The morning of our last day in New Zealand began like most of the others - feeding the ducks that had gathered outside our door. Standing outside the flat to feed them, Trav was able to gather three ducklings inside the cabin by laying a bread trail for them.
Seeing as we were planning to leave from Christchurch tomorrow, and we were a day ahead of schedule, we decided to go for a “lap of the block” and see what we could find outside the Christchurch city limits. A quick visit to the tourism office provided us with a very surprised assistant when Trav [...]
This morning we went for a hike to the terminal face of the Fox glacier, because it was not closed like the Franz Joseph one was. The trail to the face was a rather tortuous one, through many large and small rocks, all trying to get Di to fall over them. However, despite the best [...]
A mere six minutes after getting up, someone qualified themselves for SPOTD, as Trav was trying to take a shower. As with most of the places we stayed, each tap in the amenities block was affected by other taps. As a result, when in the shower, you’re hoping nobody else is going to either turn [...]
We were booked on the 9:30am Interislander ferry from Wellington to Picton ($46 each) this morning, so it was a slightly earlier rise than usual, in order to pack everything back into two bags for the crossing. As usual, there were many ducks in the caravan park, happily eating the bread we offered until Trav [...]
After a comfortable night’s sleep in a bed, we headed south, around Lake Taupo to Turangi. The drive was not a pleasant one because it was a very narrow and winding road including several 35kph corners, and there were many logging trucks ahead of us, slowing things down. Nonetheless, after more than an hour, we [...]
It needs to be said here that this day was a veritable GOLDMINE for entrants in the SPOTD award.
We began our day with a visit to the Whakarewarewa thermal park ($18NZD each) in the centre of Rotorua, which is a large area containing more spectacular geysers and boiling mud than the surrounding area. The site [...]
Heading south from Manakau, we cruised down a lovely open, flat, straight motorway that was literally dotted with dozens of accident sites. The sites were marked with white crosses, and we estimated we saw just under 100 of them, on what appeared to us to be a perfectly safe road. There were a few crosses [...]
After booking the tickets way back in mid-August, it was finally time to depart Australia and jump the “big ditch” to see the land on the other side of the Tasman. When we got to the airport, we had no idea on what to expect, seeing as it was the first time either of us [...]
