Oh To Be In England…

…now that April’s there. It was certainly surprising to see green-swilled trees and the daffodil heads already dried and scrunched. We took the bus from Heathrow as the easiest way to manage getting home with all the bags, as it avoids London and drops us off at Morrisons down the road. It was actually a really good way of reintroducing us to England, with terraced houses, semis, trees, green fields, village pubs and narrow roads – even the main roads here look too narrow for the bus after New Zealand and America.

So we are back, with forsythia and flowering currant over the lawn which a kindly neighbour has mowed for our arrival (I think I know which one!) It’s all surprisingly dry for April, knobbly soil under the turf and cracks in the flowers beds.

We had blanked out of our minds the awful mess we had to leave the house in after our building disasters of the summer/autumn/winter, so it was a bit of a shock to come back and face it all. It’s very tempting to send a few emails and book a few flights back again, but what a great relief these last three months have been.

And how will I cope, going to work with a greater choice than five shirts and five ties? I’ll be dithering in front of that wardrobe for half the morning!

I hope you have all enjoyed the blog, and that it has given you a taster of our great experiences. It’s been, as they say, a blast.

So, that’s it then. Signing off. Bye!

Noel, Deborah, Rosanna, Conrad and Louis

California Dreamin’

Sitting at the gate in San Francisco airport, we are now waiting for our final flight which will land us back in London just over three months after we departed. When this is uploaded, we’ll be home.

Our hotel, the Hotel Whitcomb, was a prime example of faded glory – marble and chandeliers in the impressive lobby, but rather musty rooms with very limited facilities along dimly lit corridors upstairs. Not even a kettle and sachets of tea and coffee. It is close to the Civic Centre with the mighty City Hall with its square of fiercely pollarded trees, and not too far from the cable car terminus and the Museum of Modern Art, but getting there demanded a walk along the decidedly seedy stretch of Market Street. It was there that I met my nutter of the trip, who promised me all kinds of unpleasant dreams. Happily, those promises were unfulfilled.

On the afternoon we arrived, rather bleary from the flight from Auckland, we walked to Fisherman’s Wharf, which was a rather longer march than it looked, and as we were warned, it’s pretty tacky, reminiscent of the tawdry areas of Weymouth. We wandered around and saw what there was to see, then took the cable car back to Market Street, serenaded at the turn around by a pretty good blues singer/saxophonist. Rattling and dinging up the hills, hanging on and chatting to the conductor, it was an enjoyable ride back. The cold was a shock after Auckland, though, necessitating jumpers and jackets which have lain largely unworn for three months.

Tuesday was warmer, largely because it was less windy, and we explored the Yerba Buena Gardens area, looking at the blend of architectural styles and periods, before catching the bus down to Lombard Street, commonly known as the ‘Crookedest Street’, though it is, apparently, neither the crookedest nor the steepest. It is, though, the only one with eight hairpin bends, adorned with flowers and lined with attractive houses.

From there we wandered back down to the waterfront at Fisherman’s Wharf and took the scenic coastal walk from there towards the Golden Gate Bridge, past Fort Mason and along Marina Green. The Crissy Field area was particularly attractive, separated off as a nature reserve with the paths running through it. The area was full of birds, including one hummingbird spotted, and a sealion roaming off the beach. At the end of the walk, we caught the bus back to Market Street and back to the hotel. Certainly San Francisco’s public transport system is far superior to that of any other city I have visited – varied, frequent and cheap.

On the final morning I had planned to go to the Museum of Modern Art while the others explored the shopping options, but I was defeated by the place being closed on Wednesday. So a morning’s shopping was dutifully done, then it was time for the shuttle back to the airport, and here we are, twenty five minutes before boarding. Just another thirteen hours or so!

Auckland Easter

We’ve been lucky with houses. First of all, there was finding our rental house, so well-positioned, furnished and close to a really good primary school. Then there was the landlady’s house in Pauanui. The problem was, of course, the early end of our tenancy. However, Louis’ great Australian friend Sam lives about 500 metres from our house, down a different street, and Sam’s Mum, Jacqui, has been Deborah’s good friend too. As luck would have it, after the end of term, they were going back to Australia for the Easter holiday, and very kindly offered us the use of their house when they left. So although we had two nights in a motel on our return from Queenstown, on Friday we were able to move in at Jacqui’s, a beautifully grand house, even boasting its own pool. As Friday bucked the forecast and was a warm sunny day, the pool was indeed a luxury, much enjoyed by all. What a way to spend our last weekend in Auckland!

On Saturday we went to the Auckland Zoo, largely to catch a glimpse of a kiwi before we left. They have the Kiwi House artificially lit, so that it’s night time during the day and daylight during the night, which allows the visitors to see the nocturnal kiwi shuffling through the undergrowth in a darkroom’s red light. Apart from that, the enclosures which worked best were those where the animals weren’t obviously on display, like the New Zealand aviary, a large area of bush enclosed high above by netting, so you had to look for the birds. The monkeys were kept in a similar way, on big islands of trees open to the sky, so again you had to be observant and search them out. The other great attraction was the sea lions, particularly the underwater observation window, where you could watch them gracefully and speedily swimming past. You may notice some similarity between the two photographs!

And this may really be the last word from New Zealand. Off to lunch with a colleague tomorrow, then a convoy to the airport for the plane to San Francisco.

What will we miss?

Louis: L&P (a NZ soft drink)
Conrad: NZ friends
Rosanna: living near the sea
Deborah: hot sunshine, beautiful vistas, leisure time, Ponsonby shopping
Noel: shorts and bare feet, seeing the sea every day, bush vegetation, very good wine for very little money

What do we look forward to?

Louis: friends
Conrad: English TV
Rosanna: friends and jaffa cakes
Deborah: decent pot of tea, Radio 4, chatting with friends, garden
Noel: BBC, newspapers, plugs in sinks, homogenous towns and villages, theatre and concert options

South Island Insights

Sorry – I can’t leave it there. Not without giving you an insight into the South Island, gained from that estimable publication The Otago Daily Times. (We were also told of Pig Hunter magazine, but didn’t manage to see a copy). However, two items in the ODT caught my eye, and I’ve got the cuttings to prove it.

One was an example of the greater linguistic freedom of New Zealand. It’s notable that advertising, for instance, is much looser in its approach to language than the UK, which has given me some interesting material for my language classes. One of my favourites was a radio ad overheard in a shop, advertising slimming cakes which have “very little sugar, and bugger all fat”. In the ODT, though, we have the Wanaka Community Board Chairman, their version of the mayor, reacting with justifiable shock to the vandalism of the Earth From The Air Exhibition: “Bugger the anti-smacking bill. I think these people should be caught and publicly flogged… these vermin came along and destroyed some of it. They don’t even have the brains of a louse.” Clearly he should be in the diplomatic service.

My other cherished cutting is accompanied by a live action photo – it’s a shame I don’t have access to a scanner. The headline is: World Records Fly at Possum-Tossing Championship. The magnificently-named Darren Tuna won the event with a throw of 31.1m, beating the previous record by 10cm. Raewyn Waller retained her women’s title with a throw of 24.85m. It all depends on your choice of throwing technique, apparently, combined with your choice of possum: “Some of the throwers may have had a distinct advantage because the possums they chose from the pile have been aerodynamically shaped into a diving position by rigor mortis. The fat ones roll well and some bounce better than others.”

Only in New Zealand, as they say!

And just before we go, probably for the last time, it’s time for the blog birthdays. Happy Birthday Clare, and also to Deborah’s Dad!

Hitting the Heights

Leaving the luggage at the motel, it was time for a last day in Queenstown. The mornings down here have been decidedly crisp, but despite the forecast, that crispness extended to the air – a bright and clear autumn day. A spit of land extends into the lake, and on this spit are the Queenstown Gardens. There is a pond, and some flowers, but it’s mainly trees and tracks, so we took a gentle stroll around there, trying to keep in the sunshine as much as possible. The bellbirds were calling from the trees, and the paragliders were already descending from Queenstown Hill, carrying passengers in tandem. We also nipped down into the mini underwater observatory, where you can see immense trout – the kind that would feed a large family, rather than the kind which might get served up whole with a few flaked almonds. The most interesting things were the eels, however, muddy black, a couple of metres long and as thick as your arm.

The ride up the hill in the cable car is scenic, but made much more exciting if you go up with Deborah. It takes on a whole new dimension when someone in your car is hiding their eyes and yelping at each swing and bump. The views from the top are fantastic, revealing the mountain ranges and the lengths of the lake, while those tandem paragliders whiz overhead repeatedly after taking off just a little further up the hill.

Queenstown is famous for its range of adrenalin-fuelled activities, from river rafting to parascending to helibiking. The cable car is not normally considered one of them, however. There is a rock face bungee jump at the top of the hill, while at the bottom we found a bungee swing. Perhaps a mite mild for true adrenalin junkies, but it suited Louis, Conrad and Rosanna down to the ground, and up into the air, and down… etc. Having least weight, the bounce kept going out of Louis’ bungee (shades of Wallace and Gromit), so the chap who ran it kept having to haul him down by his foot and ping him into the sky again.

Then, disappointingly, it was time to pick up the bags and catch the bus back to the airport. What a lovely airport Queenstown is – a real Tintin airport, full of light aircraft which make the lumbering Boeings look out of place, surrounded by mountains, and passengers climbing up the wheeled steps to board their planes. That’s how airports ought to be!

We flew back across the mountains to Christchurch in the setting sun, then on to Auckland in the dark, the end of our five day South Island holiday.

Back to work today, for the final day of term. Time for goodbyes.

We have a few more days in Auckland before we fly out, then we have a couple of nights in San Francisco en route. However, when and where we’ll be able to get at a computer again is anybody’s guess, particularly with the Queenstown internet experience in mind. Not only the crawlingly-slow internet café, but the wi-fi in the motel, which worked, but took about twenty minutes to load a page. There may be a chance in the US, but otherwise the end of this tale will have to be uploaded from St Albans. I think we’ve been there before, some time ago, in another life.

Gold Digging

The Qeenstown area was the site of a gold rush in the 1860s, gold fever being centred on Arrowtown, a few miles away. The town is now very small, but the centre is well preserved as a historic area, the main street lined with late nineteenth century buildings and the Chinese miners’ settlement preserved five minutes walk away from the centre. We drove over there on Tuesday, aboard the Arrowtown bus, took a leisurely stroll along the main street, then took the Tobin track up into the hills above the town. It was a fairly easy walk, climbing steadily for about an hour to a lookout point. From there, the walking track carries on into the mountains, but we stopped for the magnificent views of the mountains and the valley, looking over Arrowtown to Queenstown and Lake Wakatipu in the distance. The mountains give textbook examples of glacial valleys, scoured by ice, with clear bergschrund sites – all that geography coming back after all those years!

And there at the lookout, as if they knew I was coming, was Noel’s Seat!

After descending we wandered up the Arrow River back into the town, and took a quick tour around the Chinese miners’ settlement, with their tiny rough houses where they lived frugally so that they could send their earnings back to China. Single rooms with rough stone walls and roofed in tin, they cannot have been comfortable places to live, particularly in the freezing winters. Some were just walling off small caves in the cliff face.

Late in the afternoon, it was time to catch the bus again and return to Queenstown and back to the motel.

Leaping and Splashing

When we were in the Bay of Islands in January, we had hoped to see dolphins, but didn’t. On the Waitangi holiday in February, we went to Whakatane partly on the suggestion that boat trips were available there to see dolphins. They were, but the time of our arrival and necessary departure meant that we missed them. There is a resident pod of 50-odd bottlenose dolphins in Doubtful Sound, but we saw nothing on our first afternoon’s cruising. However, after a hearty breakfast, further exploration of the Sound brought its rewards; as we headed towards Hall Arm, a splashing could be seen in the distance. As we neared, a couple of curious dolphins came to play, riding the bow wave of the boat and leaping and dashing through the wake at the side, to the oohs and aahs of all the passengers gathered along the bow and sides to watch. When the dolphins left us, the captain stopped the engines at the end of the Arm to allow us to listen to the Sound, if you’ll pardon the pun. In the quiet, the area was full of birdsong and bird calls, the bush on the rock walls teeming with life, demonstrating the value to New Zealand of the wilderness of the Fiordland National Park.

With great reluctance, the trip came to an end and we disembarked in order to make the return journey, this time in bright autumn sunshine. The only differences were a trip to Te Anau (below) for lunch and to pick up Skip’s coach, then a stop at a tiny place called Athol, for an ice-cream.

We finally got back to Queenstown at about 3.30, and were driven in the coach to the door of our second motel, much less well positioned than Saturday’s, but rather more modern and attractive inside.

Lakes and Mountains

I type this with an almost full moon above, reflected in inky black water. On each side, the looming hulks of mountains blot out the sky; the strip above, and the visible V of sky between, is punctured with stars. On deck, it’s silent, apart from the occasional cry of a morepork somewhere in the darkness. We’re on ship, aboard the Fiordland Navigator, at our night mooring in a cove of Doubtful Sound. It’s a pretty stunning place to spend the night, and it was a pretty stunning journey to get here.

It started yesterday, in the dark of dawn, and a chilly, quiet taxi ride to the airport for the early flight. Our first view of the South Island was the shape of the north coast and the sudden arrival of mountains underneath the plane. We touched down in Christchurch, the descent being the bounciest, most turbulent bit of flying I’ve done. Even a Christchurch resident described it as ‘a white knuckle ride’. From Christchurch it’s just a brief hop to Queenstown, over the mountains, and the descent there is quite exciting, first skimming over the crests of the golden mountains, then corkscrewing down into the valley between them in order to lose enough height for landing.

Some people say Queenstown is getting spoilt, and certainly there is a lot of building going on, going higher and higher up the hill, and all of it seems to be hotels and motels. However, its position by the lake and still quite a cosy town centre saves it. There is something about it which reminds me of Betwys-y-Coed, with its plethora of outdoor shops with sales on. The position, though, with the lake surrounded by mountains, is very beautiful and must be striking in winter when the mountains are covered in snow. In our numbed dawn-risen state, we had a fairly lazy day, wandering round the arts and crafts market by the wharf and walking along the coast of the lake. The motel was quite adequate, with more room than any of the others, and certainly the best view we have had, looking directly out onto the lake. Moving south, we have also clearly stepped on a couple of weeks in season, as here it is definitely autumn, with the trees carrying autumn hues and shedding their leaves in the wind. There’s also a tangible drop in temperature.

This morning (Sunday, though uploaded to the blog much later in Auckland, after a frustrating outing to a highly inefficient internet café in Queenstown) we were picked up early from the motel to join the coach for the drive south west to Manapouri. This took about two and a half hours, through spectacular scenery, first along the shores of Lake Wakatipu, then across plains of sheep and, interestingly, deer, backed always by the mountains. Skip the driver gave us an interesting commentary, pointing out various natural features, the history of deer farming and recounting the Maori myths about the region. Finally we arrive in the craggy mountains of Fiordland and Lake Manapouri, where we boarded our boat for the hour’s sailing along the length of the lake, to the hydro-electric power station at the other end. Once there, we boarded our next bus to take us across the mountains and over the Wilmot Pass to descend to Deep Cove, at the end of Doubtful Sound. The road goes nowhere else, just running between the two stretches of water, and was originally built for the construction of the power station, to transport machinery, which was shipped up Doubtful Sound and trucked across the mountains to Lake Manapouri. So finally, after about six and a half hours’ travelling by bus and boat, we reached our destination, the Fiordland Navigator.

The steep walls of the Sound plunge into its depths, the tops obscured by cloud, with wreaths of mist snaking through the vegetation. It was chilly, moody, ominous as we set sail across the glassy waters. After about an hour’s sailing, the boat stopped and we were invited either to go out in a small boat to have a guided tour of the vegetation and waterfalls on the rocky walls, or to go out and do the same thing in a kayak. Deborah and Louis went out in the tender craft, while Rosanna, Conrad and I each took a kayak. While the two in the boat had an interesting talk about the plants, trees, waterfalls and animal and bird life, we paddled our way through the mist and along the walls, where the plants and trees cling on right down to the water’s edge. In places, the walls overhang, with waterfalls cascading off, allowing you to pilot your kayak right underneath to watch the water falling right on top of you! Though chilly, it was a great experience, making us reluctant to get back on board, but the spicy pumpkin soup was just the right thing to welcome us back.

The Tasman Sea became the next destination, the water becoming choppier and choppier as we neared the ocean (as evidenced below), but we made the journey to see the fur seal colony which lives on the rocks at the very mouth of Doubtful Sound. With great skill, the captain kept the boat steady in the swell just next to the rocks so that we could watch the seals flopping around. The boat turned back and found a sheltered cove, unruffled by even a wavelet, and this is where the giant anchor was rattled to the depths, a fine and enormous meal was served, and we enjoyed this remarkably peaceful night under the moon.