Seal The Deal

The Josh Franco Section
We are still in New Zealand. You shouldn't be ashamed of playing badminton. We saw lots of animals.

Hey there kids. The blog is back and this time it's personal. Actually I guess every time it's personal. If it wasn't personal it wouldn't be much of a travel blog and would maybe be a work of fiction. Anyway, last time I left you I was feeling slightly hungover. Not now. As I write this I am sitting looking out to the mountains towering over Lake Te Anau. I think the only suitable word for the view is Bonertastic. It's making it more difficult to type anyway. So since last time we have travelled down the East Coast in Trixie the Toyota (Despite her best efforts to stop us) and now we're heading back up West. For those of you who are confused (Josh) and had to ask my Mum which country we were in (Josh) – We are in New Zealand. Whatever the case I think I can safely say it's better than Old Zealand.

So before we left Christchurch we wanted to give the car a little test so we did a few day trips. We drove to Sumner and along with our gal pal Ian we did a walk to Taylor's Mistake. The highlight of the trip for everyone was seeing a pensioner sun bathing naked on the beach. The weird thing is there wasn't even any Sun. Here is also where we discovered Trixie's handbrake was by and large useless. On the plus side I managed to figure this out before slowly rolling back into the sea. Our second testing trip was to Hamner Springs where we relaxed in the eggy smelling bubbling natural hot springs. We also had a game of mining themed mini golf. It was a course I think most people would enjoy. Actual miners like ToM might find it a bit of a busman's holiday. I should also mention that at this point we were staying in The Jailhouse – an old jail refitted as a hostel. A really cool place to stay with all of the jail features pretty much intact including cells doubling as rooms. 'Anything can happen when two people share a cell cuz.' I don't know what all those prisoners complain about. It was really nice. I didn't get raped once. Just in case I did draw the prison layout on my stomach a la Michael Schofield.

Reasonably confident in our driving ability we then left 'The Church' as the kids are calling it apparently and headed out on our adventures. Our first stop was the Banks Peninsula and the small town of Akaroa for our first nights camping. We eagerly set-up our brand new tent, put out our totally useful citronella candles and prepared ourselves to go wild. And for the first night it was fine if a little cold. It was on the day after the first night that the tent pole decided to snap. This presented a couple of problems.
1.The tent was now not really capable of having people sleep in it.
2.Due to a snapped lever on the back seat of our car the back seat couldn't go down.
We were a little distressed and none too pleased with Rebel Sports' $50 tent. I drove to the shop and bought super glue and needles. The glue wouldn't fix the pole and I don't really know why I bought the needles. It was looking pretty bad. I didn't panic though and started randomly prodding the broken lever with a tent peg. Much to my surprise it worked and we got the seat down. This meant we could now sleep in the back of the car like motorized hobos (Mobos?). I revelled in my hero status for the next forty minutes. The town of Akaroa was itself a really nice little place. It markets itself as a French settlement though its Frenchness pretty much boils down to it having a bakery. I can make judgements on this because I am basically French. The main attraction was seeing The Hector's Doplhin. The world's smallest dolphin and native only to New Zealand's coast. We donned our wetsuits and headed out in search of them. It took a little while to find them but we were soon in the water. The idea was to stay still and let them interact with you but a German man in our group took this to mean flap around as much as possible and if you see a fin chase it down like a dog chasing a stick. Eventually he got the idea and the dolphins had a little swim amongst us. It was pretty cool.

After Akaroa we were heading back toward Christchurch and onto the East Coast proper. On the way we picked up a new tent pole... Or so we thought. Our first stop was the small city of Timaru. Not an especially exciting place. It didn't help that it rained most of the time and we were on an abandoned gypsy camp-site and despite there being loads of room the only other people in there (a woman and her 7 annoying children) decided to camp pretty much on top of us. Then the tent pole didn't work. It required assembly and was a completely different size to the one we already had. At this point I reached the status of 'angry'. We went to Rebel Sport in Timaru and the girl at the counter offered her sincerest apologies that we had been completely fucked around but said they didn't have any spare poles. At this point I reached the status 'HULK'. This doesn't happen often and few people have seen it. I kind of blanked out what actually happened but whatever the case we walked out with a brand new tent. Score.

It was only one night on the camp-site of the damned (and 7 irritating children) before we were heading onto Oamaru. Thankfully the camp-site was much nicer. Set quite a distance from the city The Olive Garden was spacious and open with trees and a stream trickling along side and sheltered by a cliff face. The owners were also really helpful in providing tips for our main Oamaru mission – spotting penguins. On their advise we stayed away from the city on the first night and instead went to Moeraki Village and beyond to the end of Lighthouse Road. Here we walked through a gate and literally a couple of metres to our left we saw our first penguins. An adult and its big fat fluffy chick. Here we saw about 10 penguins in total only metres away from us going about their daily business. As a bonus there were also countless seals littering the beaches and rocks. Most were just lying around but a few were swimming around in the rock pools and plain just having a great time. The next day we went to the Moeraki Boulders in the morning. After a cold walk in the wind and rain we got a few pictures before Nic's camera packed up. They were as much fun as a bunch of rocks in the sea could be and kind of cool to have a look at and a jump around on. In the afternoon we went into the city to see the Blue Penguins. In the early evening we did a Behind the Scenes Tour of the colony which was pretty lame. The guide was unable to answer any of my well thought out questions about the little things. Much better was our return at 9 for the main event. As it got dark rafts of the Blue Penguins rolled into shore. We sat in a stand and watched 116 penguins climb up the rocks and waddle to their nests. Both sets of penguins were great fun to watch. They waddle with such intensity like they have really important tasks to accomplish. The blue ones are like Lemmings from the old PC Game except without the umbrellas and drills and things. Watching them run and then fall on their stomachs never got old.

After two places that could barely be described as cities we headed to the real city of Dunedin. On the way we stopped at the very cool Asylum hostel which was as you may guess an old Asylum turned into a hostel and classic car museum (scrap yard). I should also mention that before leaving Oamaru Trixie had to get her first jump start. Thanks Olive Garden man! We stayed just a stone's throw away from the beach at another nice holiday park. We had two full days to explore. On the first we did tours of The Speight's Beer Factory and The Cadbury's Factory. Both were interesting but the Beer was a little more fun. Our tour guide was 'basically a chilled out entertainer' who after the tour told us some stories of how the mayor of Dunedin had called him without even a day's notice and got him to do a show and explaining how he crafted cutting edge jokes on subjects such as Tiger Woods' infidelity. The free beer at the end of the tour was a nice little bonus too. The Cadbury's tour also gave out freebies but only their crappier chocolate. Not a Crunchie in sight. The factory wasn't in full swing as it was still Christmas holidays but I would recommend going. We went in search of the forgotten chocolate of yesteryear The Fuse and although we saw a wrapper in the museum section there wasn't any available to buy. On our second day we drove out to the Otago Peninsula. Here we went to New Zealand's only castle that wasn't really a castle but more of an old house. We went to the Albatross sanctuary but thought it too expensive. The joke was on them because I saw one flying about. We also tried to go on a walk recommended in our pamphlet but after driving down a suspicious track were told by some farmer types that the walk we wanted to do had been closed for about 11 years. Eventually we found a walk that we were actually allowed to do heading down through some rock formations resembling pyramids to the beach. The peninsula was a nice way to spend a day and good preparation for the next section of our trip. I should also mention in Dunedin we had our first of two free AA call out as the battery went again. The guy who came to fix it moved a wire and it came back to life. He explained it was a loose connection and then I think to make me feel better bashed it with his hammer a couple of times.

From Dunedin we had a two day drive through The Catlins. No mobile phone reception, no cash points and very little in the way of civilisation. On the way we stopped at waterfalls, caves and after a long drive down dodgy track (most of the side roads were a bit of a nightmare) we found a beach that Sea Lions called home. We saw a male and female on our walk along the shore. Unlike seals Sea Lions are not scared of humans and will charge if they feel threatened. After seeing the 400kg male get up on his flippers I didn't want to do anything to make them feel threatened. Our camp-site at Curio Bay was very basic but the location was incredible. On one side we had waves crashing onto the rocks and on the other side we had more yellow eyed penguins. It was also in such a place that many Sea-Lions decided to crash there taking up camp-sites and even lying in the entrance. A German man got too close to one and ended up getting chased. It was pretty funny.

Back from the Catlins it was back to civilisation and phone reception for our phones that don't really work all that well anyway. We stayed the weekend in Invercargill with Matt and Sam Hall, their 2 year old Phoebe and Scooby Doo look a like dog Jazzie. Phoebe, Jazzie and I formed a gang and solved some mysteries. The Halls kindly allowed us to recharge our batteries and agreed to look after Trixie whilst we went to Stewart Island.

15 minutes on a tiny plane with a 10 person capacity and we were there. Stewart Island is at New Zealand's southern tip and although much bigger than Jersey it's population is minuscule with the majority of the island covered in forest. We had a day in the township of Oban to prepare ourselves before embarking on a 3 day great walk trek. It was 36km total spread out to 12 km per day with stops in basic huts with bunks and cold running water and festival style toilets. Because we had to carry all our food and provisions in our packs it was actually tough going. By the last hour of our trek we were pretty tired but with the help of a few word and memory games we got through it. It was fun and a great feeling to finish but I'm not sure if we'll do many more like it. Walking can be kind of boring when there isn't a whole lot to look at and you have to do it three days in a row. We flew back a day later and because of over booking I had to co-pilot the plane. The pilot was a bit of a dick and wouldn't let me have a go on the wheel or press any buttons but I was fully prepared to take us to our firey death if anything happened to him. Matt and Phoebe picked us up at the airport and we had another night of their hospitality (who knew putting a hat on a dog could be so much fun?) before we started our western trek.

Epic. So we are now in Te Anau basing ourselves for The Milford Sound. After this it's up to Queenstown and some EXTREME activities that I'm not allowed to talk about yet because it might upset my Mum, Wanaka and then the Glaciers.

Hope all is well wherever you are my dear readers and that you haven't been too inconvenienced by the snow. Let it be known we were totally jealous looking at the photos on Facebook. If you want to get in touch leave a comment or hit us up on the Facebook. It's always good to hear from people unless you're the type of person I secretly hate. Now I'm off to play mini-golf!

Missing you all,

Steve & Nic

xxxx