We're home 10 November 2009 Ryan Edmonton is awful brown right now. Home safe. First load of laundry is now in the wash. Glad we cleaned before we left, it felt real good to walk in to a clean home. Off to take a shower to take off the last 40 hours of airline grime off us. Cheers!
Day 14: Rotorua 07 November 2009 Ryan Quick update. We're still alive. We spent a minimal amount of time in Wellington, and all of it was spent at Te Papa, the national museum. Soon as we were done there, we hit the road around 5:45 and stayed overnight in a holiday park. The next couple days were spent in Tongariro National Park where ... [More]
Comparisons to home 04 November 2009 Ryan So far, we've seen a lot of similarity to Canada on our travels in New Zealand. The landscape is fairly similar. You get a few plains areas, a lot of hilly and mountainous regions, and really, the best to way describe New Zealand is to squish all of the provinces into an area smaller than Alberta.Tr... [More]
Day 12: Gravity Canyon 04 November 2009 Ryan Today consisted of about 5 hours of driving, with one specific stop in the middle: Mokai Gravity Canyon. Gravity Canyon has three extreme ways to fly: bungy jumping, canyon swinging, and the flying fox. For whatever reason, Jenny, while cringing at the thought of free falling doing a canyon swing, h... [More]
Day 11: Cook Straight Crossing and Te Papa 03 November 2009 Ryan As our ferry crossing was at 8AM, we were up at 5:30 so we could shower and hit the road by 7 for the 30 minute drive to Picton, the South Island ferry port. The drive as well as the crossing were pretty much a non-event and we disembarked in Wellington with no problems. Paul had told us yesterday t... [More]
Day 10: Blenheim 02 November 2009 Ryan We had set up our pick-up with Nigel from Wine Tours By Bike for 9:45 in the morning. After squaring away the campervan, we walked out onto the street of the holiday park just as Nigel was pulling up. Great timing. He picked up one more couple who were visiting from Holland and we set off for his ho... [More]
Day 10: Blenheim 02 November 2009 Jenny Wine Tour By Bike today. I think that is enough said. I'm feeling it in my head and my legs (oh, am I feeling it in my legs... and my butt... and... well, you get the picture - I'm sore! tomorrow is going to be painful). Will post photos and more details soon. Mike D., we have a bottle to share, so ... [More]
Day 9: Kaikoura 01 November 2009 Ryan I didn't sleep much last night. A part of it was due to how close we had parked to the beach. The rising tide and the crashing surf getting closer woke me up every few hours. I was able to take some pictures showing just how close the water line was getting to us around 2:30 this morning, which I th... [More]