Travelling Again!

Rainy days are good for one thing – finding a library to update my blog. We seem to be having too many rainy days recently, considering we are now in the driest region of New Zealand – Nelson.

Our adventures didn’t start too far from home at the beginning of November. We hiked the Mount Summers track, which took us up to the snow line in beautiful sunshine and gave gorgeous views of the southern alps.

Our travels really started when we headed over to the west coast, via Arthurs pass. Unfortunately, recent snow fall and rising temperatures meant avalanche risk prevented us from hiking some of the higher peaks in the pass. So to the beach we went!

 

Cheaky native Wekas bite toes and steal sandwiches – they are worse than seagull as they are so sneaky!!

 

We did an overnight tramp through amazing rainforests and then followed a rather deep river down through towering limestone gorge (wading up to my waste in places – so cold!!). We camped under one of the walls, the heat from our camp fire causing air to whistle through the crack in the rocks.

On the way back we ventured into a cave, 200m of stalactites in an amazing corridor, shining with glow worms.

 

 

Pancake rocks were a fantastic site. Sea water surged into a fountain through cracks in the layered limestone rocks. Tara terns were nesting on the surrounding rocks, avoiding the sea water showers.

Uncurling tree ferns fill the forests lining the mountains right down to the coast.

We headed north up the coast for some rock climbing and surfing, and enjoyed the wild rugged coastline. Eating fresh mussels for dinner and watching seal pups play in rock pools. We hiked part of the great heaphy walk that follows the coastline to the most remote part of New Zealand.

The Oparara arches were an amazing sight with rivers flowing through stalagtight laiden roofs. Some of the caves were full of glow worms and large cave spiders.

Heavy rain moved us on inland to see the Buller river in flood, while suspended like superman on a zip wire 10 m above the raging water! We crossed the longest swing bridge in more sedate style!

We headed round through Nelson lakes national park where gale forse winds stopped us climbing and flooded rivers hindered paul's fishing! So we carried on to Nelson and over a cloudy Takaka Hill to Golden Bay.

  

We explored the golden sandy beaches of Golden Bay and hiked into the bush to see the most spectacular stalagtight laden caves. We walked along the sand dunes at farewell spit, climbed some awesome limestone crags and biked into the mountains - making the most of the sunshine before the rain set it.

Winter in Canterbury



Mt Hutt ski field

The snow fall was slow coming and the ski fields struggled to keep snow from blowing away, however, we managed an awesome season learning at Mount Hutt. Only 50min drive to the field, most weekends were spent there. Paul learnt to snowboard and I got on some skis, which culminated in a double black diamond run on our last day of the season, on our first and only powder day. Awesome! We are both totally addicted!  I then followed it with the Peak to Pub race, which involved 2km slalom skiing in a white out, 16km mountain biking, 11km cross country run and 10m river swim! All to meet Paul and friends in the pub!!

 

View from Mt Hutt accross the Canterbury plaines

View from Mt Hutt over the Alps

Cheaky Kea enjoying lunch!

Skiing with friends at Cheeseman club field

So between skiing and calving cows at over 100 farms, the winter flew by! We took a week off in July to enjoy the ski fields in Queenstown and an awe-inspiring overnight trip on Doubtful Sound. Amazingly we were the only passengers, so with a young skipper and first mate we had quite the luxury party. We cruised into the sounds with champaign and enjoyed the mystical feel of the place as the rain clouds blew in. The crew dived for lobster for our dinner and we fished for perch in the evening. The following morning we kayaked around one arm of the sounds surrounded by high mountians, totally alone, listening to tree avalanches falling after the rain. It was a truely unique experience.

Southern albatross, the petrel infront is the size of a gull!!

Paul kayaking in Doubtful sound

Pictures can't capture the atmosphere.

Rugby World Cup fever took over in September, even not being a mad fan you couldn't escape it, and it was a really fun and social time. Sadly no matches were played at Christchurch, but we enjoyed the atmosphere at the big screens they set up in the central park, and numerous house parties. We took a trip to Duneden to see England play Georgia and were lucky enough to get ring-side seats and very close to Johnny!

A long weekend at the end of the winter was spent in Wanaka and Queenstown, enjoying some fantastic skiing and beautiful mountains.

Tosting the season with Jagermeister shots from the Ice Bar at the top of Coronet peak ski field

Views accross the lake from Queenstown

Lake Wanaka from Treblecone ski field guarded by the cheaky Kea

The drive back over to Canterbury

After waiting a month of weekends to get some settled weather in the mountains, after the ski fields closed, our landlord took us flying. The northwestily winds still kept us on our toes as the cloud rolled in over the alps and blocked the view of Mt Cook. We got to take over the controls at times and miraculously stayed in the air, flew over the foothills and Canterbury plaines for some beautiful views. It was a great end to our 8 months in Canterbury. Although I wasn't sad to finish working, I will miss this place and all the friends we have made here.

Now we are packing up ready for our next adventure, over to the west coast and up towards Nelson. We plan to spend a couple of months travelling and enjoying all our outdoor activities through the first part of the summer, then who knows?! We have extended our working holiday visas for another year, so plenty of time to enjoy ourselves!!

Views from above!

Our four seater plane

Spring is here! The not so snowy alps.

We will not have easy access to the internet for a while, however I will try not to leave my next update this long, to fill you in on the next leg of our adventures!

Living for the weekends!

We have now settled in Dunsandal, 30min south of Christchurch, for the winter. I have a mixed job in a large cattle practice where the average herd size is 1000 cows! Paul is labouring, helping with the earthquake clear up in Christchurch. Being out of the city we are feeling very few quakes, Paul is sleeping through most and our house is an old style wooden 'NZ icebox'! so it seems to cope well with the shaking, and the open fire keeps the chill of the autumn nights at bay. The pace of life is much slower here, even noticably slower than in the north island, which can be frustrating. Everyone is incredibly friendly and we have both made some good friends through work and have now joined the local climbing club as the indoor wall in the city is amazingly undamaged, so its great for dark evenings. It feels strange to be going into winter again after a brief summer, but we're really looking forward to the ski season. We are only 40 min form the ski fields so have got season passes for the weekends and have started collecting some gear! Even more stuff!!

During the week i get to drive around the Canterbury planes staring longily at the mountains on the horizon, and every weekend we are up there exploring.

View from one of my farms!

And looking back down over the plains from Mt Hutt ski field.

Lots of bouldering to do! Castle Hill in Arthurs pass.

Yes, this was our mountain bike track! Just never look down!!

View down the valley of Arthurs pass

View over Banks penninsular

Amazing sunsets over Lake Ellesmere, 5 min from our house.

Further up the coast we went whale watching in Kaikora. lucky enough to see two large male sperm whales and a huge pod of dusky dolphins, with a few albatrosses thrown in for good measure!

A wet Easter weekend on the west coast, there are supposed to be some mountains up there! We were able to see the Franz Joseph glacier and all the ice boulders flowing down the river.

Ice cave at base of glacier

 

Reflection of glacier in kettle lake, formed as glacier melted

Ice boulders the size of cars!

True steamy rainforest on the west coast.