Profile
Blog
Photos
Videos
Oh my gosh, where to start!
New Zealand is stunning!
It was sad starting off in Christchurch. Although the earthquakes were almost two years ago, there is still a big area in the city centre that is cordoned off. The council has over 1600 buildings which were damaged and of course, red tape and differing opinions mean that work is still to be started on alot of the area! It was quite emotional talking to an older lady who was thrown out of her bed and lost her daughter-in-law in the second quake! Even though she's lived in Christchurch for 60 years, she got lost as she didn't recognise any of it!
The highlight here so far has to be swimming with the dusky dolphins in Kaikoura. I got up at 4.40 to walk down to meet everyone and must admit, I did wonder what on earth I was doing! We went out for about 25 minutes into the Pacific and got kitted out but as soon as we got in the water, the dolphins surrounded us. There were sooooo many of them and they were so friendly and playful. If you swam round in circles with them, they just kept going and going with you. They were jumping about infront of the boat and flipping themselves out of the water then doing belly flops! Definitely worth doing if anyone is coming out here!
Driving down the west coast gives such beautiful views over the hills and countryside on one side and on the other are beautiful beaches and rock formations out to sea.
We stayed at a pub in Lake Mahinapua which is run by the oldest publican in NZ. His name is Les and he's 87!!! He's a real grumpy old b***** and read us the riot act as soon as we got there but give him his due, he cooked us all a fab steak and was still behind the bar at 11.20pm!!
I've decided to stay in Franz Josef for another two days. The biggest thing for me out of all my trip was to do the heli-hike up the glacier but it's been too cloudy for us to fly. The clouds are unbelievably low but the forecast for tomorrow is looking better so I'll be up at dawn (yet again!!) and keeping everything crossed that we can go!
- comments