Fresh from the Southern Hemisphere: Si and Steve do New Zealand!

[SiHart]

It's the thread you've all been waiting for: Our Holiday Photos!

Here we are at home, packed and ready to go. Steve has just made unpack half the clothes I planned to take!





Our first excursion was to the very impressive Auckland Museum. Here's Steve enjoying some Maori culture in a replica Maori meeting house



The tallest building in the Southern Hemisphere is the Sky Tower in Auckland. It's a quite incredible building. You can take trips up it to the viewing platform and bungy off the top if you're mad.



I don't like heights so I'm afraid I chickened out of going up- especially so because the lifts have glass bottoms: terrifying! As you can see, I was scared even at the bottom looking up!



Far more exciting was the Chinese New Year celebrations going on in the groud floor of the building. They had Chinese dragons dancing!



MOTAT was the museum of motoring and technology in Auckland. It was a bit past it's best sadly, but we did get a glimpse of the computers of the future there and here's me about to cause oblivion to a Boss-esque computer...



We took a trip to one of the places I've always wanted to see, Piha beach, just north of Auckland. The Lion Rock dominates the rugged coast and the sea is full of dangerous undercurrents. It is still a really impressive bit of scenery, especially when you see it first from the clifftop road



And here's Steve on the neighbouring Karekare beach, as immortalised in both the song of that titles by the awesome Crowded House and in the film The Piano. The sand stretches away as far as the eye can see, and this photo only gives you a little of the scale of the place. It's quite astonishing.



Trains aren't widely used in New Zealand, but there are three big trips that take you through some amazing scenery you can't see otherwise. This is the Overlander Train, which travels the length of the North Island, connecting Auckland and Wellington. It takes 12 hours to do that! Here's the train in the Britomart in Auckland. You can see the massive panoramic window at the back of the train. We sat a couple of rows down from it.





And here it is stuck in Feilding, which besides being New Zealand's friendliest town, was also based on the original street plans of Manchester. It's not very exciting.
The line further up had cables down, so there wasn't any power. We stood there for 2 hours waiting for coaches to take us the rest of the way to Wellington. It was quite frustrating and meant we didn't really get to have a good look round the capital city alas.

Si xx

[Wayne]

Some great pics there!
I like the one of you and Landru

(Your house looks nice too!)

[SiHart]

The next morning we were out of the hostel by 8am to take the interislander ferry across to the South Island. We were docked next to the new Cunnard cruise ship, The Queen Victoria, which left just before us.



Our train trips in the South were far less of a trial than the Overlander one. On the Trans-Coastal we travvled through vineyeards before following the coast round to Kaikoura. We passed a salt factory on the way, which had massive pools of seawater evaporating to leave the seasalt. Several of them turned pink, like the Red Sea due to a kind of parasite that lives in them- very impressive colours!



Kaikoura was one of our very favourite places we visited. It's a sleepy, samll seaside town. There's a long bay with sandy beaches, overlooked by snow topped mountains. It seems wrong somehow, but it was certianly beautiful!



While there we went on the Whale watching trip. We were lucky enough to see two Sperm Whales take the air and then dive...



Brilliant! The trip also took us out to see a pod of 5-600 dolphins close to the coast. They swam up to and under the boat and spent a lot of time frolicking around the boat as we stopped and watched! That made us smile!



From Kaikoura we went on the train to Christchurch. We had a great meal in Sgt Pepper's, a Beatles theme restaurant, where we had two very, very good meals. Here I am proving, as in Magical History Tour that I was the Fifth Beatle!



From Christchurch we travelled down to Franz Josef to see the glaciers. We took the Trans- Alpine train trip and it was the best of our train trips. The scenery was rugged and awesome, and there were some spectacular gorges and viaducts built to straddle them... like this one...



Impressive huh?
We caught the coach and travelled on to Franz Josef, stopping off for smoothies in Hokitika, where one of the cafes had a collection of teapots. Steve poses with some of them here! Note the sunburn!



Here's the view from our hostel on our first night in Franz Josef. It was pretty awesome!



Si xx

[Ralph]

Lots of great pictures there - looks like a lot of fun particularly the dolphins!

[SiHart]

Our first morning in Franz Josef was spent on Quadbikes, going through muddy puddles, through riverbeds, over grassland and through the rainforest! We stopped for tea half way through to have a bit of a break by the glacier rivers and to pose...





And the following day we took the 3/4 day Glacier Walk. That was amazing! The galcier itself was wonderfully blue and although there's nothing living up there, you feel the whole thing is alive because there's the sound of it creaking, cracking and melting the whole time. Here we are kitted up for the trip- you can't see under the waterproofs that we're wearing shorts- it was icy, but not really cold!




It's not cold, because, as you can just make out here, the galcier is surrounded by rainforest, a quite unique feature in the world!



The weather changed as we left Franz Josef and travelled back to the exciting town of Hokitika again. Saturday afternoons there, everything closes down and as you can see we enjoyed being there very much...



But it did have an amazing airport... well more of an airfield really. Here we are getting the plane to Christchurch from which we flew back to the North island. It was a small plane! Much more so than the 747 we flew from the UK!



So to Rotorua, the thermal town. After our first rainy afternoon there, the sun came out and we took a trip on the Skyline gondolas- cable cars up Mt Ngongotatha. I don't like them much being afraid of heights...



But the views were impressive!
Coming down the mountain you can go by Luge, a kind of toboggan on wheels, down a fast concrete track! It was great fun!



But coming back up on the chairlift was far scarier I can tell you!

We followed this up by going Zorbing, which basically is being pushed down a hill in a giant plastic sphere, full of water.



It was great fun- we giggled all the way down the hill, came out soaked by laughing!

As I said, Rotorua is an area of high thermal activities, and there are hot springs and thermal pools all over the city and a whole series of different thermal parks. At Hell's Gate we saw mud volcanoes, formed by hot mud spurting out from underground. We thought that of Terry Nation had named them, they'd have been Mudcanoes!



At the Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Park, they have a geezer that they help trigger every day at 10:15am with bio-degradable soap to stirr up the boiling water from underground. It was very impressive to see! As you can see, Steve was amazed!



Si xx

[Captain Tancredi]

I've been in that cafe in Hokitika!!! Although by that stage in my trip I was starting to ration shots on my memory card because I only had 240 to cover Singapore and the whole of Australia as well.

[Wayne]

Yet more great pics!

they have a geezer

Sorry, but i had to laugh. It's geyser.

(*takes pedant hat back off again)

[SiHart]

Our next port of call was Lake Taupo. We stopped for lunch at the Aratiatia dam. They use the river to genertae hydro-electricity, so every two hours through the day they open the sluice gates and the valley next to the dam gets filled with water. The noise is incredible as the gates open and the waters came pouring through. Here is the valley filling up...



Lake Taupo iteslf is huge. It's the size of Greater London! We took a boat trip out across the water, and got to see some Maori carvings in the stone cliff faces. Done in 1979, this face represents an ancient Maori chief.



Later that day we drove out to the Tongariro National Park. We did a little walk out onto the heathland, where shortly after we left the car park, we found ourselves in the middle of nowhere, with no trace, other than the path of human life.



The landscape was dominated by Mount Mgaurhoe, the youngest of the three volcanoes in the National Park. We read a sign that told us what to do if it errupted... I'm not sure we'd be here now if it actually did while we were there. It's still damn impressive though!



From there we travelled up to Hamilton, to see my Aunt and Uncle, but not before stop in the truly scared town of Tw Awamutu, the birthplace of my hero, Neil Finn of Crowded House fame. I dragged Steve to the museum, and I couldn't resist having my photo taken by the entrance... doubly appropriate I think you'll see...



We climbed a big hill in the Pirongia Forest Park. We went up Mt Ruapane which was 723m above sea level. It was a pretty intensive, steep walk through the rainforest, but well worth it because at the top you got an awesome panaoramic view of the surrounding country!



We also went to the Waitomo caves, which are lit by glow worm bellies! Steve pretended to be on the poster...



And on the Sunday we wnet out with my family to see The Bridal Veil Falls, and having others around finally enabled us to get a shot of the two of us on holiday together!



Oh and the wildlife was incredible too. Here's a Pukeho bird, which made us smile!



Or final destination was The Coromandel Peninsula. Our first stop there was the Waiau Waterworks park, full of eccentric water-centric inventions... and a couple of death slides! Here's me looking scared and thrilled...



And just up the road was a grove of 12 Kauri trees. They live for hundreds of years and grow to a huge size. Most have been cu down for their timber, but the remaining ones are protected and as you can see, very, very large.



The Coromandel is famed for it's great coastline. There are lots of great beaches and at Cathedral Cove, there's an archway formed by the actions of the sea, creating a long cave through to the other side of the cliff face. Even in the rain, we were awed by it!



On our final day in the Coromandel we went on The Driving Creek Railway, which wa sbuilt by eccentric potter Barry Brickell. He built it by hand to get clay from the ills around his pottery and was still adding to it up until 2003 when the Eyefull Tower was built- to give you a panaramic view of the surrounding countryside!



Here you can see one of the little trains at the Eyefull Tower stop.



Before heading up to Auckland to get the plane home, we stopped in Karanahake Gorge. Ther were lots of wobbly suspension bridges over the gorge, which led us to a long, dark disused railway tunnel you could walk through. The views, as always, were pretty awesome!



And then, our final stop, Auckland Airport car park, where we dropped our by now rather filthy car and picked up our bags, and Kai, our stuffed whale holiday mascot and headed for home...



And here we go... well actually it's not our plane leaving here, but we weren't in the country for much longer after we took this final photo...



Hope you've enjoyed them all!

Si xx

[SiHart]

Sorry, but i had to laugh. It's geyser.

Opps!
I'm still a bit jetlagged!

Si xx

[Si Hunt]

Wow, some great photos there! I'm dissapointed Steve didn't do a camp 'teapot' pose in that shop full of teapots!

Zorbing sounds great fun!

here it is stuck in Feilding

Everything always comes back to Doctor Who!

Si.

[Si Hunt]

HAAAAAT!!

Si.

[Dirk Gently]

Welcome home guys. I love the pictures. It looks like you had a great time.

[Antony Cox]

And here we go... well actually it's not our plane leaving here

Well I think you'd be very clever to take that shot if you were on the plane...

Absolutely wonderful photos - and thanks especially for taking one of QV.

[Pip Madeley]

Wow, those pictures are amazing! My dad was impressed by the Zorbing - did you feel like Peter Gabriel?

[Ian Lethbridge-Stewart]

Excellent pics guys.
I just knew that Ant would have to comment on the large 'boat' in one of the pictures!!!!

It looks like you guys had a great time.
I love the picture of Steve trying to blend in with a poster - at first glance I thought he was in the picture - it must the expression on his face that convinced me.

[michael]

yes you look to have a great time
wow all your pic

[Rob McCow]

Why fly, when we can sail? All the way to... New Zealand!



It's a new presentation - Clearwaters Down Under. Guaranteed smash hit!

[Ian Lethbridge-Stewart]

Excellent - what are the chances of finding a real motel with that name???
Now all you need to do is re-invent all the characters!!!

[SiHart]

I'm sure at least one of the regular cast would be happy to up sticks and go and live in Kaikoura!

Si xx

[Paul Monk]

Wow! Those pics are brilliant. We have some good friends of ours in New Zealand so maybe one day we'll be able to do the same.

[Stephen Morgan]

Some wonderful, and impressive pics there Si. Looks like you both had a great time.