It's been a while since I updated this blog, but I've been back in New Zealand since I last updated it (just before Christmas)...
Emily and Billy on boxing day, playing in a cardboard box!
This is a fantail. They're very friendly, and confidently come into houses to fly around and catch insects. This one kept coming into the spare room at Jules and Steve's, always carefully flying through an open window or door, and never seeming bothered if someone was in the room at the time. It loved the mirror, and - after gobbling a few flies - would fly around the mirror, chirping away at its reflection. They also sometimes hang around parked cars, so they can fly around the wing mirrors and check their reflections.
Christmas and New Year with Jules, Steve, Emily and Billy were brilliant, then I met Mildred and we decided to go off and set up a supermarket...
But as well as that, I went down to Queenstown where I bought an el-cheapo tent and gas cooker (both only £9 each) and rented a car.
Milford Sound from Sandfly Point (which really lived up to its name - there was literally a black cloud of bloodsuckers at times!)
The obligatory sheep photo
Mt Cook, the tallest in Australasia
There's no shortage of ferns in NZ!
Getting some forestry photos near Hanmer Springs involved walking up through tonnes of bone-dry and ultra-sharp discarded pine branches, which involved me - wearing shorts and woefully inadequate shoes - getting cuts all over my legs. A week later, one of them was still a huge infected bump on my leg, so I did my best Rambo impression, and removed the scab to find and extract a chunk of wood... the infection went away eventually, but I don't think the photos were really worth the pain!
It can be hard to contain your excitement upon entrance to the Grey District!
Ten minutes after driving carefully through roadworks with light traffic, over a few KMs of newly chipped surface, I used the water squirter to get the dust off the windscreen. As I was driving along, I saw a diagonal line spreading steadily across the windscreen. It looked very strange, and at first I hoped it was just a droplet of water at a bizarre angle, but it turned out to be (as feared) a crack in the windscreen. Since I hadn't taken the (expensive) insurance, I was worried that it was going to cost me a fortune, but it didn't turn out to be too bad - in the end paying to replace the windscreen cost me less than a third of what the insurance for the whole time would have cost!
Kaikoura
The walk through bush up to here (just south of Kaikoura) also involved plenty lacerations to the legs!
In the Marlborough wine district, near Blenheim, you have to overtake lots of these slow-moving vine harvesters, but it's not hard, since you can see straight through them!
Part of the Marlborough Sounds
Unlike the car, my tent made it in one piece all the way up to Picton, but unfortunately no further... on my final night on the South Island, one of the poles snapped, so that was the end of that!
This is Mt Taranaki, which from most angles (not so much this one) looks just like Mount Fuji. So much so that it was used as Mt Fuji in the film 'The Last Samurai'
On the 'Forbidden Highway' inland from Mt Taranaki is an unexpected whole different country... the republic of Whangamomona. It's an area - including a small town and a fair bit of countryside - that decided to opt out of the country of New Zealand. Apparently it started with a council boundary dispute which ended up with the people of Whangamomona saying, "Bugger this, we'll look after ourselves!" I doubt that any bloodshed was involved in the Whangamomona Revolution!
I thought I was keeping a
respectful distance from these bee hives, but quite a few of the bees
seemed to disagree. It was very hot, so they were full of energy, and
flew into me at top speed. Two managed to get down the neck of my t
shirt and went berserk, buzzing around crazily as I did my best to get them
out. Incredibly, I didn't get stung, and lived to see another day!
They still can't fly, but some kiwis have learned to ski!
The middle of the North Island is full of volcanoes... this is the boss of them all, Mt Ruapehu
The 'Craters of the Moon' geothermal area, which unexpectedly got much more active in the 1950s when a nearby geothermal power station was built
Heading east from Taupo, I was on the quiet and narrow residential
streets of a small town called Murupara, when a big guy on a Harley
Davidson went roaring past me at very high speed, skidding around the
corner in front as children who were playing by the street scrambled to
get out of the way. He was followed a few seconds later by a police
car, struggling to keep up. Around the corner was another police car
was coming fast the other way, but the biker had vanished up a side
street. By the time I'd left the town, I'd seen five police cars, all
in hot pursuit with sirens and lights blazing, but I don't know if any
of them managed to catch him.
A silver fern (that's the underside - the top is green!)
East Cape, NZ's most easterly point
The most easterly, ahem, cinema in the world!
A Tsunami warning sign at Te Araroa
Coming south on the Pacific Coast Highway, I came very close to hitting
a dog at speed. The road was winding, but you could see that it was
clear for miles, so I was going quite fast. Approaching a house, I saw
a collie dog lying in the grass, a few meters from the road, so I
slowed down a bit. But just as I was about to pass the house, it
turned out that the dog wasn't lying down, it was crouching watching
me, poised to leap at the car. I've never seen a dog doing it before
with cars (I suppose dogs that do don't last very long) but it pounced
out playfully onto the road right in front of me, so I slammed on the
brakes and swerved, and - only by a matter of centimetres - managed to
miss it. Thankfully the car had ABS, which did a good job of stopping
me from skidding off the road!
This was my second tent and my third hire car (it's cheaper to get a
different car on the North Island than to pay to take one over the Cook
straight from the South Island)
With my little gas burner, a small frying pan and no fridge, culinary
options were severely limited, but that didn't stop me coming up with
(I think) a new way to cook eggs, which I might try to patent: behold
the mighty Scromlette©™ - a cross between scrambled eggs and an
omelette...
Pan fry a medley of seasonal vegetables, season to taste, then crack in
two eggs. Quickly stir until the eggs are cooked. Drizzle brown sauce
according to taste; Serve.
The result doesn't look very appetising, but tastes delicious!
The (second) obligatory sheep photo!
Captain Cook's ship first landed near Gisbourne on the North Island. This statue at a lookout over the town was put up in 1969, but it wasn't long before people started asking questions about it... mainly because the statue man (apparently) bears no resemblance to Cook, and the uniform is nothing like what they wore in the British navy in 1769. Under the statue is a long spiel about all that, followed by 'WHO WAS HE? WE HAVE NO IDEA!'
After Hawkes Bay, I drove back towards Taupo, where I met Mum, Dad, Jules, Steve, Emily and Billy. We rented a bach (Kiwi holiday home) in Pukawa for a week, then I had a lovely fortnight staying back with them on the farm, before flying to Kuala Lumpur, where I am now.
This campsite had a nautical theme throughout!
All photos © George Clerk. All rights reserved. Licenses available at www.istockphoto.com/resonants or please contact me at photos@foogaloo.com
