HAPPY 22nd BIRTHDAY ALEX
HAVE A FANTASTIC DAY
Ok, that's family business over - we do miss them though, now and again.
Bloody hell, we bought a fleece each yesterday, it was damn cold and rainy. Who'd have expected that in February?
Anyway, back tracking swiftly to Rotorua, oh yes you could smell it and did it smell bad!
Hydrogen sulphide, obviously, drifting up through 'natural vents in the earth's thin crust.' That's the official spiel, what it really means is boiling water and steam, and I mean bleeping hot, bubbles up in pools, through rocks and cracks in the road. Roads and pavements have collapsed in some places and over it all this genteel little country town goes about it's business! Weird!
Jim, along with every other bloke, thought it was brilliant, a real farters paradise!
Our motel had a little room where the hot, not boiling, water comes up and you can bathe in it. Picture this, a shower sized room, a deep bath with loads of steam where you go in as a couple and lock the door behind you!! Are you thinking what I am? Do they change the water? Anyway it stank of rotten eggs so I politely declined the offer and gave her the key back!
Next stop - Wai-O-Tapu, a geothermal site, otherwise known as heaven and hell. We had to be there at 10.15 to see the Lady Knox Geyser erupt, which we managed by the skin of our teeth!
You then walk round the most peculiar landscape made up of pools of different colours, formed by the minerals dissolved in them, there was caves, bubbling water, waterfalls, etc, all gorgeous colours.
The best, and funniest bit, was the boiling mud pool, it was huge and reminded me of one of those computer games where you have to hit the one which is bubbling!
On from the weird, to the just plain beautiful. Napier, in Hawkes Bay, was destroyed by an earthquake in 1931 and was rebuilt in the modern style of the time, art deco. It is like stepping back in time, very gorgeous, very glamorous and dead on Saturday night!!
The guy who owned the fantastic motel we stopped at was born in Knaresborough, lived in Chesterfield, moved to New Plymouth in New Zealand, retrained as a butler when he was 40 and spent several years working in LA and London as Rod Stewart's butler when he was married to Rachel Hunter. Doesn't get more surreal than that does it?!
Leaving the glamour of Napier behind we headed south over the mountains to Wellington, the compact little capital city. It has a pretty harbour, industrial type architecture and art work on the harbour front, it's edgy and alternative.
The locals call it 'Welly,' it's known as the windy city and, whoa, that wind bites. A trip on the cable car, a wander around the city, admiring the 'beehive,' the Parliament building and people watching in Civic Square and our brief city sojourn was over.
We had to be at the ferry terminal at 7.25 on Monday morning, oh joy! I don't have a great track record with car ferries and when I saw that the 'Kaitaki,' the Interislander car ferry had originally been 'The Pride of Cherbourg' which I must have vomited on several times in the early '90s my heart sank!
Three and a bit hours later, after sailing through the lovely Malborough Sound, and we were off at Picton, stomachs, well mine, still intact. I must have drifted off a bit, blame the sea sickness tablets, cos I woke up an hour along the coast, and what a spectacular coast. And here we are, in the wild and wonderful town of Kaikoura. It sits in the lee of the Kaikoura Peninsula wedged between the mountains and the sea. Just offshore the sea bed drops away to about 1600m deep. This is the Kaikoura Canyon which is rich in fish and stuff which attracts big mammals.
It chucked it down yesterday and the wind was cutting, hence the fleeces, I'm sure they'll come in handy on our travels of this island. We walked the peninsula, about 10 miles, and the sun came out, it was scorching. Point Kean has a big fur seal colony and we walked amongst them, keeping a wary distance!
We've just come back from, what has to be one of the highlights of our trip, a whale watching tour on a catamaran. Of course, this meant some hours at sea which entailed a visit to the nice pharmacist before hand. He sold me some of his own remedy sea sickness tablets and I am pleased to report I spent the trip watching a sperm whale, albatrosses, dusky dolphins and seals rather than hanging over the side.
It was brilliant getting about 5 miles off shore, the catamaran bounced about and the spray was flying. We got to the canyon and waited and waited until eventually a huge sperm whale came into sight. It stayed on the surface for about 10 mins then dived with it's spectacular tail suspended in mid-air.
Sadly our photos don't do it justice. We were then lucky to find ourselves in the middle of a pod of dusky dolphins. Fantastic! They swam in synchronised style and right under the boat. On our way back to the Marina we came across a playful fur seal which entertained us for a while clapping it's flippers, rolling and placing them over it's eyes!
It was amazing, how will we better this. Well tomorrow we're on our way to Christchurch and praying for a calm introduction to this unstable city.
- Posted by Annie & Jim using BlogPress from THE iPad
Location:Kaikoura, South Island, New Zealand
1 comment:
we've definitely been on the Pride of Cherbourg before
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