My Birthday Present from Andrea

Thoughtfully acknowledging that my inflatable kayak wasn't necessarily satisfying my desire to get out on some multi-day kayak adventures, Andrea had the superb idea of getting me a kayak trip in Fiordland for my birthday (I think she secretly may have had some appetite for such a trip as well).

Some good advice from the lonely planet led us to choose Doubtful Sound as opposed to Milford Sound. After booking, and before the actual trip, we visited Milford Sound and were quite happy with our decision. Milford, while beautiful, felt a bit like a lineup at an amusement park. There were lines of busses waiting to board boats which left every thirty minutes - it felt far from the tranquil wilderness we were hoping to kayak through.

Anyway, the day arrives that we're to report for our trip. We head to the Fiordland Wilderness Experiences office in Te Anau for our safety briefing and equipment sizing. The rest of the group seems a bit quirky but fit enough to not be slowing us down too much :). There are to be eight of us on the trip all paddling two person sea kayaks, plus our guide who will paddle solo. The group consists of:

Thiery and Colline, from Belgium who speak French and a little English

Rob and Mel, from the UK, just married and on their honeymoon

Greg, from the Wales, a business lecturer on sabbatical

Tara, from Vancouver, taking a year off university between first and second year whose parents were actually Kayak guides for 10 years in my Uncle Jim's adventure travel company (Eco Summer)

Andrea and I

Will - a Maori Kiwi who has been guiding Kayak trips for over 10 years and who prefers the longer multi-day trips because it means he can spend more days in the wilderness and less days setting up.


The kayak company provides us with wet suits, polypropylene long sleeve shirts, a fleece jacket, a rain jacket, a spray skirt, dry bags for our personal gear, tents and therma rests. In addition to this, they had a few other surprises which they'd pull out on the trip.

Our first day we get up at 5am, its still dark out, and its incredibly chilly. We park, say goodbye to our trusty campervan (the fridge loaded with Ice as it doesn't like long stints withouth us driving), and pile into a van for a short trip to Manapouri. From Manapouri, we load our gear into a fairly large ferry, travel across Lake Manapouri, unload our gear from the ferry, get into our kayak getups, pile into ANOTHER van for a longer ride to doubtful sound. At the kayak launch point, we take the gear from the last of the vans and begin loading it into the boats - the sandflies, kind of like really big blackflies, are absolutely ravenous.

Once out on the sound, however, the flies, the gear transfers, the early morning, all fade away. The sound (which is actually a fiord we soon learn), is calm, the sky blue, and the temperature now quite comfortable.

The trip highlights included:
- Penguins: on the first day, we ran into two yellow finned penguins, which are a protected species who are typically quite shy, but who swam around the nose of our boat about three feet away Andrea.
- Dolphins: day two brought the dolphins. We woke up to a perfectly still fiord and could see the dolphins spraying water across the bay. We quickly rushed into our boats and paddled over nearby. The dolphins proceeded to swim with us for the next two hours, jumping beside us, playing, swimming underneath our boats, and seemingly putting on a show for us. The only thing that distracted us was the beautiful scenery, the mountains reflecting on the near perfectly still water (the only ripples coming from either our boats or the jumping dolphins), and the waterfalls tumbling down the kilometer-high sheer rock faces which plunged into the fiord.
- the shelter: one of the key surprises unfurled by Will was a bug shelter for us to dine in and generally take refuge from the sandflies (really, I'm from northern Ontario and these were some of the worst bugs I've ever seen). The shelter provided us with a great place to get to know the rest of the group, share some box wine (another surprise of Will's), and discuss the beauty of what we'd seen.
- the beach fire under a perfectly clear starry sky
- swimming in the fiord, the top layer of warmer freshwater mixing with the colder salt water underneath, and a seal coming to come visit me.

Overall, the trip was absolutely incredible and an amazing birthday gift. While the photos capture a few great moments, the trip truly was an experience which can't be captured in a few frames.

Thanks Andrea for the great birthday gift which is so far the highlight of the trip!

Kayaking and Tramping

So it's been a while since we've updated the blog...reason being that we've been doing a lot of fun stuff! In the last week and a half, we've visited milford sound, hiked a few short hikes, kayaked for three days in Doubtful sound (which was out of this world amazing - we kayaked with dolphins!), and then we had one day in town (Te Anau), followed by a 3 day hike along the Kepler Track, one of New Zealands 'Great Walks'. All of this has been in Fiordland National Park, which is the biggest national park in New Zealand. The scenery is AMAZING - huge mountains that plummet down into super deep lakes and fiords. Gavin's going to write about the kayak trip, so I'll write a bit about the Kepler Track 'Tramp' that we did! In total, it was about 60 kms - and we split it about 15kms the first day up to Luxmore Hut (from Lake Te Anau up to the Alpine area of Mt Luxmore...a lot of up), then a night in the Luxmore 'hut', which was pretty cool. It slept about 55 hikers, and was full, a lot of different groups of people hiking the Kepler Track. Communal cooking area
(with gas stoves provided) and a few bunk rooms (where they suplied bunks and mattresses, and we brought our sleeping bags). Amazingly, they also had flush toilets and running water (absolute luxury). Day two we hiked another 15 kms, entirely through the alpine, up to the summit of Mt Luxmore (with gorgeous views), and then along the saddle / ridge, with a pretty steep decent through to the second hut (Iris Burn Hut) near the Iris Burn stream, back in the tree-line. That hut also slept 55, and it was roughly the same group as the night before. The sleeping arrangements were good, although it was a little bit tough sleeping in a bunk room with snoring old men, and people going to bed / getting up at different times, so we didn't get the best sleeps, but it was totally worth it for the hiking. The last day, we then hiked out (most people do the hike in 4 days, with the last day spent at another hut), but we hiked past it for a 32 km day, all of the way back into Te Anau...my legs were VERY sore at the end of it (and a few blisters later), but it felt great when we got back! We also managed to avoid the threatening rain, so managed to make it back nice and dry :) The views on the hike were gorgeous, and we hiked through a bunch of terrain that they actually used in filming lord of the rings! Moss-covered forests, rivers etc. it was magical :) It was also fun doing a hike where we carried all of our food / clothes / sleeping bags etc.- but it's amazing how accessible the huts make getting into the backcountry - not having to cart a tent and stove/gas was fantastic. It's really too bad that there isn't a network of huts like this in Canada...there are over 1000 of them in New Zealand scattered about the different national parks, creating a huge network of tracks. It's so nice! We're definitely planning on doing another multi-day hike (likely in the Abel Tasman National Park).
Now we're all dry, clothes washed, fed and happy, back in humanity, and about to head south to Invercargill, then the Catlins, then Dunedin. We'll post photos as soon as we can! Huge hugs!
a

new pics!

we've got some new photos up...check out the link - we've added some new North Island and South Island photos :) the little picture is now just the new South Island ones.

HUGS!

Queenstown

Quick update!

We're at the laundromat on a saturday night (we are sooo exciting) in Queenstown. We've decided to park ourselves here for a while (queenstown - not the laundromat)...the city has a great vibe, and the weather has been gorgeous, so no need to leave. Today we went hiking up to the Ben Lomond Saddle, and then chilled out on the lakefront in the sunshine watching a hangliding / sky diving competition (they are so cool... :P) while eating the best ice cream we've had in NZ so far. Yesterday, gavin went for a bike ride and did some solar stuff, and I went to the physio (for my knee...this amazing country provides visitors with 15 free physio appointments if you hurt yourself while here - wonderful), sipped a latte in the sunshine, got started on my new book, and did some window shopping (and not just window shopping...I am the proud new owner of a merino wool toque, and a pair of hiking socks...exciting purchases).

The reason I needed a bit of a day off from activity yesterday is that the day before we went canyoning!! I'm not exactly sure when I decided that jumping into a freezing cold glacial canyon and spending 3.5 hours sliding / jumping / / zip line-ing our way down it would be a good activity for someone with bad circulation - but I did. It was SUPER fun (until I couldn't stop shivering - that made it slightly less fun). We were suited up in a full wetsuit, with wetsuit leggings, two long sleeved wetsuit shirts, wetsuit shorts, wetsuit caps and helmets, and life jackets, wetsuit socks and wetsuit booties...we looked AWESOME (unfortunately, we didn't get a photo as we couldn't bring our cameras with us into the canyon)!
Gavin was a pro-star...jumping off of 8m high ledges into the canyon...I was less of a pro-star (did not go near the 8m high jump), but managed to do all but one of the jumps / slides etc. that they (our two guides) asked us to do to get down the canyon. A few examples: They spun us around backwards and sent us down these rock slides that the water had naturally carved into the canyon, we jumped off of ledges into the water, fell backwards into pools of water, slid off of ledges, were lowered (and then dropped) into pools of water...it was all very fun - a great once-in-a-lifetime experience :)

We're going to stick around in queenstown at least until tomorrow night (maybe even monday/tuesday), and then head to milford sound. We have a 3 day kayak trip booked and ready to go in doubtful sound on the 20th (next friday) - and then hopefully a four day hike after that! We're still loving it, although I am getting a wee bit tired of the camper-living (hence the laundromat - I finally needed some clean clothes again :), but I'll survive :P

Huge hug!
a

ello again!

Today I'm writing from a cafe in Glenorchy - we're in the middle of gorgeous mountains, on a lake just north of Queenstown. We've been in this area for a few days, although unfortunately day 1 was rain and so we had a non-active day of movie watching (and yes Steve - more of the wire...season 3 now) and relaxing in the camper, day 2 I had a stomach flu/food poisoning, so more camper time (for me anyways, gavin went for a kayak), and now, day 3, it's raining again (and not just a little bit...it's pouring) so we came into glenorchy (the closest town to where we're staying at a super basic campsite not too far away in Kinloch). So that's put a bit of a wrench into our 'active' plans for this area. We're going to stay around here for at least 3 or 4 more days though to be able to get everything in. I'll probably only be able to post this once we get back to queenstown though because we don't have any internet here - so likely after we've done all of the fun activities (I'll try and update at that point again too)! On the plate for the next few days are a hike of the Routeburn trail (it's actually a 3 day, 30k hike, but you need to book huts, and organize transport, which is a bit of a hassle), so we're just going to do part of it as a day-hike, and try and get in about 12kms into the hike, then turn around and head back the way we came, which should get us into the alpine saddle and past the waterfalls! We've also got a day of canyoning booked (which I'm super excited about) - basically you get to absail and jump/climb your way down a canyon, and then we're also planning to bike to a place called 'paradise' (the roadsign on the way there says 'Paradise - NO EXIT' :) - not too far from our campsite, and go for a kayak on the lake! My fingers are crossed that it stops raining soon, as I'm getting a bit tired of the confines of the camper :) The area that we're in though is incredibly beautiful. It's around where they filmed a lot of the lord of the rings movies, especially the parts with the elves (so the gorgeous forests / waterfalls etc.). Our campsite is beautiful - camper is parked right on the edge of the lake, with mountains on all sides...couldn't ask for a better view :)

After almost a month and a half (I think we're at 40 days now) of living in a camper, there are definitely some things that i'm missing, and will be very diligent in making sure that our next apartment/home comes with (in no particular order):

- a bathroom (and all of the wonderful things a bathroom has - toilet, mirror, sink, shower...sigh...having the stomach flu with only an outhouse a few minutes walk from the camper is not a fun experience)
- running water
- the ability to shower on a regular basis (without either a. having to jump into a freezing cold lake, b. wear flip flops c. require us to pay 30 dollars to stay in a shit campsite just to use the showers, d. have gavin pour buckets of lukewarm water over me)
- having a bed that a. doesn't have to be taken down each morning and put up each night, b. is in a separate area from the kitchen / living area

But other than those few inconveniences, I think this whole camper thing is great - there are a lot of plus sides (you can put down the bed and sleep basically wherever, you always have all of your stuff with you, you always have all of your food with you...) so I think I'll survive another 40 days or so... :) fingers crossed :)

alright - until next time!! :)

(quick update - am now posting this from Glenorchy as we bit the bullet and finally bought some internet so that we can book a few more activities for the coming days. We're waiting for our 'group' to arrive to do the canyoning!! yippee!! should be fun. We did get the hike in yesterday, didn't get soaked by rain, only frozen by the blowing snow (hehehehe - we're here in the summer right??), but it was BEAUTIFUL. We hiked about 13k into the hike, up to the highest point (harris saddle), then turned around and came back. Gavin's proud because he ran 28km's the day before, then hiked 25km's yesterday - so over 50k's in two days. He's rubbing it in because I was a lump on a log and didn't do the 28k run with him. At least my knee is thanking me a bit :) We also discovered that the lodge near our campsite allows us to have a HOT shower (only $5...) :) yay! So after playing in the cold canyon water today, we'll have a way to warm up.

Huge hugs!

a

Kayaking, Hiking and some Biking...

a quick update! We left Akaroa after a gorgeous morning kayaking in the sound...although unfortunately we didn't get to see any dolphins (there was a bit of wind, so we could only go down the sound towards the inland end, and the dolphins were probably in the ocean-end) oh well! We did see lots of birds, and explored the cool volcanic rock formations along the water. After the kayak, we drove about 4.5 hours to Mt. Cook - the tallest mountain in Austalasia. The day was clear, so we lucked out and got incredible views of the glacier-covered mountain! We camped in a parking lot/campsite by the mountain (with about 50 other campers), and then this morning did a day hike up to Mueller Hut, that overlooked a gazillion HUGE glaciers. Although the hike was a steady 5k climb up - and then directly down - the views were amazing, and definitely worth it. I was put in my place a bit about our rockies being the best mountains EVER...these were pretty awesome. Huge, lots and lots of glaciers (and big glaciers at that - think plains of the six glaciers, but increase the size of the glaciers by about 150% each, and then add a few more). The 90km winds made it a bit tricky at the top, but luckily the Hut was there for our lunch spot (people generally do the climb, then stay the night in the hut, before heading down the next day - my knees may have preffered that option :)

After the hike, we decided to high-tail it out of the Mt Cook area, and come to a place (ahiri valley, near omarama (which I keep accidentally calling obamarama) with a potential mountain bike (more cross country) route of about 50 kms, part of which we'll do tomorrow. So as I write this, our camper is parked in a MASSIVE valley, bordered by pretty huge snow covered mountains. We're about 20 metres from a river / stream, and I can hear the sheep (I hope they cut out the 'baaaas' at night) that are wandering around in the field we're in. There isn't much around - only the sheep, a gravel road, the river and us.

One thing I wanted to clarify after my last post, is that our food situation is actually quite good. The instant noodles are our 'we're too tired to do dishes / cook anything but we need to eat' nights...usually (as in tonight and last night) we're getting pretty good with our camper-cooking! We recently acquired a BBQ - which has meant that nights of lamb (no, not the cute ones outside our camper at the moment...), corn on the cob and steamed veggies are now regular. In addition, we've been doing the standard pasta and sauce / stir fry's, fajitas, grilled cheese, salads, and even made our own popcorn (a newly acquired skill from our ski vacation - thanks jess!). We've been eating well :) I have to say, gavin's also become very skilled with doing the dishes in our confined space :)

anyhow, time for a relaxing evening and some biking tomorrow! I hope that everything is going well at home!

huge hugs

a

and another brief update as I'm only posting this is Wanaka - the sheep quieted down last night, only to have gavin go chasing them today as we biked through the valley. unfortunately, we were rained out a bit, so only got in about 25kms...but it was a GORGEOUS bike. The only part I wasn't so keen on was the river crossing we had to do - which actually in the end marked the turn around point, because once we'd carried our bikes across the river (well, gavin carried mine, I was happy just making it across without falling into the river and getting soaked), it started to pour with rain and cloud in...so we crossed back over the river, and headed back to the camper in the rain...fun fun fun. I think the weather here has something against us mountain biking - everytime we go it seems to rain - oh well! :)

Relaxing in Akaroa

Hello hello! I'm just waiting for the kettle to boil for dinner (we're having instant noodles tonight, nice and easy), and so I figured I would write a quick blog-update as we have internet today. We're freedom camping, tucked into the side of a very small, windy road leading up from Akaroa, on the banks peninsula. There's a sign about 10 metres away from our van reading 'windy, narrow road, not suitable for campers or towing'...there was a sign at the beginning of the road saying that too, so we're proud of our little tank engine for creaking and groaning up the road to this point. We figured the second sign may actually mean that we couldn't make it, and low and behold, there was a nice flat spot in the corner for us to tuck into for the night. Our spot looks back onto Akaroa and the inlet - it's beautiful. It's gavin's favourite campsite so far.

We've had a lazy day today - it was rainy this morning, so we decided to not brave the outdoors (we had planned to kayak and attempt to see dolphins in the inlet...now we're doing that tomorrow), we spent the morning inside the camper, cosy in bed, watching the Wire (Steve, I blame you, we're addicted). At about noon, we drove down to Akaroa, and I found a cute little cafe, had a latte, read a bit and bought a magazine to fill myself in on the oscar dresses. Gavin hung out in the van working on some solar stuff. In the afternoon it cleared up, so we went for a bit of a drive to find a campspot, Gavin went for a brief (but butt-kicking) bike ride, and I did some yoga overlooking the bay.

Tomorrow we head for our kayak, then late afternoon once we're kayaked out we'll continue our travels towards Mt. Cook, hang out there for a night and get a hike in, then head towards Wanaka on our way to Fiordland National park for some multi-day hiking and kayaking trips...I'm quite excited!

Alright, water's boiled so time for dinner!

Huge hugs,

a

Our Vanmate - Freddie

We've been getting a few questions about our roommate Freddie and I figured he was therefore deserving of his very own blog post - he certainly impacted us enough to deserve one.

We met Freddie in a campsite on Lake Waikaremaona where we were staying with my parents. The campsite was great, on a beautiful lake where we launched the kayak and were able to see (but not catch) the sizable brown and rainbow trout and where Andrea and I got in some decent hiking and biking... but I digress...

At first, we hardly even noticed Freddie, he was quiet, kept to himself, and wasn't an inconvenience at all. Gradually though, he started to wear on both my and Andrea's patience. It started with eating our food. Under normal circumstances, we're happy to have house guests help themselves to food, but when you're in a van and you've carefully planned your food for each meal, having components of those meals start to disappear is none too nice. And the worst part was, Freddie just sort of wasted food, starting into one item (like all the cheese off the cheese buns) and then moving onto another. And then there was his hygiene. It wasn't so much that he stank (in his defense, he really didn't), but more that he was messy and left shit all over the place. The final straw was the noise, although for most of the day we'd hardly notice Freddie around at all, at night, he'd sort of shuffle around, not talk at all, but just move about the camper. At one point, when I found him in bed with us sharing a pillow with me, I knew he had to go.

Thankfully Andrea was of the same mindset and we began to methodically plot out how we'd rid ourselves of this pain in the ass house guest. First, we started hiding the food, hoping he might get the message that way - he didn't. Second, we started switching up our destinations a bit, thinking we'd end up in a place he didn't like and maybe decide to go his own way - that didn't work either. Finally, Andrea and I had had enough - we started to plan out how to kill Freddie.

In the end, it was his love of peanut butter that did him in. After five days, four sleepless nights, and three cities, Freddie the Fieldmouse was dead (thanks in part to Andrea's ability to set a mousetrap with a hair trigger - he just stole the bait from mine two nights in a row).

Hello hello!

We're now in Wellington, having a few 'city days' before we head across on the ferry to Picton and the South Island on Saturday. The past week has been fantastic - we met up with Gavin's parents (Ian and Bridge) in Napier, and spent the past 6 or 7 days travelling with them. From Napier North to the Mahia peninsula, then in-land to Lake Waikaremoana - some of the highlights included:
- Enjoying the 'Art Deco' festival in Napier - the whole city dressed up in 1930's outfits (we felt out of place not dressed up, although Ian came close to renting an outfit to get in the spirit), live outdoor music and a great evening watching tons of pristine vintage cars roll through town

- Biking through the Hawke's Bay vineyards - we stopped in for a tasting at a winery called 'brookfields' where gavin and I picked up a bottle of delicious Malbec, and tasted 22 different lagers / ciders between the four of us at a cidery (they were small glasses - promise :) Huge kudos to Bridge, who was game to spend a day biking without having been on a bike in a while!!

- Swimming with the local dolphin on Mahia peninsula...this dolpin likes to hang out in the bay and play with people...he's wild, but generally hangs around and plays with frisbees and balls and boogy boards. Gavin was even close enough to pet him, he then stole a boogy board and swam off with it (the dolphin, not gavin)!

- Many evenings of Euchre - and I'm happy to report that ian and I took the running total 7-5, likely helped by some scotch / hawke's bay chardonnay induced daring plays (by all players - gavin and bridge did put up a good fight...) :)

- Inaugural launch of the blow-up kayak in Lake Waikaremoana, which performed well despite being a bit 'dingy-like' in nature (pictures on the way... :) It was even quickly requisitioned for some trout fishing by Ian, which worked well (although the fish seem to be a bit shy of the kayak)...

- Gavin and I got in a bit of hiking (although the hike advertised at 7 hours was actually only 3.5 hours long...hmmmm, maybe we took a wrong turn somewhere?), and some biking (where we timed it perfectly to a torrential downpour - 10 mins in it started raining, 10 mins after we got back it cleared)...only two falls this time for me (although it was only on a gravel road, so you would think I wouldn't fall on that????sheeesh)

- We even managed to acquired a new roomate - although I'll let Gavin tell you that story...

So overall, a fantastic week! We're now in Wellington at a cafe called 'midnight espresso' - people watching and getting some computer time in :) We're freedom camping close to Makara Peak, a mountain bike park just outside the city, and this morning had a mountain bike (many more falls for me, despite refusing to do any trails more difficult than the big green circle...EASY). Needless to say, I'm not really getting the hang of it yet. This is by far the most painful sport I have EVER done!

...(I didn't have a chance to post this until now, we're on the ferry on our way to the South Island! Yippee!! a great couple of days in Wellington - including some live NZ stand up comedy last night at the Wellington Fringe Festival)! Freddy (the extra roomate) decided to take off last night, so it's just the two of us again.

Huge hugs!

Napier...and photos!

hello again! So although I've just actually managed to connect and post the previous post, I actually wrote that one a few days ago. We're now in Napier, have met up with Gavin's parents, and have a 3G connection so we've uploaded photos!!

Enjoy :)