NZ Photos & Videos

Currently sat in Auckland airport and have so far killed time quite well! Only another 3 hours before the proper flying starts! Oh joy. At least I’ve managed to get all of my NZ photos onto Flickr now, so feel free to peruse them at your leisure now they’re all together …

flickr.com/photos/stokes/sets/72157602173416211/

All of the videos are now on YouTube too, so you can see them all in one place …

youtube.com/profile_videos?user=robertstokes

Doubtful Sound, Queenstown … and it’s all over.

Our trip to the Fiordlands was fantastic. It was a bit of an effort to get there – a 2 hour drive past Queenstown, a one hour boat ride, followed by a one hour coach journey, before reaching our main vessel for the trip – the Fiordland Navigator. But it was all worth it. We went on the overnight cruise, so set off at around midday and spent the afternoon sailing down through the fiords, stopping to either do some kayaking or, as I did, go out in the tender boat (small speedboat) and explore a bit further into the fiords where the main boat couldn’t go. I got some good photos of the little waterfalls we came across.

Video clips under Comments

I messed up some of the links to the video clips on YouTube so they were playing fullscreen and that meant the quality was a bit rubbish. I’ve updated all the links now (and added some new clips) so that they play at a more sensible size and look a bit better! Just click on the Comments link for any of the posts (or scroll down when in the post) and check those videos again!

Wanaka

A pretty quiet day today really. After breakfast, we hit the road on a 250km drive down the West Coast to Wanaka. This was the part of the drive that must have featured in the Top 10 in the world as it was truly stunning … and great fun to drive, with lots of twists and turns. So much fun without any traffic on the roads. We made a few stops on the way (Knight’s Point being one of particular note) to take photos.

Fox Glacier

Made it through the night and still alive, so all is well! Woke up to blue skies and glorious sunshine so the heli-hike was definitely on. After so many full cooked breakfasts, I opted for a bowl of cereal and slice of toast. We headed down to Fox Glacier, checked in and then took the chopper up the glacier to about half way up (we got dropped off at about 6km up; there’s a further 7km beyond that). It was great fun flying up in a helicopter – they did a tour around, banking sharply, so that we could see all around the glacier and take some great photos and video.

Franz Josef

Woke up this morning to the start of another rugby match – it’s on everywhere; they can’t get enough of it – and watched Argentina narrowly beat Scotland in the quarter-final over breakfast. Then we said our goodbyes to our host, Chris, at the Hokitika Heritage Lodge and headed down the coast about 130km to Franz Josef Glacier. It rained pretty much all the way (and had been raining all through the night) so we didn’t get to see very much en route, but then it brightened up and turned into a glorious, sunny day once we arrived the township of Franz Josef.

Arthur’s Pass & Hokitika

Got up early this morning to watch the All Blacks game on TV and were stunned (but quite pleased) to see them lose to France. Michael was trying to check the football scores on his mobile and discovered that England actually beat the Aussies! We didn’t even bother trying to find out as we thought it was a foregone conclusion! Couldn’t watch the game as it was on at 2am or 3am over here. Good news all round. The few Kiwis we’ve spoken to are obviously not happy but are now fully behind England, as I think they hate the Aussies more than we do!

Kaikoura to Christchurch

Unfortunately, we found out that the whale watching had been cancelled due to severe gales making it too choppy out on the waters, so instead I headed down for a nice breakfast (after discovering I have no stomach for the sea on the ferry, I was just going to have a little fruit for breakfast). After I’d finished I discovered that the nice girl at Hapuku Lodge (who we kept calling Bryan as that’s what we thought she said her name was – we did think it a little odd at the time, but hey, she’s a Kiwi, you never know! – then discovered that her name was Briar when she gave us her business card as we checked out!) had booked us onto the next trip out at 11.30am! I went down with everyone else but decided to bottle it at the last minute after the winds picked up, the woman on the counter was shaking her head saying it was very choppy and the warning system had just gone up from “moderate” to “severe” on the sailing conditions. So, no whale watching for me unfortunately. As it turns out, I didn’t miss that much – you don’t get to see a lot anyway.

On the road to Kaikoura …

After getting the hell out of Renwick as fast as our steed would take us (Toyota Corolla hire car; not very fast), we hit the road for Kaikoura, about 140km south-east, down the coast. It was some amazing driving, through the twisty mountain roads and the scenery en-route was stunning. We stopped a couple of times on the way and managed to get some great photos of the seals. I’ve finally managed to get a decent internet connection now so all my photos have been uploaded.

Quake !!

Experienced my first earthquake this morning! Well, let’s not turn it into something it’s not (it was just a tremor) but still held some novelty value. I was lying in bed, after hitting the snooze button on my Nokia for the second time, deliberating whether to get up and have a shower or stay under the covers for a bit longer as this bloody B&B is freezing cold and then there was a little shake of the bed. I just thinking “Did I imagine that?” during the couple of seconds pause, then there was another one, a bit more violent – the bedside lamp was rattling and the whole room as shaking – just for a few seconds. To put this into perspective, the super-friendly guy who picked me up from the airport in Wellington (Paul) said that “there are around 1,000 quakes a year in New Zealand, most you can’t feel, but every 6-8 weeks they’ll be big enough to move the furniture around”. I’m secretly hoping for another one.