tours

Ok the holiday blog.

I started my holidays (mid term here means a two week break).Friday the 19th of august and started to tour. Yey..

We (me and two other Singaporeans) rented a car from quality rental (but name quality, car not quality). A nissan Sunny. Not too bad, quite comfortable, but I just do not like sunnies. I dun mind being driven in one but I just do not like driving one. (my kingdom, my kingdom for a Subaru Imprezea WRX STI.)

Anyway, we left on sat morning, went to Kaikoura. And five (yes five) minutes into the drive, yours truly got lost. I was driving and I read the map wrongly ( I am probably the only guy who cannot read maps). Yup, we got lost in Christchurch, how embarrassing is that! But one of the other girls managed to read the map. With a bit of luck, trial and just plain driving straight, we managed to find our way to highway 1 to get to our destination Kaikoura

So we drove. For the first trip, we did not see sheep (which is weird when sheep outnumber people here 12 to 1). Neither did we see cows (something like 1 to 1). All we saw was cars, trees, grass and the sky. Lovely day for a drive, and it was not that long, about two half hours. We arrived in kaikoura safely, and on time! Checked in at the Dusky Lodge, nice backpackers, but I realise I do not like having to walk in the cold to the toilet. Makes you not want to shower.

Kaikoura is the animal place. There is a seal viewing place and there is whale watching for the rich and those with time luxury, fishing for the hungry and animals for the sua kus like singaporeans who have never seen chickens. Alive.

We went to see the seals. Which were really very huge, proud animals that only allowed a few people to take pictures before running away. Along the beach, we happened upon something that made us shrink back. Sheep’s (or goat’s) leg. Someone hacked at the animal and dumped them onto the beach. Not sure if it is for the seals.

So anyway, we spent the rest of the day at a farm we saw. Basically, we paid to let them give us food to feed their animals. I am thinking even slaves do not have to pay to work, here we have to let them earn a profit from us working for them. But the animals are nice.. there was this one huge sow, (and I mean huge, like you could sit on it) and there was this billy goat whose sole objective was to eat out (and probably along with) my hand. Then there was the aggressive chickens who have learnt that people equals free food. No need to peck on the ground for the slimy, sticky, yucky, horrible, fear striking worms. Nope no need to eat worms. Just wait till the nice people put the pellets on the floor and we will attack.

So anyway we left kaikoura and the animals. Headed out for a wine tour in Blenheim. Blenheim is a wine region. Beautifully built. The company we went with was based in Picton which is a port town (cannot call city because it does not have a cathedral. Well I did not see one anyway). So we wined and dined with the rich (except that the rich were behind the photo frames on the walls)
I have decided that my favourite wine is Merlot. It is a nice dark red bugger that goes down well. I have also decided that I do not like white, save Resiling white and ice wines. And desert wines. Ha ha lots of wine

After that we went to stay at the bayview backpackers. Nice place. Very nice actually. But as we had a walk the next day, down the Marlborough sounds, we could not extend the next day.

Monday morning saw us at Picton harbour getting ready to get on the boat to take us to Endeavour Inlet, which was where we would hike, a staggering X km (I have decided to not say the distance due to the fact that X is not very big, but not very small). It was a 3 hour walk on majestic hills, covered by lush green trees, bounded by the lovely sea. And we walked. Boy did we ever. By the end of it we were complaining.

Then we decided to walk on to see the waterfall which was a bit after out end point where the ferry would pick us up. The three stooges (us that is) got lost on a pre marked trail. Go figure.

Anyway that night we drove to Nelson. Which was a nice enough town. The backpackers room had a nice name, the Palace backpackers. Nothing too palatial about it though. But it was cool enough.

Nelson is a big town (big is relative, think something like Hougang; remember NZ has a population of 4 million people) but it was happening enough for us.

Wed we drove to Marahau. Now this is I think the smallest town in the world. It consists of one street of houses, all weekend houses that is, a few adventure shops. There is no mobile signal there. When we got there, it was dark, raining, cold. To make matters worse, we found the place we were staying to be a nightmare. First it was not heated. (think cold). We had to walk a fair bit (but we drove instead) to the toilet. In the cold, wet, night. Then, on this huge farm that we were staying on, there were no other people. It was disgustingly scary. And moody.

But the good news was the next day would be an exciting day. We had picked to kayak in the Abel tasman National Park, followed by a boat stay somewhere in the park of which Marahau is the entrance to, from which we would return on our legs.

The kayak was fantastic. Really had a lot fun just kayaking. And the guide, a chap called Scottie decided to allow us to sail (yes kayak sailing) back to shore. Fun, but extremely difficult, involving angling, pulling, praying and shouting.

The flip side was that petrina, one of the three stooges lost her camera at the bottom of the tasman sea.

Anyway the boat stay was good. The boat was a nice place, and it had hot water. After a day of salt water that is cold, all you want is a hot shower.
The walk back on the next day was uneventful. We concluded that we will not take any detours because we were sure to get lost. So, we chose the safest path which was to walk the clearly beaten track and enjoy the scenery. Which was awesome.

The last days of the holiday was just spent at Murchison. We stayed at the lazy cow, and mind you the people were lazy. There was a sign that said, please come in, get a room and we will collect payment tomorrow. Anyway, here we did white water rafting which was so fun! We did crazy things like swim down the rapids, Stand on the raft and raft down the rapids, and jump into the water from 3 metres. Scary but great fun. After that stop, we went to Hanmer springs, a thermal resort.

Well, then I went to prepare for the second half of my holiday. To go up to Auckland and visit Rachel and the north island. Was a good flight, but..

On the day of departure, Tuesday, the fog outside was bad. With many flights cancelled, my own flight was in the balance.

But at ten, the sky cleared up enough for my plane to take off. Yey… so I took off to the Largest city in NZ. Mind you it was large and busy. Met Rachel at the airport, she and a friend came and picked me up. Subsequently, we drove to the Kaitaia (which meant according to the guide, Food (kai) on wheels (taia). Actually it had a longer name, Kaitatia or something which mean plentiful food)

Ninety mile beach is an interesting place. Because it is part of the highway, but it is a beach. You save on maintaining the roads (the sea does that for you) But the sand was so fine, it was like salt or flour. And the sea was so clean, not like Singapore ones.

The last few days was spent in rachel’s flat, just hanging out with her and the friends. Was so cool. A bit sad to leave and come back to school (and hence work) but in ten weeks time, she will be coming over !! yey.. doing a west coast tour of the south island which I left out.

Oh and i forgot, on my return trip, i sat in Seat 2A. Which suprise suprise, was a business class seat. There were two seats in the space for three seats, so the seats were huge, comfortable and i slept the whole way back. Ha ha

I am going to post the pictures on some photo bucket thing, once I learn how to do it. Can anyone tell me which is the best to use? Thanks

Anyway time for dinner now. See you!