Lakeside Lucerne

Lucerne is lucky enough to have it all: a beautiful lake ringed with mountains, a river crossed by medieval bridges, and a chocolate-box cute old town filled with historic decorated houses. We got to enjoy all of this, albeit the mountains only at a distance and only a tiny portion of the lake front - got to leave a reason to return to the area.

The Bakers' Guildhouse, now a restaurant - but you can still join the guild if you are a baker and buy a 1000 CHF share

The Jesuit church

Hotels on the river - the building on the hill on the left is our hotel

The Old Suidtersche pharmacy, the oldest pharmacy in Lucerne. It still operates as a modern pharmacy, but you can peep in at this wonderful window display reminiscent of ye olde days. I don't know why, but I read online that you can only see this display at night, so I'm very glad we stumbled upon it at the right time!

We tore ourselves away from the beautiful scenery outside to spend a morning at the Rosengart Collection, which has a large amount of works by Picasso and Klee, amongst other modern artists.

A minimalist Kandinsky sketch

Although we were there during the week, it must have been school holidays or some sort of special occasion, as the area around the lake closest to the city was taken up by a fair and packed with families. We walked a little further around the lake to find some peace and quiet and pretty views of the city and mountains. One old guy was brave enough to take a dip, but despite the beautiful blue skies we were in mid-October by this time, so I'm sure it was chilly!

Swans/heart

Heart/broken

Wonderfully clear lake water

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!

Good trip? No doubt!

In between Wanaka and Queenstown, we stayed in Manapouri, way down south, in order to visit the Fiordland National Park and, in particular, Doubtful Sound. One of our plans had been to take a helicopter to Milford Sound and then do a boat trip there. Sounds pretty awesome, but awesome came with a steep pricetag of over $800 per person. Which would be fine if it was a once in a lifetime, magical experience, but when we saw the forecast as far as the app could see was for rain, we decided we weren't willing to splurge so much money on something that would probably be cloudy at best and drizzly at worst (or cancelled).

So, a simple boat trip (well, ferry, then coach, then boat trip) in Doubtful Sound it was. We stayed close to our starting point in Manapouri to be ready for our 5:45 alarm call the next day. The woman at the campsite wasn't what you would call welcoming. She seemed to be convinced that we were plotting to somehow scam her by leaving our motorhome in the park while we visited DS. We got to pay her back in smug self-satisfaction though when she asked "iconic or trailblazer?", and we didn't understand the question. She was asking what rental company our motorhome came from. Oh no, we don't have a rental motorhome, darling, how vulgar of you to ask.

As mentioned, DS is pretty inaccessible, so step one was a ferry trip across Lake Manapouri. The decision to take the early morning trip paid off with a beautiful sunrise over the lake. The forecast had been for rain, or at least clouds in Doubtful Sound as well, but we had figured rain is less fatal to a boating expedition than a helicopter trip, so took our chances. We got really lucky - the morning started off with a lot of low-hanging clouds in the sound, but mixed in with a lot of sun and blue skies. Apparently it rains a lot in DS - one guide said 200 days a year, the other 2 days out of 3. Whichever stat, or somewhere in between, you have more chance of getting rain than not. The rain the previous day was also a bonus in boosting the number and volume of waterfalls around the sound, so we really had great timing.

On the ferry

After the lake, we got on a bus for a short drive to the sound, over a 670m mountain pass, the lowest in the Southern Alps. Fiordland is a huge national park, covering about 10% of the land mass of the South Island, at 1.2 million hectares. Then it was on to the second boat for the Doubtful Sound itself. 

In the distance, you can just see the "gap" i.e. the gap between the islands which leads out to the Tasman Sea

A "hanging valley" caused by glacier action

Battling with the wind

Turned out the hoody wasn't much help

Stripey hills

It was named by Captain Cook, who came to the inlet into the sound but "doubted" he could sail in and out again safely, hence the name. I say sound, but unlike the ones at the top of the South Island, it's actually not a sound but a fjord. The difference being a U shape rather than a V shape.

At the end of the fjord, after the "Shelter Islands", which help keep the sea within the fjord calm, we saw a whole island full of native NZ fur seals. And, as though the god of blogs (I call her Glog) was literally smiling down upon us, there was a full rainbow too. Can't do any better than that.

Glog giveth and Glog taketh away, and she was not kind to me, however, once we turned back into the fjord. The sea had been very calm, but it got a bit rougher when we were out in the Tasman, and then, although it subsided into a gentle rocking, the damage was done. We were on the top deck, looking at some of the waterfalls lining the edges of the fjord...

Getting a close up

... when I felt I had better go to the back of the boat and lean over the railings for a bit. No-one else was back there, since everyone was up front looking at the waterfall, except for this one young dude who came and stood right next to me just as I let out a huge burp. I suppose you could be charitable and call it a retch, but yeah, pretty much a massive burp. I said sorry, he said it was okay as he rapidly backed away from me, and when I next turned around his girlfriend was laughing at me :( Ironically, he got sick later on the bus back, SERVES YOU RIGHT!

He must have told some of the crew, because next thing I know, one had appeared with a sick bag for me. It wasn't really required for its key function, but there was quite a bit of gurgling over the side followed by a retreat inside and a hot drink. Probably quite a good thing, since I took a million photos on the way out, so that stopped me taking any more on the return trip!

Jules caring for me from a distance

Sad panda

We then had the rest of the trip in reverse - back on the bus, stopping at a few notable sights, and then the ferry again.

Moss-covered tree

Doubtful Sound from above

Even with sea-sickness, I give it 5 stars, would cruise again.

A tale of two towns

After our heroic morning scaling small gravelly paths near glaciers, we drove to Wanaka, where we stayed for two nights, mainly just chilling out. It’s a nice place to do so, with plenty of cool bars, cafés and restaurants, a relaxed vibe, and of course, a pretty lake ringed with mountains. I also came across Glowing Sky, a clothing company that actually makes their clothes in NZ (a rarity these days). Their main product line is merino wool, but I was drawn in by the brightly-coloured dresses they had in the window. I ended up buying four in the same "Marilyn" cut, but with different colours and patterns. Very pleased with my purchase, look out for them on the blog soon and keep an eye out for the brand if you're in NZ!

We had an annoying group of 20-somethings across from us on the campsite, who basically seemed to sit there drinking all day and swearing every second word. On day two, I actually went and asked to change campsites to get away from them. I realise this makes me sound like a grumpy 80 year-old woman, but seriously, I think we all had enough of 20-something young men when we were 20-somethings ourselves. Their dulcet tones are not exactly what I want to listen to on a relaxing holiday.

The Haast River

Lake Hawea, next door to Lake Wanaka

Wanaka's lake and mountains

Lake Wanaka

We actually went to Manapouri/Doubtful Sound before coming back up to Queenstown, but because of the million photos of Doubtful Sound I have to upload, and because Wanaka and Queenstown are pretty much linked in people's minds, I'll do them both here.

A fantastic view of Queenstown from the Wanaka road

We were first going to spend two nights in Queenstown, and then mostly for time reasons, adjusted that to one night, arriving in the evening and leaving at lunchtime. And once we got there and looked around in the evening, we decided one evening/night was enough. As I said, Wanaka and Queenstown kind of go together. They're not far apart, they're both on the shores of a lake, they are both ski towns in winter, and they both pride themselves on adventure tourism. Queenstown is the bigger and probably more well-known of the two, and it had a correspondingly busier, brasher vibe.

Fluffy hills en route to Queenstown from the Te Anau side

Driving along Lake Wakatipu

Lake Wakatipu from Queenstown

Me and the founder of Queenstown or whatever, plus sheep wife

It's a bit unfair really, since we did actually have annoying drunken youths bothering us in Wanaka, but the entire population of Queenstown seemed pretty much made up of irritating gap year types, so we cooled to it immediately (can you say that?) There were also a tentful of young women next to our van getting ready for a night on the town saying things like "that's hot" in faux American accents as though this was 2004 and they were an entire gang of Paris Hiltons. But they left reasonably early and didn't wake us up coming home, so I can't hold it against them too much.

Our one must-do in Queenstown was to try Fergburger, an apparently legendary local institution. Once we saw the queue stretching out the door, we followed the pro tip I had seen on the internet and phoned in our order, ready for us in 15 minutes after a pleasant stroll around the town. I've got to say, pretty tasty. Jules went for a classic, if jumbo-sized burger, and I got a pork belly and hash brown extravaganza. Yum!

Mmm, pork belly