New Zealand- Marlborough Sounds

We packed up our belonging and a poorly Carys for another long trip to the Marlborough region. Despite the lonely planet describing the West Coast highway as one of the top 10 road trips in the world, we decided to take the shorter route across the country. 61/2 hours seemed like long enough for our long suffering kids. The journey itself seems to have faded to a blur, but our destination has not. It was spectacular. We rented a holiday home perched on a cliff overlooking the Marlborough sound, complete with a titanic style deck jutting out. It was the perfect place to spend time, Carys just lay on the sofa dozing while the rest of us pottered around dreaming of future trips when we might be able to walk the Queen Charlotte track and stay in some mountain huts.

Howard's ill fated sea kayaking was cancelled, but I managed to spend a morning kayaking around Okiwa Bay. It was a bit like a drier version of snorkelling as I was able to see loads of fish, star fish, sting rays, and jellyfish from the kayak. I even picked up a small jelly fish after being assured it wouldn't hurt me. They melt in your hands, leaving you feeling a bit slimy. It also allows you to see the shore line and lots of birds in a way that you normally just can't because of the dense forest.

We spent a wet afternoon in Havelock, a tiny harbour town which call itself the 'Greenshell Mussel Capital of the world'. As well as fabulous mussel (although I feel I couldn't really tell the difference between them and our European counterparts), they have a quaint little museum called 'a fish eye view'. You wander through a few rooms set out as being at the bottom of the sea. With various fish, shellfish, and plant life suspended about you. It certainly captivated us for an hour.

But what about the wine I hear you ask. Well it was good, and Cloudy Bay has a good selection of toys, Montanna has a great playground, and Wither Hills has an interesting building. Other than that you'll have to ask Howard.

The drive back to Christchurch was exciting as all along the coast there were hundreds of seals just lying on the beaches. Although some of us refused to get out of the car as it was drizzling!



Overall we found New Zealand spectacular, windy and a bit frustrating. It is all set up around doing outdoor activities that we just couldn't manage, but would have liked to do. The scale was so big in comparison with the UK, that getting around seemed to take ages. It was hard to do walks other than the long distance trails because of the forest, and our kids weren't old enough for water sports or drinking. Maybe next time..................

New Zealand- West coast

Next stop in NZ was Franz Josef, a one horse town in our book. People go there to visit the glacier or do exciting mountain activities, and I bet you can't guess which we were planning.

Everywhere in NZ is quite a drive, so we set off through the Southern Alps stopping to admire Lake Hawea, and then stopped to visit some blue pools. These pools are normally blue, but due to heavy rainfall happened to be a muddy brown when we visited. To the extent that lots of people (us included) walked right on by without realising we'd reached our destination. Carys was not impressed, and our sarnies were a bit soggy!



Driving along the West coast was less of a visual experience than we had realised, you are basically in rain forest with no views for most of the way. However, when you do reach the coast it is quite breathtaking. I've never been anywhere so untouched, with so much debris and drift wood, all set off with really powerful surf. Its quite desolate, but past visitors have made lots of sculptures from piles of stones and wood.

Everywhere we went there was whitebait on the menu, which seems to cause a lot of excitement. Apparently prices reached $150 a Kilo in 2007. It seemed a little odd to us as its on every Italian restaurant menu in the UK. When we finally sucummed to a white bait omelette sandwich from the local chippy, it was quite special.

As we rolled into Franz Josef late afternoon, I suggested a detour to the glacier, but we decided to save something for the next 2 days. That was as close as we got, that night a big tropical storm blew in and closed all the roads. We spent the night running through the downpour to and from our chalet to the toilet block with a puking/squitting Carys. I think that is the only place we've stayed in years without en suite facilities, never again.

Despite her poorly tum, Carys tolerated a pram trip to Lake Matheson, where you can get fabulous reflections of Mt Cook in the lake. Our photo wasn't quite up to postcard standard, but we were pleased when Mt Cook peeped out of the cloud long enough to be photographed.

New Zealand- Wanaka

I still can't work out if we were mad for visiting Singapore and New Zealand on the way out to Australia. It just felt like we'd never get to see them otherwise. Whenever we met someone who had spent time over here, we always asked what were their favourite things about Australia. Invariable they said New Zealand (unless they were Australian, when they said things like the "RED CENTRE").

It was quite bizzare getting off the plane after an overnight flight, and hiring a car. We set off feeling a little underwhelmed by it all. We headed south from Christchurch, stopping to have lunch in Subway (ask Howard why). Then we headed west toward Wanaka, and things got a bit more interesting, but really it was like being in Scotland, only a lot further from Bristol. I was beginning to think T had got it right spending all his holidays in Scotland. By this point we were having to swap over the driving about every 20 minutes as we felt our eyes trying to close behind the wheel. Although we didn't check, I don't think sleeping at the wheel is legal in any country.

Gradually the mountains got bigger and more impressive, and the fantastic aquamarine lakes did grab our attention. Wanaka is a fantastic lakeside holiday town with skiing in the winter and sun in the summer. Unfortunately it wasn't the debut of Howard's sea kayaking, but we did manage to wander around the lake on foot and by bike.

We bravely decided to walk up Mount Iron, described in the guide book as "close-to-Wanaka-town loop walk suits all ages and abilities and offers great views from the summit". With reasonable stats of 4.5Km, and 250m climb we thought it would be no sweat. However, Carys clearly hadn't read the guide book, and coaxing her around was a bit challenging. She wasn't impressed by the view, but managed to open an ice-cream shop on the top, and serve imaginary ice-cream to confused passers by.

New Year in Singapore

I don't suppose Howard and I imagined that we'd be spending New Year on the roof top of a penthouse appartment in Singapore. Better still overlooking the city and the fireworks. However, with the help of Kate and Nick (and more importantly their nanny), there we were. Plenty of time to talk nonesense and drink too much.

It definitely felt like a big release to finally be in transit, after all those months of planning and organisation. Singapore was the perfect place to start our adventure, a really easy place to spend time. Clean, efficient, child friendly, most people speak English, and nice climate. I don't think we'd have found it so stress free if it wasn't for Kate and Nick taking us under their wing, and Thomas for sharing his toys with Carys.

Sing is a mere 12 hours from Heathrow, 15 if you count the time they spent trying to fix the fridges on the new A380 (they even tried rebooting the aircraft by powering down all the systems, before resorting to getting some extra ice). We spent the flight in comfort, having got Evan wedged into his bassinet. With hundreds of hours of inflight entertainment to pick from, Carys watched the same episode of Dora the Explorer about 10 times, before conking out like a lamb.

We saw all the highlights of Singapore; the zoo, the aquarium, the swimming pool and of course Raffles. We had the obligatory and delicious Raffles Singapore sling, except Nick, who having been up drinking all night, indulged in a nice cup of Earl Grey tea.