Archives for February 2017

Wednesday, Feb. 8, 2017 – Cook Strait Ferry to South Island

February 8, 2017 By Admin Leave a Comment

In perfect accord with my plan, we headed out even earlier than scheduled, battling some pretty serious wind which indicated the ferry crossing may be a bit rough today, so on the way we stopped in a very cute little cow town called Bull, of course! Everything in town was full of Bull, as the picture of a sign there indicates! We stopped at a pharmacy to get some Tylenol (which they had to look up to get an equivalent), and some joint tablets, and I was thinking about getting some dramamine for the crossing, but the pharmacist was pretty adamant that it would make me drowsy, and I didn't want that since I had more driving to do, so I decided to take my chances. We took a leisurely drive, and even with the stops along the way, we arrived at the ferry nearly an hour before check in. I considered walking to the terminal to do some computer work, since they advertised free wifi, but we were parked quite a ways away, and the wind was howling and cold, so I decided to wait until we were on the ship. We had bought a local newspaper at the grocery store where we had stopped to get a loaf of bread and some crackers which I hoped would settle my stomach on the rough seas, so we sat around and read that most of the wait the hour, which turned into two hours because of some loading trouble they were having. Eventually we were herded into the ferry, which was huge, and carrying dozens of semi tractor trailers, most with a double trailer. Unlike most ferries we've seen, where you drive in one end and out the other, this one you had to drive in, then turn around inside the ship, so that you're pointing out when disembarkation came. Crazy! Once we got the campervan parked inside, we went up into the enclosed area, and I found an electrical plug where I hooked up my computer, then tried to get wi-fi, which was no easy task. It was very intermittent and frustrating. In the end, I just waited until my computer was fully charged, then joined Hubby in watching an old movie they were showing in one of the lounge areas. Toward the end of the trip we decided that the 1 ½ hour ride in Glenorchy was too short, so I contacted them about a longer ride, so now we're set up with a 5 hour ride, which Hubby feels strong enough to do, having proven that with the ride yesterday. Looking, SO forward to that! We finally docked at a very late 5:30, and it was 6:00 by the time we were driving down the ramp into Picton. The original plan had been to drive to a DOC camp about and an hour and fifteen minutes away, but there was no water there except from a stream, so we decided on a Holiday Park in Blenheim only 20 minutes away, where we could do laundry and refill with water, as we had used up all of it with showers and dishwashing, and dump everything as well. We arrived and were settled in in a site by the river, with a gaggle of ducks wandering around, and that was just across from one of the laundry rooms, which also had a kitchen. Unfortunately, the laundry had two washers and only one dryer, so I had to wait for both. Eventually got that done, dinner made, and was getting ready for bed when I got a notice from Verizon that I had already used up my entire monthly allotment of data! In only THREE DAYS! I had been so careful about turning off my mobile data, but there were a couple of times when I just had to go online, but I had no idea what could have used up that much data in so short a time. Anyway, I ended up in a chat room with "Charlie" who assured me he could solve everything, but in the end my only recourse was to up my plan and stop using it, essentially. He connected me with someone who was supposed to walk me through exactly what used up the data, but that didn't turn out to be true. Anyway, make a long story short, I was on the phone arguing with them until well past 11:00, was sound wound up I had to read for awhile, then finally turned out the light and hit the hay. Or should I say Hard Hay, for this bed is not exactly soft!

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Tuesday, Feb. 7, 2017 – First Ride in New Zealand

February 7, 2017 By Admin Leave a Comment

Woke up before the alarm, had a leisurely breakfast, then headed down to the station early, hoping to find a wifi signal where I could check my email without using cell phone data, but was disappointed no one had a free wifi anywhere. Evidently they have a purveyor here called Spark, where you buy a reloadable sim card for $5, though it starts out with $20 of wifi time on it, and it lets you onto any Spark wifi system, which is in a little cage next to the service station, and also at most of the other buildings in town. Not having time to mess with it, we decided to forget about it for the moment. Hubby suddenly couldn't find his back brace, which he usually wears for any of our longer rides, and we searched high and low for it with no success. He was convinced he had taken in out of the suitcase last night and put it with his clothes, but we looked everywhre for it with no luck. We can only think he must have knocked it off the bed during the night on his way to the bathroom, and then it fell into the door step of the van and got kicked out in the morning with no one noticing. A long shot, but we couldn't find any other explanation. Anyway, our ride leader showed up, a true Maori Kiwi, a young man of 22, whose father owned the business of Horse M Treks. Our original schedule was for the Fishers Track ride, which was advertised as bing 21 kilometers (12 miles), and 4-5 hours long with experienced riders, 6-7 hours long with novices. Jakob said the ride was really more like 27 kilometers long, which we really thought would really be too much for Hubby, especially without a back brace. After much discussion and suggestions, we agreed to take Jakob up on his offer of an alternative route which would be a bit shorter, around a different part of the forest, though he assured us we wouldn't be disappointed. Another factor was the weather, it had started drizzling last night, and was forecast to continue doing that all day, and the original route would take us up some altitude where it was bound to get much colder and wetter in the clouds. We were NOT disappointed! In fact, the entire ride was fantastic! After getting introduced to our pretty spirited horses, with Hubby on a paint named Memphis, would you believe, and me on a part Arab buckskin named Duffy, we pulled out of the driveway and up the road, following the railroad tracks a short way before crossing the road. We briefly went through a neighborhood before reaching the entrance of the wilderness area, following a gravel road for maybe a mile before crossing a bridge over a raging river, and maybe a mile or so more up the gravel road to a beautiful lookout and beyond, until we finally got off the road and into some pretty high grass like stuff, and finally into the woods, which were some of the darkest, spookiest woods ever! So cool! There was even a section Jakob called the Blair Witch section, where they used to pull practical jokes on some of the tourist, skeletons on strings and so forth. Even though it rained off and on, it seemed appropriate because it had a real rain forest feel to it. After a couple hours on the trail, Jakob led us to a spectacular spot for lunch, with a view of a stunning waterfall that apparently very few people have ever seen. It didn't even have a name, it was so remote. We enjoyed a wonderful lunch that Jakob brought for us, and chatted like old friends for well on a half hour, before mounting up and heading out again. Jakob did a fabulous job of catering to our every need, and we even did some incredible long canters unlike anything we've ever done before on a rented ride. We had one river crossing where the horses practically had to swim across (well, now quite, but it was definitely a boot-wetting experience, even though I put my legs way up!) Hubby's boots got a bit submerged since he can't lift his legs that high, I managed to keep one foot dry while the other got wet. Jakob offered to take us to a spot where we could actually swim the horses, and if it had been a hot day we would have jumped at the chance, but it wasn't that warm out, and we were already pretty wet, so we declined. We had another fantastic canter for a long way up the road, with Jakob staying behind us because his horse had a missing shoe and he didn't want to lame him on the gravel, but he gave us leave to canter as far as we wanted, just stop to let him catch up before we got back into town! Well, that was a great canter! Before we knew it, we were back to the railroad tracks and into Jakob's yard. He invited us for venison stew, which we would have loved to stay for, but we are on a pretty tight schedule, and the ride was about 5 hours long, we arrived back at 4:00. Since we still had a drive ahead of us, we had to decline, but I shared my GPS map with him (at least, it's in the email waiting to go out as soon as I can get a wifi signal again!), discovering the ride was just about 12 miles anyway, just perfect. And amazingly, Hubby's back didn't bother him a bit, despite the long ride! Guess we didn't need his back brace after all! We considered going back to the campground to look for it, but decided it wasn't worth the time on such a longshot, so we headed back to the park station, got a little fuel for the campervan, and headed south to another DOC campground I had found about 1 ½ hours down the road, which would leave only about a 2 ½ hour drive to Wellington tomorrow to pick up the Cook Strait Ferry to the South Island. Jakob was kind enough to fill up the campervan with water, which was very convenient as there was no water at Simpson's Scenic Reserve campground (which is why it's free), and we both needed showers. It was a lovely drive, albeit wet, off and on with rain, but we arrived just about 7:00, quickly settling into this offbeat little campground/parking area, having dinner, showers, catching up on the diary and reading before turning the lights out before 11:00, the latest we've gone to bed since we've been here! Must have recovered from the jet lag!

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Monday, Feb. 6. 2017 – Hobbiton Day!

February 6, 2017 By Admin Leave a Comment

After waking up fairly refreshed, we had our breakfast and headed out on the 45 minute drive to Hobbiton. It was easy to find, and the landscape was really in describable, but you could almost tell when you were in "The Shire." Though we saw very little traffic on the road there, when we arrived, the parking lot was crowded and there were plenty of folks milling about between the ticket booth, gift shop, the cafe upstairs, and the lines gathering to hop on the tour buses that were leaving every 15 minutes or so. We met our tour guide, an American who was working throughout New Zealand for the summer named Nathaniel, which was a little disappointing because we were kind of hoping the hear a Kiwi accent for the tour, but Nate was a pretty good guide, a real Hobbit aficionado with some great stories about some of the scenes, and props and secenery and actors and director interaction. Hobbiton itself was adorable, with many more Hobbit doors than are ever seen the in the movie, many in different perspectives to make it look just right depending on who the actor was standing next to them. One of the more interesting stories dealt with a huge tree just above Bag End, which in the book is supposed to be an oak, but what was there in reality was a huge pine. Director Peter Jackson evidently wanted to hire a crew to pick off every pine needle and replace them with fake oak leaves, but was talked out of it due to its sheer impossibility. Instead, they moved the entrance to Bad End off to one side and installed an entire fake oak tree, the only fake foliage in the entire place. When I first saw it, I thought the color was a bit off, but apparently it was exactly the color Jackson wanted. We didn't hear the story about it being fake until after we left the area, and along the path I looked down and saw an oak leaf of the strange color and picked it up. I had already told Hubby I thought the leaves had been painted or something, because it didn't look real, and sure enough, the leaf was plastic! So I knew the truth before the whole story. So now I'm the proud owner of a plastic Hobbit oak leaf! It was an excellent tour, though we were a bit disappointed we weren't allowed to wander on our own, we had to stay with the group, but Nate was pretty good about not rushing anyone. After the 90 minute walking tour, we ended up at the Green Dragon Inn and had our choice of alcohol free ginger beer, 1% Hobbit beer (which apparently they served at Bilbo's 111th birthday party during the filming), and 5% stout. Of course, we had the stout! Then we discovered there was a small counter serving a couple of classic British items, including pork pie by the slice and beef and ale pie in a tart shell, and since Hubby hadn't had a real pork pie in 40 years, he simply had to have some, and it was exactly as he remembered it (something you can't get in the states, at least not that we'd ever found). I had the beef tart, and we washed it all down with the stout in the 15 minutes between the tour's end and the ride back to the parking lot. The weather was perfect, Nate was great, and the entire experience was delightful, all that we had hoped it would be! We had talked about having lunch at the cafe, but they didn't have anything like at the Green Dragon, so we were glad we ate when we did. We hopped back into the campervan (I'm now getting used to shifting and driving on the left), and headed south on some beautiful back roads to the Tongariro National Park. We had no trouble finding the DOC Campground we were looking for, but then we headed into "town" to see where we would be meeting the leader of our next adventure in the morning, and discovered the gas station they were referring to. Not really much there, a Youth Hostel with lots of backpackers, a bar, a cafe, and a very few adventure outfitters. We headed back to camp, which was only about 5-10 minutes away, found ourselves a nice spot, opened up the door, got out our cheap plastic table and chairs, and was soon enjoying our beverage in the great outdoors. It wasn't long before I made dinner, and not much longer after that that we got into bed, after rearranging it to stay warm for the night, quilt on top, dressed in long underwear. I downloaded my pictures of the day (157!) before crawling into bed. We both started to read, and didn't get very far before we both fell asleep, What a great day! Can't wait to see what tomorrow brings!

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Friday, Feb. 3, 2017 – The Big Adventure Begins!

February 3, 2017 By Admin Leave a Comment

After a not very good night sleep, because Lola was trying to get on the bed all night long, we got up, did our final packing, and had brother Jeff dropped us off at the airport at about 11:30 am. We were fortunate in that we had heard President Trump was flying in today, and were afraid that might cause some traffic snarlups, but evidently he was lunching in DC and wouldn’t be coming south until later in the day. After an extended inquiry at the AA desk, trying to learn what our chances were at getting an upgrade to business class on the final leg of our journey, LAX to Auckland (we were evidently #5-6 in the queue), we breezed through TSA and arrived at the gate with about 20 minutes to spare, which was perfect. Usually we get there WAY too early and sit around for 90 minutes, but I planned it better today. We had already upgraded to First Class on our domestic flights, so we had a very pleasant flight to Dallas, including lots of hot nuts and a Vietnames salad with chicken for lunch. We arrived on time in Dallas, took the Skylink to Terminal D, and ended up at a little Irish Pub, where we’ve eaten before. I wasn’t hungry after the lunch, but of course, my insatiable Hubby ordered eggs and toast while I drank my pint of black and tan. Then I opened my computer and checked my email, and the fun began! After almost a year of careful planning, essentially knowing where we would be and what we would be doing for almost every hour of our trip, I knew that not everything would go according to plan, that some things just wouldn’t work, and we’d have to just go with the flow, but it didn’t take long for the vacation gremlins to rear their ugly heads on the one part of the vacation where I had the least control: the cruise. I received an email from Norwegian that they were having trouble with their engine (they put it in much more technical terms, but it amounts to the same thing) and because they couldn’t run at full speed, they were changing the agenda. Gone was the stop at Bay of Islands (and so our 90 minute ride and swim with horses was gone). Gone was the stop at Brisbane (and so our half-day Winery Ride, two hours of riding from the ranch to a local vineyard, lunch and wine-tasting, and two hours back again, our one and only ride scheduled in Australia), and gone was our stop at Bali (and our full-day private auto tour of most of the island). Grrrr! They added a stop at a place called Port Klempa, which is just a stone’s throw south of Sydney, and there are no cruise line excursions and not a lot to do there. I did manage to send an email to the nearest stable that offered riding, so hopefully we’ll be able to ride at least ONCE in Australia! The dates of all the remaining shore excursions save one had to have the dates changed, but fortunately I had booked them through a service called Viator, and they were very accommodating and quick to change everything. Norwegian Curise Excursions, I assume, will make the changes automatically, though we only had a few of those. I found that it was cheaper, and had a lot more variety, to do it outside the cruise line. Anyway, after all that fun and excitement, and spending nearly a half hour on the phone with Norwegian, we boarded our next flight, from DFW to LAX. Turned out they had upgraded the equipment to a new 787 Dreamliner, and we ended up in these brand new cubicles with all the mod-cons, including a seat that completely lies flat, exactly the type of plane we were on for the LAX-Auckland leg, and were hope to get upgraded to. As it turned out, it was EXACTLY the same plane! We landed at the same gate we were going to be leaving from, and on the same plane, except now, we learned from our AA friend Julie, that we had dropped down to #13-14 on the list, because of a whole bunch of “VIPs” that took precedence for some reason. As it turned out, the flight was fully booked and there were NO upgrades available, so we had to be happy with our extended main cabin seats, that just provide a little bit more legroom, and got us out at nearly the front of the pack, thought it ended up not helping much, as they ran out of customs cards, and we ended up being at the back of the pack anyway. I managed to get about 4-5 hours of sleep during the 13+ hour flight, though Hubby got somewhat less. Felt pretty good by the time I washed up in the morning, fortunately. Turned out that it didn’t matter much that we were at the front of the plane, because even though we stopped along the way to fill out the custom card and the money exchange to get some NZ$, we ended up in line right behind the folks that were sitting next to us on the plane anyway! It really doesn’t pay to be impatient at an airport! Once we got through immigration and customs and into the main terminal (it was a long walk from the international terminal to baggage claim), I tried to call the company where we had rented a campervan, and couldn’t get my phone to make the call, even though I had updated to an international plan. I confirmed with the paperwork that I was dialing it according to Verizon’s instructions, but that still didn’t work, I just kept getting a recording that if it was an emergency dial 911, information 411, and help making the call 611. So I dialed 611 and got put on perma-hold, never did get through. Eventually Hubby went to information looking for something the camper company had called a “freephone” and was directed to a phone. I dialed the “freephone” number and it went straight through to the camper place, and they sent a driver out right away. I finally realized that by “freephone” they weren’t talking about a particular type of phone, but a toll-free number good on any phone, duh! The driver showed up in a nice van, pulling a small trailer behind it, and discovered that many of the shuttles had such trailers, used to transport luggage. What a great idea! A short 10 minute trip to the office, and less than an hour of paperwork and instruction later, we were on the road! We stopped at a grocery store and spend nearly another hour stocking up on everything we thought we’d need (and naturally, still managed to forget a few things!), then set off down the road toward Hamilton. I was hoping to avoid using my Google maps, but we got a bit turned around and had to capitulate, using it just long enough to get us on the highway south before turning off the data. Had to turn it on again once we got to Hamilton, as none of the road names I had on the printed map turned up, and we got turned around again. We soon made our way into the Hamilton Holiday Park around 2:30 local time, and not a moment too soon! Despite drinking a bottle of 5-hour energy at the airport, I was serious flagging on the drive down. Driving on the left didn’t bother me too much, but trying to shift the 5-speed manual with my left hand required some getting used to! My right hand kept coming off the wheel looking for the gear shift! Even when my left hand was on the gear shift, I had to remember that first was AWAY from me and fifth was TOWARDS me. I was settled in with it by the time we got to Hamilton, though, despite my exhaustion. It didn’t take long to check into the camp (they didn’t require and entire litany of information like so many of them do here in the U.S.), and we were soon nestled under a couple of big trees, getting the bed set up, and finally settling down. Unfortunately, I was so wired from the 5-hour energy, and was just too tired to sleep, so I tossed and turned for a couple of hours. Hubby managed to sleep a bit though, not surprising, he can sleep practically anywhere! I had set the alarm for 6:30 so we could have a meal, but we were both so tired we just decided on eggs and toast for us, and cereal from him. We ate, took showers, and were back in bed by 8:30, reading for just a bit before finally turning the lights off, about the same time as the sun went down. Took a while, but finally feel asleep solidly, waking up around 2 a.m., tossing and turning some more before getting back to sleep again, and got up just after six to work on my diary and get the day started. I haven’t taken the time yet to calculate exactly how many hours it took us to travel here, but by going over the international date line, we had left on Friday and arrived on Sunday morning. We knew this day or two was going to be the toughest, and things should get more normal after this, hopefully! Can’t wait to get this adventure REALLY started!

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Wednesday, Feb. 1, 2017 – Last Ride Before the Big Trip

February 1, 2017 By Admin Leave a Comment

The last couple of days we've been slowly gathering everything we need to pack for our big upcoming trip, but today we just had to get a last ride in, to insure we're in adequate shape for our first 5 hour ride in New Zealand. We just took a quick trip out to the gazebo again, since it was convenient and nearby. We've completely filled the trailer with alfalfa and bags of food for the horses, wanted to make sure brother Jeff had enough to last for the entire 6 weeks we'll be gone, so taking the horses out anywhere to ride wasn't possible. Anywy, it served it's purpsoe, we got a number of trots and cnaters in, and feel good about our condition. Of course, the dogs came with us and enjoyed the walk as well. Nothing exciting, but it was very pleasant, perfect temperatures and weather, precisely why we like to spend our winters in Florida.

Filed Under: Ride Day