Yes - I fixed the date thing!! More photos too.

Clifden Suspension Bridge. We kid you not. Hilarious!









Us yesterday on the drive to the Fjordland. Taken by Bastian (German hitchhiker chap).







What happens when crap tourists scare seal lions so they can get a better photo by prodding it with their foot to make it sit up....



*&%*s. This poor pup ended up in the road, very upset and confused.








Mother and baby on the beach next to our campsite.

Some photos posted 26 Jan - ignore settings

Sea lion. You can see why we almost missed him. Blends in.











Martin walking to some of the caves before the tide came in...









View from back of our van in the Catlins









This is what the men get up to when our backs are turned...

Le Bon Internet...

Family Simpson (minus the little one)

Kara and her mum on the Banks Peninsula

Martin swims, Marguerite wraps up in 5 layers of clothing...

Stewart Island

(first - apologies for no contact for a while but the blog site has been playing up!! Also, the date formatting is a bit off. This is written today on the 26 Jan).

So, we headed off along the Catlins towards Invercargill...sounds Scottish - yes, that's cos those wee travellers hit these lands and made this area their own. The city feels Scottish (think Glasgow not the Highlands).

It is also where you head out to NZ's third largest island (contrary to the usual naming system, not called "More South Island")- Stewart Island.

With the benefit of about 30 mins planning outside the tourist office, we booked ourselves on a ferry to the island and a 3 day trek...covering 36km of a mere part of the island.

Well. It is GORGEOUS! The island has 400 people on it, in one town. The rest is nature reserve. This is the place to come to see NZ wildlife that hasn't been destroyed by introduced species.

So, we set off on Day 1 to the first hut. Great walk up and down hills, following the coast. Plenty of golden beaches and native forest. Jungle but nice, safe jungle (no nasties).

The hopes of the obssessive Finnish guy we were in the hut with of seeing a kiwi in the wild seemed a bit dashed at this hut by a few things:
1) someone had cats loose up there. Cats eat Kiwi.
2) There were possums. They enjoy the food kiwi eat and are better at it.
3) There were white tailed deer. See above.

Still, that didn't stop the OCD Finn getting up at 1am to go see if a Kiwi had managed to get past all these hurdles...

Day 2 was a killer. Think climbing stairs. Up and down. Board-walk on hills. Stairs for 10km. Great. Luckily, when the fun couple, Karin and Richard, we'd also met at the hut caught up with us, we went for a swim. Ahhh. Bliss.

The Finn was also in this next hut. Getting up at 1am to see...Kiwi...and rustle... and bang doors... he was not a popular man!!

Day 3, back to Oban, the only settlement.

Events of note:

• we met a Mountie!! A real life Canadian mountie. His sharp eyes picked up human blood on the floor of the first hut. We have a mountie... we have a remote hut with a group of strangers... we have blood on the floor... we see a Hollywood horror...
• note the only horror was the Finn snoring
• we met a couple who were trekking...she was 8 months pregnant! We're torn between horror and respect
• Luckily Richard had trained as a nurse, the mountie and Martin would run back for help, Karin had a pan gripper which could double up as forceps, and Kara could boil water... all options were covered
• we ate Karin and Richard's food and borrowed their gaiters... then decided not to do the 7 hour walk in knee deep mud... sorry guys....
• there is one more event of note.

Event of note by Martin Stanford

The trick to spotting Kiwi in the wild is to keep your ears pricked for rustling in the undergrowth. It is then very important to keep looking at the spot where you heard the rustling. Otherwise you may find yourself telling your husband to pay attention while the little feathered bugger runs across the path behind you. This is possibly the funniest thing that has ever happened to me.

Kara's version

Words cannot describe how bitter I feel about hearing the damned, rarely seen in the wild, creature, turning to tell the galumphing wally behind me to be quiet cos there was something in the bushes, only for Martin to see a KIWI, yes, a rare KIWI, run behind me. It's ok, he made me feel better by spending the whole day saying "I'm sorry, I'm only talking to people who have seen a wild kiwi". GRRRRRRRR.

The rest...

After the tramp (NZ for hike), we went back to Oban and chilled out and showered (hooray!). We ate fish and chips instead of super noodles - fish caught that day too. Then yesterday we went to Ulva Island - a bird sanctuary. Little birdies everywhere!! Coming up to you to have a look and even trying to eat Martin's shoe. It was great. No sighting of the bird that shall not be named though.

Now we're back on the mainland and heading to Fiordland, with a young German hitchhiker in tow (he seemed happy to wait while we did our chores). Mums, don't worry, he is a nice young man, with no facial tatoos.

Martin's parents are now in NZ so we'll see them soon too. Hooray!

Sorry - we wrote this on the 20th Jan...

.... but due to technical issues we couldn't publish it!!

It's not every night you get to go to sleep, with your van overlooking a remote, wave lashed, beach, while a great big sea lion wanders around looking for a spot to sleep. We kind of knew the Catlins was a bit off the beaten track. This was confirmed at the local tourist office, staffed by volunteers, who when we said we wanted to relax said, "Not much else goes on round here". Also, when you ask where you can buy bread from and the answer is given in kilometres, then you get there to find it is frozen bread only, it kind of confirms it.

Fortunately, we have calulated that the most cost effective food to buy round here is carrot cake and we are also still stocked up from David and Marguerite's generosity.

There are several modes of weather that can be experienced round here. Overcast and rainy. Sunny but windy. Right now we have an interesting sunny, overcast, rainy and windy effect going on.... Well, we were told to expect a UK summer, and it's damned near identical to the last few UK summers, but with sea lions and less working.

The Catlins has lots of little beaches, tracks, waterfalls, and hidden gems to explore. Yesterday was a "follow the brown sign day". These signs indicate the local tourist attractions. We saw a couple of pretty waterfalls but our favourite so far has been the Cathedral Caves. These are large caves,accessed via a long, sandy beach. You can only get into the caves at low tide, and even then have to wade a bit through knee deep water to get to another set of caves. The fun was increased by going to the back of the massive caves and making goblin noises. Please note: only one of us did that and it wasn't Kara.

We also spent two nights at Curio Beach. On one side of our campsite was a long protected, sandy beach (3 miles long) called Porpoise Bay. Allegedly 20 dolphins live here but they are VERY elusive. On the other side is Curio Bay, which has a fossilised Jurassic forest, only visible on the sea floor when the tide is out. It's also home, (again allegedly), to 5 families or rare yellow eyed penguins.

Special things we have done:
- gone to a remote campsite on the basis of "there's always a good walk you can do from those campsites" only to discover that it was boxed in by cliffs, ocean and farmland. The only walking option was back down the dirt track we drove in on.

- Had to spend two nights at said campsite because a certain member of team Stanford accidentally stuck two nights fees in the honesty box, and having spent that £3 we were damned well going to stay there

- almost walked into a 1 tonne, full grown, aggressive, adult male sea-lion on the beach, because "we weren't really looking where we were going". This caused much amusement to German wild life spotters. We know that sea-lions are dangerous. As our guide on a tour we did last time we were out here said "If a sea-lion approaches you, it wants to do one of three things - play with you, fight you, or make love to you. All 3 involve biting."

- It has come to Martin's attention that sea-lions are a bit like his old uni flatmate. Sometimes they are on the beach sleeping, sometimes they are elsewhere. But you never ever see the transition from one state to another.

- Thought we saw a dolphin, only to discover it was a seagull, doing a dolphin impression (it had a wing stuck up like a dorsal fin, the tricky bugger).

- Averaged approximately 20 minutes per new campsite, attempting to ensure van is perfectly flat. Not had much success but at least now we can figure out which way we are sloping so we put out the pillows so we sleep without waking up with a head full of blood.

- Totally failed to see the penguins coming in on the dead cert "Everyone sees a penguin" beach. Off again later to give it a second go.

In summary, the weather hates us, the wildlife spurns us, the Germans laugh at us, but our camper van is cosy, and we are full of carrot cake. Oh yeah, and we haven't been to work for more than 150 days.


UPDATE: we got to see the penguins coming in. Hooray!!!

Time with the Parents Pt 2

So we are making good use of Kara's parents time in New Zealand by staying in as many forms of accommodation as we can. The first 3 nights saw us in a lovely B&B in the "town" of Waikuku beach. Highlights of this accommodation include:

• they let us park our van outside and we slept in that but got to use all their facilities
• a 52" screen tv with a DVD list of over 300 films... categorised...we're talking serious geekdom
• an owner (the woman) who was well up for a game of "how much can you get the blonde English man to eat for breakfast"
• comedy injured pets - cat with tube sticking out of its neck (very disturbing) and horrid little yippy dog that tried to bite everyone.
• 20 minutes walk via a lagoon from a very very pretty beach

We spent time in the local area sampling hot chocolates, cakes, and going out for dinner. Pleasant with a capital PL.

We've now moved to the rural and coastal "French" settlement of Akaroa. A pretty little harbour village on the Banks Peninsula. There is "Le Bon Internet", "La Boucherie du Village", "La Gendarmarie - Police". It's like being on a set of 'Allo 'Allo... basically, two hundred years ago the French set this place up, then the English got to claim NZ. Anyway, it is very cute here and picture perfect.

The French are actually the reason NZ is a non-nuclear country. in the 1990s, the Greenpeace anti-nuclear ship, the Rainbow Warrior, was attacked in Auckland Harbour, by the French Special Forces. The Kiwis were outraged that this had happened on their water and even more pisseed off by the lack of international censure. It kind of spurred the Kiwis on to taking a stand and then they passed the law on no nuclear.

Anyway, we part company with Kara's parents tomorrow. The weather has cheered up so it'll be back to solar showers, instant noodles, peanut butter and crackers, and cereal combined with so many oats (cheap and bulks it out) it's almost a form of homeopathy...

This is the nice thing about a van - see a lovely spot, whip the chairs out, have lunch with a view.

Mount Cook. Awesome!

More of Mt Cook National Park.

This is how we left Mt Cook National Park....

Lake Wanaka. View of sunset from our campsite. We were here before in 2005. It's still as nice.

Lake Wanaka

Kara's Dad! See, we did meet up with them! On a boat trip from Queenstown.

Martin on the walk from our remote campsite.

Art Deco!

Washing on a rainy day...

Moeraki boulders (Martin wants the caption "Nice pair of boulders". Sigh.)

It's a long, wet summer....

Simpsons Divided
After a pleasant afternoon frequenting cafes and visiting a great historic site (ie the park where Ben proposed to Juliette - note, we chose not to reenact the other great historic event that took place after the proposal. How is the little lady?), Mum and Dad Simpson (not to be confused with Mum and Dad Stanford who will meet us out here in February), treated us to a scrumptious meal at their hotel. Melt in your mouth meat washed down with fine wine. Mmmm. Meat. Not so much of that recently.

However, all good things come to an end, and as we left in their 4 star hotel room, ready to continue the tour, we hit the road again.

We'll be Ma and Pa Simpson again in Christchurch soon - monitor the blog for the next thrilling installment.


The day the solar shower wasn't an option
With our hearts empty but our bellies full, we headed out into the New Zealand summer. Which upsettingly is turning out to be remarkably like an English summer. Think grey. Think cold. Think rain. Think wind. Apparently this is all Australia's fault (a wind is heading out from Tasmania, then picking up the Antarctic wind before dumping on NZ).

We hit Arrowtown, an old mining town which is a bit twee now but the walk through the old Chinese settlement was interesting (the message was: oi, you lot can come here, work hard, get gold, but don't expect rights or dignity and go home when you are done. Depressingly familiar). We cunningly made it in and out of Arrowtown before the majority of the coach parties arrived (because our concrete jungle campsite wouldn't give us our $10 deposit back if we didn't leave by 10am SHARP).

After the bustle of Queenstown, we fancied a change and headed to the very unknown Maniatoto region. Bliss. No people. Few conurbations. Many sheep. Arresting scenery. Our campsite was a real contrast to the last one - free site, 2 other groups there, in a large field with one composting loo and a tap. Heaven! Interesting population of red ants in the toilet though but fortunately they were being kept in check by a large spider.

We set off on a walk the next morning, cheerfully leaving the solar shower out to heat out. Well. The views were great. We saw no-one else for the whole 2 hour walk. We climbed to the highest hill. Fantastic. Shame we walked the last 20 minutes in a hail storm. The solar shower covered in a layer of ice wasn't that attractive.

Ranfurly
In the 1990s the tiny town of Ranfurly was hit hard by the economic depression. They had several workshops to see what could be done. One woman realised that all the original 1930s Art Deco buildings were quite unique and could be a real draw. So they began regenerating the buildings. It's great. Art Deco hotel, library, hospital, garage... loads of the little buildings in that distinctive clean line and use of colour style. It's drawn a steady flow of tourists to the town since.

While Kara was busy following the Art Deco walk through town, Martin discovered a butcher selling cheap eggs, luxurious meat filled pies (£2.50 for 2!!!) and good bacon. You may draw your own conclusions as to who the most valuable member of Team Stanford is.

Stuff we have discovered:
• It's due to rain for the rest of summer. (please, nobody tell Martin's parents....)
• life is better with a belly full of steak and ale pie
• we are next to the sea. We kind of missed this on our map. It was a bit of a shock to drive over a hill and be confronted by a beach.
• Hail + wind + sunburnt nose = ouch
• We drove past Shag Point. It amused us 4 years ago. It amused us today. We still haven't grown up. Not as amusing as Colonial Knob Hill though.
• We like having a notebook pc. Thank you Marguerite and David! We are sat in our van, while drinking cups of tea and writing this...
• ...this makes a nice change from sitting among teenagers playing violent computer games.
• However, wifi in this country is a rip off. We think we may be reduced to driving round towns trying to find a private network that hasn't been secured properly. Yes, Martin is a geek. He makes no apologies.
• The Kiwis grumble just as much about the weather as the British do
• Kara still fancies David Tennant. Caught an episode of Dr Who last night. Magic.
• We are really really glad we got a camper van and not a tent. It's been freezing at night. Last night we had 2 duvets and a sleeping bag over us. Still a bit cold.
• We LOVE our camper van and would happily export it back to the UK if this were an option.

2010 so far...

We're very disappointed to see a distinct lack of space ships and robots... instead it's looking very much like 2009 but without having to go to work
every morning, so we're pretty happy!

We did follow through our NYE plan and ended up drinking a lot of cheap red wine and then spoiling ourselves in the local pub, which sold cake. Everyone's a winner.

Stuff we have done so far:
- 2010 began with our first hangover in some time. It was like welcoming a much loved but slightly irritating uncle

- We've driven a lot and seen some awesome / resplendent scenery. Have we mentioned what a beautiful country this is?

- We've also done much high quality relaxing in various bucolic campsites, often with little birds twittering around us (it's like a Disney movie - we're followed by wildlife wherever we go...)

- We had a few nights of 3 in the van as it felt too cruel to out our friend Suzanne in her tent in the 120kmph winds, torrential rain and general flooding.

- Fortunately she is the queen of snacks so we felt well rewarded for our generosity!

- We saw Mount Cook. Breath taking. We drove to it in blazing sunshine on a clear summer day. It still has snow on it! There are glaciers there! Stunning.

- We left Mount Cook in a bit of a hurry. Having survived a night of torrential rain and storms, we had a knock on our window at 9am...it was the local DOC guy saying "You can leave now or stay for a long time. The creek is rising..." As Suzanne said, I wondered why I saw what loooked like a naked man driving his camper van out in a hurry."

- We revisited a favourite spot from last time, Lake Wanaka, and enjoyed the 7km walk to town. The three of us then depressed ourselves looking at technical clothing we couldn't afford. We cheered ourselves up with ice-cream and cake.


Simpsons Reunited
The time had come - ma and pa Simpson would be in the same location as us! Having checked into our idea of holiday hell (a campsite where you are rammed in with a piece of concrete each, charged a lot of money, and then you have to pay $1 for the shower!!!), we eagerly awaited the arrival of Simpsons Senior.

They did not disappoint. They came ladened with toiletries, clothes, CDs and books. Martin was particulary impressed by the fact that David has not been allowed to use his hotel room toiletries as Marguerite has been saving them for us (parental sacrifice score: 8). While Kara enjoyed being reunited with her parents, Martin enjoyed walking on carpet for the frist time in a month .

We got a slice of their tour life, as we got to go on their fun bus and then do a boat trip on the lake Queenstown is on to an all you can eat buffet meal. Martin went up for mains 3 times and desert 3 times. We also got to watch a sheep being sheared. The look in the farmer's eye when some well meaning person asked "Does the sheep enjoy being sheared?" was priceless. We also got to watch a sheep dog round up some sheep. This $2000 (£1000) collie was a bit new and young and didn't quite get it right... Welsh relatives with border collies may wish to consider setting up an export industry....This reminds us. If anyone is wondering what the South Island Kiwi character is like, they put up statues to their border collies...Big thanks to parents (in law) for taking us on that meal and trip. Great fun and really nice to have a meal together.

Their tour sounds like great fun but slightly gruelling... people were looking with longing in their eyes when we said we sometimes had 12 hours sleep a night...

While Marguerite and David had a spa morning complete with relaxing massage, Martin went on a run followed by a cold shower ( a dollar less on hot water is an extra dollar more for beer) while Kara did the laundry and began on the books her dad brought out.

We're now happily hanging out in their hotel room (mmm... carpet...mmm...not having to put shoes on to go to the bathroom...mmm...about to use free wifi connection...mmm... mirrors, turns out we do have tans...mmm.... Christmas presents....) drinking tea.