SOLD!!!

We have had a VERY busy week or two!

We spent Christmas with Lynne and Dave on the dairy farm we worked at back in September. Before heading into the farm, we spent four days exploring the Catlins area together. There we saw sea lions lazing in the dunes, yellow-eyed penguins (as well as two babies in a nest about one metre from us), and fur seals. We had a very cool moment when the four of us were reading on a beach and a fur seal came out of the ocean directly in front of us. It posed for pictures for a few minutes before heading past us on the beach to laze on some rocks. The whole time it was about 10 metres from us, which was incredible.

Christmas was very fun. Lynne and Dave were able to try their hand at milking. We visited our calves, which are on grass now and don’t have to be fed milk like we did a few months ago. Craig’s favourite calf is doing well; Andrea’s favourite calf is still dead.

Christmas Day we opened presents with the family, played with new toys, and had a yummy dinner. Boxing Day we were invited to a neighbour’s house for another feast. We also starred in a play written by Ania, the 11-year-old daughter. (For the record, Craig played Santa, Andrea played The Elf, Lynne played Mary, and Dave played Joseph.)

We arrived in Christchurch three days ago. This is the biggest city on the south island, with the same population as London, Ontario. We put our van up for sale right away, crossing our fingers and toes that it would sell quickly. Luckily, we had nothing to worry about! The van sold within 36 hours of putting it up for sale, AND we got our full asking price in cash! It all happened yesterday and it definitely made our day.

We’re now staying in a hostel here in Christchurch, and are in the middle of figuring out how early we will be flying into Bangkok now. We’ll either be arriving in Bangkok on January 8 or January 15, and staying for a few weeks before we fly to Delhi on January 29. Anyone reading our blog who has recommendations on places to stay/see in Bangkok or Delhi, let us know!

Travelling is about to get a whole lot more real for us!

Season Bleatings!!!

Jet Boating Video

Geotechnical Tramping

For the last week, we’ve been travelling down the west coast of the south island with Lynne and Dave. The weather was mostly cloudy and rainy, with temperature in the mid-teens.

We made it to glacier country and visited both of New Zealand’s famous glaciers, the Fox and Franz Josef. They are unique in that they are very low (altitude-wise) but are surrounded by a rainforest climate. Very odd indeed.

We hiked to the terminal face of Franz Josef Glacier, which is 7000 years old and 12 km long. It was pretty impressive, even though we were only able to get within 100 m of the terminal face – since the ice at the face randomly breaks off, they do not permit tourists up too close. Sadly, each year tourists do not respect the boundaries, and earlier this year two tourists were crushed by ice that fell on them while they were posing for a picture directly under the terminal face.

The following day we did an all-day guided glacier hike on the Fox Glacier, only 25 km down the road from Franz Josef. The Fox is 300 m deep and 13 km long. Since it’s so dangerous to approach the terminal face of the glacier, we hiked 800 steps up into the rainforest alongside the glacier to hike onto it higher up. The crampons on our boots helped steady us as Atli, our Icelandish guide, lead us on, over, and through the glacier, often pick-axing steps for us on steep surfaces. In total we spent four hours on the glacier and it only started to rain on our hike back to the bus.

To get off the west coast we had to drive over Haast Pass. To give you an idea how hilly and windy the roads are here, our 240 km drive from the glaciers over the pass took over 5 hours. Unfortunately our van completely broke down as we were driving up a giant hill, and New Zealand highways are always one lane each way with NO shoulder to speak of. As Lynne and Andrea slowed down and directed traffic around our van (which broke down on a blind corner), we waited for help. Did we mention it was pouring rain? Luckily a friendly tourist stopped to tow us up the steep hill very slowly to a pull-over, where we got a jump to our battery that lasted us until we got to our next town. One new battery and a new fuel filter later, and we’re good as gold! We are glad it didn’t cost very much to get her up and running again.

Once in Queenstown Craig and Dave did the Shotover JetBoat Ride, which took them within inches of the rocks as they rode down the river within canyons. The attached video was filmed by Andrea from the shore as they passed in front of her on their way 6 km downstream.

Now we are headed south to Invercargill, and our map is complete – we have completed our giant loop, and from now on will be travelling the path already taken. We hope to visit some old friends and get a bunch of hiking done before Christmas!

Family Ties

For the past two weeks we have been travelling with Craig’s parents, Lynne and Dave, showing them our favourite places at the top of the north island and then exploring the wild west coast. They are also in a motor home. They are doing a swap – the couple they are borrowing this motor home from are coming to Canada next year to borrow Lynne and Dave’s motor home.

The weather was glorious for the first week they were down on the south island, so we spent a few days lazing in Nelson and on a lovely beach called Kaiteriteri. It was around 25 degrees Celsius every day and we enjoyed relaxing in the sun and exploring the rocky shore around the beach by doing lots of hikes, which were more like rock climbing sessions.

Then the weather turned sour (aka rainy and cool). We stopped by Ivan and Canada’s farm (the one we helped out at in November) for a final visit. Lynne and Dave explored the farm and met all the animals, and got up close and personal with sheep for their Christmas card photo.

We have spent the last week exploring the west coast. We were warned to expect loads of rain (check) and loads of sandflies (check) – which are similar to black flies back home, and whose bites are super annoying and very itchy.

We drove as far north as you can go on the west coast, which involved driving over one of the hilliest and windiest passes yet. For approximately 20 km we were driving UP, but our 1985 campervan shone like the star she is and we made it. Once in Karamea we drove 16 km down a one-lane dirt road into Kahurangi National Park. There we explored some caves and hiked to some pretty limestone arches.

Two days ago we did our craziest hike yet with Lynne and Dave, which our hikers are still drying out from. In Punakaiki we embarked upon the Fox River Tourist Caves hike, where we were supposed to hike about an hour through the forest to some caves. Well, since the region had got last month’s rainfall in the past few days, the river was a-flowing and the six regularly-small river crossings were high and mighty and well past our knees. Once we had conquered the first two barefoot, everyone but Craig decided to suck it up and wear our hikers through the rest. Much to Craig’s dismay, since he was videotaping all the crossings, no one fell down.

The caves were well worth the wet feet. They were giant caverns with many stalagmites and stalactites to manoeuvre around. We were glad we had our torches (flashlights) since these were self-explore caves with chasms to step around. That kind of “tourist” activity is pretty dangerous, and it’s the kind of thing you just don’t see in Canada – especially since it is our favourite price, free.

On our way to the caves we picked up a hitchhiker, who gave us a “what a small world” moment when we found out she’s from St. Mary’s, Ontario, which is just north of London. Crazy!

We are now in Greymouth and still heading south. In a few days we will be near the Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers, where we plan to do a full-day guided glacier hike. We are pumped, especially since Andrea has never seen a glacier before. It should be pretty awesome!

Brrr, where's my jersey? I'm friesian!

Well, we’re back in the swing of farm life!

We’ve been staying and helping out at another farm for the last two weeks. We're just outside of Motueka, which is about a half hour drive from Nelson. This time we're at what is called a “lifestyle farm” here – 50 acres of land and some cows, sheep, horses, chickens, cats and dogs. The young couple who own it, Ivan and Canada, are about our age and we get along very well with them. They also enjoy good food, wine, cold beer, and relaxing in their hot tub on the deck – what more can you ask for?

We’ve been doing lots of different jobs on the farm and helping Ivan and Canada get it established, since their farm is less than a year old. From shovelling horse poo to building rock gardens, painting fences to clearing brush and scrub, we’ve been helping where we can. In exchange, we are getting a place to stay and wonderful home-cooked meals. Canada has made us many things we’ve never had before, including pavlova (a New Zealand dessert that is like a huge meringue with whipped cream and fruit on top) and crème brulee.

Ivan and Canada have also been tour guides, showing us around the area here. They took us to a local sheep farm to watch the shearers work their magic shearing the sheep. We also spent yesterday in Golden Bay, a two-hour drive north of here, where we visited a town full of hippies. While we were there we caught a few salmon, had them hot-smoked, then enjoyed a picnic on the beach of fresh smoked salmon, bread, cheese, and spiked cider. Mmmmmm!

Our plan is to stay here until mid-next week, and then hit the road again. Not that we will be going very far. Craig’s parents, Lynne and Dave, arrive in Auckland on Monday, and will be joining us to travel the south island the following Tuesday. It will be nice to see familiar faces from back home, as well as enjoy the goodies they are bringing us from Canada!

Back on the Beach

Oh, the places we go!

Since leaving the dairy farm a few weeks ago, we visited our friends in Dunedin again, we returned to the caravan park in Invercargill to help out for another week, and then we continued north along the east coast in search of good weather.

While in Invercargill we visited a few travel agents and took the plunge and booked the rest of our plane tickets for the rest of our adventure. At the end of January we will be saying good-bye to New Zealand and will fly to Delhi, in the north of India. From there we have ten weeks to make our way to Chennai, in the south of India, where we will fly out of. In April we will arrive in Thailand, and we will spend about four or five months bumming around Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, and Malaysia. We would like to extend an open invitation to anyone to join us in India or Southeast Asia next year to enjoy a few drinks on a beach. Seriously.

Along the way up the east coast we stayed a night at a caravan/animal park where we followed the owners on the evening and morning feeding. We met their donkey, emus, deer, possums, lamb, wallaby, goat, pig, peacock, alpacas, and many other animals as well.

Near the top of the island is the area known as the Marlborough wine region. While in town we had to visit the Cloudy Bay winery, the first New Zealand wine we ever had back home in Canada. It was delicious, of course, but when bottles range from $30 - $50, the wine better be good!

Now we are hanging around the north coast of the island, doing sun dances and enjoying the many beach-side camping options. We’ve had a few days in a row now of warm, sunny days. We’re currently in Nelson, where we spent yesterday strolling along their beautiful beach and enjoying some white wine in the sun. We have another farm stay lined up for next week only about 100 km from here, so we plan on being beach bums until then. Life is good!

Eee-Eye-Eee-I-Oh

We spent the last two weeks having a True Kiwi Experience: living and working on a dairy farm in Southland. We stayed with Helen and Michael and their two children, Ania (11) and Paul (6). Their dairy farm consists of 280 cows that are milked twice daily, as well as 80 calves that are fed twice daily, spread over their 130 ha property.

In exchange for a room of our own (complete with a fireplace and ensuite bathroom with heated flooring and a spa bath) as well as all our meals, we helped out with the cooking, kept the kitchen tidy, and watched the kids once in a while, as well as various farm jobs. Within an hour of arriving we were suited up in our coveralls and gumboots and headed out for the afternoon milking. Michael’s cowshed was built last year, so it’s all state-of-the-art (herringbone design, for people who speak Dairy). The process of milking the cows involves 36 of them lining up on each side of a three-feet-deep milking pit where we stand. Hanging above the pit are the cups that we manually attach to the teats, starting the automatic suction of milk, and that automatically detach when the milking is complete, allowing us to attach them to the cows waiting on the other side of the pit. The cows that just finished milking will file out and 36 new cows will file in, and the process repeats until all 280 cows have been milked. If all runs smoothly it takes approximately 3 hours to finish the milking and clean-up of the shed.

Keep in mind, being three feet below a large dairy cow puts you about eye-level with a not-so-pleasant/dangerous area of the cow. Dodging shit and piss (excuse our French, but this is real farming terminology) keeps you on your toes, especially since cows use these bodily functions as weapons. Another weapon in their arsenal is their powerful anti-suction-cup ninja back kick, which is known to bruise many-a forearm or hand. Sometimes, to prevent a repeat offender, their back leg would be tied to the railing to allow a smoother, injury-free milking session. Unfortunately there is no way to prevent them crapping on you as retaliation.

A job we preferred was to feed the 80 calves who lived in a separate barn, ranging in age from a day old to a couple of weeks old. These calves were split up between 5 pens depending on their age. They are fed from small milking troughs that have 5 artificial teats. This means each pen needs to be split into smaller groups of 5 – 10 during feeding. The reason for the smaller groups is that calves are naughty, and the quick drinkers will head butt their neighbours to try and steal their milk. Since they are still babies, they are fun and rambunctious. Their way of getting our attention is to head butt us in the leg, groin, bum, knees – wherever their head is aimed. The easiest way of satisfying their attention-craving-nature is to let them suck on as many of our (gloved) fingers as they can fit in their mouth. Since they only have bottom teeth, they cannot bite us or hurt us by doing this – unless they head butt our fingers into a milking trough. Watch the video below to see what we mean.










Our favourite pen was the newborns, which need to be taught how to feed. This involves straddling their neck and feeding them with a bottle until they can handle feeding independently from a trough. These little ones were the least naughty but liked to play the most. We each named our favourite calf out of the entire group: Craig’s was Ernst Ochre (tag #75) and Andrea’s was QT (tag #67). QT was Andrea’s favourite because it was very little and calm. Turns out it was so calm because it was dying. Upon arriving to a morning feed, Andrea found QT had moved on the Calf Heaven. The good news is, dead calves are worth $3, so Michael and Helen can buy two litres of petrol in QT’s memory.

Other random jobs we did were to tag (or ear-pierce) the older calves before helping load them onto a tractor to move them to a new paddock to begin their outdoor life. Andrea was in charge of loading the brass tag into the piercing tool, while Craig was in charge of catching the number Andrea loaded, holding it still by straddling its neck, and then piercing each ear. Trust us, this sounds much easier than it actually is. Riding in a pen on the back of a tractor with 15 calves on an unsealed back road surrounded by neighbouring sheep farms was truly a moment to savour and remember what an authentic experience we were having.

Overall, our farm stay has been the most interesting experience yet in New Zealand. Experiencing first-hand how hard farmers work has made us appreciate where our milk comes from, although we will not be looking into any career changes into farming! We will be keeping in touch with the family, and who knows – we may be able to reciprocate their hospitality by providing them with a Real Canadian City Experience one day!

Milka Teat

In the past few weeks we have entered into the world of “freedom camping” here in New Zealand. This is essentially just finding a park or rest stop without a “NO CAMPING” sign and setting up for the night. It’s great, because it’s free. We hadn’t done much since it was bloody cold at night in the past, and we (Andrea) wanted to pay for a camp site with power to run the heater.

We’ve been able to find some pretty amazing sites with better views than at most camp grounds. We’ve spent a few nights on those beautiful blue lakes we’ve been writing about. Craig even dared a swim in one on a warm day, but lasted under water only long enough for a picture since his limbs began to go numb with cold almost immediately.








For the last week or so we’ve been staying at the beautiful Invercargill Top 10 Holiday Park, run by Diane and Phillip. We’ve been doing a few hours of gardening or cleaning each day in exchange for a free place to stay and a few yummy home-cooked meals. They even put us up in one of their hotel-room-like units for the past two nights, so it’s almost seemed like a vacation away from our vacation... just with more weeding.

Today we begin our next adventure: we are going to live with a family on a dairy farm in the Catlins Forest area for a few weeks. We joined a group called Farm Help in New Zealand, which hooks you up with farmers and the like for whom you can work a few hours a day, in exchange for accommodation and meals. We have no idea what we will be doing, but we are confident it will be a great experience!

Mountains of Fun

From Invercargill, where the lamb bottle-feeding took place, we began to head north up the west coast. We are now in the Southern Alps, which means more breaktaking snow-capped mountains and glacier-fed blue lakes than you can shake a stick at.

Just outside of a tiny town called Clifden we ventured into a network of underground limestone caves, with our hikers, a torch (aka flashlight), and fairly low expectations of how good free caves could be. Well, were we surprised! The caves took over half an hour to navigate, and involved tight squeezes, spider walking across underground streams, and even glowworms. At the end we discovered a tiny lamb that had wandered into the caves, so we carried it out and it became attached to us. Andrea wanted to keep it, but Craig convinced her that the van would probably not be the ideal location to raise a lamb.

Next we spent three days relaxing in Te Anau where our campsite had wonderful views of Lake Te Anau, which is New Zealand’s second-largest lake and is part of Fiordland National Park. Unfortunately the weather was rainy and we were both sick, but it was the perfect place to recharge our batteries. Apparently you still get sick while on a year-long vacation.

From there we headed to Queenstown, New Zealand’s adventure capital. The town itself reminded us a bit of Whistler, and we only stayed one night, since everything was very touristy and overpriced. If we end up wanting to do a bungee jump or anything else EXTREME we will do it when Craig’s parents are here in a few months. That night we went out with a fun Scottish couple who were camped next to us and we watched the All Blacks (NZ’s rugby team) lose to South Africa. The night ended in a tiny Whisky Bar where we traded travel stories in front of a fire and played hacky sack with the British bartender who was so impressed with Craig’s “stellar ‘chops” that he bought Craig a beer.

Now we are in Wanaka, once again at a lakeside campsite and surrounded by snow-capped mountains. Yesterday we did a five and a half hour hike to the top of Roy’s Peak, which at 1578m is the highest tramp we’ve done here. Although it completely kicked our butts, we were rewarded with panoramic mountain range views at the top. You just don’t have these views in Southern Ontario!

Today we went to Puzzling World, where we went into the Illusion Rooms and were amazed by holograms and puzzled by rooms that were at an angle or played with our sense of perception. We also navigated our way through a giant 3-D, two-story, kilometre and a half maze that took close to an hour. It was a-MAZE-ing!

I Love Lamb

We arrived on the south island on August 27, and proceeded down the east coast towards Dunedin. We did the 900 km journey over two days, arriving the next afternoon, which luckily was a Friday. Andrea was able to catch up with Branden over a few beers on their deck overlooking the Dunedin harbour with the ocean in the background. That night we went out with Branden, his wife Ana, and a group of their friends to catch some live Kiwi music. We saw Sola Rosa put on a fantastic show, and recommend any Canadians looking to sample some Kiwi music to check them out – their newest video is on YouTube, “Turn Around”.

Branden and Ana were gracious enough to let us stay in their spare bedroom for a week, to take a break from campervan life. We explored Dunedin, including the University of Otago campus, the many gorgeous old buildings in the downtown area, and Baldwin Street, the world’s steepest residential street.

After a week in Dunedin, we once again heard the call of the road. On Saturday we returned to campervan life and headed further south to the Catlins area. The Catlins are an area rich with forests, waterfalls, scenic reserves, and tons of wildlife, along the southeastern tip of the south island. We were incredibly lucky yesterday to catch a rare glimpse of a couple of yellow-eyed penguins in the wild. After two hours of waiting in the cold on a rocky beach, we were rewarded with two penguins returning from the sea to their breeding grounds. They hung out by us for almost half an hour, coming within 5 metres of where we were, allowing Craig some great photo opportunities. What also made this encounter so unique was that this was not a tourist attraction where you have to pay – it was just a beach, with us and four other people and our cameras. Seeing wild penguins so close was Andrea’s dream come true.

We are now continuing west along the southern tip, again without any destination. The caravan park we are staying at has sheep, lambs, and a goat. The owners have adopted an orphaned one-week-old lamb, who Andrea was lucky enough to be able to bottle feed tonight. This was Andrea’s second dream come true, and within 24 hours of seeing penguins!

Island Hoppers

We hung around Mount Taranaki for four days, hoping the weather would improve so we could do a tramp, but we had no luck. It’s been hard getting used to having to be a slave to the winter conditions on some of the mountains, which often make them unhikeable.

We continued south, where we were finally able to do a hike outside of the tiny town of Levin (which Craig loves to pronounce as if it rhymes with “Ravene” of Trailer Park Boys fame). The three hour hike took us through the Tararua Range, but did not reward us with any spectacular views.

As we approached the Wellington area, we veered southeast, to the most southern point of the north island: Cape Palliser. Here we took the 249 or so odd steps to the lookout at the top of the Cape Palliser lighthouse. During our coastal walk to the lighthouse, we crossed paths with the north island’s largest seal colony. There were almost a hundred large, moustachioed, smelly seals all basking in the sunlight or rubbing up on the grass at the side of the road. We made sure not to get too close, as we did not want to lose our hand to a hungry seal, Buster-style (extra points to those who get the obscure television reference).

That night we stayed at a Department of Conservation campsite, which was cheap, but without power (and therefore without heat) we could see our breath inside the camper come morning. We quickly warmed up on our post-breakfast hike to a viewing platform that looked on one side to the south island, where we could see snowy peaks across the Cook Strait, and on the other side looked over the Putangirua Pinnacles, which were immense. They were also the site of the filming of “Dimholt Road”, for LOTR buffs, of which we are not.

Next up we spent a few days in Martinborough, another New Zealand wine region. Our caravan park was within 3 km of more wineries than we could visit in a day, so we indulged in a self-guided walking wine tour of the area. Considering bus tours charge upwards of $100/person, we enjoyed our slightly stumbly free tour.

For the past few days we’ve been in the Lower Hutt region, which is pretty much the closest we can camp to the city of Wellington. Yesterday we completed a five-hour, 12 km tramp to the top of Mount McKerrow, where we camped at the base of and this time did not wake up to being able to see our breath. Today we drove into Wellington and explored Te Papa, the free national museum, and the downtown. Unfortunately the weather turned extremely windy and rainy this afternoon, and if it continues overnight we may not be able to visit the zoo as we hope tomorrow.

We feel we have seen everything we can see (during the winter) on the north island, so we have booked our ferry ride to the south island for Thursday. We have heard nothing but amazing things about scenery and wildlife on the south island, and are eager to get there and see for ourselves. Considering the population of the entire south island is equal to the population of Auckland, it may be just the slower, more personal pace of place we tend to enjoy. We are heading first to Dunedin to visit with Andrea’s high school work friend who is studying there, since we are in need of socializing with people our own age – the last few caravan parks we have mostly had either to ourselves, or have shared with the over-50 crowd of “grey nomads”. A bit of time in a student town may be just what we need!

On the Road Again

Andrea’s second week of relief teaching in Auckland went much better, and she worked all five days. This included two days with a very challenging class, two days at a fabulous school, and one day in a class with three deaf children and one deaf EA (and Andrea does not know sign language...seriously). However, after two weeks in Auckland we heard the call of the road and set off driving south.

Our first stop was Hamilton, which is about as exciting as its Ontario namesake. We got some work done on the van, and met up with Suzanne and Les, some cyberfriends of Lynne and Dave, who they met online while researching their own upcoming tour of New Zealand. Suzanne and Les live full time in their 10m “bus”, so we chatted about touring over mugs of flat whites.

From Hamilton we headed to Kawhia (pronounced “Kafia”, as wh makes an f sound in Maori), where we met an eccentric fellow who informed us of every single injustice the New Zealand court system is responsible for. The next day we hit up some back roads continuing south towards Waitomo, where we did the caving about a month ago. Here we took advantage of some free attractions and good weather. We visited the Marokopa Falls, the Piripiri Caves, and the Mangapohue Natural Bridge. All were interesting natural places where Craig was able to break the camera out again after being confined to its case for the whole uneventful stay in Auckland.

Next we headed further south down a road that Lonely Planet described as “true off the beaten track backcountry.” A short detour led to a dirt track blocked by sheep and lambs as far as the eye could see. Once we made it through the herd and avoided a baby lamb trying to hitch a ride we made it to a secluded beach only accessible by walking through a dank, dark 300m long tunnel. Here we had our first exposure to the rugged west coast, famous for its black sand beaches where the sand has magnetic properties due to its high iron content.

After spending the night safely in Mokau, a mere 50m from the beach, we continued further southwest to the Taranaki peninsula. We have been in the area for the past three nights, holding out for better weather in the hopes of doing some tramping on the snow-capped Mount Taranaki which rises to the height of 2518m. However, the weather has not cooperated, the mountain has been shrouded in cloud and rain, and today we glimpsed a peek at the snowy peak.

While in the area we’ve kept ourselves busy checking out local parks (including one in New Plymouth with a FREE zoo, monkeys and all!) and doing some city walks. If the poor weather continues we will visit again in the summer when we return north closer to the end of our trip, as this tramp has made it onto our must-do list.

Tramping Video

Tramps, Our Favourite Synonym

Since our last update, we zig-zagged across the area to the south-east of Auckland, seeking out interesting tramps (hikes) and tramps (people).

We did our longest hike in New Zealand yet on the Coromandel Peninsula. We hiked the Billy Goat Track up to the Pinnacles, which are part of the Coromandel Forest Park. The hike took us almost 7 hours round-trip, and we were absolutely knackered by the end of it. The track took us through forest, over volcanic ridges, through valleys, and finally up to the top of a lookout at the top of the Pinnacles. It was absolutely breathtaking, since we looked out over the Pacific Ocean. As we were at the top we saw a rainstorm blow through the valley, and it hammered it down for about ten minutes. Luckily that passed and the rest of the tramp was dry and sunny. We took a video of the steep ascent and the wind/rainstorm at the top, which we will upload as soon as we can.

We arrived back in Auckland about a week and a half ago, getting Andrea set up to begin relief teaching. She was ready to begin working this past Monday, and we were getting discouraged when no calls came for either Monday or Tuesday, as the relief agency led us to believe that there was a lot of work here. We took Monday and Tuesday to explore West Auckland beaches (black sand and all), as well as visit the MOTAT (Museum of Transportation and Technology), where we saw exhibits on the history of planes, trains, automobiles, telephones, and lots more.

Luckily work came through for Wednesday, and Andrea spent the rest of the week working in a special needs classroom in West Auckland. It was a great learning experience, as schools here definitely have their differences compared to schools in Ontario, and the kids were great. We are going to stick around this week for more work (Tuesday is already booked), but then will most likely be lured by the call of the road to go out travelling again for a bit.

New Zealand: Moving at the Speed of Cow

We ended up spending three nights in Hastings, mostly because the caravan park gave us a good deal (pay for two nights, stay for three – believe us, it makes a difference!). The park was pretty nice and let us borrow DVDs for free (sounds so simple, but it is a goldmine for us travellers!) and we got free internet. While there we had our first New Zealand fish ‘n chips from a small shop run by a fisherman, and WOW, were they yummy! $10 for two huge pieces of tarakihi fish and a giant scoop of chips (fries).

Next we drove to Gisborne and camped at a caravan park right on the beach. Too bad the weather was about 10 degrees and windy and rainy. Needless to say, we only stayed a night. The next morning we headed north along a highway that hugged the eastern peninsula coast. Not 20 minutes into our trip did we encounter a traffic jam. Not a vehicular traffic jam, however, but a COW traffic jam! There were at least 30 or 40 cows trotting down the middle of the highway. So we slowed down for Craig to pet one out the window and encourage them to move out of our way. Finally they parted and we continued on our way, looking forward to a sheep traffic jam one day.

The scenery on the drive was beautiful, since we had a rare sunny day. The drive was comparable to the Great Ocean Road in Australia, but way less busy. We crashed in the small town of Opotoki that night since we’d had enough driving that day. In little towns like that in the middle of winter caravan parks are not busy, so we had the entire park to ourselves. That is, except for a rooster named Rusty who stood outside our van and woke us up at 5am. Seriously.

Here are some shots from our drive along the east coast:

We decided to head back to Rotorua, the sulphur town, to try and see a bit more of it. We found a pamphlet that came with our van for a caravan park that promised a beach right on Lake Rotorua where you could dig your own hot tub that would then fill with natural, hot spring water. There were even pictures of kids doing it on the brochure. Well. In reality, the beach was TINY and had two holes someone had dug who knows how long ago, full of foamy, stagnant, luke-warm water. This was one of the most expensive caravan parks we have stayed at, and it was also one of the most disappointing. The one good thing was that the park had hangi ovens to cook in, which are Maori ovens that use natural steam from hot springs to cook food in. We made up a batch of pizza dough, and then wrapped whole sausages in the dough with cheese and tomato sauce, and cooked them in the hangi. Yum!

Here we are, making friends with the locals:

Andrea is set to begin supply teaching in Auckland starting July 27, so we are aiming to be back in the city the weekend before then. We are making our way north, stopping at our favourite places on the way. For the next few days we will be in Mount Maunganui, doing some tramping, and relaxing before returning to the working world.