Walking to Ebor Falls

We are in Australia at last and have driven north from Sydney to a little town, high in the Blue Mountains of New South Wales, called Guyra. Marion’s sister, Maggie, lives here and we looking forward to spending Christmas together for the first time since before we were married. Note the sexy sun hats, essential in the outback.



We spent Friday exploring the Ebor Falls along the Waterfall Way. It was only a short walk, but the views and wildlife were spectacular. The wildlife here is far more abundant than in NZ.

You can see why the blue mountains are given their name with the blue haze coming off the gum trees.
Along the track, there were birds, insects and reptiles everywhere. This is, I think, an Australian Magpie. They are just as cheeky as their namesakes in the UK, shamelessly begging picnickers for their food.

Marion’s favourite bird so far is the Crimson Rosella

While Maggie likes the Kookabura because of its call which sounds just like a laughing chimpanzee.

You have to keep looking everywhere if you don’t want to miss anything; this little lizard was enjoying a sunbath on a rock but still enjoyed having his picture taken.

The Ebor Falls

After a short but very enjoyable walk through the bush we came across the beautiful Ebor Falls. They are made up of a series of three gorgeous waterfalls flowing over an escarpment, several hundred feet high.

This, the highest flow of water leads directly onto the middle waterfall

and then onto the lowest and longest of the three falls which flows into the valley far below.

Christchurch

Our final destination in New Zealand was it first city, Christchurch. We rarely enjoy city life but our stay here was a delight from beginning to end. It started well with a traffic warden giving us directions instead of a ticket for stopping in a no stopping zone.

We found a delightful city centre hotel, The Rydges, with a great view over the river Avon and the botanical gardens.

The hotel was just around the corner from the Cathedral Square, the heart of the city. There was something going on here all the time. This was a lunchtime concert.

We enjoyed window shopping, the restaurants and the tram ride that wound its way through the must see sights.

On our last full day, as our feet cried out for a rest, it started to rain, gently at first and then the rain came down in sheets often raining along rather than down. Luckily we were in our room when it began, from time to time we watched the storm develop as we started to prepare for our flight tomorrow.

A couple of hours later it was still raining and we noticed that the river was filling up.

Later when we ventured out for dinner at an Italian restaurant next door we found the roads had begun to flood too. We had to pick our way carefully through the puddles.

By the next morning all was back to normal and the trams were running to schedule, full of happy tourists once more.

Sadly it was time to say good-bye to Christchurch and New Zealand. We have enjoyed every minute of our trip and only wish we had time to see more of the beautiful scenery and delightful people.

The Oamaru Penguins

On the East coat of the New Zealand's south island is a small seaside town with little to make it worth a stop apart from two colonies of penguins. The smaller colony of almost extinct Yellow Eyed Penguins is watched over and cared for by an enthusiast, Denis Dove.


Denis has been working with penguins for many years, initially with the Blue Penguin Colony, where he established and managed an organisation, set up to conserve the penguin colony while making the birds accessible to the public. Having retired from that job he spends his retirement doing what he can for the much smaller group of Yellow eyed Penguins. He gave us a short introduction to the workings of the penguin year and then took us along a cliff path into the middle of the colony.


Perched half way up the beach cliff is one family group of penguins in a nesting box.

This is the only box in the colony this year, but next year Denis will use more as it seems to make things a little easier for the birds. This year there were seventeen chicks that successfully hatched, but after a bad storm two nests were washed away and four chicks were lost. With so few birds in the colony, they need a little help if they are to survive.

We were amazed to see the birds scaling this cliff and to see how fast they were doing it.

The other colony is much larger with several hundred Blue or Fairy Penguins nesting this year. Blue Penguins are special because they are tiny weighing in at only one kilogramme when full grown, reaching about thirty centimetres high.

We watched about a hundred of them come ashore, meet and greet friends they had not seen for some time or maybe just to recount the adventures of the days twenty five kilometre fishing trip. Some feat for a tiny bird!

We were not allowed to photograph the birds as the flashes and infra-red rangefinder lights upset the birds but you can find out about the colony at www.penguins.co.nz.

Wanaka

As we left Fox the heavens opened and it poured and poured all the way to Wanaka, a holiday town in the middle of the south of the island. As we pulled into our motel, the rain stopped and we had a lovely afternoon in and around the town.

As well as the shops we visited a local microbrewery, the Wanaka Brewerworks run by a Californian, with the inevitable tasting at the end of the visit. Our evening was spent very pleasantly in one of the many town restaurants.

The next morning, the sun was out again and we set out to conquer Mount Iron, a fairly gentle climb according to the Lonely Planet guidebook! After a long steep climb we finally reached the summit and were very grateful to see the picnic table vacant so we could take the weight off our feet. The views of the Lakes Waneka

and Hawea,
the towns Waneka and Albert and of course the surrounding mountains made the climb well worth while. We now understand why the Maori call New Zealand the land of the Long White Cloud.
In the afternoon we took a stroll around a small part of the lake and enjoyed another set of spectacular views of the surrounding snow capped mountains.

The Fox Glacier (Part One)

After our stop at Punakaiki we headed south along the spectacular coast road on the way to the Fox glacier. We had seen a glacier in the Rockies where huge buses with nine feet balloon tyres took us onto the glacier. We were able to walk around and peer into the ultra violet blue of the ice thousands of years old, watch it melt and taste the cold, pure water.

Here the situation is very different. The glacier was advancing not so many years ago and it is possible to walk to the wall of ice at its end. To get higher onto the glacier entails a very long guided hike up the valley or a helicopter flight.


We had booked a flight over the glacier and up to the peak of Mount Cook because we were not sure we would have time to drive around the Southern Alps to see New Zealand’s tallest peak from the other side. When we arrived in the town of Fox, the weather had closed in and we could see the cloud base half way up the mountains. The weather forecast for the next day was poor so it seemed we were out of luck.

We drove off to find a motel for the night and were very pleasantly surprised to discover that another helicopter was still flying ant that the visibility was great above the clouds. After some negotiation, a thirty minute flight for the price of a ten minute one and nothing to pay until after the flight we were off.

We did not fly up the fox glacier but another valley that rose above the cloud to give us brilliant views of Mount Cook and Mount Tasman as well as the head of the Fox glacier and the whole of the Tasman glacier. Above the cloud the sun shone brightly on Mount Cook
Once we on the eastern side of Mount Cook the cloud disappeared completely and we had an amazing flight seeing more than we had hoped for half an hour before.
Someone seemed to be keeping an eye on us!

The Fox Glacier (Part Two)

As well as seeing Mount Cook from all sides we also had spectacular views of

Mount Tasman

and it’s glacier from top

to bottom

and the top of the Fox glacier too.

If by any chance you arrive in Fox looking for a company to show you the sights we can heartily recommend "Mountain Helicopters" who were able to fly when everyone else had shut up shop. They were able to carry on flying because they changed their routes and filed new flight plans.

They can be contacted by email at mjglynn@xtra.co.nz and have a website at www.mountainhelicopters.co.nz.

The next morning before the rain set in we walked up to the end of the glacier so we could see the bottom of Fox as well as it's top.

The Punakaiki Pnacake Rocks

One of the sights we had planned to see were the pancake rocks at Punakaiki. No one knows why the rocks seem to form layers of pancakes piled on top of each other but the effect is bizarre. The rocks have subsequently been eroded into many varied forms;

A bird table.

A chimney that smokes when the waves arrive in just the right way.

Smoke that makes you wet.

Just who does he remind you of?

Tauranga Bay Seal Colony

After the Swingbridge we continued to the west coast and almost immediately came across a sign for the Tauranga Bay Seal colony. As Marion had missed the seals in the Abel Tasman Park, she was keen to see these seals in the wild. We were not to be disappointed.




We walked from the end of the bay to the top of a cliff which put us about forty feet above the seals. They seemed totally unaware of the well behaved observers and carried on as only seals can.

How manhy seals can you spot in this shot?

The Swingbridge

From the Abel Tasman Park we drove to the west coast via the Upper Buller Gorge through the Brunner Range of mountains. The highlight of this part of the journey was to visit the longest swingbridge in New Zealand. Since my balance has started to deteriorate I do feel very uncomfortable in unstable situations. A rope bridge one hundred and ten metres long certainly raises my adrenalin levels but Marion loves these situations so we had to take a look.


It didn’t look too bad from this side so we paid our fee and went for it.

At this moment I am not feeling too happy but holding on tight, very tight, off go.

I may be smiling but look at those knuckles! Just after this picture was taken the bridge started to shake and sway as a rather large guy from the USA started to tramp like a bull in a china shop across the bridge. Hold tight keep going and remember that there are some nice Americans.

The views on the bridge were spectacular but I saw far more of them on the way back, it was far less stressful, almost enjoyable.

On the other side of the river, a small circular walk took us through some old gold mine sites and along the picturesque river bank. The walk steadied the nerves just enough to cross the bridge again.