I left the USA on December 5th to spend December with Roy in Australia; it's summer 'Down Under' and winter in Houston, so why not? Much more importantly though, I wanted to see my Sweetie. I was a happy traveler; thanks to my new traveling best friend - Melitonin, I was
finally able to sleep or doze for several hours on that long flight. Many thanks to Rio's doggy grandparents, my sister Marilyn and her husband, Tech Support Sr. John, for keeping him. Again.
Thank You to Jill A. for an airport pick-up in Brisbane where I was able to spend an enjoyable day visiting with her family and my former neighbor, Juelle. It was also very fun to eat dinner with a few more friends at our favorite Indian restaurant in Banyo - Singh's Curry House. Roy flew in later that evening and surprised me with an early Christmas present: a 9 day trip to New Zealand's South Island. Is there any doubt why I LOVE this man?
We had such a great trip! Absolutely fell in love with the entire island; we decided if we ever had to live anywhere else outside the US, it would be there. One runs out of adjectives trying to describe how incredibly beautiful it is. I am going to write a brief Reader's Digest trip description here and will post pictures in another post to keep this easy. Lake Watapourri above.
In short, we made a large circle driving about 1650 km (1025 miles) driving and 258 km by train.
We flew into ChristChurch (on the East Coast) on December 8th, and were able to see the still-fenced-off Central Business District due to the massive earthquake (on Feb 2011) damage. Walking back to our motel, we enjoyed wandering through the huge beautiful Hagley Park. It was fun to take a 4 hour train ride West to Graymouth, where we picked up our rental car. Drove south down the lush green West Coast, staying in Franz Josef where we took a helicopter tour of several glaciers - Franz Josef, Fox, Tasman (the longest - 29m) and incredible mountains - Cook, (highest in NZ at 3,754m or 12,316') Fox and several others I can't remember. Sunny weather made the flight doubly stunning. I was just so thankful I didn't get sick!
At Haast we turned East to cross over the "Southern Alps" to Queenstown, which is a ski resort town. This side of the mountains is much drier. We were thrilled to find a Mexican restaurant there and enjoyed a delicious meal. Roy enjoyed a great day of fishing nearby and I went souvenir shopping. I did have a good chuckle when I saw the name of several restaurants and wondered what kind of town this really is! LOL! From there we continued South to Te Anau where we saw a small office labeled "Production Crew" - we had found one of "The Hobbit" film crews! From there we took a day trip to see the beautiful Milford Sound, which is actually a fjord on the West Coast. (note to self; look up what is the difference between a fjord and a Sound). It was here where the Woodward Travel Curse caught up with us and we had low clouds, drizzle and rain through the whole day. I was pretty bummed not to be able to see the tops of the mountains as we drove through the narrow valley to catch our tour boat but the locals told us that we were lucky to be able to see "the 8th wonder of the world" - the hundreds, (literally!) of waterfalls off the steep cliff faces. I have to admit, it was pretty incredible. Also saw equally incredibly beautiful large fields of Mountain Lupin in pink, purple, blue, white and lavender. The boat ride was fun albeit a little damp as we stayed outside Topside to see better. More waterfalls, stunning scenery, dolphins, some Southern Fur Seals napping on a rock, but sadly no penguins for Roy. On the way back the captain must have had a wicked sense of humor as he ran the boat very close to one of those waterfalls and everyone outside got even more damp. HAHA.
We sadly bid good bye to the mountains to drive northeast into farmlands to Dunedin, where we toured The Cadbury factory (Yum!) and saw their beautiful train station. We also visited the Royal Albatross Center and saw a few of those huge (wing span of 3m - 9') magnificent birds flying nearby. The rain stayed with us making it down right chilly at times; causing us wonder: if this is summer, what is winter like?!
We finished our trip back in ChristChurch were Roy found our same motel again without a map. Amazing; the same man who got lost in Sacramento for 16 years. Our flight on Saturday, December 18th was way too early, westward across the Tasman Sea to Gladstone through Brisbane .
Some thoughts and observations on New Zealand: a zillion more sheep, saw several red deer farms (what, Bambi as a meat source?!) and everything seemed pretty expensive, i.e. petrol was $AU2.10/LITER. Burger King was called Burger King there whereas in Australia it is Happy Jack. Same menu. The entire country was still flying high, rejoicing in the All-Blacks World Rugby Cup victory. Not only were the mountains specular but the lakes were an amazingly blue, clear and incredibly deep. Lawn bowling is a very popular sport here; we had fun watching them one evening and talking to a coach about strategy. We were excited to find California poppies growing on the roadside one day! Couldn't wait to out drive some nasty small black biting flies near Te Anau. My sharp eyed husband spotted not one but two quilt shops on our trip which I was more than happy to peruse. Ate my first and probably last mussels in a soup one evening. The Kiwi is the national bird of NZ (the picture of me with the over-sized one); now that is interesting. I bet 99% of the population has never seen this bird, which is the about the size of a large chicken - much larger than I had imagined. We saw one in a Visitors Center in Franz Josef, in a darkened habitat, because they are nocturnal, only come out at night, very shy and rarely seen. Now I ask you, a national bird that nobody has ever or probably will ever see? Really? Why not the very cute Pukeko which is very common? (the picture of one with the All-Blacks jersey painted on). Just wondering.......
If you were to ask me, "where should I visit, Australia or New Zealand"? That would be tough to answer. I have to say, if you love mountains, go to NZ. If you love beaches and scuba diving, go to Auz. It also depends how much time you have; you could see pretty much see most of New Zealand(both islands together are about the size of California) in two weeks. Australia on the other hand, is as big as the United States. You would have to be moving fast and be very picky about what to see there in two weeks.
Thank you My Love, it was a most wonderful trip/present. A thousand times THANK YOU.
