Rotorua stinks.

We left Taupo this morning and headed into Rotorua. It smells like ass but gawd is it beautiful.

The smell and the scenery are both attributed to the high levels of geothermal activity that permeate the area. Everywhere we turn there are jets of steam seeping up from the ground and they all smell like sulfur. We could smell the town 20km before we actually got here and I think we shall only stay the day so that the smell doesn't have much chance to settle into our clothes and souvenirs! We'd hate to bring that back with us!

 

Huka Prawns

Today, we got up nice and early, had a good breakfast, then drove up the road to spend the entire day prawn fishing.

Yes, we spent $72 and nearly six hours of our lives to catch 6 of these freshwater prawns (that's 4 for CJ and 2 for me). I can't help but think that these prawns cost $12 each. They had better be good.

...and I only hit one curb!

I’ve done it!

Having watched Lewis drive through the treacherous, curvy mountains and now returning to flat land, I mustered up my courage and got behind the wheel. It was glorious.

Driving was fairly easy – I only hit one curb - but what made it so great were Lewis’ reactions. At one point he was looking down at his lap and looked up just as we were heading into a curve. In a brief moment of panic, he jumped and grabbed for the non-existent steering wheel in front of him. That made this whole trip worthwhile because, as you may know, he does not startle easily (or at least he is really good at hiding it) and that makes it all the funnier. I only wish that I had it on camera. 

One-lane bridges abound in NZ. We even shared one with a train track!!

Vineyards are also quite plentiful here, although this explains why some of the wine tastes the way it does...

Sheep!

These little guys are absolutely everywhere. We have been walking on remote trails in the rainforest, on the beach, in the bush and they are there. Wherever we drive, they are there. Wherever we eat, they are on the menu. But they're cute! 

Free WiFi

In the US when you go to a place that offers free WiFi, you are only limited by the amount of time that the place stays open or, in the case of a 24-hour joint,  how long you can tolerate sitting there. Not so in NZ.

Free WiFi generally means that you get 50MB for free and that's it. Time to move on. GTFO. That's enough to check your email and Facebook and upload 4 pictures to the blog and, to top it all off, these places are often few and far between. This means that updating the blog is not easy and it explains why I am not posting as much as I would like.

However, now that we are in Wellington, we have the Te Papa Tangarwea museum that has free, unlimited WiFi. WOOT. Let the photo uploads begin!

Ice ice baby

We got up with the sun...

Hiked through rainforests,

Climbed over boulders...

Dodged waterfalls, 

To get stunning views of the Franz Josef and Fox glaciers.

But can you ever get too close? I think not!

Sandflies

Up until yesterday we had avoided the New Zealand curse that is the sandfly. The Maori goddess Hinenuitepo thought that the sights around the two islands were so beautiful that everyone would just stand agog and nothing would get done – so she created the sandfly to keep everyone moving.

Just with every other predator introduced into NZ (possums, rats, cats, et. al), it worked too well.

The sandfly is very much like a mosquito in that the female of the species sucks blood to feed. However, it differs from the common mozzie – as they are known here – in a few ways:

1- Sandflies are small enough to climb through your average flyscreen. We learned this by sleeping with the vents open. We awoke to swarms of sandflies feasting on our exposed extremities.
2- Sandflies think that DEET is a seasoning. It does not stop them from coming at you. In fact, I think that they see it as a challenge.
3- Sandflies are smart. Though they cannot bite you through your clothing, they will cling to it quietly so that you carry them into the car with you where you are likely to remove one or more layers of clothing and expose that ever-so-sweet flesh that they will then pounce on mercilessly.

The only thing that is saving us now is that it is winter and many of the wee beasties hibernate. With half of them asleep, they were unable to carry the rv away and had to content themselves with perching on the windows staring in at us like a bunch of little kids with their drooling faces pressed against the glass of the candy store.

Acclimation

Finally, after three weeks, we are beginning to acclimate to NZ and living in an RV.

I no longer feel like we are hurtling to our death as we speed through the hilly curves on the wrong side of the road on three wheels as we cross-reference the Department of Conservation campsite pamphlet with the Garmin and physical map book looking for our free or cheap campsite for the night. 

We have learned to take showers that last less than three minutes and to share the thirty gallons of water with each other while saving enough to make coffee and wash the dishes.

Instant coffee is starting to taste good.

The thought of paying NZ$24 for lunch sounds reasonable to us – although I do have to admit that it was a buffet and it was on top of a mountain overlooking Queenstown and that we had to pay NZ$25 to ride the gondola up to the top. I suggested that we walk to the top and save the money. My loyal companions staged a mutiny and we rode up. On the way up the steep hill we were able to see cables fastened into the mountainside that intrepid climbers use to keep from falling off to their death. I guess that was a well-deserved mutiny.

I (usually) remember to lock all the cabinets when I am done opening them so that they don’t fall open en route and spill their contents all over the rig.

Entering a roundabout requires you to yield to those coming from your right. (Remember, that is where the oncoming traffic comes from here).

To turn right out of a roundabout, you enter the death trap with your right blinker on and exit with your left blinker flashing.

Cops will pull you over for not using your blinkers.

The police here are unarmed. They compensate for this fact by working in teams and trying to keep you distracted. One will stand at your window with a flashlight shining in and talk fast asking you to say your address into what looks like an electric shaver while the other runs around the RV shining his light into the windows and shaking it around so that it appears that there are more than one of him.

Now I am a bit concerned that I will have to re-acclimate to the US when we return and that re-acclimation will be a trial by fire in Los Angeles traffic. Maybe I’ll take a cab.  

Milford Sound

Words cannot describe...

A day in Dunedin

Tuesday was a day to relax and take in the beautiful city of Dunedin. This Scottish town has beautiful buildings, tons of history, THREE coasts, a brewery, and a chocolate factory. Guess where we spent our day?

After a nominal exploration of the city (we bought tshirts and went into two old churches) we went to the Cadbury chocolate factory. They did not allow us to take pictures on the tour, but we did snap some photos before the tour began. The chocolate making process was interesting, but what I liked was that the tour guide asked lots of trivia questions and, as a reward, gave out chocolates. We had arrived early for the tour and I spent my time reading all the factoids on the wall about the history of the factory and of chocolate in general (100 cocoa beans would buy you a slave in the Mayan culture. They knew this stuff was good!!). Having spent my time prepping, I did very well in the free chocolate department and left with my hoodie pouch full. The highlight of the tour was a giant chocolate waterfall that dumped a ton of chocolate all at once in front of us.

We had some time to kill between tours so we headed to Baldwin Street - the steepest residential street in the world. It has a 19 degree incline and only CJ felt the insurmountable need to climb the hill. Lewis and I were still too tired from the previous three days of climbing so we stayed at the bottom and took pictures.We did not drive up the hill because we watched a few cars try to do it and they looked as though they were having trouble completing the hill and our rig has trouble on normal hills. Why risk it?

Next, we went to the Speight's brewery tour. The brewery has been in operation since 1860-something and still does things the old-fashioned way. They brew in copper kettles, the brewery is designed to operate using gravity to move the beer from stage to stage, and they age the beer in kauri gyles (kauri is now a protected tree and cannot be harvested. The wood in the gyles is probably worth more than hte rest of the brewery). Like the chocolate tour, the process was interesting but the best part was the tasting afterwards where they left the tourists in a bar with unrestricted access to the taps. CJ and I took advantage of this to try and make our walk back to the RV as difficult as possible.

To wrap up the night, we got takeout and did laundry. Now we are heading to the opposite coast to the famed Milford Sound.

I will update this post with pictures later...

We are safe

There have been several substantial earthquakes in Christchurch these past few days. We are safe and nowhere near the quake zone. We are currently several hours south of ChCh and we are heading to the west coast (ChCh is on the east coast).

We are sore.

After days of rain and driving, we have spent the last three days walking climbing hills, mountains, sand dunes, cliffs, bluffs, and more.

Take a stroller up that!

Saturday, we went on an ambitious hike: 24km beside the Twizel river. The DoC brochure showed a woman pushing a stroller, but after we walked 20km, we were sure that the picture was staged or the stroller was really 4WD because there was no way that a regular stroller would hold up to that terrain.

Just a side note: 20km is roughly 12 miles. I haven't walked 12 miles in one trek in years. It was hell, and we broke CJ on the way back. She limped the last 2-3 km with a pulled hamstring. 

Or across this!

Morning view of Mt. Cook from the RV.

Sunday we went to Mount Cook and hiked the Hooker Valley trail. It wasn't what the name implied, but it was still nice. The trail was supposed to be a 3 hour round trip. It took us six.

Part of the delay was for taking pictures (only about 850 that day), the rest was detours. We took every side path, climbed over every rock, and generally explored the valley thoroughly.

What you can't see is that we are about 300ft above the river below with wind gusts up to 40-50 mph.

Look what I found in the Hooker Valley!

Monday (today) we were in the very south of the south island in a town called Dunedin where we have walked up and down beach-side cliffs looking for seals, penguins, and sea lions with no success. I will post more on this later...

Our campsite in Dunedin.

We are exhausted and looking forward to a lazy day!!

The Quest for Water, continued

Because we’ve found so many free dumpsites in the cities and towns that we don’t want to pay for water if we don’t have to, so we headed south with the bleach water still in the water tank. We stayed overnight in a Department of Conservation basic (e.g. no amenities, but free!!) campsite and we hit the road at dawn, unshowered, headed towards ChCh. We were driving right on the South Pacific ocean and five minutes into our trip, Lewis saw a seal sleeping on a rock by the water so we stopped to snap a pic or two. We pulled the RV over and got out and walked to the embankment and as we approached, seals appeared everywhere! They had been there the whole time but they blended right into the rocks. Imagine that – animals sleeping in an area where they blend in to hide from predators. Who’d have thunk it?

It's a hole!

Afterwards, we continued on to ChCh without finding a free dumpsite. In my booklet, I found that there was a free site in ChCh but since we weren’t going to be near it, I delayed going until we had explored the city. Keep in mind that these city sites are usually a hole in the ground and a hose and they’re located at a pull off in the road and that is what we were expecting. Holes in the ground are generally open 24 hours…

After our adventures in ChCh, it was getting late so we headed to the dumpsite to find that it was actually part of the city dump and that it closed at 4:30. Having hot showered in two days, I made the executive decision to stay in a holiday park with a shower that night. We drive around the corner and into a nice park only to find that it too was closed. Executive decision overruled. It was back to the free site that I had located before with no shower.

The book says you can camp here, but the fence says no.

There were three sites outside of ChCh that I had identified before so we headed to them only to find that the first one was not there, the second one was fenced off and marked no trespassing, and the third was little more than a wide spot in the road overlooking a lake. By this time it was after midnight and we had been up since 5am. We threw it in park and put down for the night right there in the wide spot.

Fresh air! It smelled so much better afterward.

After three days of three people with no showers and a week of rainy weather, the rig was starting to get damp and smell really bad so the next morning I scrapped all of our plans that we had to explore the local seal colony et al, and we made our way down the road to a real holiday camp where we put in around 2pm and spent the day taking showers, doing laundry, and cleaning out the rig. And we finally got water.

The holiday park we stayed at was really nice. I mean, it was an RV park so the buildings were block with tin roofs and it wasn’t the Biltmore, but everything was clean. I mean, it was like they had Lewis and Babette on staff keeping everything neat and tidy. The showers were spotless; the kitchen was so clean that you could eat off the floor; they even had a little hand sink to wash your hands at the dumpsite. We took advantage of this and cooked in the kitchen instead of the RV and there we met some fellow campers: Mr. and Mrs. Rosen are kiwis that live in Picton to the north. They have been campers and trampers all their lives and, after a long conversation with them about kiwi culture, they invited us to camp at their house when we return to Picton.

I think I shall take them up on their offer and then I shall add them to my Christmas card list. ☺

Oops!

I swear that the grass looked like Lewis could drive on it. Who cares that it has been raining for days on end and that the ground is the consistency of Jello and that we are driving a gigantic vehicle loaded with water, fuel, food, and clothes for three people.

He's proud of his skid marks!

When it started to slide sideways down the hill I knew we were in trouble but, being the expert driver that he is, Lewis managed to get it under control and only knock our fresh water tank loose in the process. Lucky for us there was a mechanic only .3km (thank you Garmin) and he fixed it up nice for only $10!

Christchurch (ChCh)

We made it to ChCh on the 8^th and we were planning to eat lunch at a nice restaurant, it being my birthday and all. So we picked one out of the guidebook, programmed the address into the Garmin, and set out.  We didn’t make it.

As you may remember, in February of this year, a magnitude 6.3 earthquake hit the central business district and wreaked havoc on the buildings. The whole of downtown is still fenced off and access is controlled to prevent looting and anyone getting hurt by falling debris.

We walked around the fence surveying the damage for ourselves. The Westin was crack down the center and coming apart at the top. Windows were shattered and the glass still on the ground at a Chinese restaurant. Flowers and little trinkets were still hung in the fences that surrounded homes where people had died when their walls and roofs collapsed on them while they slept.

The worst damaged were the churches all throughout the city. Old stone and brick buildings that house large halls for worship service lack the inner walls that support the structure. Even far outside the CBD, where no other buildings were touched, the churches fell in.

The steeple has been set aside, presumably to be saved. There were several instances of this throughout ChCh.

As we tried to do the things that were on our list to do, we kept finding that the restaurants we wanted were in the red zone. The carve-your-own souvenir place was leveled. It was depressing, so we moved on. 

A week on the road - photo dump

We've been on the road for a week, traveling from east Auckland south along the west coast of the north island on our way to the south island (is that enough directions to get you confused?) and I have a few pictures to share that document it...

Maori totem poles

Gettin' my Paula Deen on...

It has rained every day since we've left Auckland. :(

Checking out the low tide on the Tasman coast.

The cave at cave beach.

Quest for Water

We are rapidly finding out that “three day water supply” really means “one day for three people.” The RV that we rented has a 120-liter water tank. I did my research and this is one of the largest water tanks in its class and that was one of the primary selling points for selecting this rig. Now keep in mind, we are being conservative in our usage. Lewis and I take “two-squirt” showers (one to wet and a second to rinse, soaping up in between), and CJ gets a bit more since she has more hair. Then, after doing dishes and making a cup or two of coffee we are running on empty. Fortunately for us, the En Zed is RV friendly.

Almost every town has water and a dump station that is free or cheap to use and we have great maps that show us where they all are at and tonight was no exception. We were running low on water and our grey water tank was full up and we were headed to a Department of Conservation campsite (i.e. free of charge and amenities). We pulled into this little town and dumped our gray water, filled our fresh, and stopped into the restroom there and that’s when it happened: we saw the sign. The water was under a boil notice due to a bacteria infection in the water. And we just filled our freshwater tank. Dislike. Thus began the quest for clean water.

We had a few options to choose from, but ultimately we needed to sterilize our water tank. We started by dumping the contaminated water (which was good in a way because it rinsed out our grey water tank which was starting to smell) and we popped over to the grocery store, hoping to find iodine or chlorine tablets but to no avail so we settled on the next best thing: bleach. A little in the tank and filled back up with non-contaminated water (at an outrageous price of $10!! Convenience store prices are no better here) and now we have a freshwater tank filled with pool water. We can’t drink it, but it works for washing dishes and will get us through until tomorrow when we get to the next town and dump it all and refill with fresh, critter-free water.

US through the eyes of a Kiwi

It’s interesting to find out what people from other countries think and their general misconceptions of us. We checked into our first holiday park and spent the first half hour talking to the owner. He was fascinated by the civil war and race in our country wanting to know how we felt about the war now that were ‘a generation away.’ Lucky for us, Lewis has been on a Civil War/slavery/Early American history binge of late and was able to have a well-informed discussion on Abe Lincoln’s motivations, the effects of the Emancipation Proclamation, and more. I, of course, just stood there and observed the exchange with an occasional nod because, while I might be able to speculate about the journal entries made during the Civil War, I don’t know much about the actual details of it.

After his American history lesson, the park owner told us about his first trip to L.A. He caught a cab to his hotel and he arrived to find himself surrounded by black people. According to him, ‘they were everywhere’ and he knew that he was going to get mugged and/or beat up. He told us that he’d been in a pub fight or two and he was ready when he got into the elevator to go to his room and several black people joined him. He stood in the corner of the lift waiting for the pounding only to find out that they were just normal, nice people and that what he’d seen on the television was not representative of black people in the U.S. (gasp! Television isn’t true??)

Either way, the little holiday park was interesting, to say the least. I’ll have to let the pictures speak for themselves. 

Our beauty. She was the envy of all who saw her.

Trailers for sale or rent... (actually, just to rent. No really. These are available to rent. Really.)

The honeymoon suite is well apart from everything else. I wonder why?