Saturday, January 31, 2004

Going up the wall...

The weather's taken a turn for the worse on the coast, with grey clouds covering up the blue sky, and delivering rain showers through the day. So we went swimming to the outdoor pool! Well, the pools are thermally heated, so instead of being cool, they're heated to a range of temperatures between 31 degrees (coldest!) to 39 degrees. And so swimming in the rain is unique, when you've got your body boiling, and your head and shoulders getting attacked by pin-pricks of freezing cold raindrops. The rising steam gives it a slightly mystic feel too.

As the rain carried on in the afternoon, we went to 'The Rock Face', which is an indoor climbing centre in the town. We haven't seen these kind of facilities at home – it was in a warehouse, and all the walls were covered in climbing holds. It cost £6 for each of the girls for all day climbing. There were lots of adults and children, trying out the different routes and levels of difficulty. Charlotte, who'd been rock climbing at Christmas, was straight into the harness and off up the wall.

Emily didn't need any encouragement either. As soon as she had her harness on she was away, up the wall. I had to call her back to attach the rope to her! Although it was a little more difficult for her, because the hand holds were set too far apart at times, she managed to get three-quarters of the way up the wall, and quickly got into the hang of abseiling back down again for another go. We went there because we were looking for an indoor activity for a rainy day, but the girls enjoyed it so much I suspect we'll be looking for a climbing centre when we get home.

Thursday, January 29, 2004

Getting jabs

When we left England, we'd decided to get the girls typhoid jabs done in New Zealand, so that Emily was a little bit older. So this morning the girls got to pop down to the medical centre and get them. It was quick and easy, and most importantly for them, they were rewarded with a double scoop Hokey Pokey ice cream. So now we're all up to date with all of our jabs and other medical precautions.

Well, almost up to date. We're watching the developing situation with the Asian bird flu carefully – we're flying to Singapore in nine days time, and our plan is to travel through Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam and Cambodia. We're always pragmatic about risks when we travel – after all, a lot more people die crossing the road every day than in most things that hit the headlines – but we're not going to go rushing into anything dangerous. At the moment the bird flu seems pretty low risk – it doesn't pass from human to human, and you can only get it from direct contact with live, infected chickens. So the trip to the Vietnamese-chicken-petting-zoo is out then! We'll just watch and wait, and see what develops. But at the moment, its not changing our plans. But imagine if it goes the way of SARS – our Asian photo's could all look like the one above!

Wednesday, January 28, 2004

Rotorua stinks!

After driving through Rotorua quickly to get to Mount Manganui, went back to see some more of the thermal sites, and to find out where that awful smell comes from. We stopped in the municipal park, to see where the steam was coming out of the ground. There were steaming hot lakes, and mud pools with little mud bubbles plopping up every few seconds. But most noticeable of all was the hideous sulphuric stink which rose with the steam. It was revolting and made us feel a bit sick. Its an amazing geological phenomenon, but we wish it didn't smell so bad.

Then we drove over to Te-Whakarewarewatanga-o-te-Ope-Taua-a-Wahiao, which is the best main thermal and Maori cultural attraction in the town. In between the geysers and thermal hot pools, the Maori houses are dotted around, delicately avoiding hot vents and collapsing ground. In places the ground was covered by a thin, hot crust, and walls and paths seemed to be collapsing into new holes every few steps. Some of the water reaches 120 degrees, so it pays to watch your step! As well as heating and baths, the thermal pools are also used for cooking, with vents used for steaming meals, and the hot pools used for boiling vegetables. Despite the rotten-egg smell, the girls both enjoyed a mineral-soaked boiled sweet corn, straight out of one of the thermal pools.

We also went to the Maori concert, with eight Maori dressed in traditional costumes, performing traditional songs and dances. But, of course, we were all waiting for them to do the haka, made famous by the New Zealand rugby team. Sitting in the front row, four feet from the tongues, it seemed pretty scary, so I can imagine what its like with 15 huge rugby players doing it. Charlotte thought it was great, but Emily was a bit intimidated by it – so much so that she didn't want to stand with them for a photograph!

We queued for a photo too after the show, and decided to take it as seriously as the Maori troop did. You can see what the Maori lady on my left thought about it! All in all we had a good time, but at the end of the day we were so happy to be leaving town, and leaving the rotten smell behind. Last time we travelled we stayed in Rotorua, and we even cooked mussels for dinner – given the smell we've got no idea how we did it!

Tuesday, January 27, 2004

The North Island

While we've been on the South Island, we'd not seen many Maoris or signs of Maoris. But since leaving Wellington, we've seen more in a day than in the whole of the previous two weeks. Somebody explained to me that the Maoris lived mostly on the North Island because of its warmer climate, although there are Maori lands on the South Island that we passed by. Two days ago at the Te Papa museum we were able to discover much more about the Maori lifestyle, and were stuck by the similarities to things we saw and experienced in Fiji – which isn't surprising, as the Maoris originally came from the South Pacific Islands to populate New Zealand.

Monday, January 26, 2004

Arriving at the atrium

Another 'driving' day – this time the destination made it all well worthwhile! We left Wellington and drove eight hours up to Mount Manganui, which is on the coast in the Bay of Plenty. It was a long drive, especially as New Zealand roads don't go in straight lines like in Australia, but bend and twist around every tree stump and bump in the field. We stopped for lunch at Lake Taupo airport, watching backpackers take their first sky dive.

Around 6pm we got to the coast, and drove straight to The Atrium, an apartment block between two beaches 100 metres apart. We are officially now the happiest family in New Zealand. For the six months we've been travelling we've been in hostels, campsites, motels, and campervans. In all that time we've shared one bedroom between all four of us except for 2 nights. And we've generally had to walk down the corridor/across the grounds to get to a shared bathroom (not so for our five weeks in the States, but then motels had lots of other drawbacks). But for the next few nights we're in heaven. We're in an apartment belonging to the parents of an ex-colleague at RM, and we've been given the use of it for a short while. After six months of travel, you cannot imagine how nice it is to have somewhere that feels a bit like home, and especially where the girls are sleeping in the lounge, while we get the bedroom. It means that tonight we can go the bed at a different time to them! And where we don't have to share the bathroom – we can put all our wash bag things out on the side, and they'll still be there in the morning. I guess these are the downsides of travelling like we are, which we've just got used to after a while, but which aren't "normal" at home.

I can't adequately describe the glory of sitting on the balcony of the 5th floor apartment overlooking the bay tonight now, so I'll wait until I can show you a few more photo's. For the minute, this photo says it all – how happy we'll be for a little while!

Sunday, January 25, 2004

Te Papa Museum

There doesn't seem to be much in Wellington to amuse us, but we found the Te Papa museum (The Museum of New Zealand) great with the girls. Although they weren't keen on going (how would five-floors-of-museum-exhibits grab you for a Sunday treat?) we soon found out it offered lots of entertainment for children and grown-ups. Like the "Shear a Virtual Sheep" shed, where the girls could try their hands at sheep shearing, without all the trouble of real sheep or real shears. If I describe it, it sounds rubbish, but it was much, much better than it sounds. You run a bar code reader over a toy sheep, which has been plastered with bar codes. Just to make it easy, they're all arranged in number sequence, and you have to run the bar code reader over them in the right order, against the clock. Mmmm, okay, if you've read the last two sentences, then I should repeat "it was much, much better than it sounds" – but that’s not going to be difficult heh?

There was all the usual modern museum stuff too – like earthquake simulators (a bit more real when they show you the footage of the house down the road which suffered it), maori canoes, old newsreels, art and immigration exhibits. And the girls found the "Discovery Centres", where they could read, draw and dress up to their hearts content. So in the Pacifica Discovery Centre, Charlotte and Emily got to dress up in hula skirts, and practice their beach dancing. And in the New Zealand Discovery Centre, they dressed up in Victorian school uniforms and played at being in a classroom (that must come from 6 months without lessons – I can't imagine they'd play 'Schools' if they were at home!). When they discovered the 'Dig Up a Dinosaur' exhibit, they were completely over the moon. To be able to uncover a dinosaur skeleton in a huge sandpit – they didn’t make museums like this when I was little! We eventually left the museum about 6 hours after we arrived, to complaints from both girls. Not bad for a museum day.

In the evening we went up to Sarah's Mum's cousin, John and his wife Delia, and with Gloria and Michael again for the evening. They'd spent the last three weeks around Australia, so we all caught up with our respective travel stories.

Saturday, January 24, 2004

Heading North

We've done our time on South Island, and got up at 6am this morning to catch the ferry to the North Island. This weekend is the end of the summer holidays so the ferry was split between Kiwis ending their holidays, and international tourists in the middle of theirs. The crossing took 3 and a half hours, but after lots of practice with long car journeys, it seemed to go in a flash! No sooner had we driven on in Picton than we were driving off in Wellington – to a cold wind and light drizzle.

We'd booked our hostel ahead, the Wildlife House, which is a 5 storey tower block, painted with huge zebra stripes. Once we were inside all pretence at themes had gone out the window, and it was just another big, city hostel. But it was clean, had a huge kitchen/lounge, and free internet access. So we were able to catch up with most of our emails, while the girls played on the CBeebies website. We're not keen on staying in city hostels, because they are always much bigger, and seem more cramped than hostels in the countryside. Perhaps its just the absence of green space around them, but whatever it is, we all feel better when we're away from the cities – in north America, Australia and here in New Zealand.


In the evening we went out for an Indian meal – we just needed a break from cooking for ourselves! We decided that we'd earned a night out, and also that it was good practice for our Asian diet (I know, that's a pathetic excuse, and besides we're not going to India, but we needed to justify it to ourselves somehow!). Its only two weeks now until we fly to Singapore, so we're starting to get hunger pangs for every type of Asian food. But, ask the girls and they'll tell you the best bit was going into the kitchen to look inside the Tandoor oven. Although we're not even in Asia yet, we've started to learn new things about it (in all the times I've eaten in Indian restaurants in Britain, I've never once seen a tandoor, let alone had the kids-tour of the kitchen). And, boy was the curry good. We're going to have to put "curries" somewhere onto our list of 'What we have missed most about home".

Thursday, January 22, 2004

The Innlet Hostel

I have to be honest – we're not in love with our latest hostel. After the high of the Old Slaughterhouse, we had high expectations of this new hostel, because of the high rating it has in the guide book. But sadly our expectations were dashed when we got here. It’s a lovely house, with a flower-filled cottage garden, and lovely wooden cottages dotted around (Sadly we're in the dormitory inside the house). But there's a jarring note with the toilets – they are 'dry' toilets, and they're across the car park. (A 'dry' toilet is a euphemism for a hole with a big pile of poo at the bottom!) So although everything is very nice and clean, the toilets aren't great to use. We don't mind this when we're in the bush – in fact, if you're in the middle of a national park, it's what you expect. But when you're in a house, with a flushing toilet that you're not allowed to use except at night (we're not sure why...), it's not great. It doesn't seem to fit quite correctly with a hostel that's costing us £32 a night, and that's got a dishwasher, washing machine, and all mod cons etc. (The owner has just gone off to a Green Party conference, so I guess there's some ecologically sound reason for it).

Anyway, after ignoring the toilets, there's some great features – like the outdoor baths – that are great. It's very close to the beach, and we spent the day out and exploring the local area. And in the evening we went down to the local beach at low tide to collect shellfish. It was really easy – just wander out to the beach to the wide sandbanks, and dig through the wet sand with fingers to locate the shells.


Emily got bored by the end, but Charlotte was captivated by the whole thing – that she was getting her own dinner, and because clams are one of her favourite foods, she didn't want to stop. We sorted them out by size (we'd decided that small ones were young ones, so we decided to bed them all back in the sand), and then brought the rest back to the hostel to clean and rinse. We cooked them up, and put them into a creamy pasta sauce, and that was it – home caught dinner! It appealed to the inner 'hunter-gatherer' in me, and I'm sure Charlotte had a 'Cave Girl' moment – it kind of shows on the photo!

Wednesday, January 21, 2004

To Golden Bay

As always, it was time to leave. After four nights we'd become very attached to the hostel, it's owner David, and had made great friends with Linda and Brigitte, a couple of German-speakers staying there. But all good things come to an end, and we had to move up the coast towards our ferry connection to the North Island. Everything was packed up into our rucksacks again, and carried down the hill by David – and to Charlotte's glee she was carried down too!

Then it was all-into-the-car for another epic journey – six hours driving to Golden Bay, to a small hostel called the Innlet in Pakawau. The drive, as ever, was spectacular, and the best bit was finding that the hostel had an outdoors bath in the woods. So after the drive I soaked myself in the bush, enjoying the fresh air and no engine noise. (Our hire car is cheap, but sadly the radio only makes a sort of 'tinny thrashing' noise, so we don't get to drown out the engine with our CD collection!)

Tuesday, January 20, 2004

Hydro-electric power, Sandflies and Sunsets.

As a result of being set in the bush, the Old Slaughterhouse is a bit different. For a start, it's entirely constructed of wood, which was carried up the hill by helicopter. The water comes from the stream behind the hostel, rather than from a water pipe. And there's no mains electricity, because the cost of running it up to the hostel would have been huge. So instead, David has a small hydro-electric generator on the creek, which generates 24 volt electricity to charge a bank of car batteries under the hostel. This electricity is used to run the lights (using special 24V/60W bulbs – they look just like normal ones, but run on 24V power instead of normal 240V), and powers the only other electrical device in the house – a small hi-fi. Everything else that needs electricity is missing – no washing machine, no television, no dishwasher etc. It meant that when we arrived with a flat laptop battery, two flat camera batteries and a desperate need to charge them, we were stuck. We ended up going into town yesterday for a coffee, and asking if we could plug them in while we sat there and drank our coffee (slowly). The hydro-generator is the size of a fish tank, and inside there's little flywheel which is spun round by the water flowing through a pipe the size of a drainpipe. Its an amazing bit of technology, and it seems to provide all the power that's needed to power the lights, at no cost.

When we took a trip out of the hostel today we went 40km up the road, to where it ends and the Heaphy track begins, and went down onto the beach for about 10 minutes. But we'd arrived at peak sandfly time, and they are both annoying and persistent. Although New Zealand doesn't have any dangerous animals – no snakes, no poisonous spiders, no horrible monsters – but the humble sandfly makes up for it. They gather in clouds early and late in the day, and bite anything in sight. We'd prepared – we all had repellent on – but they attacked in droves, and crawled through our hair to bite our heads. It was nasty, and we were soon itching everywhere. So we beat a retreat to the car, abandoned plans to walk the first hour of the Heaphy Track, and headed back to the hostel. According to the Lonely Planet, "sandflies hunt in pairs – one to lift the sheets while the other one bites you."

When we got back to the hostel, it was all forgotten. For three days now we've been looking at poor sunsets – just as the sun dips the clouds get in the way, and the sky turns black and grey. But tonight was different – the daytime's clear blue sky stayed clear, and when the sun dropped it turned orange, then red and lit up the coast. We'd even splashed out on a bottle of red wine. Can you imagine how we felt – watching the sun drop over the Tasman Sea, with a glass of wine in our hand, lazing on a wooden bench on the decking? We could almost imagine we didn't have children!

I don't want to rub it in, but I had to share this photo too – it was the last gasp of the sun, burning up the clouds as it went. We took these photos with our new digital camera, a Canon EOS 300D. It’s an SLR camera, and means that we have a bit more control over our shots, and can take some more adventurous pictures (it'll be especially useful when we start seeing more wildlife, if we get to Africa). Although it is a bit of extra weight to carry, and bulkier than our other camera (a digital Canon Ixus) we don't think we'd have been able to get a shot like this with the small one. We bought it in Sydney, and now all we have to do is get it through Asia safely!

Monday, January 19, 2004

Blowing out the cobwebs

After yesterday's quiet day, we woke to find the weather sunny, and great to be outside in. After walking down to the car, we drove to Charming Creek, which is only two miles away. This is a river valley, with an old coal mine railway running up it. For the first mile it was good walking – a pretty wide, easy sloping path, with the river on one side and the mountains on the other. The path had been filled in between the rails of the old railway, and every now and again we'd come across a relic of the old coal mine railway – things like coal trucks, old engine cabs etc. The information boards, telling stories of dead miners and runaway trains notched up the excitement a bit too.

Then we turned the corner of the creek, and came across a railway tunnel going straight into the mountains. The girls went apoplectic - "Do you think there's a ghost in there?" – "Will they be wearing a white sheet?" – "Can you go first?". We all walked slowly through the tunnel, trying to avoid the water puddles, and Charlotte screamed when a drip of water dropped onto her face! It was great, and the girls hadn't even noticed that they'd already walked two miles.

We walked on further, across the river on a tiny suspension bridge (well, it was 50m long, and about 30m above the river, but when you looked at it afterwards, it seemed as if it was made up of tiny ropes). Eventually after the second tunnel, and walking past two waterfalls, and through one waterfall, we turned around, and walked back down the creek. In all it had taken us two hours, and we'd walked five miles, but the girls enjoyed it immensely and found the energy to keep going.

After the walk we rewarded ourselves with an ice-cream. We're all agreed that ice-cream is New Zealand's best thing. The glaciers and mountains are cool, the whales, dolphins and seals are nice, but the ice-cream is terrific - there's simply no other word. And just south of Hector is a shop which sells cones like these for 50 centres (Umm, about 20 pence), so they're even within our budget! The problem is choosing the flavour from the freezer cabinet – Boysenberry? Cookies and Cream? Chocolate Éclair? Orange Chocolate Chip? Hokey Pokey? For me there's no contest – Hokey Pokey wins every time. It's a vanilla ice-cream, with little pea-sized balls of honeycomb stolen from the middle of Crunchie bars. The bad thing about New Zealand ice-cream is that we've only got three more weeks to eat them!

Sunday, January 18, 2004

The Old Slaughterhouse Hostel, Hector

We're now in our 5th hostel in New Zealand – the Old Slaughterhouse, in Hector. It's almost as far up the West Coast as you can go, just above Westport, where everybody turns off to reach the rest of the island. Its much quieter up here than elsewhere, because the only reason to drive past is to reach the end of Heaphy Walking Track, a 70km walk that starts just north of here.

The Old Slaughterhouse has to be one of the most unusual hostels we've found anywhere – its perched on a hillside, about 250 metres above the road, and there's no road running to it. Instead, you walk up through the bush, for about 10 minutes, before emerging at the front door of the wooden building. (If you look at the larger version of the photo below, you'll see Charlotte and Sarah making their way up the track to the hostel – it helps give an idea of scale!Fortunately the owner has a four-wheel motorbike, which he whizzes up and down a separate dirt track, carrying our rucksacks.


The accommodation is a huge house, which is the home of David the owner as well as being the hostel lounge, kitchen and toilets. The bedrooms are in two separate buildings, set above on the hillside, with views across the Tasman Sea to Cape Foulwind and Karamea. At least, there would be views if the weather had allowed it. But today was grey, and tremendously windy, so we spent the day inside, reading, writing and playing. Everybody in the hostel was in the same mood, so the room looked as if it was full of human pillows, just resting on the sofas in the same place all day.

Saturday, January 17, 2004

Long distances…

After breakfast we all piled back in the car and drove down the other side of the Southern Alps. Arthurs Pass is the key pass through the middle of the range, and connects the East coast (where we've been) to the West coast. At the sea we turned right, and headed up north, towards the top of the South Island. It was a great drive. Having driven some roads which have been labeled as "the best drive in the world" (chronologically - the road through the Rockies; the Big Sur in California and the Great Ocean Road in Australia), we're pretty sure that the road between Greymouth and Westport should be included somewhere in the 'Top 10 Drives' list. The road is sandwiched between the coast and the mountains, with the coastline alternating between beaches and cliffs, with huge rocks sitting in the sea offshore. And because it was a New Zealand road, it had very little traffic on it. Every now and again we'd pass the most beautiful beach houses (or bachs as they are known here), with views to die for.


At Punakiki we stopped to look at the rock formations, but what really took our interest was the signpost. We're 16,000km from home – almost 10,000 miles. It reminded us of all the things we've left behind for the moment, and led us all to think about the things we miss most from home. We've been travelling for 6 months and one day now, and tomorrow is exactly half-way on our year's trip. When we got back in the car to continue our journey we were all a bit quieter than normal, as we thought about what we'd done so far, and what lay ahead - what will Asia be like?

We finished our driving around 5 o'clock in the afternoon, having driven for 4 hours, and stopped for 3 hours at sights and supermarkets along the way.

Friday, January 16, 2004

Arthur's Pass

Having left Australia behind, we thought we'd waved goodbye to the long car journeys. But no - we've discovered that New Zealand is bigger than it looks on a map (its amazing isn't it, I studied Geography at school, I even got an O-level, but I still seem totally incapable of looking at the scale of a map!). Anyway, today we learnt that Arthurs Pass is a long way from Mount Cook – or at least, it is when you travel by road. By air it wouldn't be more than a couple of hundred kilometers, but by car it took us hours, and those hours were spent driving along roads which were often steep and windy. The scenery that comes with the landscape is quite something – wide river valleys strewn with rocks and boulders, and steep sided mountains, capped with snow and scree.


New Zealand has about 64 million inhabitants, but 60.2 million of these are sheep and cattle - which leaves 3.8m to live in a country about the size of the UK. The result is a landscape that is pretty barren of human habitation – lots of grassland and forest – and few villages or towns. On the map it looks like there are more, but I've been caught out twice now thinking that a 'town' on the map will have a petrol station or shop, when it turns out to be a single house (and in the case of Kaikopo Junction, the house looked like it hadn't been lived in for a century or two).

Arthurs Pass town, which is a big dot on the map, turned out to have a shop and a petrol station (well, a shop with a petrol pump), so it was quite big. All of the houses were tiny, but built for an alpine environment. This cottage was typical – wooden walls, corrugated iron roof and little else. The Kiwis build almost everything with corrugated iron – even when building a brick house, they normally use corrugated iron on the roof. Our hostel, which is a YHA one, is a bit bigger than this cottage, but still very rustic, and - importantly because we're 800m up in the mountains – warm.

Thursday, January 15, 2004

A day in the mountains


From our hostel we drove across to Mount Cook. We'd been expecting to see snow-capped mountains, as we'd had a peek of them on our drive yesterday. But we hadn't expected to get this view – a stunning blue lake, a cloudless sky, and in the distance Mount Cook dropping down to lake level. The girls hadn't been keen to sightsee today, but when we stopped for a photo, they both piled out of the car and ran down to the lake shore, and spent the rest of the day running around at every opportunity – must be mountain air!


The closer we drove, the more magnificent the views became. The weather forecast had been for a dreary, overcast day (exactly the weather wished on us by our 'friend' Caroline) but like so many forecasts it was wrong. And the air was warm, without being hot. It was the kind of weather that makes you feel as if you'd like to emigrate tomorrow!

We drove to the town of Mount Cook, and walked through the Hermitage Hotel. According to the brochure it's "the most famous hotel in New Zealand", which I can't comment on, but I can report that its got very nice toilets! We decided to blow our luxury money on a cup of coffee in the town's coffee shop, which overlooked the mountains and the glaciers, through a huge window.


And then it was time for a walk – along a trail, across a very bouncy suspension bridge, and to a viewpoint overlooking the foot of a glacier. In winter the landscape must surely be completely covered in snow, but it seems more dramatic in summer, as you can see the huge stream flowing from the glacier melt-water, and the walls of ice slipping down the rock slopes on the mountains. Although it was windy and in the mountains, it wasn't cold, so it was real t-shirt weather. This is an area of New Zealand that we'd not visited before, and the bright blue lakes made it evocative of our trip in Canada – although we didn't get the crystal clear air there, because of rain and the forest fires. We've definitely seen things today that we'll remember for a very long time.

Wednesday, January 14, 2004

Moving on, leaving in tears...

Well, despite the rustic nature of the hostel, the girls were torn to leave. We all started the day with breakfast and a shower – you can see the shower cubicle on your left, which isn't exactly luxurious, but out of the window (well, hole in the wall the size of a window) you can see all the way down to the bay, and if you're lucky you'll see dolphins cruising the harbour. Then Charlotte had her last Japanese lesson. She's really enjoyed talking to, and playing with, the Japanese in the hostel - learning their language and making Origami. She definitely enjoys it more than her daily Maths lesson! Then the morning dragged as the girls took their time packing, and then Emily got the chance to help Anna change the beds, and sort out the toilets in the campsite. By the time we eventually left it was 1 o'clock, and the girls cried, and begged not to leave. But we have to move on – we've got a month to see the sights, and for once, have deadlines to meet!

Our journey took us inland, south towards Mount Cook. It took us five and a half hours to reach Lake Tekapo, where we checked into the Tailormade hostel. On the way we'd stopped for ice-creams, email and tea at McDonalds (a great medicine for tearful children), so we arrived at sunset, and was it glorious. The lake was a cobalt blue colour, with the mountains rising in the background. The hostel is in an old wooden house, on the edge of the village). I've tried to capture it with the photograph, but I'm not sure if it does it justice – you don't get the relaxed feel of an alpine town in a photo. The scenery is magnificent, and as we drove over the high meadows we passed through fields plastered with rainbow-coloured lupins.

Tuesday, January 13, 2004

Life at the hostel...

The spookiest thing happened today. Tom, the hostel manager, turned up with the old Visitors Books from the hostel, and we found our original comment in the book from February 1994. That in itself would have been fantastic (hey, I got it right when I said "the night in the huts will be a memory for sure!", because that's what made us come back, even though we're now in the farmhouse, rather than one of the corrugated and wood garden sheds), but what made it spooky, and hilarious, was the photo of us signing it. I'd completely forgotten that we'd had our photo taken, so it was a bit of shock to see our faces staring out of the pages, ten years on.

The conclusion was that Sarah hadn’t really aged, and I had - well, let me put into words that everybody else was too polite to say, I'm fatter. Last time we travelled I'd lost four stones by the time we arrived in New Zealand (oh yeah, I was really fat when we left England!), and that meant that we were a lot fitter – when we stayed here we strolled up to the Lookout point up the hill with ease, which is definitely not an easy walk. This time, with so much use of cars, and the girls' limited walking ability, we haven’t had the same regime, and the result is we feel less fit, and fatter.

Fortunately, we don't have to walk up the hillside to get fantastic views – the view from the deck is pretty impressive too – when you're sitting here eating pasta and Dolmio sauce it tastes pretty terrific! We only planned to stay for two nights, because we're on a pretty tight schedule here in New Zealand, but decided to stay an extra night because its so relaxing. But we must leave eventually, and when we do we know that there will be tears from the girls. Some hostels work like that – the minute you walk in the door, you feel instantly at home. Yesterday somebody baked muffins for everybody in the hostel, today we baked scones (and old New Zealand habit of ours), tomorrow I'm sure somebody will bake a cake!

Monday, January 12, 2004

Onuku Farm Hostel

We're now in Akaroa, a small town on the Banks Peninsula, a two hour drive from Christchurch. It's a weird place, because it’s a 'french' town – there are French flags flying from the church and town hall, and a very French feel to the town. I guess that a while ago it became the place to live if you were a French immigrant to New Zealand. We're here because of a lovely farm hostel that we stayed at last time we travelled, which we've now come back to. It's called Onuku Farm Hostel, and its set on 1,000 acres of grazing hillside, and we've got the company of 2,000 sheep. It's pretty basic (imagine the words 'farm' and 'hostel' and you've got a good idea of what it is like), but the girls love it. Everybody is very friendly, and the girls have spent the day playing volleyball, feeding the pigs, and repainting the stones that mark out the campsites. We even got to go into town without them, so as well as picking up the bread and milk, we lounged on the shoreline reading a paper (aah, a few moments of adult behaviour in a children-dominated year).

Mind you, it is pretty basic – the cottage, which was once the farmhouse, has four bedrooms with 16 beds, one toilet and two small kitchens. So as a result things have been built outside – like the two showers in corrugated irons shacks, and the toilet up the hill in another shed. Oh, and the kitchen, built into a lean-to on the decking. But it all works – it's charming rather than basic, and the kind of people attracted to stay at the hostel make it a very special place to stay. There are a couple of children staying here, who are from New Zealand families, so the girls have somebody else to play with, and many of the guests delight in teaching the children to paint, play volleyball or make necklaces.

Sunday, January 11, 2004

Life in the freezer!

One of the key attractions in Christchurch is the International Antarctica Visitor Centre, a cross between an amusement park and a museum. Christchurch is the home base to the New Zealand, American and Italian Antarctica teams, and houses all of the special aircraft used to fly people and stuff to the ice bases. The Visitor Centre gives an insight into what goes on down there, as well as some of the history of ice exploration.

The highlight for the girls was the freezer room – a huge room re-creating the Antarctic landscape and temperature. The walls were covered in a huge mural of the scenery, and the sides and floor were covered in snow and ice. The temperature was kept at a brisk -5 C and there were various Antarctic items strewn around – a ski-doo, an ice cave and a polar explorer's tent. Coming into the room from outside, at a balmy +24 C, was brilliant – an immediate cooling off chance. But the girls loved it too much – every half hour the room simulated a polar storm, with the temperature dropping to -24 C. Charlotte loved this so much she stayed in for three of them. After just over an hour in the room, wearing shorts, I'd begun to wonder if it was possible to get frostbite on a sunny day!


Charlotte, of course, didn't feel the cold at all – but she was obviously getting cold, because her nose started to turn red, followed by her cheeks, and then her fingers. It was only when she started to gather snow and throw snowballs that she began to realise that it was pretty cold. Soon, her hands were freezing, and finally we were allowed to leave. Sarah, of course, hadn't been silly enough to enter the room, so she had plenty of time to explore the rest of the centre, and read all of the material on the walls – something that is often quite difficult to do if you're visiting somewhere with children.

The rest of the centre was interesting too, with conventional displays of all things Antarctic, and lots of short films and models to show how things work. We even found a photograph of one of our distant New Zealand relatives in one of the displays! We eventually left the centre four hours after we'd entered. Although it wasn't cheap (about £8 each) it turned out to be well worth it for all the time that we could spend there.

Saturday, January 10, 2004

Deja Vu all over again

This is a spooky place - not only do we feel like we're in the past, in a city themed on the mid-20th century, but we also feel that its been created to make you feel as if you're somewhere else. Today, on our way to the art gallery and museum, we passed chaps providing rides on punts up the river. We could easily have been in Oxford! We had to do a double-take - 13,000 miles round the world to see what's on your doorstep.

After 4 days of lots of walking, the girls are starting to tire a little - Charlotte has pulled a muscle in her leg, so we're moving slowly and only for short distances today. It is amazing that the girls have as much energy as they do, because at the moment we're still trying to re-programme their bed times to earlier than 10pm! But they love getting out of the hostel and exploring, and they equally love getting back to the hostel and being able to play or help with the cooking. (Yes, we managed to get into the New Excelsion Hostel, which is possible the best run hostel we've stayed in for a long time. It's a bit curious that everybody seems to be around our age - there's another family on an 8-week holiday in Oz/NZ, as well as lots of couples. Normally we feel a bit out of it in a hostel, because there's a generation gap between us and most of the others. But in this hostel it seems okay - perhaps that will be repeated throughout New Zealand?)

But the girls love any hostel - lots to see and explore, and different people to talk to (they must be sick of hearing our conversations all of the time!). In fact, they seem to find it easier to settle down in a new hostel than we do, as they just dump their bags and go off to find everything. Its a definite eye opener into how independent children can be when they get the chance (hmmm, something to be watched too!).

An Evening at the Ballet

While wandering Christchurch today we passed the Court Theatre, and saw that they had a show on called 'Ballet Briefs', and about half an hour before curtain up, sitting eating dinner, we decided we'd go. After all, what's a trip around the world without a bit of local culture? So we dashed across town, frantically grabbed tickets and hopped into our seats as the lights began to dim.

It was the ballet equivalent of the Reduced Shakespeare Company – 6 ballets in one and a half hours. As they described it in the introduction, it's "ballet without the boring bits". Its difficult to describe how side-splittingly funny it is to see two guys in tutus/fairy costumes/tights/whatever performing all the parts in a classic opera like Swan Lake. There was definitely some interpretation needed, but the girls loved it, and we were relieved that the 'adult' jokes went straight over their heads. I've never been to ballet before, although Sarah and Charlotte go to the ballet in Oxford every Christmas, but I've saved myself loads of time – instead of sitting for 9 hours through all of these ballets, I've had the works in an evening! Mind you, I don't suppose I've had the full story, but then if you can see one ballerina (male, bald and overweight) doing the classic Swan Lake pas de deux then I'm sure that its possible to imagine the whole chorus line of 30 beautiful ballerinas doing the same thing (but in time, not out of breath and not gasping for a cigarette!).

If you get the chance, see it – there's enough classical ballet manoeuvres to satisfy that it is 'proper ballet', and enough jokes to make a philistine, like me, laugh.

Thursday, January 08, 2004

Time Travel

Even though the world scientific community won't admit it, it's definitely possible to travel through time. Take the trip from Australia to New Zealand which we undertook today. For a start you cross two time zones, as Sydney is 11 hours ahead of GMT, and Christchurch is 13 hours ahead. And a three hour flight means you arrive 5 hours later.

But that's not what I was really meaning. What I really mean by time travel is leaving Australia in the 21st Century, and arriving in New Zealand back in the 20th! It is just like stepping back in time when you hit the ground in New Zealand. Its not the airport - that looks pretty modern. Its not even the transport - their buses are up there with the best of them, and are a million years ahead of the London Buses.

Its the rest of it - its the fact that when you walk down any street in New Zealand you see things which have just completely disappeared at home. Old, faded shop fronts, with window displays protected by yellow film; shop signs that look like they were painted 30 years ago, although you know they were only done last year. At first its a shock and surprise, but after a while it starts to become quite charming - the fact that you don't feel afraid to cross the road because of the traffic, and the way that everybody seems so polite (crikey, am I showing my age or what?). I'm sure it'll be different in other parts of New Zealand, but for the moment we feel like we've landed in 80's England.

We tend not to book our accommodation in advance wherever we go, but that might be a problem in New Zealand. We phoned heaps of hostels from the airport, and they were all full. In the end we went to the accommodation booking office at the airport, who booked us into a motel near the centre of town. The airport bus dropped us about 1km away, and we walked the rest. Halfway there we had to stop to let the girls cool off (and get their first Hokey Pokey ice-cream!) This picture tells the story - Emily's sitting amongst our luggage - the big black one contains the car seat and the uncompressed sleeping bags, so doesn't weigh a huge amount, but the big green and black rucksack weighs about 27 kilos (yes, it's getting heavier!) and so is a pain to even get on, let alone carry. Before we hit Asia we're definitely going to have to lighten our load significantly (Car seat - gone! Sleeping bags - gone! Fleeces - gone!), but for the next month we'll probably hire a car, so it won't be a big problem.

Anyway, we got to our motel, and found that it had 76 rooms, and only two that were occupied - and when we looked around we realised why. It was grimmer than anywhere we'd stayed before, especially the 'themed' restaurant, which was completely done out to resemble a cowboy saloon, complete with bar men wearing chaps and guns in holsters. When we saw the 'Howdy Partner. How d'you fancy a Fast Draw competition?' poster, we decided that enough was enough, and we'd eat in our room. At least the weather was sunny, and perhaps tomorrow we can get into a hostel!

Wednesday, January 07, 2004

I feel like Skippy tonight...like Skippy tonight...

Our last night in Australia called for a special meal – and after three months of seeing it on the menu, I decided that I should try one of the "Bush Foods". At the café of the Aboriginal centre in the Grampians they offered a 'triple treat' of Kangaroo Steak, Emu kebab and Crocodile burger – but it didn't seem right to be munching away on man's friends (well, even crocs have friends, like little Bob Irwin!) in the middle of a National Park, where even taking a leaf from the ground is an offence.

But now we're back in the city, sensibilities have been left behind, so it was just a case of choosing which cute, furry, Australian animal to eat! I feel sorry for crocodiles, because they've got to live with Steve Irwin hanging around and wrestling them. And emus just don't look like the kind of bird that you'd get a nice kebab from. So kangaroos seemed to be the ideal candidate – to Australians they are a pest, and they're definitely not endangered, as we've seen them all over the place (remember Pambula campsite and Anglesea golf course?).

So I sat down to dinner at Krave (the best value café we found in all our time in Sydney) and ordered the kangaroo steak. I didn't know if I'd expected anything special, but what I got was a steak – just a plain, simple steak that could have been beef, lamb or any other kind of 'normal' meat. It tasted just like anything else (although, I must be honest, that my mind was dominated by the thoughts of Skippy rather than having a meat-gourmet mindset).

And if I hadn't known it was kangaroo, I guess I wouldn't have thought any more of it. But as it was kangaroo, I was a bit intrigued – after all, it's a bit like eating horsemeat in England – there's nothing wrong with it, you just don't do it. Anyway, back to Skippy. A little bit of research turned up the Aussie Meats Guide to Kangaroo Cuts, which contained this lovely diagram showing where the cuts come from – to help your imagination, I've drawn on where my rump steak came from!

So there we go – I've enjoyed a nice kangaroo steak, didn't choke on it, and positively enjoyed it. (Oh, and the girls had pasta!)

Fantastic Sydney!

Another day of sightseeing today - our last day in Australia - before packing our rucksacks ready for them to be thrown around an aircraft hold (or is it on the tarmac they do the damage?). Whatever, we had a great last day.

The sun shone. The sky was kind-of-blue (when the clouds parted). And we all got sunburnt! You'd have thought we'd have learnt by now. We walked across the Botanical Gardens to the Opera House, then took a ferry up the river to gawp at the wonderful waterside houses that grace the shores of Sydney Harbour. It gave us all a chance to rest our legs, and think about how lovely it would be to live in a city like this, with great views across the water. Shame that we don't have the money to buy houses like that in England - or even in Sydney, where a harbourside penthouse recently sold for A$15,000,000 (around £6M!).

We wandered around the harbourside, and stared at the opera house and the views. We watched the hundreds of people climbing the Sydney Harbour Bridge (next time...). We paused by the Opera House and asked somebody to take our photo in front of it. Sadly, the Canadian who took it didn't really have an eye for a photo - he took a close up of us, and left out the Opera House completely! So we asked somebody else to take a photo (phew!). We watched some aborigines playing didgeridoo with the harbour as background. It was an uplifting ending to a great 3 months in Oz.

And then we went back to the noise of the city, and the bustle of the train stations, and dust of the underground, and the squalor of Kings Cross (where our 'private hotel' is), and the spell was broken. Who cares, in a years' time we'll remember the highlights of the day, not the rest!

Tuesday, January 06, 2004

Around and about Sydney

It's great to be back in Sydney again, and to be somewhere we are familiar with. Yesterday was spent shopping and replacing some more of our worn-out clothes - new bikinis for all the girls, new boots for me! And today was exploring day – walking around and about the city to see the sights. We all walked miles, including the girls, and had a great time. We walked to Darling Harbour, on the other side of the city, and visited the Maritime Museum and wandered around the harbour. We ended up by seeing the didgeridoo show in Darling o Harbour ("Fab!" said Charlotte; "Brilliant" said Sarah; "Brrrrrrr" said I trying to get the noise right to play one). And then we walked halfway back home before the girls' legs wear out and we switched to the underground trains. We really enjoy sightseeing in cities, as we all enjoy walking as long as there are plenty of chances for the girls to stop and rest/play. They will walk much further in a city than in the countryside before they complain of being tired, and we all feel as if we've had a much healthier day because of it. (I'm not sure if that can be true, breathing in all the traffic fumes, but that's beside the point!)

Monday, January 05, 2004

Crikey, I Owe An Apology

Following absolutely no outrage by the international media, I feel I need to apologise for this photograph which I inadvertently took and used on this website last year. Obviously I had no idea what I was doing when I put my children inside the mouth of a huge crocodile. Although it was made of fibreglass, crikey, it could so easily have gone horribly wrong if it had suddenly come to life! Anyway, I've learnt my lesson – next time I decide to send the girls near crocs, I'll leave the camera at home mate!

Sunday, January 04, 2004

Back in Sydney

Finally, after 14 hours driving, we drove back into Sydney. Although it wasn't strictly necessary to drive across the Harbour Bridge, we did it anyway to mark our return to the city! It had been a long, very hot drive, and we were all relieved to arrive. In the campervan the girls had enjoyed the long trips – they sat upright and had a table for drawing or cards. But in the car they just had to sit in the their seats, and it got quite boring for them. But its our last long drive for a while, and in the last month we'd only covered 800 miles in the whole month, so they were pretty patient.

None the less, they were happy to get out the car finally in Sydney, and run around like monkeys on the lawn. After driving on near empty country roads for three months, it was a bit of shock to arrive back in a heaving city, with cars going all over the place, but we managed to get back to Kings Cross without incident, and checked into our backpackers hotel (we're in the kind of hotel which you'd run a million miles from in England, but what would you expect for £24 a night for a triple room!). We're still on the Sydney Olympics trail too – after staying in cabins that were used for the athlete villages during the Olympics, we're now sleeping in an official Sydney Olympics bunk bed too!

Saturday, January 03, 2004

Breaking up!

We've made it!!! We've all successfully survived a month in a cabin as an extended family together. For Charlotte and Emily, it's meant that they've had their grandparents around all the time – and therefore lots of treats and ice-creams, and somebody to appeal to when Mummy and Daddy said "No" to something. For Sarah its meant having her Mum and Dad around to talk to, and to provide some grown-up company. Michael has a real interest in history, and was like a history guide as we toured around. Gloria has a passion for wildlife and birds, and acted as our nature guide for the month – although Charlotte's knowledge of Australian wildlife gave her the edge some times!

And for me? Well, I'm proud of the fact that I've survived living in a 20" x 12" cabin with my In-Laws for a month. I bet David Blaine never thought of adding that daring element to his stay in the glass box. Perhaps he wouldn't have made it if he had!

Anyway, here's the evidence of how successful it was. Here's the last photo of us all together, after we'd packed up and were just about to set off. The smiles show that we all managed to live in close confines together successfully – or it could just be relief that we were all heading off!

After we parted company, we set off towards Sydney, which is a 600 mile drive we'll do over two days. The weather has definitely turned towards "searing" – we drove into Holbrook (our overnight stop) to a temperature of 44-degrees. The air conditioning in the car was struggling to cope, and in the cabin it completely failed to keep up, so we spent the night with the air-con on full blast, and the ceiling fan doing a Sikorsky impression.

Friday, January 02, 2004

Time to break a New Year resolution!

Note to self: Don't ever, ever have another New Year Resolution that is "Try something new soon".
Well, it’s a new year, and we're keen to do new things and explore new places still. So yesterday, after our coffee, we signed ourselves up for a 2 hour "Abseiling for the Nervous Beginner" course. Charlotte was keen to go, but Emily was too small, so spent another morning with Gloria and Michael.
When we arrived at the meeting point, we found out that we'd been mistakenly put onto the half-day "Rock Climbing and Intermediate Abseiling Group". So instead of doing a small abseil down a 45-degree slope, we found ourselves at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, roped up and ready to go up. There were a dozen of us in the group, including a couple of other children, and we alternately climbed and held the ropes for other climbers.

We all had a go at climbing, and Charlotte loved it. After her experience on a climbing wall before, she was raring to go up and raced up the rock face. She wasn't so keen on coming down – it meant putting your trust in the hands of the rope belayer (learnt some new technical words too!) and leaning back into space, and just walking backwards down the rock face. But we all did it, and all enjoyed it.

Then it was time for abseiling – not on the beginner slope, but straight down a vertical 90-foot cliff face. Charlotte wasn't up for it – her fear of heights stopped her walking to the edge at the top – but Sarah and I both had a few goes, and walked away with huge grins on our faces (I know it seems unlikely for me to grin, but I did, honest).

The only hiccup during the whole morning was when Sarah slipped on her last climb, lost her grip, and went swinging across the rock face like a pendulum. It was bad timing – it happened on the steepest bit, when her rope was tangled around an outcrop, so there was nothing anybody could do to stop her. She banged her shins against the rock, and ended up with a nice bruise on one leg and a nasty cut down the other, which then bled all over her shoes. Her fall would have been a lot worse, if she hadn't conveniently swung into the arms of the instructor at the bottom! It could have been a lot worse, but it was an unfortunate end to a brilliant morning.

Thursday, January 01, 2004

Happy New Year!

It seems that it was only a few weeks ago that we were leaving home, and setting off on our trip. And then, when we think back to our time in Canada, it seems ages ago. Whatever, it has now been almost six months since we packed up our rucksacks and set off into the great unknown with the girls. We've all learnt so much in that time – for me, I've learnt so much about what being a 24-hour-a-day-Dad can mean, with no opportunity to escape to the office for a break! I've also had to learn a lot more patience than I normally display – and even that isn't enough for some situations. I've also learnt how much fun it can be doing things all together – exploring, finding new places and learning new things.

The hardest part of travelling together is that there is no chance for us to have a break as we would at home. That quiet time of the day, after the children have gone to bed or to school, when it's possible to have an adult conversation, and you can genuinely relax. As we've all been sleeping in the same room all the time, that hasn't really been possible – the girls bed times are so messed up by travelling that we tend to go to bed as soon as we've got them asleep.

This morning then was a real treat. Gloria and Michael took the girls off to a wildlife park, while Sarah and I went for a walk to the Grand Canyon (Hey, the second Grand Canyon of the trip, but to be honest the Australian one isn't that exciting after the US one). It was great to be able to hop around the canyon without having to worry about looking after the girls. After we'd finished our walk (including half an hour sitting on top of a rock pillar, just appreciating the view without having to watch out for somebody falling off) we went in to Halls Gaps and had a coffee and a bacon sandwich, and just sat having a conversation and reading the papers for an hour and a half! This is only our second break from the girls in six months (for the first, we went night canoeing in Queensland), and it was just great.

We've also been lucky enough to get lie-ins on a regular basis since Sarah's parents have been with us. Each morning the girls have woken up at their normal, early, time and wandered through to Gloria and Michael, and have then either settled down in bed with them, or watched children's TV. Once you have children ,lie-ins become a faded memory, and this is even more true when you're all in the same bedroom. So we've had a luxury we wouldn't even have got at home – wow!