23rd-26th January 2009: Sydney

The CHP annual partners' dinner was in Sydney, so we headed over for the bank-holiday weekend. We also took the opportunity to visit Sophie's cousin Matt and his wife Celine, who live in Darlington, a suburb of Sydney. Sophie and Matt spent Friday evening catching up on the last 10 years.

It was Sophie's first trip to Sydney, so we set out on Saturday to see a few sights. Unfortunately the weather wasn't cooperating: 42℃ is not an ideal temperature for wandering around. Gusts of wind in the botanic gardens felt like an oven door being opened nearby. Eventually we escaped to the Sydney Shangri La, our CHP-provided hotel for the next two nights.

The CHP dinner was at Guillaume's restaurant, in one of the sails of the iconic Opera House. The seven-course extravaganza was predictably excellent, and the matched wines were also very good.

Sunday was busy. We went for a 15-minute seaplane flight in the morning, giving us excellent views of the harbour, its bridge, and the beaches. After that we met up with a few other CHPers to board the 18-foot-skiff spectator ferry, which follows the fleet during their races. These overpowered sailing boats are excellent to watch, particularly with beer, as their crews struggle to keep them upright and guide them round the course.

After the sailing, we met Matt, Celine and some of their friends on Bronte beach for a relaxed few hours. Tim went for a swim and nearly got carried off by a rip-tide, but all finished well.

Monday was Australia day and Syndey was packed. We had a 3:30pm flight to catch, but we managed to catch sight of the annual Ferrython (a race between ferries, obviously). We also saw some funky close-harmony singing at The Rocks before heading to the airport.

Tim, Sophie, Celine and Matt

More photos, from the seaplane and of skiffs, here.

6th January 2009: Queenstown

After finishing the Kepler Track we took a scenic bus ride (Tracknet are excellent) back to Queenstown for the last night of our holiday.

For our final morning, we took the gondola up to the hills above Queenstown and had a quick go on the highly enjoyable luge, before heading to the airport.

We were back in Auckland by mid-afternoon, marvelling at the sunshine and relative warmth of the city.

2nd-5th January 2009: Kepler Track

"Hello. We'd like to pick up our hut passes for the Kepler Track, please."

The man in the DOC office in Te Anau was very helpful. "Here's the forecast for tomorrow. I think they'll probably close the alpine section of the track, because the wind is forecast to reach 100km per hour above 1000m." Well, we wouldn't get to the high level section until the following day, but what would happen to all the people who weren't able to do it tomorrow? Would the hut tomorrow night be somewhat overcrowded?

"The next day the wind looks like dropping off a bit [a mere 70kph] but it's going to snow above 1200m. Also there are some trees down on the track you'll walk tomorrow. I believe it's passable though. Oh, and watch out for the falcon in the Rainbow Reach area. It's been attacking walkers on the track, so be sure to wear a hat. We had a chap in here two days ago with a great gash across his head."

Hmm. This wasn't how the Routeburn Track had started out a few days before. That was much more a case of, "Here are your tickets. Would you like a rubbish bag?"

Still, Anna, Chris, Tim and I defied fallen trees, weather and aggressive falcons, and set out the next morning on our four-day walk. Seemingly against all odds, we managed to survive it unscathed and without track closure.

Day 1 was an 800m climb in the rain. We didn't hang aboout; even brand new Gore-Tex doesn't keep you dry in Fiordland rain, so breaks were kept short to avoid getting cold. We reached Luxmore Hut by about 2pm and spent the afternoon and evening drying off our kit together with 50-odd other damp hikers. That evening we had some lovely views across Lake Te Anau - the clearest views of the walk, as it turned out.

Luxmore Hut

Day 2 is the alpine crossing, and was a day of intermittent horizontal snow. Somehow this felt more Christmassy than anything yet - snow on 3rd January makes me feel as if I'm at the right end of the world. Slightly weird to have it a week after midsummer in NZ though.


All we could see from the highest point (the 1472m Mount Luxmore) was the inside of a cloud. However, we had more luck at the last viewpoint just before dropping back below the treeline, and enjoyed some pretty partially-clouded views over Lake Manapouri. They fuelled us for the 91 hairpin bends in the track through the trees to Iris Burn Hut.

Chris and Anna walked out from Iris Burn to Rainbow Reach the next day, while Tim and I stayed in Moturau hut and walked out to Te Anau the day after. The final evening was great fun; three days of walking and some bad weather had made the hut atmosphere very sociable, and we were pleased to find we were chatting with the owners of Artisan Wines, a winery just outside Auckland. We feel it would be only polite to visit and sample their wines some time soon. Earlier in the walk we had also met a very interesting DOC employee whose uncle originated guided walking on the Routeburn Track.

The Kepler had its moments for weather, but turned out to be a great walk for wildlife. We saw a number of keas showing off the bright orange underside to their wings; fantails in the woods near Lake Moturau; a sleek stag in velvet near Iris Burn Hut; a falcon (which didn't attack us, and which we would have thought was part of a treestump had the DOC man not pointed it out); and Chris found glow-worms under a rock near Iris Burn Hut.

31st December 2008 - 1st January 2009: Milford Sound

We were picked up from the Divide shelter at about 2:30pm by a plush Real Journeys coach to take us on an overnight cruise on Milford Sound. The coach ride was part of the experience: the scenery as you approach Milford Sound is an awe-inspiring sequence of vertical kilometres of precipitous rock walls and churning rivers.

The rain that day was heavy even by Fiordland standards, so the waterfalls were (apparently) even more numerous and impressive than usual. Even the excellent coach driver/guide was getting excited by the amount of water coming over the Chasm waterfall. This was definitely the best waterfall I'd ever seen, the second time that had happened that day.

The Homer Tunnel which cuts through into the otherwise inaccessible Milford Sound is a particularly impressive feat of engineering and has a fascinating story of depression-era job creation.

We boarded the cruise ship at about 5pm which took us into Milford Sound. Possibly the best view was of a rocky overhang, a kilometre above us, with waterfalls coming off it. Instead of dropping into the sound below, the water was being blown upwards, forming its own cloud.

The peak in the centre is over 1500m high.

The boat picked up a mooring buoy in a sheltered bay, and we had the chance to do some sea kayaking before dinner. Dinner itself was very good, likely improved by the previous three days' dehydrated dinners. We just about stayed awake until midnight and sang the obligatory Auld Lang Syne on the foredeck (at 11am on the 31st in the UK!) but were in bed at 12:02, exhausted but happy.

Early the next morning the ship headed out to the mouth of the sound, then slowly worked its way back to the harbour where we had started. More breathtaking views, etc. The coach then met us and took us back to Te Anau, dropping us at Keiko's B&B where we were staying for the night.

The ~100ft Milford Mariner, pictures of which you can see here, is dwarfed by the walls of the sound.

29th-31st December 2008: Routeburn Track

We did our first NZ Great Walk in the company of Mike, Lara, Rich, Lucy, and two boxes of wine that we hauled up the hill. All well worth bringing along.

We armed ourselves with a brand-new Gore-Tex waterproof for Sophie and a big breakfast (hurrah for gluten-free Eggs Benedict) and boarded a coach for a leisurely ride to the Routeburn Shelter. The coach ride itself was stunning, along the side of the very blue Lake Wakatipu and past a series of snow-capped mountains. We also saw the valley that was used for Isengard in the Lord of the Rings films.

By the time we'd admired the shelter and taken the obligatory start-of-trail photos, it was almost 3pm when we started walking. The first day is under 4 hours though, so we made it to the very shiny Routeburn Falls hut in plenty of time to reduce the weight of wine before the next day.

The first and last days were mostly through beech forest. The woods down here don't mess about - the trees have parasites growing on them, and both trees and parasites have a generous covering of moss and lichen. No space is wasted where something could grow.

Day 2 was the most spectacular day, with the whole day above the treeline crossing the Harris Saddle. While not as blazing hot as the day before, we had clear skies and amazing views; we also nipped up Conical Hill (a short side trip) and admired a glimpse of the far-off sea while trying not to get blown off the peak sideways.

My favourite view of the holiday was probably the one that took in the wooded valley leading down to the flat, grassy Route Burn valley bottom, with snow-capped mountains in the background. It's not everywhere you get all that in one eyeful.

Lake Mackenzie hut, the second stopover, was slightly less brand new than Routeburn Falls, but came with a warden who entertained us at length with his hut talk. Somehow the old chestnuts about weather forecasts (if you can see the hills it's going to rain; if you can't see them, it's already raining) still raised a chuckle.

The final day we had our first taste of Fiordland rain. The wet stuff in this area is legendary, but we got off quite lightly - a mere 4 hours of yomping downhill before we were back in civilisation. Lots of small streams were swelling quite impressively already, and we could see how the stories of wading through waist-deep water came about. Highlight of this day was the 174m Earland Falls; a rain-swelled waterfall we didn't so much see as experience, with the track taking us through copious spray. Tim was heard to say this was the best waterfall he'd ever seen. More on that later.

We reached the Divide shelter around 1pm and spent a chilly hour and a half waiting for our coach ride out, trying to dry off along with a dozen other wet trampers. The hip flask came in very handy.

27th-28th December 2008: Franz Josef, Wanaka & Queenstown

On 27th, we had a full day's walk booked on the Franz Josef Glacier with Lucy and Rich. Franz is one of only three glaciers in the world that descend into temperate rainforest - the others being Fox Glacier, just down the road, and one in Argentina. It's an easy walk to the face, which is only 240m above sea level.

We donned crampons and stepped onto the ice. The guides put much time into cutting staircases with their pickaxes so that walking on the ice is extremely safe and easy. The down side of this was a lot of waiting around for the track to be built, but we did manage to climb a fair way up - around three-quarters of the way up the first ice fall at 600m.

While on the ice fall we had some fun squeezing through narrow crevasses and admiring the very blue ice. We also met our first kea of the holiday - perhaps a bit of a funny place to find a parrot.

We had planned to drive further from Franz but, after our sizeable walk, the hot tub back at Rainforest Retreat was just too tempting, so we spent another night in the civilisation of a proper campsite and enjoyed an evening with Lucy and Rich.

The next morning we set off early to get to Queenstown in good time, as we had an amount of faff to do before our first Great Walk the next day. The drive over the Haast Pass is impressive, moving from West Coast rainforest to alpine scrub, and it was painful to drive past many viewpoints and waterfalls without stopping. We did take a quick peek at the Fox Glacier on our way.

We had a quick lunch stop in Wanaka, which proved to be more or less a one-street town overlooking a spectacular lake, and pressed on to Queenstown, a larger town overlooking an even more spectacular lake. Even our cheap and cheerful hotel had an awesome view.

Having accomplished hut tickets and luggage transfers, we met Mike and Lara for a curry together with Lucy and Rich. Lovely to spend some time with old friends! The next morning we returned our camper van - the end of a week of driving - and got on a bus to start our tramping week.

25th-26th December 2008: Nelson Lakes & West Coast

Christmas day was unusual. Waking up in a camper van, with no Buck's Fizz, didn't seem quite right! We had some distance to cover, so we set off for the Nelson Lakes.

On the way we drove through countless Marlborough vineyards and along some extremely straight roads. We arrived at Lake Rotoiti for a late lunch and our first experience of sandflies. It was impossible to stay still for more than a few minutes without attracting a swarm.

We set off for what we expected to be a 1-2 hour lunchtime stroll to a waterfall. It turned out to be 3 hours marching through a downpour. Lesson learnt: always take your waterproof trousers.

Now rather damp, we paid a quick visit to Lake Rotoroa before continuing west. We had a trip booked on Franz Josef glacier on 27th and a fair distance to cover by then. We spent the night at a random DOC campsite at Slab Hut Creek, which turned out to be our first sight of a gold-panning area. We were entertained by watching a group of fishermen build a bonfire out of wet wood. They didn't quite have to resort to petrol to get it going.

Having had a blow-out the night before, we had a simple dinner cooked out of the back of the van, then spent a pleasant evening drinking wine and committing mass sandfly murder to ensure a good night's sleep. (Flip flops make excellent murder weapons.)

The next day we headed down the west coast, stopping first at Greymouth. We had a look at the flood barrier and Sophie explored a pretty art gallery and managed not to buy anything.

Next stop was Shantytown for a spot of gold-panning. This was surprisingly good fun - we were each presented with a pan of rubble from a local river and came away with about $2 worth of 22ct gold. Our wedding rings are made from West Coast alluvial gold so we were particuarly pleased to have done this ourselves. We also met some nice weka on the steam train ride.

From there, we checked out the famous but unremarkable Hokitika and carried on to Franz Josef Township to stay in the Rainforest Retreat campground. Another welcome return to civilisation, with good drinking water, bathrooms, and a hot tub on site. Lucy and Rich joined us later for dinner.

22nd - 24th December 2008: Marlborough region

From Kaikoura we headed for Marlborough Sounds, spending a couple of nights in the DOC Cowshed Bay campsite. Before we got to the Marlborough wine region we'd already seen at least a dozen vineyards, with many more to come. We stopped at the Montana Brancott winery to taste and buy a Pinot Noir for dinner.

The drive from Picton to Cowshed Bay was a little longer than we'd bargained for - almost two hours of bendy roads punctuated by one 5-minute stretch that was more or less straight. It was worth it though. We slept between Queen Charlotte and Kenepuru Sounds - the former bright blue, the latter equally intense but a bit more greeny - surrounded by lush forest and right by the beach.

The following morning we slept in - our only lie-in of the holiday, as it turned out - then went for an amble on part of the Queen Charlotte Track. The views over both sounds in the sunshine were spectacular and compete for my best view of the holiday.

Having lunch at Black Rock shelter, we met a group doing the Queen Charlotte as a guided walk. Day 3 of the walk is reputedly tough so they were delighted when we told them they were only an hour and a half from their hotel. We met them later eating a slap-up meal in the Portage Resort restaurant - the difference being that while they returned to their en-suite rooms, we had a 10-minute walk to our luxury site ($12 for the night).

Christmas Eve dawned rainy, with no sign of let-up. After some indecision, and helped by the sales skills of the amusing Frenchman hiring kayaks, we took a double kayak for a paddle in Kenepuru Sound. After some leisurely exploration around the mussel farms, we decided the wind had got up and we'd better head for home. Coming round the lee of a point we saw the most obvious wind line imaginable - glassy calm water where we were, chop and white horses a few metres off. Sadly we had to paddle upwind through it to get back. We felt we had earned our lunch though, unlike most of the bored couples in the cafe waiting for the rain to stop.

From there we headed back to Bleinheim, where we were booked at Herzog winery for dinner. Our first shower in four days, at Watson's Way Backpackers, was very welcome and we felt quite presentable afterwards. As soon as we got to the restaurant, however, it became apparent that we were woefully underdressed in jeans and flip-flops. Still the service was impeccable and nobody batted an eyelid. We had a fabulous five-course tasting dinner, each course with its own wine, which cost nearly as much as our week's campervan hire. A fine flashpacking moment.

21st-22nd December 2008: Christchurch & Kaikoura

On 21st December we set off for our summer holiday - two and a half weeks on the South Island.

The holiday feeling started straight away with a hilarious driver on the Auckland airport bus. He was a very jovial chap who kept stopping to wait for people to visit cash points, not caring that the cars behind him would have preferred him to go when the traffic light was green! He raised a laugh by ticking off a couple saying a fond farewell at the bus stop.

A couple of hours later we were in Christchurch. We spent an hour or two there, catching sight of the Botanic Gardens and the inside of a supermarket before heading off with our camper van. We had a Jucy Crib for 8 days - a converted people-carrier/minivan with a bed in the back. It was rather cosy but served us well, handled like a car and allowed us to overtake lots of larger conventional camper vans.

We reached Kaikoura that night, ate a tasty dinner at the White Morph, and more or less managed to assemble the bed in the dark with a bottle of wine in us.

The next morning we were out early for a guided kayaking trip around Kaikoura's fur seal colony. It was pretty good, but we were a bit hampered by a Japanese couple in the group who spoke no English and couldn't get the hang of making the thing go forwards... Still we enjoyed paddling close to a few swimming seals and admired some more on the rocks.

High spot of the outing was when we brought the kayaks back to the beach. Paddling at the shore we were a few feet away from two huge sting rays in the shallows - one of them must have been 6ft across.

We finished up our Kaikoura visit with barbecued crayfish at a beachside stall, before heading north up the coast - we had a long way to cover in a week.