25th July 2009: Waitakere Ranges Walking

Things have quietened down a bit since Sophie left - we had been trying to squeeze as much as we could into her last weekends here, and I haven't had much planned since. I did manage another sail at Panmure Lagoon Sailing Club last weekend, but it wasn't much to write about.

With Ken now back on the CHP NZ team, things were bound to get busy again. This Saturday I was supposed to be having another kite-surfing lesson, but the day dawned calm so that was abandoned. Instead, Ken and I headed to Cascade Kauri in the Waitakere Ranges for bit of a walk.

Sophie and I have been here before - there are some excellent stands of mature Kauri in the area and I wanted to see some more of them. From the car park, we took the Lower Kauri Track ("for experienced trampers only"!) which had some entertainingly muddy and steep sections. We then went north to take the Whatitiri track back to the car park, which crosses some grassy fields offering, unusually for the Waitaks, a open view.

Somewhere around then we lost the track. This doesn't happen often in NZ - they're normally very clearly marked. I suspect it was when Ken went to 'play' with a flock of pukekos. We'd been wandering around for a while, and were just discussing how to make a tent out of fern leaves, and wondering what pukoko would be like for dinner, when we found the track again and our fun was spoilt.

We saw quite a few birds in that area: pukekos, fantails, red-crested parakeets, a wood pigeon, an NZ robin and plenty of tui. Not a bad haul. It's interesting how this year in NZ has turned me into a little bit of a twitcher. Only a bit though!

11th-14th July 2009: Sydney

On my way home from NZ, I stopped off in Sydney for three days. I had a new relative to meet, a few friends to see, and wanted to fit in a little sightseeing.

It turned out to be a sociable stay. Kate, a colleague of Tim's, very kindly picked me up from the airport to drive me to my hotel and waited while I got settled in. Perhaps too kindly; Sinclairs at Bondi has a quirky feel and a very friendly and helpful host. By the time he had finished showing me round and giving me maps and useful information, I fear Kate's brother may have demolished the lasagne she had left in the oven.

Bondi Beach

In the course of the next couple of days I was plied with gin and tonic, cooked dinners, and generally welcomed by Kate, her brother Jon (who cooked me a delicious roast even though I'd never met him before), and ex-colleagues Rich and Nick. I also had the pleasure of meeting my three-month-old second cousin Lorelei, who frankly cannot be real. When I arrived she was asleep; she soon woke up and spent some time grinning at me; she then had a meal and went down for another nap. Is this really what babies are like?

In between times I fitted in a few touristy things, starting with a visit to the Art Gallery of New South Wales to see the Aboriginal art. I just love those bold colours and spotty crocodiles, although I am woefully uninformed about the meaning underlying the pictures.

I also walked the Manly Scenic Walkway, which wasn't honestly all that manly, being a well-graded 10km walk that any girl could manage. It was certainly scenic though, taking in surf, beaches and the native bush of the Sydney Harbour National Park.

Tourism-wise, the highlight of my trip was whale watching. This was something I had never quite got round to doing in Auckland. I'd love to say it was because I knew it would be better in Sydney. I discovered that Sydney is situated next to a highway for humpback whales, which every year swim north to the tropics to breed, right past the mouth of the harbour. My boat - a triple-decker ferry-like affair, but fast and with plenty of viewing space - located a passing humpback in minutes. We spent at least an hour watching two of these amazing creatures rolling along, surfacing to breathe, and diving with that classic tail-flick.

Humpback whale

6th-7th June 2009: Coromandel Peninsula

Coromandel is another trip that has been on our to-do list since we got here, but we saved it until winter, knowing that the weather would still be passable up here when it got cold further south. We were rewarded with a balmy weekend and a brilliantly blue Pacific.

Tim's colleagues James and Ken came along for the weekend and we drove around the standard tourist haunts. Hot Water Beach was similar to the one we previously visited at Kawhia, but with even warmer water - plenty of people were wallowing in their bikinis despite the fact that it is really not quite summer any more, even here.

Cathedral Cove was beautiful, with weather-sculpted rocks towering over the water. Some local walkers pointed out an eagle ray in the shallows and we watched it for some time. It was hard to get a good sight with the sun reflecting off the water, so Ken waded in to get nearer, much to the detriment of his jeans. He wore them for the rest of the weekend anyway.

Anything for a good photo

In Coromandel Town we enjoyed a surprisingly good meal at the Peppertree Restaurant, one of only two restaurants in the one-street town. Coromandel is a centre for farming green-lipped mussels and these ones were particularly succulent. We stayed away from the local wine though, assuming there was a good reason we hadn't seen it on menus outside the peninsula. Maybe it was great and we missed out.

The next day we took a tour bus to the tip of the peninsula to walk the Coromandel Coastal Walkway. Our driver was a very well-meaning lady who told us everything she knew about the local history, and persisted in referring to our three-hour amble as a great achievement, even giving us certificates for completing it. She advertises it as a 7km walk, but told us after the walk that it was 10km, but she doesn't tell people in advance because they wouldn't do it. The DOC website lists it as 8km. Sigh.

Tim colour-matches with the Pacific

After the twisty, unsealed road back to Coromandel Town in the bus, we got back into our rental car (a cheap-as Nissan Sunny of 1990s vintage) for another 3-hour drive home. Our mood was lifted half an hour later though, when Tim spotted a pod of dolphins in a bay by the coastal road. We stopped to watch and saw lots of fins and a few leaps. These appeared to be bigger than the dolphins we saw in the Bay of Islands, and there were plenty of them, maybe 15-20. The road home seemed much shorter after that.

More photos here.

23rd-24th May 2009: Tiritiri Matangi

The bird sanctuary island of Tiritiri Matangi has been on our to-do list for months. Situated in the Hauraki Gulf, it is free of mammal pests such as rats and possums and home to many endangered bird species. Mammals introduced to New Zealand have wreaked havoc with the native birds, especially ground-nesters whose eggs are easy prey, so this is a big deal conservation-wise. Tiritiri Matangi is also the island that until recently said Ni (say the name in a high-pitched voice and you'll see what I mean).

We spent two days on the island, spending the night in the bunkhouse so that we could go out after dark looking for kiwis, which are nocturnal. But a couple of hours of peering into the dark bushes didn't yield any sightings of the elusive birds, although we heard plenty calling. It was quite windy so they may have been staying well-sheltered, or perhaps we just couldn't hear them moving over the rustling of the trees.

A bellbird

During the day we did better. Walking around we were followed several times by fantails, feeding on the flies our feet dislodged. We also saw dozens of honey-eating bellbirds and stitchbirds at feeding stations maintained by the park rangers, as well as saddlebacks, whiteheads, kingfishers, New Zealand robins, parakeets, and the more common tuis and pukekos. The best were the takahe. These football-sized flightless birds are extremely rare, but there are three living near the visitors' centre on the island who are almost overly friendly and all too keen to steal your lunch if you look away. Quite a surreal experience - somehow I expect rare creatures to be shy. Maybe this gives some insight into why they're nearly extinct.

Tim bonds with a takahe

Staying in the bunkhouse was, as ever, a fascinating experience. With us were a couple of other people on holiday and five or so volunteers and researchers who work on the island. Some had led very varied and interesting lives and told dinner-table stories that were well worth hearing. One man had been an airport customs officer, and told us about a woman who tried to take her dead father on a plane as a passenger in a wheelchair. (Do you have any idea how difficult it is to ship a body in a coffin?) Luckily he noticed before she boarded...

Tim got a lot of good pictures - see here. Of course we also threw away lots of pictures of empty branches a bird had just left :)

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.

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.

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.

30th November 2008: Goat Island

Encouraged by a couple of Tim's scuba-loving colleagues and some fabulous sunshine, we headed up to Goat Island for an afternoon of snorkelling.

Goat Island is a marine reserve about an hour and a half north of Auckland and maybe 100m off the mainland, an easy swim from the beach. We spotted snappers, rays, a crowd of blue mao mao, and some funky zebra-striped fish, and watched the CHP boys get yet another set of interesting sun burn marks from yet another set of funny-shaped outdoor kit (this time sleeveless wet suits).

On the way back we had a thrilling race in which one car sat in traffic for 45 minutes while the other (driven by a reluctant me) skittered over unsealed roads in a hilarious attempt to beat the queue. We just about succeeded too.

24th-27th October 2008: Great Barrier Island

It was the labour day bank holiday weekend in New Zealand. We heard the traffic was likely to be terrible so we took a ferry to Great Barrier Island for a three-day walk. Photos here.

Great Barrier Island reminded us of the Isles of Scilly. With a population of around 800, it has a small-community feel, very few roads, and a laid-back attitude to bus timetables. Fortunately we fell on the right side of this with a lovely chatty lady called Christine of Great Barrier Travel who drove us to and from our walk and was happy to stop at coffee shops and view points for us. She also took advantage of our trip to distribute fresh bread around the island, flown in that morning.

Friday - stayed at Stray Possum Lodge, cheap lodge/backpacker accommodation. We were pleasantly surprised that the landlady took us at our word when we asked for our steaks very rare.

Saturday - walked from Windy Canyon to Kaiaraara Hut, via Mount Hobson and a spectacular kauri dam on Kaiaraara Track (photo). Took 5 hours or so and included a few steep slippery bits that had us pretty well climbing down trees at the side of the path. The only other hut occupants were a lovely couple, Angie and Tim, who gave us some good pointers on where to go next in NZ.

Sunday - Kaiaraara Hut to Great Barrier Lodge via the old Forest Road, around 5 hours again. The track passes two huge old kauri trees - a rare sight since most of the big kauris were logged a hundred years ago - which made Tim very happy. (photo)

Great Barrier Lodge was lovely - a simple room with a huge comfy bed and sunny view of the harbour. That, combined with a couple of lamb racks and a big breakfast, was exactly what we needed after 2 days' walking.

Monday - 3-hour walk out to the road via the Kaitoke Hot Springs, natural thermal pools in a stream. Really cool to be in proper natural pools, though we weren't sure about the amout of wildlife we were sharing them with. (photo)

Another win for the Lonely Planet - the walk route was taken from its Tramping in New Zealand book.

20th September 2008: Canyoning in the Waitakeres

Went "canyoning" down the Cowan Stream in the Waitakere Ranges. This involved jumping, sliding and abseiling down rocky waterfalls into large pools. Huge amounts of fun, and quite an adrenaline rush: some of the jumps were pretty big. The company we went with, canyonz, refer to this as the Blue Canyon. The guide was a total dude, about the best fit for the word you can imagine. He kept telling us to be careful walking in the river or we'd break our [cue laid-back surf-style voice] leeegs.

The trip was organised by John M and Sophie R, and we were joined by Claire P and Graham. And three amusing Germans.

One of the pools on the way down had a large tame eel in it called Albert. He seemed to enjoy ham from the sandwiches, and made a good attempt on the dude's shoes.

Canyonz also do a trip to the Billy Goat falls in the Kauaeranga valley. One to do later in the year perhaps, although Soph isn't so sure!

14th September 2008: Motuihe Island

Spent the day on Motuihe Island, an uninhabited island in the Hauraki Gulf. 80-odd people from IBM were on the ferry with us, planting trees for the Motuihe Trust.

Lovely, peaceful island. We walked along the ridge to Bald Knob (hur hur) at the southern tip of the island, then discovered we could get all the rest of the way round without leaving the beach. Probably a 2-3 hour walk in all, at a leisurely amble.

Saw lots of pairs of birds which were either fighting or flirting, had a beach picnic, and admired lots of weird rock formations, we think caused by erosion of conglomerate or layered rocks at different speeds. Some really good pohutukawas too, clinging to the cliff where no tree that big had a right to be.

The planted trees look really impressive. The ones from 2004 are already shoulder high and give a feel for how the island will be in a few years when it's all returned to forest. We may well come back some time and do some tree-planting ourselves.

24th - 27th July 2008: Port Douglas

Went to Port Douglas, Queensland for CHP Australia annual company conference. Stayed in the Sea Temple Port Douglas.

Friday:
Tim went white-water rafting on the Barron River with CHP. Good fun, good screaming from a few people.
Sophie went for a short walk in the Mossman Gorge. Pleasant undemanding walk, about an hour through rainforest with occasional pretty views of an overgrown rocky stream in the gorge (with overgrown rocks to match).

Saturday:
Sailed on Sailaway IV to the Low Isles for snorkelling at the edge of the Great Barrier Reef (http://www.sailawayportdouglas.com/). Saw lots of green turtles, giant clams, and some funky fish. Mostly soft coral, ie. greens and browns, at Low Isles - think the other trips further out would have given us more bright colours and more wildlife variety.

Sailaway IV was a good fun 60' cat and they let Tim helm the boat home :)