Haere ra, Aotearoa

Greetings! At time of writing, I've been back in Belgium for a few days, not back at work yet. It was my aim to finish my NZ blogs before going back to work, because I know myself and my lack of motivation that will kick in the longer I leave it.

EDIT: Since time of writing, I went back to work, then the bastards blew things up, then a jittery few days of arrests and searches in various familiar and not-so-familiar parts of Brussels, then Easter.

We arrived back in Brussels on a Thursday at around 7 am, which is a pretty tough time when you're trying to deal with jet lag. This time round, we only stopped for a few hours in Bangkok, a 28 hour 10 minute trip (not counting airport transfers, waiting around etc.) I found the trip to NZ fairly hard, even with the stopover, so I wasn't looking forward to this one. In the end, it wasn't so bad.

From Auckland to Bangkok, the plane was fairy full, and I had a window seat, with Jules in the middle and some dude on the aisle. I was sending probably fairly unsubtle "move" vibes to the guy shortly before and after take-off, to no effect. In the immediate vicinity, I could see at least five rows with only one person in them, so it seemed pretty unfair that we were three in our row.

Shortly after the meal service, the guy on the aisle fell asleep and I needed water and was panicking that we would be trapped in the row like that for the whole flight. After quite a long period of whispered argument as to who was going to wake the guy up, he briefly stirred awake to the sight of us both staring at him and we asked to get out. When I came back from the loo, I asked him if he would prefer taking the window seat. He said it was up to me, so I told him I wasn't going to sleep and didn't want to keep disturbing him if he was going to sleep the whole way. He graciously took the window seat, and then spent the vast majority of the flight awake, so I felt pretty guilty for making him swap (he only got up once one time when we got up as well, whereas I got up like half a dozen times, so it probably was the best arrangement). Much as I like looking out the window and leaning on the window frame (even more crucial on long flights), I think I'll always go aisle from now on. I was seriously feeling panicked by the prospect of being stuck in my seat.

In Bangkok, we were quickly through a bag check and into the airside shopping, where I got an hour-long foot and neck massage (more of a leg and back massage really, not that that's a bad thing). We had already been awake for nearly 24 hours at this stage, so I managed to drift off at one point during the massage, even though most of it was quite painful. Definitely a good way to spend the stopover though, I had started getting some neck and back pain already on the first flight, so I came out of the massage feeling pretty refreshed.

On the second leg, the plane was even more full and we were three in a row again. Thankfully though, the guy next to us spotted a free exit row seat and disappeared, so we got to stretch out a bit. I took a sleeping pill which enabled me to doze on and off for a lot of the flight, so it wasn't too bad. Time just seems to crawl on these long flights, though. I'd look at the time - 5.27 am, look again what felt like 10 minutes later and it would only be 5.30, and you'd just feel like time was standing still.

Here in Brussels, it was cold but sunny. I was very grateful that the apartment was clean and tidy and there were fresh sheets on the bed and the house sitter apparently didn't steal any of our stuff. We had to take the poor cat to the vet for a urinary tract infection, possibly caused by stress :( but at least we had the time to take care of that and he's hopefully fine now (waiting for lab results).

After five weeks off, it's going to be an adjustment going back to work on Monday! We're currently waking up very early (4.30 am yesterday, 5.30 today), so that part at least shouldn't be a problem, but that's obviously balanced out by being tired in the afternoon. At least this first week is a short one followed by a four-day weekend for Easter.

Anyway, back to the last little part of our NZ trip. We drove from Napier to Otorohanga via Taupo for lunch and a stop at the Huka Falls. I didn't remember how impressive they are. They're not a big, high waterfall, but the sheer volume of water passing through is pretty awesome - 220,000 litres per second.

Baby trees!

Turbulent river leading to the falls (The Waikato)

The Huka Falls

We then visited the Otorohanga kiwi house. This was a bit more in line with timid kiwis hiding in the darkness. One actually was down by the front of the glass, but spend most of the time just sitting there sleeping. This is, until the keeper came in to feed it. She explained that she would have to put on rubber wading books and protective pants, because the kiwi was quite territorial and aggressive, and had even injured one of her colleagues. You sort of hear this and think "yeah right", because I've never seen or heard of kiwis being anything but cute and passive. But as soon as she approached the pen, the kiwi became agitated and went from sleeping in the corner to running back and forth the spot where she was climbing over the fence. And then it totally went for her. It was hanging off her crotch by its beak, clawing at her legs, sticking its beak in the turn-ups of her pants, etc. I couldn't find any videos online, so you'll just have to imagine the sight of a mad, fat kiwi hanging off a girl's crotch. Quite amusing.

Jules and a parakeet (kakariki)

I forget what this is, some species of native duck I suppose. A little cutie anyway

A cheeky kea

We spent our last night on the road at Waitomo, to visit the famous glowworm caves. Setting off in the morning, Jules backed into a grass bank and broke the plastic taillight surround off. Poor van, it had one day left till retirement!

The caves are another place I'd been before, but only remembered vaguely. The walk through the caves was nice enough, but the boat trip with the glowworms was average. I say average to mean really a blend of good and bad. The good was the glowworms themselves, they were really pretty and it is a cool feeling to be gliding through the pitch black in silence (apart from a noisy kid) looking up at them. It really does feel like you're looking up at stars in the sky.

The bad is that they make out like you're really voyaging through a glowworm universe or something, when in reality they just turn the boat around a few times in a relatively small space. Photos aren't allowed until the very end, which is allegedly for "safety", but I don't really see how it's safer encouraging people to take a few panicked snaps at the cave entrance. Presumably if you can't take your own photos it's easier to sell you the photoshopped snap of you in front of a glowworm background that they make up. Everyone taking photos all the time would detract from the overall experience, but since you're essentially just going around in circles, it would be better to have the first few turns photo-free and then let people take one on the last circuit. We probably should have taken the rainy-day opportunity to go to the much less famous glowworm caves in Te Anau, instead of what we did do, which was just sitting in the van.

My hurried glowworm snap

Outside the cave

And so, that was pretty much that. We drove back to Auckland, where our time was mostly taken up with house-keeping (packing, cleaning the van, shipping my old books and stuff back to Europe) and winning "New Zealand's biggest pub quiz" (high five?) It was a lot of fun, but it's nice to be home. I hope those of you who don't know a lot about NZ enjoyed exploring the country a bit with us!

Chilling out

After Abel Tasman, we were originally going to stop in Greymouth, mostly to break up the drive, not because I’ve heard anything good about Greymouth. In fact, everything I’ve ever heard or seen of Greymouth in books and travel shows and so on seems to suggest it’s a rainy dump. So when Jules suggested we just drive straight through to the glaciers, I was up for that. We did actually stop in Greymouth for lunch, and it was a perfect blue-sky, sunny day, so although we didn’t hang around long enough to see the town proper, we didn’t leave with such a bad impression of it.

A one-way bridge... shared with a train. Eek!

Another of our plans had been to stop in Okarito and do a night kiwi spotting walk. But when we rang up the day before, he was all booked out. We haven’t been booking anything more than a couple of days in advance, and just turning up to campsites without bookings, and this was the only time it hasn’t worked out. Unfortunately, Jules was super disappointed he wouldn’t get to see kiwis. While it would have been awesome if we had managed to see a kiwi in the wild, we were still excited when we drove through Hokitika and spotted a sign for the National Kiwi Centre. We knew we definitely had to stop in.

It turns out there’s only two kiwi in the National Kiwi Centre, which makes me a bit dubious that they should be calling themselves that, but the quantity of kiwis is made up for by the quality of kiwis. I’ve seen kiwis before on school trips and so on, and I think also as an adult, but I don’t have much memory of seeing more than a blurry blob hiding in some bushes in the dark. (Kiwis are nocturnal, so if you go see them in a kiwi house or zoo, they will always be kept in a dark enclosure.) These kiwis, on the other hand, were running around, coming right up to the glass, and there was even a bit where you could go round the side and watch them over a railing, with no glass. On the part with no glass, we could even hear the kiwi snuffling loudly and moving through the undergrowth. It heard us too, when we were standing above it, only about a foot away, and it put its beak up and looked at us. (Or listened at us, apparently its eyes are very weak.) 

Instead of using their eyes, they used their long beaks for everything, probing in the ground with the full length of the beak, tapping quite hard on the glass and sides of the enclosure, turning over and breaking apart rotting logs looking for insects. Maybe this isn’t PC, but they really looked like a blind person with a cane, using the beak to probe their surroundings. It looked like it would hurt, the way they were tapping on the glass and twisting the beak underneath logs, but obviously not! It was super cool to see them so well and to see them being so active. One even did a poo!

The kiwis were definitely the main draw, but there were various other native and non-native fish, lizards etc. in the place. There was a wall of glowworms that really looked just like LED lights on the wall, they were so evenly spaced and artificial-looking. And there was a tank of absolutely massive scary eels. It was kind of cool watching them swim and also stay floating, perfectly still, even in upright positions.

No cute kiwi photos due to their delicate eyes. So here's some eels

We stayed the night in Franz Josef, and in the clear night sky we could see the stars incredibly well. I don’t remember seeing the Milky Way so clearly, or seeing so many different stars. I just wish I knew more constellations (Orion is the only one I can ever identify). Of course, not helped by the fact that “the stars are very different tonight” in the Southern Hemisphere vs. the Northern. And the moon is upside down!

In the morning, it was foggy, and the forecast was for cloudy weather. However, it lifted as we walked to Franz Josef glacier, and we got some pretty nice views. We got up and out nice and early, and thus it was nice and quiet. On the way back, there were plenty more people walking in, so we were quite pleased with ourselves. It took about an hour to walk to the glacier, stopping for many photos, and half an hour on the way back. Mostly because I really needed the loo by that stage!

Franz Josef glacier

The terminal face

Waterfall with mini rainbow

The next stop was Fox Glacier. Being later on in the day, it was busier, although I have the general feeling FJ is more popular. FJ was certainly our favourite of the two. Because of the angles, you couldn’t really get a good view of how Fox comes down the mountain, although the face of the glacier was maybe prettier than Franz Josef once you get up close to it. But talking of getting up close, I think when I was a kid, you could go right up to them and walk on them. These days the walk ends quite far away from the glaciers, due partly to dangers of rock falls and so forth, rivers changing course and the ground becoming unstable, and because the glaciers have retreated so much. Now, if you want to climb on them, you have to take a helicopter there. There were signs on the way to Fox showing where the glacier came to in 1750, and it was way, way further than these days. Photos even from a few years ago show a huge change. The walk to Fox was shorter, about an hour round trip, but also a bit steeper and rougher. Probably a contributing factor to preferring Franz Josef!

The evil "no stopping" signs on the way up to Fox Glacier

The terminal face of Fox