DJ-RTW's Travel Blog

Back to the Big City - Wellington, New Zealand

 This place was Average visited Mar 8, 2008

The City of Wellington is really nicely situated between mountains and a quiet ocean bay – a lot like Vancouver – so you can see what attracts people to live here. In some ways, it reminded us a lot of Canadian cities with landscaped parks, well-preserved historical buildings and street names we are familiar with such as Victoria, Waterloo, Elizabeth, etc. Even though we were in the city for only a couple of days, we ended up spending a good part of it driving in the countryside and along the undeveloped oceanfront east of the city. We camped outside of the city as well – near the town of Waterloo – so it was easy to make it out without hitting traffic. Other than the interesting Art Deco architecture, the Maori Museum was the best thing about this city. It’s large displays permitted entire homes to be included as well as war canoes and a multitude of whakairo or wood carvings.

posted Mar 31, 2008 | Comments (0)

Crossing from South to North Islands - Picton, New Zealand

 This place was Average visited Mar 7, 2008

Blenheim (pop. 26,500) was just a one-night stop in an area known for its wines. We did enjoy seeing many, many vineyards and beautiful winery buildings reminiscent of California’s Napa Valley. On the way out of Blenheim to take the ferry to the North Island, we travelled the 36 kilometer Queen Charlotte Drive which provided some gorgeous views of the Marlborough Sounds with its many bays, islands and coves.

posted Mar 31, 2008 | Comments (0)

Ocean, mountains & birds all over the place - Kaikoura, New Zealand

 This place was Great visited Mar 6, 2008

The country drive from inland Hamner Springs to the coastal town of Kaikoura featured mostly farmland set amongst rolling hills with mountains in the background. We confirmed that New Zealand does have a lot of sheep. But it also has many cows, chickens, horses and other domesticated animals you would expect. But, boy, does it have a lot of sheep! This ocean-side beach town provided a beautiful setting where we spotted fur seals basking on rocks, dolphins swimming in the bay, and many sea birds including red-billed seagulls. There were also interesting rock formations carved by nature some millions of years ago that looked like a giant grader had passed by (see photo). We didn’t see whales, unfortunately, as was the wrong time of the year.

posted Mar 31, 2008 | Comments (0)

First luggage incident in one year! - Christchurch, New Zealand

 This place was Average visited Mar 3, 2008

Well, this part of the world trip didn’t start out so well. We travelled from Bali, Indonesia to Sidney, Australia and then onto Christchurch, New Zealand. My bag, unfortunately, stopped somewhere along the route or maybe didn’t start the journey at all: no one at Jet Star Airlines (Quantas’s discount airline) could tell me what had happened. This meant that I had to buy clothing, a new sleeping bag, see a doctor at a local clinic ($150), get new prescriptions ($120) and worry that I would never again see just about all of the stuff I own in the world!!! When the airline finally figured out that they had not lost my luggage – just misplaced it in Christchurch (our arrival city) – they tried to deliver it to the campground we had vacated some four days earlier just as we told them we would. The brain thrust behind the airline finally figured out a way to get my bag to me in Wellington (on the north Island) seven days later. Christchurch is a cute little city – very neat and clean with seemingly very little going on. It was a bit cold for us (so I bought a new jacket, long-sleeved T-shirts and warm pyjamas) and that limited a little what we felt like doing. I think we were going through a reverse culture shock after two years of travelling in mostly non-western countries. We could read and understand all of the signs here. The stores were organized as we are used to back home. The only weird thing was driving on the WRONG side of the road. But we soon got used to driving on the left side and it has become the RIGHT side of the road for us now. We spent most of our two days here shopping for my stuff and for camping equipment and getting used to the high cost of everything! A meal at Pizza Hut for $30!!!! that could feed you for a day or more in most countries in which we have travelled. We also discovered, in the grocery stores, that this may be the capital of weird canned food: Mexican beans, corned mutton (!), corned lamb (what’s the difference?), and – not at all weird but from a long distance – pink salmon all the way from Canada! We did manage some fun in Christchurch at the International Antarctic Center. Now, you might be wondering, why would they go to what is essentially an aquarium/museum about Antarctica when they were actually at the real place!?! Well, they have Little Blue penguins there and this is the only place to see them unless you go way south on South Island which we weren’t. These were the first penguins we had seen since almost a year ago when we saw some on the southern cape of South Africa (south of Cape Town). The whole experience was a lot of fun especially watching the feeding of the dozen or so Little Blues. The penguins have all been injured in nature or by man and were taken in to ensure their survival as none could have lived much longer if left alone. Most were little chicks when they were brought in so they’ve known no other habitat for most of their lives. They were a lot of fun to watch swimming and interacting with each other. Other fun stuff included stepping on a platform that allowed you to be on both poles at the same time (okay, a little lame); and I discovered that there is a “Storm Emergency Stop” which I would like to import to Northern Canada where they could really make good use of such a thing (it was to stop an artificial storm that got as cold as minus eight degrees Celsius. Give me a break! That ain’t cold!).

posted Mar 31, 2008 | Comments (0)

Beautiful Bali - Kuta, Indonesia

 This place was Great visited Feb 29, 2008

There is only one reason to go to Bali and that is to relax…something we have learned to do really well on this trip. The strip of tourist resorts and towns in South Bali offers from the most luxurious (read expensive) to the most basic (still expensive but less so). We stayed at a nice little resort outside the main tourist towns in Tuban to enjoy the lush garden and perfect swimming pool. We walked into town in the afternoons – not a good idea as it is at the hottest time of the day – and sometimes walked to the beach. We found most of the area to be far too touristy with touts selling everything from massages, to Bali ‘battiks’ to taxi rides.

posted Mar 31, 2008 | Comments (0)