Kepler, kayaks and Keas

My first week in New Zealand’s South Island I spent in Te Anau, a cute little lakeside town where the backpackers is right on the water and just down the road is The Moose, a bar with good beer and a big TV to catch some of the tennis. 

The lake is beautiful with a clear view of the mountains on the far side and the weather has still been fantastic, super sunny and warm - perfect for a swim.  The water is cold and clear, but when you swim out it gets very deep very quickly.  Apparently in some places the water is over 300 metres deep.  When you look down the water is so clear you can see the sparkles on your toe-nail polish and below you nothing but darkness, it’s almost as if swimming through space.

Lake Te Anau

About an hour away from Te Anau is Milford Sound, one of the must see spots in the South Island and I decided to see it by kayak.  The tour was good, we had a small group and the tour guide, Ollie, was a good mix of facts and a bit of bullshit and banter.

We jumped in the double kayaks and because I was on my own I ended up in a kayak with Ollie.  I strapped the waterproof bag with my camera under the elastic straps at the front of the kayak along with my drink bottle.  About five minutes after we’d paddled out into the middle of the lake I decided to get my camera out of the bag and plop! - there goes my drink bottle, slowing floating down into the dark and eerie depths below.

Kayaking the sound is fantastic way to see it. It really gives you a good sense of how big the sound is and it’s peaceful just padding around in a small group, being able to ask questions and chat with the guide as opposed to the boats where there’s just the guide talking over a microphone.  One funny thing about the sound is how distorted distances get.  At one stage we could see a waterfall in the distance and we all agreed it was about 1-2 kilometres away – apparently it was 8!  

Mirror Lake - on the way to Milford Sound.

Kayaking Milford Sound

Kayaking Milford Sound

One of the major tourist drawcards in this part of New Zealand is the Great Walks.  A series of long hikes through the national parks.  The two most popular are Milford and Routeburn tracks, but they were booked out so I signed up to do the Kepler track, a 60 kilometre, three night, four day hike suitable for people with moderate fitness.

It all seemed like a great idea until the day of the hike and I looked at the outline for the next four days and suddenly thought, oh god is my fitness moderate?!  Luxmore summit is looking like an awfully big hill!

The first two days were warm and sunny, walking through mostly flat rainforest of tall mossy beeches and shrubby ferns, often running along a rocky river which rushed past, deep and a bright aqua blue.

The hut on the first night was in an amazing location, right on the lake with a lovely little beach where I went for a swim and a wander before sitting out in my pj’s with a cup of tea and watching the sunset.

Because the Kepler track was almost booked out as well I ended up doing the track backwards which meant that although I was in huts full of people each night there were only actually four others travelling the same direction as me.  These were four guys (who were all travelling on their own too) who would begin their daily hike an hour after me and finish two hours before me.  I wasn’t sure whether it was because they were fast or I was slow but it could have been a little of both.  They were headphones in and off they went whereas I was tramping along, having nice long stops for lunch when I found somewhere pretty, stopping to look at a mushroom, look at fern, watch a bird, listen to the wind, listen to the river or the rain and occasionally take a photo.

If fungus and moss are your thing, you'll love NZ

On the third day I finally got some of the New Zealand weather I was expecting.  Misty and rainy with low lying cloud, the rainforest is so much prettier when everything is wet.   There were three hours of switchbacks, up, up, up through the rainforest before coming out into alpine shrubs, a thousand stairs and mist so thick you couldn’t see a hundred metres away.  And it was quiet, not a sound to be heard.

On the last day I woke to find the mist had cleared on the top of the mountain, so it was bright and sunny with a view of the mountain peaks and an ocean of cloud below.  And lots of noise - insects, birds and bees everywhere.  At the hut there was a pair of friendly Kea's, big alpine parrots, one who tried to bite my finger through the window.

There were a few birds around but I didn't see any Kiwi or Takahe

On the Kepler track

Sunset from Motorau Hut

In my pj's having a cup of tea and watching the sun go down

Iris Burn Hut

On Kepler track

Luxmore Summit

High above the clouds

Pretty spider web

So some of you may have seen the facebook pic of where I rubbed all the skin off my heels.  I actually did this on the first day (my own stupid fault for leaving my wet boots squashed into my bag for a week) but I really enjoyed the walking and was not sore or stiff at all as I was expecting - so it’s confirmed, I totally nailed moderate.

Now off to Queenstown tomorrow to meet mummy dearest at the airport :)

Vino revolution!

So a few of you are going to read this and think ‘Oh god, she’s off again for how long?’, but no just a short jaunt over the ditch for a wedding - a little holiday while I plan the next big trip ;)

I was invited to a wedding in Auckland and as I hadn’t been to NZ before managed to wrangle a few weeks off to have a look around.

The wedding was great, the brides Katy and Anna had a fantastic day and a bunch of us stayed in a big house together which was fun.

As most people had flown over for the wedding the big day started a mystery tour around the city, with stops including the waterfront area where all the bars and restaurants are, this amazing ice-cream store and the last stop being the wedding venue.

Katy and Anna's wedding.  Photos courtesy of my pilfering from Pete and Kristy.

The wedding was pretty unique, all starting a cocktail on arrival after the mystery walk.  There was a cool revamp of old traditions such as tying the knot and jumping over the broom and some great speeches – if anyone ever needs advice on speechwriting talk to Jenni, somehow she started with calling her sister ‘Stinkface’ and ended with half the people at my table searching for their tissues.

So it was a great day and a great excuse for a trip, but as mentioned in some of the speeches it’s just a pity that this destination wedding was by necessity, not by choice.

So now I’m just going to have a little rant about Australia’s current marriage laws.

I cannot understand how two consenting adults in a loving, committed relationship can be told that their relationship is not recognised and in effect is not as important or equal to other relationships.  It’s embarrassing.

It’s embarrassing living in a country being governed by a party that pro-actively works against equality.   

This is not Animal Farm where some people are more equal than others.

Equality means treating everyone the same, not picking and choosing.  It means giving everyone the same opportunities and rights.  That includes equal rights to healthcare, education and to marry without prejudice (all things the man in the budgie-smugglers seems keen on fighting against).

Anyway, rant done – now back to the holiday.

So the holiday actually started with a free boot clean for my hiking boots from the immigration guy at the airport, followed by Emily and I getting dropped off at our hotel only for reception to tell us they had no booking.

‘Are you staying at this Waldorf?’ said the reception dude.

‘Uhh, is there another one?’ said Em.

‘There are five,’ said the reception dude.

‘Ohh.  Can you name them?’ said Em.

Luckily the one that sounded kinda vaguely familiar was only a two minute walk away and turned out to be the right one!

Oh by the way, a few people flying in were getting a surprise to the tune of $90 when they taxied from the airport to the city – for future reference just google super shuttle and they will drop you anywhere for $36.

We found Auckland not be at all what we were expecting – I was imagining a big country town thinking it’s a city and crappy weather.  However what found seemed a bit like a little Sydney – a proper little city, hilly but still nice to walk around and the weather was great.  Sunny beachy days and warm nights, except once when it rained and we walked an hour in the rain back to our house – that was still nice though.

One day we all caught the ferry to Waiheke Island.  It was fantastic and again not what I was expecting from New Zealand – it was like being in Port Douglas or some other beach resort town. 

From the ferry we followed a little bush trail to the town where we had a really scrummy lunch – I had these delicious cauliflower fritters with haloumi.  Then the water looked so inviting, vibrant greens and blues and crystal clear and the sun was so warm, that we just had to go to the beach (and yes, we totally waited 30 minutes before swimming).  And there we met the Beach Ambassador, a friendly old fellow whose job it is to wander about chatting to tourists, making sure everyone is having a good time and remembering their sunscreen.

After that we headed out to a couple of the wineries and partook in a little tasting and did some more snacking.  The wineries in Waiheke are lovely, and the wine is good too!

Waiheke Island

The Melbourne crew in Waiheke

Soaking up the sunshine and wine

After everyone else had flown home I had a day or so left so I went hunting for hobbits.

Matamata is about three hours from Auckland, the land is flat and there are lots of veggie and dairy farms and it’s almost like you’re driving around out the back of Boisdale or Newry.  But then you turn off the main drag and flat land turns into steep hills dotted with sheep and trees and suddenly you’re in hobbit-land. 

The movie sets look amazing!  All these little hobbit holes built into a hill, with English gardens and vegie patches.  And the Green Dragon Inn is in good working order with a free beer or cider on arrival.

But the tours are so over-crowded, half the time you can’t hear what the guide is saying and the rest of the time she was trying hurry everyone up, rushing us through because there was another tour ten feet behind us.  And the tour behind us was full of school children – which was bullshit.  If you’re going to have small people on the tours they should at least be dressed like hobbits!  Anyway, the rushing was a pity but I found a couple of nice single serving friends to hang out with for the tour and have a spot of lunch with before heading back to Auckland.

Next stop South Island!

All over red rover

Wow, that was like the fastest 3 months ever!  I’ve already been back at work a week. 

 

So here’s my final post on my last few weeks in Sri Lanka and I just like to start with saying a big, giant, fantastic thanks to Sandy and Samadhi, my friends from work who looked after me and showed me around Sri Lanka.  I’ve seriously been the laziest tourist ever and just let them organise everything!

 

They introduced me to their friends and family too, who were all lovely.  There was Juggie who was never far from a bottle of Sri Lankan red rum, ‘Lighning Harry’ who has a fantastic story on getting expelled from boarding school and Nilu who makes the best chocolate mousse I have ever tasted –  it was amazingly yummy.

Another very special person in Sri Lanka is Mahinda Rajapaksa.  He’s the Sri Lankan President and Samadhi loves him.  He’s less popular than Abbott and he tries to remedy this with lots of pictures of himself being smiley and walking.  And these pictures are everywhere!  Seriously, like huge billboards every 500 metres. 

 

As I mentioned in an earlier post Sandy likes the resort life, so we did a bit more of that with a road trip to the east coast.  Except for some of the rough roads almost getting me to the vomity stage it was great.  There were beautiful beaches with water so flat it was like being in a big pool and we played volleyball, rode jet skis and bribed police. 

Yep, bribed police.  Somehow we managed to get pulled over for speeding 3 times in 3 days with 3 different drivers.  But the done thing in Sri Lanka is to hop out of the car, have a chat to the copper, slip him a tenner and off you go.

As well as mad driving and paying cops another favourite Sri Lankan past time is talking about the weather.  We talk about the weather in Melbourne and Dad can talk about the weather til the cows come home, but he’s a farmer and in Victoria THE WEATHERS CHANGES!  In Sri Lanka it’s the same every day, yet still everyone wants to mention that it’s hot like it’s a new thing.

Robina and I teased Sandy and Samadhi when they complained about the heat because we thought they should be used to it – but apparently no one gets used to it – ever.  Their friends would say it’s hot, as would the radio dj’s, tuk-tuk drivers and hotel staff.  I figured it must be the go-to conversation so when I came into the hotel one day said to the hotel dude, ‘Gee, it’s a bit warm out there.’  He stared at me blankly. ‘It’s hot,’ I said.  The blank look disappeared and he started nodding, then smiled and started picking on me about my red face!  But that’s the thing with the Sri Lankan weather conversation, you can’t say it’s warm.  It’s hot.  It’s either hot, or was hot or will be hot, any other descriptive efforts are just wasted.

One of the places we went to on our road trip was Sigiriya, The Lion Rock.  It’s an ancient city built around, into and on top of a big rock.  You walk through the old ruins of what was a castle, past moats that they used to put crocodiles and pools where the king would watch ‘his ladies’ swimming.  And in the middle is the big rock and a big climb up to the top.  However, we only had two intrepid explorers on our trip, so it was just Sandy and I who made the hike up to the top.  But it was well worth the sweaty, humid climb.  The mountain that the castle is built into is the highest in the region so there are 360 degree views and on the way up there are wall paintings that are thousands of years old.  Amazing.

 

Another great place we went to was Polonnaruva, a medieval city.  More ruins, big ones with temples and lots of budda statues, all very cool.

 

When we got back to Colombo the city was busy preparing for the Vesak festival.  The main festival was starting the evening after I left (poo), but a lot of the lanterns were up and lit up the city better than Christmas.  There's lanterns, glowing flowers and fairy lights, the river was lit up and boats floated upon the river also covered in lanterns in a rainbow of colours.  All along the streets were stalls where people were building huge lantern sculptures with a myriad of coloured lanterns and moving parts like carousels.   

Also as part of the festival people set up street stalls and make and give away food and drink to people for free!  

:( Pity I was on my way back to Melbourne when it was all happening,  but ah well, now to plan the next one I guess ;)  

 

Welcome to Paradise

I was at the airport with Robina.  We were queuing for our flight and talking about going back to work, returning to Melbourne in winter, how great Sri Lanka has been and thoroughly depressing ourselves when suddenly we were like ‘Hang on, why are we getting upset?  We’re not going home yet!’  We were actually on our way to the Maldives a place often referred to as Heaven on Earth.

In Male (ma-lee), the Maldivian capital, we met Robina’s friend Tegan at the airport and early the next morning the three of us boarded a seaplane to take us to our resort island.

Oh by the way, it’s Maldives like for ‘forgives’, not Maldives like ‘skydives’.

The flight was amazing.  Crystal clear waters in vibrant blues and greens washing over shallow reefs and dotted with small tropical islands.  From the plane I could actually see dolphins swimming and jumping out of the water! 

Arriving at our island we were greeted by welcome drums and a man saying ‘Welcome to Paradise’.  We were taken to our room where we discovered we had been upgraded from the garden villas to a beach villa.  The water was literally 10 feet from our doorstep and upon closer inspection I discovered that swimming up and down in the warm, shallow waters were baby reef sharks and stingrays.  We called our little reef shark Bruce Jr after the shark in Finding Nemo.  Our little Brucy was so cute, about 20cm long with a black tip on his little fin and he’d swim up and down past us all day. 

So we spent four days swimming and snorkelling, I went diving, we tried kayaking and spent a lot of time and effort on the all you can eat buffets for every meal.  We had the same couple of waiters every day and they were just lovely.  Each day we would have lunch and hang out chatting, having a tequila sunrise or two and the waiters would laugh at us as we left telling us that we’d been there so long it was already dinner time.

So at the end of our four days I left Robina and Tegan on the island (they were flying out that evening) and returned to the airport for my flight back to Colombo.  However, the one hour flight back took a little longer than expected.  After sitting on the tarmac for an hour and half while the pilot told us there were technical difficulties they were checking the pilot finally decided to do that old IT trick and turn it off and on again.  So we sat in the dark for 15 minutes before we were finally told to get back off the plane.

This was just the start of a 12 hour wait before I finally got a flight home.  Yep, that's no typo - 12 hours!  And that was hours and hours of not being told anything by the airline and just being made to sit in the tiniest airport in the world that doesn't even have any wifi.  Poor Sandy and Samadhi turned up at the airport in Colombo to pick me up and I wasn't there!  And you should have seen the look on Robina's face when they turned up for their 10pm flight and I was still there!  They had also been delayed, however it was their seaplane that got delayed and the poor things got stuck on the island for an extra 3 hours!

Hey there Lucky Eyes

This trip has not only been fun, but educational.  This week Robina learnt that rubber comes from trees and I learnt that I don’t like pedicures.  I think I prefer going to the dentist, but my blue toenails do look pretty fantastic.

As well as manis & pedis, Robina, Samadhi & I went for massages.  I don’t really like massages but occasionally will let myself get talked into going because everyone craps on about how great they are.  So this time I got a full body powder massage and a head massage.  The powder massage was like a scrub so rough not tickly which was good.  The head massage was actually ok until the stupid woman stuck her fingers in my ears!  It was like getting a wet willy, eww. 

Driving in Sri Lanka is a pretty hairy experience.  People don’t believe in using lanes or blinkers – just horns.  Motorbikes and tuk-tuks (3-wheeled enclosed motorbikes) are everywhere and the bus drivers may just be insane.  100k will take you about2 ½ hours.    

Sandy is a good driver but still as crazy as the rest of them.  Robina gave me a motion sickness tablet which knocked me out but I woke up at one stage to Robina and Samadhi screaming as a bus came flying round the corner towards us on the wrong side of the road!

 

So the crazy roads led us out to the Pinnawala Elephant Orphanage.  There were heaps of elephants there, we got to feed one fruit and feed bottles to the babies – it’s kinda like feeding a really big poddy calf and they drink a 2 litre bottle in literally 5 seconds!

 

 

Then they walk all the elephants down to the river where they hang out for the morning, playing in the water, some getting a scrub with a broom and couple of young elephants getting a bit antsy.  Ah teenage love, it was all very awkward and the poor fella couldn’t quite get it together.

 

So there I am getting some photos and quietly singing 'Nellie the elephant' to myself when Samadhi comes up and says she need some money because she accidentally had her palm read by a fortune teller and now has to tip the guy.  So the dude takes the money then turns to Robina and starts telling her how she loves music and dance and Fridays.  Apparently she also has a good child bearing spot or line on her hand.  He told me that I have lucky eyes and should be in the society of famous people or something like that.  Well Mr Fortune-teller we’ll see.