formed, and slippy. The weather was crap and we quickly gave up and decided to backtrack to peel forest to try some easier walks.  Whilst these were perfectly nice, the weather was quickly turning and we were both a bit fed up.  After a quick google I managed to find a nice boutique cinema a couple of hours away in the ski town of Methven, and it turned out to be the release day of Spectre in NZ! Highly recommend it, possibly the best Bond yet.

We’re only a day or two from Christchurch now.  This morning we did a 4 hour walk at Rakaia Gorge, an incredible river with luminous blue waters that have cut out a huge chunk of the landscape.  Whilst being an enjoying and challenging walk, it was slightly marred when, at the big view at the end of the walk, a large bird of some sorts (“The bird equivalent of the Indominus Rex”) swooped down and stole Laura’s sunglasses from the top of her head! Laura is fortunately unhurt, but understandably angry at the bird (Laura: “I hope it chokes on the plastic.”)

For tomorrow, we have decided first to come and explore Arthurs Pass, one of the 3 routes over the mountains from East to West on the south island.  Surprise surprise; it has lots of walks, which we’ll embark on tomorrow. We’ve driven over to the West of the pass, and will head back East in the next day or two.  Arthurs Pass has to be one of the best roads we’ve driven on the whole trip though, with huge mountain ranges on either side looming over as you drive, along with some fun 16% gradient roads thrown in to test Vanatar’s prowess.

Having already invested in all the gear needed for multi-day hikes we thought we would tick off another of NZ’s great walks. In Fiordland there are 3 available: The Milford, Routeburn and Kepler.  Milford track is the most popular, and it turns out the huts are booked up over a year in advance which ruled that out.  Routeburn currently has major avalanche risks, which would’ve required us to get helicoptered part of the way (at a not insignificant cost.) Which made our decision for us: we were going to walk the Kepler track!

The Kepler can be done in 2 or 3 nights; after the agony with our backpacks during the Abel Tasman Coastal Track we decided to do it in 2 nights; more walking but with less to carry.  Laura managed to get all of her stuff into a daypack thanks to some impressive MacGuyvering of cables and carabiners.  This meant we had a lot of walking to do on the last day, but it looked feasible as it was mostly flat on day 3, unlike the first two days.

Our plan was to stay at Luxmore hut on the first night (after climbing nearly 1000m), Iris Burn on the second night (after decending another 800m or so) then make it to Rainbow Reach on the final day (where we were picked up by a shuttle bus.)

One of the reasons this track is meant to be so wonderful is the diversity of the nature on show and it really did deliver.  The route was part forest, part tundra, part alpine hills (snow!) and even a beach in there at one point.  For me personally it was even more amazing than the Abel Tasman and some of the most beautiful views I’ve ever seen.  I don’t think walking will be the same again for me anywhere else.

The climb on the first day was surprisingly not too bad; the inclines weren’t too steep and our bags were mercifully light in comparison which meant we made it to the hut by 3 in the afternoon in quite a good condition.  This is one of the most beautiful huts in NZ and we were treated to epic views like this:

The hut even has a permanent ranger, who gave us a one hour nature tour and a guide to the stars- with zero light pollution and no moon the stars were really clear and you could even make out the Milky Way.

We made one mistake though.  Having seen the profile we’d assumed most of the climbing was done and it was mostly downhill, so we ate all of our chocolate (the only treat we’d brought.)  Turned out that was a massive error, as day 2 had a gruelling climb to the summit, followed by an incredibly sharp descent that was even more painful than going up the mountain!

Despite the pain, the views on the second day were truly second to none, looking down over Lake Te Anau and over to alpine mountains on all sides.

The final day was 7 hours of downhill, which we managed to knock out in under 5.  Although it was easy walking, by this point both of our feet were killing (my shoes are slightly too small so my toes hurt, and Laura had blisters) and we were exhausted thanks to someone in the bunk room who snored like an elephant so we were just desperate for it to be over.  You can see how happy we are at the end.