New Zealand

Our last part of the travel, Kaikoura.

Here it is all about finding either whales, dolphins or furseals.

We are greedy and like to see all of the above…

The minute we arrive from the mountains we get a view on about 100 dolphins playing around at shore. Nice welcome.

After arranging our boats for the whale encounter, we head over to south bay, where all the seals should be.

South bay is a rocky part along the coast where you can walk on when it is low tide. The seals are relaxing in the sun, beingg lazy as always, and we can just walk in between them.

The rest of the afternoon we spend relaxing, because that is what we planned on doing as much as possible on our last couple of days.

Next day we have an early start to go and search for whales, more specifically the sperm whale.

We have a moderate to heavy sea in front of us, so we were a bit worried about motionsickness. And to be honnest, we were right to be.

We all filled our little write paperbag, except Tanne, who showed some strong stomachcontrol…

But at least our effort got its reward, we saw to whales from upclose. ( that means, you see them swimming and when they dive under, they show their tail.

Back to our favorite bar afterworths, because we had have enough sea for one day. We finished the day with a very nice seafood platter in a nice restaurant.

On our last day in NZ, Tanne finallly got to do the kayaktrip she was wanting to do for a long time.

Steven and Tanne booked a sea kayak trip to some seal colony.

Meanwhile Eveline and Inse wanted to see the dolphins up close and so they booked a dolphin encounter.

Both were very cool to do. The kayaking was a fun trip and the seals played around our kayak.

Inse and mom got to see some hundreds of dolphins around their both. Wow ! We wanted a final seafood dinner and ate crayfish and mussels from a local seafood bbq stand.

In front of us is the looooong trip home, but on the other side are famiy and friends to look forward too!!

 

The second part of our Catlins coastal trip takes us to a lot of nice things. Cathedral caves is one of them, a 40 min walk along the beach ( accesable only on low tide) takes you to a u-shaped cave on and in the sea. There even was a pinguïn inside.

The nice Purakaunui waterfalls ( where I could finallly test some settings of the new camera). One of the most photographed falls in NZ.

The nuggets (again a dissapointment for Tanne). A group of rocks in the water, but the lighthouse on top and the sealions playing in the water make it a good stop.

And enough beach and bay to spend a year…

So after driving through an Ireland setting, we than arrived in Scotland. Dunedin has more Scottish influence then its name alone. It has nice whiskey, and some nice pubs as well…
We visited the chocolade factory of Cadbury ( the biggest chocolate factory on the Southern hemisphere. Being Belgian we tried to convince them we had better…

Tanne almost cried when we entered the building.

It was really interesting for us too, because the factory was fully operational when we got our tour.

A short stop at Moeraki boulders (unexplained solid rockballs in the sea).

We than drove to the Great lakes around Mount Cook. And again this was one of the most amazing places we visited.
Both lake pukaki and lake tekapo are deep blue/green with brown grassland around it and snowy mountains in the back. For me this tops even Milford sound. Allthough we never got a clear view, the colours here are amazing.

We also visited a sheep farm where we could see how the Merino sheep are being shaved.
With a full jacket:

And without the jacket:

The kids also got to milkfeed the lams.

The Church of the good sheppard is another of those famous photomoments, it is the smallest of churches, but it is the location that makes it special.

We were lucky to be in Tekapo while there was the yearly “fete”, a yearly market with lots of foodstands, attractions, …we just couldn’t leave , it was just too cosy and enjoyable.

We are now on our way to the last part ( Sad face) of our trip:
Dolphins and whale watching in Kaikoura…

See you soon

Arrived in Te Anau, after a long but very nice drive from Queenstown. We had blue skies until half an hour before arrival.
But that didn’t killed the mood, because we were prepared for that. The fiordlands are amongst the wettest places on earth. With 255 raindays a year and rainfall of around 6000mm a year.

So first day we didn’t see much of the nice lake around Te Anau. We did make a visit to the glowworm caves as a rainactivity. Unfortunately we don’t have pict of that, as it wasn’t allowed. Think of it as a dark wet cave, with thousands of small green lights around you, pretty cool, especially if you know these glowworms can only be seen in a couple of places worldwide.

The next day was D-Day for Milford Sound. A 2 hour drive followed by a 3 hour boat cruise should gave us an idea of the beauty of this fjord.
The first of the roadtrip, was as expected, low clouds and no view on mountains whatsoever.
But once we got higher up the road, the weather turned and we got some blue sky and clear views.

Once we were on the cruise, we had misty conditions again, but even then this is really an amazing place. The low clouds really gave an extra edge.

The Milford Sound is a fjord surrounded by mountains that rise from the sea to up to 1600m, I can only try to explain, and even the pictures don’t do it justice, but we were convinced it is one of the prettiest sceneries we have ever seen…and we have seen some

We are now in the most Southern part of New Zealands South Island : the catlins

This is a coastal area with lots of wildlife.
On day one we could put a check to some of the animals on our wishlist :

Sealions, relaxing and sunbading on the beach

Pinguïns : endangered yellow eyed pinguïn, comming ashore at night

Dolphins : Rare Hector dolphins, spotted near the coastline during sunset (kind of hard to photograph)

And some other fun things :

Trees, that had a bad hairday because of the wind

And pita everywhere…

We vinden het superleuk dat jullie aan ons denken !!

We zijn superblij vandaan ! We hebben vandaag een aantal diertjes gezien die we echt wilden zien.

Eerder al zagen we een aantal zeehondjes die aan het zonnen waren in Milford sound.

Maar vandaag vonden wij het antwoord op Niels zijn vraag…
Er zijn hier wel degelijk leeuwen…
Zeeleeuwen :

Daarna vonden we een strand waar er pinguïns aan wal kwamen :

En bij onze wandeling bij zonsondergang zagen we dolfijnen in de zee ( maar die zijn een beetje moeilijk ze fotograferen) maar als je goed zoekt kan je ze zien…

Nu hopen we enkel nog een walvis te vinden, dat zou super zijn !

Before we head to lake Wanaka, we first make a stop at lake Matheson, this is a smaller lake, but famous because when the sky is clear, you get nice reflections of the surrounding mountains. No luck for us, but a fun walk in mystic rainforest.

The drive to lake Wanaka is one of the best we did so far. Especially between lake Wanaka and lake Hawea.
The scenary has suddenly changed the green rainforest for brownish grassy slopes.

First day we take it slow, relaxing on the beach, icecream, day off for the kids.
Next day back to business : Mount Iron. This was probably slightly too hard for T and I, because it is a steep climb to the top of the mountain. They managed in 3 hours, but it was not their best hiking day. The view on the top and the ices in town made up for that.

After some relaxing on the beach we drove a part of tomorrows route and found an overnight area on top of the crown ridge mountains, with view on Queenstown. Except for a other camper we have the place for ourselves. Nice view for aperotime!

Nekt day, the capital of thrills : Queenstown
First stop the suspension bridge over Karawau River. The place weer they invented bungeejumping…
A huge modern complex allows people to make the 40m historica’ bridge jump. Inside the building you can watch everything on a big screen. Business at its best.

Because of the rain we keep our first day simple and make reservations in the minus 5° bar. Where everything is made out of ice, even the glasses. Fun !

We have better luck with the weather the next day, and we take the skyline gondolas to Bobs peak. From there you have a Great view on Queenstown and its lake.
We then drive all the way up Coronet peak 1648m and try to climb to the top, but halfway we take the right decision to turn back, we had another hour of very step terrain waiting and that would have been too much.

A quick stop at shotover river, where they take the small canyon with a 100horsepower jetboat. We keep it safe and have a beer instead 🙂

We are now on our way to Te Anau, for what should most likely be the highlight of our journey…

Dag vriendjes,

Het is al even geleden, maar wij stellen het supergoed hier.
We hebben al zoveel gezien en meegemaakt dat we het eigenlijk al niet goed meer weten 🙂

We hebben vulkanen gezien, met helikopter gevlogen naar de sneeuw, zeehonden gezien, veel gewandeld ( wat we niet altijd zo leuk vonden), ijsjes gegeten ( wat we super leuk vonden) en op het strand gespeeld.

Af en toe kijken we naar de foto die we meekregen, want we beginnen onze vriendjes toch wel te missen.

Morgen gaan we naar een grot om gloeiwormpjes te bekijken, wat is dat nu weer ??

Hopelijk is in de klas ook alles goed.
We hebben al veel van de werkjes gemaakt die we van de juf meekregen. Meestal doen we dat op de mooiste plekjes 🙂

Tot gauw dikke knuffel
Tanne en Inse

After an amazing Ferry Crossing we arrived in Abel tasman Np. We thought spending some days here and enjoying the very nice beaches. However rain was our part. This park is very famous for kayaking the bays and beaches. This was however something we could not do. So we took a scenic boattour. Big mistake ! We were stuck for three hours on a taxi boat picking up hikers and kayakkers. At least we could see some seals playing around. It might have been the weather or the tiredness, because of the horrible night we had on a carpark in Nelson, but we decided to get going instead of staying in the park.

 

The next day was a better one, a lot of driving, but with a lot of stops.
First there was new zealands longest swingbridge. Another fear conquered for Tanne.

Then we visited a seal colony at the coast of Westport. Tanne and Inse loved to see the seals bading in the sun…

Next were the pancake rocks at Punakaiki.
It turned out that it wasn’t what Tanne expected 😉
But some very nice natural wonder at the coast.

Another longer drive took us to the Alps where we wanted to see the glaciers. There are only a few glaciers in the world that descent to sealevel, and Franz Josef and Fox Glacier do that surrounded by tropical rainforest.
We did a longer hike to the base of the glacier. Inse and Tanne walked for nearly 3 hours now!!

We rewarded ourselves with a visit to the hotpools. The girls seemed to love it 🙂

Next day was time for our highlight : a scenic helicopterflight above the glaciers and snowlanding on top… WoW, wow wow that was very worth the money spend… Especially after the free upgrade we got from the owner !
Normally i need to walk for several hours or days for such a views, but this was a nice present to ourselves.

 
 





Laters.

Tongariro national park is famous for its volcanoes and thermal areas.

There are thee main volcanoes in the park : mount Ngauruhoe ( Mount Doom in the lord of the Rings), mt Ruapehu and mount Tongariro. Mt Ngauruhoe is the most eye-catching one as it had a “standard” conical look.

Apart from hiking there is not much to do in the park, so guess what, we hiked. We started with a small hike 30 mins to a waterfall and on the same day did another 40 mins ridge walk. That gave us a first view of the typical vulcano mt doom.

Tanne and Inse did very well on those so the next day we could do a 2hrs walk to Taraniki waterfalls. Amazingly Inse did complete nearly the whole walk. Not bad for a three year old.
As a reward we treated ourselves with chairlift to the highest restaurant in Nz. At 2020m we enjoyed the sun on the panoramic terras, what a view !

The real maincourse in Tongariro is the world famous Tongariro Alpine Crossing, a 8hrs, 20km hike in beween the volcanoes, a trophee Steven could not resist. So next morning he took an early start and at 7am he started his walk. Hoping to be back at 2pm so we had enough time to hit the road. You can read the outcome of that Crossing in a separate post. But at 12 he was back at the campground after a 4hr 30mins hike…

We hit the road with a long stretch to wellington in front of us. There a no real highlights in beween, so drive, drive, drive. But we ended with a free overnight with the camper right on the beach, perfect!

The Wellington day was one of those day to forget… In short : no parking in the city for our camper, no campground , so no visit.
20min drive to a extremely expensive campground…

The Ferry Crossing itself was something we looked forward to, not only because it did bring us to the scenic south island, but also because the last hour go through the amazing Marlborough Sounds, some kind of fjord. That alone makes it worthwhile…

We left rotorua, but not without seeing another thermal park. We had high expectations for this park, based on pictures we saw. It had a big geyser and stunning vulcanic pools. The first part was a marketing rip-off. The geyser was artificial and activitated daily by adding some kind of soap. But the park itself was very nice. A 3 km hike with the champagne pool (what else) as our personal highlight. A boiling blue lake with brown and green colours on the edges.

We decided to skip Hobitton and Waitomo glowworm caves, these were either too expensive for some hairy feet midgets or too far a drive for a 20 minute tour in a cave. Sorry to all the Lord of the Rings fans, we will make it up with you later.

As a small compensation we did the detour to Te Puke, which is the kiwi capital of NZ. We now know everything about kiwi’s ( the fruit, not the bird, nor the people). Kiwi360 is a working plantage where one can get a ride in some kind of kiwitrain. We now know how kiwi’s are grown. All new zealand kiwi’s are for export to europe. The kiwi’s we are rating in new zealand are imported from Italy. Humane logic…

We headed to lake Taupo, the largests lake of new zealand. This is more a nice place for a stopover on the way down. Before we arrived there we had to stop at huka falls. These are nice falls, but seemed to be even nicer if you are in one of the jetboats, making a 360spin just underneath the falls. We chose a visit to the prawn farm instead. We weren’t overly excited about that at first, but it turned out to be a nice discovery park and at the end we could fish for our own prawns. The once we got, we could cook and eat right away. Because of all that, tanne en inse suddenly like prawn…

Next update be tongariro national park…

Ps we are not impressed by the Maori look… We too can look mad!

We had to find a good rythm to travel the first days, but now we seem to have find a good balance between wanting to see a lot ( hence drive some more) and keeping the kids satisfied (read beach and playtime). One of our first highlights was cathedral cove near hahei beach. A 45 minute walk to a Thailand/krabi like rockformation in the sea. I wont try to explain, see for yourself :

From there we decided to go down directly toRotorua, the geothermal capital of new zealand. Boiling mudpools, hot water beaches, geysers, and as Tanne says: “the smell of eggs”.

We also, learnt interesting things about Maori culture, allthough we had to convince tanne and inse these Maori are not always mad… The big eyes and tongues out is just a part of the haka to scare the enemy off 🙂

We decided to skip hobbiton and waitomo glowworms cave. A hard decision, but they were either too expensive or too far away. Sorry to all the hobbit and lotr fans… But we added Kiwi360 ! Yeah, we now know everything about the kiwi’s you eat…