Punakaiki

We arrived in Punakaiki after a long drive, maybe five hours. We stopped a couple of times on the way so it wasn't too bad. And the scenery everywhere we go is stunning. Anyway, we arrived at the Punakaiki Resort mid-afternoon, so we had a bit of time to relax.

We stayed in one of the eco suites, and it was very nice! But no mini bar again, so the boy went back into town (two shops) to get some beer for himself. I went for a walk on the beach, armed with the camera. Thankfully the boy had reminded me to take the spare battery with me, because the one in the camera died after two photos. But I was organised so it didn't matter.

The beach was nice but it was fairly windy and not very warm. It means I had it all to myself so that wasn't so bad. This was a little waterfall and creek that ran across the beach.
These are the pancake rocks that Punakaiki is famous for. Scientists don't know why they are formed that way. They really do look like stacks of pancakes.
Here's a little rockpool with some interesting patterns at the bottom.
I was playing around with the camera, trying to slow down the exposure to get the effect of rushing water looking all cloudy, and mostly succeeded here. Other photos I took were so overexposed that you couldn't actually tell what you were meant to be looking at. These are all beach photos, by the way.
Except this one. These are the pancake rocks proper. They are enormous and all shaped like stacks of pancakes.
There apparently was a blowhole here too but we didn't see it. I'm guessing it had been eroded since the signs were put up. But it was worth seeing.

We had dinner at the restaurant at the resort, once again very nice food. It was lovely listening to the waves as we went to bed too.

Nelson

This morning we sadly left the Hapuku Lodge, headed for Nelson. We decided to go to Picton on the way, only to discover it wasn't on the way at all, and we had to drive back to Blenheim to then get to Nelson. But we drove through the Malborough wine region which was just lovely. I even recognised some of the winery names.

Picton was lovely, but quite small. We headed on to Nelson, to find our next accommodation, the Honest Lawyer.

I did not enjoy Nelson in the slightest. I was navigating with a very bad map (we'd stopped at the visitor centre in town to try and find the way to our accommodation) and I managed to get us lost. For the first time, I might add. The boy got annoyed with me and told me I clearly couldn't read a map, so I threw it at him and told him to read the effing map himself. He then got us lost twice more. I was getting sick of going around in circles so I took the map back and found the way.

We didn't think much of the Honest Lawyer, to be honest. It was one of those Olde Worlde type places, which I don't like at the best of times. And we'd booked the Rose Cottage, but when we got there they told us it had sprung a leak and had moved us to the honeymoon suite.

Pffft, honeymoon suite my ass. It was the smalled, darkest, pokiest room I've stayed in in a long time. Seeing the look on my face, the boy offered to go find some other accommodation but I couldn't be bothered. So I sat in the beer garden and read my book while he went off to find some chocolate to placate me. No room service or mini bar, you see. The food from the bar wasn't too bad though.

We left as early as possible the next morning and headed to Punakaiki.

Whale watching

This morning we went to pick up our hire car. They gave us a Hyundai Sonata. We ended up referring to it as the gutless wonder. But it got us everywhere we needed to go so I guess it was okay. Next time though, I'm going to insist on a better car.

We then drove to Kaikoura, about three hours away, to go on a whale watching cruise. At first we thought we might not get to go, because the weather was pretty bad, but they sent us out anyway, making sure we had all taken motion sickness tablets. The swell was 1 - 2 metres, so it was pretty rough out there. I have never had motion sickness in my life but the boy suffers terribly and I was quite worried that he'd spend the entire time out the back throwing up. Luckily the ginger tablets and Kwells he took did the trick, and he was fine.

This is the beach at Kaikoura. You can see the weather isn't very nice.
This is a Sperm Whale poking his head out of the water to look at us. It was quite amazing and our nature guide said they rarely do that so we felt quite special.
This is one of the whales showing us his magnificent tail as he headed back under the water. These whales were about 18 - 20 metres in length, and were quite amazing to see. He was a long way off which is why his tail looks small. They're really not small at all.
This one is an albatross that lives in the area. They skim along the tops of the waves, looking for fish. The wingspan on this one was about 9 feet. I can't remember the exact name of it, I was really looking for more whales.
And here you can see the whale as he's about to head back under the water. For some reason my camera had a fit and stopped taking photos for 5 minutes, so I missed the close up view of his tail. But at least I saw it in real life, which is more important.
After the cruise (two and a half hours which seemed like about 20 minutes) we headed off to find our accommodation. The maps the car hire place gave us were practically useless so we did a lot of driving around randomly looking for places.

Eventually we found our accommodation. It was called the Hapuku Lodge and it was absolutely stunning. We stayed in one of the treehouses and Wow! is all I can say.

This is the view from the shower. Yes, the shower.
This is the view from the lounge, which had a fire as well. We did light the fire, even though it wasn't that cold, just because it seemed like we should.
We ate dinner in their restaurant and the food was delicious again. I would highly recommend Hapuku Lodge to anyone going to Kaikoura. We've already decided we need to go back at a different time in the year, probably winter, just for the stunning scenery, and to see more whales.

Tranz Alpine Train Ride

Today we went on the TranzAlpine Train over to Greymouth, and back to Christchurch. It's a four hour ride in either direction, and the scenery was quite amazing. I didn't take many photos because it's hard to take photos from a moving train, so you'll just have to trust me that it was lovely. I did get this one photo of the Canterbury Plains as we were coming back into Christchurch.
Greymouth was pretty but there wasn't a whole lot there. We only stayed for an hour to have lunch, then had to get back on the train to come back to Christchurch. But it was nice enough. I slept a lot on the way back, having seen all the scenery already. It was a very relaxing day!

We decided to go out for dinner - the boy went and did some reconnaisance and found a nice italian restaurant for us to eat in. Their service was a bit slow but they had the best garlic bread I've ever eaten, and my dinner itself was delicious. It started raining while we were eating but wasn't really cold. Luckily it had mostly stopped by the time we walked back to the hotel so we didnt' get too wet.

Departure Day

This morning we left the house at the crack of dawn (really - 7.15am) to head to the airport to fly to Christchurch. We arrived about 2.30pm and were collected by a very nice man with a van big enough to carry 10 passengers. He drove us to our hotel - the George Hotel - and give us a bit of a tour of the city on the way.

In the afternoon we went for a walk along the Avon River, which winds through the park that is in the middle of Christchurch. It was right opposite our hotel and very nice. It's a pretty city, remind me a lot of an English village (only bigger).

We decided late to have dinner in the hotel but there were a lot of people in the restaurant so it took AGES for us to get our food. I think the waitress knew we were annoyed because we got free dessert. My meal was nice, which made it not so bad.

No photos today because I didn't think to take the camera on our walk. Silly, I know.

Leaving, on a jet plane

Well, I hope it has big engines anyway. We are off to New Zealand in the morning and I've done the same thing as last time, posted blog entries for each day which I'll fill in when we get back, complete with photos.

See you in 12 days!

Travel documents

They're here! And it's only 10 days til we leave! I am excited.

Ooooh

Hey, did you know we leave on our holiday in 12 days?

I'm excited too.

Ready to go!

The bookings have been made, payment has been made, we are ready to head off on our holiday! It's just a shame that it's still four weeks away. Oh well, at least we don't have the massive countdown of our last holiday again.

And finally some good news; my new camera lens has FINALLY arrived so I will be picking that up this morning.

Planning our next holiday

So this year we've decided to go to New Zealand in March. We'll be there for about 10 days. At this stage, it's just the south island we'll be visiting. Flying into Christchurch and then driving around the island. We'll include a whale watching cruise, a train trip over the mountains, and a cruise through the fjords. I'm already excited.

The final thing

So in the mail last week I got a card from the post office telling me I had a package waiting for me. Of course the post office was closed until today, so I finally went and got it. It was the box of stuff we'd ordered from the Rocky Mountaineer two months ago! Yay!

I have a new t-shirt, keyring, polar bear carving, and fuzzy hat. The boy has 2 t-shirts, a dvd, a book, and 2 panorama posters of the mountains. We also have a magnet for my sister. I can't believe it took two months for these things to arrive. They charged my credit card all that time ago and I was beginning to think I'd have to fight with them to get the money back! But all is well.

My rock

I'm not a "rock" person. I don't understand the appeal. But when we visited the fossil shop in Vancouver, I saw an egg made from this rock and couldn't keep my eyes off it. Something about the colours just appealed to me. However, the egg was $5,000 so I was not bringing that home with me. Instead I got this small one. It's called a Septarian Form. And I love it.

Day twenty nine

Arrive home in Melbourne! Tired but happy.

Day twenty eight

This morning in Singapore we decided to go shopping again and get my lovely new handbag. She has been named Kate.
Isn't she lovely? We had a late checkout from our lovely hotel so we got to hang around our suite until 6pm. Then we got driven to the airport by another man with a nice shiny car (this one was a mercedes benz) and hung out at the airport for a couple of hours until our flight left.

We had intended to claim back our GST from our shopping in Singapore but we checked in our bags before finding out that we needed to show what we had bought in order to make the claim. Suffice to say, we did not claim back the GST. Oh well, lucky it wasn't a LOT of money.

The flight back to Melbourne is about 7 and a half hours which isn't too bad. As it's overnight we just slept most of the way.

Day twenty seven

After waking up at 4.30am (jetlag sucks) we got up early and went for breakfast. We decided to go shopping but after consultation with the concierge discovered that the shops didn't open until 10am. We had a couple of hours to kill so we went back to our suite and read for a bit.

After setting off to go shopping, we covered about 3km of underground shopping centres - thank god for the airconditioning because it was HOT! Anyway we made it to the train station and caught the train to Orchard Road. They were doing major construction on Orchard Road so there wasn't a lot to see... we did visit a few shops and I got some new sunglasses. The boy got some new boots and a winter coat from Hugo Boss (which is ironic considering it was about 32 deg C outside) and we caught a cab back to the hotel.

We had dinner at their fancy restaurant that night which was lovely. Then afterwards I decided that I needed a photo of the city skyline from our hotel room and this is what I got.

Day twenty six

We spent all day today flying, flying, flying and arrived in Singapore at almost midnight. Luckily a nice man with a big shiny car picked us up at the airport and took us to our cushy hotel, the Ritz Carlton. Even better, they upgraded us to a suite!

Day twenty five

Early afternoon flight from Vancouver to Singapore. 19 hours in the air!

Flying... flying... flying...

Day twenty four

Today was our last day in Vancouver. We decided to have a lazy day - got out of bed late, wandered down to a cafe for a late breakfast, moseyed back down Robson St and looked in all the shops. I bought some stuff in Kiehls and spent a bit more than intended. We lazed around for the rest of the afternoon.

Day twenty three

Today we went to Grouse Mountain and the Capilano Suspension Bridge. This involved a long walk (a VERY long walk) down to the sea bus terminal (otherwise known as the ferry), then a ride across the bay, then a bus trip up the mountain. THEN we had to catch the skylift gondola thing up to the top. Actually that was pretty cool but it was so foggy we literally could not see three metres in front of us.

Anyway the whole point of going to Grouse Mountain was to see the grizzly bear refuge. There are two orphaned grizzly bears that live there together. And look, here they are! Grizzly bear butts!
I saw this chipmunk sitting on a tree trunk. Personally, I wouldn't have been in the bear enclosure but maybe that's just me.
Here the bear was posing for me...
And here comes the other one, not wanting to miss out on the action.
And now, for your entertainment, grizzly bear wars!
So Grouse Mountain was totally worth the hassle to get there. On the way back to the ferry we decided to get off the bus and visit the Capilano Suspension Bridge. After paying CA$31 (each - and that's about A$689 each) to get in, we walked over the bridge and were... disappointed. It was nothing to get excited about. But I got a couple of nice scenery shots.

The ride back was long and the walk back to our hotel was even longer. We went out for dinner and crashed again.

Day twenty two

Today I foolishly went out without my camera. We walked down to Stanley Park, which was just beautiful. After wandering around there for a while we eventually found the Aquarium and visited that for a couple of hours. They have Beluga Whales there and they were so much fun to watch.

We went back to the hotel (I should be point out that it was a one hour walk in each direction) and found the address of the fossil shop that the boy wanted to visit. We caught a cab over there and spent over two hours looking in the shop. We left having bought several fossils and cool rocks, which were shipped home to us.

After a big day out we had dinner and crashed out at the hotel.

Day twenty one

This morning we flew back to Vancouver (in business class thankyou very much). For a three hour flight we only arrived one hour after leaving. Happily, our hotel let us check in early and they gave us a nicer room than the one we had booked. Anybody going to Vancouver, the Listel Hotel on Robson St is great!

So we left our bags and stuff and wandered down Robson St for a bit. We looked for some decent coffee but just like in the States, the evil empire is everywhere and we were disappointed in our quest for coffee. We did find a decent cafe and had some reasonable eggs benedict so that was a plus. We just moseyed around the shops, and ended up having dinner at the restaurant in our hotel, which was excellent.

Day twenty

Here's the most important shot of the day.Yes people, those are BABY polar bears. With their mum. How freakin' cute are they? These babies are about 10 months old.

This afternoon we travelled back to Churchill and spent an hour in town before heading back to the airport. We flew back to Winnipeg and arrived around 8.pm. After three exhausting days on the tundra buggy seeing the amazing polar bears, we crashed out (after having our first showers for three days).

Day nineteen

Today I will mostly let the photos speak for themselves.
Except for this one. The story here is that one of the tundra buggies blew a tyre and it had to be changed. Going on the ground in polar bear territory is not advisable. There were three men to change the tyre, and one man to stand on the roof of the tractor (being used to jack up the tundra buggy) with a shotgun in case of polar bears. Just as well he was there too. One very large male bear spotted the potential for some lunch and snuck up in the grass. The tyre changing boys jumped into the tundra buggy until he went away. But he didn't go away. He got closer and closer (very slowly) until they had to get in the mechanic's vehicle and drive at the bear to chase him off. We called it polar bear reality tv.

This is a snowy owl. They nest on the ground. Well, there are no trees.

Day eighteen

After our first night on the Tundra Buggy Lodge, which was an experience, let me tell you. We had bunks, which is fine. But there were 18 of us in one buggy and we had one shower and two toilets for all those people to share. It was ... cosy. But seeing these magnificent beasts made it totally worthwhile.

This is the outside of the lodge. Sorry about the reflection, I didn't have much more opportunity to get a good photo.OH MY GOD look it's a polar bear! This one spent most of the time just sitting in the kelp bed and waiting for the ice. He would sometimes raise his head as we drove past, but mostly he ignored us and slept.
This one did almost the same thing.
Want to know what a polar bear butt looks like? I have many variations on this shot.
This bear obliged by at least not showing me his butt as I took the photo.
And here's the sunset from our second night. It had snowed early in the morning then cleared up and we had great weather.

Day seventeen

This morning we got up at quarter to dawn to fly to Churchill to see POLAR BEARS! We landed in Churchill after a two hour flight at about 10am. Here's a picture of our plane on the runway after we got on the bus.
This is the world famous polar bear jail! Bears that are caught too close to town before the sea ice freezes are trapped and kept here until they can be released a safe distance away out on the sea ice. They don't get fed, they only get water to drink. It's to encourage them not to come back.
The bears are caught in these traps.
I don't know if I've mentioned how cold it was in Churchill. Oh and those white dots you see in the picture? Not bad photography, no no, that's snow.
Just up the road from the sign that says you shouldn't walk in this area because there are polar bears about, is this boat. The locals have turned it into a sort of playground. We didn't go and play, you know, because of all the polar bears that were about.
After lunch in town (not an exciting place, if you're not going to see polar bears I really don't know why you'd go to Churchill) we had booked a helicopter flight out over the tundra. These are the helicopters we went on.
FIRST POLAR BEAR SIGHTING!! Okay it's a bit blurry but I was excited and it's hard to keep a camera really still on a helicopter.

Day sixteen

This morning we left Lake Louise and travelled to Calgary (about a 3 hour drive, give or take). Our driver picked us up on time but there was some confusion about payment. I had already paid the travel agent back in Australia but he seemed to think we would be paying cash for the trip. Anyway about an hour away from Calgary he pulled over to the side of the road and rang his boss to clear up the confusion. I spoke to his boss and he was extremely rude to me. He said the pick up had "been booked on the internet somehow" and he hadn't received any payment and that I had to pay by credit card now. Mind you, he wouldn't even tell me how much I had to pay. So after much arguing I just gave him my credit card number and we continued on to Calgary.

By the way, Calgary is an ugly city and I don't ever want to go back. It seemed to have no soul or character at all. So we got on the plane to Winnipeg and checked into our hotel. Tomorrow morning we fly to Churchill to see POLAR BEARS!

Day fifteen

Still at Lake Louise today. We had to get moved to a different room because the thermostat in our room wasn't working properly and we were too hot - I was even starting to get a heat rash on my leg! Ironic when it's snowing outside. Anyway today they moved us to a very nice suite on the other side of the hotel so we have this view out our window now.
It alternated between rain and snow which means the rain washed away the snow. Very sad. We went for a walk along the lake in the morning and got these couple of shots, but it really started coming down so we went back inside.

I went and had a (VERY expensive) facial and massage at the hotel spa and the boy napped all afternoon. We had a very nice lunch in the Lounge with big picture windows looking out over the lake. Dinner was good, we played some pool (I didn't win) and all in all it's been a good stay at Lake Louise.

Day fourteen

This morning we spent wandering around Banff before heading off to Lake Louise. This is the main street of Banff. It's very pretty, and one of the cleanest towns I've ever seen! It wasn't crazy busy with tourists, although there were enough of us there. They were gearing up for ski season to begin in three weeks' time.
We decided to take the gondola up to the top of Sulphur Mountain and see what the place we were in really looked like. Here's the view from our gondola, looking down.
These are the views from the top of the mountain. Oh and by the way, we can never call the hills in Australia "mountains" again. They are pathetically small!


In the afternoon we caught a cab to Lake Louise. We were staying at the Chateau Lake Louise and this is the view from our window.
(If you look carefully, you can see a bit of my reflection in the window.)