Van stuff, and a walk on the beach

Spent the morning meeting legislative requirements for a warranty of fitness certificate for the camper van. It failed first time (handbrake not adjusted correctly), but after authorising the extra work, it passed second time round.

Then a trip to the auctioneer to do all the paperwork and arrange to drop the van into their yard on Saturday.

Home again by noon, exhausted by the frenetic Auckland traffic and poor signposting. The people putting signs up fail to realise that there is always a delay between seeing a sign, considering whether it applies, and beginning to act in response. In Auckland, the signs are either so small or so late placed that one is usually part way through the intersection before realising you have to turn/change lanes etc.

Kura and I then drove out to the west coast and walked on the beach a long way. We were about to return when Kura's foot slipped sideways on a rock and she twisted her ankle. She is now pretty immobile, and it looks like we will not be walking tomorrow. As she said ruefully tonight, "at least it didn?t happen early in the holiday!".

Into Auckland

Had the AA do a vehicle inspection. The AA assessment today was good. Apart from a slow oil seep from the gearbox tailshaft and a need to change the oil and coolant, the vehicle and mechanicals are sound and in "satisfactory condition".

Drove from Whangerei via the coastal scenic roads to get a taste of the region. Blue sky and sunshine, nice. Travel quite slow, particularly as we approached Auckland, due to the steep hills and the number of heavy trucks heading towards the city.

Arrived at Mt Roskill about 430pm to a nice welcome from Gladys. She has just offered us the use of her house while she is away over Easter, which is very kind of her.

Had an older couple come around to look at the van, but they were not willing to come to our price, nor to the price we were prepared to drop to - they were wanting a $3k discount to $6500.... But that's not a consideration yet. Unfortunately my "loose lips sink ships" so they know we are leaving Sunday and probably think they have us in a corner (I'm not a salesman and do not want to be...). I'd rather auction it than be a party to that kind of coercion. We parted on good terms. I'm unsure whether we will see them back again.

Storm damage and the Waitangi Treaty

The campsite we stayed last night was very nice even though the owners were really under the hammer. The floods had swept away their water pump and the pumphouse, scoured their river boundary, and left all of the grass and soil so water-sodden that it squelched as you walked. The municipal water supply was contaminated, but because their storage tank was full of good water before the pump went, they had a reasonable sized buffer - so short showers were requested!

We visited the Waitangi treaty house this morning. A very interesting visit that highlighted the differences between Australia and NZ. Mostly remittance men rather than convicts, a more fertile land; I sensed it was a less brutal society as a result, in spite of the frequent internecine Maori warfare that included cannibalism on occasion. Whether I am accurate in saying this I am not sure, but that's my perception.

Here the Maori tribes were well organised and recognised that their world was changing without them being able to stop it, and over a period of time, negotiated a treaty with the British crown that secured them ownership of their forests, sea etc. It does appear that some of significant success factors were:
1. An external threat (the threat of a French takeover on parts of NZ) caused the Maori tribes to want to unite with the Crown
2. The apparently positive, trusting relationships the Church Missionary Society missionaries had with Maori chiefs
3. The positive relationships and mediation skills developed by the British Government's Resident as a result of being sent by the Crown to be their representative in NZ, but without being given any tangible authority or power (he was sarcastically described by Maori as a "man o' war but without any guns"). Perhaps this was ultimately a very positive thing...! He was ultimately succeeded by the new Lieutenant-General of NZ, but served on as a key negotiator and support person.
4. The strong leadership of the Maori chiefs.

Although the implications are still being worked through 150+ years later, I am very impressed with how the union of the two peoples has occurred here.

Everywhere we traveled today we saw the evidence of the half metre of rain in 36 hours. Railway ballast washed away leaving tracks suspended in a void, very large tree trunks caught in rapids, trees with debris up to a metre up their trunks. As for the landslips, it has been an eye-opener to see the number of huge piles of rocks and clay on the road from Paihia to Whangerei. Most of the roads here have either one side a very steep hillside up or down, and in some cases both...! There were traffic cones and workmen all over the place removing slips from the roadway, rebuilding where the verge had been swept away by the current, etc etc.

Tonight we are at Lois's place (nee Nelley) in Whangerei in the backyard. I was successful in getting an AA inspection booked for the van for Tuesday morning here in Whangerei, so we'll need to be up and away early to ensure we appear at the nominated 830am appointment. Groan. :-)

We had another response in relation to the camper today. Not sure where this person is, still waiting for another email from him.

Meeting more Nelley's - and a chance meeting with Seriah

We, like most other campers, left very early this morning. I suspect they had probably, like us, discovered how awful the facilities were. We couldn't wait to get out of there...! The most expensive caravan park we've used, and the equal worst with several other very poor parks (most ranging from acceptable to very good).

So we traveled towards Aron Nelley's farm using the local car ferry.

On the way we had yet another "God-moment". We had stopped after leaving the ferry, me for coffee, Kura for a craft shop (!). As we were about to leave, a slender young woman stood in front of the van some 20 metres in front of us and stood there with an wistful expression.

I said to Kura "what does she want...for us to give her a lift?". The girl then stuck her thumb out to make it clear.

So we decided to help her out. Seriah sat in the rear seatbelt right behind us and spent most of the time telling us about her travels in NZ and the people she had met. In one of those coincidences that maybe are not, we learned that she was from Fremantle, had lived in Boya as a child, and that she had just spent some time living with a young NZ family who were radical Christians living a simple lifestyle (solar power, grow own food, process food manually etc). Seriah was impressed even though she said "she was not religious", and told us about their simple and loving lifestyle. We felt that we were once again presented with evidence of God working in a person's life.

We offered to take her to the town that was next on the road we were travelling along but she needed to get to Auckland quickly so she opted to bail out at the appropriate intersection. As we parted ways where our road to the farm diverged from her's, to Auckland, I encouraged her to keep thinking about what she had seen and heard on the little farm.

We were concerned about her safety as a single woman hitch-hiking, and prayed that God would watch over her and keep her safe - and thinking about the things she had seen and heard.

When we arrived at Aron's and Lynne's farm, we were welcomed for lunch and spent a pleasant time talking family history. Aron then took us both on the quad bike for a tour round the farm, up to a high hill where we could see the tidal river going through his place. Eat your heart out Liam (:-)

We then traveled onto Ahipara where we booked into a simple but very nice, clean campsite with an easy-going, friendly manager - and it cost only $25. Good to know that yesterday was an aberration!

A much better day today.

Storms in the north island [29 March]

Well, what a day. We waited until 945am before leaving Manakau, near Auckland, in order to evade the rush hour. Even that didn't help us too much...the traffic was thoroughly jammed up to Auckland. It took us about an hour to travel to the CBD because of the stop-start driving in the pouring rain.

Crossing the river bridge north of the CBD was a nightmare as we ended up in a highly constrained lane with concrete walls one side and other lane edge hardware on the other. The wind was blowing strongly and there was little room for error. I was thoroughly relieved to reach the end of the bridge.

We decided to go to the west coast to escape the rain, even though we had no idea of the extent of the rain and flooding. It wasn't until we started westwards and began encountering creeks almost mat the level of the road that we realised that the weather was quite severe.

We made an early decision to book into the Matakohe Top 10 as soon as we arrived, before going to the Kauri Museum. We were lucky enough to get the last self-contained unit, so we are snug and warm tonight.

The Kauri Museum was very, very good, and even though we spent two hours there, we need more, so we're going back first thing tomorrow morning to continue. Lots of examples of ancient Kauri trees exhumed from swamps in excellent condition after tens of thousands of years; a complete sawmill set up and operating slowly so you can see how it works; stationery engines; bushcraft exhibits, heaps. Excellent.

Betty, a relative of Russell Nelley, is collections manager at the museum, but she is still on leave so we did not meet her.

From quiet bush to hectic suburbs [27 to 28 March]

27 March

Spent a longish day driving south from Tapu. We stopped at a number of small towns to look around, including a drive inland on a very narrow blue metal road with sheer sides to look at a very large Kauri tree that is still alive, the "Square Kauri" that was preserved by loggers because of its unusual shape.

I bought plugs and points for the van, having become quite frustrated with performance. The van toolkit has now EXPANDED to include a feeler gauge to enable me to set the points. It would also have had a cheapie spark plug spanner, but Repco had sold out :-( However, I was offered the loan of a beaten up shop demo wrench, very kind of them, so I replaced the plugs there and then - all except for number 4, which like our own bus, was almost frozen in. When the borrowed wrench started bending, I abandoned any intention of replacing the plug, imagining either a smashed and stuck plug, or an embarrassingly broken wrench. So we're now operating on 3 new plugs and one old.

However, our main activity was to drive into the Karangahake Gorge to do a walk. A brief conversation with a DoC staffer identified a 3 hour walk into the hills to see a large remnant Kauri as appropriate, "as long as we didn't mind getting our boots wet".

Well, the significance of that statement emerged as we travelled onwards. In all we made 7 or 8 creek crossings, balancing on randomly placed, slippery rocks - then of course, the same number coming back. Somewhat frustratingly, we keep crossing what I judge to be the same creek, to and fro...someone in DoC had a sadistic sense of humour. Although we didn't fall in, there were a number of occasions when we slipped and came very close to getting in the drink.

The walk became very steep towards the end, and Kura commented that the steps, where laid, were clearly for someone with longer legs than her.

We emerged muddy and tired some hours later. As it was getting dark, we started travelling towards Russ and Mary-Ann's place at Whangamata. They had kindly made a bed up ready, so we scoffed baked beans and fruit along the way so as not to make any last minute imposition (we had not decided to go there this night until we had emerged from the bushwalk and were on our way).

It was lovely to drive up the familiar road to their place, "like coming home" Kura said.

28 March

Up early talking with Russ before he went to work. Then replaced the points and went for a test drive...much better now, motor missing nowhere near as much...very pleasing.

Rain pouring down and power went out, so noone could have a shower due to no water pressure. However, shortly before Maryann went to work, it came on again, so she left us there enjoying the hot water!

Before we left Whangamata, we explored a quarry that had taken Kura's interest for it's geological formations. Couldn't find the main feature after a walk, so we left. On the way we travelled through Kauaeranga Gorge, so we stopped and walked a bit, getting quite drenched.

Travelled north on the motorway and reached Manakau on the outskirts of Auckland about 330pm. Traffic getting very heavy and I was tired, so we bailed out looking for a motel or somesuch. Even that was stressful due to the traffic (we'd come off, then back on the motorway in the search for reasonable accommodation).

After some highly stressful wrong turns and recoveries, we ended up at a Top Ten park that had a single motel unit that I took on the spot, as the forecast is for 35 to 45 knot easterlies and increasing rain tonight...not a night to be in the van with a long walk to the facilities.

A gentler day than expected... [26 March]

Left Coromandel for areas north. On the way we decided to go no further than Colville, as the driving is quite tiring, and there was a lot of winding gravel road to travel to get to the next place north of Colville.

I (Ian) was also feeling rather drained. So we cancelled the intended trip to the northern tip of the Coromandel peninsula and instead had a relaxing drive with a number of stops on little rocky coves. This included a stop for carrot cake from the Colville Caf? (per Lonely Planet), cappuccino for me and a blueberry smoothie made with soy milk for Kura. The lady was very helpful, giving Kura a try with a small glass of the brew before committing to it, as the smoothie wasn't cheap. It was very tasty, so she went the whole hog - and had no ill effects, which was great.

We had a number of very nice encounters with people as we traveled southwards again.

We stopped at Woodworks, a rampant bush block in the middle of nowhere where we met Greg, a talented maker of furniture from cypress pine slabs. His very impressive repertoire was shown in his photo album...pieces shipped all over the world.

After we had chatted for a while, Greg revealed tentatively that he was a Christian, and we had even more to talk about. It was a case of mutual encouragement, ended only by the revelation that he had to get back to tending his roasts - it was his birthday and he had guests coming. So we wished each other well and carried on our ways.

Stopped at another little bay and prised Pacific Oysters from the rocks, managing to get some off successfully and cooked them with chili sauce. Some we had to discard as once cooked, they do not open like mussels and we could not get them open. Only later when talking to Ray and June (see below) did we discover exactly what they were and that you have to smash them open....

We decided to stop for dinner on a patch of lawn right on the beach in a tiny seaside hamlet. We ate as the sun was low on the horizon - very nice environment. After tea we walked over to where an elderly couple, Ray and June, were fishing for snapper. We talked for a long time and June let Kura handle the rod for a while - that was her fix...

It was very pleasant watching the sun set over the sea and the more distant Auckland region (we were just across the Firth of Thames so for us the sun appeared to set across the sea). After the sun set we said goodbye to them and carried on to Tapu where we set up camp in the dark.

Railways, hydro-mechanics, and spirituality [25 March]

The title sounds a bit like that classic "Zen and the art of motorcycle mechanics"....!

After our walk to Cathedral Bay, I was knackered and just wanted to stop driving, and just eat and sleep, so I gave up on Hotwater Beach...the only hot water I was interested in was a warm shower. So we drove on to Whitianga, a fast growing holiday house location several hours from Auckland...think of Busselton+Dunsborough.

In the morning realised it was Sunday so we abandoned our morning plan and found the Whitianga Baptist church. Great welcome to us, followed by a very practical and useful address by an older guy, Brian, who was standing in while the pastor was away on holidays. Brian's prep for his address today was clearly overseen by an all-knowing power.

Last night I had spent some sleepless hours worrying about the sale of our campervan. There had been no useful nibbles from potential buyers and our flights home on 8th April are now only 2 weeks away. Silly really, but the wee small hours can be like that sometimes. I eventually gave myself a talking to and reminded myself that I needed to trust the God who loves me. That's a little harder than one might think, because I'm not one of those who believes that because I'm one of God's people, I will naturally inherit health, wealth and happiness. I think that is not a sensible interpretation of the Bible message. All of us see times of pain, worry, loss, as well as the welcome times of ease, enjoyment and happiness.

The next morning while sitting waiting for my wife to return from her shower I was prompted to read the first century Christian leader Paul's letter to the Roman church, chapter 8 verse 9, where he says "we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him". The point is I think, that in the development of the Christian, whatever happens, God can turn it into a useful experience for him or her.

While reflecting on this, it struck me that a development area for me is trusting God. By nature I want to ensure events around me are 'controlled' (I tend to have risk mitigation strategies for everything... :-). But right now there's little I can do about this camper-sale issue and it's been eating me up. The right thing is to trust that God will use whatever happens to develop us, and having done what I can to advertise the vehicle in a sensible way, to leave it in his hands and not worry about it.

Well, that was a fairly big realisation for me. You can guess my surprise when Brian at the Whitianga Baptist Church turned his attention - in the middle of his address - to the issue of anxiety and the importance of trusting God. It was a very useful time and I was glad we made the effort to find them.

It has been an interesting day!

Alongside all these 'deep' things, the somewhat more mundane business of sightseeing and eating continued.

The twisty-turnies returned again and we had heaps of hilly corners with recommended speeds of 25 kmh and one even at 15 kmh.

We enjoyed immensely supporting the local fire brigade at a tiny beachside town by scoffing two of their big mussel fritters each at $2 a time. Divine!

Had a very enjoyable time on the narrow gauge Driving Creek Railway at Coromandel. It developed from one man's obsession with railway to an amazingly complex, enormously popular narrow gauge railway. It provides a one hour return trip through multiple tunnels, a half-figure 8 and dual layer loop, a zig-zag section, and a number of bridges. Very good value.

After that we spent some time at the WaterWorks' theme park also at Coromandel (really just a very, very large lawn area with a pathway that led you past many very large hydro-mechanical devices).

The owner's father invented a 3kw 230v hydro scheme that ran for 8 years until scheme power was introduced. The son obviously inherited his father's genius, as there were numerous fascinating water-powered exhibits that were absolutely ingenious. Examples: water powered pendulum clock that must have been 6m high; stream-powered device (clacker valve) that pumps water metres into the air just using the shock wave produced when the valve opens and closes; and numerous other intricate, but large-scale mechanical devices powered, triggered, or using water.

Kura let off some steam here by flying down a flying fox. When she hit the end I though she was going to fall off....but she didn't. It was obviously fun as she had another go after that. [Dad, I wished you were here, you would have LOVED the waterworks visit, probably even more than the narrow gauge railway....and that's saying something!]

Left there at 6pm and back to Coromandel township to stay the night.

Up the Coromandel Peninsula [24 March]

Left whangamata with an offer to return for a night once we have completed our trip round the Coromandel. Day is overcast but every now and then the sun breaks through and it's quite warm.

Heading north up the peninsula we have once again struck the narrow, twisty, hilly roads [2nd gear, left lock, right lock, left lock.... And so on]. We've been warned that many of the roads to the north are even more narrow and to hope not to see a truck coming the other way!

I am writing this after muffin and coffee at a caf? in a little town. Kura is browsing a gift shop while I sit here. Enjoying the quiet. Today we intend to walk to Cathedral Cove and back, then visit Hotwater Beach at low tide around 5pm when we should be able to sit in geothermally-heated hot water pools dug in the beach sand.

Possum shooting with the Nelley's in Whangamata [22 to 23 March]

Our course northwards from Rotorua went faster than expected and we arrived in Whangamata before managing to contact Russell and Mary Ann Nelley, so we called into a caravan park and set ourselves up. Later that evening we managed to contact them and agreed to drop in in the morning.

We received a lovely welcome. Mary-Ann's 50th birthday party is on Saturday so we have been helping them set up a 9m x 3m tent, make bon-bons(?), decorations etc. We had a lovely home-smoked salmon meal last night, and will have a BBQ will lots of their friends tonight. Although we have been invited to stay on for the party, we will probably leave on Saturday morning and start making our way north, up the Coromandel peninsula. We had intended to leave after setting up the tent, but there were parts missing last night, then we had troubles fitting itonto the timber decking, dodgy connector, and then to my immense mortification, discovered once up that one of the pieces was in the wrong place....somehow we overlooked moving it when the missing parts arrived. I knew it had to be moved, but in the bustle of activity (there were lots of friends and relatives), it was overlooked by all.

The decking was a dangerous place to be for about half an hour as we attempted to move the two pieces around. Unfortunately as in all systems, the removal of one piece destabilised the whole structure and we had other pieces falling from the heavens.....

Last night I shot my first possum with Russell's .22 rifle. In NZ, possums are a pest like rabbits in Australia. Possums were introduced from Australia to create a fur trade in NZ; unfortunately, they have no local predator and an almost boundless supply of food. However, they are steadily destroying Rata trees (of similar local significance to Jarrah and Karri) because of their prodigious appetite and the fact that they have a birth-rate about twice that of Australia. Consequently, possum shooting is a routine activity in all the areas we have visited.

Incidentally, yesterday I managed to reverse into a tree with the roof vent up. You guessed it, smashed another piece off and bent all the metal pieces (again). However, this time I knew exactly what to do, so out with the screwdriver, duct tape and Araldite and it was all back together in 30 minutes or so. I was SOOOO frustrated with my forgetfulness....

Pongs and belches [20-21 March]

20-March

Visited Orakei Koraka in the morning. It's been partly wiped out by a dam in the adjacent river, but what is left is pretty interesting. We didn't see any geysers, but there was constant belching going on (no, Doris, not me) from the mud pools. Some of the water wells up from deep vents in the ground. It's boiling hot but is the most fascinating blue. Worth visiting to get a sense of the geothermal stuff.

By the time we got to Rotorua we felt that we'd 'done' geothermal stuff and were happy to omit any further visits. Rotoroa stinks with the Hydrogen Sulphide being emitted everywhere. Even the town park has clouds of steam and pong being emitted. And we hadn't seen SO MANY hotels and motels anywhere else. Talk about commercialisation - I think it was worse than Queenstown.

We booked into a caravan park in Rotoroa in the last afternoon. Kura wasn't well but perked up a little later on. Which was fortunate, because we managed to book into a Maori cultural evening (songs, costumes etc) and a hangi, and it went later than we've normally been retiring.

The event was OK, but not managed very well. As a result a significant chunk of our group missed a lot of the guide's remarks given during a walk through the nearby bush. I have some process and presentation ideas to send to them once I can get them onto paper. The meal was OK. In short, while interesting, there was nothing really to write home about....so I won't!

21 March

Traveled round the edge of Lake Rotoroa on the way north. Lots of access points for fishermen-lucky them. On the was we stopped to look at what we though were Okere Falls. Fortunately we saw a rafting company's van, and chatted with a girl on the staff. Turned out we were looking at the head river, not the falls themselves. So we took a side road and waited for the rafts to arrive at the botton. Good-oh. Then we followed the road back up and this time stopped at a recreation reserve, which turned out to have a very interesting story about yet another hydro project,, as well as even bigger falls. Don't know how the rafts got down the thunderous, narrow and high falls in the middle. It was a pity we were at the end rather than in the middle of their river transit!

Turns out that a local publican wrote to Thomas Edison in the late 1800's (quite early...) with regard to getting an electricity supply set up for his NZ hotel. We think the world is small now, but it's fascinating that even in a world where letters took probably months to travel from NZ to the USA, interest in technology was very keen.

Drive from Okere Falls to Whangamata (Fang'a'ma'ta) was tedious and twisty, complicated by fast drivers who menaced from behind. Pretty tired and fractious tonight.

Made contact with Russell Nelley and will visit them in their house at Whangamata tomorrow. Funnily enough, we think we passed their house while looking for a DOC campsite (we abandoned that because the DOC place was so far out, and took a campsite in a town caravan park).

Geothermals of all kinds [19 March]

Travelled to Taupo where we learned the full significance oif the delayed departure of the Overlander Auckland to Wellington train from the National Park railway station the other day. I've never heard of a lahar before, but we narrowly missed being caught up in the large traffic congestion that resulted.

You see, first we were late leaving the farm. I think Terry really didn't want us to go, so it was after 10am before we left southwards to Wanganui to pick up Highway 1. The continual rain also slowed us down. Kura had identified two alternative highways by which we could travel to Taupo: the western-most route State Highway 4 (SH4) and the eastern-most State Highway 1 (SH1) via SH49. Smack-dab in the middle of our two alternate northwards routes is the crater of Mt Ruapehu.

As we left Wanganui city some time around 12, I saw a very large highway sign that stated that two highways were closed. Because I hadn't caught the detail and Kura hadn't seen it at all, we did a U-turn and approached it again. It was clear that the eastward route she had considered was closed, while the westward route was open - so we chose SH4, which runs about 15 km west of the crater

We had assumed the reason for the road closures was the heavy rain and the debris that was very obvious as we travelled. We noticed a very large amount of traffic travelling against us and assumed it was end-of-weekend traffic from Lake Taupo.

Only later did we hear that the 7 metre high crater wall of mud, ash and stone had been breached, as the NZ Govt has been expecting since Christmas Eve 1953. On that occasion, 153 people died when their train was overcome by the torrent of mud, rocks, trees and water unleased by the last time the crater wall gave way (and that's what a lahar is....).

We were lucky to be late leaving the farm, and also to notice the road sign or we would have been stuck bumper-to-bumper on State Highway 1 with everyone else....! I'm not claiming providential intervention, but its interesting to reflect on the coincidences.

It's a big news story here, and much credit to NZ civil defence as it appears that their contingency plans worked very well. Temperature sensors indicated that the water temperature had risen to Vibration sensors started giving the first warnings 1 hour before the torrent was unleashed. Pagers issued to residents downstream gave them adequate notice of the incident. There will be a very interesrting study to be had of the preparations and the actual performance.

Travelling past Lake Taupo is like being near the sea. Whitecaps from the very strong easterlies, waves crashing on the sea, and yacht pens around the edge. We passed people collecting mussels on the beach as we drove around the lake perimeter. Note that we are talking about a lake that is at least 30km by 40km....big.

Spent most of the morning in Taupo doing banking, shopping, email, and booking our flights back. We were surprised to find that with 3 weeks to go, Air New Zealand was pretty much booked out except for the very expensive seats. However, Qantas had tickets available on Easter Sunday, so we decided to book them immediately, even though we're not sure when our camper will be sold.

Visited a geothermal area that puffs huge clouds of steam and acideic fumes into the air. Very interesting that it was created by the activities of a geothermal power station built in the 1950's that changed the dynamics of the underground water and steam reservoirs, drying up a large geothermal field including geysers and mud pools, and creating new ones where we visited. A change of the environment had significant unexpected impacts....

The caravn park we booked into tonight, in Golden Springs, has its own geothermal stream and pool, so we got into our bathers and soaked for some time. Not deep, but full of bubbles and perhaps at around 27 degrees.

We intend visiting another geothermal field tomorrow at Orakei Koraka, but will probably bypass Rotorua as our impression is that it's very commercialised.

On our way again (18 March)

Terry and Heather gave us wonderful hospitality and we thoroughly appreciated their welcome.

Left the farm around 10am and drove towards Taupo. We saw some amazing country, particularly as it had been raining so heavily for about a day. Large waterfalls cascading down only a metre from the roadside, tumbing through a culvert under the road; Landslips next to the road with rocks and boulders freshly eroded from the steep sides and fallen either onto the road or the verge; chocolate brown, foaming rivers that one would stand litltle chance of surviving.

The early part of the trip was steep and twisting, but as we reached the plateua, the terrain became flatter and very harsh; since many of the areas were also ski areas, we guess that the plateua is mostly snow-covered in winter. It was a dismal day, so we stopped at the National Park railway station for a hot drink and something to eat.

The Overlander train was still there, an hour after it should have left for the downhill run to Wellington at the southernmost point of the north island - we speculated that the kinds of landslips we had seen near the road may also have been a problem for the train. The conductor was fussing around arranging for a fax to be sent to the station, which supported that suspicion.

We were both pretty tired so stopped in a tiny town about 40 km short of Taupo for the night.

Wellington and northwards 14 March

The caravan park in Picton was underneath an overhead railway line that trains periodically thundered over during the night. Not a comfortable night, and the alarm was not at all welcome at 6am.

Still, we got out of the park by about 645 with the aim of getting into the ferry queue at the designated 7am, for an 8am departure. After being in the queue for some time, when it was our turn we found at that you cannot pay on the way in through the "turnstiles" (if only their telephone operators had provided this critical piece of information when I called that day).

So we were waved to one side where I parked and went into the building to pay, get a docket and then walk back to the entry point. While I was discomfited about the whole situation, I was impressed by the disarming friendliness of the Picton terminal staff, who were not put off balance by my failure to fit their procedures. I found them a happy lot whom I could only smile back at. Top marks for customer service to Bluebridge Ferry service.

We had an interesting ride on the ferry, sitting with an older couple, Bill and Joy, who we later talked to for most of the 3 hours. Bill and I talked for a very long time about spirituality and Christianity. His background was long-time involvement in charismatic churches as well as community aid service in the Solomon Islands, but . I have no idea why our paths crossed, nor why the conversation went the way that it did, but as we shook hands to say goodbye, there was a mutual sense that the meeting had been a 'God-event' of some kind.

The drive up from Wellington was the worst driving experience of my life. The winds was so strong and unpredictable that we felt like giant hands were pushing us to the left and to the right. It confirmed Bill's comment about Wellington, that "it's people walk between lamp-posts, hanging onto them because of the wind"!

After about 3 hours of hair-raising, teeth-gritting driving through shredded branches, complete with gusty winds, lightning and hailstones, we started looking for an oasis, having given up the idea of reaching Wanganui, where Kura's relative lives.

We ended up hiring a motel unit at Foxton Beach at around 3pm. It's been a relief to not be driving, to have a bit of space (even if it is about three times our normal accommodation fees per night). The wind is still howling outside, but we have an oasis of calm and warmth - complete with TV.

Tomorrow, hopefully the wind will be less and we will make Wanganui.

Sea-kayaking at Abel Tasman National Park

Well, I had a quiet day while Kura went sea-kayaking. I decided to go for a walk in the national park, but didn't get myself properly organised. My main concern (given the day and the fact that Kura had the sunscreen) was that I would get sunburned. However, within an hour, the issues had changed. It was steadily raining and the sun had gone...but I had not brought a jumper, nor a raincoat.... Hmmm. Walked for another half an hour, but as I was getting wetter by the minute, I decided to bail before I got to the intended destination. Amusingly, by the time I had walked out of the park and within a few minutes of reaching the van, the rain stopped and the sun came out.

Anyway, I consoled myself with a large flat white, carrot cake and a paper at the local caf?. Very bourgeois! After that, I traveled to the nearest town with an ATM as we were out of cash, got money, Telfast, copied the photos to a CD, used the internet, got petrol, and then returned to Marahau to await Kura's return. I had still several hours so made tea while waiting.

Kura had a great time.She learned how to paddle a kayak properly because she was in a double kayak with the guide during the trip. Also, she learned how to say her name properly when the guide introduced her to the other trip participants: Ku'Rha (quiet Ku then an emphasized Rha).Interesting. I commented that it may be time for a mid-life name change :-)

When she got back, we started our 3 hour trip to Picton. Looks a short distance on the map, but as with most travel in NZ, the time taken is much, much longer that we would expect in Aus. So 3 hours later we had traveled the 187 km from Marahau to Picton, arriving pretty tired at 8pm.

Takaka and Marahau [12 March]

The clouds had settled over the mountains overnight and rain started. It was further encouragement to move on, so we packed up and headed back over the mountains. Surprisingly, the return trip was heaps easier than going over. This appears to be because on one side of the mountain, the road is more like the Kalamunda zig-zag (long straight sections with hairpin bends) and easier to ascend, whereas the other side of the mountain is full of hairpin bends with very few straight sections (so we ground up in low gear most of the time). Today we got up really fast, then coasted downhill through the countless hairpins with ease.

Kura really wants to do some more sea kayaking near Abel Tasman National Park, so we got her booked for tomorrow morning at 8:30am. Since my back was problematic when we were using sea kayaks in Akaroa, and it is still recovering from the disk injury of last week, I'm not participating.

Instead I will be cooking tea, as we will be high-tailing it to Picton as soon as she returns at 330pm and won't have time to cook tea. Our aim is to be on the ferry to the north island early the next morning (i.e. Wednesday morning). We haven't booked yet but will find out the likely free spaces tomorrow and work from there.

It has rained a lot today, but Kiwis need the rain. It has been a surprise to see how dry NZ really is. Much of the agricultural land we drove through has very extensive irrigation to be productive, including an enormous canal that is about 10+ metres wide and goodness knows how long. We were very surprised at the use of huge boom-based sprinkler systems, often with ten or so joined end-to-end, and rotating (self-powered we presume) from the end that is connected to the water supply, thus describing an arc across huge grassy paddocks. Also surprising to us has been the use of sprinklers of the kind we might use on an oval - on huge paddocks that are many times the biggest oval, some sprinklers even appearing to be embedded in the ground.

The sandflies are still biting, and the old bites are still swollen and terribly itchy, including a generalised itching across entire chunks of skin near a bite. We have a range of creams to reduce the itch, none of which really work well. On a pharmacy's recommendation, we tried telfast tablets. They appeared to help reduce the overall effects, and we have consumed the whole packet - and now need more. Pity the poor pioneers with no medicines and no flyscreens!

Kura has been collecting seashells and is currently sanding and washing them to see whether they might be good enough to take home. She has just discovered that vinegar works well, although it is a little weak The third suitcase looks more likely every day ;-)

Seals, fish, beach, springs and home-grown hydro schemes [11 March]

Our van is now for sale in 4 web-based advertising venues: sellmefree.co.nz, autotrader.co.nz, trademe.co.nz, and bbhnet.co.nz. We've already had 20 viewings on one site, but the cynic in me wonders whether those are just web crawlers! We are now on the last 4 weeks of the holiday and expect to take the ferry for the north island sometime this coming week.

Got our schedule all sorted today, thinking there was no church here in Takaka (Tuhk'uh'kuh). Then as we drove through the town, we saw a Church of Christ church building. A quick re-jig of plans ensued and we joined with them for their time of worship this morning. Afterwards, we drove to the 'famous' paddle crab caf? on the far north-west corner of the south island and had (you guessed it) crabs, mussels, and cold meats for lunch. At $20 a head, this was our biggest splash-out on food this holiday.

We then drove onto Wharariki Beach (Far'a'ri'ki) where we left the car and walked a fair distance to get to the beach. Lovely place, but hot getting to and from it! Small fish were cruising the rivermouth and constantly jumping out of the tannin-stained water. Should have seen Kura, she just wanted a fishing rod....

We were also surprised by a young seal popping up and down through the waves and then starting to come ashore until it became disturbed by people nearby who jumped up and pointed at him. We have heard it said that seals are like the inquisitve dogs of the sea - pity this one was scared off.

We started our journey back quite late, and on the way decided to visit Te Waikoropupu (the locals call it Poo-Poo for short :-). Here there were two interesting things. Firstly a home-grown hydro scheme that was established in the 1920's using water courses and races established for a gold mining operatioon in the 1800's. It ran until the 1980's producing 0.8MW until they had a flash-over that destroyed the windings. At the time, all the powers said it was just junk to be sold for scrap, but there was a surprisingly stroing community backlash led by some key characters, one of whom reminds me of my Dad by his approach to broken things. These are paraphrases of quotations from this fellow from the storyboard at the hydro plant "they tell me it's not worth fixing. But I won't have that. Anything can be fixed if you have the will" and "if it's worth doing, it's worth doing well".

Well, the story goes that the army helped with engineering work, the company that supplied the original generator in the 1920's (ASEA I think and still around!) rewound the windings, and some people in the town even mortgaged their houses. A huge community investment of time and energy, all to achieve the goal of getting the system back up again...that's commitment!

The generator is now humming away, contributing to the national grid, with payments from the grid managers going back into the Golden Bay community. It's now also a tourist attraction too, with a nice walk around the water collection area and a glassed viewing area to see the control unit, the flywheel and the generator.

Great little story. I would like to have got it exactly word-for-word. Hopefully if you do a web search for "PuPu Hydro" you will find a website with more details.

Due to a navigational error on my part, we then journeyed to the other site in PuPu, the PuPu Springs (I though they were all together in one place but miscalculated - give me a steering wheel rather than a map any day....!).

Apparently the largest freshwater spring in Australasia, with very pure water. The water constantly surged up at a great rate from a rock vent 2.7 m below the surface, creating interesting ripples on the surface.

Due to concerns about introduction of the didymo (rock snot) diatom (see previous posting) no-one is allowed to get near or touch the spring water with body, clothes etc. Seeing the number of ducks and other birds happily swimming around, I did wonder how long it would be before birds naturally did all the damage that we are being asked to prevent, just by flying from an infected waterway to an uninfected one.

Got back to Takaka late, about 7:30pm and decided fast food was the best option, so fish and chips were duly ordered and consumed, followed by a very nice phone chat with Liam.

On our way again [8 march]

i'm finding it a litle easier to move today, so we've left, heading for points north of Christchurch. I am very thankful for the blessing of relative mobility - I had not expected to be moving so easily so soon.

My need to not-sit for too long has given kura an excellent opportunity to stop at craft stores. ;-) We're at the second one now and while she is browsing, I am flat on the floor of the van.

Our first visit was to a home-based craft shed near where we were camped. The woman there was also christian. it was good to talk with her and look at her home-made possum-skin coats and hats. Possums in nz are as big a problem than rabbits in australia so theres a thriving market in killing them for their pelts or for plucking their fur (which is spun in with merino). Possums are not native to nz (wre introduced from Australia) and are fast destroying native nz forests.

Second stop is a quilt shop. Hope I do see kura again today.....

Yes, she returned, with a bag of goodies - gunna need another suitcase to go home....!

Quiet day [7 March]

I (Ian) am still moving very gingerly. A short trip in the car to the shop to extend our stay was enough to freeze me up again. So I am on my back on the bed in the van and kura has gone on one of the forest walks we had planned to do before we arrived.

Kura did another 2 walks while I lounged on the bed.

Frustratingly, none of these places had gsm signals so I could catch up on blogging, but I am enjoying continuing to read 'Spiritual Leadership' by Blackaby. When I first started reading it I didn't like the book's style and what I felt was its experiential focus; however, i'm now thinking that's probably because my naturally cerebral/clinical approach needed re-balancing! I'm now finding it very useful reflecting upon the ways that spirituality can be expressed in the corporate context.

Blackaby includes a number of fascinating quotes from Harry Truman's biography; it has given me a real interest in reading more about Truman.

Roof vent repaired [3 march]

Reassembled the roof vent onto the van - seems to be working well, but I'm not sure it would survive being left angled up while driving; we will need to be very disciplined in remembering to wind it down before driving off again.

It has been surprising how warm it has been in NZ on so many nights. We always need the roof vent open to get some airflow in the van. We even bought some mesh from a curtaining shop to make flyscreens for the two sliding windows (and used some uhu-tack to stick them outside over each window) so that we can get airflow but no sandflies at face level.

How a campervan can be built in NZ without flyscreens I will never understand. While WA rightly has a bad rap for bushflies and mosquitoes, NZ has terrible sandflies and mosquitoes.

Left Manipouri heading for Mt Cook. A good drive, lots of flat roads. We followed the Lindis Valley so for much of the day we were bounded to the right and the left with huge hills, while we followed the twisting countours of the valley floor and the Lindis River. Became quite hot later on.

Instead, we travelled to a little town (whose name I will not attempt to spell) and camped overnight in a motor camp. There was a very pretty turquoise lake there. It was being used for rowing races, so very early the next morning we could hear the rowers being urged on by the coach.

Cruising Doubtful Sound [2 March]

The cruise on Doubtful Sound was in 3 parts. A small ferry took us from the Manapouri jetty to the Merdian Energy Hydro plant, then a coach took us overland to meet the cruise vessel at the Deep Cove jetty which is in the landward end of the fjord. This vessel then took us all through the fjord to the sea, and then the process was repeated until we arrived back in Manapori.

The scenery was wonderful, the commentary laid back and reflective. It's hard to put into words the scale of the mountains each side of the fjord, the height of the waterfalls. Or the ferocity of the sandflies, but I will address that in another posting!

We enjoyed watching a seal repeatedly thrash the water as he chased a large fish, which we also saw jump out of the water in an attempt to escape. I'm not sure the fish was that impressed! The boat was stopped and allowed to drift as we all watched the shenanigans. ALso some tiny blue penguins floating in our path, although they were swift to dive when they saw us coming closer.

The engineering in the hydro plant was fascinating. What grabbed my attention was that even in a very large project such as that, the engineers 'got it wrong'. Expecting to produce 700 megawatts of power, they were disappointed to find that they could only produce 580 MW. Why? They had miscalculated the friction of the water against the tunnels they had bored through solid rock, and the tailrace tunnel could not get rid of the water fast enough. It took another 25 years before a second parallel tailrace tunnel was approved and funded. When this extra tunnel was completed they were able to achieve 710MW of power output. Interestingly while the first tunnel was made using explosives, the second was bored with a huge (looked about 20+ metres in diameter) tunnelling machine that made a smooth circular bore, perhaps explaining the extra, unexpected 10MW!

We sat with an older couple in the vessel who were very pleasant. We exchanged addresses as they are visiting WA in June, and we will be passing their home later this month. They also shared with us some rock code fillets from their recent Stewart Island fishing expedition, which were very nice and solved that night's dinner menu...

Before returning to the caravan park, I purchased araldite and duct tape to effect repairs to the camper's roof vent. The caravan park manager obligingly loaned us a rickety old ladder which enabled me for the first time to see what I was dealing with on the top of the van roof. That evening the two of us put the jigsaw of bits back together, with copious amounts of glue and duct tape holding in shape. At one stage I was getting rather concerned that I had so much Araldite on my fingers that I was in danger of getting them glued together (and with no nail thinners to help...). Fortunately, the glue came off quite well on damp rags, so I was saved that indignity.

We placed a rubber mat on the gaping roof vent to keep the sandflies out and left the cover to glue.

Marking time at Wanaka [28 feb]

Drove to Wanaka. Interesting scenery, Lake Wanaka is like a vision of the deep blue Mediterranean Sea against rocky Greek islands. Lovely. Wanaka is a real tourist destination and appears to be full of German tourists. Imagine Mandurah in the Med. Come to think of it, NZ is full of German tourists. NZ must be a safe and monetarily attractive place to visit, to come so far.

In Wanaka, we decided to have the brakes checked, as they were grabbing and producing scraping sounds. Proved to be an expensive job ($360) that delayed our departure by a day. A new front brake disk was required one side due to very bad scoring (a pebble lodged between pad and disk).

Prior to knowing we would need to wait another day for the car part to arrive, we had booked an early morning departure cruise on Doubtful Sound in 2 days time. This was to rather complicate our week...

I spent a very enjoyable time visiting the NZ Fighter Pilots Museum in the morning. A refurbed Hurricane amogst others, and a range of WW2 transcripts and photos had me totally fascinated - as well as sobered by the short life expectancy of so many.

Technology troubles

There's been no posts for a little while. For a day or so, we couldn't get reliable connections, then I ran out of credit on our Vodfone prepaid SIM, then horror of horrors, I made the mistake of trying to download some emailed attachments from a web cafe computer to my PDA's SD memory card, with a USB card reader. Worked OK (it seemed) until I tried to put the memory card back in the PDA - gone, all gone.

It's happened before and should have known better.

So, the commentary on our visits to the Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers has gone, along with a lot of other stuff. Luckily all the preceding material is on this blog.

Now we're in Wanaka, have credit, but GPRS doesn't work :-} Not my day. I'm hoping that when we get to Manapouri tomorrow for a daytime cruise on Doubtful Sound, we may see better GPRS functioning. I won't comment about the hours I've spent on the phone waiting for Vodafone's helpdesk to even ANSWER my call to enquire about the status of the Wanaka GPRS situation..... They do NOT rate any level of quality from this customer. I haven't even SPOKEN to a real person yet...

Well, that's all for now, I will update the blog once I've re-typed some news, and once I have a working GPRS facility once again.

Franz Josef Glacier and rainforests

It was quite a short drive to the Franz Josef Glacier. Since we had so much washing to do, we stayed at the local Top 10 caravan park, which is a very new and clean park (it will be even better given 5 more years to grow trees for shade).

The glacier seems to pour through the valley above us, like dirty cream. Although it is quite white at the top where the snow falls (it is called the Neve I think), it is not so lower down. We will walk around the edges tomorrow, but will save our (expensive) guided glacier walk for the Fox Glacier on Mon. or Tues., as its slope is less severe than Franz.

Weather is very bright and sunny, even though the mountains have a top-hat of white cloud just hanging there. The skies are full of buzzing helicopters and light planes taking tourists for the trip overhead. They cost between $200 and $400 per person for up to 30 minutes of flight. We've decided that we'd rather walk and save the money for the Doubtful Sound overnight cruise that so many people from all different backgrounds have raved about.

Kura had a headache and went to sit in the TV room for a rest. What should be on, Bethany, but Gilmore Girls. I swear I cannot escape these crazy, fast-talking women - even in NZ they follow me!

When Kura felt better, we drove to the Glacier car park and went on an hour's walk through the rainforest in the valley below it. Although we've taken photos of the glacier, you really cannot do justice to the size. It is somehow odd that in the presence of so much cold, you can have rain forest, which I usually associate with Queensland. The nice part about these rain forests is that there are no leeches...unlike Queensland!

It's been quite frustrating not being able to access GSM mobile phone services for about 3 days. The GSM service is the carrier for our mobile phone calls and GPRS-over-GSM is the carrier via Ian's PDA for email, blogging, and occasionally web browsing (seldom though as it can be very expensive via GSM). This afternoon, I gave up waiting for "the next town" and used the caravan park web kiosk at $9/hour to email Jodi to say where we were. But in the middle of my internet session, the power failed and the computers wouldn't come up, so the park staff had to come and reset things for us, and give us more money to reimburse us.

When I came back to the van I noticed that Vodafone's signal strength had gone from zero to two points. Makes me suspect that their tower had a problem that was only addressed when the power failure occurred.....! Hence the multiple, backdated blog postings and delayed emails that have poured from my PDA this afternoon.

We had hoped to join the Presbyterian church in Franz tomorrow, but there are no services on.

Campervan stuff for Dad

Dad, thought you might be interested in some info on the van. It has been built for a cold climate. Has a 240v air heater and fan that gushes hot air into the van if you're on a powered site. In addition, hot water is somehow captured through a heat exchanger at the front of the van, although I haven't yet located it. Basically it has a pair of heater hoses clamped to the underside connected to a boiler of some kind in the left-hand rearmost cupboard. I also have a suspicion there may be a 240v water heater, although I haven't found it. The hot water tank is of a reasonable size and takes a very short time to heat up. There is also a mixer tape that somehow works with a pressure sensitive water pump to provide pressurised water at a selectable temp. Very sophisticated compared to our van at home. Furthermore, the outlet over the sink is connected to a metre of so of flexible tubing, thus enabling you to take a hot shower outside if you so wished (we haven't done this yet!).

The fridge is an Engel in-situ 12/240 style appliance. Rather smaller than ours, but OK for two. It is connected to a deep-cycle battery behind the driver's seat, inside a wooden compartment. There appears to be a custom piece of electronics which switches the fridge onto the car battery in some situations, 240v in others, and back to the deep-cycle battery in others. It also acts to protect the deep-cycle battery by shedding the fridge load when the battery gets too low.

The Kiwi campers do not comply with Au safety rules. There are no high CO2 escape points, no low propane escape points, and the gas bottle is located inside the camper cupboards - no outside hatch to access the tank.

Bed setup is a feat of cunning. The table is always up but is double-jointed so that after yanking it from a plastic clasp on the wall, it's horizontal and vertical surfaces all go horizontal and provide much of the sleeping surface.

The layout is like our old Nissan Urvan, seats/bed at front and at the back, cupboards and fridge one side, then the corridor and then the sink/HWS/cooker and more cupboards. Corridor is a bit narrow for us, we are always getting stuck half way down!

Overall we are pleased with the van. It is quieter running than ours. Interestingly, although it was registered as a 1991 vehicle from Govt. perspective, when I looked at the owners manual, it was clear it was a Jan 1990 delivery. Someone did something dodgy back at the very beginning!

Finding God's people in a distant place

Today is Sunday, so we decided to see whether there was a church in Akaroa where we could meet to worship God with some others of God's people. We had missed the Anglican meeting, so walked round a bit and arrived in time for the Presbyterian meeting. Tiny little church, full of young families there for a christening. Has three retired ministers who are participating in a team ministry approach with the congregation. The music was a bit awkward and slow, but there was a good spirit of welcome and acceptance, and a focus on the community implications of the baby's baptism. Cool.

Just after we sat down, we were joined by another couple, Simon and Rachel. We ended up talking afterwards and thoroughly enjoyed the time together. Simon had recently retired from the academic staff of the Massey University Conservatorium. After talking for a while in the church, we joined them for coffee at the coffee shop nearby where we spent a very enjoyable hour and a half. They have a "bach" (kiwi for beach house) at Akaroa, and look for opportunities to minister wherever they are. They had just come from the Anglican service where Rachel played the music for the service. They had then dropped into the Presbyterian church worship service in order to receive ministry (having ministered to others earlier). They both hail from Anglican backgrounds but in more recent times have been associated with the Baptist church. It was very cool getting to know them.

We then drove out (more incredibly narrow, twisting, and hilly roads...!) to a historic Maori church on the shore where we had lunch and read about the history from some detailed accounts on the wall inside.

Then, off to a walk track known as "Ellangowan Scenic Reserve". Optimistically described as a "30-40 minute return walk", we drove up very steep roads, often in first gear, then stopped before descending a road signed as "Extremely dangerous"!. We walked down the dangerous road till the walk trail started and then ascended almost vertically up the hillside (it was very steep). It was a very hot day in the sun, but as soon as we entered the rain-forest like hillside forest, everything became cool and dappled. Ferns everywhere, huge beech trees.

We could smell sickly sweet smells from time to time, and after a little while we realised it was the randomly growing foxglove flowers (digitalis, I think, native to the UK) which were a purple splash of colour here and there in the thick bush.
At times I sneezed constantly, later realising when walking through a patch of sunlight, that every big fern we brushed against released a thick brown cloud of spores; until then, until then we hadn't seen the clouds because of the poor light under the big trees.

We reached the peak of the track eventually, leaving me aghast at the path we had to walk next to a sheer drop down hundreds of feet. I did that metre or so on hands and feet because my trifocal glasses are not good for depth appreciation at the best of times - and this was no time to get brave!

The walk down hill was equally as steep and quite slippery at times, but in the forest you didn't get a sense of danger. When we reached the road again, we realised that we had now to retrace our steps to the start of the track, and then to where the van was parked.

It was a long hot walk uphill. But oh, the view....we were so high, even on the "dangerous road", that we could see a very long way out to sea. We were so far distant that we could see no waves, just what appeared to be a stationary random pattern and the colour change as the milky inlet water colour changed into the deep green of the Pacific.

After a shower we drove back to the town and made tea by the edge of the inlet, afterwards talking with a retired couple (like you Mum and Dad) who were visiting with camper from Auckland.

Well, that's all for tonight. Lots more that I could say, but we're getting later and later finishing in the evenings and it's now after 10pm. With daylight saving here, we have good light until about 830 pm, so I didn't even start this until 9pm after washing up.

On the road at last...!

Well, after doing a heap of food shopping in Christchurch, we set off out of the city, and through 1.8km of roughly circular tunnel through the rocky hills to the sea port that 'feeds' Christchurch's population. It's the same town we saw from the crater rim, high above, several days ago. Like a pint-sized Fremantle! Walked around and talked to Jodi, Bethany and Kevin (Liam, still sleeping at 930am is a bit lazy.....!).

Drove off to find Diamond Harbour on the other side of the harbour. The harbour is really big and it took us ages to drive around the edge, because the roadway was full of twists and high climbs to cope with the natural terrain. I spent most of the time in third gear with lengthy periods in second... The water is a delicious shade of aquamarine because of the amount of clay in the hills above the harbour -in some places the water looks quite milky.

After finding a road called "Kura Lane", we retraced our steps and headed off to Akaroa. Road got better as we got closer.

Coming over the hill after a long climb and being faced with Akaroa's estuary and myriad bays laid out before you like a postcard was gob-smacking. Is there nothing in NZ that isn't speccie?

We're late tonight and I will finish this note earlier than I wanted because we have to work out how to set up the bed in the van. I had a number of photos to post but the ftp client keeps getting timeouts over the GPRS link :-{

On the horns of a mechanical dilemma....

Cloud has descended once again. Today it's even hanging over the crater rim where we walked a few days ago.

We both think we are losing weight because of all the walking we are doing without a car....! Christchurch is a provincial city, not as many big buildings as Perth but perhaps similar in size, except that the suburbs here are smaller. It has lots of old stone buildings, churches, halls mixed amongst the newer buildings. A tramway does a wide circuit of the city adding a european feel. Nice place but we are champing at the bit to get out on the open road and see the scenery we came to see....so we...

Had a look at a backpacker van which was going cheap because the owner was flying out on Saturday. It was fairly cramped (Mitsubishi L300) so we took the bus out to a rental firm with whom Ian had corresponded a month or so ago about an ex-rental van that was for sale (1993 Econovan, hi roof, $9500). This van has done 430,000km (:-) we reviewed the parts replacement history since 1997 (eg 3 gearboxes and clutches, cam belt, three starter motors, cyl head, muffler, brakes) - it's clear that they fixed parts as they failed. Although the interior 'furniture' is quite worn, it was in good-enough condition and the outside looked OK. There were two things still to be repaired: the 12/240 fridge was out for repair (has to be fixed and refitted), and the front sway bar rubbers were shot (when we test-drove it there was a clanking as the sway bar hit the chassis thru which it travels).

But wait! We had rung another van seller early today and in the evening he called us back and brought his van out to show us at 7pm tonight. A 1991 Econovan (like our's at home) but with only 240,000km on the clock - much less than the other. Drove well, albeit with no power steering, and quieter than ours. It is a family camper they had 4 years and drove around 37000km. Kids now getting too big to fit so they were looking to sell it.

Dilemma....newer, high km and known service history vs slightly older with little over half the km, with nil service history. Both are fit-for-purpose, and although not re-sellable into the Auckland backpacker market (too expensive), it's good enough to sell into the kiwi consumer market (unlike the other heaps we've seen). We could have gone either way but offered this private seller $9500 for the comfort of lower km, and our now waiting for his wife to call him back to confirm the she's also happy to take our offer.

We're hoping that tomorrow this process will be completed and we can pay our money and go. We had intended to have an AA inspection before purchase, but time is getting away - the AA have no slots free until Monday, and that would mean at least another 4 or more days kicking our heels here. Our assessment of the vehicle is that it is much better condition than vehicles that we've seen for $8500, so it's time to take a gamble (most unlike me).

Sunshine in Christchurch! And more dodgy wheels...

Holiday mode this morning - didn't get out of accommodation until 10am. What's more there was blue sky this morning - the first we have seen in ChCh so far. The sun shone bright and warm for most of the day, so we used our hats and sunglasses in earnest today.

We walked to the Botanical gardens and ambled around for some time. On the way Kura visited a shop with the the most extensive selection of beading Ian had ever seen.Needless to say, we left with a little bag of treasures. The adjacent patchwork shop was also raided.

We walked back and forwards from the city twice, as while in the Botanical Gardens we received a call from someone who was bringing their parent's camper over. But it was another disappointment - unsafe gas installation, dodgy foldout bed. Better however than the extremely dodgy Mercedes van that someone else brought over in the evening. The latter seller was unabashed by the state of his vehicle and the rust visible on all sides (we couldn't believe his ebullient praise of the vehicle...!).

It seems a change of strategy may be required. We either have to enter the "flat roof" backpacker van market (ex-Japanese import LiteAce/L300/HiAce ~160,000km SWB vans+20 litre water+foam bed base+portable gas stove - costing up to $5k) or stay with the high-roof E2000/HiAce ~300,000km LWB ex-Maui camper vans and increase our buying limit towards $10k. Resale will be easier in the former case, but the latter will provide more flexibility and comfort when staying in national parks. There is some dissent in the household over this decision....not sure what the outcome will be.

Crater walk with me....!

Well, it seems the fire brigade turns down its PA overnight...what a relief!
Very chilly outside but the room is a little too warm under the quilt!
Spent the morning chasing up vans again on the web, ringing people. After lunch we decided it was time for recreation so we took the bus to a place near Lyttelton where we went up the gondola/cable-car to the rim of the ancient volcano that Christchurch is built near.
Lovely view of the commercial harbour one way and panoramic views of Christchurch, the beaches, and other crater-related hills. A cruise liner stood cheek-by-jowl with freighters against a lovely azure blue, circular harbour made by the old volcano. Looked a lovely harbour for sailing (there were lots of yachts in pens as well).
Kura then led me on a walk that traveled along the rim of a saddle from the cable-car station down, down, down (with every step I could only think "we're going to have to climb back every step we travel...!". It was quite chilly as we descended, and we were glad of the 4 layers we had on. Having reached the base of the saddle, we then had to climb all the way back (as anticipated...!). But in spite of the cable-car building looking very far away, surprisingly it only took us 20 minutes to return... it was a lot hotter climbing up and soon we were down to just 2 layers and sweating profusely (Kura probably only glowed...). I think the muscles will be a bit sore tomorrow. There's a great ride for bikers from the base to the peak and back again.
Bus back to town, had Khymer Satay meal each then walked back to our accommodation where we sat in the lounge listening to a young Japanese student play all sorts of music on the old piano (without music sheets, just like my Uncle Alb used to in the UK when I was young). He told me that he reads music, memorises the melody and then plays by memory. What a gift for him...and for us! I left Kura there still listening while I came back to type this blog.
Camper vans...The market seems to have ramped up in Christchurch after a real lull during January. Many of the vans that we observed being repeatedly advertised without success in Dec, Jan and Feb have been sold in the last week. A surprise that has us a tiny bit frustrated but patiently waiting for something that is OK. The van we saw today was not at all in good condition. Great engine, but the bodywork, interior and price being asked were not in harmony! We have to be sensible and remember we will want to resell whatever we buy, and this one was pretty poor.
We have 3 possibles that we hope the owners will show us tomorrow. It's a bit of a juggle watching the internet, making phone contact and trying to arrange a viewing (sounds like a funeral not a sale!). A fourth we called tonight had buyers on site so we're expecting a call back tonight or tomorrow to tell us whether it is still available.
It was great being able to text Dad and Mum and Jodi and get replies as we sat at the cable station overlooking the scenery. Ain't technology grand! BTW, email, web etc is now working tickety-boo from the PDA, which pleases me immensely.

A loooong day

We had very good flights Perth-Auckland, Auckland-Wellington, and Wellington-Christchurch, but by the time we had waiting 4 hours at Auckland, we were just longing to be horizontal.
It's been a long dayfor us,spent largely walking round the CBD in Christchurch finding a Vodafone SIM, buying some food, and beginning to do the ring-around of vans that were on the market last week.
We were disappointed to find that a number of the vans we had on our hitlist had sold in the last few days, including 'Bella', which had been on the market for a month or so. Average going price seems to be NZD$8500 for a hitop van between 1989 and 1992. There's still one definitely for sale, and the older gentleman will bring that round to us tomorrow hopefully (which gives us a chance to slack off a little and recover). If that falls through, we may be in a bit of a fix and may have to hire a car for sightseeing while we wait for more vans to arrive from the north.
Weather here is quite chilly. We really noticed the difference from Auckland and Wellington (both north island) and Christchurch (way south), because the daytime temp went from 21 C to 14 C over the 45 minute flight to ChCh (std abbreviation down here for Christchurch).
Technology has caused me a few hassles. The Vodafone SIM worked, but it was a while before I realised it was still connecting to the Optu GPRS access point in Australia - and so blew NZD25 of prepaid credit :-{
It took me several hours of web searching to identify the correct gprs settings to be used. But at last, success using www.vodafone.net.nz as the access point name, not live.vodafone.com as suggested by their website. It says little for Vodafone that I had to get this information from a UK website!
Well, that all for tonight, pretty tired, and Kura's already asleep. I hope there are no more fire brigade callouts tinight....it now emerges that the place we had paid for for 3 nights is a block away from the ChCh Fire Brigade. Whenever there's a callout the phone, the radio, and acknowledgements from the vehiclke come over the PA system. There were 3 callouts this afternoon alone....the things you find out too late!

GeekZone

Some of you will be wondering about how we will be keeping a mobile blog without an ADSL connection and laptop... So here's the good oil...

Hardware complement:
Canon A530 Powershot camera with SD memory card
XDA IIs Pocket PC with SD memory card and Vodaphone NZ prepaid SIM
Stowaway bluetooth keyboard

Software complement:
Spb Imageer for Pocket PC to reduce resolution on pictures taken with the Canon camera (we'll be uploading text and images via GSM GPRS link at high cost, so a 1Mb photo is just not appropriate!)
SoftX ftp to upload the reduced resolution photos to our web space
Diarist to upload text and links to blogger.com

Since I spent 3 evenings gathering the information I needed to get going with mobile blogging cost-effectively, I thought that I might save someone else the hassle by documenting the solution in a simgle place. Of course, there are many nways to skin a cat, and many other combinations, but I know this one works!

but what about pictures?

let's see whether diarist can handle a picture...

this is who we are...

Got the pda talking to blogger.com at last!

I tried pocket blog and pocket blogger - but for some reason they didn't work. But pocket diarist (from New Zealand - really!) works just fine. Thanks to Kevin Daly for sharing it with us!

ian