Moving on...

We finally booked ourselves on a ferry to the South Island so drove from Taupo to Wellington one incredibly windy day. Thankfully Sean did all the driving but it wasn’t much fun with a loaded van. We spent a few days there and met up with Askea and Rea again. In Wellington we toured around a bit and saw the Botanic Gardens, had a spin on the cable car, saw the new and old St. Paul’s Cathedrals. We also took the mountain bikes out for a spin in Lower Hutt one morning. A free tour is run in the Parliament Buildings so we took that opportunity to see inside the “Beehive” and elsewhere. We learned something interesting on the tour too: when notices of pending legislation are put in the paper anyone, whether a national or just a tourist there for a couple of weeks, can write in and request an oral hearing where they can voice their concerns over the legislation. This cannot be denied, so when the cabinet are considering it the person can attend the entire meeting and has absolute freedom of speech while he/she is sitting in the meeting. Apparently it’s not abused, though I’m sure it might not run as smoothly at home!

And so, on Friday 25^th January, 3 ½ months after arriving in New Zealand, we finally boarded the ferry to the South Island.

On arrival, we slowly drove towards Nelson, stopping in Blenheim for breakfast and again in Pelorus Bridge for lunch at the side of the river. We couldn’t resist taking a dip too in the heat of the day. When we arrived in Nelson we went straight to Maree and Ross’ house as instructed! They are both Kiwi’s but Maree sometimes comes over to Ireland and works with Sean’s mum, so Sean met with her this summer in Ireland and she invited us to visit. They were great hosts as we stayed with them for a few days, doing more mountain biking and also going to the Da Vinci exhibibtion running in Nelson at the moment. It was really interesting as it had small models of his drawings together with computer graphics of how some of his machines worked.

We dragged ourselves away from Nelson and drove up to the base of the Abel Tasman National Park, another popular walking track. As we weren’t prepared for camping out overnight, we couldn’t do the 2/3 day walk all the way around the headland, so instead we arranged to get a boat to drop us about seven hours up the track at Bark Bay and we would walk out. The scenery was best from the water, but the walk was nice under the cover of the trees. We stopped for lunch at Stillwater Beach and had a swim before carrying on, the entire walk taking us about 4 ½ hours.

The next day we started heading further south to meet up with some other Irish paddlers. We stopped in Murchison, which is a busy centre for kayakers, but due to the lack of water there at the moment it was nearly deserted! Apparently it’s the best summer they’ve had for about 15 years, which is doing wonders for my tan, but not so good for the kayaking! As it was so quiet, we carried on to Greymouth that evening and met our friends in Hokitika the next day.

January 2008

Since New Years, and changing the van, we spent a while in Auckland doing up the interior, but we did manage to fit in a few fun things like going roller blading in Mission Bay – I didn’t fall! Once the Homy was ready to rock we went back down to Taupo.

One evening Sean, Jeanine and I walked up Mount Tauhara which is quite near Taupo and gave us great views of the lake and town. That was a warm up for the Tongariro Crossing, a popular walk through Tongariro National Park. The walk first climbs up to the base of Mount Ngaurahoe, which was Mount Doom in the Lord of the Rings films. We were tempted to go up Ngaurahoe until it got hidden in the clouds – as there is no track up it (and it’s quite a steep climb) people are advised not to do it unless there’s very good visibility. So we continued along the track through a remarkably flat basin before climbing again to the Red Crater. From there we decided to go up the side track to the top of Mount Tongariro, a round trip that is supposed to take a few hours but only took us one. Carrying on down the path we passed the Emerald lakes and some great scenery before arriving at the end just 6 hours 20 minutes after leaving the start. We only walked for about 5 hours 30 minutes in all on the track too, despite the guidelines suggesting what we walked should take over 10 hours! Sean was on a mission to complete the walk as soon as possible! It is a very good walk through some amazingly barren scenery.

Our new bikes arrived while we were in Taupo so we set off with Tim and some others one evening to go biking. With a little confusion about how far away the track was, we finally arrived at Ikawhenua Range two hours and 120 km later. It was getting dark but we hadn’t driven all that way to not go biking, so out came the bikes, and the two torches that we had between seven of us… It was good fun though, trying to keep on the track in the dark! Another day Sean and I took a spin in Taupo on the track between Spa Park and Huka Falls, which was a great easy run. Sean has to be patient with me, a beginner biker!

Changing our van

We started hunting for a new van – the Emina is getting a bit too cramped as we gather more and more toys! We took a look through Taupo, Rotorua, Hamilton and Auckland and vans were few and far between.

However, just after Christmas we got a call from Jason saying he had found us a van, so we drove down to Taupo to check it out. It was a lovely clean high roof Nissan Homy with a tow bar that is running well so we quickly shook on the deal and trotted off to the bank.

After spending an afternoon cleaning up the Emina we drove both vehicles up to Auckland and checked the Emina into the Backpackers Car Market. After just a few hours patiently waiting a very tired and jet lagged Austrian arrived in with his son looking for a van that he and his wife could sleep in at night, but that they could also transport their two children in with them by day. Our shiny van stood out and suited them perfectly and so, happy with the $200 profit we were making on the van, we waved goodbye to the Emina and happily went back to the bank. As a tip for you all – shine up your vehicle before you try to sell it! Well worth the effort.

Having sold the Emina we turned our attention to the new Homy. We got tinting for the windows in the 25% off sale in Supercheap Autos, saving a few more pennies, and spent a day putting it on. It’s hard work but well worth it. We discovered that putting sudsy water on the tint and the windows works really well – next boat I put contact on is going to be brilliant!

Before getting the van we’d spread the word that we were looking for one, so our friend Greg who is a builder thought of us when his company were about to throw out some lovely plywood. We used that wood to make our bed in the back of the van. Another friend who is building a house also had some off cuts of wood around and we used them to make a chest and shelving as well.

The next step was putting in curtains, so we bought some great material for $3 per metre and I got down to sewing.

After all that, we’re pretty happy with the new van and happier still that we were able to buy some bikes (nicely discounted due to being “earthquake damaged”) and fit all our clothes, boats and bikes in the van!