It's about time!!

Entry number two! Here’s hoping I get a chance to post this soon (currently writing on the Ferry from North Island to South Island)

Day Five: Unfortunately this one was a little bit of a washout, since it was drizzle and rain all day, but all things considered a lazy day certainly didn’t go astray for us!
In between card games and general lazing about we drove as far towards the south tip of the Peninsula as we could (this is as close as we could get before private property gates brought our drive to a halt. You can see the tip not far away).

After that we drove back, stopped off at the beach along the way and had a walk around the beach and the rocks nearby, and managed to get back into the car before the rain kicked back in again.

Dinner was seafood gumbo with salad and such (mmm, tasty). Now, nearby to our lodgings is a decent sized hill (see below)

Our first day here I looked at that and thought it’d be great to climb, and there’s a walking path up the side that Adrian got partway up on the morning of Day Four before he was defeated by steepness and wind.
Around 9pm after it became quite certain that the rain and wind wasn’t going to stop for more than a few minutes I said screw it, threw on my jacket, grabbed my torch and headed out to give it a climb (everyone else thought I was nuts and opted to stay home). I found that the ‘walking track’ was basically a narrow dirt path (now gone to mud) that was at times a sixty plus degree incline. I made it to the top, sat down for a while unable to see a thing between the dark and rain, then ‘climbed’ back down again, falling on my arse a dozen times and slipping and sliding in the mud. But I managed not to pitch over the side and returned to our lodgings triumphant, wet and muddy (and then had icecream). Really really rewarding climb actually, very glad I did it.

Day Six: Not much to report about day six to tell you the truth. We got up, we drove for six-ish hours to Wellington, we had tasty dinner at a pub there and a walk down the shore, then headed to bed. Yay exciting day!

Day Seven: Two big things today. First of all was a trip to the Weta cave. Now this isn’t anything to do with Wetas (apart from being the logo), Weta is a special effects company that’s worked on Lord of the Rings, Kong, Avatar, the Avengers and a whole bunch of other things. Prop and landscape making and models and digital imaging, all that kind of thing. Here are a bunch of photos from the gift shop:

We also went through what they call the “Weta Cave”, which is where they’ve basically setup a bunch of props on the walls and tables and lead tour groups through it (there are windows into the workshops and during the week you can actually see people making stuff).
Rather than having ‘tour guides’ they actually get people that work in the workshop to do the tours, so we were lead through by a very talkative young lady who works in prop making, building guns and swords and that kind of thing, who gave us a thorough description of the design process, how their 3D printing works, that kind of thing.

I tell you what, the stuff that they can do is fantastic! Their painting people can make just about any surface look like anything else, for example, the armour that the Witch King wore in Lord of the Rings, that looked like black steel? In all the fighting scenes, that’s a rubber compound so that all those spikes didn’t kill anyone).
Then at the opposite end of the spectrum they really do make some of the props fully-functional. Weta did a series of live-action mini-movies for Halo 3, and one of the things that they did was build a Warthog (one of the jeeps used in the games). A fully working one, including independent wheels, airbags that allow the wheels to raise and lower as required, and a (presumably non-functional) minigun turret on the back.

Apparently after they did the mini movies someone from Bungee (the company that makes Halo) called them up and went
Bungee: “Umm… did you guys make a Worthog for those movies?”
Weta: “Yes”
Bungee: “A *working* one?”
Weta: “Yes…”
Bungee: “Can you actually drive it?”
Weta: “Yes, you can”
Bungee: “Can WE drive it?...”

So a bunch of people from Bungee came over to Weta to drive the Warthog around, and crashed it into a wall (thankfully it’d been built to withstand that).

Really, really awesome place to go through, the only downside was that due to IP laws there were no photographs allowed L.

Then the afternoon was a half day tour through various Lord of the Rings filming locations, which was a lot of fun. We went all over Middle Earth, from the Quarry that was turned into Helm’s Deep and Minis Tirith:

To the River Anduin: (Well, one of the five rivers that makes it up at least)

To Rivendell:

To Isenguard:

                                               

To part of The Shire, specifically where Frodo and Co are chased by a farmer at the start of Fellowship, roll down the hill, and have to hide from a Ringwraith. Here’s some random shots:

And here’s a shot of me tumbling down the hill exactly where the Hobbits did:

And here’s Cumber and a pair of girls from the tour, pretending to be a Ringwraith at the same spot where you see the Ringwraith silhouette in the movie:

So yeah, that one was a lot of fun. There was then dinner at the Green Parrot (apparently Vigo Mortensen’s favourite eatery in the area), washing the cars, and getting ready for a stupidly early morning.

Day Eight: Up at 6am, three hours on a Ferry to the South Island, where we will get on a bus for a six-seven hour drive to Christchurch.
Met up with Lara when we got to our hostel, went out for Asian dinner… that was about it really. Exciting day!

Day Nine: Another travelling day here, but a MUCH more interesting one. We took the scenic railway from Christchurch to Greymouth, and oh my god the scenery was gorgeous!
The one hiccup was that there was some screwup with their computer systems so our seats were double-booked for part of the journey (the whole car that we were in was booked by a tour group), and we had a *really* rude and arrogant travel guide bitching at us. It was pretty obvious that double-booking had happened when both of us had tickets for those seats, so getting the train organiser on duty to look into it was to be expected, but this guide, yeesh, “Here are the people who are taking our seats!” “These people are sitting in our place”, there was no “Hang on everyone, the train has double booked, lets get this sorted”, everything was most definitely *our* fault and we were maliciously stopping some of his people from having seats.
In the end the rep from the train company (who was a really nice guy) moved us into the café cart for the duration of the double-booked leg, gave us free tea, coffee and hot chocolate, and kept coming past going “Get your camera out, there’s a great river out the right side in a minute” and such.

Unfortunately from this point on I'm having issues with my photos order, and swapping the format is resulting in me not being able to preview them on my netbook, so very few photos until I get back to Australia :(

We split up that afternoon, some of us did a tour of the Monteith’s Brewery and some went to a shop just out of town that sells possum fur products.
Brewery tour was great value, $20 got us three drinks from on tap, plus getting to pour one of our own, and a couple of coupons.

Our accommodation for that night was awesome. We got a very nicely spacious flat, the most room we had all trip!

Day 10: This was a big one. Franz Josef Glacier trek!! We actually managed to be the last group onto the ice for the day (and we went out in the morning) due to the cloud levels.
Because you have to helicopter onto the Glacier it’s not uncommon for the choppers to just not be able to get there, and the cloud cover was very low. If we’d left ten minutes later then we wouldn’t have gotten onto the ice at all, so whew, lucky us!!

I have to say, the Glacier is *amazing*, basically huge piles of frozen waves, with tiny, short caves and all kinds of things through it (we even got to go through a couple!). Just… it’s really hard to describe, take a look for yourself!

If you’ve ever wanted to take a look, do it *soon*, the glacier is receding really fast and it just won’t be around that much longer. If I recall right the guide said they’ve lost 70m (half the glacier) of depth in the last five years.

On the colours that you’re seeing, the black is, of all things, Ash. From Australia. Yay bushfire ash blowing across the water and dirtying up the glacier.
The blue ice is caused by the density of the ice. More of the visible light spectrum gets absorbed and thus it appears blue. Sometimes you’ll even get Green ice but that’s exceedingly rare, and the kind of thing that you’d need to tunnel way into the depths of the ice (in somewhere like Alaska) to find.
Amusingly our guide said that because the blue ice is so dense and the air bubbles are so compacted, if you were to put a cube of Glacial ice in your drink, the release of air as it melted would probably shatter the glass!
Actually, our guide was fantastic. He’d randomly carve stairs into the ice with his pickaxe to make for easier standing for photos and such and was generally really laid back and easy to talk to.
We also found out why all the water in NZ is that amazing blue colour, it’s because of the rocks in the area. As the glacier and mountain water flows down it grinds the rocks on the way through, and the ‘rock flour’ in the water is what gives everything that glorious colour.

So, a helicopter ride to and from an awesome glacier walk, what on earth could make the day better? Well I’ll tell you. Hot pools.
Our glacier tour tickets included entry into the nearby hot springs (glacier water heated by thermal vents), where we merrily soaked away for a few hours. Holy cow it was amazing! I swear my feet hadn’t felt that soft in ages, huzzah for soaking feet directly in a water vent.

We split into two groups for dinner that night. Beef nachos at a tasty pub with good friends. Fantastic day!

Day Eleven:  Today was another travel day, several hours driving to Queenstown. We took a few stops along the way when there was amazing scenery (which NZ is kinda good at), here’s a shot of an amazing lake that was just and awesome:

We checked into our accommodation, some people went grocery shopping, and Lara made awesome vegetarian chili for us all for dinner.

Day Twelve:  This was a day that we’d all been both looking forward to and dreading. Throwing ourselves off a cliff.
Half of us went paragliding and the other half went hang gliding. I guess I was lucky in that I didn’t feel nervous until the last few minutes, and I was mostly able to push that aside.

It was all done tandem, and hang gliding in my case. The guy I was gliding with gave me a few ‘to dos’ for before takeoff (basically, “When I say go we take two big steps, then run, and keep running until I say stop even if there’s nothing under your feet, in case we drop lower again”, and how to hold onto his harness properly).
We needed to stand for a minute or two waiting for the wind to right itself, so I’m standing there on the cliff edge forcibly keeping myself calm, and then evidently the wind has shifted and my ‘driver’ has just shouted “Run!” and started going, took me a split second to register and then I was running without letting myself think.

Once we took off though... wow. It was a lot more stable than I thought it’d be, and in general I was too distracted by the scenery and the sensation of *flying* to be scared. He even let me control the glider for a bit, but by ‘control’ he was quite clearly shifting his weight in the harness to move me as required, so it was more an illusion of control, but still awesome.
here’s a photo, I also have a video if anyone wants to see it in person:

After gliding we all kind of sat around for a large chunk of the day as adrenaline wore off, going “Wow… we *flew*!” Before wandering into Queenstown proper later that evening, having the most amazing burger I’ve ever eaten, and deciding what to do with the next day, since we had an ‘empty day’.

Day Thirteen:  We once again split the party, half of us went on a winery/cheesery walking tour (and by ‘walking tour’ I mean they went “We don’t have to pay no stinking bus to drive us between these places, lets WALK!”) while the rest of us went White water sledging.
What the frak is White Water Sledging I hear you ask? Well, imagine a cross between a boogy-board and a toboggan that you put your arms and upper torso on/in while the rest of you stays in the water, and then going (twice) down a river with some rapids and some calm bits!

It was *way* more of a workout than I would have thought, I don’t do resistance training so the kicking against the current when needed and the effort of holding my arms in the one position to support my body really wore me out.

During the first run (we did the same section of river twice) we pulled to the side and those who wanted to got to do a “Cliff jump”. They’ve found a section with a cliff and deep enough water to safely jump from, and you get to climb up and choose how high an area you want to jump off.
As I am kinda want to do I went for the biggest one, which given the water levels were a few meters lower than usual, was seven meters high.
I was more scared than I was from hang gliding! And my arse hit the bottom of the river (only softly at least), which was apparently a first.

Day Fourteen:  Time for another big day. Horse Riding!! Unfortunately Lena, who had been coming down with a cold, didn’t feel well enough to come along so we were only six rather than seven (plus one girl on her own), but we had a great fun trail ride.
I was on the only mare in the group (other than the one that the guide at the rear was still training), named Peaches, who believe me was *not* all ‘peaches and cream’. Apparently she likes ‘bullying the guys’, got kicked at once, tried to bite one, and didn’t get along with Tank, one of the bigger horses.
I’ve made her sound like a total cow there, but she wasn’t really, just.. not placid. She was neck rein trained, which was new for me, but we came to an understanding partway into the rid: I held the reins very loosely in one hand and mostly let her do her own thing, and she realised that in a split second I could pull those reins as tight as I wanted and assert control. We got on quite well after that.
I was happy to find out that I can still sit a horse quite well, and control her when she shies. I decided not to push it and join the trot/canter group that split off from the walkers. I figured first time on a horse in I don’t know how many years, I’d take it easy J

Our guide did tell us some amusing stories about Lord of the Rings stuff that’d been filmed in the area. For eg, you know the scene where all the Riders of Rohan line up for a rousing speech? Most of them were women.
The deal was they used a whole bunch of locals and their horses (there were 250 riders and horses in that scene) dressed up in makeup and armour etc, but 75% of the riders in the area are female, and because of the time of year most of the men were lambing and dealing with stock. So yep, most of those big burly warrior men are women in muscle suits with fake human hair beards.

***

And as a final stop of the day, we went to the Skyline Restaurant, so we all got dressed up (or as much as we could from our travel clothes). Getting there involved travelling up to the top of a very large hill by cable car, and having an amazing buffet dinner (all restaurant quality food, and they didn’t run out of anything). Perfect way to cap off our trip to Queenstown, and in a move completely in character for my friends, Lara sneaked off to speak to the guy they had playing guitar over dinner to get him to sing Happy Birthday Darren. Sure it was a day early, but all good.

Day Fifteen:  Yay for another travelling day! Many hours of car travel down to Milford Sound. Which apparently has absolutely no mobile reception and only very expensive WiFi, otherwise this blog would have been up by the end of the day.

Day Sixteen:  Up early to head along to Sea Kayaking! Unfortunately there’s no photos of this one since I wasn’t game to take my camera on the water, dry bag or not.

Firstly, we found out that Milford Sound is misnamed, in waterways terms a “Sound” is where the entryway to the sea has been carved out by river activity, and a “Fjord” Is one that’s been carved out by a glacier. Milford Sound is most definitely a Fjord.

Whatever you want to call it it’s very pretty, the water is a very dark, almost metallic blue-green , caused by the
vegetation that washes into the Fjord from the cliffs. The cliffs are very steep, rock, and covered in vegetation. Some trees manage to sink their roots into the rocks, and the rest kind of sit on top of it, all tethered together in one big mass. Every now and then there are “Treevalanches” when some tree will come loose and drag a whole section of the cliff’s greenery down into the water.
It takes around five years for the moss and such to regrow, 30-50 years for the small shrubs to regrow, and a couple of hundred years for the big trees to return fully. And then the whole lot will come tumbling down again.

We were out there for a few hours (dear gods that was hard work!), saw a few birds and a couple of seals. Good fun all around.

Then it’s time for the looong car ride back to Queenstown, as half of us head off tramping tomorrow. 

I'll try to take plenty of photos of the mountains :)

And there we go, finally an actual update. The next one (covering tramping) will be much sooner :D

At Long Last!!!!

Howdy everyone!! So, it's FINALLY time for entry one of the NZ travel blog :D

Sorry it's taken so long, apparently my netbook doesn't like tethering to my phone for internets, and it's taken ages to get into a place with WiFi when I've also been able to squeeze in the time to post (as it is I'm on a rickety table covered in plastic bags as we sort everything for going on the Ferry tomorrow morning).

I’d intended to try and have the first entry up the day we landed, but it was not to be. So, here’s the deal:

Day 1: I won’t bore you with the details of the flight and stuff, that was pretty standard and boring. We landed in Auckland, grabbed our hire cars (which very nicely had free SIM cards that just needed to be topped up, since NZ doesn’t normally do free SIMs) and headed to our accommodation (a hostel in the city).

Upon the recommendation of the lady behind the counter we went to a place called “Elliott Stables” for dinner, which was utterly awesome. Imagine a food court, but the tables are setup like a restaurant (with numbers), and there are food places around the sides. So you go up, place your order and give your table number, and it’s delivered to the table. So the ‘restaurants’ don’t have tables on their own, they all use the ‘food court’.
Really nice food too, I had Jamaican Jerk Chicken with a side of Jumbalaya, others had everything from crepes to chinese.

Day Two: Sleep was had and next day was off to Hobbiton. There were a few confused turns, numerous roadworks and a four car accident on the highway but we got there in the end and could change the time of our tour. I’ll say this, the place is gorgeous, tonnes of flowers and fruit trees and such, piles of moths and butterflies, it’s really well maintained and setup. Also, take a look at this, the bumblebees are HUGE!!

They told us a few quite interesting tales of the place. The big oak at the top of Bag End? Yeah, they found a great oak for the shot out in Rotorua, so they cut it down and then into pieces, carefully labled each piece, and then reassembled the now very dead oak where they wanted the shot. They then imported thousands of fake oak leaves from Thailand and wired them onto the tree.
Then when The Hobbit rolled around, they realised that the oak had rotted and really couldn’t be reused. So they took it apart again, made a mould of each piece, recreated it out of resin, reassembled it, imported thousands more leaves….

The tour ended with a drink at the Green Dragon Inn (their cider was actually very tasty) and then we were off again to Rotorua.
Accommodation was a little self-contained place in a holiday park which was thankfully much cooler than the Auckland. We headed off to a wildlife park place. Alas my photos aren’t too great due to lighting, but here’s a few to give you ideas:

We saw Kiwis and Wekas and such. Laura was right, NZ seems to be a place where every niche that might be taken up by another animal species has been taken over by birds instead (Wekas are basically bird like rodents in terms of the place in the ecosystem that they occupy. Much cuter though).
Also, take a squiz at this:

Those rainbow trout are a handspan high, they’re bloody HUGE. Alas no eating them, apparently they’re protected in NZ.

After that, back to our lodgings and we made dinner (salmon, mussels and chicken with haloumi and salad. Tasty!)

Day Three: We had a bit of a slow start, but first stop was to the Wainangi (I think?) hot springs, which was the site of a huge volcanic eruption 130 years ago and has gone from “barren wasteland” to “A scene from a Dinosaur movie” in that time.
Take a look at some of these, the hot pools and mists and boiling water and stuff made some amazing pictures:

Unfortunately we only had time for a third or something of it before we had to leave, as it was time to head to ZORBING!!

For the record, Zorbing (ie rolling down a hill in a giant hamster ball) is absolutely utterly completely awesome. Kicks the crap out of everything else we’ve done, Hobbiton had no chance of competing. There’s two balls, one inside the other, and then water in the inner ball so that you don’t have issues with friction, and you get kicked down a windy course on a hill. It was basically impossible *not* to be grinning like an idiot when you get to the bottom, it was amazing (so much so that most of us paid for a fourth run rather than the three we’d intended).

Some photos!!

From there, well, a ‘nice’ long four hour drive to the Mahia Peninsula where we get to stop for a few days and not rush about the place. We went via Napier and dinner, and finally rocked up at Mahia at 12:30am (yay for finding our accommodation in the dark!)
Most people were kinda frayed and tired after all that, so sleep was had as soon as we could. 

Dare Four: After sleeping in (well, I did, most people were up a bit earlier but dear gods I needed the sleep) we drove up to the Morere Hot Springs and rainforest preserve.  Basically this place is a big rainforest national park with a hot springs setup in the middle.
So we walked for a couple of hours through rather lush rainforest (see below for pictures) with a picnic lunch in the middle, before spending a nice long time recuperating in the hot springs they had (one hot pool, one super hot pool, one ‘holy crap that’s one degree above freeing’ pool, and you’re supposed to swap between the three).

Here's some random shots:

They had a really awesome gift shop there as well with a lot of locally made jewellery and such (including possum fur nipple warmers… I have no idea where the idea for those came from!)

After that four people headed up to Gisbourne to get groceries, and myself and Laura headed back down to Mahia to get the place tidied up, take a look around town and such.
Here’s a couple of shots of the coastline nearby J

Dinner was BBQed seafood with salad, and desert will come once we’ve digested that a bit.
Aaaaand that’s it for the first blog post! Sorry it’s taken me so long to get this up, but I hope it was interesting reading J.

It doesn't actually bring you up to date, but with a three hour ferry ride and eight hour bus ride tomorrow, I think I'll write up the remaining stuff then rather than tonight.

More to come soon!!