Skydiving - the video!

Here I am in action tumbling towards earth!!!

You may want to turn your volume down before you play the video - the backing music is pretty loud!

June conquers Vertigo!

Here's proof that June managed the climb up Mount Ngauruhoe. What a star!

Mark and June climb Mount Doom

Here we are re-enacting a scene from Lord of the Rings on the slopes on Mount Doom. Its one of the most emotional moments of the film - I hope we did it some justice! I think you'll agree that June's impersonation of Sam is uncanny!

A long hard day!

Mount Doom
Originally uploaded by mark&june

If you ever go sky-diving, don't plan on doing something early the next morning!

I was so excited after the sky-dive that I didn't get to sleep until 2.30am. This wouldn't have been a problem if we hadn't planned to walk the Tongariro Crossing the next day, which involved getting up at 5.30 in the morning!

The Tongariro Crossing is described as the best one day hike in New Zealand, and is a 7-8 hour walk through stunning volcanic landscapes. An optional side-track is the climb to the summit of Ngauruhoe volcano, which was made famous as Mount Doom in the Lord of the Rings. The sign-posts said this would add 3 hours to the walk, but it took us 4 hours to clamber up and slide down it. The climb up was really strenuous and a bit scary - it certainly felt a lot more dangerous than either bungy-jumping or sky-diving! June did amazingly well doing the climb, especially as she suffers from vertigo! It really was a hard-slog getting to the top - if I was Frodo I would have been tempted to put the ring in a drawer and hope for the best.

Although it was great to have reached the summit, there was still another 6 hours of walking ahead of us. Unfortunately my old skiing knee-injury started hurting near the top, and June had a sore ankle, knee and wrist, so the last 15km were a bit of a struggle to say the least! The views were stunning though, and we eventually got back to the car at 7:45pm, after more than 12 hours of walking!

Needless to say we're having a really quiet day today......

On an All Time High!

Flying without wings
Originally uploaded by mark&june

As you can see from the photo, I did it!

I wasn't expecting to go sky-diving until tomorrow, but we got back to Taupo a bit earlier than planned and the sun was shining, so I thought I might as well go for it!

We went along to Taupo airport and I was given a quick briefing before being suited up. The plane took about 20 minutes to reach 12,000 feet, and before I knew it I was sitting at the edge of the plane about to fall to earth.

Luckily I wasn't on my own, as a Swedish guy called Patrik was strapped to my back. We were in free-fall for 45 seconds, and the experience was awesome : the wind was rushing past me, the G-forces were pretty strong, and the ground seemed to be coming up to meet me pretty quickly. I was shouting and laughing with sheer joy - it was incredible!

We plummeted 7,000 feet before Patrik opened the 'chute and we floated slowly to earth. Patrik let me operate the "controls" for a while, and we had great fun spinning down in circles.

It wasn't at all scary and I would recommend it to everyone! Absolutely one of the best experiences of the trip (and my life) so far!


There's a few more photos over on Flickr, and hopefully I'll manage to put the video up soon.

In Hot Water

Hi everyone!

 

We've had a great few days exploring the geo-thermal hot-spots of the North Island. After Napier we headed to Taupo, where the plan was to go on a hike through the volcanic landscape and (for Mark) to go sky-diving, but unfortunately the weather wasn't great at the weekend so we changed our plans and headed north up to Rotorua, which is the centre for geysers, hot springs and mud-pools. We saw some really beautiful sights and enjoyed relaxing in thermal pools and waterfalls. The geysers were pretty cool, although very different to the ones we'd seen in Iceland. Instead of erupting periodically they seemed to gush incessantly for hours on end.

 

As you can tell from the blog below we also went zorbing in Taupo, which was great fun. We changed into our swimming costumes and climbed into the 11ft balls, which were partially filled with water. We were then pushed down the hill, rolling head over heels until we hit the bottom!

 

This morning we came back down to Taupo. See the blog above for details of what I got up to this afternoon!

Zorbtastic!

June on a roll
Originally uploaded by mark&june

Hi everyone. We're just back from having rolled down a hill in a giant rubber ball. It's called "zorbing" and was really great fun. The picture above is of June on the way down!

We've had a great couple of days in Rotorua - we'll add some more details soon - internet connection runs out in 1 minute! Bye!

No room at the inn(ings)

Hi everbody!

We're in Napier right now, which is on the east coast and is a really pretty town. It was devastated by an earthquake in 1931 and was re-built from scratch in the early thirties, the majority of it in Art Deco style. Its gorgeously sunny today so we're having a nice relaxing wander around.

On the journey up here yesterday we heard on the radio that the One Day International between England and NZ was in progress in Napier. I was hoping that we could get here in time to find somewhere to stay and then pop along for the last couple of hours of the match. How wrong I was! We spent a fruitless hour trying to find somewhere to stay, and even visited neighbouring towns looking for somewhere. One motel operator told us that because of the cricket the nearest available beds were in Taupo, a two hour drive away! We decided that our only option was to sleep in the car, and thought that we might as well do so in a camp-site so we'd have access to showers etc. We rolled up at the Hastings holiday camp, and were over-joyed to find that they had a cabin available! It even had a little TV in it, so we could meet our Wednesday night rendezvous with Lost! Needless to say we didn't see the cricket - a shame as it sounded like a great game.

Tomorrow we're heading west towards the volcanoes and lakes on the Taupo region. I'm hoping to go sky-diving there, but will see if I have the nerve or not!

We've uploaded a few photos from Wellington (including one of me in elf ears!) - see the North Island link on the right. We had a really nice time in the city. Although its not as stunning as Sydney it had a really nice feel to it. We had a drive round the "Wellywood" studios but didn't see anyone famous, although we did have one evening meal in Viggo Mortensen's favourite restaurant!

The Iron Duke

Hello from Wellington! We sailed across to the North Island on
Saturday and have spent a very enjoyable few days in the nation's
capital. After a couple of weeks in the countryside its been a nice
change to be in a big city again.

We've continued our tour of the world's government buildings with a
visit to the NZ parliament, which is made up of a mixture of classical
and modern architectural styles, the latter embodied in the famous
'bee-hive' building. There are lots of similarities to the UK and
Australian parliaments, except that the kiwis did away with the upper
house in the fifties as it didn't add much value and cost too much to
run!

We've also been to a few museums, including the excellent Te Papa, and
popped into the National Archives which house the Waitangi Treaty,
which was signed between the British and the Maoris in 1840.
Apparently there have been long disputes about how the Treaty was
implemented, but overall there seems to be a lot more integration here
than with the Aborigines in Australia. Before this trip we assumed
that the Maoris and the Aborigines were more or less the same, but
that is far from the case. The Maoris arrived in NZ about 800 years
ago, but the Aborigines have been in Oz for 50,000 years and were
pretty much cut off from the rest of the world for most of that time.
That lengthy isolation may have something to do with their desire to
maintain their traditional way of life.

Anyway, that's enough history lessons for one blog! We're managing to
have some fun as well, and have enjoyed eating and drinking our way
round the city. Tomorrow I'm off on another LOTR trip, while June gets
her hair cut and no doubt enjoys a few hours peace and quiet!

Look me in the eyes

Walking on water
Originally uploaded by mark&june

Hi from June in a wet and windy Kaikoura!

Its not all wall-to-wall sunshine out here as you might imagine from the photos we post, though to be honest it has been pretty beautiful weather in NZ - much better than we had expected.

Yesterday we woke early to a lovely calm sea and sunny day which was just about perfect for our Dolphin Encounter. I wasn't sure what to expect and was a bit worried that it might not be quite the right thing to do to try to swim with these wild animals.

Once we were kitted out in our wet suits we watched a briefing film explaining that they are wild and if they don't want to play with you they won't, definately don't touch them and basically if they find you interesting they'll play.

After about 25 minutes boat ride we came upon a big pod of dusky dolphins, they reckoned there were about 400 of them - what an amazing sight - they were swimming along with the boat, jumping out of the water, doing back flips and sommersaults and we just slipped off the back of the boat with our flippers and snorkles in amongst them.

They had recommended we try to make eye contact and make nosies to attract the dolphins' attention - I got the tune of the Chattanooga Choo Choo into my head and hummed that incessantly which seemed to do the trick and soon I had 4 or 5 dolphins swimming beside and around me making their little clicky noises. A couple of times I concentrated on just one and and we kept together for 30 seconds - a minute maybe, swimming round in circles diving down and back up but I quickly ran out of breath and stopped humming and they were off.

I couple of times I bumped into Mark and we just grinned inane snorkly grins at each other and set off to find our dolphin friends again.

I feel absolutely fine now about having swum with them. They aren't tempted to come to the boat in any way - they're not fed or enticed and they weren't performing for us, they were just doing what they do and seemed briefly interested in us - and the feeling of looking into their eyes and them looking back at you as you're swimming along is something I'll remember for a long time.

Slow down, you move too fast....

Hello again! This evening we find ourselves in Kaikura, which is a town famous for its off-shore whale and dolphin populations. We're really looking forward to going swimming with the dolphins tomorrow morning - hopefully they'll be feeling in a friendly mood!

 

We've spent the last few days travelling along the north coast of the South Island. Our first stop was the Abel Tasman National Park, which was good but didn't quite live up to the expectations we had based on the photos we've seen. We went for a walk along the coastal track, hoping to admire the beautiful beaches and green-blue sea, but the track was so enveloped by trees that we only got brief glimpses of the sea! We did visit a couple of beaches and went for a ride on a water-taxi, but it wasn't quite the paradise we had hoped for! Maybe the overcast weather had something to do with it.

 

Much more enjoyable was the trip to the far north west, where a huge spit of sand stretches out into the sea. We visited some stunning beaches with beautiful sand dunes and wild seas, and had great fun jumping off the dunes - hopefully we'll load some of the photos tomorrow.

 

Next stop was Nelson, which is a cool town with lovely cafes and restaurants. We spent one night in the town and then spent last night with Eileen and Rob in their gorgeous house in the country. It really was a beautiful place, set in 5 acres of land with views in all directions to the mountains and sea. Unbelievably the house isn't worth much more than our little terrace in England. We had a great time with them, and I even really enjoyed the vegetable lasagne, which is something I didn't think I'd ever say.

 

Before I sign off I have a confession to make - I have a New Zealand criminal record! A few days ago we were happily driving along when an un-marked police car behind us put on its lights. To my surprise I was speeding! We've spent the last month crawling along in our hire car, being overtaken by everybody, so it was a real shock to find we were driving at 67kph in a 50 area. In my defence, m'lud, the speed limits seem to be pretty random over here - one minute it's 100, the next its 50, then its 70. No excuse of course, and I ended up with an $80 fine, but hopefully no points on my licence.

 

Will report back soon about the dolphin swim. Love to you all, and thinking of some of you especially right now.

Ice, Ice Baby

Morning everyone. The internet is painfully slow here so I'll keep it brief!

 

We've spent the last couple of days on the West Coast, exploring the Fox Glacier and Franz Josef Glacier. They were both really cool places (geddit?) and we enjoyed hiking to them, but the highlight was definitely a helicopter flight over them. The views were awesome and we landed on the Fox Glacier for a quick walk around. It was really beautiful and peaceful.

 

We're heading up to the top coast of the South Island this morning, to take in yet more stunning scenery at Abel Tasman National Park. We are continually amazed at how beautiful NZ is - it seems that round every corner there's something amazing to behold. We've uploaded some more photos if you want to take a look.

 

Today marks 5 months since we left the UK. We've done and seen so much, but at the same time it also seems to be going quite quickly. We often count our blessings that we've been able to take this trip - its an amazing experience. Thanks NU!

Its a Small(ey) World

June, Rob and Eileen
Originally uploaded by mark&june

Hello all, and greetings from Wanaka! We've spent the last 3 days here - its an incredibly gorgeous town about an hour north of Queenstown, and like most of the places we've been to is on a lakeside and surrounded by mountains. Its a really beautiful, relaxing and cool place. After a few days in backpacker's we've been staying in a lovely studio with its own garden, which has made our time here even better.

Yesterday we had one of the most enjoyable days of our trip so far. In the morning we visited Puzzling World, which has a great 3-D maze to get lost in, and a number of rooms built at strange angles to confuse the senses and make it look like balls were rolling up hill. We spent 3 very happy hours there and left with big grins on our faces!

Later on we went to the 'Cinema Paradiso' to see No Country For Old Men. The film was great but the cinema was even better. It didn't have traditional cinema seats but was filled with sofas and lazy-boys, and there was an interval half-way through the film to go and get cakes and coffees. It was the most comfortable cinema we've ever been in!

In the evening we went out for dinner with none other than Rob and Eileen Searle. Those of you who worked at NU / L&E might remember Eileen as Eileen Smalley, Gordon Dunse's PA. Rob worked upstairs in the business. They moved out to NZ about 3 years ago and just happened to be holidaying in Wanaka at the same time as us, and June spotted them walking down the street as we were sitting having a coffee! It was a bizarre coincidence and it was great to catch up with them and learn about their (seemingly idyllic) lives in NZ. They live at the top of the South Island, so if our timing works out we hope to visit them again next week.

We've loved being in Wanaka so much that we even spent some time looking in estate agents' windows and doing some sums. At the end of the day NZ is probably a bit too far away from home for us, but otherwise this place feels pretty perfect.....