Hunting the rare yellow eyed penguin

29-03-07

Weather report... As per Scotland, damp, drizzly with low cloud and mist.

Looked out of the window and promptly went back to bed for an hour hoping the weather might lift. No such luck, the drizzle was here to stay for the day.

We spent a couple of hours in the morning, checking out Dunedin itself. If you're passionately into dark forboding architecture then the other things that might draw you to Dunedin are the cafe and music culture going on here plus the shopping. Oddly enough this place seems to be better equipped with shops than Wellingburgh, To me the highlight of the town was the art gallery, for Deb it would have been the shops but she's spent all her spending money and is hanging on for her birthday ;o)

Dunedin is a big university town and it shows, everywhere you look there are students. Apparently there can be up to 18,000 of them, considering there's only 110,000 people in the whole town you can see why you see them all over the place. The consequences are lots of very cheap eating establishments, mostly oriental in nature, second-hand clothing stores and pubs/bars.

After lunch we took a drive up the coast to look at the Moeraki boulders. These are stones that have formed into almost perfect spheres after milions of years of mineral deposits, etc, then become exposed as the cliffs have been eroded by the sea. I took a few photos before a bus load of Japanese tourists desecended on the beach, then headed further up the coast to Oamaru.
Oamaru is famous for having two different colonies of penguin, the yellow eyed and the other being the blue penguin. The blue penguin only comes ashore later on in the afternoon/evening and given we were unlikely to see many as it is moulting season we decided to head off in search of the yellow eyed ones. And we found them, well at least 5/6 of them heading up the beach and then up onto the cliffs where they spend the night. Apparently you don't get to see many of these together as they're not particularly sociable, so we did well with the ones we saw here. Unfortunately, we were a good 100 metres from them due to the height of the cliffs. We were to have better luck later ;o)

On the way back to Dunedin, we decided to check out a place called "Shag point"! No really, that is the name!!! It was starting to get a little dark, but good penguin and seal country, we're becoming experts now! As luck would have it the cliffs were a lot lower here, only 5/10 metres in places and just as we arrived a fully moulted yellow eyed penguin came out of the see and waddled up the beach and sat directly below us. You could have almost reached out and touched it ;o)) We both managed to get a few good photos of the penguin and a few seals nearby before Deb had to head back to the car because of the cold. Did I mention is becoming a camera geek now? I caught her discussing her camera featues with another tourist yesterday.....;o0
A misty drive back to Dunedin after a successful days pengiuin hunting was finished off with a Morrocan themed bar.

Next stop the adventure capital of NZ, Queenstown........

Arrived in bonnie Scotland (Dunedin)

28-03-07

Weather report... left a cloudy Wellington to land in glorious sunshine in Dunedin. Later on as we made our way on to the Otago peninsular the mist and cloud came down.

The flight down was on time, nice and smooth, the only hiccup being a screaming, vomitting kid sad directly behind us! Deb managed to hold her patience and focus on eating her chicken sandwich instead, very impressive! Landed at Edinburgh airport ok, oops meant to say Dunedin airport, this town is very much a miniature version of Endinburgh. Even the countryside round here looks like the lowlands of Scotland, and with the changeable weather thrown in it's hard to tell the difference. It's not until you speak to the locals that you realise you're still in NZ, they're far too polite to be Scottish ;o)
We picked the hire car up from the airport, again very efficient and no hassle. As it was still fairly early, 11am, and the weather was looking ok, we went straight out to the Otago Peninsular to look for penguins and other wildlife. We followed a windy scenic road along the waters edge with small hamlets dotted around, stopping occasionally for me to check out photo opportunities. We stopped at a small cafe for a snack and relished in the 70's nostalgia of the place before moving onto the penguin conservation sanctuary!

We spent an informative 90 minutes or so at the sanctuary checking out a few of the Yellow Eyed penguins (the rarest penguins in the world). The following day we managed to track some of these down in the wild, more of that later.

From there we then headed back to Dunedin to find the motel. The motel, Farrys on George Street, is well located just a 5 minute walk from a number of reatauarants then just a further 5 minutes into the centre of town. It's a comfortable place, nice and clean, quiet and comes with a complementary broadband line! So, later on in the evening Deb was able to Skype Audrey and Peter for a quick 10 minute chat.

We finished the day with a good meal in a local fish restaurant.

More from Wellie...

27-03-07

Weather report... nope, you guessed wrong... cloudy and cool this morning!
We took off in the car this morning and drove around the Wellington peninsular, a nice little twisty road hugging the shoreline.

There were a few little communities dotted around the coastline and as with Welington they had used every available piece of potential building land on the hillside.

The car went back just after lunch, so that left us to explore a bit more on foot as the sun came back out. Too be honest we would have preffered another night in Napier than find something to do in Wellington for one more night. Oh well, wonderful thing hindsight!

Tomorrow we get an early morning flight to Dunedin to start our tour of the South Island. Is that really 10 days gone already!!!

Next update from Dunedin.....

Wandering around town...

26-03-07

Weather report... Sunny and warm, cloudy and cool mid-morning then warming up again later. Noticeably cooler than Napier though.

Straight out the back door of the motel onto Cuba Street, apparently it's the "hip" street in Wellington. If felt more like a cross between Swindon high street and Covent Garden to me, lot's of little boutique shops, cafes and restaurants. A bit of retail therapy for Deb on the way down to the harbour side before going into Te Papa, the museum of NZ.

The museum is certainly worth a visit, certainly if you have children, as a lot of effort has putting into making it as educational as possible with activity areas dotted all around.

We then moved on to the major shopping street, Lambton Quay, for some more retail therapy for Deb. I don't think Deb was that impressed though, although I did manage to spend some money on a "beanie" hat ready for the colder climes of the South Island! As in keeping with the Kiwi's passion of walking there are loads of outdoor holiday type stores stocking everything you could need for an adventure holiday.

We found the cable car station (funincular railway) on Lambton Quay and took the ride up to the botanical gardens. The sun came back out for us here so we spent a pleasant couple of hours wandering up and down and around the gardens. A bit more shopping on the way back to the motel and then wash and brush up for the evening.

The city is very compact which means almost everything is reachable on foot, again clean, tidy and friendly service. It's very much a cosmopolitan city, with not a huge amount of history, so really 3/4 days would be enough to cover everything off after which you'd probably want to start venturing into the surrounding countryside.

As this was a cosmopolitan city we finished the evening with an Indian curry, in fact a very good curry.

Drive down to Wellie

25-03-07 - cont....

We left the wine groves of Hawkes Bay behind and headed south across the south eastern prairie. This part of North Island is very dry and has sparse vegetation, it's apparent this country has wildly differing climate and vegetation zones! For a couple of hours we passed through the flat dry pasture land, this area is clearly all about the farming. The small towns we passed were clearly built to serve the farming community, and appear to host a very religious community, with "God" promo boards scattered around the fields and towns. The animals farmed appear to be sheep (of course, it's NZ!), cattle and deer, with the odd Lhama and Alpaca thrown in! Plenty of land for sale as well.....
The towns themselves are appearing to follow a familiar theme, the outskirts consist of the industrial units and car dealerships, then you get the low rise wooden boarded homes in the suburbs. The town centres usually consist a single street with retail outlets down the side and a wide grassed area in the middle of the carriageways. I've yet to see a car dealership out of town, and second hand delares out number manufacturer franchises 2 or 3 to 1. Thinking back to Rotorua there were literally dozens of second hand dealers all lined up down one street. I get the feeling people don't buy and sell privately, they must prefer to use the dealers! Almost all the cars on the road are Japanese in origin and quite old, I guess the temperate weather stops them rusting!
Back to the trip.., we stopped at Mount Bruce conservation centre on the way down to stretch our legs and check out some of the animals and fauna they had there. Another chance to see a Kiwi bird ;o)
Suitably refreshed at Mt Bruce we set off for the final leg into Wellington. Again the scenery getting more vegetated and dramatic, with a fun drive up and over a high pass.
The nearer we got to Wellington the more it felt like England. The road turned into a dual carriageway, the traffic started to speed up and the traffic got heavier. Up until then all the locals seemed to stick religiously to 100Km/Hr, I don't know what the fine for speeding round here is, but it must be steep as they all seemed to be programmed from birth not to exceed the limit! That said, it's probably all this fantastic scenery they've got to look at that helps to calm them down ;o)
We found our next stop ok, the Victoria Court Motor Lodge and within 5 minutes we were unpacked, settled in and kettle on! We're getting the hang of living out of a suitcase now.... The accomodation is a bit more basic, I'd probably rate it as a 3 star, but it's , clean, functional and more importantly perfectly located just 5 minutes walk from central Wellington.
We've just had a quick bite to eat at an Italian restaurant and are heading off to bed. What is it with the Italian restaurants over here, none of them seem to do Pizza! Bye for now......

Debs gallery

Late breaking news, Debs gallery has appeared.....For those just joining us, the galleries can be found here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pinkpotamus/collections/72157614902902931/

Motor on down to Wellington

25-03-07

Weather report... yes you guessed, hot and dry... again.Up and about early to check out and motor on down to Wellington. We'll probably stop off a couple of times on the way down. Catch up with you later.

Art Deco galore

24-03-07 - cont...

Hottest day so far, we're definitely on the hot side of the island now, hence all the wine groves, as far as the eye can see!

We spent the morning wandering round Napier, a bit of a cross between Miami and Brighton. Plenty of cafe, bars, restaurants and for Debs a few shops for her first bit of retail therapy. Of course I wasn't going to hang around standing outside shops like all the other bored men, so I headed off with the camera. I've put plenty of pics of Napier up on the site, getting bored with them yet?! Just wait until I get home, you're only seeing about 1/3 of them in the gallery ;o) Once some of them are tweaked a bit, turned to monchrome, etc, they should ome up real nice. That can wait until I get home though....

Napier had it's own sandy/shingle beach, agan it was almost deserted, which given it was Saturday and only 50 yards from town a real surprise. If this was England, given it's proximity to the town and with the weather it would be packed!

We then headed off into wine growing country and stopped into the Trinity Hill winery for a quick bit of wine tasting, and a bite to eat under a shady umbrella. There are probably 50 or so wineries in this region, so with all the different varieties that get produced you could have a different bottle everyday.

A quick change into our posh kit for the anniversary meal and then straight back out again. Stopped by another look out point to catch a few sunset shots, then down into town for the meal. Deb went for the duck, probably shot local, shooting duck seems to be their equivalent of pheasant shooting. must be a doddle shooting duck compared to pheasant, duck are twice as large and travel at half the speed of pheasant. I went for the rack of NZ lamb, cooked absolutely perfectly and we washed it down with a bottle of Hawkes Bay Church Road Merlot Cabernet Sauvignon 2004.

We had a quick wander round town after the meal, the place was deserted. Do you remember how it use to be 20 or so years ago in town in the UK? You could go for a walk in the evening and feel completely safe, no idiots running around throwing up and fighting everywhere. At least we use to do it in the pub out of harms way ;o)))

The town itself is great, again very clean, people are friendly. Great service in the retail points, nothing like England where you're lucky to get a grunt out of a hormonal teenager on drugs serving you!

Finished the day by "Skyping" Debs mum, we had a good fast wireless broadband connection so we could use voice and video. A bit of delay on the line but more than useable.

Tommorrow we're off down to the capital, Wellington .

Arrived in Napier

24-03-07

Weather report... hot and dry... again.

We're now in the Bella Tuscany motel on the outskirts of Napier, again thoroughly recommended. Deb has just flooded the bath room by not shutting the shower door properly. Joe gets to sacrifice his towel ;o( More to follow later... assuming I don't drink too much wine tonight.

Thermal highway

23-03-07

Weather report... hot and dry.

Up and about early, left the motel at about 09:30. The plan was to follow the "Thermal explorer" highway, so named because of the large number of thermal activity spots (100's), down to Lake Taupo then across to Napier.

First stop was Wai-O-Tapu, arguably the best thermal place to visit. The only let down was the geyser, only because they force it to erupt by throwing a soap bar in to break the surface tension of the water and get it to blow (more like a under-powered hosepipe). Joe's tip - the Geysers at Te Puia are much better. So arrive at Wai-O-Tapu at 10:00ish when everyone goes to see the geyser, and go straight into the park, you'll have it all to yourself ;o)

Fabulous colours and shapes in the thermal formations, check out some of our pictures. I could have spent several days in this place alone, a photographers delight! In fact NZ is becoming one huge photography opportunity, I sense Deb is losing a little patience, although she is getting in some good shots herself on her birthday present (more pictures of Joe taking pictures).

I'll let the pictures cover the rest of the trip to Wai-O-Tapu.

A quick stop at Huka Falls near Lake Taupo to check out the rapids then headed down through more amazing scenery to Napier. Mile on mile of managed forestation round here, NZ will never run out of wood with it being this well farmed. Napier is wine country so I expect we may sample a bottle for our anniversary tomorrow.

Finished the day with a quick trip up a local peak to check out another amazing sunset. A little misty but still worth it. Local fresh fish and chips for tea.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/noddygoestotoytown/sets/72157614848735003/

Mystery tour

22-03-07

Whilst I remember, weather report.... obvious from the pictures, hot and dry still!

Today we went on a Joe mystery tour drive to explore the countryside round Rotorua and up to the coast line. Set off North from Rotorua and stopped off to check out some lakes and rivers, waterfalls, etc. I must say, everything is exceptionally clean and tiday, even out in the countryside, not one piece off litter have I seen. Also the roads are fabulous, wide open, well maintained and fun to drive.... now I know why all the locals drive Imprezzas and Skylines ;o)

After an hour or so we dived into to cafe on a farm / adventure center for a spot to eat. Lots of the farms round here double up and do some form of adventure stuff, not surprising really with the fantastic scenery (walking tours), rolling hills (off road driving) and fast flowing rivers (rafting and jet boating, bigger and better to come though). We sat on the veranda, no one else around, looking out across the countryside listening to nothing... absolute peace and silence... work was now a distant memory ;o))

The scenery round here is like a cross between Salisbury plain, the New Forest, the Tweenies and pre-historic world... on overdrive. For the fans of the LOTR this is Hobbiton. Pampas grass, flax's and tree ferns grow like weeds here. Did I mention we actually passed another car on the way! Mile on mile off empty roads.

We hit the area to the East of Whakatane and then followed the coastline, mile on mile off wide empty beach. Tooo tempting not to explore. So we parked up and wandered along "our" own beach for half an hour. Deb was of exploring water pools with her camera whilst I was stalking seagulls. Time to move on...

Headed back to Rotorua through a back road, following various lake shorelines, stopping off occasionally to take some piccies. Starting to get the hang of my camera now, shooting without having to think what settings I need to be on. Give it a few more days and you should start seeing the odd decent one appear amongst the usual tourist snaps ;o)

Had a nice meal in an Italian restaurant to finish the day. Heading off to Napier tomorrow, could have done with at least one more day here.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/noddygoestotoytown/sets/72157614920138228/

Alpin motel

21-03-07 - cont...

Been offline for a few days. Back online as we have wireless at the Napier motel we're now at.

Just to quickly mention, the motel was the Alpin Motel, if you have transport I would thoroughly recommend it.

To finish off, the night of the 21st, we popped into a local hotel for a buffet then headed back for an early night. Our clocks are still a bit out, getting up early is fine but it's the nights that still catch us out. That said I'd rather be up with the birds and make the most of the daylight, it's not very often you get to the other side of the world and what's the point of spending the time in bed (our anniversary might be different!)

Meet the locals....

21-03-07

Great nights kip last night, nice comfy bed a beer did the trick!

Went to Te Puia today for the Maori cultural centre, geysers and mud pools. All in all an interesting and enjoyable morning. We sat in on a short traditional Maori welcome meeting and concert, where they invited men to perform the Haka. I steered clear, after my last experience on stage in Malaysia I thought better of it! Deb was impressed by the mens tongues, one in particular got her attention, he managed to touch the bottom of his chin...;o)

It started to get a little hot during the morning and of course I'd forgot to bring my cap so I'm wandering round with a glowing head at the moment. Deb has caught the sun a little as well, with a nice red shoulder line.

We went along to the Skyline Skyrides in the afternoon. A quick trip up a cable car to the top of a hill, where you could then whizz down the hill in a wheeled luge. I did well to get Deb in the cable car, there was no way she was going in the luge though, it meant wearing a helmet! But I did catch her out later on when we decided to walk back down the hill. We got half way down and came to a dead end, the only way back was a steep walk or jumo onto an open ski-lift, the ones where your feet dangle. Deb jumped on without thinking then spent most of the trip back up with her eyes closed and hands gripping the safety bar tightly! I was well proud of her ;o)

We had a quick drive into town, where I managed to find a road that went down to the lake, not literally, but along the lake shore. There was plenty of bird wildlife about, so it was out with the camera and fired off a few shots. Deb then had great delight taking pictures of me taking pictures of things...;o(

http://www.flickr.com/photos/noddygoestotoytown/sets/72157614920080970/

Photos...

All photos will be on flickr.....

http://www.flickr.com/photos/noddygoestotoytown/collections/72157614919339924/

Drive down to Rotorua

20-03-07
Cleared through Auckland airport really quickly, and just had a 5 minute wait for the hire car to arrive. The hire car isn't the best in the world, but we're not paying much so can't really complain. It's a Suzuki station wagon, given that everyone round here seems to drive Subabru's it would have been nice to had one of those to blend in and at least I would know where all the controls are!

For a minute I thought we'd got off at the wrong country and ended up in the USA, the airport and surrounding areas looks just like Orlando. Wide open spaces with bunches of low rise condos everywhere! We stopped off a couple of times on the drive down to Rotorua, and you can really tell they're in a different century round here ;o) The first stop at a motorway station reminded me off the Little Chef's when they first opened!!! The second stop, in Cambridge, we had a quick coffee in a historic building, very much like a southern Americon wooden gospel church.

The road down to Rotorua was great, wide open fast sweeping bends, through some great countryside. I think this was the area where they did the Hobbiton scenes in LOTR. There were tree ferns and Pampass gress growing along the side of the roads like weeds! This is very much an agricultural area with farm steads everywhere, primarily cattle, although I did spot one Alpaca farm! I reckon they must resurface the roads this time of year though as there were at least 5 sets of resurfacing works going on in the 250 KM's we covered from the airport to Rotorua. I think Deb missed most of the scenery, as she kept nodding off!

My GPS receiver is working fine and I've been able to grab some GPS tracks from my PDA on the way down. When I get chance I'll upload them so you can follow the route ;o)

The motel room is fine, it has seperate lounge and bedroom, plus a spa pool in a private enclosed patio area and a communal swimming pool in the grounds. I was straight in the spa for a soak and refresh myself after the flight and drive down. Popped out for a quick bite to eat and prices seem very reasonable.

Gave Deb her birthday present today, with it being a new handbag sized camera, it seemed better to give to her at the start of the holiday rather than at the end! She seemed pleased and promptly took a few pictures of me in the spa pool.... censored!

It's just beginning to sink in now, we're on the other side of the world......

Had a drive down the main "strip" to find somewhere to eat. No shortage of motels round here, and plenty of fast food joints, that said it's not too objectionable. Still feels a little like the US, I guess we'll find more of the reel NZ when we head further South.

Singapore to Auckland

19-03-07 - Left Singapore on time, slightly better seats this time, must remember to try and pre-book seat allocation online again. Just a 9.5 hour flight into Auckland. We both managed to get a few hours cat napping done and a few more movies. The on demand entertainment system is really nice, just hit the pause button when you're feeling tired have a quick nap then resume where you left off when you get back.

Arrvd in singapore

arrvd ok, not too bad a flight. got a bit bumpy over afghanistan, think that must have beem the gunfire! just a 2 hour stop over, enough for Deb to browse the shops. Next stop NZ

Almost ready

Ok, we're almost set, just finish packing and have a cup of tea! c u all soon ;o)

Welcome!

Hi to everyone reading my blog. This is a day to day record of our holidays travels round New Zealand.