Riiiiiight … So we get to the airport shuttle bus stop in downtown Auckland and wait for the bus. Which is supposed to stop by every 20 minutes, but does not appear until about 45 minutes later. OK, we’re still OK, we’ll just get to the airport 2 hours before flight time, still plenty of time. Then we finally arrive at the airport, and take care of a few necessities (like picking up the stored luggage and returning the rented cell phone) before getting in the checkin line with our luggage … behind a just-arrived busload of Japanese tourists. The line took an hour for us to get through. By the time we got our bags checked in, it was already boarding time, and we hadn’t even cleared security yet! Fortunately, NZ has very little flight security (attention terrorists, here’s your new vacation spot! oh wait, NZ stayed out of the Iraq folly) so we flew through security. Twice — we got rejected by the first passport check because we hadn’t paid the “Oh You Want To Leave That Will Be Twenty Five Dollars Please” exit fee. We did get to the gate with time to spare … specifically, 10 seconds. No kidding, we waited for 10 seconds before they called our row and we went in. Oh, and Chris and his big laptop bag got pulled aside for a random search by security! Yay!
During the long oceanic flight, Chris plowed through Juno (middling thumbs up), Control (middling thumbs up), and American Gangster (thumbs down), and decided that no movie can really be any good on that little screen, especially if it has dialogue that you need to actually hear. Also it was no help that the Ugly American behind us had a jowl-rattling snore that would wake the dead. Sharon rewatched Flight of the Conchords episodes again. That show is crack to her, apparently.
In San Francisco we got our bags, got through customs with blazing speed, rechecked the bags, and got Chris’s tickets corrected (did we mention that United had screwed up Chris’s US tickets?) Then had a little bit of time to sit and do internet work (thank you SFO for your excellent wifi) including the post that precedes this one. Then back on the plane …
In Denver we didn’t have to hassle with our bags since they were now checked through to Atlanta, so were able to finally sit down to some righteously greasy food and do some idle people watching. We sat next to a most surreal family from Brooklyn, ask us about it sometime. With another hour to kill, we then settled in at the gate for more idle reading and internet goofing (including hopefully this post), but discovered that Denver’s wifi is terrible. Instead of making you pay for it, it’s free, BUT it’s ad supported. How they actually insert the advertising uses a technical mechanism that breaks many websites, including that of this blog. And the signal was too weak to be usable anyway. Hooray.
In Atlanta, finally, we had to wait about an hour for our bags, but they showed up and that’s all that mattered at that point. Taxi ride, key in door, home! Hi cats! 2 am. 35 hours awake.
Which basically consisted of taking a ferry from downtown Auckland to the island of Rangitoto in the bay. Rangitoto formed out of thin air (well, sea water) as a new undersea volcano erupted about 600 years ago and thrust this new island up out of the water. It’s a couple miles around and has the familiar cone at the center, albeit a small one. 
What’s really amazing about this island is that the lava hasn’t broken down into soil yet, so most of the island is covered in this surreal deep-black fluffy-looking stuff that is actually volcanic rock. In some places a couple inches of soil has formed (starting with lichen on the rocks) and so you do have some plant life. But mostly it’s either bare black fluffy rock moonscape (despite 600 years of weathering) or overgrown with low plants that can eke out a life on the meager soil so far. 
So in contrast to our self-guided travels for this entire trip, today we paid for the ferry ride out and went on a guided tour of the island. We piled into this tractor-trailer rig (with mostly retirees and toddlers) and went on a slow and impossibly bumpy ride around the island, with commentary by the tractor driver up front.
Today was the big drive back east across the island to Christchurch to return the campervan and fly to Auckland. The drive was uneventful, except for when we had to drive through a treacherous gorge that was part of the pass (“Arthur’s Pass”) through the mountains. There had been signs for an hour discouraging people from towing a trailer through the pass. On our way into the mountains we were passed by ambulances and fire engines with sirens blaring. AN HOUR LATER we reached the gorge, where a sedan towing a trailer had hit the guardrail and nearly plunged to their deaths. It was an extremely remote place, just about the worst part of the entire pass, certainly with no cell phone coverage, and we wonder how long the accident wreckage was in place until word reached the emergency services to fire up their engines. As we passed them, finally, we all glowered at the college-aged morons who had created their own misery … The picture above was taken right after we reached the top of the pass, only a minute after getting past the accident site. That’s a permanent snowcap at the top of the mountain. 
Then we passed through the very arid region east of the mountain peaks, which provide more starkly beautiful views, including this one of a small lake with whitecapped waves on it because the wind was so strong! Below is a 360-degree panorama, which Chris likes doing if only to watch Sharon roll her eyes. Obviously you can’t make out much in this web version, even if you click below to get the enlarged version … At full resolution they are stunning … we’ll have to get these printed as blowups.
We took our time in the morning getting up and out. Wednesday had been a long day and we needed the rest. Plus we figured we were letting the first wave of annoying tourists crash through the Fox Glacier park. When we got there it was indeed crowded but not so bad. A well-worn path led from the large car park 
up to the “terminal face” of the glacier along a lively river (coming from the glacier, carrying curiously GREY water). One the way we had to cross two streams … Fording raging, boulder-strewn streams is not Sharon’s forte; her stubby little legs just aren’t suited for hopping from rock to slippery rock. She made it over though (hooray!) and the glacier was big and green/blue and dirty. It was probably smoother and whiter farther upstream but that costs big bucks for the helicopter ride or big calves for the hike. We made it to the terminal face, in fact we went a bit too far by inadvertently following a guided tour group past the ropes. You can see Sharon (tiny) in the second image here, in the lower left of the image. Below is a panorama of the scene; for scale, you can again make out some people in the lower left.
20 minutes up the road (the small photo here), and then stopped at a lake by the road and had lunch. Then we set in for the longish drive up to Greymouth, a mix of twisty mountain roads (which Chris is quite tired of now) and flat straight runs through farmland. Our arrival in Greymouth, intended as a shopping respite for Sharon, was disappointing as all the stores were closed. It was 5:15pm, and everything was closed already. What is it with everything closing at 5pm in this country? Don’t these people need to break even? The hours aren’t even posted so they can close early. Grrrrrr. We found a jade store that was still open — staying open “late” for some lingering customers — and we picked up some swag and got the hell out of there.
We spent the night at a holiday park on Rapahoe Beach about 10 miles north of Greymouth. Our campsite backed up to the dunes and overlooked the ocean. We walked through some flax plants a few feet and were on the beach. Once again, this was a rock beach with billions of ocean-rounded rocks of all sizes. 
Sharon filled her pockets, carefully evaluating each stone. We walked a bit down the beach to the Rapahoe Hotel and Restaurant. More of a bar that happens serves food, it was filled with happily mangy locals drinking beer, playing video games and gabbing. When we walked in the way was blocked by a big golden retriever who immediately got up and plopped back down a few feet further into the bar. Stella, as she turned out to be named, was there with her family. 
Stella later molested her beloved Homer Simpson doll (note mangled head in photo). After a “jug” of beer, a 
We found this weird fungus on the way. Sharon’s been buying field reference guides to local flora and fauna, and every time we get back to the campervan following some exploration she dives into her books to try to figure out what in blazes we just saw.
Next was Fantail falls where a partially dried out river bed has been taken over by crafty travellers. There are stacks of rocks all over the rocky bed which is next to the river which is right across from the falls. We made a few stacks and went on.
On our way to the glacier area we took a longish walk to a beach that (supposedly) had crested penguins. We were there around 5pm and they don’t come ashore until later so we didn’t see any, but we had a lovely walk through 
a dense lush fern forest on the way. It had a long suspension bridge over a roaring river and really good trails. We encountered a fearless fantail bird that was catching bugs we were stirring up. Here’s Chris next to a giant fern frond.
Queenstown itself is a very very touristy alpine ski town, in a picturesque setting but still swarming with human beings. Sharon swears that she saw someone wearing a Branson Missouri t-shirt, and not ironically either. Fortunately we knew this going in and only planned to spend an hour or so just poking around. And that’s exactly what we did and then high-tailed it out of there.
Arrowtown was back up the road a bit and we stopped there to visit a Chinese Settlement. Set back from the town center along a little trail, it shows how Chinese immigrants came in the late 1800’s to work the hills for gold. They had several restored stone huts showing how the men lived there for years with the intention of eventually returning to their families after finding their fortune in gold.
Back on the road, we headed to the town of Wanaka, on the shores of Lake Wanaka. Stopped at a 
Spent the night in Otago at a holiday park and then in the morning went to the 
Unfortunately we only got to see an adult one when it was fairly far out at sea, but it was really big and obviously an albatross — they have big wings that barely flap at all and they fly so low they are practically skimming the waves. In this picture at left is a shag colony (sort of a cormorant kind of bird) and the little smudge of white in the lower right is an albatross chick. Really.
This is a shot off the albatross colony cliff. At the bottom is bull kelp, a massive seaweed that washes up on the beaches. We encountered some dried kelp on the first Pacific beach a few days ago (the one with the black pebbles) and that dried kelp is strong as steel.
Up until now they’ve all been mashed by cars. As we left the dam (not another soul in sight, by the way), Chris spotted it in the road. We got up close to it and it peeped once and just sat there even after we tried to shoo it out of the road. Darwin at work.
Cromwell is a former gold mining town from the late 1800’s. It’s now been built up a bit with new construction and looks like a Las Vegas ghost town crossed with the weird barrenness of Westworld. To Chris it felt like the subdivision in Poltergeist (“you only moved the tombstones!”). Its current claim to fame is its orchards, apparently (see photo). More fish and chips for dinner.
Chris is obsessed with the hedgerows that rise with military precision between fields of sheep and/or crops to act as windbreaks. He will taunt his dad with many pictures of them when he gets home.
The houses here are charmingly small and often have well-tended gardens of roses and dahlias in the front yard. There are also many conifers and eucalyptus; very similar to the coasts of California. We’ve passed lots of orchards down in the south island; plums, cherries, apricots, apples, olives.
The blues are the smallest penguins in the world. (There are only 17 kinds and most live in NZ.) This reserve colony has been set up with man-made nesting boxes that are just barely big enough for the blues to get into but too small for predators (e.g. cats, dogs, etc.) to get in easily — at least not with a penguin beak pecking back at them. Every evening the penguins come back from their day at the sea, clamber up the rocky shoreline and head into their little burrows in the field by the coast. And waiting for them is a grandstand full of penguin nerds. It was noon when we got there and the usual flock of penguins would not be arriving back from the sea until 8pm or so, by which time we would be long gone down the coast, 
so we instead got a look at the three moulting penguins stuck in their nests waiting for their plumage to replenish (takes a few weeks). We could get a look into their nests via a darkened hut that the boxes backed into. Sorry no pictures of live little blues; none allowed. This pic is of two stuffed (~sniff~) guys in a glass box.
As a consolation prize, we walked out on the cliff face along a treacherous path that took us above some shag nesting sites. Actually, we didn’t see them at first, until we noticed one looking up at as, and carefully leaning out we cou
ld see that dozens were right there below us.
The drive out on the peninsula was spectacular. Breathtaking! Or gut-wrenching, in the case of Sharon peering down at her imminent death on the ultra narrow and twisty roads.
A 
The reserve has set up long, deep trenches that are covered by camoflage and allow visitors to make their way through the penguin nesting grounds without disturbing the penguins. It felt rather like a battlefield, with Chris thinking of WW1 trench warfare and Sharon feeling like she was in Viet Cong tunnels. 
Tour groups of about 15 can go through this maze of trenches/tunnels to viewing areas (where your peer out at ground level through slots high in the wall) and peer out at the penguins ambling by. As with the little blues, many are entering their annual moulting season where they regrow a new set of feathers. 
They must sit on land for about 4 weeks without fishing for any food, because the new feathers aren’t waterproof as they come in. They fatten up in the weeks preceeding and then must conserve their energy during the molt. If startled by people they can become so alarmed it uses up their fat stores and they may eventually starve to death before they can finish the moulting. These penguins come ashore off a blustery coast in the midst of seals lounging around and the ever present sheep. The yellow eyes nest in the forest up from the beach.
Special guest blog appearance by a sheep!
Waking up in Kaikoura, we headed out to Point Kean, where there are seals right there on the rocky beach. Another one had wandered up in the bushes
. Then we hiked up to the top of the cliff to overlook the ocean. This was going to be our best chance to see any whales (breaching out on the water) because we decided to skip the whale tour option (by boat or plane) as they are exhorbitantly expensive, and there actually aren’t any whales out there so it would be very dicey to try to see just one. No whales seen from shore, but more stunning views – blah blah blah!
We hit the road for Christchurch, stopping along the way at a lavendar farm that had a gregarious farmer and equally gregarious sheep. Christchurch itself seemed dull and we got back on the road after a pointless hour in the cuty center looking for a break. Sorry Christchurch. We’ll return to catch our flight back to Auckland on Friday.
Leap day! Here in Wellington they’re celebrating by bungy jumping off a high bridge. Any excuse, I guess.
Sharon bought two little bottles of champagne to celebrate our voyage. Chris spent much of the trip on the top deck being blown around while taking far too many pictures as we entered the Marlborough Sounds on the way to docking in Picton.
After getting off the ferry, we drove west a little bit through more twisty mountain roads with gorgeous views of the water to our right and unbelievably verdant tree fern forests to our left. We’re getting tired of twisty mountain roads though. Then we headed south through the wine country of Renwick and Blenheim … guess what, we don’t really care that much about wine country, so we pretty much blew right through that and headed for the Pacific. And an hour later or so we had our first sight of it! (shown here).
We passed a road called “Wharanui Beach Road” and turned around to go back and get our first close-up look at the Pacific. What we found was a remarkable black pebble beach — no sand or even dust, just black pebbles of various sizes, from rice grains up to golf balls. Sharon was quite happy exploring the pebbles!