Wellington, New Zealand

We didn’t have much planned today, just a couple sites to see plus the City Gallery Wellington, a contemporary arts gallery.

Most stores were open today so we did some browsing. Heather got a bunch of merino wool tops (replacing the one she lost in Savu Savu when she handed in her laundry, which seems like ages ago).

The first site on the list was the Beehive, which is the local nickname for the beehive-shaped government buildings. It’s beside the parliament buildings; the whole area is nicely landscaped and worth the walk over.

Nearby is Old St Paul’s, a gothic revival cathedral built in 1860. It’s a beautiful church to see. It’s a little out of the CBD so doesn’t see as many tourists but if you’re in Wellington you should go see it.

Had lunch at a random Turkish place, it was okay. The owner was super-friendly though.

Last for today was City Gallery Wellington. It had some cool exhibitions, including a feature by Joanna Margaret Paul that we really liked. By coincidence we had seen an exhibit by her husband, Jeffrey Harris, in Christchurch. Both the exhibits had a segment reflecting on the death of their 2nd daughter, which is how we made the connection.

We were hoping to grab a coffee at gallery but their cafe was closed over the holidays.

We were close to the waterfront and could hear the sound checks for the NYE celebration.

We had dinner reservations at Highwater Eatery, one of the few places I found that was a) open b) took reservations and c) didn’t have a big NYE dinner / buffet. Cause it was NYE it felt more like summerlicious with the kitchen just constantly pushing out the same food. It was probably the best we could expect on NYE.

We got back to our apartment around 10pm and were asleep well before midnight. The new year would have to wait until we woke up.

Wellington, New Zealand

Wellington has a walking tour of outdoor sculptures so we figured we’d start with that, it’s a good way to orient ourselves in a new city.

We started mid-way through the suggested tour cause it was beside our bnb. The tour then wound its way to the waterfront, past Te Papa (the National Museum). The pics of the waterfront redevelopment reminded us of Toronto. They’ve done a great job here creating public spaces.

The sculpture tour continued along the waterfront to the train station, at which point the tour cut into the city core and back towards our starting point. Wellington has compact core, very lively and creative. We liked it.

We had lunch at Dragons, a Chinese restaurant a couple doors down from our bnb. Heather had noticed it yesterday, it looked busy enough. Turns out it was super packed and we were lucky to get seated without a reservation! We had dim sum for the first time since covid, it was excellent.

After lunch we relaxed for a bit at the bnb and then went to visit Te Papa. It’s free admission so we gave a donation (which you can do with tap here).

The lower floor was very busy so unlike Drake we started at the top. They had some really interesting exhibits by Māori artists. It took us a couple hours to get through the 5th and 4th floors; we quickly walked through the rest.

We didn’t have dinner reservations for this evening. I had booked something in October but they had since emailed to say they were closed over Christmas due to lack of staff. So we wandered down Cuba St which has a high density of restaurants. Ended up at Floriditas where we had a really nice bottle of Grüner Veltliner which the sommelier was happy that we tried. The food was okay.

Wellington, New Zealand

We said goodbye to the South Island today, taking the Interislander ferry across the Cook Strait to Wellington.

We had breakfast at Sime’s cafe on the way out of Kaikōura. We had just missed the end of breakfast yesterday and so I was able to have their eggs benedict today which was excellent. The food came out quickly and we were back on the road a little after 10am.

It’s about a two hour drive from Kaikōura to Picton. The drive is beautiful, as all drives here seem to be. We were back in wine region, this time Marlborough.

We arrived at the ferry around noon and checked in. I had bought our tickets as soon as their summer schedule was released back in May. In the local media there’s warnings about how busy the crossing is right now and to book ahead, so lucky we knew our itinerary so far in advance.

We waited in line until 1pm when they started boarding. We parked our car and grabbed some good seats for the 3.5 hour crossing.

There’s the option to book car rentals where you drop off the car in Picton and then get a different car on the Wellington side. But that meant dragging all our luggage across as carry on, and also chancing that there may not be a vehicle waiting on the other side. So we booked a single car for the full trip and paid for its ferry crossing.

The ferry departed right on schedule. The first part was interesting, through the Queen Charlotte Sound / Tōtaranui. It looked similar to sounds we saw in Fjiordland except the hills are much lower and flatter. But still very scenic.

The waves increased slightly when we left the protection of the sounds and entered Cook Strait. The swells were about 1m which is considered good. There’s websites that forecast the swells and so we knew in advance what to expect. We only really noticed it when we got up and walked around.

It took a while to disembark in Wellington. We docked around 5:30pm and we didn’t drive on to shore for another 45 minutes. It gave me time to memorize the route to our bnb in the centre of town.

We had got used to remote areas and parking anywhere to unload the car. It’s a whole other story in a busy city. We parked in a loading zone and hoped we wouldn’t get a ticket. There’s a few very popular restaurants on our street so all the meter parking was occupied.

I then drove the car to a carport about five minutes away, while Heather finished getting everything up the stairs and into our apartment.

We had reservations at 8pm so rushed to get ready. I then looked up a similarly sounding restaurant in Google Maps and we walked 8 minutes in the wrong direction. So I called the real restaurant and let them know we were running late so they’d hold the table.

We ate at Atlas, which was one of the better restaurants we’ve eaten at, probably only Restaurant Ö was better. Their website said they had a 3 or 4 course tasting; when we were seated it turned out it was actually a six course tasting. It was all excellent, with no misses. The wine pairings were good too. It hardly seemed like we started the day on the South Island.

Kaikōura, New Zealand

We didn’t sleep well at all, partly because we were worried about sleeping in through our 5am alarm. This morning was our big albatross tour!

We drove down to Encounter Kaikōura at 5:30am to check in for the tour. We were a few minutes early and looking for caffeine. The excursion folks suggested we try the Sudima hotel next door. It turned out their kitchen didn’t open till 6am, but the very nice person there made us a couple cappuccinos for takeaway, on the house.

Our guide / boat driver, Gary, met us at 5:45am. There were nine of us on the excursion (Encounter does small groups, one of the reasons I had booked with them). We drove five minutes to the jetty on the other side of the peninsula. We then got on the boat while it was dry docked, the first time I’ve had to do that. (I think the 2016 earthquake messed up the water depths at the jetty).

The water looked calm, but in a smaller boat even swells of 1m were making me and Heather feel a bit naseous. We went out about 3km to where the shelf drops off, which creates a natural feeding area for the albatross.

A few giant petrels followed us. They have a wingspan of 2m and looked pretty big. They are also a very mean bird, with a call that sounds prehistoric. Gary said you wouldn’t want to get in a fight with it. He probably didn’t need to give us the warning, lol, I wasn’t going anywhere near it.

We got to the shelf drop off and cut the engines. A few Royal Great Albatross landed about 100m in the distance; Gary said they are shy at first but would eventually paddle their way towards us. These were enormous, with wingspans over 3m! They made the giant petrels look small. We also saw two Wandering Albatrosses, with a wingspan of 3.7m, the largest flying bird in the world!

Over the next hour we saw 18 albatrosses, 16 petrels, 60+ shearwaters and a bunch of other birds. Gary kept track of the sightings for research purposes; and then gave us a copy back on shore.

Both of us were feeling seasick most of the time, we enjoyed seeing the birds but not as much as we might have. I also found looking through my camera lens threw me off. So didn’t get as many pics as I might have. Oh well.

We boated over to another location closer to shore, where we saw dolphins pods swimming about. And then we saw a random little blue penguin! It quickly disappeared in the waves.

The excursion was really well run, with respect for the wildlife. There was no chasing after birds or other sea life. Gary was also really knowledgeable.

We got back to shore and drove back to the Encounters facility. It was crowded with tourists getting ready for the later morning tours. The company also runs dolphin tours, including one where you can snorkel with them. That sounds way too cold for me, I much prefer Fiji waters.

We decided to have breakfast at their cafe. While waiting for our food, we overheard a lot of tourists come in to try to book same-day excursions, only to be turned away cause they were fully booked. Good thing we had booked ahead!

We decided to do the Kaikoura Peninsula Walkway as soon as we got back to our bnb. We thought if we sat down we’d fall asleep and then lose momentum for the day. The weather had turned, it was now misty / cloudy and half drizzling. One thing I really like about smartphones is that they’re water resistant, whereas my camera stayed in my backpack to start.

There was a shortcut marked on the trail that allowed us to skip the in-town part of the walk. We had some difficulty picking out the trail markings for the shortcut at the corner of Cromer and Ward St but figured it out. It started with steps over a fence and through a sheep paddock. We had to watch our steps here! About halfway down to the shore we picked up another road, and it was a clearly marked trail the rest of the way.

We walked along Fyffe Quay to the parking lot at Point Kean. This is a popular tourist lookout for seals and was a bit crowded. The walkway went back up the cliffs to the Point Kean Lookout and then wound its way along the top of the cliff to a lookout over Whalers Bay. There were dozens of seals lounging about. They aren’t much for pics as a seal lounging about looks the same as a dead seal. The weather had cleared so I had my camera out again.

We continued along the walkway to the South Bay lookout, and then down to the jetty where we had launched for the albatross tour earlier this morning. It was about noon and starting to warm up. We had started the walk in 13C and drizzly and had slowly ditched layers throughout the morning.

Took another shortcut, this one more structured, called Tom’s Path, which brought us back to Scarborough St and back to our bnb. The full circuit took us just over three hours, although we did stop for a lot for pics.

Threw some water on our faces and then went out for lunch. We wanted to try Emporium Brewery along Hwy 1 but it was closed over the holidays. Instead tried out Sime’s Kitchen a few doors down. It was excellent! (Later I realized that our bnb host had recommended it too).

We crashed for a couple hours and when we woke up the weather had cleared and we had a beautiful view of the bay.

For dinner we had reservations at The Pier, one of the classic restaurants for crayfish. The region is known for crayfish, in fact Kaikōura means ‘eat crayfish’ in Māori. So we drove down and ordered crayfish :) it was pretty good, grilled in the half shell and served with garlic butter.

On the way back home we drove up to Kaikōura Lookout to watch the sunset. It’s a two minute walk from our place but it was super windy. You can see both sides of the peninsula from the lookout. Watched the sun go down and then drove home. It was a very full day.

Kaikōura, New Zealand

It was drizzling and miserable as we packed up the car to leave Christchurch for Kaikōura. The weather cleared up as we headed north. We were now into NZ holiday season and there was much more traffic, with locals heading out of town, ‘caravanning’ as they call it. Mostly we were just in trains of cars, it was quite the change from earlier in the trip when we’d be the only car on the road.

We drove the 2.5 hours straight to Kaikōura. The last 30 minutes was spectacular, with seals lounging on the rocky coast and tunnels through the mountains which dropped right into the ocean.

Kaikōura sits on a peninsula jutting into the Southern Ocean. Our bnb was atop a ridge overlooking the town and the bay. It was a bit strange to enter the bnb. The host was vacationing on the west coast, and had left instructions on how to find the key to enter. All our previous bnb’s had lockbox codes or keycode entry. We weren’t sure we had the right house until we found the key hidden in a box of soap as instructed.

We drove back into town (if there were stairs down the cliff it would have been a five minute walk, instead it was an eight minute drive). It was a bit of a shock to see how busy it was in the main street, March Break-like.

Luckily we found a parking spot on the street, and then walked up and down the street deciding on a cafe for lunch. Had a bagel with smoked salmon at Chiwis, which was highly rated on Google Maps but maybe was overwhelmed by the crowds today. At least their coffee was good.

We had dinner reservations at Zephyr at 7pm so decided to do the Peninsula Walkway track tomorrow, as it’s a three hour walk and we didn’t want to be rushed. We had hoped to instead see the museum this afternoon. When we walked around earlier the sign had said it was closed until January, but then we saw someone walk in! So not sure what the sign was about, but the museum was definitely open.

We paid for two adults and toured around the museum. It wasn’t too bad. They had an exhibit about the 2016 earthquake that devastated the area, knocking them off-grid and inaccessible by land for weeks.

Got back home and cleaned up for dinner. I had made reservations at Zephyr back in September, which seemed a bit silly at the time, but we were glad we had it now that we’re in peak tourist season.

Christchurch, New Zealand

We had time yesterday to read up on all the attractions in Christchurch and pick the ones we wanted to see given we just had one day to see them. Oddly, the Lonely Planet recommended the Art Gallery and not the Museum, and the Moon Guide was the opposite. Based on other sources, the Art Gallery was the top site to see, so that’s where we started.

The Christchurch Art Gallery Te Puna o Waiwhetū has free admission, we left the suggested donation. It’s spread across six exhibits on two floors. We started with the upstairs. The gallery wasn’t busy at all, which surprised me.

We were really impressed with the exhibits. We spent over two hours just on the upstairs galleries. By then we were out-galleried and so left for lunch. It’s really a place that requires multiple visits.

We had lunch at Banh Mi EM, which was excellent, it really hit the spot. The part of town it’s in looked to be more where locals went out, as opposed to bars and restaurants on Oxford Terrace along the Avon River which looked more touristy.

Next on our itinerary was Christchurch Transitional Cathedral, commonly known as the Cardboard Cathedral. It’s the temporary cathedral while the original is being restored. There’s all sorts of rules about deconsecrating churches that had to be followed. The temporary cathedral was built in 11 months, partially out of cardboard tubes. It’s designed by Japanese architect Shigeru Ban (he also designed a temporary church in Kobe). Anyways it was interesting to see.

The final site we wanted to see was 185 White Chairs, a temporary exhibit commemorating the people who died in the 2011 earthquake. It was very well done.

Throughout the day we had crisscrossed the core a few times. There was much more open today, including most stores.

Before heading home we stopped in at Riverside Market, it’s filled with local food retailers, sort of like St Lawrence Market in Toronto. Had a 4-beer paddle at the Canterbury Brewers Collective kiosk, a great way to sample the local craft beers.

Walked back home and had dinner, wrapping up our tour of Christchurch.

Christchurch, New Zealand

Merry Christmas! We slept in and had a relaxing breakfast in our little Airbnb. It was a beautiful day, 22C and sunny, and low humidity.

We picked up our dinner from Pedro’s House of Lamb just before 11am (it was less than a 10 minute walk). It smelled amazing, I think it’s more usual here to have a big brunch / lunch, and so the lamb was ready to eat. We weren't planning to eat for a few hours, so we put in the fridge for later this evening. Pedro's provided handy reheating instructions with the takeout.

The only thing open in Christchurch today was the Botanic Gardens (I had to look up, both botanical and botanic are grammatically correct, botanic has fallen out of common usage). I think most of the tourists in town (and some locals too) also made a visit here today, some bringing food for a picnic. It’s a really nice park in the heart of the city. For some families it looked like a Christmas Day tradition to have a bbq picnic in the park.

Walked around a bit more, checking out the open hours of various places for tomorrow that we wanted to visit, like the Art Gallery and the Museum.

There wasn’t much open at all, just two food trucks and one coffee shop. But just walking around the city core was pretty good, one of the more interesting cities we’ve visited over Christmas.

Got back to our place and relaxed. Listened to Ludacrismas, somewhat of a Christmas tradition for us.

The reheating instructions from Pedro’s suggested it would take only 15 minutes to reheat the lamb and potatoes, but I think that’s if it was left on the counter. We were reheating from the fridge and it took over an hour.

And so we had our little Christmas dinner. The lamb was excellent, we had also splurged for a nicer bottle of Pinot noir. The sides were great too - coleslaw, sliced potatoes and fresh peas, which I steamed. Mmm good.

Christchurch, New Zealand

Christmas Eve! We had a pretty good breakfast at The Vicarage, our bnb in Oamaru. It was just down the street from Countdown (a supermarket), we walked down to get groceries for the next couple days, as we weren’t sure what would be open over Christmas and Boxing Day.

We’re in the heart of Otago, a major fruit growing region, and so stopped at roadside pick-your-own raspberry farm about 20 minutes outside Oamaru. They also sold pre-picked fruit which we got.

There was a constant stream of traffic heading out of Christchurch. Our bnb was off Montreal St, one of the major streets in Christchurch, so it was easy to drive to, the opposite of our Dunedin experience.

Our bnb in Christchurch is a full unit in a row of townhouses. It came with its own garage too! The area was residential but minutes away from the main pedestrian areas. No chimney though for Santa.

Later in the afternoon we walked into town. Over 80% of the buildings in the CBD were destroyed by the earthquakes in 2010 & 2011, including the main cathedral and other historical buildings. The restoration is planned over many years. Right now it reminds me of the waterfront development in Toronto - lots of urban planning in the design, just waiting for things to be completed so people can move in and bring life to everything.

There were a handful of restaurants open today on Christmas Eve, although we planned to cook at home. The weather was perfect, about 22C.

We also walked down to Pedro’s House of Lamb, a Christchurch institution. They have a Christmas Day special of slow-cooked lamb shoulder and sides. I had ordered back in October as they only take 80 orders and as you can imagine it sells out quickly. Today we just wanted to check out where it was. It was also conveniently located beside a Liquorland which had a ginormous selection of local wines and craft beer.

We got back to our place and cleaned up. We had salmon again for dinner, getting our fix of King Salmon while we’re in NZ, along with a local white.

Oamaru, New Zealand

We had one of the shorter drives of our trip today, just 90 minutes to Oamaru. Had another uninspiring breakfast at Fable Dunedin, finished packing up, got our car from the valet and then departed.

I got caught up in the turn-only lanes again, so looped around for one last view of the hotel before getting in the correct lane to get out of the city core.

About an hour north of Dunedin we reached Moeraki, home of the Instagram-famous Moeraki boulders. These are spherical boulders about 3’ in diameter that dot the shore. It’s a popular tourist stop off. We arrived around 11:30am, at low tide. During low tide the boulders are on the beach, more accessible and harder to get tourist-free pics. The tourists came in bunches and I did get my tourist-free pics after a few minutes though.

We then went into Moeraki Village for lunch. The classic, Fleurs Place, unfortunately closed permanently recently for non-covid reasons. Fleurs has been written up in international travel publications and even has its own Wikipedia entry. Our Airbnb hosts in Oamaru suggested we instead try The Fishwife, supposedly the best fish and chips in NZ.

We showed up at The Fishwife, but due to lack of staffing over Christmas just had crawfish on menu (no accoutrements like fries, just crawfish). So we went across the street to Moeraki Tavern, which I remembered reading was just as good as The Fishwife.

We both had fish and chips, it was excellent. I wonder how much better Fleurs or The Fishwife could have been, cause this was pretty darned good.

It was only another 30 minutes to Oamaru and our Airbnb. It’s in a historical building, a former vicarage.

We were a bit early to checkin so had emailed with the host, and dropped off the car and then explored Oamaru. One of the draws is the Steampunk HQ, a museum, but that wasn’t our thing. Instead we wandered around the neighbouring Victorian Precinct and the wharf. It was very photogenic.

Got back to the bnb and met our host, Jacqui. She was very enthusiastic, happy that we had been out touristing in her town. (On the way back we also stopped in at the local Countdown, a grocery store, to stock up pre-Christmas for Christchurch).

We relaxed for a bit and then headed back out for our Little Blue Penguin excursion! The penguins come ashore at dusk (after 9:30pm this time of year). There’s a viewing gallery set up on shore, I had bought tickets before we left Toronto. There’s also a convenient restaurant next door, where we had reservations for 7pm.

Dinner was average, but it was more about the location. Went over to the Penguin conservatory around 8:30pm. Seating is first-come-first-served, we were in the 2nd row, an excellent viewpoint.

At 9pm the Penguin folks started their little spiel on the penguins. At 9:30 the first raft of seven penguins came onshore. They were really cute, about 18” tall, waddling towards their nests for the night, passing by about 10’ in front of us.

It took another 30 minutes to see the next raft, and then they started coming in constantly. Over the course of the evening we saw about 150 penguins. It’s one of the highlights of the South Island in my opinion. You can watch a live webcam of the penguins coming ashore, just remember it's +13 UTC.

We were lucky with the weather, it was about 15C at 11pm when we left. We wore multiple layers to stay warm (it gets cold just sitting around). Our host also gave us blanket to wrap around our legs.

They don’t allow pics cause flashes scare the penguins from coming onshore. You don’t need to use a flash, but there’s always someone in the group who doesn’t realize their flash is on, so it’s easier just to have a blanket ban on pics. So unfortunately I don’t have any pics, but I did get to watch them the whole time and not get caught up in picture taking.

On the drive out we passed by a handful of penguins waddling along. We drove at 20km to make sure we didn’t hit any. (The penguin folks also asked that we check under the car before departing to make sure there weren’t any penguins underneath).

It made for a very full day, which in fact was a transit day.

Dunedin, New Zealand

Breakfast was disappointing at our hotel, Fable Dunedin. I think I had booked here cause it’s a historic building, and it does have lots of character. But breakfast is not its thing.

Anyways I had planned on the itinerary to take a day trip to Port Chalmers, for boutique stores and galleries and the like, but based on our whirlwind tour of Dunedin yesterday, figured we could do the same thing here in Dunedin without the hassle of driving.

There’s lots of street art in Dunedin so sketched out a rough path. Started at the train station, which is a beautiful building and one of the most photographed buildings in NZ. Unfortunately it’s undergoing restoration right now :( instead just checked out the art galleries upstairs at the station.

It was close to lunch so walked over to Beam Me Up Bagels, based on online recommendations. I had the cold smoked salmon bagel and Heather had the hot smoked version. Both were excellent.

Then we started the street art tour in earnest. The tourism board had a booklet on a Dunedin with a page for the street art. We followed their map to see most of the art, plus a few more not noted. It’s a great way to explore a city, we walked through areas we otherwise may have overlooked. (Penang in Malaysia was one of the trendsetters for this).

It took us a while to see most of the street art; the city is compact but it’s still very car-centric, so we spent a lot of time waiting at streetlights. At least here it’s acceptable to jaywalk, unlike Hobart.

We had a double espresso at Precinct Foods, their dessert was amazing.

Went back to the hotel to rest up for a few minutes before heading back out to see Toitū Otago Settlers Museum. I think it would be better marketed as a history museum, but what do I know. It was about 3pm (the place closed at 5pm) so we figured the main rush of people would have left already.

Anyways we really enjoyed the museum. There wasn’t anything specific that stood out; it was mostly a bunch of historical stuff that explained what / why we’d been seeing in NZ. Like that Abel Tasman was a Dutch explorer (we’ve seen many things named Abel Tasman) or the history behind various cultures arriving in NZ.

The last exhibit focused on communications and technology, and had a iPad (!) as one of the museum pieces.

Got back home with just enough time to shower and head back out for dinner. Tonight we ate at Plato, a restaurant all about fresh seafood. It made a nice contrast to the trendy place yesterday. It’s right on the wharf and the seafood was excellent. We split a bunch of dishes to sample almost all the types of seafood, including oysters, ceviche (more like kokoda), clams and mussels in a white wine broth, and one of the catches of the day, coconut with blue moki.

The sun was just setting as we left, (it’s the solstice today) and the lighting on the harbour was amazing.

Took a circuitous route home. We happened to pass by the Indigo Room, a little bar near one of the street art we’d see earlier, and recommended by a passerby. So we stopped in for a drink, it was a really cool place, even though we were probably two hours early and a couple decades late.

Dunedin, New Zealand

We had breakfast at our lodge overlooking Tahakopa Bay, one of the last times this trip we’ll have such a great view of the ocean. Both of us though were looking forward to Dunedin, and being in an urban setting again for a couple days.

It’s under two hours to Dunedin, so we added in a detour to Nugget Point Lighthouse. We drove along a gravel road for the first 20 minutes from the lodge to get back to the Southern Scenic Route, and then quickly reached then turn off for Nugget Point. The last five km approaching the point is along The Nuggets Rd, which hugs the coastline, dotted with picturesque homes. It also narrowed to a single lane around tight bends - we were lucky to not encounter any caravans (camper vans) or minibuses going the other way.

We reached the parking lot, about 75% full. Not sure what happens in busy season, there’s not much room for overflow. Anyways, it was cold and windy so we put on all our winter gear for the ten minute walk to the lighthouse.

It’s a beautiful walk along the ridge, about 200m above the sea. We saw a couple canteens of royal spoonbills (amazingly, there is a collective noun for spoonbills) on the rocks below.

You get the classic view of the lighthouse along the path, with the ridge in the foreground and the large rocks (the ‘nuggets’) in ocean below. Spent a few minutes at the base of the lighthouse and then walked back to the car.

We had booked a tasting menu for dinner tonight so just wanted something small for lunch, and not too late in the afternoon. Stopped in Balclutha, a small town along the way. The town has a nice span bridge across the Clutha River. There wasn’t much in terms of cafe options - we ended up at Cafe 55 and split a club sandwich. It was served open-faced and messy to eat, but it was tasty.

Then we carried onto Dunedin. It reminded us of Hobart with the hilly streets and turn of the century architecture. It was a bit confusing to drive in, as some lanes suddenly become turn-only lanes. A couple u-turns later we arrived at the rear of our hotel, Fable Dunedin. Walked around to the front to figure out parking and checkin. Drove the car to the front to unload, and then the valet guy drove our car away, hopefully somewhere safe.

Our room was very small, with barely enough room to open our suitcases. Oh well, it was just for a couple days.

We walked into the Octagon, the centre of town. It’s bustling with pubs and churches and cinemas. It was drizzling a little so walked back to the hotel.

We had dinner at Moiety, in a beautiful old building. Our table wasn’t yet ready so we had a drink at the bar. It’s a 5-course tasting here. We also had some oysters from Marlborough to start, which were similar to the ones we had on Bruny Island. We liked all the courses. It took a while to get through dinner, almost three hours. We got home quite full.

Purakauiti, New Zealand

We didn’t do much today. We had originally planned to see Cathedral Caves, about 30 minutes south of us, but it hadn’t yet opened for the season (later we found it’s cause they are updating the tourist infrastructure). It looked to be a dreary day so we just hung out at our lodge, it was a nice place to watch the ocean. We’d also been on the go for the past few days so a day of no driving or bug repellent sounded good. Took pictures of the sheep in the adjacent fields. Went for a short walk up the dirt road when the sun poked its head out. Caught up in our laundry.

For dinner we had the salmon from Southern Seafood Products, it was excellent.

Purakauiti, New Zealand

It didn’t take us long to pack up the car for our drive to Purakauiti, on Tahakopa Bay in the Catlins. The fastest route takes three hours but we opted to take the Southern Scenic Drive, which is four hours driving plus stops.

First we drove into town to do some grocery shopping. The best produce was at Four Square, and they had a better bakery too. We already had wine from Clyde Village Winery, where we had gone on a tour a few days ago. Then it was on the road!

We stopped for a quick break after an hour to see the Clifden Suspension Bridge, which was just a couple minutes off the highway. It was an interesting enough stop.

Just south of Tuatapere we reached the ocean again, (technically the Foveaux Strait). The views were gorgeous. We had another quick stop at Gemstone Beach, which as its name suggests, is covered with polished stones various colours of gemstones. We spent a few minutes collecting some interesting looking ones.

We planned to call in at Southern Seafood Products in Invercargill for fresh king salmon. The folks at Clyde Village Winery had recommended it as the best place in town for fresh seafood. It was easy to get to from the highway. They are mostly a wholesaler but also have a small storefront where they sell to consumers. There was a constant flow of regulars coming in for their favourites while we were there. We picked up some salmon fillets for dinner.

It was around 12:30pm and a good time for lunch. There were some highly rated cafes nearby, so we went to the closest, The Pig Station. It turned out to be in the old train station, and had tons of character. And also excellent coffee. We split a bacon buttie, basically bacon on toast with some mayo and tomatoes. It was really tasty.

Invercargill had a really good vibe to it. It doesn’t have the big tourist draws that the rest of Fjiordland has, but we both thought we would have enjoyed a couple days here.

We got back on the Southern Scenic Route, next stop, our Airbnb. The turn off was a few minutes east of Papatowai, and then about 20 minutes on a gravel road to finally get to the Tahakopa Bay Retreat.

Our place was off the grid, with no cell reception. It’s solar powered and had wifi (I’m assuming via Starlink). It overlooked Tahakopa Bay, we could see the full bay and the waves slowly crashing in. We were a bit elevated so it wasn’t as loud as other places we’ve stayed at recently, but it had one of the best views.

There’s a path down to the beach so we changed into warmer clothes (it was only about 12C) and trekked down. The path was muddy from the recent rains, but still navigable. It took us about 20 minutes to descend to the beach.

The tide was just starting to go out, so the sand was really firm. First walked five minutes to the cliffs to the south, and then walked about 30 minutes down the beach in the other direction. We turned around to head back home at that point. (Later from the lodge it looked like we almost reached Papatowai, about half way down the beach). We were lucky with our timing just after the tide turned, as there were no sandflies at all, until just before we exited the beach.

It was nice to be able to make our own dinner after eating in restaurants the past few days. We had lamb with grilled vegetables and an excellent pinot noir. The wood pellet burner had heated the whole place up, it was a nice evening.

Te Anau, New Zealand - Glowworm Caves

We had a 3rd excursion from Te Anau today, this one a half day to see the glowworm caves. Glowworms are found mostly in NZ and parts of Australia. The worms use a blue glow to attract their prey that then get caught in sticky strands. The glowworms are most impressive seen in caves cause of the surrounding darkness.

The visit to Te Anau Glowworm Caves was easy to get to - the departure is right in town. Real NZ organizes the excursion including a 45 minute boat ride across Lake Te Anau to the caves. (Real NZ are the same people that organized our excursion to Doubtful Sound yesterday).

We boarded the boat at 10:15am. There were lots of kids for this excursion, it’s a pretty cool trip for kids (of all ages!). We recognized some tourists from yesterday, it’s common to do multiple excursions here.

The Real NZ folks gave a commentary on the boat ride, parts of it were getting repetitive for us. They’re all very good speakers.

At the caves, we were split into groups of about twelve for the cave tour itself. We entered the cave, walking along a metal boardwalk. The cave is very young (relatively), only about 12,000 years, and so the stalagmites are only a few cm long. There was water dripping down in places, and it’s about 12C in the caves. We wore our rain jackets and base layers.

The lighting gets progressively dimmer as we got further into the cave. It’s designed to allow our eyes to slowly adjust to the dark, to maximize the glowworm experience.

We boarded a small boat with a bench down the middle, six on each side facing outwards. Our guide then turned off the remaining lights and we proceeded in the darkness.

It’s almost like a Disney ride, the way the boat bumped along the sides as we moved forward slowly. Then we saw the glowworms! They’re in bunches, looking like stars or LED Christmas tree lights, except it’s natural. It was really cool. The highlight is a 4’x8’ grouping that seemed like it was only a couple feet above our head, like I could reach out and touch them. The guide manoeuvred the boat so everyone had a good view.

We returned back in the dark to the starting point, where the next group of twelve were waiting. We swapped places and then retraced our steps down the boardwalk to exit the caves.

The actual viewing was only about 10 minutes, but it was more than enough. It makes sense to do it by boat, so that people aren’t stumbling around in the dark, and they keep moving. Cameras aren’t allowed in the caves, although even if they were, there’s nothing that is photographable. Overall it was a really cool excursion, something neither of us had seen before.

We returned by boat to Te Anau, and went for lunch. Heather had noticed a little cafe previously that looked interesting. Split a pizza and Greek salad, both were tasty.

The rest of the day we relaxed back at our bnb, going through our pics from the past few days and updating our blog.

Had dinner at The Fat Duck again, it was good. Tomorrow we were back on the road, so had an early night.

Te Anau, New Zealand - Doubtful Sound

Two of the most popular excursions in Fjiordland are the day trips to Milford Sound and Doubtful Sound. Both are named ‘sounds’ but are actually fjiords. Milford Sound is the most popular; Doubtful Sound is larger and more inaccessible. Fortunately we had the time to visit both this trip and didn’t have to choose. Yesterday we went to Milford Sound, and today was our excursion to Doubtful Sound.

The starting point is at Pearl Harbour in Manapouri, a 20 minute drive from Te Anau. We left our bnb around 9:15am to allow extra time to find parking etc, although that’s not really an issue here.

Got our passes and boarded the boat at 10am. From Manapouri it’s a 45 minute boat ride across Lake Manapouri to West Arm. We had seats up top, more to be outside. The view was okay, similar to any lake with little islands. There were about 120 tourists on the excursion.

Then we switched to three buses for the 45 minute drive across Wilmot’s Pass to Deep Cove. At the pass, the buses stopped so everyone could get pics of Doubtful Sound. It was a steep downhill from there to Deep Cove (pop. 2). In Deep Cove we boarded a catamaran for the tour of Doubtful Sound. We grabbed a couple bench seats on the top deck.

Doubtful Sound was named when Captain Cook, exploring in 1770, thought it would be doubtful if he could make it back out to the Tasman Sea if he entered the sound, based on the prevailing winds.

It was mostly cloudy as we pulled away. It then got windy, and finally a bit rainy. This drove most of the other folks to the lower decks. The weather then cleared up, with the sun poking out, but the other folks remained on the lower decks, leaving just a handful of us up top.

As the sun came through and the clouds lifted, the mountains came into view. It was really cool to go down the sound. It’s generally a bit wider and not and tall as Milford, but it does have some really narrow sections. It also has a few arms that we explored down (First Arm and Crooked Arm).

The coolest part was approaching the Tasman Sea past Shelter Islands. It looks like you’re dropping off the end of the earth, like some sort of flat earth rendering. I’m not sure what causes this illusion, maybe it’s the freshwater meeting the sea. It wasn’t until we were about 500m away that you could finally see the Tasman Sea. The water got rougher so we reversed and went back up the sound.

Overall I’d say Milford Sound was a more impressive sight; and Doubtful Sound a cooler experience. In First Arm the captain turned off the engines so we could experience the ‘sound of silence’ (I'm pretty sure the pun was intended). It was still a bit windy so I wouldn’t call it silence, but it was still pretty cool.

Then we retraced our journey back home, 45 minutes by bus and 45 minutes by boat. We slept through most of it. We still had to drive 20 minutes to get back to the bnb. (Some people then board a bus for a 2.5 hour drive back to Queenstown!)

It was another full day excursion, and again well worth it.

Had dinner at Ristorante Paradiso, which was okay Italian food. They did make the best espresso we’ve had this trip though.

Te Anau, New Zealand - Milford Sound

Today was our big excursion to Milford Sound / Piopiotahi. We were up and at breakfast at 7am, so that we’d be ready for our pickup from the bnb at 8am.

Chatted at breakfast with another couple staying at the bnb. They were also going to Milford Sound, but with a different operator. We had booked ours through the bnb. Sarah (our host) knows just about everyone in town so we figured she knew the best tour, and also could help in case of any issues.

Trips & Tramps picked us up a little after 8am. We were the last pickup on the way out of town so that worked well for us, avoiding the milk run.

The driver was really friendly and had excellent commentary along the two hour drive along the Milford Highway. We stopped at a couple lookouts and also a short walk at Mirror Lakes. Passed over the Divide, one of the three east-west passes in the Southern Alps.

Most interesting was the the Homer Tunnel, a 1.2km single lane tunnel. The weather is quite often different on either side. It’s also part of a 17km stretch prone to avalanches. They close the highway and trigger the snow a few times per winter.

I’m glad we had a driver as we pulled into the ferry terminal. There’s all kinds of signage for parking of various sorts. Our approach was easy - our driver dropped us off at the front door.

We got our boarding passes and lined up at dock 4 to board. There’s lots of sand flies here, the worst area we’ve seen so far. Heather had picked up some bug repellent at Pancake Rocks which is really effective against sand flies.

We rushed on board our catamaran after they opened the gates, following the drivers advice to sit on the port side. The boats stick to the left side as go down and up the sound (similar to driving on the left) so the views are better on port. There was only about 30 or so of us on board, so there was lots of room for everyone.

We ended up spending almost all of two hour boat ride out on the lower deck, sheltered from rain by the upper deck.

It was really cloudy and occasionally rainy the whole excursion, so we didn’t get to see the tops of the peaks, but it was still very impressive to see. It took about an hour to get to the Tasman Sea, where it got very choppy and we quickly turned around. Depending on the weather it’s possible to go further out to sea and see how the sound remained unknown to Europeans for so long.

We also stopped for seals, dolphins and some waterfalls. On the way back the captain eased near a waterfall. Heather and I stayed inside for this, but other folks remained on deck. The spray was like being in a car wash, it was so powerful. (A couple days later we were chatting with folks who went the day after us, and cause it hadn’t rained that day, the waterfall was just a whisper).

We got back to the ferry and boarded our bus for the journey back home. We stopped for a couple little walks, including Lake Gunn (with 500-year old beech trees) and Lake Mistletoe.

We were dropped off back at our bnb around 5pm. The excursion makes for a long day but it’s well worth the trip, one of the highlights of New Zealand.

We showered and went for dinner at The Fat Duck. It was really good. We booked there for Sunday night as the place we originally had booked is now closed Sundays.

Te Anau, New Zealand

It was a slower start this morning, perhaps having had too much fun yesterday evening. We walked over to the bakery attached to Oliver’s (where we had dinner yesterday) to get some baked goods. We also bought some sandwiches for lunch, and granola, in case the gluten-free granola we bought earlier was also taste-free.

We ate on the little bistro table outside our little bnb. Between the yogurt and granola and fruit and pastry, we ate pretty good. Heather made herself a French press coffee, I had a tea. Unfortunately so far in NZ, tea has meant teabags and no teapot, which isn’t my cup of tea.

We were packed up and on the road exactly at 10am. Once again we really enjoyed the ease of packing up with the extra space in a car.

We retraced our route to Cromwell, connecting back up with our favourite Highway 6. There was considerably more traffic as we approached Queenstown. The highway turns south before entering town, but even there had the distinct feel of suburbia. From a tourist standpoint, Queenstown is more about adventure sports like white water rafting and bungee jumping, and not really our thing. We had decided to skip here when we did our planning, even though it seemed like half the Lonely Planet was the Queenstown chapter (maybe a bit of literary license on my part).

Anyways we were glad to finally turn south and see all the traffic melt away.

We drove through a few small towns which looked like they had a bit of character. Had our packed sandwiches at a roadside rest stop near Lowther.

We stopped for a coffee in Mossburn. I had intended to stop at Bracken Hall, which rated 4.6 on Google Maps, but instead mistakenly pulled in at the cafe before it, Dome Cafe. We ordered a slice of apricot cake based on the reviews for Bracken Hall. Fortunately for us, Done Cafe also knows their apricot cakes.

It was only 45 minutes to Te Anau from Mossburn. The drive changed back to farmland and some tall hedges again (similar to outside Christchurch).

We arrived at High Leys Lodge around 3pm. It’s a small bnb with just three rooms. Our room faced Lake Te Anau with the Southern Alps rising in the background. Yet another place with an amazing view (great job by our travel agent).

We’re here for four nights so spread our our stuff. The room had my new favourite thing in a hotel room, two luggage racks. It’s one of the longer stays we have in NZ, there’s three excursions we wanted to do (Milford Sound, Doubtful Sound and the Glowworm Caves).

We had dinner in town at Redcliff Cafe. We had made reservations for all four nights in Te Anau based on recommendations from our host, Sarah. Redcliff is her favourite.

Dinner was pretty good, with fancy meals. Heather had the salmon with gnocchi; I tried the ribeye steak. The hit was the gnocchi. It’s also the only town where we have to drive for dinner; so instead I got a bottle of craft beer from the local Bottle-O to drink back at the bnb.

It was a mostly cloud-free evening, perfect for watching the sunset, having a beer and trying to catch up in my blog.

Clyde, New Zealand

We were getting the hang of packing up our stuff now that we’d been in NZ for a few days. Having a car gives us an expanded storage - for example our hiking shoes stay in the car, and our jackets get thrown in the trunk on top of our suitcases. Much easier than having to cram everything in the suitcase. Plus with all the random short walks along the drive, it makes it easy to switch into hiking shoes and don the appropriate jacket depending on the mood of the weather at the time.

We had another nice breakfast, although I was still full from dinner and so skipped the eggs this morning. Said our goodbyes to Pete (who totally reminded us of our friend Stéphane).

It was another scenic drive further south along Highway 6. There’s a couple viewpoints along Lake Wānaka. It got even better at The Neck, a narrow strip of land connecting the lakes. We were the only car stopped at the viewpoint of The Neck, which we found odd as it’s one of the better views!

Then we drove a bit further to Lake Hāwea which if this wasn’t the quintessential picture of NZ then I don’t know what is. We stopped at a pullover, not an official viewpoint, for pics. There was the glacial blue lake with rocky mountains rising behind. In the foreground, sheep ran around a field filled with spring flowers.

There was a viewpoint a few km down the road but it wasn’t as good. The parking lot was also temporarily overflowing, a bit dangerous as cars were backing out into a highway where the limit is 100 km/h. In busy season it would be crazy.

The highway was getting busier, likely due to proximity to Queenstown.

Our lunch destination was in the heritage precinct in Cromwell. In the 80s, the construction of the Clyde Dam flooded out some communities. They preserved some of the historic buildings from the main street and reconstructed them on higher ground in Cromwell. Some are museum-like and others now house boutique stores and galleries.

It was 22C and sunny in Cromwell, we had left the clouds behind on Lake Wānaka. We had lunch at the Grain and Seed Cafe, splitting a sandwich and salad. We finally figured out the portion sizes :) decided to have a coffee later when we arrived in Clyde.

Walked along the pedestrian area in the Heritage Precinct. There were some interesting galleries and I did find steak knives in another (bnbs tend to have very dull knives). Got back to the car and drove to Clyde.

Found our way to our bnb in Clyde, took all our stuff in and then headed out for a tour of Clyde. It was just about 3pm, and most places close down around 4pm.

Checked out a couple art galleries just around the corner from us. They had some cool stuff, but nothing that jumped out at us. Then we tried to get a coffee. The first couple places we tried were just closing up. It didn’t look good for us, until we came across The Post Office, a cafe in an old post office. Had a coffee and a couple chocolate treats.

While there I googled the winery just up the street from our bnb and saw that they did tastings on request. So gave them a call, and asked if we could come by around 4:30pm. Sure enough they could schedule one for us!

So finished our coffees, went back to the bnb to freshen up, and then a two minute walk to the winery. At first we weren’t sure if we were there, until one of the owners, Chris (I had spoken with her on the phone) waved to us from the 2nd floor balcony. She was just doing some wine stuff and was in the white overalls that wine people wear when doing wine stuff.

Her husband, John, welcomed us into the tasting room. We chatted while he sorted out the tasting. He said normally Chris did the tastings but she was doing wine stuff.

Anyways we tried their Chardonnay, Rose, and their 2016 and 2017 Pinots. Chris had finished her wine stuff and joined us. They were interested in our itinerary, and suggested fish mongers in Invercargill to get smoked salmon and blue cod for when we’re in our self-catering place in the Catlins. Their winery, Clyde Village Winery, is very small, only 2,000 vines, but still award-winking. It was fun chatting with Chris and John.

Had just enough time to shower and get to our dinner reservations at Oliver’s, about a five minute walk. (Everything is a five minute walk here).

Oliver’s is in a restored old building. It’s part of a hotel that was built from old stables. We had looked at staying there when we did our planning but it seemed overpriced. Better to stay at a cheaper bnb and then eat at the restaurant :)

Dinner was excellent. We had a drink afterwards in their bar area. The bartender was a big Raptors fan, of all teams. He said North American sports are big in NZ cause the games are at a convenient time for them to follow, around midday.

It was quite the turnaround for our time in Clyde. It wasn’t looking good at first in our desperate search for coffee, and then did a 180 with the winery tour and dinner and Oliver’s. A nice end to a full day (‘full day’ relatively speaking, from a vacation context).

Makarora, New Zealand

I woke up around 4am cause the moon hit me in the eye, not unlike a big pizza pie. Literally, the moon was shining in through a side window directly on my pillow. I tried to take some pics through the window, which looked pretty good except for the double reflection in the window of the moon :(

The mountains in the distance started to get colour from dawn; it was really beautiful so I just lay in bed awake and watched. Heather woke up at some point and did the same. So we didn’t get much sleep but it was really pretty. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. The sheep and cows woke up and started bleating and mooing. Eventually the sun rose over the peaks east of us.

We had a big breakfast, yogurt and muesli, poached eggs, toast with peanut butter and honey, and French press coffee. Pretty good for self-catering if I may say so myself.

When we were chatting yesterday with our host, Pete, he had suggested that we do the 2hr Blue Pools Track. Most folks just walk in 15 minutes to the Blue Pools; Pete thought we’d enjoy the full walk; he said it was his favourite in the area.

So we were on the road by 10:15am, still a blue sky. The track was just ten minutes north on Highway 6. There was just a handful of cars in the parking lot at this early hour. We were fully geared up for sun and sand flies.

The Blue Pools were nice. (Someone we met later on suggested that some people visit from areas that don’t have blue water cause of all the sediment in the water, and so blue water is really unique for them. For us it’s not such a novelty).

We were the only people on the track beyond the pools. We followed the marked trail through forest, and then later parallel to a farm, through meadows and fields of wild flowers. It was very peaceful. Fortunately it hadn’t rained recently cause otherwise the track would be very muddy.

We turned back after an hour, for a total walk of about 2.5 hours. It was really relaxing.

We had lunch at Makarora Country Cafe. It was just a couple minute drive from Wild Earth Lodge so we went home first to freshen up.

The rest of the afternoon we relaxed at our lodge. We had a washing machine and did several loads of laundry. We had been changing locations every day for the past week and this was our first opportunity to do laundry in a while.

We had scotch steaks (aka ribeye) with grilled asparagus, red pepper, onion, eggplant and mushrooms. (I definitely need to get an instant read thermometer. I overdid the steak slightly).

We sat outside again to finish the wine and watch the sunset. It really is one of our favourite places we’ve stayed.

Makarora, New Zealand

We drove further south on Highway 6 from Franz Josef to Makarora today.

First we stocked up on groceries for the next couple days at the local Four Square. The selection was small but worked well to source a couple dinners, including lots of fruit and vegetables. Our first use of our Esky (the brand name of coolers here, it’s so popular that the brand name has become synonymous with coolers, like Kleenex) and freezer packs that we had bought at Bunnings (a Home Depot equivalent in NZ) just outside the Christchurch airport.

The drive south on Highway 6 was spectacular yet again. We followed the Tasman Sea coast for most of the day before turning inland at Haast. We stopped at a few of the well-marked viewpoints (there’s markers 5km, 2km and 400m leading up to the viewpoints). Our favourite was Dune Lake lookout, which had a two-storey lookout tower you can climb for better views of the sand dunes. Also stopped at Fantail Falls, and walked to the Jetty Lookout at Matheson Park (there was a slight breeze and so no reflection of the peaks in the distance).

We arrived at Wild Earth Lodge in Makarora around 5pm. The lodge is one of our favourite places ever that we’ve stayed at. The backyard faced out to a large sheep grazing farm, and beyond that the Wilkin River and Mount Aspiring NP.

Sorted ourselves out, and then started on dinner. The bbq was a full grilling plate, rather than grilled. I did the salmon on the bbq, and Heather took care of the asparagus and potatoes. A little browned butter with caper sauce for the salmon, it was just like at home! Except the salmon was local - we will sometimes buy King Salmon at our local fishmonger in Toronto, sourced from NZ.

Finished off the wine lounging on the deck watching the sunset. One of the best outdoor decks we’ve had that could actually be enjoyed, with no bugs and a comfortable 15C.

Franz Josef, New Zealand

We wished we had an extra day in Breakers Boutique (near Greymouth) cause it’s a relaxing place to stay, and there’s plenty to see just north. Unfortunately, when we were planning, they didn’t have availability for the two days. Oh well, I guess that’s for another trip.

We did start the day driving north 30 minutes to Punakaiki and Paparoa National Park to see Pancake Rocks. It was windy and drizzly (and for most of the drive today). There weren’t many tourists visiting today based on the car park.

There’s a nice boardwalk that takes you through the park. Pancake Rocks are unique - it’s hundreds of thin rock layers stacked on each other, with the Tasman Sea pounding away at them. Well worth the drive!

Stopped in at the tourist info centre which had some pretty decent souvenirs. Heather bought a t-shirt.

Then headed south on Highway 6. The drive, winding along the coast, is stunning - it’s a tourist attraction on its own. We had a list of suggestions for the drive to Franz Josef from Jan, our host at Breakers.

Because of the rain we decided against the treks and instead called in at Shades of Jade in Greymouth. Heather had liked their jewelry on display at Breakers. I bought a hei matu necklace, a stylized fish hook, a Māori symbol.

The jade folks recommended Monteith’s Brewery for lunch so we checked it out. The portion sizes were large. Should have split a sandwich and salad. Heather liked their cider. Bought a couple bottles to go so I could try their Pale Ale later on.

Debated getting groceries in Greymouth for a couple days out (Greymouth is the largest town we’ll be in the next few days) but decided to take our chances in Franz Josef.

The rest of the afternoon was driving with occasional stops for viewpoints, some spectacular, others okay. Filled up on gas in Hokitika at the NPD self serve. It was much easier figuring out how to be open the gas cap on the Corolla vs the Outlander we had in Tasmania.

The weather cleared as we arrived in Franz Josef. Most people come here to see the glaciers, but it looked a bit like a tourist trap when we did our planning, what with global warming causing the glaciers to recede. So it was just a transit stop for us.

Franz Josef reminded us of a ski resort town, with the focus here on getting tourists to take a helicopter tour.

Picked up some groceries at the Four Square in town (it’s a chain here). Our bnb is just on the outskirts of the centre, about a 5-10 minute walk. It’s surrounded by rainforest.

There were just a couple of restaurants to choose from, which didn’t take reservations, so we went early for dinner (6:45) and were able to get seated at Alice May’s. As with almost all restaurants here, they had a sign warning about how understaffed they were.

The food was excellent, Heather had the salmon and I had the grilled pork, and a bottle of local pinot noir. We would have preferred more vegetables. At least the next couple dinners we’re cooking ourselves.

We wandered about the town after dinner. It was still bright out, the sun only set around 9:15pm cause we’re a bit south and close to solstice. The Southern Alps looked nice at dusk, we were lucky the clouds had cleared.

Greymouth, New Zealand

We checked that our flight from Auckland to Christchurch was on schedule first thing when we woke up at 6am. One benefit of staying at an airport hotel is that they are focused on passengers catching flights. So no worries about breakfast at early hours.

It’s a three hour difference between Adelaide and Auckland so it felt like 3am for us, ugh.

Caught the 7am shuttle to the airport. We had no problems at self check-in, printing our luggage tags (our boarding passes were digital), nor getting through security.

Then the wait at the gate, hoping our flight wouldn’t be cancelled. flightaware.com showed the inbound flight was on schedule, which boded well. (It’s amazing how much flight-related info is out there on the web).

And then we boarded! Another full flight, although this was a shorter flight at only 85 minutes. We even got a hot beverage. We had checked that our luggage was with us before we departed, so there was no nervous wait for our luggage at the conveyor.

I picked up the rental car from Sixt while Heather gathered our luggage. Sixt was very organized, with our car keys and agreement all ready to go. When researching the trip, one of frequent complaints I had seen was car rental reservations with no cars, (I think there’s a Seinfeld for that). So it was a relief to see that our car was indeed there :) I planned the trip south-to-north to increase our car chances. It’s way more common to start in the north, so car rental companies normally end up with all their cars in Christchurch. It’s possible to get a big discount to drive the cars north for them; but this requires a bit of schedule flexibility which we didn’t have.

So took our ‘before’ pics of our Toyota Corolla rental, loaded up our luggage, and we were off on the final leg of our little adventure, six weeks in New Zealand, country number 97 for me :)

About Australia, it’s the first country we’ve spent a bit of time in and not used cash. We used tap everywhere. Usually we are in countries a little more off the beaten path, where access to the banking system isn’t ubiquitous and cash is needed, so I don’t think this will become a trend for us.

We were on the road by 11am, not far off our original plan of 10am, so the missed flight didn’t impact our itinerary much at all.

The drive from Christchurch to the west coast through Arthur’s Pass was spectacular. We lucked out with a beautiful sunny day as well. The folks at Breakers Boutique had given us suggested stops along the drive, from which we picked the ones most interesting to us.

The hedges around farms in Canterbury were huge, about 20ft tall and neatly trimmed.

First stop was at World Famous Sheffield Pies for lunch, where we had some savoury pies. Mmm good.

Next up was Castle Hill, with 4-storey boulders on a hill. It’s a pleasant 30 minute walk from the car park on track that loops around the boulders. We were surprised that the car park was full (we’re still in what would been shoulder season pre-covid) but it was a Saturday and it looked like there were some rock climbing clubs meeting.

Had a coffee in Arthur’s Pass, where we had our first view of kea, a mountain parrot, scavenging at the restaurant. You’re not supposed to feed them but I guess enough people do to make it worthwhile for them to hang out.

Last stop was at Deaths Corner, which has great views of the valley (we also stopped at another viewpoint, not on our lodge’s suggested stops, now we know why, lol).

Finally reached the west coast and turned north on Hwy 6. The highway runs most of the west coast of the South Island, and should be on lists of best road trips in the world. Today we just had 10 minutes on it to get to our lodge, but we’ll be driving most of its length over the next few days.

We stayed at Breakers Boutique. For some reason they had upgraded us to a nicer room, which was amazing. Too bad we just have one night here.

We dropped our stuff and walked down to the pebble beach. I’ve never seen so much driftwood in my life! Heather loves the sounds and sight of the ocean, and there was no shortage of that here. There’s a reason they named the place Breakers Boutique :)

We had the homemade pizza (it's the only item on offer - otherwise it's a 15 minute drive to town for takeout) and a NZ pinot noir for dinner and watched the ocean. It was a great start to NZ!

Auckland, New Zealand

We hadn’t planned to spend the night in Auckland but due to flight delays missed our connection to Christchurch :(

The day started in Adelaide. Our ADL-AKL flight was at noon, so we were able to get up at decent hour. We thought about upgrading cause it’s four hours but the flight had just economy seats, plus it looked to be completely full.

We got through security and then waited inside the terminal for our gate to posted. Then we realized we had to go through another set of security checks for international flights, including having to dump our water bottles again and fill up on the other side. Very odd.

The flight was delayed by an hour cause the incoming flight was late. We were flying Air New Zealand for the first time - the seats were really comfortable, no need for upgrades.

The flight attendants came by to all the transferring passengers to explain how they were hoping to rush us through our transfers. They arranged for passengers to disembark in stages - first the passengers on connecting flights across the Pacific, then connections within NZ (which included us). There were 40 passengers, including us, connecting to Christchurch, so we figured they would hold the flight till we got there.

Unfortunately as it was an international flight with a domestic connection, we had to first collect our luggage, pass through customs, get to the domestic terminal, pass through security, check our bags, and then board. In 55 minutes. (In the future, for international to domestic connections, I’ll probably plan to stay the night in between).

It was all going to plan. The cross-Pacific passengers disembarked, then us and 38 of our fellow passengers.

Our luggage came out the conveyor pretty quickly (we had already checked in the Find My app to confirm our luggage made the flight).

We had trekked in the Outback and declared our shoes as possibly contaminated with dirt, so got flagged through customs. We had to pull out our shoes for inspection, which was quick. The longer part was trying to cram everything back into the suitcase.

Then we walked over to the domestic terminal. The flight staff suggested walking instead of waiting for the shuttle as it’s just a ten minute walk. We recognized other passengers from the flight making the trek too. It was drizzly and very humid, quite the change for us from the arid climate in the Outback. I was sweating by the time we got to the terminal.

Tried to self-check our bags but the flight wasn’t coming up in the system. Then an Air New Zealand staff came over to inform us the gates were closed for our AKL-CHC flight :(

So 40 of us lined up to get moved to the next available flight (there’s multiple per day) and get our accommodation and meal vouchers.

Took us an hour of waiting to finally get rebooked, on the 9am flight the next day. As we were at the counter, the agents found out that the 8:30am flight that they had booked most of the folks ahead of us was now cancelled. Good thing we were on the 9am! Hopefully that would remain on schedule. Later we realized the weather had been bad in Auckland today and lots of flights had been cancelled. The line up for vouchers kept on growing with passengers from other flights.

We’ve been pretty lucky over the years that we haven’t had many missed flights. I think just one canceled flight in Borneo and Heather had her luggage delayed in Lisbon.

There were two other passengers staying at the same hotel as us. One of the other passengers didn’t want to wait for the shuttle, so took an Uber and offered to take all four of us. Very nice of her.

Finally got to the hotel at 10pm. The restaurant had just closed so we ordered room service. The friendly JetPark hotel people suggested we order at reception before heading to our room so we wouldn’t have wait long for our food.

It was a rather long day and we weren’t quite yet at our destination. Oh well.

Adelaide, Australia

Today was mostly driving back the 500km to Adelaide from Leigh Creek. We first drove through the national parks in Flinders Range. Observed the yellow-footed rock wallabies bounding about the rocky cliffs, pretty mobile for two feet. It was a beautiful day today, 22C and sunny. We were extremely lucky with the weather during the excursion.

During the drive home we also finally saw kangaroo in the wild, which was on my list.

We got back into Adelaide just before 6pm. Said our goodbyes to Paul, who’d been our excellent guide and driver for the three-day excursion, and checked back into the Ibis.

At first we were thinking of something low key for dinner. Then Heather suggested Italian (we had met an Italian expat in Marree and she had said there was excellent Italian food in Adelaide). So we looked up italian restaurants in google maps, cleaned up and headed off to Osteria Oggi, where we probably ate too much :) it was all excellent though.

Leigh Creek, Australia

Today was our big descent to Kati Thanda Lake Eyre!

Paul (our guide) had been checking the satellite forecasts to make sure we didn’t get stranded in a flash flood. There was some storm activity southwest of us but nothing to worry about. Today was also much cooler - a forecast high of 32C, much better than the 38C we had yesterday. However it was really windy all day today. Luckily the recent rains had kept the landscape green so there wasn’t too much dust. Usually this time of year the heat has burnt off everything.

About 30 minutes in we spotted a couple of wedge tailed eagles, munching on roadkill. They flew up into the roadside bush as we drove up. Got some decent pics, although Paul teased me for having my camera buried in my day pack instead of at the ready.

By about 10am we were there! It’s a dramatic approach, as the first view is after cresting a dune a few hundred metres from the lake.

We had been comparing our various devices as we approached (the car GPS, Garmin, and our iPhones) to see the elevation. They varied from -24m to -8m (the official measurement is -12m).

There’s a car park, and then a path which descends to the actual lake. We started on a salt crust over hard sand, which eventually turned to softer sand. We walked out about 100m before turning back. It was super windy - it was really hard to walk back.

We also saw lots of chatters of budgies flying by, every few minutes. I didn’t know that budgies existed in the wild. I also had to look up the term for a group of budgies - chatter is appropriate, as you hear them before you see them, flashing green as they passed by. I took some random pics that you can recognize as green and bird-shaped, but not anything I’ll be submitting to National Geographic.

There were cool shaped ant hills on the shores. They were like cookie-cutouts, with vertical edges rather than a sloped side, I think because of the wet sand. Anyways they were cool to see.

We spent about 45 minute exploring Kati Thanda. We walked back to the truck over an abandoned rail line - Paul suggested we look for a railway spike as a souvenir. Once we found one we saw hundreds of them scattered along the former rail line. Got a nicely shaped one, rusty but still with the original point on the spike.

Stopped for lunch in Marree, at Marree’s Outback Roadhouse. One thing we both really liked about the excursion is that we ate at real places that locals frequent, rather than tourist stops. They have a real small-town feel to them (as you’d expect). It also does feel like you’re in the outback. The tumbleweeds blowing by probably add to the atmosphere too :)

Passed by the Lake Eyre Yacht Club, which started as a joke but is a real thing. We had read about it when researching the trip.

We had a few more stops in the afternoon - at the ghost town of Farina, Lyndhurst Ochre pits and the Aroona Dam. We saw some long-necked turtles and black swans in the artificial lake behind the dam.

We stayed overnight at Leigh Creek Outback Resort. Their diner was much more sedate than last night, although still pretty busy. It was steak night; we both had the Scotch steak, which in Canada we’d call a ribeye. The chef knew what he was doing - it was really tasty. We’ve been drinking Cooper’s Pale Ale on tap here in South Australia, the brewery is in Adelaide and it’s really popular.

It was a very full day of touristing, we fell asleep quickly.

Roxby Downs, Australia

We had a hearty breakfast at the Ibis in Adelaide, checked out and met Paul at 7:30am in the lobby. Paul’s our tour guide and driver for our whirlwind three day excursion to Kati Thanda Lake Eyre, the low point of Australia.

This will be the 4th low point for us. Our first low point was the Dead Sea when we went to Jordan. A few years later we went to Lac Assale in Djibouti, more for the scenic excursion and because I’d also been to the high point of Africa. Anyways the Seven Low Points became a thing for us after that.

Based on the rest of our itinerary we had just three days and two nights to get to Kati Thanda and back. Paul (the company is just Paul and his wife, Astrid) arranged the custom itinerary, with about five hours driving per day, and interesting sights along the way. It’s a dangerous trip to self-drive if you don’t know what you’re doing in the outback.

At this point we still weren’t assured of getting there. Flash floods can close down roads for days; and the weather forecast was all over the place the next few days.

So we loaded up Paul’s Toyota Landcruiser, and started on our adventure!

Over the next three days Paul turned out to be really knowledgeable about almost everything in the region, including the history of towns, and identifying all the birds and animals that we spotted on the drive.

We had a fuel stop and coffee break once we got out of Adelaide. Mince pies are popular in the morning and Paul recommended them, so I tried one. Not my typical mid-morning snack but it was pretty good.

First highlight was Lochiel, a pink lake. The colour changed based on the sun / cloud cover; got some okay pics. My iPhone was better than my camera at picking up the colours.

Next we saw Germein, a former shipping town. There’s a 1676m long jetty to reach the drop off where ships can dock. It’s so long it had a railway track to assist with shipping back in the day. It was an photogenic historical stop.

As we drove inland, north from Adelaide, the farmland turned to desert scrubs above the ‘Goyder line’. Above this line, farmers aren’t eligible for relief funding in case of drought etc. The farms had perfectly straight crops, guided by lasers and GPS.

At some point we passed the marker for 'The Outback' which was also a place we wanted to get to, similar to how we wanted to get to the Sahara. we had googled the definition of the Outback and there's no set boundary - even Paul said it was basically 'inland'. The roadside sign was probably from the tourism marketing board, lol.

We stopped for lunch at Arid Lands Botanical Gardens. The temperature had started to creep up, it was now 32C with a forecast high of 38C. This is typical as we get into summer. We’re the last excursion for Paul before they shut down for three months over the summer - it just gets too hot, with highs in mid-40s.

Last sightseeing for the day was an outdoor museum in Woomera, with rocket launchers and aircraft. The coolest part for me was a second stage booster recovered from the outback. The region is still militarized for testing and launches - we passed by large off-limit areas.

We stayed overnight in Roxby Downs, a mining town. The restaurant was packed in the evening with off-shift mining crew drinking and eating.

Adelaide, Australia

We had a couple connecting flights on Virgin Australia to get from Hobart to Adelaide. When we were returning the car in Hobart, we ran into the same car rental folks at the gas station, then in the parking lot and finally at the counter. So they had verified first-hand that we had fueled up :) probably had a laugh watching us trying to find the gas cap release on the Outlander.

It was a beautiful day in Adelaide. It’s a quick 15 minute taxi to get to the CBD. We stayed at the Ibis, which isn’t our typical choice for accommodation but we just needed something functional.

We were hungry so wandered down Rundle Mall, a pedestrian mall in the heart of Adelaide CBD. It reminded us of Singapore, with the blurring between inside / outside and private / public areas. It’s mostly international chains on Rundle Mall. Ended up at Harry’s Bar, which was across multiple floors in a beautiful old building. You go there for the location, not the food or beers. Sat out on the 2nd floor patio overlooking Grenfell St and had some pub food.

Around 5pm it was starting to get chilly so went back to the hotel. The travel day had messed up our meal times, so ended up just having ramen for dinner. There’s a decent amount of immigration in Adelaide and a good variety of different cuisines.

Repacked our suitcases for the Kati Thanda Lake Eyre excursion starting tomorrow and went to bed.

Hobart, Australia

On Sundays the Farm Gate Market closes down Bathurst St for a block between Murray St and Elizabeth St, just around the corner from our Airbnb. We could see the vendors arriving and setting up from our window, and then later people leaving with bags full of produce.

We went down to check it out after breakfast. It seemed like every second person had a huge bunch of basil. I’m not sure what they do with that much basil - maybe make pesto or jam? We’re leaving tomorrow so we didn’t buy anything, although lots looked good.

Later we walked twenty minutes up Elizabeth St to North Hobart, another little community full of cafés, restaurants and craft breweries. Had lunch at Raincheck Lounge and then sampled the beers at Shambles Brewery (the beers were so-so).

Walked back home and then later got ready for our big dinner at Templo. Templo supposedly kick-started the culinary trend here in Hobart (at least, according to the Lonely Planet).

We arrived a couple minutes before our seating at 6pm, and realized we were amongst the last of the 20 or so diners to arrive. It’s semi-communal seating - we were placed at a table for ten. Fortunately the other couples were just as unenthusiastic as us about meeting everyone else, we all just kept to ourselves.

The food was simple courses done really well. Also the wines were paired for consecutive courses so you didn’t feel like you had to finish the glass every course. I preferred the tasting at Aløft; but it was still great to eat here - it’s sort of an institution in Hobart.

Walked down to the waterfront after dinner. The lighting was really nice for pics.

Hobart, Australia

Today was our big visit to MONA, the Museum of New and Old Art. It could put Hobart on the map similar to how the Guggenheim Museum did for Bilbao. Almost everyone we met on this trip, when we mentioned we were going to Hobart, asked if we were visiting MONA.

We had pre-booked our tickets (it’s timed entry), as well as the dedicated ferry from Hobart harbour up the River Derwent. I upgraded to the ‘Posh Pit’ on the 25-minute ferry ride based on reviews that said it was worthwhile.

We were up early so had a leisurely breakfast at our Airbnb. Heather had a moka pot coffee, she’ll be an expert on every type of coffee maker by the time we’re done this trip! She had bought ground coffee beans from a little store on Bruny Island, which made great coffee. Also we had fresh mango, strawberries, blueberries and lychee, all local (Australian) and in season. Mmm good.

Wandered down to the waterfront, we were a bit early so checked out the Salamanca Market which is open on Saturdays. It’s huge, with dozens of stalls selling pretty high quality crafts. We didn’t have much time to browse, just as well as it’s too early in the trip to be accumulating stuff.

The MONA ferry lady was right on top of things as we arrived. Made sure we had our tickets ready on our phones, and that we had downloaded the O app, which we’d use to tour the art.

At 10:15am she lined us up, a separate line for posh pit and regular tickets. The lines were both about the same length - so much for the exclusivity! But as we boarded, the posh pit folks were seated in comfy chairs and then we had sparkling wine and canapés on the ride over :) plus, we were in the front half of the boat, for the all-important view of the approach to MONA. The complex sits mostly below ground level, and the entry is part of the experience.

Anyways the museum staff were very efficient at herding everyone. We had our passes scanned to enter, and then descended down three floors below ground level to start touring the gallery.

There were quite a few works that struck us, probably cause the gallery does try to be provocative.

Anyways it took us about 2.5 hours to get back to ground level. By that time we were out-galleried, so walked over to the various restaurants on-site. Had lunch at Moorilla Wine Bar.

I had originally booked our return ferry for 4pm but it was easy to change to 3pm at the ticket counter. Waited outside in the gorgeous weather (about 25C and sunny), and then caught the ferry back to Hobart. We had a cappuccino and assorted cakes in posh pit, which probably covered the cost difference :)

Walked back home. Hobart has a very compact walkable city core. Unrelated, people don’t jaywalk at all here.

For dinner, figured we’d just walk around Murray St and Elizabeth St and pick a restaurant that appealed to us, and hope we could get a table for two on a Saturday evening. We ended up at Dāna Eating House which was excellent.

Hobart, Australia

We were sad to leave our Adventure Bay lodge, it’s one of our favourite places we’ve stayed at. We timed it perfectly to leave, out the door at exactly 10am per the checkout time.

Stopped at few lookouts on the way back to the ferry. Two Tree Point was photogenic. As we were getting back in the car, a bunch of birds flew over (including some yellow-tailed black cockatoos) so Heather pulled out her binoculars and we bird-watched for a bit.

Caught the ferry back to the mainland. It was really busy going the other direction - locals getting a head start on the weekend. Just like cottage traffic back home :)

We drove to our Airbnb in Hobart, a little north of the centre, in the heart of cafes and hip restaurants. Checkin wasn’t for a couple hours at 2pm, so we just left the car in the Airbnb parking spot and then went for lunch. The parking spot was tricky to get into - it’s up a steep narrow driveway on top of the storefront below the Airbnb.

We walked towards berta for lunch, a place recommended by the folks at the hair salon (salons are pretty handy for getting input on local hotspots :) ). There was a pizza place on the corner (Medici) which looked and smelt awesome so we stopped there instead. Way back we had booked the chef’s tasting at Peacock and Jones for dinner, but we didn’t feel like a big dinner, so canceled and instead booked in at berta for 7pm. We also canceled the chef’s tasting at Dier Makr we had for tomorrow, cause we had the full day at MONA and we didn’t feel like we’d want a big dinner after that either. There’s waiting lists for both places so someone else can enjoy it :)

Walked around the pedestrian area a bit more. Stopped in at Woolworth’s which here is a grocery chain (when I grew up it used to be a department store in Canada) for breakfast stuff.

Finally made our way to the Airbnb. Our place is big, but rather spartan in furnishings. Did some laundry (one advantage of Airbnbs over hotels, especially for longer term travel).

Later went back to berta for dinner. It was very enjoyable, a small restaurant (seating about 16 for dinner). Halloumi was featured on a couple menu items - it seems to be common here in Tasmania. We may have over-ordered, but definitely less than an tasting menu :)

Bruny Island, Australia

We weren’t sure what we wanted to do today on Bruny Island. Started with a casual breakfast with yogurt and granola and baguette slices with butter and the honey we bought yesterday. Watched the wallabies bounce around and munch on grass.

Decided against a longer trek, mostly cause they either involved crossing streams and getting our feet wet or loosely-marked trails. Instead booked the lighthouse tour for 2:30pm.

We first drove back to the neck, a 3km skinny stretch of land between the north and south parts of Bruny Island. Climbed up the stepped boardwalk at the Truganini Lookout for great views of both sides of the neck. The Adventure Bay side (exposed to the ocean) had big waves as opposed to the Isthmus Bay side which was super calm.

It’s possible to observe the little blue penguins here at sunset, but we didn’t want to be driving at night with all the wildlife about the roads. (We’ve booked another place in NZ where we can watch them, it’s in town so we can walk home after.)

We had lunch reservations at 1pm at Bruny Island Premium wines near Lunawanna, so figured we just head there early and see if we could get seated. Had a very tasty lunch, including crayfish, wild scallops, and pork belly. Heather had their Reserve Chardonnay; I was driving so just had a sparkling water. We also got a picnic platter for takeaway for dinner.

Then drove south to Cape Bruny for the lighthouse tour. The road turns to gravel just past Lunawanna. There’s also a permit required to enter the national park - there’s a QR code posted at the entrance and you buy it online. We think it’s on the honour system as nobody actually checked for it.

Got to the parking lot with about five minutes to spare before the tour started, and then realized it was still a five minute walk uphill to the lighthouse :( made it up in time though.

The guide was a gentle old soul (we didn’t ask, but I suspect he was a former lighthouse keeper). There was just four of us on the tour (they limit it to ten).

Learnt some things about lighthouses I didn’t know - for example, each lighthouse along the coast revolves at a different frequency, so they can be used as navigation aids. The Cape Bruny Lighthouse we visited was retired a few years ago and replaced with an automated LED / solar powered lighthouse nearby; the old one is now just for tours.

We were glad we took the time to drive down to take the tour (it’s about an hour from our Airbnb).

Drove back home and then relaxed the rest of the afternoon. Later had our picnic dinner and called it a night.

Bruny Island, Australia

When we had planned out our trip, Hobart was the only city about the middle of the trip that had an Aveda salon. It’s hard to find stylists that can cut curly hair, at least with the Aveda name there’s higher probability, plus Heather had her colour code from her stylist at home so it was easy to match the colour. So this morning Heather went to her cut-and-colour at De Stilj Hair, the local Aveda salon in Hobart.

In the meantime I went grocery shopping, as the next couple days we’re staying at an Airbnb. We’ll have a barbecue so I was looking for lamb. The favoured cut here seems to lamb shoulder so that’s what I went with. It was super cheap! $7 AUD.

Closer to noon I went to get the car from the carport. When we arrived a couple days ago at 9pm it was a 30-second drive; midday it took me 15 minutes to drive around to the front of the hotel.

Anyways it was much easier to pack up cause we weren’t taking a flight, so no concern about where liquids were packed and how many bags we had. Loaded up the SUV and we were off on our next adventure!

Followed google maps to get to the ferry to Bruny Island (not sure how we got around before iPhones). The ferry crossing was about 20 minutes and so smooth we didn’t even realize we had left!

Once on Bruny Island everyone makes the same stops - first lunch of fresh oysters at Get Shucked, then onto Bruny Island Cheese for groceries (wine, cheese, baguette, craft beer) and a coffee. Next to Bruny Island Honey for more groceries. Our last stop en route to our Airbnb on Adventure Bay was Bruny Island Raspberry but the season is a bit late this year :(

We finally arrived at the Airbnb and unpacked. That’s when we realized the place is surrounded by wildlife - dozens of wallabies grazed in the fields around us.

So I had the surreal experience of grilling lamb while wallabies munched away at the grass metres away from me. The wallabies just went about their eating ignoring me.

Dinner was excellent. The cheese folks only had one red varietal which was a Pinot noir but it went really well with the lamb. All the ingredients I had picked up earlier were tasty too. While we were eating Heather noticed a white wallaby bounding by! Supposedly these are hard to spot. It was a nice finale to the day.

Hobart, Australia

We were up pretty early, probably due to the one hour time difference. This was the first time on this trip that we didn’t have to go outside for breakfast!

The continental breakfast was pretty standard. Tea doesn’t seem to be much of a thing here :( I ordered eggs benedict from the hot menu cause I was hungry from our ‘dinner’ last night.

We hadn’t planned much at all for Hobart, aside from booking the visit to MONA. So we browsed through the pamphlets and map from the hotel and decided to start with walking to Salamanca, an artsy area down by the waterfront. It’s sort of like the Distillery in Toronto, with lots of galleries and trendy cafes.

Next we walked over to Arthur Circus, which is a cluster of restored cottages, a very cute neighborhood.

It was about time for lunch, so we stopped in at a random café (Perch) where we had an excellent smoked salmon bagel and coffee. They take their coffee seriously here in Hobart, every corner has a cool café.

After lunch headed over to Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery. We really liked the exhibition on Tasmanian Aboriginal people, and another about the Antarctic. (Oh I forgot to mention, on the Virgin Australia flight from Sydney to Hobart, the pilot started with a land acknowledgment).

The museum closed at 4pm and we joined the last patrons crowding into the gift shop just before close.

Relaxed back at our hotel and then got ready for dinner. Hobart is a foodie town and I spent the last few months researching the restaurants to try out. Tonight we had booked the chef’s menu at Alœft.

The host greeted us with a disapproving how can I help you? and became much friendlier when it turned out we did in fact have a reservation.

The courses ranged from very good to amazing. The setting was also very cool, overlooking the harbour.

We tried to roll ourselves home except it was uphill. Walked a bit past our hotel, to get more of a walk after dinner. An excellent start to Tasmania :)

Hobart, Australia

It took us three days in transit to get from Yasawa Island to Hobart. It’s possible to do it in two days but it was good to have the admin day in Nadi to use the higher bandwidth wifi to upload pics and download offline maps, and to switch from our tropical Fijian stuff to our cooler weather clothing. Plus it also gave us a buffer in case of flight delays.

First was the flight from Yasawa Island to Nadi. The plane taxied up a slight hill to get a running start :) haven’t seen that before. It was also quite the approach on landing - the pilot dropped down over the hills and then made a 90* turn to square up with the runway about 10 seconds before landing! It seemed more complex than the landing in Paro, Bhutan (supposedly one of the hardest places in the world to land).

It was just as hot in Nadi (33C) although we had much better a/c, and we spent most of the next day inside sorting out what to pack for NZ and Tasmania.

It hardly seemed like a month had already passed and that we’d completed the Fiji part of the trip. We did learn more about the culture and way of life compared to other countries - it was similar to Bhutan that way.

The next morning we had a very early start to fly to Hobart. We settled up and brought our left luggage to reception the night before, so all we had to do in the morning was get up at 4:45am, and wake up and leave.

It was easy to catch the boat shuttle across the river - it was busy ferrying staff coming in for the day. Our taxi driver was waiting and we whisked off to the airport.

We had bid for an upgrade for the Nadi-Sydney flight cause it was almost five hours, and we had started to hear more coughing amongst the guests at the Doubletree. Fiji Airways calls this a ‘Bula Bid’ (Bula is the catch-all phrase for welcome, cheers, bless you, etc), which I always misread as ‘bully bid’ in reference to house offers in Toronto.

Anyways our bid wasn’t accepted. I had looked up the flight on expertflyer.com and it showed two seats still available in business. So we asked at checkin how much it would cost to upgrade, and it was cheaper than our declined bid! So we upgraded for fairly cheap, and made our way to the Fiji Airways lounge for some breakfast.

I napped most of the flight (it was actually a lie-flat seat, which I was surprised for a mid-haul flight). Food was not so good (should have filled up in the lounge, lol).

We arrived in Sydney around 12:30pm, an hour behind Fiji. Got a nice pic of the Opera House from the plane just before landing.

We had previously filled out our Australia ETA app so entering Australia was fully automated. It’s such a difference from entering Canada at Pearson.

We collected our luggage and then waited for the shuttle bus to get to the domestic terminal. It was beautiful outside, about 23C and sunny.

We had about four hours to wait for the flight to Hobart. Had a craft beer and a sandwich at a little airport restaurant, which hit the spot.

It was only a 90 flight to Hobart, we arrived around 8pm. The airport is about the same size as Charlottetown’s. I went and picked up our rental car while Heather waited at the carousel. The Enterprise folks were super quick so I rejoined Heather at the carousel (it’s pretty casual here). With AirTags it’s far less stressful waiting for our luggage cause I could see the luggage was actually in Hobart.

The Enterprise folks had upgraded us to a big SUV, although we would have preferred a compact car. Oh well, at least there was no concern about fitting the luggage in the trunk (we’re traveling this leg with one suitcase each, and our weekend packs for carry on).

Followed Google Maps to get to our hotel in the centre of Hobart (on Murray St :) ). My phone battery was dying but managed to make it there with about 4% remaining.

Checked in, parked the car in the nearby car port, and then rushed to the hotel bar before they closed at 10pm. Had a drink to celebrate the start of the Australia leg of the trip (and country number 96 for me :) ). The kitchen had closed so snacked on a probably not-so-healthy bag of salt and vinegar chips and roasted nuts. It was a long transit day, it hardly seemed like we had started our day in Nadi.

Yasawa Island, Fiji

We joined the organized excursion this morning to Sawa-i-Lau Island, to swim in the limestone cavern popularized by the 1980's movie The Blue Lagoon.

It was another excursion heavily discussed about what to wear / bring. The resort suggested masks and fins. From what I had researched the main cavern was accessed via stairs, and then you could swim through and underwater tunnel to the second (dark) cavern. The second cavern didn’t have any appeal for us so we just took our masks and water shoes. Once again we chose wisely :)

We had another beautiful sunny day with minimal wind. Cause we were sunscreened up and had on our water shoes, we walked along the beach to the activities bure instead of calling for a ride.

Over half the guests had signed up for the excursion, 14 of us in total. We split into two groups for the 30 minute boat ride around the south end of the Yasawa Island to Sawa-i-Lau Island.

It’s a very scenic ride, passing by several beaches that the resort drops folks off for a private beach lunch, one of the signature excursions here. (The idea of being on a hot beach with minimal shade and no way home except waiting for the boat also had no appeal for us. To each their own though).

We arrived on the beach near the cavern. There was a group from another resort already there so we browsed the craft stalls on the beach for ten minutes or so until it was our turn.

The first cavern was okay, it’s cool as an excursion but I wouldn’t plan a trip to Yasawa just to see it. We didn’t bother with the second (dark) cave. Obviously there’s nothing to see there; I think people like the excitement of swimming through a 10’ tunnel, which was about 2’ below sea level based on the tides when we were there.

The water was still smooth for the boat ride back. We’ve been extremely lucky with lack of waves whenever we’ve been in boats so far this trip.

Got back around noon; showered and then had lunch. It was another hot sunny day so we didn’t do much the rest of the day.

Overall we were glad we came to Yasawa Island resort. The main attraction for us was the white sandy beaches and the isolation - there’s only the one resort on the island. The bures were a bit rustic, the food so-so, but it’s a great place to just watch the waves :)