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Richard writes...
After an enjoyable flight from Brisbane (I watched Mockingjay part 1 and they handed out free lindt chocolates), we arrived in Auckland where we spent a few days relaxing in a very nice apartment and exploring the city with Nic's parents. Whilst in Auckland, we were on the edge of another cyclone (the one that devastated Vanuatu). This was the third country on our trip to greet us with a cyclone, but thankfully we were yet again a good distance away from the badly affected areas and just saw some mild wind and rain. After the storm passed, we said bye to Nic's parents, picked up a hire car and a bootful of camping kit, and were on the road south.
The car, apparently named George, is a rare breed among rental cars here - a manual. This was tricky to find, but hopefully worth it, since Nic has done incredibly little driving in the 10 years since she passed her test. A month or so driving on quiet roads, when we have no long-term interest in the lifespan of the car's clutch, nor any excess to pay in case of accident, seemed like a good opportunity for re-learning. Two weeks in and everything is going well.
The camping kit was bought from a nice couple of backpackers who spent two months driving and camping across NZ and were about to head to the Philippines. Huge amounts of enthusiastic advice was passed both ways, and everyone was assured that they were in for a treat. It was probably one of the most wholesome transactions ever done in the car park of an industrial estate!
Since it is autumn here, we wanted to cover the south island first, before it gets much colder, then work our way back towards the warmth of the tropics (sorry to those reading this in the UK, but anything less than 20 degrees C feels cold to us nowadays). We therefore had a couple of days of driving to get to the ferry terminal. The ferry crossing didn't take too long, but thanks to the cyclone, conditions were "less than favourable", which meant that I spent the whole time with my eyes fixed on the horizon. We made it though, and the view was in fact very pleasant.
Our first "proper" stop in the south island was Kaikoura, a peninsular on the east coast. Just out to sea is a massive underwater trench, and huge upwellings of water, which makes the area extremely rich with marine life. It is deep, open ocean though, so not much of a dive spot. Instead, we went up in a small plane to spot a sperm whale and shedloads of dusky dolphins. On top of the wildlife spotting, the weather was beautiful and the snow capped mountains rising from the sea made for great views from the plane. We also attempted to take a swimming trip out with the dolphins a couple of days later, which was less successful. Despite having seen huge pods of dolphins from the air, we managed to spot about 3 individuals on our boat trip and even they didn't hang around for long. We did get to see albatrosses, got a refund, and avoided needing to jump into the cold, wet sea so it wasn't that bad really, apart from the 5am start.
To break up the next drive we spent one afternoon in ChristChurch, the town hit by a series of earthquakes in 2010/11. Apart from a ruined cathedral in the centre of town (they haven't yet worked out what to do with it), it seemed like it was simply a very nice town (including Oxbridge-style punting streams) with a whole lot of building work going on (nearly every building in the city centre is being rebuilt). There was also a shopping mall built from shipping containers, which was less cool than it sounds.
Next stop was the Franz Josef and Fox glaciers. I'll be honest, we were a little underwhelmed. The weather was bad, and the glaciers were not as impressive as those in the (European) Alps. Our hostel did offer up a massive cauldron of free soup each evening though, which was very welcome in the cold.
Due to the unreliability of the weather, we had been checking weather forecasts a lot during this period, looking out for a clear day to visit Milford Sound. We spotted a window, and went for it. Another big drive, some camping (we are getting good at it now), and a boat trip later, and NZ had redeemed itself. The weather was beautiful and the views spectacular. Much more like it. Neither of us have been to the fjords in Norway, so can't comment there, but the views rivalled what I remember of Yosemite from when I was about 13.
We are now in Queenstown, the "adrenaline capital of NZ". It has not failed to deliver. On our first afternoon we rented a couple of big downhill bikes, got dressed up like PowerRangers, and headed up in the gondola to the local bike trails. The downhill runs are graded like ski runs, from green (through blue, then red) to (double) black. We started on the green runs aiming to increase difficulty as the afternoon progressed. However, we quickly realised that standards are a little different to back home, as the green runs felt like UK red runs! So while Nic took a break for cake, I went to investigate some of the blue/black runs. The blue was just about manageable, but the black was, well, basically just a series of cliffs strewn with rocks and tree roots. I returned up the gondola to sheepishly suggest that we stick to the green runs.
After building up confidence some more, we agreed that we would have one last go on the green runs. Some people will be rolling their eyes at this point, knowing what is coming next. "One last go" never ends well. About half way down, Nic apparently got bored of cycling and decided to combine it with gymnastics, doing an airbourne somersault-dismount while catapulting her bike at an unfortunate tree.
After an impressive amount of sympathy from the (presumably rather jaded) people at the walk-in medical clinic at the bottom of the trails, Nic had an x-ray to prove that her thumb wasn't broken and a cool glove thing to wear which means she is giving a permanent thumbs-up. This happened three days ago and her thumb is already loads better, probably thanks to all the chocolate that we have eaten to keep spirits up.
The last few days have seen some more sedate, wet-weather activities in Queenstown. We watched Cinderella at the cinema (after the mountain biking day, you can imagine how much say I had in choosing what we did), and tried another one of the escape rooms that we had enjoyed back in Kuala Lumpur (we are awesome at them now, we even set a new record). Today we met up with Nic's parents again, and had a great day hiring tandems, playing mini golf and introducing them to an escape room. Tomorrow we leave Queenstown and start heading north again, fingers crossed for some warmer weather!
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