Ohakune to Lake Taupo

After Wellington we drove up to Ohakune, a small place that is apparently rammed in the Winter Ski season due to its proximity to Mount Ruapehu and the Turoa ski field. We had chosen to grace it with our presence as we were hoping to catch up with Carl and Maureen, a cheerful Kiwi couple we met in Samoa.

We chose the Top 10 holiday park as Clairy has become increasingly enamoured with their immaculate facilities and we weren't disappointed here. The shower experience alone was worth the cost of a night in the tent with its automated hot-air toasty changing facility, fancy lighting and super pressured hot water.

She also enticed this furry beast over for a good bit of loving.


'Back off please'...It seemed to be an exclusive event.


Ohakune is also famous for producing some damn fine carrots, as this specimen seems to testify.


We found Carl and Maureen back at work at their cafe/bar/restaurant and had a chat with them. They gave us a very tasty free cup of coffee and suggested some nice things for us to do in the vicinity.

The first was to head up the road on their side of the mountain. It got progressively steeper and steeper, resulting in some definite head under blanket scenarios for Clairy on the way up. There was still a good amount of snow on the mountain. When Carl and Maureen returned from their wonderful relaxing holiday in Samoa they found the ski season had been extended by two weeks, resulting in them being thrown right back into a mad rush at work instead of the chilled off-season they were expecting, poor buggers.




Mount Taranaki on the West Coast way off in the distance. A beautifully clear day.


The heat was perhaps not so wonderful for the poor buggers (though they only have themselves to blame) who were doing a totally insane mountain run, aptly named 'The Goat'. This required them to run over loose shale and huge rocks for mile after mile as well as to climb various running waterfalls. The final 'Mama's mile' was on the horrifically steep last mile of paved road before the ski slopes. Whilst taking these pictures various haggard stringy types huffed and puffed past us. The finish was just past where we stopped to take some photos and they hadn't bothered to close the road for the event. I felt slightly guilty cruising past them blowing carbon monoxide in their beetroot faces.

Nice place for a jog.




There were various walks to waterfalls on the mountain road. In what would turn out to be a familiar theme for the day we decided to just take a few snaps from the car.


We carried on round Mount Ruapehu in order to see the other side and take in some of the landscape of the Tongariro crossing.


Kiwi crossing! A couple of signs had some good quality alterations.




Mount Ruapehu from the north side.


The seemingly totally out of place Château Tongariro.


Fearing another head under blanket situation Clairy wandered around the small Whakapapa village (cheerfully pronounced fakapapa) while I zoomed up to the end of the road to take some piccies. Sadly the views weren't that great up where all the ski lodges are.


The Tongariro crossing apparently encounters some incredible brightly coloured lakes and crosses a number of different vegetation zones, but to make ourselves not feel too bad about not quite having the energy or time to do it I convinced us it would all have looked like the shot below (this was where they filmed some of the Mordor scenes!)


I did get this great shot of the cone of Mt Ngauruhoe (Mt Doom in in LOTR) on the way down.


From there we reached the ridge looking down on the beautifully verdant Lake Taupo.


An incredible difference in colour.


And we headed straight for the Tokaanu thermal baths, finally Clairy's first experience of the abundant geothermally heated mineral waters of New Zealand. It was pretty basic but we had our own private pool, making it almost essential for us to get nekkid! I'm hoping these pictures aren't going to breach blogger's tight codes of conduct.


Oh hell yeah! What a specimen.


Outside the park was a 20 minute walk round the thermally active area. Steamy.


There were some great sulfurous-orangey coloured deposits.


And stinky mud pools bubbling away. I just love the noise they make.




Oh hi! A lovely little fantail came and did a little display for us. They are such gorgeous looking things.


And on we headed around the lake to Taupo itself


Top 10 holiday park, Taupo. Possibly the most over-facilatied of all the holiday parks we have been to - complete with swimming pool, tennis courts, insane fun-park for kids, 1-4 person pedal cars

We visited the honey hive, a place were you can buy pretty much anything that it is possible to make from honey. We had an interesting chat with one of the owners who told us all about the processes involved in getting hives to concentrate on particular flowers for their pollen creating the different honeys that were on offer. One fascinating example was the five finger flower which very rarely is in blossom long enough at the correct time of year for bees to make use of it so creating rare but very tasty honey (we got to sample them all!). There was a live hive in the shop that got access to the outside world through a perspex tube.

After the honey hive we took a peak at the spectacular Huka falls, just outside of Taupo. Here the Waikato river is squashed from 40 metres across into a 10 metre chasm creating a thundering display of beautifully clear blue water.


Rafting not recommended.




It was extremely noisy, and that wasn't just the Japanese tourists.


We popped into town and found ourselves a decent looking bakery. The lakeside seemed a pleasant place to eat our lunch, but we weren't quite prepared for the militant ducks that surrounded us as soon as we sat down.


This particular young lady was outrageously cheeky. She actually made Clairy jump when she reached up and snatched the last of her roll from her hand when she was absently looking the other way.


Then it was time for our next thermal spa. This time it was DeBretts Spa Resort in Taupo. These proved to be a slightly more upmarket affair, although that didn't stop us from lowering the tone and getting nekkid again!


Check out the classy tongue and groove, complete with Maori carvings, and a beautiful lady! At this place they had an assortment of temperatures in the different private baths. I insisted we try the hottest at 41C, but could barely hack it for more than 5 minutes. In a little bit of a goldilocks fashion we tried almost all of them until we

Clairy spotted this gorgeous curly fern outside and just had to get a piccy. Near here we watched a blackbird have a near scorching bath in one of the thermal cooling pools which fed the spa. It seemed to be loving it!


After we had made ourselves nice and pruney in the heat of the thermal waters I insisted I had a go on the slightly dated looking dragon water slide. Its been an astonishingly long time since my last cheese grater experience with the poorly put together Sedgemoor splash version. There were various signs about having to be over a certain height to use the slide, but perhaps rather carelessly nothing about being an enormously tubby bloke.

I chucked myself down it with gay abandon and lay back to get as much speed as possible not really thinking too much about the change in forces that might have occurred now weighing probably three times as much as I did on my last water-slide experience. I suddenly found myself absolutely hurtling down, to the point where I was thrown round the last three corners with such force that I temporarily left the slide before remaking contact with loud painful bangs. I think Clairy and the kids down below thought I was going to smash the thing to pieces. I was actually pretty terrified myself thinking there was a good chance I was going up over the side and into serious injury territory. Check it out...a look of genuine fear!


Fortunately nothing did break and a small child down the bottom told me not to worry, a much bigger bloke than me had done much more damage a few moments earlier when he got stuck and a train of kids piled into the back of him.

Christchurch to Wellington

After mine and Clairy-warey's fairy-penguin experience we realised we were getting a tad behind schedule, having spent nearly 4 weeks on the south island and really needed to get a wriggle on. We headed off from our tiny shed-room in Dunedin and were up in Christchurch in a surprisingly nifty 4 and half hours, only stopping for some essential purchases so that we could cook Kirstie and Johann one of our spectacularly refined camping Thai curries.

It was fab to see Kirstie and Johann again. I was particularly pleased to find Kirstie had thought of getting something for pudding, and after Johann's anti-stereotyping surprise rejection of the apple strudel, we had tip-top hokie-pokie ice cream with added choc-whizz, here being modelled by Johann. I was well chuffed as you might be able to imagine.


After a very relaxing couple of nights we were genuinely gutted to have to say goodbye. Who knows when we will see them again, but hopefully we'll work something out. Possibly when we realise we can never settle again and set off to become professional travel writers, or some other pretend employment.

We left early to reach the 1:30pm ferry. In the end we had plenty of time, enough to stop at the super tasty KFC, that's the unfortunately acronymed Kaikoura Food Company. Here we had a coffee and as advised purchased a 10 dollar box of their superb creme brulee fudge. It was fecking gorgeous and only just about lasted the ferry journey.


I popped up on deck to take some piccies once the ferry was on its way. It was very pretty heading out of Queen Charlotte Sound.


A beautiful day for it.


The ferry does some quite sharp turns as it works its way up through the sounds. Its a bit disconcerting from down below as it leans more and more to one side and feels disturbingly like it might tip over.




Fortunately the swell didn't increase much when we reached the open sea and we had a nicely chilled crossing to the north island.




Wellington lived up to its notoriously pricey reputation in the accommodation stakes so we spent a night in the incredibly busy but well ran YHA hostel. Our main purpose for staying in Wellington was to get our Indian visas sorted. By the time we arrived though the Indian High Commission had already closed helpfully being open just between 10am and 1pm. We had a quick look round and received first hand evidence of why its called windy-welly. It was blowing a massive hoolie. It was pretty damn funny watching the runners going nowhere on the harbour walkway.

Eventually we did manage to achieve our goal of getting some utterly hideous passport photographs for out visa application. After wandering around looking for a cheapo booth we ended up heading to an outrageously over priced pharmacy and enduring the shame of having them processed manually. I was tempted to take a picture of them and add them in here, but this idea was vetoed by Clairy (quite rightly) on the grounds that it would destroy the pristine beauty of our blog.

The next day the wind had died down and our visa application went incredibly smoothly, although we did find it rather hard to leave our passports on the desk off the high commission along with about 50 others plus random bits of paper. They assured us it would be fine and they would be sent by our provided courier envelopes ASAP to our friends Amanda and Warwick in Auckland. We crossed our fingers and headed off to explore a bit more.

Clairy spotted this apparently famous kiwi tree with its bright red blossoms.


A welcoming alcoholic's front room.


Although that's not necessarily a very good indication of Wellington, apart from maybe the alcoholic thing. It had almost a London feel in its massive amount of drinking establishments spilling out onto the streets. It also had a very flashy business district that we sauntered through and some interesting little cafes.

We particularly liked this place called Ernesto's that did an incredible carrot cake, and was done out really nicely inside.


And out.


Having got our visa process on its way, we headed back to the car and set off to explore the north island.

Dunedin and the Otago Peninsular

Oh hi! Our trip to Dunedin was windy and rainy, and when we finally got to the city itself we could both see the potential similarities with Scotland...yes, wind and rain. It was blowing a hoolie to the extent that we opted for a cabin at the holiday park (actual garden shed size in reality), but a lot warmer than the tent.

To warm ourselves up we cooked ourselves a Thai green vege curry (with delicious coconut milk from Samoa), and sat by the gas fire in the communal area. Just as we were walking back across the grass to the cabin, we noticed that a tree had blown over in the wind, then suddenly we saw Erin and John in the space near the tree. This was good comedy value as we had kept in touch after meeting them in Fiji, but thought that our paths might not cross in New Zealand. This chance meeting was a real treat! We chatted the evening away together and swapped some stories about our fave places. We were really chuffed to see them and had a great night.

The next day we all arranged to go to the Otago Museum together, luckily for us all it was still wet and windy and therefore a perfect day to be indoors!

A skeleton of the extinct flightless Moa. It was hunted to extinction by the Maori's about 400 years ago. Very big drum sticks, and probably great ribs too...


A Waka Taua or war canoe. There was an excellent exhibition of Maori artefacts on display including woven flax bags and cloaks for chiefs, with painstakingly gradiated feathers inserted into the weave. Also a collection of greenstone and Tiki.


A very elaborately carved Maori communal store.


Oh dear! So far away from Easter Island, but still the real deal. A touch too much of the British Museum, perhaps... ' we have your antiquities, and we are keeping them!'


There was an excellent display of Oceanic Art that was beautifully unified by a geographical display of models of out-rigger canoes from across the South Pacific. There were also artefacts from Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands and PNG.

A variety of Coconut flesh shredders from Tahiti. The coconut shredding stool with fibre bound coral, reminding us of the ones we saw in the islands of Fiji.


The Cook Islands intricate wood carving.


The Marquesa Islands also had a human hair cloak on display and beautiful hair combs. A place I would dearly love to visit in the future.


Thousands of tiny bird feathers inserted into the woven vegetable fibre cape. The same feathers as a cloak in the Pitt Rivers Museum, England.


New Zealand's Royal Albatross. Sadly we didn't get to see any in real life at the Otago Peninsular, because they are apparently nest bound through Nov to Dec.


The museum also carried a display of Chinese art on loan from the museum of Shanghai, who had set strict controls over the presentation, lighting, layout and even required daily humidity updates from Dunedin! There was an exquisite display of lost wax bronze vessels with an incredible amount of detail, some of which were over 4000 years old. It was fascinating.

We had lunch with Erin and John at a vege cafe where amongst other things we compared our countries respective utensil use and considered the our of two sporks, instead of one (ridiculous)! On our return to the museum I persuaded everyone to take a look at the insect display in the attic room. Little did I realise just how 'Tring Museum' it would be! It was a delight and I really did have an 'all our yesterdays moment'. Quality!

A photograph of the interior of the original Otago Museum building, taken between 1877 and 1884. An articulated skeleton of a southern right whale stands on the ground floor.


Just like in the photo above, we got to wander around the old display cabinets, some of the poor stuffed animals were looking very tired and misshapen as well as discoloured from years of sun exposure. Now, later I am thinking where was the whale skeleton? Lol.

An impressive Japanese Spider crab, the world's largest crab. And an appropriate pose from me in the evolutionary primate section...Mmmm.


The last time we saw you was in Costa Rica! I wonder how the beetle that was found in a box of bananas imported to Britain is now doing...


After much serious concentration, reading, admiring and general focused enquiry, it all became a bit too much...Here's John in the 'you can touch' section, being helped into a turtle shell by Wiji...Erin taking a pic in the foreground.


This is such a brilliant shot, I am laughing sooo much I can't hold the camera still!


This is prime Facebook profile material, fo-sho. Pure Genius and strangely just the right size for John too it seemed...He was meant to wear that shell!


After hysterics we even managed some more focused time looking at the last of the displays in the cabinets.


Golden nuggets of fossilised sap (amber) from the native Kauri tree.


'Say Mmmmm- Moa!' Lol, Thanks John and Erin we totally loved your company and sense of humour...and cheers for the North Island tips too!


A group 'Moa Moment' courtesy of the girl on reception... 'The camping Americans and Brits do Fiji and NZ in tents', then both couples send their camping stuff home to continue their trips, now that is dedication and organisation...or madness even maybe...who knows?


After saying our goodbyes, Wiji and I headed off back to our tiny shed and then later that evening we set off on the hour and a half journey to the very tip of the Otago Peninsular, to Pilots Beach.

Whilst at Curio Bay the British twitchers had given us top tips about their wonderful Blue Penguin sighting, and we hoped to have a similar experience too. Due to my enthusiasm we were about an hour and a half too early, but we did get to watch sea lions leisurely swimming in the bay. Other tourists arrived and ignored the 'keep off the beach' signs, in favour of walking past them while reading them, only to position themselves right on the waters edge...DOH! Fortunately, (just as the twitchers had told us) the volunteer wardens arrived and got them to move back behind the sign and the fence, with what was shaping up to be a crowd for the evening. The wardens did a great job of setting expectations for the viewing and got everyone sorted. Then we all waited gazing out to sea...There was talk of 'rafts' of penguins swimming ashore then marching up the dunes to their mate waiting in the old rabbit burrows with the egg or chicks.


Sure enough as it got dark at about 9:30 ish, rafts of penguins swam to the beach then scrabbled upright to have a secret agent style scope of the area before making their way cautiously up through the dunes. The wardens got people to sit in small open groups in silence, so that there were no large barriers. Wiji and I watched several groups come ashore and then sat in the sand and were treated to a group of five Blue Penguins waddling past us, just inches away, in a 'No you go first, NO YOU go first' styleee. It was amazing. A really brilliant experience!

A dark and blurry shot of a raft of Blue Penguins coming ashore, just before it got too dark to take a piccie without a flash. The Blue Penguin is the smallest Penguin on earth and is sometimes called the Fairy Penguin. They take it in turns to spend a day each fishing before returning to shore to swap over duties.


We then watched and listened as more penguins made their way from the sea, across the dunes and called their mate in the process. I recorded some of the delightful sounds being made...