Travels in the North and South Island

Hello and Happy Xmas to you all!! (yes, it's tomorrow but hey, we won't be online then!).

Well, team Stanford successfully negotiated the windy Crook Straits, between the North and South Islands of New Zealand. To be fair, the crossing was as flat as a pancake. The most painful bit was having to watch some truly awful films enroute.

Before we left the North Island we did have a few little adventures...

... we made it to New Zealand's capital city, Wellington... imagine England's capital city the last Saturday before Xmas... then imagine the opposite... we got off our train in the city's main train station... and there was NO-ONE there - apart from other confused looking tourists. Seriously, you could have cluster bombed the place and only caused a few minor grazes...We struggled to find our way to the "heart" of the city as there was no-one to ask...

Anyway, we did make our way through the deserted streets (Saturday at midday!! Half the shops were shut!!) to our destination. We feared the Zombie Apocalypse, but these fears were unfounded.

After arranging a rather nice B&B for Kara's parents when we see them out here in Jan (Hooray!!), we went to the Te Papa museum. Awesome. Worth a trip to Wellington just for that. Even Martin loved it and he hates museums, and culture, and being educated (Please note this is not a failing on his parents' behalf but his own fault. They tried, poor people. That is why we have been away for 4 months and only been in 4 museums.Sigh). The highlight was a preserved collossal squid, complete with video of it being caught. Amazing. There was also loads of interactive stuff (things to bang, jump on, spin, touch, crawl into, watch etc). We even watched a 3D film.

Other things of note were that Martin ran up Colonial Knob Hill. This amused us greatly. We are regressing.

South Island

We spent two days at the Abel Tasman National Park. You know when you see a postcard of paradise like beaches, with white sand, turquoise water and little islands in the bays.. they're taken at the Abel Tasman.

Team Stanford looked a bit silly when one evening we went for a swim as the tide was going out. The water level drops by 4metres at this time of the year. Martin walked out about 300m and was still only knee deep. Sheep faced, we walked the long way back to shore!

THE thing to do here is the Abel Tasman coastal track (3 to 4 days). We had no time for that so we did the next best option. We took a water taxi (!) to a spot 23km up the coast and walked back from there. Like most of their kind, our taxi driver was chatty, fun, and gave us a mini sight seeing tour as we sped up the coastline (really sped. He was running late). The only mistake we made was deciding to cut the last 3 km of the track out as we were bored of it and walking it across the beach at low tide. Yes, we ended up wading through pools of water and walking on squidgy sand. The previous 20km didn't hurt but the last 3 did!

Christmas Plans
We're now settled into Collingwod for Xmas. This is a small (50 houses, one pub) village at the north of Golden Bay (Golden Bay - does what it says). We booked a B&B before we left the UK, one that Ben and Juliette stayed in. It has become obvious that we were much more discerning in our choice of accommodation back when we had salaries! The place is gorgeous! We have our own bedroom and bathroom plus full use of the whole house with dining room, 2 living rooms, a fully equppied kitchen, laundry room, 2 verandahs, and decking for the garden. Pete (the owner) has already put the BBQ out for us for tomorrow. www.lewishouse.co.nz if you want to see more.

The best bit is it's right on the beach front. we had breakfast on the verandah overlooking the sea this morning, in the sun. We hear about your white Xmas and raise you...

Last night we went cockle hunting at low tide and now have a bucket of cockles waiting for us to cook them up for dinner tonight.

Tomorrow, Xmas day, we are joined by a friend of Kara's, who's also travelling. We have meat. we have beer. We have the cheapest Xmas pudding money can buy. We have the sun. We'll miss you all, but it's going to be great :-)