Wandering Scotsman

Off to rugby world cup game!

I’m  long overdue with a blog post. We’ve just returned from a fantastic day skiing on the Remarkable mountains. Here’s a quick pic from a viewpoint that we could see our house from.  I’m back up tomorrow for an ice climbing course.
Its all great here.  I’ve even had a few days where I’ve went skiing for an hour before work.
More soon….

We had a great cruise on the lake today after a big skiing day yesterday. Turned out it was a private cruise as noone else booked….which was great as we went to the far side of the lake.
Its such a great day I wish it didn’t have to get dark!

Just a small update to say we’ve survived our first week in the house, and almost my first week in the job.

Yes I know you can see the joins in the picture above, but wanted to get this up here to show a different view of “home”.  Pretty neat eh?  Yup that’s the van in the drive, and the view out the back.

I can get home within 15 minutes which is quicker than we thought.  Work has been interesting this week if a little daunting – exciting (but hard) things being discussed, and still pinching myself walking down the hill with stunning views in the morning, and along the lakefront at lunchtime.

Ciara has also accepted a job at the same place and starts a week on Monday which is great, although I’m going to miss the experimental and tasty dinners, and my lunch being made for me!

We’ve had a couple of barbeques outside (cooking in the dark) which have been really quick and easy, and it’s great seeing the light changing every day in the morning.  I’m counting down the 6 weeks until the mountains open for winter and can’t wait to get back on the snow.

The first pay day is on Tuesday but it’ll take us a while to get back in our stride, which is maybe a good thing!

Hope everyone is well.  There’s only one question for family and friends – when you coming over?

Apologies, I ‘borrowed’ this picture from a Queenstown council job advert….but I thought it was appropriate to the current move to Queenstown.  With a bit of luck, and the additional purchase of a “fresh tracks” pass for me, hopefully I’ll be able to do this before work sometime as well.

A nice morning in Wanaka!

Just typing this in a small campsite just outside of Invercargill on the very South of the South Island.  Yes, I’m way behind on any form of blogging but time just seems to fly by.  We left the fantastic house of Ciara’s relatives on Monday and have been travelling down through Dunedin, and the Catlins on the South East of the South Island. We’re just outside Invercargill (about 30km towards Queenstown), and we are heading to Stewart Island for two or three nights which we’re really looking forward to. 

We probably won’t do too much there but as bizarre it may seem to everyone doing they’re 9-5, we’re quite looking forward to a break from moving on constantly.  We’re getting a bit “fed up” of seeing the next ‘great waterfall’ you should see, or yet another place to see seals (these were on our regular walk in Wellington) etc.  When we get back onto the Mainland (which the South Island is referred to), we’re going to head back up to the Queenstown / Wanaka area to do some activities, then if all goes well, we’ve sorted out at least a couple of weeks volunteering in exchange for accommodation in Wanaka.  Although the work may be quite mundane we’re really looking forward to being based in one spot, and our favourite spot for a wee while.  The owner may want some help in photography or marketing as well.  We’ll wait to see if it comes off, then we’ll post a link to the place – it’s pretty stunning.

As always, we think it’s worth spending a bit of money when in places to have the odd drink so you can see what it’s really like.  Tonight we went to the pub that runs the small campsite to find that it has ‘toss the boss’ as a form of happy hour on a Friday – you order your drinks, then a coin is tossed to see if you pay.  The wine wasn’t, but my large beer was free.  We thought that was great, then some guy walked into the bar with a fresh crayfish on his arm, up for raffle.  Although the locals said it wasn’t the biggest one, this was no normal crayfish.  It was grabbing onto his arm (with some force going by his comments), and the bloody thing would have been almost as long as my arm if it’s tail was stretched out……we never entered the raffle  – we figured we wouldn’t have had a pot big enough to cook the bloody thing in anyway!  Aaaah…welcome to Southland.

We have arrived in Christchurch awaiting my mum’s arrival on Thursday (erm, which I thought was on Wednesday until recently!).  Ooops.

The last 10 days have been great heading down the West Coast and stopping for the night in lakeside campsites.  We spent about a week in and around the Arthur’s Pass mountainous area which was great – very limited spending (although the money still disappeared), surrounded by mountains, and doing some active things.

We stopped for a couple of days of relaxation on the way into the pass at a pretty fancy campsite with very little around it, reading our books in the sun.  From here we went up to Arthur’s Pass village and did an amazing walk called Avalanche Peak which is one of the best one days walks in New Zealand.  It was a bit of a grunt up to the top, but with a reward of amazing alpine views and surrounding glaciers.  Around us the alpine parrots (or Keas as they’re called) were hanging around just waiting for us to leave something loose so they could fly away with it.

We then moved just along the valley about 10km to a great free camping spot by a lake that we could swim in which was superb.  We used this as a base for a couple of days to go to a bouldering area called Castle Hill to do some climbing type stuff.  On the way we stumbled across an underground cave system that was free to enter in Cave Stream Scenic Reserve that was absolutely amazing.  When you enter the cave, you check the water level and make sure it’s below your waist, then you walk up the underground stream, fully inside the cave for up to an hour, the passage only lit by your headtorch.

We somewhat reluctantly left Arthur’s Pass, but may be back later in the trip.  We headed to Akaroa on the peninsula south of Christchurch for a couple of day’s more sun, and we are now in Christchurch.  We saw an amazing exhibition by Ron Mueck in the art gallery yesterday – hand crafted human forms which were so lifelike it was stunning.

A storm is due with some rains and winds over the next couple of days.  Wev’e not felt any aftershocks in Chritchurch so far.  It’s quite sad to see quite a few buildings that have been flattened due them being unsafe.  We have the van in for a service today and Ciara is off to meet some relatives tonight, then we’re getting prep’d for a busy three weeks after mum arrives on Thursday.  Cities are dangerous for our budgets as we’ve plumped ourselves in a fairly central campsite at $39 a night, but it’s good to have a base, and we have both been sucked into the sales in the outdoors shops already, but have grabbed ourselves a couple of absolute bargains.

The blogging will be quiet again over the next few week’s but I’ll try to keep it up.  We’re off to the tourist highlights including Tekapo, Mount Cook, Wanaka, Queenstown and the Sounds.  Hopefully we’ll stop off in an observatory where you can attach your own camera’s for some night shots through their powerful telescopes.  We’re leaving Christchurch on Saturday.

Hi All, and a belated Happy New Year to everyone. Although it may sound like we’ve been living ‘off grid’ with no updates, we haven’t been, it’s just that time on the road flies, and days are busy, and laptops aren’t picked up.  Photos for this post will come later!

We took in Christmas in Collingwood then headed towards Takaka just down the road in Golden Bay.  It was time to try and climb, and experience at least one night out in the laid back (hippy!) town on Takaka.  It’s a great vibe around here but you can tell there are quite a few who have moved for the vibe of the place.  There’s loads of outlets for local artists and clothesmakers, organic cafes and outlets and all the normal stuff associated with a small town.  We had a nice evening in one of the bars speaking to the owner about the place.

From spending a night in the town, there was more rain predicted so we headed to a full blown campsite on the coast to sit back and read our books.  Luckily it only lasted a few days, so we managed to get a couple of morning’s climbing in, another short attempt at fishing with no joy (but another tangled line!), and a couple of nights free camping in the harbour carpark!   We managed to climb over a ridge on the coast over a pretty awesome gravel road to one of the beaches in the Abel Tasman National Park.

The climbing we did was in a great setting right behind the road (short walk!) and right on the coast (great views).  One day was almost perfect – a good couple of hours climbing one easyish routes, some decent people to chat to next to us, a kite flying session on the beach, and a short swim in the sea – what a great way to spend the last day of the year.

Our New Year was spent in a local inn just outside of Takaka  – we left it too late to get into the campsite, and didn’t want to just park up on the road randomly.  It was full of locals, bar the odd unexpecting tourist.  I say locals – I should say local ‘characters’ – quite a bizarre but interesting night.  We were pretty much parked in a field next to the Inn, had to go to the toilets inside, and the biggest nightmare of the night was that this was our second New Year’s night with no countdown….nope, no-one said “10, 9, 8…..” – we were gutted.  THey just went straight into a crap rendition of Auld Lang Syne (they were a pretty naff band – a Swedish tourist managed to get on stage to play and stayed on for 20 minutes getting more praise than the band!).

Reluctantly we decided we should leave Golden Bay and head towards Nelson Lakes and the West Coast.  We had so many things we still wanted to do in and around Golden Bay from biking to climbing and walking, and the weather had held us up a bit (our excuse anyway!).  We decided that we could still be there in a few weeks and still think the same, so we left as it is one of the closest areas to Wellington (albeit across the sea) where we think we’ll end up heading back to.

We headed down to Nelson Lakes and managed a day of walking and another with some biking.  We also managed to cross paths with our previous ‘flattie’ (housemate) and friend from Wellington on her return from New Years holidays so managed to get some post, grab a coffee and have a natter.  Our friend had just been in a place called Karamea on the West Coast so we decided to head up there as it’s a bit off the beaten track, and there’s a high chance we wouldn’t be there again unless we did the Heaphy Walk.  It wasn’t on our plans, but that’s the joy of being on the road!

One the way over we stopped off in a cheap DOC camp site and squeezed in our first activity of doing a tandem zip line swing across the river.  It looked like good fun, but it ended up confirming our fears of spending money on the big activities.  It was lame, and we felt cheated of our $60.

Karamea was lovely and we managed to hit it up pretty well in two days – we walked through caves, limestone karsts, had some great views and beach walks, and camped at the end of a road for a night, and really experienced the wild, rugged, west coast.

We were lucky in Karamea as the weather held out, so we decided to head down the West Coast just as it turned.  Unfortunately that stopped us doing some cycling in one area, and climbing in another but hey ho.

There’s less than a two week until my mum comes down the road.  The road trip’s great but despite having all the time in the world (relatively), we could have three, four, five times as long and we’d still struggle to do everything we wanted.  Sometimes we’re struggle as we want to do so much we end up doing only small bits of each of them, but who’s complaining!

Between now and the 19th when my mum arrives, we’re going to head a bit further down the west coast, over Arthur’s Pass to hopefully stop for several days for biking, walking and climbing, then over to Christchurch for some shake, rattle and roll (although I joke, the poor buggers are still suffering from many aftershocks from the big quake so we may not spent so long there). We’re currenty in and around Hokitika, and heading to Arthur’s Pass today  or tomorrow, so we’ may well be out of reception a wee bit for a few days – not sure.

The van is doing well, it doesn’t seem to be so leaky of late but the roof, and insect mesh on the side windows are starting to resemble a cemetary of sandflies…..they’re like mosquitos and are a bit of a pain, but we’ve got off relatively lightly so far, despite all our bites!

I’ll try to get some photos up when next online…..

We’ve survived the first few days but yet to get into the flow of being on the road.  We’re starting to think we may just reach that as my mum and Allan arrive to visit us in a few weeks. 

We came off the ferry and drove for a massive 10km (!) to a DOC (Dept of Conservation) campsite next to the sea.  It was just as well we left as our older habits were dying hard – within minutes of arriving we had spent $50 on a South Island road atlas and some mozzie spray.  It was a great feeling to have only driven for 20km, including the drive from our house to the ferry, and be sitting where we were, a glass of vino in hand and chilling in the sun.

From here we headed around the coast to another cracking spot by the beach which was about 20km away, along a very hilly gravel road but again was set on a fantastic beach which gave us some super rocks to clamber over as the sun set.   Although we were going to head over into the Sounds, we were so close to Blenheim we decided to go mountain biking for a couple of hours, then go to a vineyard for some sampling.  This is one of the prime wine growing regions in NZ.  Despite this, one was enough really as we never really appreciated wine that much, and we’d probably still end up selecting the specials at Pak’n’Save on a Friday night!

To make the best of our chances of getting to the Sounds we decided just to head towards there and drive for an hour or so to within 15km of where the Ferry dropped us off, so we completed a little circuit.  Again we ended up in a cracking DOC site right next to the sea.  Despite the impending rain storms I headed out to try fishing and caught my first four fish.  I never had a clue what they were, and the were pretty small so I popped them all back in the water….although to be fair two of them got back in of their own accord before I got them onto the wharf.  Ciara quite wisely decided this was not the time to start fishing on the road trip and settled into a book….so she missed my glory and I’ve got no photos (so I should really be saying there were several large fish that ‘got away’).

The next day our trip into the Sounds was put on hold as it still lashed down and we could hardly see the other side of the bay, so our mood dropped a bit …..at least we had the choice to change our plans but it was somthing we were both looking forward to.  We decided to head to Nelson, which is always sunny according to the forecasts, and I was accompanied with a little drip of water on my foot, just beside the accelerator….not a good sign.  We knew we had a bit of a leak in the van but that was the worst I had noticed….guess we never drove in Wellington when it was raining!  On top of that, later that night we noticed the 12v socket for the coolbox had broken……then we witnessed an inconsiderate backpacker pissing by our van in a free motorhome parking area as we settled in to dinner…  and you wonder why free camping is getting a bad name in NZ!  If you read this and you are touring around NZ – wise up – in a few years (if that) there will be no free camping left in NZ, so grow up and respect it, or everyone will be forced to travel around in expensive self contained vans.

Alas, today we have been brought back to our road trip in true style.  We got up early and went to the superb Nelson market, got a replacement coolbox socket no worries, spent the day on the beach by Nelson at a local’s spot courtesy of a well timed text from a friend in Scotland, and I am sitting typing this in the van, parked up in a campsite, less than 10 metres from a lovely beach.  We headed to Kaiteriteri on the edge of the Abel Tasman National Park.  We’re going to park up here for a couple of days, head back to Nelson to get some ‘xmas shopping’ in, (i.e. shoes for Ciara hopefully, the same as mine – our xmas pressies to each other…..mine are sitting tucked away in the van until she gets hers), then decided where to head for xmas, in the hope we’ll manage to find a spot next to the hordes of Kiwis who’ve booked up all the sites.

It has been a wake up call with the cost of activities here though – a day’s sea kayaking in Abel Tasman costs up to $194!  That’s about £90 which is a bit crazy if you ask me, so we probably won’t be doing as much as we’d like to as that could mean several extra days of not doing such pricey activities.