Clive is going to do a post about our time in Taupo but in the meantime we’re going to jump ahead a bit. I’m too impatient to wait for him – not like me eh?
We ended up flying from Auckland after the semis (the less said about those the better) down to Nelson where we rented a car for our week on the South Island. We spent the afternoon in Nelson, checking out the art deco cathedral which was a little grey and depressing for my taste, and then heading to the Founders Heritage Park which is a replica historical village where you can also sample the local organically certified brews which were quite delicious. We happened to be visiting at the same time as an exhibition of urban art with pieces from Banksy and others of a similar school – I haven’t seen a great deal of this type of art and I don’t pretend to understand the meaning behind all of it but the exhibition was fascinating.
One final piece of important business we had to attend to before we left Nelson was to visit a location of extreme historical importance – the site of the first ever rugby match in New Zealand, which was played at the foot of Botanical Hill on 14th May 1870 where Nelson rugby club trounced the lily-livered pansies from Nelson College 2-0. For those of you that don’t follow rugby, Clive and I are striking a ‘line out’ pose in the photo below.
From Nelson we drove to Picton along some of the most stunning coastal road I’ve ever seen (our photos don’t even come close to doing it justice). Picton is nestled in one of the many bays formed by the various fjords that are part of the Queen Charlotte Sound on the NE coast of the South Island and the views are breathtaking. We were hoping to do some of the famous Queen Charlotte track while we were in the area, which you can walk or bike, but the weather on our one full day there was awful so we had to knock the idea on the head (we’ll be back) and instead we headed down to Blenheim and the South Island’s wine country – hoorah!
On the way to the wineries and because the weather as still awful we decided to stop in at the Omaka Aviation Heritage museum which has a good portion of planes from the personal collection of Peter Jackson who also helped design the exhibit. The result is an incredibly engaging display of original and replica first world war fighter planes made from wood and fabric which frankly boggle the mind. One of the most famous displays depicts the downfall of Baron Von Richthofen, the infamous Red Baron, including the original canvas swastika that was cut from the wing of his downed plane. Another that sticks in my mind shows the different ways that the two different sides in the war solved the issue of wanting to mount guns to planes that were flown by one person and were powered by propellers at the front. How to prevent the pilot from shooting his own propellor?! One company completely changed the design of the plane and mounted the propeller behind the pilot which frankly looked very odd but in my opinion was preferable to the second option of relying on a design that set the timing on the machine gun to ensure that it missed the propeller blades, at least most of the time…
And then it was time for wine tasting, probably one of my favourite pastimes 🙂 We head first to the evocatively named Spy Valley winery (you can imagine why we headed here first) where we tasted about 8 of their wines which were frankly delicious, made all the more frustrating by the fact that we couldn’t buy much because we’d have to drink it all before we left NZ. From here we went for lunch at the Herzog winery where we ate delicious pork belly and lamb in a formal garden in the sunshine which had finally appeared. Simply blissful. The pork was nearly as good as Mum’s it was that good. Another glass of wine with lunch then some more tasting at St Clair via a detour for some handmade chocolate at an unexpected chocolate factory stop meant I was pretty tipsy by the time we got to Cloudy Bay, the final stop on our tour. We rationalized our multiple purchases here by making them gifts for Clive’s family in Queenstown – there’s always an excuse if you look hard enough.
From hot water beach we headed a little further up the coast to Cathedral Cove to finally be greeted with some beautiful weather showing off the lovely beach and archway to its fullest. There is a short walk down to the cove which the signs say takes about 40 minutes – the Lonely Planet disagrees and says that only those on a ventilator should take that long – in our case thankfully the LP was spot on 🙂
Cathedral Cove is a rock formation that has been formed by the erosion of the sea. I last went there 10 years ago and not a great deal has changed since then apart from a big sign that warns you not to go under the archway for fear of falling rock and a yellow tape that is incredibly easy to hop over. I guess they feel like they’ve done their bit in warning you and if anything happens you can’t sue.
After the obligatory photo shoot we headed on down the coast to Rotorua to check out some steaming mud pools and shooting geysers that draw over 3 million tourists to the area every year. I have to say apart from the weirdly lunar landscape in the Wai-O-Tapu park and the insane natural thermal phenomenons in the area that definitely capture the imagination, none of us were particularly taken with Rotorua. I have no idea why anyone would choose to live in the town – the entire place smells like rotten eggs. And I mean the whole town.
We set off in convoy from Orewa with me driving the bus and Jo charged with navigating us through the rugby mayhem of Auckland and onwards to the wilds of the Coromandel Peninsular. This is a rugged coastline on the east side of the North Island, marked by tiny towns and endlessly serpentine roads barely hugging hillsides or at other times barely above the lapping waves. I loved it although was disturbed by the distinct lack of sheep. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a Welshman or anything but I’d read that NZ has over 30m sheep and I was looking to get my teeth stuck into some fine lamb chops.
A highlight of our first day road trip was deciding to take a “short cut” across the peninsular along what the guide book told us was the legendary 309. In fact, this was essentially a 30km gravel road that took us into the heart of Jurassic Park, a bonkers twisting, undulating, deserted road-to-nowhere fringed with a dense thicket of tropical lushness that threatened to produce monkeys and veloceraptors at any point. In my mind we were pioneers discovering an ancient route to hidden treasure, Jo just told me to keep my eyes and our camper on the road as we swayed from bend to bend with my “enthusiastic” driving. Along the way, there were vague signs of life – a very disturbing hillbilly compound notable for it’s ramshackle dwelling and array of rusting vehicles (either abandoned, or hijacked and burnt out as far as we could tell). At this point I had the dueling banjo scene from Deliverance playing in my head and we sped on whilst being chased away by several mangey hounds of death salivating with great gobs of Satan’s rabid slobber.
Eventually, we emerged on the other coast and half an hour later arrived at our campsite destination. Despite the inclement weather (read lashing rain and gale force winds) we donned our swimwear and headed to the beach with a few borrowed spades. No we were not in training for the British sand castle championships, we were after the thermal springs of hot water beach, an infamous NZ phenomenon where hot springs seep up through the sand to provide warm pools akin to natural hot tubs. During the frigid 20 minute walk down to the beach we mused that this could just be a cruel kiwi joke to send unsuspecting Brits down to dig up the beach just for shits and giggles but as we rounded a rocky outcrop there were several others lounging in their little sandy hot tubs. We quickly set to work with our spades and before long realized this was no joke, the water coming up through the sand was so hot we actually had to dig with flip-flops on to stop our feet being scalded. After a few minutes we were basking like seals in the sun as our own pool was complete, although with the tide on the turn our time was limited. Still, it was a very surreal (and uniquely cool/hot?) experience to have a steaming bath actually on the beach in the midst of chill winds and frigid waters!
So, Mr B here, after 6 weeks Mrs B has given up the iPad to a far less skilled and gifted scribe to give his take on the travels. The arrival in Auckland was somewhat of a second homecoming for me and after jumping in a taxi at Auckland airport to go and pick up our paradoxically named “Space-Ship”, I insisted on stopping at the first sign indicating we were on George Bolt Memorial Drive. For those of you who haven’t been bored by my tales of the family pioneering aviator, Great Uncle George, as I affectionately call him, was a bit a legend and held many flying records in NZ after buying the first plane built by the Boeing brothers out of Seattle. He then went on to start the first official airmail service and later became Chief Engineer to what was to become New Zealand Airways – a bit of an all round hero who’s exploits inspire me but as yet I’ve failed in anyway to match (there’s still time I hear you silently yell at your computers….)
On to our home for the next 4 days a brilliant campsite north of Auckland in a little beach side town called Orewa. A simply stunning seaside location with a crescent expanse of golden sand and freezing surf! Here we settled in and met some Canadians from our own Vancouver in the campsite kitchen on the first night and promptly shared an evening of beers and laughs and in Jo’s case 3/4 of our 16 year old fine scotch whiskey recently purchased in duty free. A good start to our Kiwi adventure and indicative of the friendliness and camaraderie that typified everywhere we went in NZ, not just from the host nation but everyone visiting for the tournament. It’s amazing how much a big sporting event such as the RWC brings out the human side of humanity and we experienced a very similar vibe in Vancouver during the 2010 winter Olympics.
Our first games were South Africa v Samoa followed by England v Scotland the next day. One match was closely fought, a joy to watch featuring open running rugby and for 60 mins at least an exhilarating contest of rambunctious rugby. The other was England laboring to a fortunate last minute win over the “Auld” enemy. Don’t get me wrong it was great to see our boys in action but they gave us scarcely little to shout about and the chants of Swing Low were easily drowned out by the Scottish fans baying for a big upset. Of course being NZ all the locals were vociferous in their support for Scotland – pom bashing being a favorite pastime after supporting the All Blacks. Still we scraped through and a win is a win at the World Cup and I was more than consoled about our poor performance by the fact that we put Scotland on the plane home, few things in life are more satisfying than beating the Scots!
Over these days we had also met a lovely English couple Dean and Lorna who were at the beginning of their 3 year working travels….it put our paltry 4 months into perspective! We resolved to explore the North Island together over the next few days before returning to Auckland for the 1/4 Final matches.
Spaceship – the swiss army knife of campers. So proclaimed the orange writing on the side of “Red Dwarf”, our home for 10 days when we arrived in Auckland.
Despite the fact that the previous place that we’d rested our heads had separate dressing areas and sinks for each of us as well as a wraparound view of the jungle, we were still pretty excited to pick up our reclaimed Toyota Avensis, turned Spaceship and point it towards our home for the night, a campsite north of the city.
Rugby fever already had the country well in its grip by the time we arrived towards the end of the pool games and there were supporters in all manner of shirts proclaiming their support for one of the countries, all still in the running at that stage. Nearly everyone, no matter where they were from wanted to stop and chat and find out how long you were in the country for and which games you were going to – I say nearly everyone because we managed to find a couple of Scots that really didn’t want to talk to us no matter how many polite questions we asked them about their trip. I was willing to try and be friendly, but after being summarily ignored I was even more delighted when we sent their team packing 🙂
The whole camping experience was pretty great to be honest. NZ’s campsites are incredibly well set up with great facilities, which is just as well, as I didn’t really fancy having to cook dinner on the two ring gas stove hanging out the side of our little car. We did suffer from a little camper envy though when we traveled for a couple of days with new friends Dean and Lorna who had a camper where you didn’t have to put the bed away to drive it around. Imagine the luxury!
The whole camping experience is obviously much more sociable than staying in hotels and by the second day we’d already got drunk with a couple of Vancouverites, met a tonne of English, French and South Africans and secured new friends to share a full day pub crawl to the England v Scotland game with – result! We’d also discovered the wonders of the extra foot of space that you get if you open the Spaceship boot a little and put it’s little rear tent up – a whole foot!
So enough of lounging on beaches, it was time for us to actually get a bit of local culture and see what Bali was about. Seeing as we only had a couple of days, we didn’t manage to really get off the beaten track and instead headed to Ubud, that place made famous by the film “Eat, Pray, Love” starring she of the braying laugh and flapping nostrils, Julia Roberts. That one was for you Dad.
Of course we did what any good culture vultures would do when arriving at a place of such history, we headed to a darkened bar to watch the All Blacks vs France 🙂
Ubud was quite an assault on the senses after the quiet of the previous few days in Lombok and Gili T. There were other tourists everywhere, traffic snarled the roads, “Taxi, Taxi” was shouted at us at every other step, ticket sellers pressed leaflets into our hands, and there were shops, shops and more shops. Fortunately there were also ancient temples, luscious green rice paddies and stunning gorge views to be discovered. And of course there were a couple of lovely hotels that Clive had organised which were just the place to retreat to after a sweaty day of sightseeing. I liked the feel of Ubud, even though it’s the most touristy place that we’ve visited so far. Somehow the multiple outposts of Paul Smith shops and the like are balanced out by the more authentic Indonesian chaos that surrounds them and keeps Ubud just this side of cheesy.
One of the afternoons we decided to borrow some bikes from our hotel so that we could explore the surrounding area. I was imagining that we’d be given worthy steeds based on the type of hotel we were staying at, but no, I had to perch my unpadded buttocks on a rusting hard tail with a saddle I think a couple of the local dogs had fought over and attempt to slow any descent using V brakes! V brakes I say! The horror! Still, it allowed us to get up into the rice paddies outside the town, which were just stunning (pics below).
We also got out to see some of the local temples with a guide for day which was fascinating, though I have to confess we did get a little “temple apathy” after a while as they are all built on more or less the same layout so look increasingly familiar. We remarked to our guide that there were a lot of statues in the private gardens of houses but were told that these are actually family temples and pretty much every house has their own temple no matter how humble the dwelling which is remarkable when you consider how poor some of the people are. All the pavements were also always covered in small offerings of flowers and sweets in hand woven baskets with incence burning that families will spend up to a third of their income on along with other religious donations – another indication of how important religion is to the population that is 90% Hindu.
Our final stop on our day with the guide was to a local coffee plantation where we tried a number of local teas and coffees including one that is made from coffee beans that have been eaten by a Civet, an animal that looks a bit like a cat, digested, then, yep you guessed it, harvested from its poo. Mmmmmmmm delicious! I can report that it was very smooth 🙂 and if you don’t believe me, check out this link – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_Luwak.
After a number of days of staying at hotels that were miles from anywhere and full of people on their honeymoon or other coupley holidays, it was pretty refreshing to hit the laid back surfy style island of Gili T and see other people and have options for restaurants and bars. Don’t get me wrong, I LOVE the lap of luxury 🙂 but it’s good to mix it up.
We were staying at the Gili Eco Villas, which on the map looked to be a long way from the harbour, so we snagged a horse drawn cart to take us to our hotel. Turns out nothing is far from anything on Gili T and even though it was on the other side of the island we were there in about 5 mins.
We had two full days on Gili T which was “suffering” very early season winds (they’re due in December) and the locals were bemoaning the terrible weather – it was still over 30 degrees and sunny. We spent one day exploring a bit on bikes and the other day we went scuba diving, which was a first for me. The Gilis are known for the diving and all of the companies are good and reputable and have fixed prices (not common in Indonesia) which was reassuring for a newbie. There’s also a load of conservation work going on there because the place was destroyed by a Tsunami a number of years ago so they’ve formed an Eco trust that has installed some artificial reef structures off the coast that have a current running through them which is supposed to stimulate coral growth. Each person diving has to contribute $6 to the trust which of course we were more than willing to do.
As for the dive, we did a morning of training in the pool which all went well and then the actual dive was later in the afternoon. We only went down to 12 metres, but that was good enough for me for my first dive and we saw loads of brightly coloured fish. Apart from a small panic as we were descending – my imagination getting the better of me for a moment – everything went swimmingly 😉
From the lap of luxury in Lombok we were delivered to the ferry terminal to make our way to the Gili Islands which are three small islands just off the coast, renowned for their diving and lack motorised vehicles.
Our taxi driver stopped at the terminus which the Lonely Planet had warned me was about 1km from the port and with it being over 30 degrees we didn’t feel like walking with all our gear, so a bribe of about 80p saw us further down the road closer to our destination. Here we were met by a number of men offering anything from the public boat which was about $1 to a chartered boat which was $20 each. And here folks was our first taster of being taken for a ride, Asian style. Long story short, they persuade us to take a charter then tried to keep us in the office for as long as possible selling us onward transport to Bali. I didn’t want to go with them until we’d seen what there was on Gili, but they just thought I was playing the tough one so they tried Clive to see if he proved a softer touch. I was so chuffed with myself for holding strong when their price kept coming down but little did I know they had already stiffed us.
When no more money was forthcoming they became very quickly disinterested in us and suddenly our boat was ready. One of the guys led us through a building yard of some sort and down on to a beach where numerous rickety wooden vessels were heaving with the waves. I turned round to ask our representative a question and he’d already disappeared leaving us with the boatmen. After much gesticulating we discovered that we were to be traveling on a 30ft long wooden craft that looked as though it was used for transporting building material, complete with tarp full of dirt in the bottom.
We set off with one guy behind the wheel and what looked like two small children to pull the anchor and generally snigger at my discomfort. It only took a couple of minutes for things to get really uncomfortable. Hitting the first broadside wave the gallons of water in the bottom made an appearance up the inside of the boat and I got my first face full (of many) of sea water. Things got worse as we pulled into the open channel with the boat being pitched sideways 45 degrees at times and everything, including us and our bags getting soaked with each wave and threatening to exit the boat. At one point I was practically lying down and holding on to the side with two white knuckled hands, seeing headlines flash through my mind, “Honeymooners lost at sea”, “Charter boat disaster claims two young lives” and quotes from family and friends, “They were such wonderful people and had their whole lives ahead of them” – well people have to be nice about you when you’re dead.
At one point right in the middle of the worst part of the trip, just as I admitted to Clive that I was seriously scared, the engine stopped and we were at the mercy of the swell, being thrown one way and then the other with nothing to stabilise the completely impractical long thin vessel. I have absolutely no idea what compelled the captain to turn off the engine, perhaps he just wanted to hear some colourful swearwords in English or see the look of abject terror on my face (he got both), but after a few seconds we were on our way again, still pitching one way and then the other. Then just to add insult to injury, the public boat ($1 remember) came past the other way with plastic sidings to prevent the passengers from getting wet. Passengers who were all wearing life jackets! Nothing so sensible for us!
Even the “docking” at Gili Trawangan involved us leaping from the boat during a low point between waves and our bags being thrown down onto the beach afterwards. Lesson learned me thinks – ask to see your charter vessel before handing over your cash.
Clive took charge of booking this leg of our travels and really wanted to make it the traditional honeymoon. This to me conjures up images of white sandy beaches, cocktails and sun worshipping – turns out we were on the same page 🙂
After much research and note taking on various scrap bits of paper that look like rubbish but have major significance (It would appear that my husband has some things in common with the Luddites) he settled on the Tugu hotels both in Bali and Lombok.
I can report that the bed in our Bali hotel was very comfortable seeing as we spent most of our 2 days there in it! Days of not really sleeping in the run up to the wedding and 30 hours of traveling pretty much wiped us out. The first day we didn’t get up until after 2pm!
The hotel in Lombok was probably the most incredible hotel I will ever stay in. Our room and bathroom was bigger than our whole apartment in Vancouver and we had a rain shower head that was about 2ft in diameter! Oh and did I mention the 9ft wide bed?!
There were only couples staying at the hotel who were content in each other’s company so there was a pervasive hush about the place that was just perfect after such a hectic few weeks. We slept and read and slept some more then occasionally ate and drank something – it was blissful.
All that work, all that planning, all that stress, all those decisions that we anguished over….and for what????
Seriously the most amazing wedding EVER. That’s what! I know that everyone says that their wedding was the best ever but seriously, hands down, ours really was the best ever!
One of our guests told us that it was the most honest expression of emotion that they’d seen at a wedding and yes of course I’m biased but I’ll take it 🙂
It all unfolded exactly as we had wanted. Yes, we had the blip on the morning of the wedding when our childcare bailed on us (shame on you Sillybillies) but with Mum to the rescue we soon had an alternative. My aim was to make it through the wedding without giving my bridesmaid Jo Coll, Queen of the wedding disaster story, any more ammunition, and I’m pleased to say we did it!! She wasn’t aware that the ushers managed to get to the church without any of the orders of service, the confetti, the music system or the fans I had bought. And the other little blips where we had a pause of about a minute before Ivan got the recessional music going in the church and then the lights going out twice in the marquee during the speeches all just added to it.
My parents had worked so hard over the last 18 months since we asked them if we could have our wedding at their place and my God did it show. Everyone mentioned them in the speeches and they more than deserved it. What a backdrop for a wedding. I couldn’t believe the transformation since last Sept when we were last there. Our photographer Paul said that their home was a photographer’s dream. Seriously how lucky am I to have this family?!
And speaking of our photographers….Paul and Annabel ROCKED!! We knew they were awesome before the wedding because they did my best friend Anna’s wedding but they still exceeded our expectations both in the photographs they took but also the way that they took part in the wedding. I couldn’t imagine having anyone else involved. To get a taste of what they can do check this out: http://www.paultoeman.com/blog/?p=4844
As anyone I’ve spoken to in the last few months about the wedding (ok, make that anyone I’ve spoken to in the last few months) will know, to me the speeches are the best bit about the wedding and the speeches at our wedding were just fantastic. They made us wish that we had a videographer at the wedding even though we never really wanted one and then in stepped my Uncle Alan to save the day. He’d recorded all the speeches on his phone and we watched then again the next day. Genius 🙂
So much more to say about the whole thing but I’m on my honeymoon so it’ll have to wait.
Xoxo
boltsintotheblue 