April 9th – April 15th – Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom!

Lucy says........
What to do with our guests. Greg Had planned an exhaustive programme (exhausting as well!!) The first morning in Wanaka was so cold that we all had breakfast with our coats on!!
We decided to familiarise every one with Wanaka walked into town along the lake front. It was a lovely day, bright and sunny and warmed up quickly once the sun came up and that has been the pattern since.

The following day we drove out to Mount Aspiring Valley and walked along the valley towards the Aspiring Hut, again a lovely day however we turned back before we got to the hut as very black clouds were looming, although they came to nothing.
Later in the week we moved to Queenstown, over the mountains and Betty & John looked after the children for the day while Greg Harry and I went for a Quad bike ride.
Now, having been, (what 5 months ago?) on a Quad bike, I quite happily agreed to go…. It turned out once we got there that we had been booked onto an Adventure tour… I was starting to get nervous…
Fortunately we were given our own guide who was really understanding of me. We started going around the paddock then set off along a road and progressed to muddy puddles, mud, more mud and steep hills with mud and huge holes in them with mud.
By the time we had finished 3 hours later we were very muddy but it had been really good fun.
Alistair & Rowena had had a good day with Grandma as she had let them have whatever they wanted for lunch..!!
That evening we all went for a buffet at the restaurant at the top of the gondola. Wow, what a spread! The Children had a lovely time going up again and again to choose things to eat.
Friday morning saw an early start for Betty & John who were flying to Wellington at 8am for a few days to stay with John’s friend. Once at the airport they were told that as it was very cloudy there were no planes flying so they would have to wait, eventually at 12.30pm they left!
We returned to Wanaka. This was the beginning of the end trip for the van; the plan was for the children & I to take the van to Auckland while Greg came back here to start his course.
We left on Saturday to travel back to Ch-church leaving Greg & Harry here to go mountain bike riding and watch the rugby.

April 2nd – 8th – Arrival of Harrison Ford!

Greg Says……
Mon 2nd – Last night we found ourselves at this campsite at Leighfield Beach north of Christchurch, where we were the only campers! We parked on a site overlooking the sea, and after Alistair and I had bee for a run settled down to watch our movie on Movie Night! Some say this is the highlight of the week, and look forward to from the minute the film finishes the previous week!
Anyway, we awoke; well Lucy woke up at 7am to a brilliant blue sky with a beautiful sunrise over the Pacific. The rest of us stayed in bed, and did not get up till 9.30am….disgraceful I hear you say! I guess we are all so tired out with the constant move from campsite to campsite, so we stayed here another day. The day consisted of lessons for the children and reading for the adults……..I can’t remember when I spent the whole day reading! Alistair finished his book ‘Watership Down’, Rowena and I listened to the iPOD, with Row dancing to ABBA! Lucy finished her ‘Claire Francis’ book, and started and almost finished ‘Born Free’, and I have been reading ‘Nine Lives’ by Alan Deere, who was a WW2 RAF Fighter pilot (it’s really good!).
Towards the end of the afternoon we had some kicking practise with the Rugby Ball, and then the hardy ones i.e. Lucy, Alistair and Rowena went down to the beach as the sun went down to do some water colours……by this time the wind was cold, very cold!! I thought I’d catch up with the blog!
Winter is nearly here, and the sun disappears at around 6-6.15 pm these days. It can still be hot during the day, but it does get cold at night. The nights have been generally clear of clouds, and last night the full moon was out. It was so bright it almost felt like day! The sky is full of stars, there are some which we recognise from the North, but a lot in the South that we don’t, I suppose we don’t look at the sky so much at home?
Spent the rest of the week pottering around doing things around Christchurch. Greg needed a medical for his flying and then a blood test. We drove out of Ch-ch towards the Banks peninsular and found a lovely place to stay where we were the only ones. It was a bit spoilt as we were driving on diesel fumes as there are never enough petrol stations in this country. However we limped into one just in time!

Also did a trip to Hanmer Springs, about 1.5 hours north of Ch-ch. Spent the best part of a day reading while the children slid down the water slides until they resembled prunes and soaking in the hot pools which ranged from 35-41oC, al under a lovely blue sky.

We popped into see Will and Julie who used to live next to us in Bournemouth before moving out here a year ago. We just looked them up in the ‘phone book and turned up! We were invited to dinner the next day and spent a very pleasant evening with them.

Greg picked up Harry, Grandma & John from the airport on Saturday morning , took Harry to a rugby match that evening and then they made their way to Wanaka on Sunday.




“The Splinter Group”

Alistair, Rowena and I left Greg in Christchurch and journeyed towards Wanaka. We stayed in a POP for the night, the middle of a field next to someone’s house in the pouring rain! I didn’t go to sleep until 1.30 am, I don’t like it on my own!!
The following day was overcast and drizzly so we didn’t get to see Mt Cook as we passed, all the mountains were covered in cloud.
We did see 2 lovely, quite different lakes, L.Tekapo a lovely clear lake surrounded by dry orange/yellow hills and presumably mountains behind and L.Pukaki, another huge lake but this one was a beautiful opaque turquoise blue. The reason for the colour and cloudy appearance was the fact that it has very fine a colloid suspended in it from where the rocks are worn down by the glaciers.
We arrived in Wanaka in the late afternoon and unloaded to van, we have so much stuff!! We will have to have a garage sale before we leave!!!
Next day it was ‘normal’ household duties making beds cooking and shopping to be ready for our visitors.
Hasn’t Harry grown!!! He had a sore throat when he got here which made his voice sound really deep, but as it got better it wasn’t as deep as first thought!

Had a roast dinner, first in NZ, Beef & Yorkshire puds which were a bit burnt on the bottom, will have to get used to the oven.

March 26th – April 1st – Christchurch NZ….feels like home!

Lucy says...........

Greg is getting quite good with his “headlines” isn’t he?

Feeling sore from playing soft ball and an invitation to come to Glenorchy School anytime, we left Middlemarch.
We had a dilemma, we have to change our plane tickets in Christchurch, also want to go to Mount Cook, opposite directions!! Which way to go? The weather forecast was cloud & rain for Mt. Cook, so it had to be Christchurch.
Journeyed up the coast and stopped at the Moeraki Boulders, these are large spherical boulders sitting on the beach. I have been here before, but again, like everything else they are quite different. I thought there were lots more of them and the sea covered them, (Greg has since suggested that I might have been there at high tide! Oh, didn’t think of that!! Thick or what??)
Found a place, Katiki Point, that had a hide just above the beach and stayed for ages (mainly because it was freezing outside, no, not really) watching the seals lolloping across the beach and playing in the sea. It was supposed to be the main hide-out of the Blue Penguins, the biggest colony in NZ, but we only saw 2, so either they are in danger of extinction or they were swimming out to sea somewhere!!
Stayed the night off the main highway by the beach, with the noise of the waves in one ear and the state highway 1 in the other.

It was further to Christchurch than we thought, got there the following evening and stayed at an expensive campsite, when I asked how much the site would be he said $46, Wow I said, that’s expensive, straight away he changed it and said, for you I could do it for $36, (was he a kitchen or double glazing salesman in a former life or perhaps of Indian descent!!??) Spent the evening with our fingers in our ears as the freight railway line was the other side of the hedge!! Fortunately the trains stopped between 11pm and 5.30 am!

Into Christchurch the next day to find the Qantas (didn’t realise that Qantas didn’t have a U after the Q) office we had been told was here, wasn’t! So went to the airport to see if we could change our tickets. The Qantas ticket clerk said we could but in the middle of sorting it out her computer went dead! So we have to do it over the ‘phone.
Mission now accomplished we leave NZ 29.7.07 and fly to Sydney.

That evening we went for a walk down the road to see if we could find a bottle shop for a crate of cold beer. On coming out of the bottle shop Greg was lured into a bar next door and we ended up having dinner there. Rib eye steak, chips, salad, fried eggs, a huge plateful for $6.50 (approx 2.75 pounds!!)

We decided that as we had been blasted recently by the icy winds from the Antarctic we would check out the Antarctic Centre, a museum thing all about it. It was brilliant, we were in there for about 3 hours, I could have stayed much longer. The best bits for A & R were firstly the “Snow room”, a room with snow in it! You had to enter through 2 lots of doors and put on rubberised overshoes and parkas, the temperature inside was -5 oC (if anyone knows how to do degrees C with the o up in the air, on the computer please email me fordgp@googlemail.com) Inside there was an igloo, a storm tent and Rowena’s favourite, a slide made out of huge ice blocks that she spent practically all the time we were in there sliding down. Every so often they simulated a storm with the wind dropping the temperature to -25oC. IT WAS FREEZING!! We put 2 parkas on the next time we went in!!
They have a penguin pool with Blue Penguins, much smaller than the Yellow eyed ones we saw the other day, they are rescue penguins. We watched them being fed.
There was a huge amount of information there about the Antarctic, lots of things that I hadn’t realised, eg, It rarely snows, most storms are wind storms. There was a fantastic film documentary made, I should think in the 1970’s, about over wintering at Scott Base, all the chaps had long hair and beards (reminded me some what of Greg!) and huge framed glasses!

I made a pact with Greg, if he let me go to the Christchurch craft market, I would go to the Air Force Museum with him!!
Alistair and Rowena came to the market with me and we had a good poke around, Alistair is very interested in all things Maori, and bought himself a greenstone necklace in the shape of a Maori club (which he tells me is used to club Mutton Birds, to eat!) this is to add to his other one in the shape of a Maori fish hook, which dragged the south island out of the sea in Maori legend.(it means courage) He avidly reads all the Maori legends at DOC offices, bookshops, and libraries. And we also got some sheep wool to do some felting. Finished products may be sent to particular people……!!
Found a food alley with lots of stalls selling ethnic food, had scrummy lunch of falafel, beef and chicken kebabs and Alistair had a fried dough pizza.
Then to Air Force museum which was actually quite interesting, WWI &WWII from the NZ perspective. Home front NZ style. There were also 3 flight simulators; even I had a go on them!!
Moved on up the coast a bit, as the weather is really lovely. Children went in the sea; I got bitten by sandflies for the first time in ages, found a nice little site next to the beach.
Alistair has discovered watercolours he was given some w/c pencils and a pad for Christmas or birthday by I think Catherine, thanks. He spends a lot of time finding things to paint..!