Mark & Mandy

Queenstown is sometimes compared to Lake Tahoe because of the lake, and the mix of winter (skiing) and summer (boating) activities. But the comparison doesn’t do justice to Queenstown. The lake is more magnificent, the mountains truly dramatic (they’re called “The Remarkables” for a reason) and Queenstown is the (self-)declared capital of adventure sports. This is the place where bungee-jumping originated and you can see scores of paragliders above the town all day. We even saw a combo parasail (dragged behind a boat in a parachute) bungee jump. Now that sounds like a bad idea!

So we arrived from the Franz Josef Glacier at the Queenstown House just in time for wine and cheese. This place is one of the top two accomodation finds of our whole trip! It was a wonderful place to end our visit to New Zealand and provided us with great service and all the creature comforts that we could ask for. After getting settled in and having wine and cheese (and blogging some of our previous days) we walked down the hill to the downtown mall for dinner at Dux Deluxe.

After dinner we decided to go to the ice bar “minus 5″ just down the street. This was an worthwhile experience, but I’m not sure I’d go back again. For a $25NZ entry fee, we donned our long warm coats and gloves and about 15 of us filed into a 15 x 30 foot icecube. The rebuild the room once a month, and everything is made our of ice, the tables, chairs, and even the cups, which you can smash after you’re done drinking. The environs provided ample opportunity for clowning around with the ice sculptures and greg even did a vodka shot straight from the queen’s mouth!

Friday morning we got up to a scrumptious breakfast and then walked into town to do some looking around and shopping. We got quite caught up in the merino wool activewear products that are made by Icebreaker… they have some pretty sweet stuff that is comfortable, warm and never smells (which is useful for me) even after multiple days use.

We had a quick lunch at Fergburger before heading over to the Queenstown airport to meet Matt Gibbons (son of my Godfather David Gibbons) to do a flying tour of the surrounding mountains and part of the Fjordland national park including the Milford Sound. Matt was the best host and took us up in a Cessna (8-seater) to head up around the southern alps and onto the Milford Sound. The flight was truly a remarkable way to see the mountains, we flew between them over glaciers and impossibly steep faces (all those Lord of the Rings scenes were not CGI – well except for the forts and palaces!) and saw some picture-perfect hanging lakes with waterfalls cascading down the incredibly green mountainsides.

We landed at the Milford Sound airport after the 45 minute flight and Matt handed us off to one of the cruise liners that took us on a cruise down the sound. The ship’s captain was quite fearless in piloting his 100 foot boat within 10 feet of the sheer rock faces (because the water continues straight down at the shore). He took the front of the boat under some of the waterfalls that were dotted around the coast and pointed out the tree-falls – which is where one tree decides to fall because of too much water, or snow and drags a whole swath of interlaced trees and vegetation down the side of the mountain.
The captain also informed us that Milford Sound is actually a fjord. The difference between the two is that a Sound if formed by a river and is V-shaped, whereas a fjord is formed by a glacier and is U-shaped. The fjordlands are a product of the many glaciers that used to stretch more than 50 miles out to sea melting and the sea water filling in the void. This is also the end-point of the Milford track which by all accounts is one of the most amazingly breathtaking treks in the world, and something we will be returning to do soon I hope!

When the cruise returned, Matt took us back to Queenstown on the plane by finishing our loop south over the Fjordlands. In time for wine and cheese! This time we all made it to the soiree and met some of the other guests to hear about their exploits in New Zealand. Over a few glasses of Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir we tried to figure out where to go for dinner. We asked our hostess Louise for any recommendation and in 5 minutes flat she got us a backdoor reservation at “Captains” which turned out to have delcious food and great service… we felt like princes and princess of the town! After dinner we stomped back up the hill sadly to spend our last night in Queenstown.

Saturday we got up and packed our accumulation of purchases on top of our already excessive packing and finally got done by 11:30. Matt called us shortly thereafter to say that flights for the day were cancelled due to weather and that we could meet for lunch as he had suggested the previous day. We met Matt and Emily (looking radiant at 7+ months pregnant) for lunch at Winnies where they serve some very interesting but delicious pizzas (cranberry chicken and brie anyone?) It was great to catch properly with them and it made us even sadder to leave!

Aft
er lunch we did some final gift shopping and then got our taxi to the airport. As we were driving into the airport, Mandy looked out the window and saw Matt standing on his door step (he lives in one of the air traffic controllers houses right next to the airport), and he happened to look up and see us too! Emily and Matt walked over and joined us in the lounge while we waited for our flight to Christchurch (security is a little less paranoid in New Zealand). We sadly parted company when our flight was called and reflected on our whole trip. We stored 5 of our 6 pieces of checked luggage at the Christchurch airport and spent the night at the Chateau on the Park. We had a 7am flight to Sydney to catch so we didn’t stay up too late!

Sunday was the day of the 6 hour layover in Sydney. We wanted to go into town to do some sightseeing, but we would have had to get an entry visa and pay the departure tax and $100 each didn’t seem like a good value at the time. Luckily we had Greg and his Star Alliance gold status that got us into the united red carpet club so we could at least check email and have some free drinks and food. The United flight back to San Francisco was much more painful than the Air New Zealand flight to Auckland (remind me to avoid the american carriers internationally whereever I have a choice), but we sailed through customs and even met our next door neighbors Bernie and Sonja and Jenna in the waiting area for the flight home!

We picked up Lola before closing time and vegged out a bit that evening watching TV and enjoying the comforts of home.

After the underwater adventure, we headed on down the coast to Hokitika. We stopped at Punekiki to see the blowholes and pancake rocks but sadly the sun had gone down so all we saw was a few possums in the moonlight. We could hear the amazing booming of the blowholes but couldn’t see the spray that sometimes goes several hundred feet in the air – something for next time we’re down here.

The hotel at Hokitika was nothing too special, but we were there less than 12 hours and it served it’s purpose well. We had a surreal dinner at the hotel restaurant where the waitress/hostess was remarkably unenthusiastic about her job. When we first arrived at 8:30 for dinner she had to “check with the cook” to make sure they could still serve us dinner as they closed at 9. Then when we were seated and started looking at the menu, Mandy asked what the soup du jour was, only to be told to wait until she went through the specials – which she then proceeded to do right then. Other oddities included deferring our request for water to the “waitress” whom we had not seen up to that point. I guess this is the downside to not tipping at restaurants!

So anyway, we left Hokitika at 7am to drive to the Franz Josef glacier for our 8:45am check-in. It was a remarkably cloud-free morning for the west coast of the south island, so our hopes were high that the flight wouldn’t be cancelled. We arrived a few minutes late to check in after driving through some of the most beautiful valleys and pastoral scenes of sheep grazing beneath enormous mountains besides the ocean.

After getting the all clear, we went to put on our stinky glacier hiking boots (which we had to use so that the “talons” would fit on the soles). There were about 20 or so people there and they asked us to split into two groups… one that felt a bit more adventurous and up for some moderate hiking, and the other for people who wanted to go slow. Greg, mandy and I and 2 other people self-selected as moderately fit, the rest stood in a slightly confused mass until the guides forced 5 others onto our side… an indicator of the speed of walking that we’d do! The helicopter took 5 of us at a time and we were in the first group. It was the first time in a helicopter for all of us, so we got a lot of thrills out of the ride. The pilot took us up and over the top of the entire glacier and then did a few passes over the different sections of the glacier. They said the snow in the fastest part of the glacier moves about 3 metres a day (that’s 10 feet), and the end of the glacier is currently advancing at about 2 feet a day after several years of receding.
We landed in the middle of a flat section of the glacier that doesn’t move much and got out to put on our talons (which are sort of lightweight crampons). Once the second half of our group arrived, our guide Troy led us off across the glacier. Troy cut steps in various parts of the glacier with a big pickaxe he carried around, while we just had little ice axes to help us balance and hoist ourselves around various places.
We hiked around for about 2 hours making a big loop around the glacial flats. We went through some crevasses and even an undiscovered ice cave that mandy was the first non-guide to go through ever! We encountered crevasses and dangers that included icy potholes that went down several feet and were full of freezing water. We all managed to avoid them but a few in our party went in up their knee and one poor woman fell into one all the way up to her waist… she was very brave about it. In the end we had a very fun walk around amazing ice pillars and deep blue ice caves (the compressed ice only reflects the higher frequency lightwaves which gives the ice an unreal blue tinge).
On our helicopter flight back down the glacier, the pilot asked us if we wanted to have a little fun, or get “the granny tour”. Of course we wanted to have some fun, so he swooped around the mountains beside the glacier, and took us in low over the river before making a stomach churning turn and coming in for a perfect landing.
After some lunch at the base, we drove down to Queenstown for our final two days. The drive took us about 4 and a half hours through some beautiful snowcapped mountains and we finally arrived at the Queenstown House at about 5:30, with plenty of time to spare for wine and cheese!

We left Nelson pretty early this morning to drive South to Charleston (which is just south of Westport). Charleston is a small town (150 people), but many years ago (New Zealand’s Gold Rush) the town population was up to 130,000 people and there was talk of making it New Zealand’s Capital. We were doing the Underworld Rafting adventure. This company was started in 1987 by two teachers, Ray and Geoff, who were taking their students on this adventure when many of the parents said they would also like to participate.

When we arrived they outfitted us with all of our gear – wet suits, boots, life vests and of course a helmet with a head lamp. The gear was a bit wet and a little stinky. .

We were teamed up with a German group and we loaded into the vans to be transported to our start. Geoff and Ray have built a train (including laying all of the tracks by hand) that takes you through the rainforest to get to the bottom of the caves. Once we stopped at the end of the line we got into our gear

We took a short walk along the Nile River and crossed a suspension bridge (also built by the team). From here we ascended 117 steps to the top of the caves (by now Greg’s stinky wet suit was overwhelming him).

We entered the caves at the Triclops entrance – the caves are exactly as they were found and so we were very careful not to touch any of the formations.

All of the formations are formed from pure calcium carbonate – and just amazing! This area has lots of volcanic activity but the limestone areas in the cave remain perfectly still preserving the formations. The stalactites and stalagmites grow at 1 inch per five hundred years – slow going.

We ducked and shuffled through the caves to see all of the different rooms – I was feeling happy about being a bit vertically challenged, especially as I followed Greg. Many places in the caves the stalactites had grown to meet the stalagmites creating columns – .

Once we had made it through the formations we moved into another part of the caves where we could see water. Now for everyone who talked to me before I left, I was so excited for the glow worms – they brochure says you get to raft through caves using only the lights from the glowworms. As our guide pointed out a few glowworms I began getting really excited – then he said a flood had come through in January and wiped a lot of the worms away. I was feeling crushed. The four glow worms that we were looking at were cool but where were the sea of shiners…

Ray had us get into our tubes and practice steering by using our hand paddles. We were floating around in cave wondering where it was that we were going to get out.

Ray had us hook our feet together like a train and turn off our headlamps. He took the back position and began paddling us and told us to keep our heads down. He pulled us through a narrow opening in the cave (it was a super tight fit) and once through he turned off his head lamp and VIOLA! There were the glow worms – tons of them.

We floated through the caves in the dark and eventually we could see light. The caves open up into the lush forest – an area that would be hard to get to unless you were in our tubes.

From here we floated into the nile river and down the rapids. We exited the river and got back on the train back to Charleston. I had my expectations set pretty high for this trip and they were totally exceeded – for those coming to NZ this is a must. I think they also have glow worm caves on the north island, but rafting through the dark only lit by glow worms can’t be beat!! This rocked!

New Zealand Part three – Adventuring in Abel Tasman

I have decided that I am a First Class Adventurer – I love to explore, adventure, hike (insert activity here) but at the end of the day I like a hot shower and good food. Somehow I convinced Mark and Greg that for this trip we should ALL be first class adventurers… so let the adventure begin!

We started out for kayaking just outside of Nelson in the Abel Tasman National Park– we booked the trip through Abel Tasman Kayaks and we opted for the 2 day tour with Lodge stay (key word here is Lodge). We met our guide at 8:30 am and gathered all of our gear (jackets, spray skirts, life vests) and had a quick safety briefing – we headed down to Marahau beach and began our journey. There were 6 total in our group plus our guide Jake. Mark and I were in one kayak, Greg teamed up with Rachel (a dutch girl visiting NZ) and Eva and Mike were in another. We headed North up the coast passing many “Bach’s” which are only accessible by foot or water taxi – actually all of Abel Tasman is only accessible by foot or Water Taxi (that water taxi is quite a business). We made our first stop at Apple Tree bay for morning tea (I love it here!) .
We pushed off again and continued our voyage north – the weather was beautiful, sun shining and great seas, including an unusual “Sou-wester” which allowed us to raft together put up a sail harness the wind for a while on our way to Watering Cove where we stopped for Lunch. .

Jake (our guide) cooked up some green lipped mussels (Yummers!) and beef skewers which we enjoyed with Pita Bread and Salad. It was quite a feast on the beach. After lunch Jake let us loose and sent us off on a hike to Torrent Bay Lodge. (Don’t worry all of our luggage was taxi’d up to the lodge ahead of us!). We spent the rest of the afternoon hiking through the beautiful bush (the NZ jungle). Much of the walk was a trail through the jungle with a thick canopy of ferns, trees and vines. We decided to go the long route and head over to Cleopatra’s pool where the water from the river gushed over some boulders.
We made it to the lodge around 4:30 to find no one – we were amazed at this lodge in the middle of the National Park supplied only by boat – but somehow it had hot showers, beer!!, and a full professional Kitchen. Craig Wilson, the Chef and owner of the Lodge, prepared us an amazing dinner of Lamb, roast vegetables and salad. Craig actually cooked for Paul and Linda McCartney (this ones for my mom) and Ron Wood of the Rolling Stones. The lodge holds 24 and the night we stayed there were 10 total guests. After dinner we retired to the lounge for chatter, but headed to bed early.

A new guide, KP, met us the next morning and we took a Sea Taxi up to Onetahuti Bay (more north). We geared up and headed back out to sea, heading out to see the Seal Colony on Tonga Island. Again we had amazing weather (luck is on our side). We kept our distance from the seals – similar to the river otters, if you scare seals they won’t return to the island.

We continued down to Mosquito Bay where we had lunch – this was an amazing beach. We brought our kayaks up on a sand bar and by the time we were done with lunch we had to drag them back to the water because of the tide. . We were in the water about 4 hours by the time we returned to Torrent Bay. From here we took a water taxi back to Marahau Beach where we expected to get off the boat. Instead the driver drove the boat onto a boat ramp that was connected to a tractor. The tractor pulled us out of the water and then drove us back to Abel Tasman Kayaks headquarters in the boat.
We headed back to Nelson to spend the night in a great little house – the Sea View Holiday house (great find greg) where we had fish and chips and watched A History of Violence (I guess lugging our NetFlix all this way paid off). Next we are off to do underworld rafting…

We left Martinborough and headed back to Greytown to buy more chocolate for Greg and then off to Wellington. (Before we left we grabbed a quick shot of the whole group – notice the similarities between Michael and Roland). Wellington is a lot like San Francisco, with high hills overlooking the bay and quaint little houses tucked all around. One of Michael’s old friends, Faith Taylor (she was at our wedding to Montana) owns a beautiful apartment down town overlooking oriental bay and hosted a cocktail party in honor of our arrival. Her apartment is amazing, a new york loft with great views and lots of fabulous art (some of the art was by Tom Sladden – somehow distantly related to us – 3 cousin?) here we are with Scott, Faith and Jane (Jane is Faith’s daughter who was over from Sydney)

It was a great party – towards the end of the night Hamish Gibbons began to convince Greg and then Chloe that we needed to go out to experience the New Zealand night life. We tried to play the old married couple card – but eventually we caved and off we went. Mark and I made it till midnight, Chloe till 1 am, and greg till 2 am, we aren’t sure when Hamish went home.

We stayed in a lovely Bed and Breakfast and in the morning we dined with a family from the UK who informed us that right behind our house was they tree where all the hobbits hid as the scary man on the horse (nasgul?) passed by in Lord of the Rings. Sadly we were running to catch the Ferry and it was pouring rain so we didn’t get to check it out. The ferry was great – we drove our car on and headed up stairs to get settled for the 3 hour tour. The Ferry is an Inter-Islander Ferry and it carries passengers from Wellington to Picton, it also carries a train. The train drives onto the ferry rides across the Cook strait and then gets off in Picton to head around the south island – crazy!! here is a view of Wellington from the bay as we left.

Once off the Ferry we headed for Marlborough beautiful wine country. Michaels old “university” drinking buddy owns Spy Valley – the largest privately owned winery in New Zealand producing 1% of all New Zealand Wine – had arranged to give us a tour off the area and the vineyard. On the way to meet him, we stopped at Cloudy Bay for a quick taste and then off to Highfield winery for lunch.(the mountains in the back of this photo are the mountains on the Cloudy bay label – I think we served the Cloudy Bay Sauvignon Blanc “Sauvy” at our wedding).

We met Bryan and Jan (Johnson – close to Johnston) at Highfield Winery and then headed over to their “Lodge” which is really a manor on many acres of beautifully manicured English gardens (they have, over the years, planted 200,000 tulip bulbs!). Bryan had us jump in his car and we drove over to the winery – spy valley is named for the CIA Echelon base located just down the road. Bryan walked us through the entire process (with a glass of bubbles in our hand)– from how the grapes are collected, de-stemmed, squeezed and put into the tanks. We tasted unfermented Sauvignon blanc grape juice (which was delicious) and half fermented juice (not so delicious). Here is Bryan showing us the primary fermentation for the Spy Valley Pinot – the skins float to the top and are stirred every so often. We quickly tasted all of the Spy Valley wines, my favorite was the Echelon Bubbles!! Bryan gave us some Spy Valley gear (shirts, hats and wine) and we were off. We headed to Nelson which is located on the water and considered one of the sunniest areas in New Zealand. Michael’s big event was on Saturday night so during the day Chloe, Greg, Mark and I had headed out wine tasting around Nelson. [insert 8] We tasted at Te Mania, Richmond, Khurangi Estate and Neudorf (our favorite) – I have had more white wine in the past week than I have had all last year. We have collected about 3 cases of wine to bring home – so everyone will get to have a taste.

The Nelson College Jubilee was a huge event – lots of “Old Boys” with family and friends.
Twice Mark was asked if he was Michael Sladden’s son (and he wasn’t even wearing a name tag).

We have one more day in Nelson and then we are off for adventuring (kayaking in Abel Tasman, Underworld Rafting in Westport, Heli-Hiking on the Franz Joseph Glacier and an air tour over the fjords in Queenstown) – I am crossing my fingers for good weather all the way.

Well we are on our adventure!! We took off Saturday afternoon and headed to SFO before getting on our Air New Zealand Flight to Auckland. Greg had been in charge of purchasing us some snacks and we ended up with an entire carry on bag filled with treats (yes we know there are snacks in New Zealand, but you can never be too prepared.

The flight had video on Demand so we were all very pleased – I watched 3 chick movies (Rumor Has It, Prime and The Weatherman), and mark watched 3 Mark movies (Harry Potter, Serenity and Aeon Flux). I was pleased when Greg ordered wine with dinner (its true he does drink in other countries). The flight was 14 hours but after many movies, food and games of Sudoku we arrived. I like to follow the law so I made the boys declare all of our goods (food and hiking boots) even after I got the roll of the eyes from Greg. We opened our Snack-case and disposed of the illegal products. Here are greg and mark at the drop point…

Greg’s bad luggage Karma showed its ugly face and sadly none of our bags showed up. We headed to our hotel to check in, but because it was 7:00 am they didn’t have any rooms. We went in search of some clothes to hold us over until our luggage arrived. We checked in, took a shower using all of the hotel’s toiletries – and headed off to catch the ferry to Devonport. We walked up Mount Victoria to get great views of the Auckland bays and downtown. Here we are in our new clothes – yes I love trees!!

We headed back on the ferry to Auckland to meet Duncan and Robin at the Loaded Hog for drinks and dinner. They are both working in Auckland and living the life aboard Whisper. We had a great dinner at Wagamam (japanese noodles) and headed back to the hotel to sleep off our Jet Lag (which hasn’t been that bad)

The next morning we headed across to the Bayswater Marina to meet Robin and Duncan and Whisper. The weather was a mix of sunny blue skies and then mini-squalls (WHITE SQUALL!) We decided to be true Kiwi’s and brave the elements. Once out in channel I was able to navigate Whisper and avoid massive freighter ships and ferry’s – it was pretty stressful. At the first sign of tipping, I quickly handed back the wheel.

We headed into Islington Bay where we dropped anchor and had a lovely lunch with tunes, beers and fabulous sun! Greg and Mark got a little out of control at the front while trying to hoist the sail (at least I wanted them to envision that as they posed for the shot. Duncan and Robin are awesome sailors – they took some time to get us aquainted with the general sailing terms and even let us be ship mates!

We headed back into the marina (perfect docking Robin!!) to try a new Kiwi drink called a “Bee Sting” – a mix of Manuka Honey Vodka and Ginger Beer with a splash of lime. It was YUMMY! We ordered in “Hell’s Pizza” which was delicious and tasted many NZ wines. Yes more drinking by Greg!

We got up early to fly to Wellington where Michael greeted us at the airport. We snagged our car and drove to Martinborough to Roland (Michael Sladden Look-a-like) and Lyles Vineyard (Julie this is your kind of place). We had a lovely lunch on the veranda and headed out to do some wine tasting at the local winery that Roland and Lyle supply grapes to Ata Rangi. YUMMY. Lyle also mentioned a famous chocolate shop in Greytown and of course greg was ready to go. Honestly this is truly the most unique and tasty chocolate ever – Greg Stocked up, but today we are heading back for more.

We had a lovely dinner in town and today we are heading back Wellington for a cocktail party with many family friends. We are having an amazing time and wishing we could permanently be on vacation! We will blog more when we get to Nelson.

Cheers from Kiwi Land!