Home at last

We meet our driver at the departure lounge and we are soon aboard the mini-bus home.  It's really nice to be somewhere where the air is a decent temperature, Singapore Airlines seem to keep the planes at the same temp as Singapore.
Amazingly the drive round the M25 in pouring rain at rush hour is pretty quick and soon we are home.  My lovely parents have left us bread, milk and food - so all we need to do is open the post, start the unpacking and sleep.

That's it, the holiday is over. So, what have we learned?:

• Don't fly Singapore Airlines. if you want to lose weight 
• For some reason sandals are called Jandals in the antipodes. 
• Kaikoura is not pronounced remotely like how it is spelt 
• Dolphins hate us
• Rain loves us 
• Penguins are really cool 
• Whales are wonderful
• Sealions love surfing 
• "Sweet As" is Kiwi for "Yes I concur"  
• Mount John is not just an instruction
• Mount Cook likes to hide
• We are rubbish at packing
•  Anywhere that has the pie as it's major culinary art form is fine by me. 
• Vegetarians are just fussy eaters who should stop their whining and have a steak pie. 
• New Zealand aint half pretty 

On a personal note,  I am amazed that my lovely wife has managed to put up with my company 24/7 for the entire 24 days without going completely mad.  Also how well she faced many personal fears and bravely overcame them, she has been very brave - I am proud of her and love her very much.

Thanks also to everyone who read these ramblings,  I hope they have provided some amusement.
Chris

Singapore to London

Of all the things I thought I might be doing today,  I didn't think I would be standing naked in the middle of an airport.  I'm not really up on the whole international jet setter thing, but the showers at Changi airport are a much needed thing.

We landed at Singapore 6 hours before our flight to London was due to leave.  So we have 6 hours to kill in a really hot airport.  We started off trying to amuse ourselves with a bit of shopping but it turned out the shops were even hotter than the rest of the airport, so we soon sought refuge in the (slightly cooler) business class lounge. 

Still 5 and a half hours to kill, but I have a great idea planned,  you see Cheng Airport has a butterfly garden (it's a very green airport, with trees and even a waterfall).  So I head down to the other airport with camera in hand to kill an hour or so, only to discover that because it is night time they turn the lights off to let the butterflies sleep.  Oh well, I can't even see them in the dark, let alone get shots of them!

So we are left with a round of getting a drink, reading a bit, getting some nibbles, reading a bit more, updating the blog, checking facebook, repeat.  By about 9:30 the heat is getting too much and as the sweat is starting to pool, it is time to take a shower.  It's really rather refreshing to get a shave and shower - after all it is about two in the morning by my watch and we have been travelling since 7 in the morning.

Eventually our plane leaves and no sooner have we taken off then I'm asleep.  This is when those fully flat beds are a really good thing,  I managed to get 6 or so hours kip and Maria managed a few short sleeps between coughs.

No sooner have I woken up when a stewardess appears with a cup of tea and some ferrero rocher - again they are spoiling us.  

So, what to do?  I'm wide awake and still 6 hours from London and virtually everything on the entertainment system I have seen.  So I decide to amuse myself with keywording the 6000 photos I have taken.  It's a dull job but no one else is going to do it.

Finally, after being served a nice big breakfast,we start to approach Heathrow.  We watch the approach on the onboard mapping system, and we watch the plane do a big loop as we are stacked on approach.  I have always thought my shed is used as one of the stacking locations for Heathrow and judging from the map I seem to be right.

We touch down at home at 6 in the morning - though my body clock doesn't have a clue what time it is.

Christchurch to Singapore

Over the last 24 hours I have shoved the entire daily  output of 3 pharmaceutical factories down my throat in a desperate attempt to calm the gout in my foot.  It seems to be working, all be it slowly.  Overnight I could just about stand, but walking (even like a bloke who's right leg was made out of plasticine) proved quite painful indeed.

As the alarm goes off, it is with a lot of trepidation that I put my feet on the floor.  It seems my luck is holding,  though it hurts somewhat, it is actually possible to stand on it and walk with a silly limp.

We finish packing, and head on out to the airport.  We leave behind a staggering amount of rubbish.  I know there are some things, like liquids we can't take on the plane, but why we have accumulated all this rubbish and carried from hotel to hotel only to chuck it away at the end will remain a mystery of our time.

We move easily through Christchurch airport with no drama and into the business class lounge.  A quick trip to do some shopping, Maria got some perfume and  I got a book on the locations for the Lord of the Rings and Maria treated me to a copy of "Shed" Magazine,  which I have been coveting all the time we have been here.  It's a brilliant read,  an article on how to make your own knife catches my eye - but it is possibly not best to read it to close to airport security!

We settle in to the lounge and I update the blog whilst snacking on a few things for breakfast. We didn't have breakfast in the hotel - we have learnt the lesson that Singapore Airlines will happily feed us till we explode.   In the lounge I end up helping another passenger to connect his laptop to the wifi, I'm supposed to be on holiday!

The flight goes back across New Zealand and from this height it is easy to see the clouds forming on the western seaboard, getting to the central Alps and disappearing on the mountains leaving Canterbury under a cloudless sky.  No wonder it rained so much at Fox and Mount Cook, you can see exactly how it happens from up here.

All those clouds = rain

The Airline staff then start on their determined mission to make everyone in business class constantly full.  I missed out two courses and still had enough food.  Maria gets offered piles of plants in different arrangements and the lucky girl even gets some tofu - I am so jealous...honest!

After lunch we have time to look out the window at Australia beneath us,  god it's dull.  Hour after hour of barren orange soil passes below us with amazing uniformity.  They really should have some sort of global conference and get everyone to agree to make Australia small or more interesting.  No one is going to miss that dull bit in the middle.

As exciting as Australia gets from the air

The trouble is, they haven't updated the in-flight entertainment since we flew out, so the only thing to watch is the stuff you didnt want to watch on the way out.  If you ever think it might be a good idea to watch "Cowboys vs Aliens" - it isn't!  Finally we land at a very warm Changi airport,  to enjoy our 6 hour wait for the next plane.

Mount Cook to Chrstchurch

Well this makes a change,  today I was woken by the alarm...not Maria's coughing.  She seems to be getting better, at least she got a decent nights sleep.  I think about this as I hobble about the room: gout has flared up in my right foot.  At the moment it is agonising, but if I'm not lucky it will soon be excrutiating.

We couldn't be bothered to pack last night so we packed this morning - forcing stuff into far more bags and carrier bags than we should have and so we just about checked out by the last check out time of 10am.  Having paid yet another exorbitant fee for internet access, we wave Mount Cook goodbye.  It is a fine looking mountain, really attractive - when it is not hidden by rain clouds!

We drive along the lake to Twizel,  Maria driving whilst I grab some snaps from the car window as we travel along.   We stop at Twizel for breakfast,  and sit outside the cafe where we share some of our breakfast with some very bold sparrows.

We decide to take the scenic route to Lake Tekapo which runs along side the canals created as part of the hydro-electric schemes up here.  The water is still the stunning azure blue - we have now learned that this colour is due to "rock flour" in the water from the glaciers that feed the lakes.  For a scenic route it was prettier and quicker than the route along the state highway...result.

After that it was the slow descent down through "Beautiful Valley" and on to the Canterbury plains.  The Canterbury plains make Norfolk look interesting and mountainous.  I am driving now and to relieve the boredom,  I have invented a new game.  Every 5 or so km there is a passing lane added to the road,  they are not particulalry long stretches so I make it my mission to see how many cars/lorries I can overtake in these small stretches of road.  A personal best of 5 makes for a pretty good achievement,  though I may have  exceeded the 100km speed limit on the odd occasion.

Beautiful Valley and some "rolling road blocks"

We found the airport pretty easily and as the hotel was just over the road that was none too difficult either.  We then drove over the road and dropped off the car,  and the nice people at Avis arranged for a lift back to hotel as now my gout had got pretty damn harsh and any kind of walking was proving a bit difficult.



All day I had been throwing far more anti-gout drugs down my throat than I am supposed to,  in a desperate attempt to calm things down and enable walking like a normal person.  But it's really not helping much,  so my kind wife decides to get me some ice,  for use as an ice pack.  This proves some what difficult as the instruction book in the hotel says that there are 3 ice machines at different ends of the hotel..only it lied.  On phoning reception  it turns out that the ice-machines were removed some time ago,  Maria makes her displeasure known to the guy on reception!


After a trip to the restaurant to get an ice bucket - the rest of the evening is spent lying about with an ice pack on my foot.  We even order room service as walking as far as the loo causes real difficulty.  This does not bode well for tomorrow as airports require an awful lot of walking!

Mount Cook in the Sunshine

I awake at 6 to the sound of Maria coughing as I had been every hour before. At least this time it gives me a chance to get some snaps of Mount Cook at dawn. Despite having a hotel room that looks like a pharmacists with remedies for colds and hay fever everywhere but none of them seem to have made much impact.

We have breakfast in the room with a view of Mount Cook and the other mountains covered in a fresh layer of snow from all that rain we had.  This view & experience was one of the reasons that really attracted Maria to going to NZ but being really ill was not how she had visualised it.

This morning we are booked on the Glacier Explores trip on to the glacier lakes and up close with the icebergs.  We get on the coach and already Maria is breathing heavily just sitting there,  this is not good.  We take the bus along a gravel track to the base of the terminal moraine that holds in the glacial lake.  From there it is a pretty easy mile walk,  well it's for most of us but it was real difficult for Maria.  I could only carry her coat and sympathise as she coughed her way along the track.

The boats are specially made to be strong enough to get nice and close to the icebergs.  We saw the different stages of the ice and them rolling over trying to maintain stability.  The lake only came into existence in 1975 and since then has grown to an incredible size as the glacier recedes.  As you progress up the lake the lateral morrains (rubbish dumps to the sides of the glacier) grow really huge,  showing how big the glacier once was.  We head up towards the glacier it's self which looks like a great dirty lump of muck.  This is because the ice on top is melting leaving behind just the rock that the ice contains.

All too soon,  it is back to the jetty and the walk starts again.  Maria is really struggling on the way back but we get there eventually, but Maria is not looking too well.  Returning back to The Hermitage,, Maria takes to her bed to try and get some sleep - can't say I blame her.

I decided to do a bit of walking.  First I head up to the hooker valley and I walked up past the climbers memorial and the first swing bridge taking the odd snap along the way,

Then I popped down to the Tasmen valley and took a few more snaps.

Maria didn't seem much better when I returned, lets hope a nights sleep helps..

Mount Cook in the rain

At 2am I wake up to the sound of Maria coughing, at 2:30 I was woken up to the sound of Maria coughing, and at 3:30, 4 and 5.  She is not a well puppy.  Her cough sounds terrible,  I'm glade we are the only people on our floor as otherwise I am worried that someone might hear the noise and report me to the NZSPCA for performing un-natural acts on geese!  She seems to have caught the same sort of cold/virus I got at Kaikoura.  Mine got so bad that by Queenstown,  the smallest slope was leaving me feeling completely breathless and gasping.  This is not good.

To add to the air of jolity, it's raining.  The view of Mount Cook is still noticeable by it's absence.After breakfast it was time for a drive down to Twizel along the side of the unbelievably blue Lake PuiKaki.  As soon as we go 3 miles from Mount Cook the rain stops and the sun comes out.  The purpose of our 45minute each way journey is to visit a pharmacist -she chats to Maria and diagnoses hay fever,  I'm not completely convinced to be honest but she leaves with  lots of different tablets and potions.  Lets hope they make a difference.

On the way back, its still sunny all the way along until of course we get to Mount Cook airport the rain comes down in buckets.  A quick lunch at the Sir Edmund Hillary Museum cafe then we decide to leave this soggy place behind and head to Lake Tekapo.

Down by the side of Lake Tekapo, sits The Church of the Good Shepherd.  This tiny little church sits in an amazing position by the side of the lake with mountains in the background.  The view is so stunning they don't bother to have any decoration behind the alter - just a large picture window.

We drove up to the nearby Mount John observatory at the top of a very windy hill and captured a few more snaps of McKenzie country before being blown back into the car.

Then it was a drive back to base, an d the weather had worsened.  Mount Cook village was under yet more rain.

For our evening meal,  we took a drive down to The Old Mountaineer Bar and Cafe.  - it;s only a short walk but we drove as it was lashing down.  Whilst we were sitting in the mountaineers cafe, the weather starts to change.  A patch of blue sky slowly appears,  the rain slows and the clouds slowly disipate.

Finally,  just as the sun sets, we sight Mount Cook.  Which was just as well as otherwise I would have had to get a refund from the hotel.

Dunedin to Mount Cook

The sun rose bright and clear over Dunedin - read that sentence again.  I said the sun,  yes that big yellow ball had decided to grace us with it's presence and the city is heating up.  By the time we leave it is really warm and I am starting to wish I had worn shorts.

The drive takes us up along the coast which looks great in the sunshine.  The first stop on the way is the Moeraki boulders. These strange round rocks sit on the beach at Moeraki, like giant eggs left behind by some huge dinosaur.  they really are quite a strange thing to find on a beach.

The next stop is Omaru, which is an unusual city for New Zealand.  The city grew rich in the Victorian era due to profits from the refrigerated meat trade and it is full of impressive Victorian stone buildings. It even has a massive opera house - which seems bizarre in what is now a rather small town.

Now we start our drive up into Mckenzie country - named in honour of English actor and star of The Office and Pirates of the Caribean, McKenzie Crook.  It is a land of brown grasses and seas of blue lupins,  with azure blue lakes that seem unreal all of which is towered over by huge mountains.  As we round each corner there are gasps of wow!! and stunning,  There really aren't enough words to do the place justice.

A stop for lunch and we find a nice place that does Maria a stuffed Kumara (sweet potato) ,  which makes a change from the option of cheese & onion sandwiches which are normally available.  Then it is on through more glorious sunbaked country till we approach our destination - Mount Cook.  15km outside Mount Cook the rain starts,  by the time we get to The Hermitage it is coming down in buckets.  This is what we have come to expect.

We check in to our room with "Mount Cook views" though you could have fooled me.  All we can see is mist and rain. Our evening meal is in the restaurant with "Mount Cook Views" (mist), get the lift with "Mount Cook Views" (rain) back to our room with "Mount Cook Views" (fog and heavy rain).

Watching the evenings weather forecast apparently we are to expect snow tomorrow.  Snow!! it's supposed to be sodding summer!