.
Less than an hour since I left the hotel & I'm checked in, through security - Express Lane of course and had a snack. Aircraft leaves 15.10 so not too long to wait.
First flight to Singapore is 10hrs 50 minutes 5524 miles, arriving 21.00.
I then has a 4hr 10min Stopover at Changi Airport. Flight to LHR departs 01.10am (Friday) arriving LHR 7.45am 13hrs 3mins 6763 miles. 27hrs 35mins from take off here to landing LHR!! Hope I can sleep?
The Big Yellow Bus is known as the Explorer Bus in Auckland and acts as the Hop-on Hop-off service. I boarded the bus at stop 2 the Sky Tower with a very efficient lady who seemed not only to be issuing the tickets but also controlling the positions and timings of the buses enroute. For example, once I had my ticket this lady announced that the next bus would be along shortly. Just at that moment the driver of this bus called her on the radio to say that he was at stop 9 (The last on the route) and preparing to drive-off to Stop 1. The classic response from the 'Lady Controller' was "Clarence could you Womble along please I have two passengers to join you at Stop 2 and a further two to buy tickets." We had plenty of time to join 'Uncle Bulgaria" (My naming) at Stop 2 to begin our journey.
Whilst waiting, I watched several courageous individuals taking a controlled fall from 192 metres up on the Auckland Sky Tower. So not a bungee jump but free falling between two fixed wires to a landing platform above the street. I will certainly not be taking that route out of the Restaurant later this evening.
The whole of Level 2 of the Museum is a memorial to New Zealand infantry, air force and navy who gave their lives in Japan, Greece, Gallipoli and many other theatres of war – see photo. This Museum like the Maritime Museum also covers the arrival of the Mauri's and how their culture and language developed. The final section was devoted to natural history and the photo shows some Kiwis.
I'll cover the visit to the Sea Life Centre in a further post otherwise the photos take up too much bandwidth and the post will not 'send'.
Yesterday -Tuesday- I spent the morning at Auckland Zoo and after some orienteering problems I found my way to the Quayside in Auckland Harbour and the Maritime Museum.
Auckland is the largest City in New Zealand with a population of 1.7 million. It's a vibrant city with wide streets but a heavy traffic problem which the Government is attempting to alleviate by building a metro but this in turn requires numerous road works. It is also set on a hill so it's easy walking down from the hotel to the harbour but quite a climb on return.
Although the centre of the city is set out in a grid fashion there are one or two tricky street intersections that unusually for me caused some confusion. The pedestrian crossings are also strictly controlled by lights which with heavy traffic can take some minutes to cross but all in all it's a very pleasant city with lots to do and see.
My first guided tour yesterday was to Auckland Zoo and to the New Zealand collections area described in Wikipedia as follow:
Te Wao Nui – "Te Wao Nui" (a Māori-language phrase meaning "the living realm") features six ecological New Zealand environments; The Coast, The Islands, The Wetlands, The Night, The Forest and The High Country, and is home to more than 60 native New Zealand animal species including a subantarctic fur seal, little penguins, Malherbe's parakeets, Antipodes parakeets, tuataras, New Zealand longfin eels, brown teals, North Island brown kiwis, morepork, Little Barrier giant wētā, kākā, kererū, North Island saddlebacks, tūī, keas, takahē and blue ducks. The habitats also feature 110 different plant species native to New Zealand.
I saw most of this collection including the 4 Kiwis! They are nocturnal so their enclosure is dark during the day with sufficient moonlight to pick them out if you can in the gloom and we were exceptionally lucky to see all 4 fluffed up balls of brown feathers. Even our guide in 5 years had not seen all 4 Kiwis out together. No. photos sadly. I do have photos of many other of the species described above but I have attached a photo of the big male Orangutan with his bedding on his head!! The other photo is of the Giraffe, Zebra and Emu enclosure. An impressive display in which all the animals looked well in the sunshine.
In the afternoon I wound my way down to the quayside to visit the Maritime Museum. Another extensive and well-presented series of displays including how the Pacific was populated by migration from Southeast Asia, the history and culture of the Mauri voyages and the construction of the differing canoes required for long voyages, local fishing and other activities. A hall devoted to migration to NZ in the early 1900s and to the history of dinghy sailing. This proved to be another nostalgic moment for me as one of the boats displayed was a GP 14. I have many happy memories of helping to build a similar craft at Secondary School under the guidance of a Woodwork Master whom every boy adored. He was an ex-veteran from Burma and knew how to inspire confidence and skill in boys. I had many happy hours sailing such a dinghy in the old gravel pits at Rickmansworth in Hertfordshire. The Master's name was Percy Graver.
In the evening, we had the Farewell Gala Dinner. It was a very enjoyable event. Everyone has got on so well and many lasting friendships have been created. Mind you it was late to bed so I'm feeling a bit worse for wear this morning.
I have today at leisure here in Auckland, so I intend taking the Hop-on-Hop-off bus to the Museum and then to the Sea Life Centre. This evening a group of us have booked to eat in the restaurant at the top of the Auckland Sky Tower.
So, this may be the last post until I get home but will try to send one later after the Sky Tower.
Whilst walking to the departure gate I was passed by the crew for my flight. The same crew as yesterday. I was greeted by name by the Flight Supervisor who asked if I had been well looked after overnight and offered to carry one of my cabin bags! No wonder they are considered one of the top airlines.
Photo of our aircraft.
The flight was cancelled at 9.30pm last night. Had to re-enter NZ, reclaim baggage & then take a cab to Marriott Hotel back in Auckland for the night. All paid for of course. Met by a Snr Rep from Singapore Airlines. A major component in one of the wing flaps had failed and needs replacing.
The Airline has been excellent with text and emails updating new flight departures and onward bookings to LHR.
New Flight will now depart midday and arrive Singapore at 17.50 local time but I will then have 6 hour wait until 23.30 for the flight to LHR. I will now arrive 7.55am Saturday morning! 26 hours late!
Middle of the night rang Addison Lee who are picking me up at Heathrow. Automatically identified booking & confirmed it has been moved to tomorrow morning. All courtesy of Singapore Airlines plus. Gift Token for NZ$200.00 as well.
So a bit of an adventure but I have been well looked after.
Sent from my iPhone
Flight rescheduled for 7.30pm. It's now5.30pm. No idea yet about flight to LHR. Will not arrive in Singapore in time at the moment. At least I'm in the Business Class Lounge & not fighting for a meal voucher!
Sent from my iPhone
Our departure now delayed until 10.00pm It's now 8.00pm local time. No guarantee aircraft will be fixed by then. I have been rebooked on Flight from Singapore to LHR at 9.00am Singapore time arriving London 15.40!! Hope I can rearrange pickup! Going off this flying lark!! Standby for further updates!
Sent from my iPhone
The Aircraft has a technical issue. Expected to take 2 to 3 hours to resolve. Will be offloaded to Terminal shortly. Touch & go if will make 2nd flight to London.
Sent from my iPhone
I have about 20 minutes to complete this final post. You should get it about the time I arrive at Heathrow tomorrow morning!
I had a fabulous plant based haut cuisine meal with a final group of 8 travel companions who have become firm friends at the Sugar Cane Bar 192 metres up the Auckland Sky Tower yesterday evening. Magnificent views and one of the best meals I have ever eaten.
Just a couple of photos.
It has been a wonderful experience. I have fallen in love with New Zealand, especially the South Island. I am returning home with 1059 photos and 76 videos, and many happy memories.
I'm in the lobby of the hotel awaiting my pickup in an hour to Auckland Airport for my 3.10pm flight too Singapore. I've just realised that if I don't reset my wristwatch, it will be the correct time and date for when I arrive home tomorrow (Friday) at 7.45am LHR!! I am exactly 12 hours ahead of the UK.
The Auckland Sea Life Centre was one of the best I have seen. I thought Lisbon and Boston were good but Auckland comes very high up the list. You enter through an ice tunnel into a replica of Scott's Antarctic Cabin. Cramped but full of all kinds of equipment and stores including a small hand printing press on which on a weekly basis a member of the team composed and printed a newspaper and of course a treadle operated sewing machine.
Next comes a magnificent display of Gentoo Penguins in a spacious ice and snow filled enclosure. The Gentoos were as funny as I remember then from my Antarctic adventure back in 2011.
The tour ended with a tunnel under a huge tank full of sharks and many other species of fish. I have some excellent video.
The other photo is of Auckland across the harbour.
This evening I'm in Auckland at the Sudima Hotel close to the city centre with the distinctive Sky Tower looming large above my room window. It's a beautiful hotel but once again it has no desk or chair so I'm standing to bring you this post.
Today we have travelled 229km from Rotorua to Auckland via Pukekohe about an hour's drive south of Auckland to join the Glenbrook Vintage Steam Train that runs 7.5 kms from Tuakau to Waiuku and return. We sat in the Parlour and First Class Cars and were served a tea of buttered Hot Cross Buns, two chocolate Macaroons and a small Easter Egg and a cup of tea of course.
The Glenbrook Steam Railway has an excellent website which tells me that:
"The Glenbrook Vintage Railway (GVR) was founded in 1970 but its story starts in 1914 with the construction of the Waiuku Branch Railway.(KIWI Rail).
The Glenbrook Vintage Railway Charitable Trust Board was established by members of the Railway Enthusiasts Society (many of which were working for New Zealand Railways at the time) to preserve, rebuild, and operate the old Waiuku Branch Railway between Glenbrook and Waiuku. Over the years, this bunch of passionate volunteers fundraised to acquire locomotives and carriages from around the country, as well as cutting back the gorse that had overgrown the railway line using machetes. The fully working railway that is the Glenbrook Vintage Railway you see today is a testament to the vision, dedication, and hard work of these founding members. The mission of the Glenbrook Vintage Railway is not only to maintain and operate our heritage trains over our historic railway line and beyond, but to keep alive and share the skills, stories, and history of the railways that built New Zealand.
Our Railway runs over 7.5km between Glenbrook (our connection with the national rail network) and Victoria Ave (Waiuku). There are three level crossings, at Morley Road, Pukeoware Road, and Cornwall Road. The total trackage including sidings, crossing loops and yards is 10.2km. Intermediate stations include Pukeoware (our main workshop and storage facility) and Fernleigh. There is also a platform at Morley Road."
https://www.gvr.org.nz/about-us
At one of the stations on the return journey we were invited to alight and take photos and videos as the train backed up the line and then came steaming back into the station. I have a magnificent video, including full chuffing and whistle sound effects – Hornby would be proud of me – but I can't attach the video to the post. If you want to know more then please visit the web link above and I'm sure you will find some video to thrill you and fill you with nostalgia.
Courtesy of Screenshot I have attached one photo of the engine in full steam. No sound or 'smelly' vision to aid to the nostalgia!
It's the last full day of the Tour tomorrow and I'm off to Auckland Zoo for the morning. The afternoon is free with a farewell dinner in the evening.
I then have Wednesday in this hotel as well to explore Auckland at my leisure. I fly on Thursday at 3.10pm local time and arrive home at 7.45am on Friday 5th
You will have gathered by now that I'm trying to have a catchup with postings on an evening described in the Itinerary as 'at your leisure' which really means find your own food since not all hotel evenings include dinner. To be honest I have enjoyed a small meal of dried fruit and nuts acquired along the way washed down with a Heineken Zero beer. I have grown a little tired of evening dinners that comprise a dinner plate size Ribeye steak, beautifully cooked but enough to feed 2 or 3 people. Evidently there are 25million sheep and 7 million beef and dairy cattle in NZ so not surprising the main diet is meat!!
I have completed 14,000 steps (5.7 Miles) today, half of which were completed this morning when we visited the Wai-O-Tapu Thermal Wonderland, a spectacular showcase of New Zealand's most colourful and unique geothermal elements sculpted by thousands of years of geothermal activity. I'm not going to explain all the geological activity that gives rise to the photos. I will do this later when I have more time to research and explain the various phenomena. Safe to say, however, it's all to do with thermal energy which secretes steaming hot water full of various minerals – some good and some not so good to the surface creating all kinds of sink holes and other features. The thermal baths contain lots of silica which acts as an exfoliant as well as kaolin which is good for the skin. The various colours of the pools and secretions are all the result of chemical reactions with the hot water.
At 10.00am we moved swiftly on to The Lady Knox Geyser. This is the only regular erupting Geyser in New Zealand and even this one is 'fed' with a surfactant to break through the oily surface of the Geyser interface deep below ground to fire at 10.15am every day. Today there was an audience of hundreds. Left to its own devices the Geyser would probably only erupt every 3 days and very unpredictably.
The story is that the local site was once used as a prison. Inmates discovered the hot water and decided it would be good for washing and brought soap. They quickly found that the soap interacted with the chemicals erupting through the thermal vents with explosive outcomes, blowing clothes high into the sky!!
Now as part of a National Park the geyser is named after Lady Knox the wife of a former Governor General of New Zealand.
Again, courtesy of some screenshots I can illustrate the eruption, but you will have to wait for the full video.
Finally, we visited Waimangu Volcanic Valley & Hot Springs. The photo is of one of the hot springs that continuously issues from below ground.
An interesting morning followed by a stroll around Rotorua.
So tomorrow we leave for another long drive to Auckland and if can you believe it the last two full days of this tour!!! The journey will be broken by trip aboard the Glenbrook Steam Train to include an afternoon tea prepared on board.
Tomorrow is another 'forage for yourself' dinner so if the tea is substantial enough I will ltry to post again.
Happy Easter!!
At 4.30pm on Saturday 30th March 2024 we set off to Te Pa Tu which roughly translates to The (Māori) Village in the Air (On the mountain).
Te Pā Tū (formerly Tamaki Māori Village) is the only cultural experience in New Zealand, to have won the Supreme New Zealand Tourism Award.
This was a wonderful evening of vibrant, colourful entertainment culminating in a Feast of Local Food that included Scotch Eggs, Roast Duck and Tandoori Chicken! Split into groups we were first shown how to perform the Haika, traditional stick games designed to assist Warriors in attaining weapon skills and learning about the design of their houses. Too much to go into here but by the end of an hour we all had a good understanding of the Māori history, traditions, and cultural aspirations.
The highlight of the evening for me was 20-minute performance of songs and dances all performed with great accuracy and vivacity. I have this performance recorded on video but few still photos, but with a bit of ingenuity I have managed to grab a screenshot of the performance to give you a flavour!
The 315 km journey from Picton to Wellington via the ferry proved to take its toll in several ways, not least exhaustion and lack of sleep. I lost some ground in terms of recovery from Covid with a strong Positive Test on Friday morning but by the end of a less strenuous day I felt better, and we had a beautiful hotel on Lake Taupo (See photo). The dinner, however, took over 2 hours and by 9.30pm I was all in once again so sorry no posting.
We are now 2 full days further on and sadly, and annoyingly, I still have a faint positive test line even though I am not sneezing or coughing or experiencing shortness of breath, but I have lost my sense of smell, which proved to be beneficial when we visited the Thermal Springs this morning!
More on that visit in another post.
We have had an afternoon and evening at leisure for a change her in Rotorua, so I will try to get a couple of posts completed.
Lake Taupo is the largest freshwater lake in Australasia. It is roughly the size of Singapore and is the crater (Caldara) created by the Taupō Volcano began erupting about 300,000 years ago. It last erupted 1800 years ago and it's said to have been one of the most violent eruptions known in the world in the last 5000 years. The eruption plume reached 50 km into the air, so that all of NZ received at least 1cm of ash and areas near the lake were covered in more than 100 metres of eruption material.
Today, the lake marks the start of one of the many Hydroelectric Generation Schemes in New Zealand that supplies about 80% of its energy needs.
We arrived on Friday evening to Lake Taupo sparkling in the late evening sunlight but overnight the wind blew up and that meant that our cruise on the lake on Saturday morning had to be cancelled. Instead, we witnessed one of the most popular natural attractions in the North Island when millions of litres of water are released from the Aratiatia Dam creating an awe-inspiring transformation of a dry, rocky gorge into a roaring river, forming thundering, turquoise-coloured rapids over ancient volcanic remnants. The blue frothy, turbulent waters are caused by the creation of air bubbles in the massive flow of water.
I have a wonderful video but sadly that is too big to attach to this post, so I have borrowed an after photo.
This afternoon we crossed from Picton to Wellington on the North Island. Sadly we all arrived safely but our coach & driver didn't.
We left Christchurch at 7.00am aboard the Coastal Pacific Train for the 5hr 45min journey to Picton to board the 2.15pm InterIsland Ferry for the North Island.
The railway and road run alongside each other along the spectacular coastline. A good time was had by all espying Fur Seals & Dolphins & keeping a look out for Scott our driver and the coach. We saw him twice but he was nowhere to be seen in Picton. Sadly there had been a fatal crash on the coast ride & Scott was marooned in a long traffic jam. He and the coach were booked on the next Ferry at 6.30pm but that was running 3 hours late so the poor man will not get to the hotel until midnight.
So no luggage but had a lovely dinner that I was allowed to join this evening. I haven't yet tested negative but I have really felt normal today. So I think it's drinking chocolate & wait for my case at around midnight.
Sorry no photos on phone to attach.
Happy Easter!
Sent from my iPhone
Tonight, I'm in Christchurch on the penultimate evening before we join the Coastal Pacific Train tomorrow morning for our trip up the East Coast on our way to Picton to board the InterIslander Ferry and the crossing to the North Island. This time tomorrow I should be in Wellington.
Covid wise the symptoms have receded further today with less sneezing & coughing but after a test this morning I'm still 'a 2-line Covid convict' at the back of the coach. I think it's going to be Saturday (5 days since tested positive) before I can really expect to be released. APT have provided plenty of test kits and I picked up another box for free in a Pharmacy this afternoon.
So, a few more facts about the irrigation water spray booms and Mt Cook. These facts may come in useful for my end of Blog Quiz!
The photo taken on my iPhone from the coach shows one of these huge water spray booms. Each section of the boom is 50 metres in length. I spotted one boom arm with 13 sections this afternoon on our journey from Mount Cook to Christchurch. The longest our driver, Scott, has seen is 27 sections so over a kilometre. Each section costs upwards of NZ$10,000 so a quarter-of-a-million for the longest one. They measure how wealthy Farmers are by the length of their booms!!
It has been another glorious drive through the Canterbury levels today. This morning, we left behind the Southern Alps which had a fresh coating of snow after a violent thunderstorm overnight around Mt Cook but grey skies soon gave way to blue skies, sunshine and fluffy white clouds as we drove the length of Lake Pukaki. The lake itself shimmering with the blue glacial 'flour' – microscopic pieces of mica and other minerals washed down from the Alps.
We then travelled on to Lake Tekapo to a small township of the same name at the southern tip of the lake to visit the tiny Church of the Good Shepherd, built of local stone and oak and erected as a tribute to the early pioneers of the region – mainly Scots. The backdrop to this tiny church was stunning as I hope the photo shows.
Back to Mt Cook. Aoraki/Mount Cook is the highest mountain in New Zealand 3,724 metres (12,218 feet). If we could have hopped over the mountain towards the west, then we would have been close to the Frans Josef Glacier where we had been a week ago!
In the Māori language Aoraki (Mount Cook) translates to "Cloud Piercer", a romantic rendering of the name's components, according to the Wikipedia entry: ao (world, daytime, cloud, etc.) and raki or rangi (day, sky, weather, etc.)
Whilst I would like to post more this evening, we have to be up and out of the hotel by 5.30am tomorrow morning and Covid is not giving me much sleep at the moment.
Today we travelled from Dunedin to the very foot of Mt Cook. My hotel room Balcony has a magnificent view across the Southern Alps but I can't quite see Mt Cook.
We drove for most of the morning along the Waitaki valley. The Waitaki River is damned in 5 places to provide irrigation for the vast herds of beef and dairy cattle that feed in this area on the lush grass. The fields are irrigated by long booms that pivot in a semicircle and can cover vast swathes of land. The central pivot also measures the ground saturation and adjusts the flow accordingly. The longest boom we saw was 1.1kms in length!!
The countryside is just spectacular. The ground undulates continuously with thousands of trees to act as windbreaks. Some of you will remember the paper route guides that the RAC & AA produced which would describe a stretch of road as 'undulating', well here think of the undulating as on steroids and backed by the Southern Alps!!
When we arrived Mt Cook it was shrouded in cloud and it was raining. Whilst my travel companions were having dinner (I was isolated in my room with Covid), I noticed that the skies had cleared and this is Mt Cook in all its glory. They are going to be so jealous in the morning.
The hotel houses the Sir Edmund Hillary Alpine Centre. Sir Edmund was one of my schoolboy heroes. At the age of 7, I listened daily to the radio broadcasts of his ascent of Everest. My parents noticed this and told my Primary School Teacher (Miss Bartholomew) and thereafter, every morning I give a short announcement on his progress and of course, when he reached the summit on 29th May 1953.
What I learnt today is that Sir Edmund who is a New Zealander did all his training for the ascent of Everest on Mount Cook. Moreover he did all his preparatory work with Sir Vivian Fuchs for the crossing of the Antarctic in 1957/58 another boyhood fascination of mine.
Remember Rutherford and Canterbury College Christchurch, well Sir Edmund studied at this College too!
Well that's all for today folks. Back to Christchurch tomorrow and then the Coastal Pacific Train on Thursday.
The Covid symptoms are receding fast. An overnight sweat seems to have relieved the worst symptoms and today apart from the odd sneeze and cough I have felt pretty much normal. I will test again in the morning but it's only day 4 since the positive result so maybe too early to hope for a negative. I sit in the rear of the bus with the 2 other ladies who have succumbed. Thank goodness no one else has caught Covid – well to date anyway.
I had hoped to catch up with Posting to the Blog this evening but the bug is still taking it out of me and I'm desperately tired plus Covid is causing me a bit of Brain Fog – no more than usual I hear you cry! My final excuse is that this hotel room is not equipped for drafting posts. I'm currently standing up since there is no desk and no chair!
So yesterday we were in Dunedin (New Edinburgh) and, more particularly in the afternoon, on a visit to the Southern Royal Albatross Centre on the very tip of the Otago Peninsular. I will leave you with some homework to look the location up on a map. This is the only known nesting site for the Southern Royal Albatross the 3rd largest species of Albatross with a wingspan of 3 metres. The sub-Antarctic species – the Wandering Albatross – is the largest with a wingspan of 3.3 metres.
Pairs bond for life and they only produce an egg biennially so great is the energy required. We were lucky yesterday to see the last 4 chicks of this years hatching. The parents will feed them until they are 8 months old and heavier than the adult birds – about 8kgs. The photo shows one of the chicks strengthening its wings by flapping. Once the chicks are ready they will take to the air and head east across the Pacific Ocean to the West Coast of Chile where they will feed on the strong ocean currents in that part of the world. It's a non-stop flight of 9000kms which will take about 10 to 12 days since they can cover a 1000kms a day. They can achieve these enormous distances and speeds because they have a special tendon that goes from wingtip to wingtip across their shoulders that they can lock into place. This isolates their wings from their bodies which means low heart rate and saving energy using only the wind to power their flight.
These teenagers will only return to Otago at the age of 5 and will then bond with a mate over the next year or so and produce their first egg at 8 years old. They live for about 25 human years but there is one Matriarch at this site who has lived for 60 years and still laying.
The second photo is of a Teenager showing his prowess at flying.
I can hardly believe after avoiding Covid for 4 years I come to NZ and after just a week I have tested positive for Covid this evening – Sunday 24th March.
We have been to Stewart Island off the town of Bluff the most southerly town in New Zealand. After a very bumpy small boat crossing, we had a 2 hour walk through the Ulva Island Wildlife Sanctuary.
I had hoped to attach a couple of photos, but they are not storing in albums correctly and the Covid is giving me Brain Fog tonight.
I don't feel too bad at the moment. I will be banned to the rear two rows on the coach and will have to see what other isolation requirements follow. I'm fully vaccinated so hope it will not last too long.
I've had a thrill packed afternoon enjoying a 2-hour Jet Boat ride on the Dart River. We first travelled 44kms northeast of Queenstown to the township of Glenorchy (Only 300 inhabitants) and the marina for the Dart River Adventure Jet Boats.
The Dart River empties into Lake Wakatipu. The same lake that Queenstown overlooks and shown in the photo I sent from outside the Restaurant yesterday. I went back to the same Restaurant tonight and was greeted by almost everyone on the service team. I had Crispy Akaroa Salmon on a coconut sauce. I have not yet posted about my visit to Akaroa yet which occurred last Sunday. Akaroa is on the Banks Peninsular about 70kms southwest of Christchurch. We went to see Hector's Dolphins but you will have to wait to see if we spotted any! What we did see is the Akaroa Salmon Fish Farms that provided my meal this evening.
Sorry a bit of an aside. Let's get back to jet boating. These are fast – very fast – flat bottomed boats driven by a powerful water jet. They originated in New Zealand and are deigned to travel in very shallow river systems. They have no propellers or rudders and are steered by rotating the water jet nozzle. For the scientifically minded amongst my readers the boats are powered by a big engine that sucks water into and rotates an Archimedes Screw which then forces it at high pressure out of the stern of the boat. They can travel in water of less than 4 inches, are very manoeuvrable and can reach speeds of 80kms/hr - and we did!!
At this time of year, the river levels are very low. The Dart River like many on South Island are described as Braided. If you think of braiding hair, then water flows down channels that cross each other making complex patterns. The skill of the Jet Boat Driver is finding channels that have just sufficient water to allow the boat to pass.
Over 2 hours we travelled over 35kms up the Dart River to the point where it became too shallow to go further. It was an exciting ride a combination of the Dodgems and Formula 1 on water!! Unfortunately, I can't show you the video I took of a boat doing a '360' i.e. turning the whole boat on its axis – with high G forces - that creates copious amounts of spray and guess where that landed!!
The landscape of the river is mind blowing. In the far background of one of the photos you can see the snow-covered peaks at the start of the Southern Alps. In the other photo you can see a mountain on the right with two flat topped peaks, this was the mountain used in the filming of Lord of the Rings and the Hobbit
Well folks it's nearly 9.30pm and I have a 6.00am start tomorrow when we take a very scenic drive over to Milford Sound, for or a late morning cruise before driving further south to Te Anau. From Tomorrow 21st March we will be 'off-grid' so to speak and there will be no internet and very patchy mobile reception until next Monday or Tuesday so no posts in the interim.
Have a good weekend.
This evening I, together with 30 other fellow travellers, dined aboard the Tram shown in the photo. The History of the Tram and its conversion to a restaurant is shown in second photo.
The meal was outstanding, as illustrated with canapes, duck, venison and cheese!
Served over 3 hours as the tram made 3 - 50-minute circuits of the Heritage line with a comfort break before commencing the last circuit.
A meal to remember.
The following description is a summary of the Wikipedia entry for the Peacock Fountain at the entrance to the Christchurch Botanical Gardens.
The Peacock Fountain was bought by the Christchurch Beautifying Society from money bequeathed by John Thomas Peacock a trader, politician and philanthropist. The fountain was unveiled in 1911, moved to a new location some years later, and put into storage in 1949. After a $270,000 renovation, it was commissioned again in 1996, in its third location, just inside the gates and opposite what were some of the original buildings of Canterbury College, University of New Zealand.
Peacock bequeathed a substantial sum of money to the Christchurch Beautifying Association "for the purpose of beautifying the reserves and gardens in the City of Christchurch and improving the Avon River." Christchurch City Council commissioned a prefabricated fountain created at the Coalbrookdale Iron Works.
The fountain, unveiled in June 1911, was always controversial. The head of Canterbury School of Art, Robert Herdman Smith, stated in a letter to the Press in 1911 that "it exhibited no more taste than the gaudy decoration used by travelling showmen to embellish their merry go-rounds."
Recurring maintenance problems led to the decision in 1949 to dismantle the fountain. It was put into storage in the 1980s. Of the 309 cast iron pieces that made up the fountain, many went missing over the years or deteriorated, so that 158 of them had to be re-cast. The restored fountain, with a new colour scheme (again controversial), was recommissioned on 26 May 1996. One letter to The Press claimed that the new colour scheme was "cause(ing) flu-like symptoms when looked upon."
The photo shows the current position of the Fountain opposite a complex of original Canterbury College, University of New Zealand buildings. Today this complex houses Canterbury Museum, a café and a cinema which belies its claim to fame as the place where Sir Earnest Rutherford (Born in New Zealand in1871) studied for his first degree in Physics. Rutherford has many discoveries to his name including being the first person to split the atom in Manchester in 1917.
I have just had some of the best Fish & Chips I have ever tasted sitting in the open-air overlooking Queenstown Bay and watching the sunset on the mountains and a Para Glider.
Since we left Christchurch last Monday morning, we have travelled 330km across the Southern Alps on the Transalpine Express and then travelled another 80km to Frans Josef to view the glacier and to stay overnight.
Today we have covered 350km to Queenstown – the adventure capital of South Island – I've declined the offer to Bungy jump for free as an over 75!! So, we are more or less in the centre of the South Island as it begins to narrow at its southern end. Over the next couple of days, we will travel to the very southern tip to Stewart Island, via Milford Sound on Thursday. I'm off tomorrow on a Jet Boat on the Dart River.
The scenery is just spectacular and just keeps giving and giving with almost every bend in the road and there are many hairpin bends!! It has been enhanced today by sunshine and blue skies. More photos of the scenery when I post about the journeys of the last two days.
The Botanical Gardens are expansive and include a colourful 100metre long Herbaceous Border that contains almost all the plants and shrubs I have in my own garden but rather better cared for and laid out! There is also a large Rose Garden, but the real glory of the Gardena is its magnificent display of trees both native and from all over the world. In this respect the Gardens are more akin to an Arboretum.
Among the many splendid specimens is a Giant Sequoia (Red Wood) which has grown to almost the same height as those in its native habitat in the USA. Our Guide suggested that he reason this Red Wood is doing so well is the high water table.
Another interesting specimen is a tree presented to the Gardens from Nagasaki in Japan (Christchurch is twinned with Nagasaki). It has been grown from material from one of only three trees that survived the Atom Bomb and now grows alongside a Japanese Peace Bell.
I mentioned in a previous Post that there was a connection between a feature in these Gardens and a book I bought to read whilst on my travels. The Guide pointed out a small green building and mentioned that Scot and Shackleton had both called into Christchurch to check the accuracy of their compasses using the instruments housed in this building. We were speeding along in a Buggy at the time but if you look on the extreme left of the photo about two-thirds of the way down the left-hand side you might be able to spot the end green wall of this feature.
So, what's the connection? The building was set up by Sir James Ross – he of the Ross Ice Shelf in the Antarctic – in the Southern Oceans in the mid 1850s to map the Earth's Magnetic Field and enable accurate resetting of compasses between True and Magnetic South. The full history is set out in a book entitled 'Erebus – The Story of a Ship by Michael Palin. It has proved to be a real page turner for me.
There is a second connection between this book or rather the ship the Erebus and New Zealand. Whilst exploring what is now known as the Ross Ice Shelf in the Erebus Ross and his crew discovered a Volcano which they named after the ship Mount Erebus (Erebus from the Latin means 'Hellish' but you will have to read the book to understand the full significance of the name Erebus). Sadly, in November 1979 Air New Zealand flight 901 crashed into Mt Erebus with the loss of 250 lives. Another extraordinary coincidence arising from the mention of a small green, rather nondescript building on a March afternoon in 2024 and a book bought quite by chance!
35.00 NZ$ bought me a one-day Hop-On Hop-Off pass for the City Heritage Tram. The circuit takes 50 minutes with 14 stops.
The city has some 24 Trams. Many were acquired from Philadelphia in the USA and have been lovingly restored to provide the current City Heritage Tour. Other trams in the fleet were built in New Zealand including the Royal Tram shown in the photo and on which I rode. It was built in 1910. named the Royal Tram because the late Queen Elizabeth II had travelled in this vehicle. The Heritage Tram Tour takes you past, or close by, all of the City Centre Attractions old and new I refreshed myself with a coffee in the Tramway Café before visiting the new City Library.
Annoyingly I have just realised that I haven't got a photo of this impressive new building that extends over 4 floors. The 2nd floor is devoted to children with a dedicated Lego Build area and was absolutely buzzing on Saturday morning! The library also has three areas of Roof Garden and the last photo shows the snow-capped Southern Alps. I will be riding the Transalpine Express on Monday 18th March through this alpine landscape..
I awoke after 12 hours of rest to clear blue skies and bright sunshine. My aim today was to ride the Heritage City Tram and get my bearings, visit the new City Library and the Botanical Gardens in Hagley Park. I achieved all three objectives but with the added bonus, courtesy of a miscalculation of the tram timetable, of being able to visit a Woodcraft Centre set up in some converted sea containers, a short distance from both the Botanical Gardens and the Art Gallery.
In this Post I will introduce Christchurch and then in a couple of shorter posts explain an interesting coincidence between a feature in the Gardens and a book that, quite by chance, I bought for enjoyment on this trip.
Christchurch is a city still emerging after the devastating Earthquake of 22nd February 2011. The quake occurred shortly after 1.00pm on that Tuesday afternoon and measured 6.1 on the Richter Scale at a relatively shallow level to the East of the city in Lylleton Harbour, an extinct volcano in which Christchurch sits. The damage was more severe because of the of the nature of the underlying strata of sand and silt, combined with a high-water table. I learnt today that if you stand in Cathedral Square the ground is one metre below sea level. The quake forced the water into the upper layers of sand and silt, turning the ground to a very wobbly jelly. Over 7000 homes to the west of the city were demolished and 60 per cent of the city centre was also destroyed.
Today the city is a mixture of old and new buildings with many areas still to be cleared of debris and some buildings still to be carefully demolished. It's clear, however, that the best of the old has been preserved and conserved and now sits alongside new buildings such as the impressive City Library - the Turanga. The renovation of the Cathedral will take another 4 years to complete but the Temporary Transitional Cathedral designed by the Japanese Architect Shigeru Ban opened in 2013 and has become a symbol of hope and community for the city. It can seat 700 in a steel ad timber clad structure supported by 90 reinforced cardboard tubes. It's expected to last 50 years and has some impressive stained glass over its entrance.
Christchurch is described as the most English city outside of the UK and the Lonely Planet Guide lists it as in the Top Ten cities in the world for Street Art. It's also a very green city with over 1200 greenspaces.
By 6.00pm the rain had stopped, and I went in search of some food. It was a rather grey and dank but only a 5-minute walk from the hotel across a park in front of the Transitional Cathedral (Photos to follow since today Saturday has been gloriously sunny) to Cathedral Square.
My taxi driver had said that the best place for 'street food' was the Riverside Market and, once I had made a couple of inquiries and found my way, this certainly proved to be the case. Three floors of all kinds of eateries including Argentinian Steak, Indian, Malaysian, Japanese, Korean and Mediterranean to mention but a few. The place was buzzing with people, mainly tourists from the USA, Australia, Japan and Korea.
All this to the beats of extremely ear popping music. 'Drum and bass' is nothing to the volume and beat of this 'surround sound', hence the quip "Where it's all happening man!
I eventually plumped for a Black Burger, the brand name of the stall and not the colour of the product! Placing the order proved interesting. The young guy taking the orders was 'horse' from shouting over the music and was also deaf!! Sign language proved effective, and I finished up with a thin Classic Wagyu Beef burger and a portion of fries. Wagyu beef is very expensive (Hence the thin burger), because of the time it takes to rear the beef to have its famous flavour and marbling throughout the meat. Traditionally Wagyu beef comes from Japan but given that it seemed to be available at other stalls in the market as well, this beef may have been reared in New Zealand.
Whatever the source the burger was delicious and after a stroll back to the hotel I fell into bed and slept for 12 hours.
I awoke to clear blue skies and glorious sunshine, and I have had a wonderful day in Christchurch riding the City Tram and visiting the Botanical Gardens, oh and I was introduced to 'Trim' milk so watch out for my next Blog!
This evening, I have met with my 34 other fellow companions on this Tour, and our Tour Director Melissa and our Driver Scott. The Tour begins in earnest at 8.30am tomorrow morning Sunday 17th March when we will be joining a two-hour Akaroa Nature Cruise to view the smallest and rarest of Dolphins, the Hector's Dolphins in their natural playground.
Just when I was congratulating myself that I was leaving a sodden UK it has rained heavily here this afternoon for the first time in many weeks. I thought the ground looked dry and scorched as we descended through fluffy white clouds over a tranquil and sunny silver sea with waves gently breaking on the huge sandy beach bay into which the Avon River that runs through Christchurch drains.
As I remarked on this to my Taxi Driver he said 'look over to your left' and there the dark clouds had descended and it was clear that rain was falling. As I stepped into a very smart Tesla – phone required to start the car!! – the first drops appeared on the windscreen and by the time we were in Central Christchurch, some 20 minutes later, it was raining heavily and has continued to do so for the rest of the afternoon.
A shame since the drive in revealed a green and colourful city of flowers and no high-rise buildings after the Earthquake of 22nd February 2011 devastated Christchurch, killing 185 people. Most is now rebuilt apart from the Cathedral where renovation work continues as I hope to see tomorrow.
The forecast is for the rain to stop by around 6.00pm when I hope to escape from the hotel – the Rydges Latimer – that is only 100 metres from the centre of the city in search of some food. The hotel is very comfortable, but the restaurant is also very reputable and the most expensive in town.
I have most of tomorrow to myself. The Welcome Reception is at this hotel at 5.00pm. So I think it's the Hop-on Hop-off Tram for starters and then the Museum and Botanic Gardens. The forecast is more encouraging for tomorrow! It better be since I haven't brought an umbrella and full weather gear.
The photo form the aircraft as we came into land demonstrates so clearly why they chose this area for the setting of the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Hobbit. The actual area is part of the tour later in the week.
. Less than an hour since I left the hotel & I'm checked in, through security - Express Lane of course and had a snack. Aircraft lea...
