Alex & Lizzy's (Travel) Blog » Lizzy

Kaikoura: Swimming and ‘singing’ with a thousand dolphins

Lizzy — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 11:33:09 +0000

Famous for whales, dolphins and Albatros, Kaikoura must have been a tiny village no-one had ever heard of before they realised that close to the shore, there’s a deep ocean ridge which brings all the ocean’s big stuff within easy reach. After debating for several hours, we chose to swim with dolphins rather than to go whale watching. The dolphins are of course wild and the boats aren’t allowed to do anything to attract them so after a sickening few hours (oh yes it was rough- but fortunately we’d both taken the Kaikoura Cracker beforehand so no buckets were required by us) we spotted around a hundred. We jumped into the water and were straight into singing mode to attract them- Don’t think I’ve ever sung anything so badly but the dolphins seemed to like it and would appear a few feet in front of us out of the murky water, circle us and then swim off. It was a bit surreal because the water visibility was so bad that it was a bit freaky seeing nothing and then suddenly being within touching distance of a few big dolphins- still pretty cool though. Wonder what else we were close to that we couldn’t see!!

So, whale watching is on the list of things to do in the future… although we’re reliably told that Orcas (killer whales) circle the bay where we’ll be living, so maybe we won’t even have to pay to see them!

Marlborough Sounds & Wine

Lizzy — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 09:33:31 +0000

The Marlborough sounds have such a convoluted coastline (think fingers of coastline pointing out to sea) that it took us a pretty much a day to drive half way up one of them. We collected another hitchhiker en-route who’d gotten so disorientated by the sounds (because until you can see the end of them, both directions look the same) that after one day walking, woke up and walked back in the direction he’d come from for 4 hours by mistake- oops. Having said it’s disorientating, he didn’t seem to be the sharpest tool in the shed as he was carrying an 80kg rucksack with him including a four person tent…

Anyway, the next day we spent cycling round the vineyards in Renwick and after that, we weren’t too sharp either (no comments about Lizzy never having been sharp please!). We’d managed 12 vineyards in 5 hours- tasting about 60 wines (Don’t worry parents- they really were only little tastes!) . A small vineyard called Gibson Bridge was our favourite- everything we tasted was amazing and no, it wasn’t the last one we went to!

We spent the night at Robin Hood Bay – it didn’t remind us of Nottingham in any way other than the name.

Abel Tasman

Lizzy — Sat, 06 Mar 2010 04:35:08 +0000

We spent two days and nights in this northern coastal area, mainly walking parts of the coastal route and taking in the views- which of course where stunning (starting to sound like a broken record I know but it’s true). Unfortunately, due to the camera having an impromptu swimming lesson, we had very few photos from our first day’s walk as we left it to recover (it didn’t seem to like swimming much as it gave us all sorts of funny pictures after it’s little dunk). Fortunately, it decided to forgive us and the next day it was back to normal working order, and we were able to avoid getting camera number 3! (yep- we have got through 1 waterproof one and 1 normal one already). Abel Tasman is probably the place we’d most likely go back to for a summer hol. as there’s just so much to see here and it’s all beautiful!

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My birthday

Lizzy — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 04:22:54 +0000

My birthday started with breakfast in bed and some pressies, including a parcel from the UK which had a very convoluted journey to the camper van and which involved numerous secret phone calls to DHL, my recruiter (Annie), Annie’s cousin, Annie’s cousin’s secretary, Alex, and of course Julie who it was from. Needless to say, I felt very very spoilt I felt even more spoilt when I returned to the van to find it filled with balloons and a cake with candles. I think Alex nearly passed out trying to blow the 10 balloons up in the five minutes I’d been gone! All of that meant that I wasn’t too disappointed when our heli-hike planned for later that day was cancelled because of the rubbish weather. Instead we decided to move on further up the coast to Hokitika. We went on a short walk to a gorge there and for a treat we spent the night at a campsite with a spa and, after a run across the car park (the showers weren’t hot in the spa block) had our first hot shower in several days due to Queenie Simon not having one (we’re not admitting to how long it had been!).

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The Glaciers

Lizzy — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 04:14:51 +0000

From Queenstown we headed north to Fox & Franz Joseph Glacier, stopping only a few times to admire the views, pick up a hitch-hiker and to fill up with fuel & water. We spent our first night at Lake Matheson. It was here we discovered that our little camper ‘Queenie Simon’ leaks on one side when it rains heavily. Fortunately, a plastic bag and repositioning seemed to keep us and the inside pretty dry. Our poor Canadian neighbours in their ‘jucy van’ with its rear boot access cooker, were not so fortunate. Feeling pleased (and a little bit smug) we invited them to eat with us in our now rain-proofed van. Either the thought of eating what we cooked horrified them, or they didn’t trust our rain-proofing efforts as instead they opted for re-plumbing their cooker to work from inside their cramped little van. We stuck our heads out a few times to check they hadn’t gassed themselves and when they joined us later for drinks they seemed fairly coherent (at least initially) so I guess they avoided gas poisoning.

The views on the walk round the lake the next morning where as stunning as ever and we managed to also fit in a walk to Fox Glacier and plan for the next day- my birthday when we hoped to do a heli-hike to Franz Joseph Glacier.

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South Island: Milford Sound region

Lizzy — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 19:48:55 +0000

We spent day 3 driving towards Milford Sound, enjoying the stunning scenery changing as we headed into Fiordland. We stopped en-route at a couple of places for lunch and for some short walks and eventually arrived at Milford Sound in the evening. Unfortunately, there’s no-where to camp in Milford Sound is itself (which the Lonely Planet unhelpfully fails to mention) so when we arrived in the cafe car-park/Ferry Terminal area, we spent a while debating whether we should ignore the ‘no overnight camping’ signs or drive 70km back to the nearest campsite with spaces… we chose to risk the $400 fine on advice from a helpful bar tender who told us that in the 18 months he’d worked there, the wardens had only moved people out once and without a fine. It turned out to be the right decision as we were able to get the first boat out the next morning which was not only cheaper but also very quiet.

The views were spectacular as you can hopefully see. We were also incredibly fortunate as the weather was unusually dry and sunny. The fjord has an annual rainfall of over 7m and there are over 200 days of rain here per year. As well as that we also saw three different schools of bottlenose Dolphins! If it hadn’t been so cold, I’d have been very tempted to jump in and swim with them- they’re amazing . We also saw some seals but having been brought up predominantly in Norfolk near Blakeny, they didn’t wow me as much- though they are pretty cool.

South Island: Mt Cook region

Lizzy — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 05:04:40 +0000

After a slight mix up with the campervan (we’d mistakenly put to pick up from Christchurch city not airport- oops!) we set off towards Timaru where we were planning to spend the night. Not a particularly picturesque place but it was en-route to Mt Cook where we were heading toward the following day. After waking up with cold faces the next day, we headed out. En-route we stopped at Lake Tekapo and Lake Pukaki- both incredibly beautiful even in the gusty wind. We’d planned to spend a couple of nights at Mt Cook and do some treks but unfortunately the weather was terrible and forecast to remain bad for another few days. Instead we settled for a short walk up to Lake Tasman where we saw our first ever Icebergs, and decided to move on and get a bit ahead of our planned schedule so we continued southwards. We stopped overnight at a Lake Dunstan, which reminded us both of the reservoir near Snake Pass en-route to Manchester. It was stunning waking up in the morning and having breakfast overlooking it with not a soul in sight.

More photos @ Picasa

Sydney: Our favourite city so far

Lizzy — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 06:25:39 +0000

We had a fantastic time in Sydney, catching up with friends (Karen, Jill, Lou & Jake) all of whom took it in turns to be our tour guides & hosts. Jill took us for breakfast and then on a walk from Darling Harbour, round to Sydney Harbour Bridge, the Rocks (where we stopped in a museum with the best air-con we found all day), Circular Quay and then the Opera house which are all really impressive. We decided en-route that Sydney is our favourite city so far. Karen & Matt took us on a walk round the North Heads and also a costal walk from Coogee to Bondi and cooked us our first Aussie Barbie which was lovely. We also went up to see the view of the city from Karen’s office on the 37^th floor which has got to be better than we’d have seen from the Skytower as the buildings closer to the harbour. And poor Lou and Jake had to put up with us for the five nights, cook for us, chauffer us around and take us out for dinner . We also made it down to Manly where we spent an afternoon on the beach. It turns out though that spending time with friends and enjoying Sydney made leaving for Auckland harder than we imagined…but that’s another post.

The East Coast of Oz: Part 3 – Diving with the big stuff

Lizzy — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 09:04:48 +0000

Bonus stop: Forster- The best and worst diving so far!

After a brief farewell stop to drop Jules and Tom in Newcastle, Alex and I headed back up the ‘freeway’ to Forster where we checked into a cheap hotel, slightly reminiscent of a retirement home, and then headed to the beach for a couple of hours.

Grey Nurse Shark

Diving the following day, was the best and worst dives of our trip so far. Whilst diving in Asia, we’d naively expected to be surrounded by dolphins, huge manta rays, sharks and even whale sharks at every turn, (yep we know- stupid but nevertheless true!). We’d almost started to doubt that there really where loads of big things in the ocean for us to see. Fortunately, this dive resolved any disillusionment we had! On the first dive, which was also our deepest so far at 33m, we spotted about three 3m long Grey Nurse sharks as well as lots of jack fish… On the second dive, we saw 25-30 sharks, an eagle ray and a logger-head turtle and it was AMAZING!! We had to swim through the kelp, creep through a crack and hide ourselves behind a ridge half way up and looking into a bowl shaped hole. There we were metres away from around 15 1 ½ -3 ½ m long Grey Nurse sharks that were circling the bowl. It was one of the most awesome experiences of our trip. Possibly one of the most frightening experiences for Alex was when he narrowly avoided grabbing the tail of a Wobegong shark that he’d not seen resting on the bottom! The dive instructor later told us that the ‘shark attack’ in Sydney the previous week had been by a Wobegong- although apparently it’s one of the first ever reports of this type of shark being aggressive. Oh and the Grey Nurse sharks are also very docile and aren’t man-eaters for anyone questioning our sanity at this point! We’ve no photos as we don’t have an underwater camera that works below 10m BUT we’ve found some photos online to show what the sharks we saw looked like.

Wobbegong Shark

The reason the dive was also the worst so far was mainly because of the company we dived with who where quite unfriendly telling me not to tell anyone I’d ‘fed the fish’ when I was vomiting over the side due to sea sickness and they were also snobby about us having predominantly dived in Asia, which apparently isn’t ‘real’ diving. Fortunately, the highs definitely outweighed the lows- by about 25 sharks

(Photos courtesy of Richard Ling – they’re not ours! Licensed under Creative Commons)

Fraser Island: Sand, sharks, snakes, spiders, sea and sun!

Lizzy — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 09:35:24 +0000

Fraser is home to seven of the most deadly spiders and snakes in the world, its waters are patrolled by sharks* and jelly fish and the land by dingos. The only way to get around is by 4WD and the nearest emergency help is air ambulance 1 ½ hours away. If that didn’t make us feel a bit nervous, the risk of losing our vehicle excess if we got stuck anywhere certainly did!

So off we set, Tom, Jules, Lizzy and Alex on a mini 4WD adventure around this beautiful but apparently deadly island. I was quite happy to leave the driving to Alex and Tom who both loved navigating the sandy, rutted tracks- I was content to drive only on the easier beach section where we invented the game ‘Jellysquish’ . Fortunately, despite this leading to a very messy under carriage, we weren’t fined anything on returning the car. We managed to blag** a campsite spot which normally should have set us back $40 for the two nights so we enjoyed the luxuries of flushing toilet and running water and didn’t have to use our shovel once

The sights on the island where very pretty and we enjoyed swimming in lakes and in the ‘Champagne rock pools’ (the only bit of sea safe to swim in as sharks can’t get in), climbing the dunes, walking through the rainforests, wandering round the Maheno shipwreck and of course all the 4WD. We also enjoyed swatting and then feeding giant March flies to the catfish in Lake Wabby which gave us a great deal of satisfaction as they had bitten us to shreds by then- Ouch!

Bugs aside, a fantastic trip

More photos @ Picasa

*nope- despite looking, I didn’t see any

** read trespass- although admittedly we didn’t actually know it cost anything to start with- we only found this out as we were leaving