Good Bye Dotti

August 2 – Showing off Dotti

We were up early this morning to take Dotti to her 8am pink slip appointment. We wanted to be there early so we could double check for any oil. We drove over and stopped into the McDonald's nearby. I grabbed us breakfast and Beau mopped up the tiny bit of oil that appears to be leaking for the oil cap. While we had our breakfast in the van a young guy started checking out the van. Beau opened the door and had a little chat, apparently he is looking for a van. We gave him a flyer and hoped to hear from him. We headed down to the mechanics and while Beau got the pink slip done, I picked us up coffee from 7-Eleven. I was gone maybe 10 minutes but Beau had paper in hand by the time I had gotten back. WE PASSED! We made our way downtown to the car market feeling very optimistic about our day. Once in the car market I stayed with the van while Beau went to check his e-mail. He found a van wanted ad and replied to that in hopes of drumming up some interest. We had a bit of down time before we got our first call about the van. We ended up setting up 4 different viewings of the van for today! Or first one was around noon and we met them downtown. They were a nice British couple, they had a look at the van said they were going to grab a coffee and would give us a yes or no after. About 10min later they were back coffee in hand and said they'd take it! Awesome, they hadn't even test drove it or started it or anything! We got a deposit and said we'd bring it to them in Bondi tomorrow. We headed back to the caravan park in disbelief. We messaged the other people who were supposed to see the van and told them it had sold. Now we had to pack ourselves back up into or backpacks again! Yikes!!! We did laundry then crammed everything we owned in our bags. We went out for a celebratory dinner at the mall up the road and had some yummy Thai food. We had a sundae for dessert then headed back to the caravan park. It was our last night with Dotti.

August 3 – Good Bye Dotti

After a quick breakfast we finished our packing and cleaning and set off for Bondi Beach. It was about a 30min drive and we found the place without too much trouble. We got the money off the British couple in crisp $100 bills. We sold her to them for $4500 and they were going to take car of the registration renewal. They had give us 45 100 dollar bills but we had gotten a $200 deposit off of them yesterday so being the honest people we are we gave them $200 back. We went down to the transit office with them and submitted the notice of disposal, form saying we no longer own the van. Then parted ways and hopped a train back into town.  I hope Dotti treats them a little better than she did us. We booked ourselves into a pretty nice hostel in the Kings Cross area. Kings Cross is the backpacker mecca here and not so strangely the red light district too. Our hostel was off the main drag and should be pretty good. After settling in we walked over to the car market and got our bond back from them. The guy who was working down there was very happy for us and had been a really good guy to deal with too. Now we needed to find a bank but had to walk about 20min to find an ANZ branch. We deposited our money and closed Beau's account. On our way back we stopped into O'Malley's Pub and had a jug of beer. We then went to Coles and bought kangaroo burgers for dinner. We passed the evening with internet and Olympics.

Good Bye Dotti!

August 4 – Around Sydney

We had our free breakfast of cereal, toast and instant coffee. The coffee sucked but better than nothing I guess. I Skyped with Elaine for a bit, we had some catching up to do. After a nice chat I signed off and Beau and I went in search of something to do for the next 10 days. We looked into some trips out to Ayers Rock, also known as Uluru, but with flights and a tour it would be about $1000/person. Not quite what we were hopping for unfortunately. We discussed our options and decided to go to the Blue Mountains and Hunter Valley. So we rented a van for 5 days. We got a “Wicked Camper” a graffiti van with a bed in it. Feeling pretty excited about our next week we headed down to the harbour to get some shots of the Opera House on a beautiful day. We also went for a wander in the Rocks and into the Sydney Visitors Center. We got some pamphlets on the Blue Mountains and the Hunter Valley. On our way out of the Rocks we got side tracked by a candy shop where they were hand making peach candies. It was super cool and we got to try some fresh ones when they were done. Yummy. We had another jug at O'Malley's before heading back to the hostel to make burgs again.

Stretching candy

August 5 – Bondi-Coogee Costal Walk

We have enjoyed being warm and inside at night but the beds are quite squeaky and every little move I make creaks. We had cereal and toast for breakfast before catching a train out to Bondi Beach. We walked down to the infamous beach to go for a nice walk. It was lovely and sunny out with a bit of wind to keep us cool. We did the Bondi to Coogee costal walk, a 6km walk between Bondi Beach and Coogee Beach along the ocean. It was pretty busy with people since it was a gorgeous Sunday but it was nice to see so many people out enjoy the lovely winter day. It took us about 2 hours to do the walk with many scenic picture stops along the way. We got Subway for lunch once we reached Coogee and then grabbed a McD's cone to enjoy at the beach. We enjoyed the beach for a little bit before catching the bus back to the train station. Once back at the hostel we had a nice shower before heading for to O'Malley's for a jug of Snakebite (cider, beer and grenadine). After a jug of that we decided to switch back to beer. After a couple of drinks we popped into the grocery store for some fish and made fish burgers for dinner. Then spent the rest of the evening on the internet and watching the Olympics.

Bondi Beach

East Gippsland

May 17 – Wilsons Promontory

As we pulled out from the camp ground a kangaroo hopped across the road. Definitely need to keep an eye out for animals out here. We were headed to Wilson's Promontory National Park and had another beautiful day for it. As we entered the park there were all kinds of wildlife warning signs up and one advising you to get off the road if you stopped for wildlife. At one point there was an emu crossing sign which seemed pretty ridiculous to us until shortly afterwards there was an Emu on the side of the road. We stopped for a bunch of photos and then as we started off again we saw another one going off into the trees. Pretty Crazy! We stopped at a few scenic lookouts and enjoyed some breath taking views before stopping at Tidal River Campground. We got the low down on the walks in the area, unfortunately a bunch were closed due to severe flood damage last year. We picked out our campsite and ate some lunch. Then we headed off for a walk to Pillar Point. Along the way we had some awesome wildlife encounters. We had a kookaburra flying just ahead of us for a little bit and then there was a kangaroo chilling on the path. We got some photos of him before he meandered off the path. Up at the point we had some spectacular views of the coastline and the different islands just off shore. The sun wasn't right for photos in the one direction so they wont do justice to the view. We took a different route back to the camp called “Tidal Overlook” and got some more great views of the coast. This is about as south as you can get in mainland Australia. We really enjoyed sitting and soaking up the fantastic views on top of the point. When we got back down we attempted to sit outside but it was a little brisk. Beau made us tea while I bundled myself inside (I'm currently crocheting myself a toque). We found the battery was oddly low and it was quickly depleted even though we were only using out little lights inside. We made some tomato/garlic/bean soup for dinner and then started up the van to charge the battery up a bit. We are going to go into the store we purchased the battery from because it looks like we might have a dud. We did see a bunch of wombats wandering the park as well as some nasty possums.

Emu

Look out view

Tidal River

Kookaburra

Kangaroo in the path

No Justice

The view back towards the campground

May 18 – Reves Beach

It was pretty chilly last night but not unbearable once huddled under the blanket. It was warmer when we woke up this morning but it was also overcast too. It was very windy so we decided against hiking up a mountain. We made our way out of the park and saw some kangaroos hanging out on the side of the road. We stopped in the little town of Foster for groceries and gas. We also popped into the information center/library and used their free wifi. I hadn't really gone through my pictures or written up on the computer so I couldn't do much of a blog post. We continued on to our free campsite for the night called Reves Beach. It was a little bit bumpy to get down here and it's not the nicest of campsites but for the price it'll do. We took a nice little walk along the beach and then read in our chairs outside till it got too chilly for that. We have the ocean to lull us to sleep tonight.

May 19 – Paradise Beach

It was raining a bit when we first woke up but fortunately it subsided before we got up. The sun had come out and we enjoyed our breakfast outside in the sunshine. We headed out and onward to our next stop which was Paradise Beach. This beach is a part of 90 Mile Beach as was Reves Beach. It was a nice little campsite. Beau and I took a long leisurely walk on the beach but it was too cold to go barefoot. After we came back to the camp we set up the chairs and tried to enjoy the great outdoors. Beau played some guitar and I crocheted until our fingers got too cold. Sadly it was cloudy and there were surprisingly quite a few mosquitoes out, or mozzies as they call them here. I thought it would be too cold for the skitters but I was wrong. We ended up being driven inside.

 

May 20 – Sale

It was a clear sunny day when we awoke and we took full advantage it by setting up our chairs and table outside in the sunshine. We enjoyed our oatmeal and coffee and warmed ourselves in the sunshine. After breakfast we finished packing up and headed off again. As we got into the town of Sale we saw a market going on. It was mainly a flea market with people selling all kinds of stuff, tools, clothes, books, knick knacks, and also some vegetables. We bought a wack load of carrots and some red peppers for pretty cheap. We had a little walk around and then down along the river. This town was apparently very important back in the day as a main thorough fair for goods coming up from the ocean. After our little walk we bought a burger from a bbq stall at the market. The burgers were good with “salad” (coleslaw), egg, beets and onion but they were missing the cheese. We went to the information center and got loaded up with pamphlets for our future route. While in town we got some groceries as well as some odds and ends from the dollar store that we needed. Beau also picked up a guitar booklet so we can have a little more variety in his song playing. We filled up with petrol headed out of town. Our free camp spot for the night was a roadside rest stop. Not the nicest of places but there were bathrooms and I think any caravan park nearby would have been on the roadside too. I figure it's better to have free highway noise than pay for it.

May 21 – Dotti gets an Oil/Coolant Change

After a not too restful sleep we awoke to a little bit of frost on the windows! It was definitely brisk last night. Our stove just managed to last us for breakfast before the fuel conked out. We headed into the town of Bairnsdale where Dotti had an appointment with a mechanic. She needed her first oil change and a coolant flush. We went into the visitors center and got some info on the town and surrounding area. Across the road from the center was an Autobarn, the store where we had purchased the battery from. We went in to see what they could do for us and fortunately the guy knew what he was talking about and had a check of the battery and said it was a dud. They had to call our original store to find out what they could do for us since they didn't have the same battery in stock. We got lucky though and they straight up swapped it for a better battery they had in store. It probably costs about $50 more than the one we had originally purchased. Saweet! After our battery score we went into a camping store to check out stove options. Ingo and Monique had given us a small propane tank they had kicking around so we were trying to figure our whether we should stick with the small camping stove we have and buy canisters every two weeks for $12 a piece or get a new stove top and fill our propane tank. We found out some information from the camping store dude and decided to go with the propane tank set up although we weren't going to buy the stuff from the camp store since it was way more expensive, go Super Cheap Auto. We took the van to the mechanic then walked back to the library to use the internet. We stopped into K-Mart first and Beau bought a new cotton t-shirt. We are also on the look out for a new travel game since you can only play crib so much. At the library I got my blog a little up to date with some pictures and Beau did the same with his website. We then went to pick up the van and just under $200 later she's ready to keep going. We headed towards Lakes Entrance to a Caravan Park for the night and a hot shower. It's been much too long since we've been clean. While we made dinner we chatted with the Aussie couple who are the park managers as for four weeks ago. They were very nice a let us hook up to power without charging us for it! Beau and I both had stinking hot showers and loved every minute of it. Tonight is much warmer than last night which is a blessing.

The International Comedy Festival

April 1-5

The International Comedy festival was in town and we decided to take advantage of the free shows downtown. We headed DT on a Sunday Saver train ticket and caught the tail end of a French acrobatic/comical show. Afterwards there was a pair who did a random improv show with some very strange props. Beau got picked out of the crowd to join them on stage. He did some improv with news paper and got a sucker out of it. I was laughing so hard I was crying! A guy in the crowd had taken a video of it and sent it to Beau. Check it out here! (the video isn't amazing but you can get an idea of the shenanigans Beau was put through) After that show there was another one later with short performances from the two groups we saw as well as a Swedish Elvis impersonator and a hoola hooper. We were very entertained that day and enjoyed ourselves immensely.

The rest of the week was pretty uneventful although Beau did buy a guitar from Costco. It's not the greatest but he's excited to have a guitar to play.

Monique and Ingo headed off on their holiday to Tahiti this week. They have been lovely, gracious host but it is nice to have a little time on our own again. We do have Snow and Juneau to look after.

The French group - Five Foot Finger

Beau making his stage debut with Funny Bone

Getting his sucker reward

The hoola hoopest

She had all these hoola hoops going around here at once

The Swedish Elvis Impersonator

April 6 - 9 Happy Easter

The weather was really nice on Friday so we took the dogs down to Brighton Beach. Google took us down a fairly busy route so it took about an hour or so to get there, probably should have taken less. There were a bunch of dogs at the beach, Juneau and Snowy had a ball. We brought camp chairs with us so we were able to relax without getting bowled over by dogs. We enjoyed the beach for a couple of hours before heading home. It was nice to get out and enjoy the sunshine.

The rest of our Easter weekend was pretty uneventful. We mostly did some more work on the deck. We did hit up a farmers market while walking the dogs and picked them up some homemade treats at Monique's requests. Gotta say they love the homemade goodies. On Monday we made the mistake of going to Westfields Shopping center and it was packed. It was sooooo hard to find a parking spot and sooo frustrating. We picked up some coffee and cheap sweat pants from Big W, think Walmart. It's been disgustingly cold the past two days I think it was a high of 17. We had to turn the heat on.

Snowy and Juneau

Juneau drying off

Snowy and Me

Tues April 10 - Will Anderson, Wilarious

We spent the morning doing some much needed house cleaning. Man can those dogs shed. I made us crepes for lunch and then we had squash soup for dinner. Since the International Comedy Festival is going on we decided to get tickets to see one of the shows. While in Christchurch we had seen on TV a show called the Gruen Transfer and it was a comedic talk show about ads and marketing hosted by Will Anderson. We found him quite funny on the shower and since he had a show, Wilarious, with the Comedy Festival in Melbourne we decided to go see him. It was fun to get out and do something quite different, I have never been to a stand-up comedy act before. Will put on a really good show and we were really happy we decided to go.

April 11 – 16

I know I keep saying this but we are pretty boring. We've been continually working on the deck. We've been taking the dogs for walks and Beau's been practising the guitar. I decided I needed a creative outlet and I've taken up crocheting. I've been working on slippers with my first one not turning out quite right. Typical me, I wanted slippers so I make myself some. The internet is a gold mine of information, go YouTube! I did get a short day of work in on the 11^th. One of the agencies needed a body fast in a near by location so I got the call and had a 5hr day in a housing development sales center doing mostly nothing. But hey they paid me about $24/hr for it so I'm not complaining. On the Friday Monique's friend Sarah stopped by with her two dogs, Lucy the Great Dane and Layla the Boxer. She stops by fairly frequently to let the dogs all play together and wear them out. While there she offered us some tickets to a comedy show. She had won them but she and her husband couldn't attend. The comic was a Canadian named Mike Wilmot. We attend the show on Sunday evening and had a good laugh. He was funny and vulgar but it was all good natured. Beau was in stitches laughing.

Painting the rails

A work in progress

Removing a rotted post

Post Gone

New post!

 Now be prepared to be grossed out by the common house spider, a huntsman

He was about the size of my palm, YUCK

New Zealand comes to an end

Feb 29 – Piha

It rained quite heavily in the night and we had a heck of a time trying to dry the tent and fly out. It was pretty overcast but we did get a few glimpses of the sun. We finally got everything mostly dry so we could pack up. No one showed up to collect our camp fees so we had a free campsite last night. We headed into the little town of Piha to check out the beautiful beach there. It was spectacular even though the weather was not promising. We walked along the beach and saw a bunch of starfish, birds and surfers. We had some fun with tripod photos, Beau and I goofed around a bunch. We really enjoyed our beach walk and took a ton of photos. We decided that because of the weather we would head back to Auckland early and arrived at Elaine's around 12:30. We were very luck because both Elaine and Shane were home. We were also very lucky because their neighbours had recently moved out and we were able to park in their empty spot. Beau and I were starved so we went to a nearby food court and got some Indian food for lunch. Mine was a little bland but Beau's was pretty tasty. We then did some grocery shopping at the Asian food store, Countdown, and the Auckland fish market. We caught the free shuttle most of the way back to Elaine's. We did some laundry then I started on Tabouli salad to go with dinner. We made green curry muscles, they were amazing. I made up a green curry sauce then put the muscles in to steam. We also had focatia bread to dip in our curry sauce. I will definitely be making muscles like that again. We finished the evening with a movie called Tower Heist which was quite funny.

Piha Beach

Mar 1 – Goodbye Wingroad

Today we had to return our trusty Wingroad. We'll be sad to see him go, he was a good little car. So we dropped the car back at the rental company. They were a little surprised by the car being returned there since when we rented the car the computer systems were down and when the rental later got put into the system it was entered that we would be returning it to Christchurch. Of course our paperwork said otherwise and we returned it no problem. We got a ride back to Elaine's place and Beau popped out to pick up some avocado, tomato and chips for lunch. We did some laundry and got the tent, tarp and sleeping bags aired out. Later I went to go get a hair cut. I went to a hair academy down the road and got a $25 hair cut. The guy that cut my hair was not what I expect of a hair stylist graduate. He was middle aged, possibly middle eastern (his name might have been Housain), and barely said a word. He did an alright job but I just ended up with a blunt cut. One of the teachers asked me if I was going to be in the area for a little while because he was wondering if I could be a hair model. But obviously I'm leaving in two days so that wasn't going to happen. When I got back Elaine was home from school and I had almost forgotten we were supposed skype Mom and Dad soon. We all had a nice chat and I got to see and say hello to my monster Monty. I kind of miss the little bugger. Shane and Elaine made tacos for dinner and then we watched the first episode of Game of Thrones. Afterwards Beau and I skyped a couple in Melbourne, Monique and Ingo, who we might be house sitting for. They were very kind and offered to pick us up from the airport and said we could stay there until we started our HelpX placement.  We took the up on the offer.

Mar 2

This morning I skyped with Grandy for little bit. We had a lovely chat but the next time we talk she will be living in Kelowna. It's too bad we weren't able to visit her at her house in Wales but ca la vie! Beau and I got all our stuff packed up and ready to go for the morning. We have to catch a very early bus to the airport tomorrow so we want everything ready. Beau needed to exchange his snorkel since it was a little leaky and then Elaine came home from school. We were all going to go out together, Elaine and I had some shopping to do but then we realized we were going to be skyping cousin Kate soon. So Beau went and did his thing while Elaine and I got to have a great chat with Kate. We were meeting up with Shane for dinner and since Elaine and I didn't have a chance to go shopping earlier we decided to do a little before hand. Poor Beau got dragged along with us. We didn't do too much shopping, at least we didn't think so, but we were able to find me something for my birthday. We met Shane at an Indian restaurant and the food was super good. We split four different dishes with some naan and rice. Yum. We headed back to their house and watched another episode of Game of Thrones. We were up pretty late chatting and will probably only have about 3 or 4 hours of sleep tonight.

Camper Van Travels!

I know it feels like I've been neglecting my blog but the problem has been finding free internet. None of the campsites have it free! It sucks but we've found a nice pub in Queenstown for lunch with free Wifi. I'm a little disgusted that we could get free wifi all over Asia and here they care $5 for an hour. Pfft not paying that thank you very much! Ahh well who would have thought we'd be less connected in a Western country.

The camper van has been going pretty well. We've been a little cooped up lately because the weather has been brutal. It's been rainy and cold. I'm a little upset thats I've had pants and polar fleece on. There was even snow in the mountains one day! We are going on a massive three day hike tomorrow so cross your fingers we have good weather :S

 

Jan 4 – The Beach

Today, after a very leisurely start to the day, we hoped on the bus and headed to an area called Sumner to go to the beach. It was lovely and sunny out but unfortunately windy as well. There are some houses built on cliffs above the beach but you can see where the cliff has fallen away due to the earthquakes and actually taken part of a house with it. We also saw some of the concrete pads overhanging the cliff too. At the bottom of the these cliffs there were big shipping containers, I think to hold back any falling rock and debris. We walked along the beach, the sand was very hot but the wind kept things quite cool. The water was pretty cold too. People were sun bathing and swimming despite the wind. I think our blood has thinned because it did not seem warm enough to go swimming. We had a nice walk along the beach and on the promenade. There was a beach side restaurant and Beau's and my eyes almost fell out of our heads at the prices and they weren't necessarily out of line. We just are used to $1 beer and $2 meals. We had a coffee and a mixed appy plate. After digesting we saw a sign with some walking trails near by so we headed off in that direction but the trail was fenced off most likely due to earthquake damage. We headed back into town and stopped in at a store called The Warehouse, it's like Zellers. We did some recon on soft sided coolers and portable BBQs for when Mom and Dad come down. The rest of our evening progressed the same as most nights with dinner, walking the dogs and watching whatever movie is on TV, tonight was the Green Mile.

At the Sumner Beach

Jan 6 – Hiking in Christchurch

Beau has been bugging me to go hiking so we finally figured out how to get to the mountains. The day started off not so nice but once the afternoon rolled around the skis cleared. We took the bus down to the Halswell Quarry to start our hike. We hiked the Quarry and then turned east towards the mountains and the ocean. We hiked through some sheep farms and cow pastures while also hiking upwards. It was quite a ways but we finally made it to the coast. It was beautiful and windy. There were clouds forming as they came up over the mountains and us. It was really cool. We hiked along the mountains towards where we were catching the bus. We hiked for a total of 4.5hrs and had about 1.5hrs transit time. It was really enjoyable but we've been so lazy lately that I felt out of shape.

The view from the top of our hike over a bay

Jan 8 – Mom and Dad Arrive

Today Mom, Dad, Elaine and Shane arrive this afternoon. Beau and I spent the morning organizing ourselves. Cleaning and getting things organized to get packed up. Everyone arrived around 1pm and were starving. They hadn't had a chance to eat anything between their flight and picking up the RV. We went out for lunch at a pub around the corner from the house. We then went grocery shopping and

picked up some things for camping. The rest of the day consisted of getting the camper organized. Beau and I made dinner and we watched some of Die Hard 3.

Jan 9 – Drive to Abel Tasmin

After a hearty breakfast we finished cleaning and packing we were ready to go. We left the house around 10am, we had been aiming for 9. We headed north through Christchurch towards the north coast. It was a very pretty albeit windy drive. Two of the seats in the camper face backwards so are condusive to car sickness. I had no problems with all those windy bus rides in Asia but this one made me a little green around the gills. We stopped in Kaikoura for lunch and to check out a supposed seal colony there. There weren't too many seals but we saw a few and the view was super nice. We continued on our way with more twists and turns. We stopped in a town called Havelock and had some amazing steamed green lipped muscle from the Muscle Pot. It was really good. We ended up in Marahau. We arrived at our campsite and just had some salad for a late dinner. The campsite had a nice location near the beach but was very full.

A seal in Kaikoura

Family Photo

Jan 10 – Kayaking in Tasman Bay

Today we are going kayaking in Tasman Bay. We were up pretty early and had cereal for breakfast. We were supposed to be at the kayaking place for 8:30 but as usual we were running late. We had tried to contact the company the day before but for some reason the call wasn't going through. They had started the safety demonstration without us but fortunately we have all kayaked before although never with skirts. We had to demonstrate that we knew how to recover from a capsized kayak. We got through the safety course and were fortunately on schedule. We loaded the kayaks onto a trailer and hopped in a van to be taken the short distance to the beach. We got out in the kayaks and had a little more instructions from the guide and then we were on our way. We kayaked along the coast and then headed towards Stuart Island. We were hoping to see some seals, penguins or other marine lift. We didn't see much around this island but it was pretty none the less. We went around the island and north towards Adele Island. We pulled up on a little bit of sand and eat our sandwiches standing. It was high tide so there wasn't any beach to speak of. It was also quite windy. We got back on the water and went around the top of Adele Island. We saw some seals and seal pups! They were very cute but we still didn't see any penguins. We headed back towards the mainland and took a little break on a beach there. We then followed the coastline back towards our kayak pick up spot. The pick up point was tricky since the tide goes out very far so essentially the area is a big sandbar. We ran ground and had to pull the kayak in part of the way. We kayaked for about 5hrs and were very sore in the shoulders by the end of it. We got the kayaks back and got showered and warm. Then we tackled the task of trying to cook dinner on our little BBQ. The charcoal briquettes were slow to get going and never really got going well. Dinner cooked up okay with the help of the microwave. Beau made marshmallows over the tail end of the coals. We enjoyed some nice coffee and Baileys before bed.

Elaine and Shane in their Kayak

Mom and Dad in their Kayak

Kayaking in Tasman Bay

Jan 11 – Drive to Greymouth and wine tasting

It looked like it would be a lovely day when we woke up this morning. We had breakfast then left the camp ground. We stopped to buy a few groceries and got some directions for wine tasting. We went to three very nice wineries. The first was Neudorf Vineyards which was a very nice old looking wooden building. They had some lovely grounds and tasty wines. Our next stop was Kahurangi Estate, they had a lovely Merlot which is actually made from grapes from the North Island. Apparently merlot grapes don't grow well down here. Our last winery Woollaston Estates, it was a very snazzy winery. There was a little art gallery and some interesting sculptures outside. They too had some very nice wines and we splurged and bought a more expensive Pinot Noir. We finished with wine tasting and headed towards Greymouth. It was a relatively uninteresting drive. The scenery was nice enough and fortunately it was too twisty turny. We arrived in Greymouth and found a motor park to stay at. Beau and I made skewers for dinner and mashed potatoes. Our motor park was right by the beach so we had a little walk along there before jumping in the hot tub. It was nice on our sore kayaking muscles. It had started to rain when we went to bed. Some very loud thunder woke us up in the middle of the night too.

Jan 12 – Franz Josef Glacier

The rain didn't stop from last night, it was pouring when we woke up. We had breakfast then packed up again to hit the road. We had to do a big grocery shop again, 6 people go through food very quickly. After groceries we were headed towards the Franz Josef Glacier. We arrived at the glacier and had some lunch in the RV. Then we set off to do the glacier walk. It was pretty nice out at this time, but we made sure to pack sweaters and rain coats. As we walked towards the glacier, the view was quite nice but there were some clouds closing in on the top. Pretty soon the glacier was obscured and it was pouring rain. We got soaked. Mom headed back to the RV but the rest of us ducked under the rope and continued closer to the glacier for a better view, we were also hopeful the rain would let up. It did stop a bit and we were able to get some good pictures although the clouds never fully lifted from the top of the glacier. We headed back to the RV and were almost dried out when it started to pour again. We were only 5 minutes from the RV but we were absolutely drenched. Once back in the RV we got into some drier clothes and struggled to find space to hang all of our wet things up. We headed into the Franz Josef Village and checked into a motor camp. It was Elaine and Shane's turn to cook and Beau and mine to do dishes. After dinner and dishes we went out to a pub for a little bit to us the internet. The internet was free but the drinks were kind of expensive. It had stopped raining for a little while but it started up again when we went to bed.

The Franz Josef Glacier

Elaine!

The top of the glacier