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!