Dunedin to Queenstown

You will have to excuse our lack of blogging ... the last several days have been quite full of adventure, excitement, and driving. Also I forgot to pack an Ethernet cable and the B&B at which we were staying at Te Anau only has wired internet access.

On Friday, we did the Otago peninsula, just to the East of Dunedin. The driving was moderately terrifying, as the Kiwis apparently do not believe in guard rails. Our first stop was Larnach Castle. We were as surprised as you to learn that there is a castle in New Zealand.

The castle and its ground were gorgeous, but the sordid tale of the Larnach family was like a train wreck: you really want to look away, but have to keep finding out more. To sum up: Larnach had five children by his first wife. His first wife died suddenly, so Larnach married her sister with some sort of fancy prenuptial agreement to protect him from his creditors. His second wife died in surgery and there was some shenanigans with him forcing his children to sign an agreement without knowing what it contained to get all of his holdings back. He married a third wife: a sweet, young thing about 30 years his junior. Everything was super until one of his sons started having an affair with her. That ended with Larnach shooting himself in the Parliament building (he was a politician) and later the son killing himself as well. Soap opera writers could not make that sort if thing up.

After a perilous drive back down the mountain, we continued up the coast towards the wharf from which we were to depart for our albatross and seal viewing cruise. The cruise was pretty cool: we happened upon a port bound fishing boat which was trailed by a couple hundred sea birds, amongst which were Royal Northern, Royal Southern, and two other species of albatross. The guy driving the ship said that this was a very rare occurrence, as albatrosses do not normally follow shipping vessels that close to shore. In addition to the albatrosses, we also saw myriad other species of sea bird and New Zealand Fur Seals.



To cap off the afternoon, we went further up the coast to the Royal Albatross Centre, where we got to see four of the twenty-three chicks currently nesting on the Otago peninsula. A Royal Albatross chick will, at its heaviest, weigh in at 12-14 kilograms! That is 26-31 pounds for those of you, like me, who can't convert metric to American units in your head.

The drive back to Dunedin was not quite as nerve wracking as the drive out, as the west-bound lane was against the cliff face, instead of on the water side (with no guard rail and a shoulder whose width is best measured in millimeters), but it was still arduous. We had dinner at a hip little place called Craft, where I had lamb shank and Jen had a bowl of kumara pumpkin soup as big as her head (kumara is what they call a sweet potato here). We were greeted by a lovely little NZ$10 parking ticket when we got back to the car.

On Saturday, we had to drive up to Te Anau. Since it was not that far of a drive and we had all day, we decided to take the scenic southern route, rather than the more direct (and apparently not as scenic) route. Things were fairly slow going, due to all of the sharp, steep turns that driving through the mountains entails.

And then we saw the sign: Cannibal Bay, 400 m Turn Left. Jen and I experienced one of those moments of near-telepathic nonverbal communication that can only exist between two people who have been married as long as we have been (5 days, at that point), and we immediately turned off and drove 14 km over an unsealed (unpaved to you Yanks) road to a little beach with all sorts of cool rocks, cliffs, sea lions, and tourists attempting to be eaten by the sea lions. I'll let the pictures speak for them selves:





After scampering over rocks and around sea lions for longer than we should have we headed back to the car and realized that we might or might not be able to make it to Te Anau for the glow worm cruise that was scheduled for that evening. Contributing to the delay was the dinner we had in Invercargill at a place called Hell, which serves gourmet pizzas and had old Tom and Jerry cartoons playing on the plasma a screen. We managed to make it with minutes to spare, but only by leaving local speed ordinances crying and bleeding in the corner. Despite the name, the glow worm cruise was really cool. We took a boat across Lake Te Anau to the cave entrance, where they have built a wee lodge with refreshments and such for people taking the glow worm tour.

In the lodge at the entrance to the cave, they showed us a couple of time-lapse, infrared videos of glow worms in action. One of them was of a territorial fight between two glow worms that started with one glow worm knocking the other off the ceiling of the cave and ended with the knocked off glow worm getting eaten by the other one after a valiant, but ultimately futile counter attack. Several of the senior citizens who made up the rest of the tour group where quite shocked to see the brutality of the life of a glow worm.

Once the videos were done, we walked a couple hundred meters into the cave. There, we hopped onto a small, 10 person boat, the guide turned off all of the lights and we went deeper into the cave on the water to view the glow worms. Now, when I say "we went deeper into the cave on the water", what I mean is that in the pitch black darkness (the glow worms did not emit enough light to actually see anything) the guide stood at the bow of the boat and pulled us through the cave along chains that had been set into the cave wall. Alas, we could not take pictures of the glow worms, so you'll just have to take our word for it that they were cool.

The whole thing took about 2.5 hours and, once again, had us checking into our B&B after 10:30. This place was decorated in a fashion that I can only describe as ultramodern. Jen and I both felt like we were not cool enough to stay there. But, we had already booked it and they didn't have any other guests, so we stayed.



On Sunday, we had a free day in Te Anau. Having slept past all of the interesting cruises and tours departing from places near Te Anau, we decided to drive up to Milford Sound and do some short hikes and see a fiord. That is not a typo, apparently only the Scandinavians spell it fjord. We did six little side hikes, each 20-40 minutes in length: Lake Mistletoe, Walker Creek, Lake Gunn, Lake Marian Falls, and The Chasm. All of these were incredible in their own way. The best, however, were The Chasm (where a river has carved the rock into huge, intricate, swirling shapes that go down about 15 meters) and Lake Gunn (which was a walk through a beech tree forest that predated European knowledge of the Americas).



After the last side hike, we hoofed it up to Milford, where we hoped to catch a quick dinner and then try to head back to Te Anau before the sun went down. We missed the cafe closing by mere minutes and the bar did not start serving food for another half hour, so Jen had great fun taking pictures of the fiord until the batteries in the camera died. For dinner, Jen had a steak sandwich that was served with an enormous pile of beer-battered fries and I had pork sirloin garnished with fried apple and a beer-honey sauce that I am going to try to make once I get access to a kitchen again (I even went and asked the chef how it was made).



The drive back was uneventful once we got out of the clouds, except that the traffic signal at the kilometer long tunnel turns off at 6, so we had an interesting time navigating around oncoming traffic in the 1.5 lane tunnel. We also pulled off the road and killed the car to look at the stars in the clear, moonless sky without any light pollution.

That sums it up for the last couple of days. We are in Queenstown now, getting ready to head out for the evening. I'll tell you about our adventures this morning with a bloke named Fraser and Jen's first experience with left-side driving tomorrow.

Penguins and Cheese

Today we traveled on highway 1 about 5ish hours from Christchurch to Dunedin with a significant stop in Oamaru.

Scott was doing extremely well driving until today (as predicted by the customs agent, the 3rd day), and we had our first (hopefully only) accident. Now don't worry! The very minor accident involved Scott hitting a curb. The hubcap is really beat up and the tire appears to have a gash in it, but we took it to a tire place and they assured us that it was perfectly fine to drive on, so on we go.

In a town called St. Andrews we felt the Pacific Ocean of the NZ coast for the first time.

We made it to Oamaru by 12noon for our special behind the scenes tour of the Oamaru Little Blue Penguin Colony, which actually turned out to be not all that special because all of the nesting boxes that we got to have a sneak peek into were all empty today. The tour lady was very nice though and it was just the three of us for the tour, so we got extra attention...OK all the attention. She also allowed our half-hour tour to stretch into an hour of Q and A. Next we were told that the actual penguin viewing that we were entitled to wasn't until 6pm, bummer. Fortunately, there was a local cheese factory, Whitestone, that had a cafe and a viewing area and another Penguin colony that we could visit to pass the time.

At the Whitestone Cafe we of course got the cheese sampling and had some really awesome cheeses, including a Windsor Blue cheese that has won all kinds of awards. We also got to go into a viewing area that looks into the factory where people were making the cheese. It was cool and the workers even hammed it up a bit for us by pretending to eat the cheese, etc.

Next we went to the Yellow-Eyed Penguin Colony. This was little more than a cliffside path with a "hide" overlooking a stretch of shoreline about 1/2 mile long. The YEP is endangered and really shy, so they try to have a lot less human contact with this species. We sat, stood, waited, and watched from about 3pm until 5:20pm and after several people had left in frustration, we were rewarded for our patience when 2 YEP's swam ashore for our viewing pleasure. Since there are only about 450 breeding pairs in this part of NZ and it is the off (molting) season for them, we were really lucky to have seen them.

Then it was back to the LBP Colony to see the 6pm viewing which had us sitting in bleachers and watching as the penguins came up a ramp from the sea and charged across an open area of gravel, and through a wire fence into the protected colony area with their nesting boxes. They are very cheeky little penguins, and were absolutely hilarious and fascinating to watch. Unfortunately, we weren't allowed to take any pictures. :( We left around 8pm after 46 penguins had come out of the sea to nest for the night.

We then took off for Dunedin and stopped in Moeraki for dinner. We first went to THE TAVERN, but they were no longer serving food, so we were directed to THE RESTAURANT (Fleur's Place). If you couldn't tell, Moeraki is kind of a tiny fishing village. Anyway, the restaurant turned out to be a very excellent, gourmet fish restaurant (go figure) dripping with character. I had some flat fish that starts with a T, and Scott had Grouper. Both were incredible.
It is very dark in this part of NZ at night, but we finally made it to the lights of Dunedin and our B&B, The Claremont House, around 10:30pm. We are in the yellow room. It is cool.

I will post some pictures from today tomorrow, but for now I am dead tired and off to beddy bye. Scott's already asleep. ;)

Post Nuptials

Hey, everyone, it is me, Jen, so expect future entries to be less witty. They will also be shorter and less frequent since tomorrow a.m. we leave the conveniences of the city and may not have regular internet access. Plus, we are doing a lot of scheduled activities which may leave us a bit short on "blog-time".

Since we last posted, we spent most of Tuesday sleeping and recovering, but also went to the International Antarctic Center where we saw handicapped Little Blue Penguins and got to ride around in a Haggland (an all-terrain, amphibian Antarctic vehicle) driven by a crazy man named Shaun. We had dinner at a neat place called the Tap Room where Scott had green-lipped mussels and really good Monteith's beer, and I had kangaroo and a Kiwi daiquiri. We walked around a lot after that looking for the Christchurch casino which sadly had no poker on Tuesdays. I still walked away $5.00NZ richer though from some boring slots.

Wednesday: We went on an all day tour to where they filmed Edoras, Rohan for the Lord of the Rings, the Two Towers. Now, I know that most of you are now scratching your heads a bit because I told you all that that was where we were getting married. I lied. Or rather, I was under some false presumptions. Anyway, it matters not at all. Point is, we went there.

As I said, we leave tomorrow for Dunedin, which is south of Christchurch along the east coast of NZ. On the way, we will stop at Omauru to see some normal Little Blue Penguins on a behind the scenes tour.

Here are some more wedding pictures and some pictures from the last 2 days.

At Edoras:




At the International Antarctic Center:


In Christchurch:
More wedding photos:

We Done Got Hitched!

The day started when the air-raid siren that is our room alarm clock went off at 0500 stopping both Jen and my hearts. After a quick use of the defibrillator, Jen started getting ready and I went back to sleep.

We had breakfast at the hotel restaurant. Jen had French toast and I had the Warners Classic Grill. The Kiwi interpretation of French Toast, by the way, involves piling Canadian bacon and fried bananas on top of the toast. An odd combo, but it sorta worked.

After breakfast, our wedding coordinator, Donna, and her crazy Japanese husband/business partner, Shoei, picked us up to go the the Office of Internal Affairs to get the legal bits out of the way. There, Donna annoyed the nice bureaucrat by committing heinous crimes against spelling on the wedding application. Jen and I had to swear that we were not related in any way (they had a list of several dozen relationships that were forbidden to marry). That done, we headed back to the hotel and Donna made Jen promise to eat (something that, apparently, many brides forget to do).

We had about an hour and a half before the hair and makeup person was going to show up, so we walked around Christchurch for a bit to run some errands and find a bite. We found a bite at a small cafe whose name is escaping both of us at the moment. We both had a "Toasty", which is a fancy way of saying "grilled sammich". Jen had mushrooms and ham, I had chicken and tomatoes. Jen's sarsasparilla beer was way better than my organic apple-black current juice.

The makeup person, Julie-Anne, showed up on time and I (Scott) was banished to the hotel lounge with a book.

Hours passed.

I returned to the room in time to catch the end of Jen's hair and makeup application and for both of us to start getting dressed. Everyone loved both of our costumes, especially Jen's dress. As we exited the hotel to get into the Rolls Royce that was taking us to the heliport, we got a lot of stares from a group of tourists who were boarding a bus right outside the hotel.

The helicopter ride took us to the wedding location: the confluence of the Waimakariri and Esk Rivers in the Southern Alps. It was very windy and we startled a rabbit upon landing. The helicopters landed on a ridge above the rocky riverbed. We hiked up about 100 yards into a field of wild grass and thorny berry bushes that loved Jen's dress and shawl.

And then there was some drama with Jen's belt, the ceremony, some coffee mugs, an exchange of rings, some pictures, some bubbly, some paper work to sign, and we were off again back to the heliport.

The scenery both to and from the location was absolutely breathtaking.

After we returned, we quickly changed into our fancy, shmancy dinner clothes and went to a marvelous dinner at the Curator's House, which was highly recommended by the hotel staff, but not in any of the tour books (which we took to be a very good sign). When the concierge made the booking, apparently they let slip that we were newly weds, so we had a private room on the second floor with wee confetti spelling out "Congratulations" all over the table. I had a porterhouse steak with portabella mushrooms topped with some sort of salsa. Jen had cold marinated venison and a side order of olives. We split a divine Crema Catalana, which is a cinnamon and lemon flavored creme brulee.

And then we walked home and collapsed.

Here is an official wedding picture for your viewing enjoyment. We'll post some that we have taken once we buy a cord that will let us download the pictures from the camera, as I was stupid and did not pack it.

Christchurch

We are all checked in and settled into our hotel here in Christchurch. We are staying at the Warners Historic Hotel, which is some sort of historic hotel with internet access, but no central heat (each room has a wall-mounted heater unit). The rooms have old-school metal keys (as opposed to a key card) that are attached to a big chunk of wood (3" x 2"). While that does make it rather hard to loose the key, it is a little awkward to have in one's pocket. As honeymooners, the hotel upgraded our room on the house, which we thought was very kind of them.

We took a walk earlier in the day, looking for a place to have lunch. It turns out, however, that almost all of the restaurants in Christchurch are closed for lunch on Sunday. Bah. We ended up eating in the hotel restaurant. Jen had a lamb salad, I had bruschetta.

The walk was fruitful, however, in that we got to experience a kiwi cuckoo clock chiming the hour. It was an enormous egg-shaped clock with a kiwi sitting on top. When it was time to do its thing, the side of the egg opened up and there were several scenes played out about different phases of New Zealand history. Without a narrator, it was more or less nonsensical. There was a bit with a sheep getting shorn and sporting a poodle show cut, something about rugby, a random bungee jumper, and it closed with an alien riding a hover bike. We really don't know what the last part was supposed to be, but I'll see if I can trade in the Toyota Carola that we are renting for one of those hover bikes.

We had dinner at the Tandori Palace, an Indian restaurant next door to the hotel. Jen had a basket of nan (the way tasty Indian flat bread) as big as her head (I am, for once, not exaggerating when I use that idiom) and I had a chicken curry. All the food was excellent. Jen had a glass of the ginger beer, which was very good, and I had a local beer: the Monteiths Dark. I'm not quite sure where it falls in the beer taxonomy, perhaps a dark lager? Regardless, it gets two thumbs up: Smooth, complex flavor with a hint of spice and almost no aftertaste. The evening was made, however, by the Crazy Mongolian (complete with fur-lined hat) who peered into the window next to our table and started talking. We are not sure if he was trying to talk to us or was content to converse with the voices in his head.

Tomorrow is the big day. Jen is getting up at 5 to start prepping ... I will be getting up significantly later, as I am a guy and thus relatively low maintenance.

We made it!

We are in the Auckland airport, with about 2 hours to wait until our flight to Christchurch.

Estimated time to nuptuals: 33 hours

Crunch time!

Tonight begins the packing frenzy, which has been preceded by a laundry and cleaning frenzy the last couple of nights.

I'll have to remember to check the bags on Friday to make sure that we didn't pack one of the cats.

Slightly more than 50 hours until we get on a plane to LAX!