Toronto, Canada

We've been back home now for a few days, trying to de-jetlag. Overall it was a really fun trip.

We finally got back to Toronto after a four-day transit back home. The arrival through customs at Pearson has improved since our last time through (pre-covid), although it's still behind all the other international arrivals we had on this trip. It also took almost an hour for the luggage to get from the plane to the carousel. I suppose we should be happy that our luggage arrived at all.

The highlights (in chronological order):

• Snorkeling with manta rays in the Astrolabe Reef 
• Flying over the reefs in little prop planes during local flights in Fiji
• Standing on the 180th meridian (the only accessible place in the world where you can do so)
• Snorkeling with all the colourful fishes and coral at Rainbow Reef
• Village walks on Taveuni
• Walking around Hobart
• Road trip to the Outback in South Australia
• Making it to Kati Thanda, our 4th of the Seven Low Points
• Driving along Highway 6 on the West Coast
• Excursions to Milford Sound and Doubtful Sound (Milford more impressive to see, Doubtful a more fun experience)
• Watching the sheep graze from our lodge in Tahakopa Bay in Southland
• Little Blue Penguins in Oamaru
• Seeing Wandering Albatross in Kaikoura (wingspan of 3.7m, the largest flying bird in the world)
• Glowworm caves in Waitomo and Te Anau (my favourite was Ruakuri Cave)
• Learning about wines from the many wine regions in NZ
• Orakei Korako Geothermal Park

We were lucky to not get sick over the whole trip. There was a lot of uncertainty with covid when we booked back in Feb 2022, but pretty much all the restrictions had been lifted by the time we started out trip. We wore masks on flights and other public transport, and in the occasional museum if it was busy.

It was our first trip where English was an official language in all the countries. Fiji has three (English, Fijian, Fiji Hindi) and NZ has three (English, Māori and NZ Sign Language). Legally, Australia has no offical language but English is considered the de facto national language. (There's a handful of other countries without an offical language, including UK, US and Japan).

Australia is the first country I've spent more than a couple days without having any currency from the country. (We had cash in NZ as a backup -- in a couple places they didn't take foreign credit cards, and some roadside fruit stands were cash-only)

We also traveled with a bluetooth speaker (in our case, an Echo Dot 5th Gen, which can be used offline as a bluetooth speaker). We used it quite a bit, especially in bnb's.

A couple last bits of trivia, the 38 days we spent in NZ is the longest I've spent consecutively in another country. At eleven weeks, this was our longest trip together. It's probably nearing the longest we'd like to be out traveling, after a while we do miss the routine of home.

Time to start thinking about our next trip!

San Francisco, USA

Day 3 (Fiji Standard Time) of our four-day transit back home, today from Nadi to San Francisco.

The flight didn't depart from Nadi until 10:15pm so we had all day to do much of nothing. We were able to get late check-out at 5pm for $100 FJD which was great. We spent most of the day in our air-conditioned room because we weren't adjusted to the 31C or humidity.

We had one last ferry ride from the Doubletree to the mainland and then a taxi to the airport. We forgot that we had been in the Fiji Airways lounge previously (we had upgraded at check-in for the flight from Nadi to Sydney). It was pretty crowded in the lounge, there were two large flights to LA and SF around 10pm, and I'm guessing most people had the same idea as us, to hang out at the lounge for most of the evening.

Our flight boarded and departed on time. We were able to get a few hours sleep 'overnight'.

Day 3 (Pacific Standard Time)

We arrived in SF around 12:45pm, after a pretty smooth 10+ hour flight. We also gained 18 hours by crossing the International Date Line so arrived nine hours before we took off. We had to clear US immigration and customs before rechecking our bags for the last leg home. Originally the NAN-SFO-YYZ flights had a nice connection, but before we started our trip, Air Canada changed the SFO-YYZ flight to leave an hour before we arrived. So we had 23 hours in transit in San Francisco. I had booked a hotel in Union Square rather than staying at the airport.

We had to wheel our luggage (in a $8 USD cart!) from T1 to T2, where the United / Air Canada desks were. We asked directions from a very helpful airline agent who guessed that we just came off a long flight and would prefer to walk to T2 rather than take the inter-terminal bus.

Unfortunately Air Canada couldn't take our checked bags until the following day. So we would have to lug six suitcases into town. Hopefully this wouldn't affect my Uber rating!

It was a beautiful day in San Francisco. We were lucky cause the previous week the entire coast of California had had torrential rains and flooding. Our hotel people gave us suggestions on where to eat and tourist for the afternoon. We had lunch at E&O Kitchen, just down the street from our hotel. By the time we were done it was almost 3pm, and we realized we were back in the northern hemisphere with early sunsets. So we went back to the hotel to grab warmer jackets for dusk.

We walked through Chinatown and then down Columbus Ave, where the restaurants changed to Italian. We continued down Columbus to Fort Mason for a view of the Golden Gate Bridge and Alcatraz Island. Fort Mason is popular with joggers and almost everyone passing by stopped to take pics of the sunset. It was one of the better sunsets we'd seen on our trip!

We took a different route back to our hotel, down Polk St and then back across Sutter St. It was a pretty good whirlwind tour of San Francisco! It looks like a pretty cool place to visit with lots of character. We didn't have much steam left, but wanted to stay up a little longer to try to get back to our time zone, so we stopped in at the Irish Bank for a drink, and then called it a night.

Nadi, Fiji

Day 2 of our four-day transit back home, today from Auckland to Nadi.

Our flight was at 9:30am so we decided to get through all the airport lineups and then have breakfast in the terminal.

We had a little wrinkle cause we only had a one-way ticket to Nadi (our flight to Toronto was part our return ticket from Toronto to Nadi). So we we couldn’t checkin online, and instead had to go through a couple longer lineups to show proof of on-going voyage. It was pretty crowded so we wore our masks the whole time, including the flight.

The exit immigration process was fully automated. We’re dreading having to go through Pearson in a few days, which is the opposite of the experience here.

The flight was really pleasant on Air New Zealand. We got totally engrossed in our movies (Elvis for Heather, Tenet for me) and neither of us realized we had even taken off until we were about to land. Perfect movie lengths for a three hour flight!

Cause I booked our flights so many months ago I was able to book seats near the front of economy, and so we were first off the plane and first through immigration. Good thing cause there were only a couple agents and slow going.

Got a taxi to the DoubleTree. We’d taken the route a half dozen times during our Fiji leg of the trip and it was very familiar to us.

About half the staff at the DoubleTree recognized us, some of them even remembered our names which was really impressive, given the number of guests they encounter.

It was 1pm and our room wasn’t quite ready, so we had lunch while waiting. The downside was that we were still in our cooler weather clothes and it was 29C here. Oh well.

We were reunited with our left luggage and took a golf cart to our bure. The rest of the afternoon we spent rejigging our luggage yet again, this time with carryon for our overnight in San Francisco. We had our carryon suitcase now so had more room (on the flight here, our carryon was our weekend pack).

Had dinner yet again at the Doubletree. They had just changed menus so we had some new items to try. We both had fish dishes, both of which were walu, a common fish for eating here in Fiji. I also had a couple Fiji Bitters :)

Auckland, New Zealand

It was a beautiful morning in Waiheke. We didn’t have much time to enjoy the view from the bnb cause we wanted to catch the 11am ferry back to Auckland. This was our first of four transit days to get back home.

Things were going to plan until my Gmail app decided to upgrade itself while I was trying to look up the lockbox code to leave the car and house key (attached to the tow hook on the car). Heather was able to look it up and then we rushed over to the ferry line up. We made it on the 11am with minutes to spare.

Took an Uber to the Novotel at the airport, and then camped out for the rest of the day. We had lunch and dinner at the in-house restaurant which got only 2.6 on Google but wasn’t too bad. Had one last local Hazy Pale Ale :) I had read about the Nelson and Manteuka hops before we got to NZ, I really enjoyed them.

Our room had an excellent view of the runway and landing planes, as well as of Manukau Harbour and the surrounding mountains. It was really quite scenic. Heather also liked watching the little cars pulling the cart trains like little doozers.

We repacked our stuff to maximize our carryon in case our luggage didn't make it.

We took a little walk after dinner. We actually retraced our route from the international to domestic terminal just for fun. This was the path we had taken in miserable weather and in a big rush when we first arrived in NZ, unsuccessfully trying to catch our connection to Christchurch. It was much more pleasant today, a really nice sunset too.

Waiheke Island, New Zealand

Another day focused on eating (that’s one of the main reasons why folks come to Waiheke!) We were lucky that our time here was over a weekend - dinner is only available on Fri/Sat at most places.

We had lunch reservations at The Oyster Inn, in Oneroa. On the way in we stopped at the Ostend Market (it’s open Saturdays). It has a real community feel to it. We browsed through the stalls, some of the food stalls looked amazing if we didn’t already have lunch plans.

Anyways onto Oneroa. We were a few minutes early for our lunch reservation so checked out some of the art galleries along the main strip.

The Oyster Inn is in a prime location on the strip, with its 2nd-floor balcony overlooking the street and the bay beyond. We had the Te Matuku Bay oysters which were excellent, deep shelled like those from Bruny Island but meatier. We also had crudo with avocado, another popular dish in NZ, here served with wasabi peas. I tried a Pale Ale from Alibi Brewing Co, run by the same folks who own Tantalus, where we were having dinner tonight.

On the way back home, we drove up Trig Hill past our bnb to the lookout point, as suggested by our taxi driver yesterday. It had also been mentioned in Waiheke Local when I was surfing on what to do here. Anyways it’s a really cool lookout point, and relatively unknown. Great views of the island and its bays and inlets, as well as across to Auckland.

We had dinner at Tantalus Estate, which shows up on lists of top places to eat in Waiheke and also Auckland. (It’s not uncommon for folks from Auckland to just come to Waiheke for dinner).

On Saturday the only option is their tasting menu, paired with their wines. The food was really good, although we did find the courses a bit busy. The real star was their wines, which were all excellent. Unfortunately they don’t export to Canada.

Most other folk got up to walk around the vineyard in the middle of their dinners, a sort of 7th inning stretch as Heather called it. So we did that too, just before sunset. It’s actually not a bad idea for a longer meal.

It turned out our server was from Ajax, a suburb of Toronto. Five of the staff, as well as one of the owners were also Canadian, and over the dinner they all took turns coming over to chat. This was more Canadians than we had seen over the rest of our trip combined!

Our taxi ride home got a bit delayed (another customer was in a hurry and the owner asked if we minded getting bumped). The owner offered us another wine sampling, and then took us on a tour of the bar and private dining room in the cellar (and then also covered our taxi fare). It was quite cool to see the cellar.

Anyways it was a nice unofficial end to our long vacation. (The next few days are just getting home).

Waiheke Island, New Zealand

Our bnb host had recommended driving out to the east coast to Man O War winery, so I had made a reservation for lunch. Part of the attraction is the drive there.

I was getting more accustomed to the larger vehicle. We were also glad to have the SUV as most of the drive was over a rougher gravel road. The road curved its way through hilly farmland and the occasional vineyard. It was quite beautiful. Saw some sheep - I had been wondering if we had seen our last sheep back in Te Kuiti.

We arrived at the winery just before noon. It’s an iconic NZ coastal setting - there were families on the beach having picnics, other kids playing pétanque on the lawn in front of the winery.

Lucky we had reservations, as it’s a pretty small vineyard. Our table (half a wine barrel) had a little name tag, Reserved for Eric.

We hoped to try the Te Matuku Bay oysters but they were out; so instead had a charcuterie platter and some other nibbles.

A group of friends were gathering, looking like they were here for a wedding. Later, another person asked us excitedly if one of them was Dan Carter? We laughed and said we were the wrong people to ask. Then we asked them who Dan Carter was. (Apparently he’s a famous rugby player who played for the All Blacks).

Anyways we quite enjoyed sipping our drinks and enjoying the view of the bay.

We drove back along the southeast, passing by some more vineyards and a distillery. We hardly passed any cars at all - the main ferry access to Waiheke is on the west end of the island. It’s only about an hour to drive across, but most folks tend to stay on the west end around Oneroa where most of the restaurants and galleries are.

Later we went for dinner at Te Motu Vineyard. It was in a nice setting overlooking the vineyards. We had thought about walking there (it’s about 25 minutes) but ended up taking a taxi cause there’s no sidewalk. Dinner was good.

Waiheke Island, New Zealand

Another transit day, this time to our last stop on our trip before we begin the multiple steps to get home.

Auckland was originally our last stop in NZ, before we swapped out time in Suva with three days on Waiheke Island. This had to do with covid protocols at the time; spending less than 48 hours in Fiji on the way back meant we were considered in transit (and thus lesser protocols).

It did mess up other planning though. The car rental, booked much earlier at a really cheap rate, with changes not allowed, ended today. So we had to drive the car to the airport, and then Uber back to town so we could catch the ferry to Waiheke.

Some car rental stats:
South Island 2488km, 155km/day
North Island 1168km, 130km/day
Total 3656km, 146km/day

We also had to rejig our backpacks to fit into just a suitcase and our weekend backpack. It was an adjustment after having a car for six weeks which was an extension of our storage. The bnb hosts offered to take any items we no longer needed, like our cooler and freezer packs.

It was still drizzling as we made our way to the ferry line up. It drizzled pretty much the whole time we were in Auckland. Waiheke Island is a popular destination in the summer for folks in Auckland, and in the local media we’d read there had been some long lines for ferry. It wasn’t too bad though; we got on the next ferry (the 45 minute ferry runs hourly).

We reached Waiheke around noon. Our bnb here also included a car rental (a Hyundai Tucson). The car was available immediately, parked near the ferry; but we’d have to wait until 2:30pm before we could check in to the bnb.

We had lunch at Ahipao, which for a café servicing the ferry terminal crowds had really good food. I had eggs benedict, probably for the last time on this trip. It’s a popular menu item here in NZ.

The restaurant has some cool little milk dispensers for tea / coffee. They had the name of the ceramic place stamped on the bottom, from right here on the island (Waiheke Ceramics). So that’s where we headed after lunch!

Nearby was Obsidian Wines, and we were in need of a wine for dinner, so we headed there next. We got a bottle of their Montepulciano for our pizza take-out tonight.

That took us to 2:30pm, nicely timed to when we could checkin. Our bnb is in a cottage environment (most places here are), up a narrow road. To park you have to get the vehicle to hug the hill, so that there’s room to pass. It took me a few tries, I was still getting used to the larger vehicle. Anyways finally parked.

Lugged all our stuff up the stairs to our bnb. For the first time on this trip, we didn’t have potable water. So we had to head out to the nearby Four Square (a mini-market) for bottled water. And then park again. Although this time it took fewer attempts :)

For dinner we had take-out pizza from La Dolce Vita. (Nailed the parking this time!). The pizza was amazing, as were their salads. Went really well with our wine.

Auckland, New Zealand

For some reason I had planned three full days in Auckland. After spending the three days, I’d say Auckland’s a really nice place to live, with all sorts of different neighbourhoods and little local cafes and restaurants. There’s a reason why Auckland routinely shows up on best places to live. But as a tourist, it’s not terribly exciting. I’d say the same thing about Toronto. I hardly took any pics either.

We checked out the Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tāmaki, Auckland War Memorial Museum and the New Zealand Maritime Museum, and walked around the waterfront and downtown core. The downtown is undergoing some major infrastructure work and is mostly under construction (also similar to Toronto). We used Uber a few times to get in and out of the core; it was pretty reasonable.

We ate at some pretty decent Asian restaurants in Auckland. We also had dinner one night at Freida Margolis, which was a really cool neighbourhood bar. Only later we realized it’s also written up in the Lonely Planet.

Another observation is that Auckland is very car-centric. There is pedestrian infrastructure, but the car is always favoured. Even at what appears to be crosswalks, it’s the car that has the right-of-way.

And that was about it for Auckland.

Auckland, New Zealand

We had a checkout of 11am from our bnb in Te Kuiti and could only check in at 3pm in Auckland, so had a relaxed morning, and I was finally able to use a teapot to have a couple cups of tea :)

The weather was nicer today, and we could actually see the surrounding countryside on the drive. It was really beautiful, not the spectacular cliffs or switchbacks in the South Island but still really nice.

I was feeling a bit peckish so we stopped for a snack at a cafe in Whatawhata. Got a sausage roll which maybe wasn’t the best thing cause the pastry wrap was very flaky. So ate outside the car and then we carried on. It was very yummy.

The drive into Auckland was taking us right past Maungakiekie / One Tree Hill, which was on my list of things to see cause of the U2 song. It would also give us something to do until 3pm. Plus, according to the forecast today might be the only nice weather we’d have while in Auckland.

We were lucky to find a parking spot in the park. It was then about a 15 minute walk up the paved path to the top of the hill.

I had read that there’s no longer a tree so we weren’t surprised when we didn’t see any. The view was great from the top - Auckland sits at a narrowing in the North Island and we could see the water on both sides. We also had a view of the downtown and the Sky Tower, a 328m tower completed in 1997. (By comparison the CN Tower is 553m tall). Anyways it was a nice day to see the views from the peak.

We hadn’t had lunch so had a quick bite in a cafe, rushing to eat before they closed at 3pm. (We’re the world’s slowest eaters so rushing may have just been normal speed for others).

We then drove to our bnb. It was a bit different driving in a city again!

Our bnb was at the end of a dead-end street, in Grey Lynn, a residential area similar to Leslieville (where we live in Toronto). Unfortunately most restaurants were still closed for the holidays. For dinner we ended at Pocket Bar, a neighborhood wine bar. It was a nice atmosphere.

Te Kuiti, New Zealand

I was excited about breakfast cause our bnb had a teapot, but then we slept in a bit so only had time for one cup, as we had a couple more Waitomo Caves excursions this morning, the first (Waitomo Glowworm Cave) starting at 9:30am.

We had checked in yesterday and already had our tickets, so just made our way to the waiting area, in the main admin building.

The glowworm excursion was much more organized than yesterday’s Aranui Cave tour. There’s a tour with 16 people that starts every ten minutes and the guides showed up on the dot.

At 9:30:00 our guide welcomed all the 9:30 tour people, and scanned our tickets on entry. First thing was a bunch of green screen pics. Photography isn’t allowed in the glowworm cave so they photoshop you in pics you can buy later.

There’s a short walk through some stalagmites and stalactites, similar to yesterday’s Aranui cave. It also got progressively dimmer in the cave to make the glowworms more visible.

We all boarded a boat and then the guide pulled us through the caves in the dark using an overhead rope system.

We entered the first cave, with an impressive clustering of glowworms, about 15’ x 15’, about 20’ above us. It was larger than any cluster we’d seen in Te Anau Glowworm Caves, although those were much closer overhead.

We circled underneath the glowworms for about five minutes, before continuing on. That however was it for the tour. That’s when I noticed the tour is called ‘Waitomo Glowworm Cave’, with a singular cave. Te Anau had a series of caves with glowworms and I had figured this would be the same.

It only took 45 minutes for the whole tour so we had time to check out the gift shop before driving over to the Ruakuri Cave. Its entrance is close to the Aranui Cave.

This was also pretty structured. They had a limit of 16 people, and asked for our names to check in (so we didn’t need to show our ticket). There was a constant stream of walk-ins trying to buy tickets, only to be put on a waiting list. I think it’s just to make them feel better as there’s hardly any no-shows.

Our guide met us at exactly 11am and we walked about five minutes to the entrance. Our guide was good, the best of the three excursions we had here. We entered the long spiral walkway down 45m to cave proper. Once in we were completely in the dark, to help our eyes adjust.

At the bottom, we passed through a series of airlocks, like we were in a James Bond movie. Our guide explained the airlocks were to maintain the airflow as nature had designed. They had learned from other cave systems in the world, where entrances built for tourism caused subtle changes in cave life from airflow that were only noticed over years.

These caves were the same age geologically as Aranui, but much more extensive and a far better experience with the smaller group. It’s a 90 minute loop that returns back to the spiral walkway. As a bonus, you can also see glowworms! In fact we felt the glowworm experience was better here in Ruakuri than on the Glowworm Cave tour.

Overall if you only have the opportunity to do one of the Waitomo Cave experiences, I'd definitely recommend the Ruakuri Cave tour.

And that was it for our day. It was still drizzling (it’s been miserable since we got to Te Kuiti). Which I guess as we had been touristing in caves didn’t matter that much.

We spent the afternoon at our bnb, catching up on reading, laundry, and our travel blog posts. We checked out the green screen pics from earlier in the day, we looked photoshopped in. We had grilled lamb and a Greek salad for dinner which all turned out rather well.

Te Kuiti, New Zealand

We had breakfast on our way out from Tongariro, at the same place we had lunch yesterday (Creel Tackle House). The staff remembered us and gave us a warm welcome.

Our last little adventure on this trip was a series of caves in Waitomo. The caves are very popular and you need to book ahead, although probably not months in advance like us.

We had tickets to Aranui Cave at 3pm. Our bnb had said we could check in early, which worked out great for us. So we drove straight there, about 2.5 hours, arriving around 1pm. Our bnb was surrounded by farmland and rolling hills, about five minutes outside Te Kuiti. The drive in reminded us of the Azores, lined with purple and white flowers.

We quickly unloaded the car, checked out the kitchen facilities, and then went over to the supermarket (New World) for groceries, before heading over to the caves.

It’s a bit confusing to figure out how to get to the cave entrance, as every cafe and store is a ticket agent for the Waitomo caves, and they all have signs looking like they’re the official. It’s similar to buying tickets online for the Vatican Museums.

We followed the road signs and google maps in the general direction. We stopped at the i-Site, which had been the official agent in other tourist attractions. They were very helpful, showing us on a map where to stop to check in, and then where to drive to start the excursion.

So we continued down Hwy 37 to the check in location. It’s the main admin site for the various Waitomo Cave excursions. We showed our receipt from our months-old online purchase, and they gave us tickets for each of the three excursions (Aranui Cave, Waitomo Glowworm Cave, Ruakuri Cave) we’d signed up for.

The start of the Aranui Cave excursion was another 10 minutes down the road. We parked and then waited for the guide at the starting point, which was very helpfully signed as ‘You are in the right spot for the Aranui Cave tour. Please wait here, your guide will be along shortly’.

Our guide showed up as promised by the sign. The group was much larger than I had expected - there were over 30 of us. We didn’t have to show our tickets, which I found odd. The guide collected tickets from folks who volunteered them but that was it.

The excursion starts with a five minute walk to the cave entrance, including a few dozen steps up. Backpacks and food/drink aren’t allowed, just water and cameras.

Once inside the cave, it mostly follows a raised boardwalk, single file, with railings. With 30 people it was slow going, especially with everyone wanting pics. We were near the back and didn’t hear much about what our guide was saying.

The caves themselves are relatively young geologically. We found them less impressive compared to other caves we’ve seen, such as those in Mulu Park, or the Jeita Grotto in Lebanon.

It’s a 20 minute walk to the furthest accessible point in the cave, at which point we turned around and retraced our path back to the entrance. For the return walk the group was more spread out, and so more enjoyable. Overall though, if we had skipped the Aranui Cave we wouldn’t have missed much.

We drove back to our bnb and had a coffee. Later we had dinner, spaghetti with meatballs, for a change in menu. The kitchen had a great view of the rolling hills and sheep grazing, a very typical NZ scene. We also saw a double rainbow!

Tūrangi, New Zealand

We weren’t doing the Tongariro Alpine Crossing today but we still wanted to do some trekking. The Tongariro River Trail that looped near our lodge, a 15km trail along the river, seemed perfect for us.

It was drizzling a bit as we set out. Google Maps satellite view was very useful to help us find our way from the lodge grounds through back trails to the actual trail itself, which was then really well marked.

It took us 90 minutes to walk to the Red Hut bridge, our crossing point. The other side ran adjacent to the town (Tūrangi), and so there were a few more casual walkers. We saw only joggers and dog walkers on our first half. There were also numerous anglers in their waders in the middle of the river. We kept our voices down so as to not disturb the fishies.

Got back to the lodge after three hours, an enjoyable little walk.

We quickly freshened up and went out for lunch. At first we tried to get into Hare & Copper, but it was a little fancy for us having just finished hiking. So we went over to Creel Tackle House & Cafe, which even from its name sounded more our thing. The front half of the place caters to anglers, and the back half is a busy cozy cafe. We had excellent sandwiches and coffees.

Got back to the lodge, and later that evening went down for dinner. The main chef probably had the night off as the dinner was not as good as yesterday’s duck.

Tūrangi, New Zealand

Onto the next part of our New Zealand tour, through the geothermal area in the middle of the North Island.

There’s a few geothermal parks around Taupō and Rotorua. We had chosen to visit Orakei Korako, based on our research it’s one of the more underrated ones.

The forecast called for rain to start there around 2pm. It’s a 2.5 hour drive from Havelock North, so after breakfast we drove pretty much straight there. We did stop to fill up on gas just outside Napier, good thing we did cause there wasn’t another gas station until we reached Taupō.

Also just outside Napier we passed through Esk Valley. We’ve had wine from there a few times this trip. The last vineyard we passed had along Hwy 5 had a sign, “last vineyard tasting in Hawke’s Bay”, lol. We’ll be back in another wine region when we get to Waiheke Island.

Arrived at Orakei Korako Geothermal Park & Cave around 1pm, the lot was about half full, which boded well.

Bought our tickets online, they had QR codes plastered everywhere with the link to their website, instead of having to staff a ticket booth.

It’s a two-minute boat ride across the Waikato River (included in the ticket). The boat goes back and forth on demand so it’s never a long wait (I guess unless there’s crowds backlogged).

The path through the geothermal park starts immediately on the other bank. It was pretty cool to see, different from anything else we’ve seen on this trip (as frequent readers may know, we like to have a variety on our trips otherwise it gets monotonous for us).

The walkway takes about an hour to complete, passing by geysers, mud pools and hot springs. There’s no railing on the side of the walkway, so we had to be careful when taking pics, that we didn’t take a step back into the boiling water.

Anyways it was really well done. It seemed like we were the only tourists in most parts; partially that’s cause it’s well designed. For whatever reason, it is under-touristed. We really liked it.

We had lunch at the on-site cafe. It started raining just as we were leaving, so we timed this really well!

It was an hour drive to our next place, Tongariro Lodge near Tūrangi. The town and surrounding area is one of the top places in the world for trout fishing. We were staying here cause it’s also a convenient jump-off for the Tongariro Alpine Crossing Walk.

The 19.4 km / 8 hour trail is considered one of the top day walks in NZ. It’s mentioned in all the guidebooks as a must-do. We booked the accommodation to have the option; but as we did more research we decided not to. For one thing, it’s now very popular - over 3,000 people walk it every day. This causes bottlenecks at the start and finish - you need to arrange for bus transfers. It’s sort of like the pics you see at the top of Everest, although I might be exaggerating. But the point is that we enjoy the isolation of walks in nature. Walking with 3,000 other folk just doesn’t have the same attraction for us.

Another reason for staying here is the excellent restaurant. We had the daily special, seared duck breast, which was excellent.

Tuki Vineyards, New Zealand

One of the classic pics of Hawke’s Bay is from Te Mata Peak at sunrise. We had three nights within a 15 minute drive of the peak, but the weather didn’t cooperate, it was overcast and rainy every morning.

Later this morning the clouds parted a bit, so we drove over to Te Mata. You can drive all the way to the peak; many people instead park at the lot at the main gate and then hike up the rest of the way. We drove further in to a parking lot about 500m drive from the top, cause the remaining road was single car width and takes forever to drive.

So we parked and walked up to the peak. It wasn’t too busy, about 50 or so other tourists also at the top. The forecasted rain probably kept some folks away. We quickly took our pics, cause we could see the rain showers approaching us. We made it about half way back to the car when the rain reached us, we had our raincoats so we were fine.

We didn’t have much else on our itinerary today. We drove to Hastings, a twin town to Havelock North, and took more pics of art deco buildings. Almost all the stores were still closed for the holidays.

We got back to our place and got ready for some wine tastings. There’s a couple vineyards within walking distance, so I had called earlier in the morning to book the tastings.

First up was Black Barn Vineyards. It’s a popular stop on the tasting route, they’re set up to handle about 100 people. They did sell charcuterie pick-your-own boards which was great for us, as we hadn’t had lunch. So had some cured meats and cheeses and sampled some wines. Can't go wrong with that!

Te Mata Vineyards was a five minute walk back towards our place. They’re a smaller vineyard with a more intimate tasting room.

We then walked another five minutes to get to our cottage. It was cool that both vineyards were within walking distance , I hadn’t planned around that. Otherwise it’s not really feasible for me to do any tastings as the driver.

Later in the evening we had our dinner, grilled steak paired with a Cabernet blend from Te Mata. I haven't really liked any of the bbq's at the bnb's we stayed at, they don't get hot enough for a decent sear. Oh well, at least the wine was good!

Tuki Vineyards, New Zealand

The restaurant was closed at Porters, our hotel in Havelock North, so we checked out and went out for breakfast. There was a bit more open this morning, although a lot was still closed, some through till Jan 11!

We had an excellent breakfast at Bay Espresso. It was super busy but we still got our food and coffee fairly quickly. Their eggs benedict was pretty good (it’s a fairly common breakfast item in NZ).

Our next place was under ten minutes away, a cottage on Tuki Vineyards. Originally we wanted to do a chasm walk near Martinborough but it was closed on Jan 1; so instead just booted it up to Hawke’s Bay. Tuki was already booked so we ended up at Porters for one night.

We couldn’t check in until 2pm, so drove over to Napier. In 1931, there was a 7.4 earthquake in Napier which wiped out most of the Hawke’s Bay area. The buildings were rebuilt in the Art Deco style of the 30s and many of those buildings still stand today.

We walked around the central area of Napier taking dozens of pics. It started raining so we decided it was a good time to see their museum. The sun was poking out again when we exited so walked around a bit more.

On the way to Tuki we bought groceries for dinner for the next couple days.

Tuki is a small wine producer, and they have a single cottage on the vineyard. We wanted to stay at a vineyard for a night or two on this trip, and so here we were!

We had pasta with chicken and lemons, mostly cause the lemons are in season and looked amazing in the store. The pasta turned out pretty good.

Havelock North, New Zealand

The most interesting thing of today was getting the car out of the carpark in Wellington. There was no ticket or anything when I drove in three days ago, it’s all digital. I entered my license plate at the machine to pay, and it brought up a pic of me entering. It calculated how long I’d parked. I then paid, and then when I drove out it recognized the plate and opened the gate! Maybe this sounds boring if you’ve seen it but I found it quite cool compared to the archaic parking lots I’ve used in Toronto.

We drove four hours to Havelock North, stopping for lunch at Hell Pizza in Palmerston North, one of the few places we saw open along the drive. We walked around Te Marae o Hine (The Square) and then carried on with the drive.

Even in Havelock North there was hardly anything open (and the town is known for its multitude of cafes and restaurants). We stayed at Porter’s cause of their restaurant, but due to lack of staff, their restaurant was closed Sun/Mon. One of the few (only?) restaurants open in town was the Rose & Shamrock, the local pub. It was really lively, full with a nice mix of ages and families, locals and tourists. We managed to snag a decent table for two. Ordered some pub food and had some beers. It was a nice night out.

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.