In Search of Elves

I am home. After 3 and a half months in New Zealand, I am home.

I am also totally disorientated!

I saw a church on the ride back from the airport and my first thought was 'look at that amazing OLD building.' It was like I had never seen something old before. It was also a shock to see winter with people buttoned up in coats. In NZ, the children are just going back to school after their summer holiday.

My flights back were extremely long and painful. But when I flew from Christchurch to Auckland I was put in the first class lounge as a treat, and there was a very good looking group of cricketers there(they were a regional NZ cricket team). I am afraid to say that I didn't flirt with a single one of them, however, because they were all very arrogant. But it was still fun to see them as I browsed the buffet.

I feel very lucky to have experienced such an incredible treat of a trip. It was a much needed and special trip and it has done it's job of giving me a break from winter, putting some fun into my life after experiencing a lot of pain last year, and giving me time to make some decisions about the future. I now have 1000+ photos to sort through and put into albums, e-mails to write, people to visit and sleep to catch up on. Thank you for joining me on my travels.

yawn. My dog is currently sitting on me. I don't think she will let me go away again for a good while yet. ;-)

Some fascinating facts about the Sperm whale. Did you know that it got it's name from the early whalers, because when they caught one and opened it up they found 2 1/2 tonnes of what they thought was semen in the whale's forehead. Can you imagine carrying 2 1/2 tonnes of semen in your forehead? ewwww.

In actual fact what is held in the forehead of the sperm whale is OIL. And it's use is pretty incredible. When they are at the surface, breathing, they cool it down, and it turns solid, letting them sink down to the bottom of the sea to feed. Once down on the bottom, using blood vessels they heat it up so it liquefies, meaning they float up to the surface. Both actions use the minimum amount of effort. Isn't that incredible? An internal buoyancy system.

As you can probably tell I have just been whalewatching.

I very nearly missed the bus to Kaikoura, but I arrived there on Saturday, unfortunately in terrible pain because of the walking around trying to find the bus stop that everyone thought was in a different location, and because the bus driver thought he would ignore all the rules of the road and overtake every little thing. There was even a U turn in a main street in Christchurch at one point! The weather looked terrible when we arrived. There was a 3 metre swell on the sea and severe seasickness warnings for anyone going out. I tried to get myself on a whalewatching tour thinking the next day would be worse, but gave up as the pain got worse. (read unbearable)

Sunday came around and miraculously was sunny. Amazingly I got myself on a morning tour - I was originally due to go out in the afternoon but everyone was saying the weather would be taking a turn for the worse.

To cut a long story short I saw two very cool sperm whales floating on the surface taking in oxygen after an hour long dive, and even better, lots of dolphins. How many?

5? No
10? No
100? No!!

The crew counted 415 dolphins around our boat!

It was just incredible and I got so many photos of them jumping in the air. They were the tiny Hector's dolphins, which are only found around the coast of New Zealand so it was even more magical. We spent ten minutes in their presence and it was just brilliant. They were all showing off like anything.

I got the bus back yesterday evening and spent the rest of the day in terrible pain; the worst it's been on my trip, but I'm so glad I got to experience that. It was amazing. My bus ride back was equally hairraising, and very twisty. But I got a bus earlier than expected so I got back at 7pm instead of 11pm.

I am glad to be back in this hostel - the one in Kaikoura was not so nice after this one here. I now have the job of squeezing everything into my suitcase for my flight to Auckland tomorrow. The flight home is on Wednesday. Because of the pain I am definitely looking forward to getting back, but what a trip it has been.

I have arrived in Christchurch. Well, at least I think I have. I hadn't seen one single sign anywhere saying 'Christchurch' so I'm having to guess that that is where I am.
I am in a really comfy cosy hostel, with lots of lavendar bedspreads and dvds to watch. (Muriel's Wedding last night). It is a perfect 'amost-last' hostel.
Today was great. I slept in because my drive yesterday wore me out. I then went to the Cathedral square and watched a singer called Flick Grater sing. I then listened to the Wizard speak (I will add a link later). He was talking about how you shouldn't follow God, money or nature but fairies. Quite right too I say.
I then went to the aquarium where I was deliriously happy for half an hour, it was GREAT. I saw the cutest Southern Pig fishes. Adorable. And rays, eels and sharks. And I also saw a KIWI!! It was so cool. The enclosure was kept in the dark so it looked like a little furry blob (like Cousin It from the Addams family) with a long white stick. It was fairly magical. 90% of kiwi chicks die in the wild. They are very rare and very shy.

I also went round the cathedral (culture!!! finally! I almost wept with relief) and at chocolate cake in the botanical gardens. It sounds like I did a lot but it was all in my wheelchair, which made it a lot easier. I couldn't have done any of it walking. But my hands hurt now!

I am off to Kaikoura tomorrow but the weather reports aren't good so whether I get to go out and see whales or not I don't know.

Today was a bit of a special, unexpected day. More of that in a second.

I have been feeling rubbish for the last week. However, a couple of days ago I made a good friend called Charlotte and that cheered me up. We spent two great days playing with a green chair. I should perhaps mention she was 18months old. Normally I don't play with chairs, even nice green ones. Last night I was sitting on a bean bag in front of the tv, feeling like I was about to cry I was in so much pain when she came up behind me and gave me a kiss on my cheek and shoved half a chewed caramel bisuit in my mouth. She was so cute. I am very broody now though!

So - today. I woke up after a day in bed yesterday and remarkably felt a bit better than I have all week. It was a beautiful sunny day too and so I rang a company on the offchance they were operating. They are called Southern Alps Air and I rang them a lot last week seeing if their plane trip from Wanaka to Milford Sound was operating. Every day they didn't have the numbers and I kept keeping my fingers crossed that they wouldn't even as I rang because of how I felt. But I rang today, and they had someone in the office at that moment asking to go, so they said to drive down and as long as the weather didn't change we could go up.

I was definitely unsure about driving to Wanaka considering how bad I have been feeling, but I so wanted to see Milford Sound; supposedly one of the most beautiful places on earth, so I covered myself in great swathes of sticking plaster (including my neck, which was a painful place to rip it off of at the end of the day).

I had the most brilliant drive down. I saw lake Pukaki, which has Mount Cook overlooking it. I was so excited, and had my music blaring so loudly I almost started jumping up and down out of excitement. Sometimes having a bad back saves me from embarrassing myself! I drove through absolutely gorgeous scenary and eventually got to Wanaka. There was one other woman (who I actually shared a room with in this hostel a week ago) and a family also waiting. We flew in a tiny, wobbly, old plane down to Milford Sound (I was petrified) and saw even more amazing sights. It was a bit hairy when we got to the Tasman sea - the breezes caught sight of us and decided to give us a good shake, but eventually we came in over Milford sound and landed.

I then did a boat trip down the length of the sound. It was beautiful. Even better, some DOLPHINS (hurrah!) were swimming and came and swam alongside the boat for a good 15 minutes which was fantastic. There was a mother and calf and around 10 other adults, all beautiful. We also saw fur seals and a penguin, plus several waterfalls. Milford Sound is famous for sandflies, but I wasn't bitten by one! Amazing! I did see some though and they were giants.

Finally we came back to where the plane was and flew back, passing lots of tents near a town called Glenorchy, which was the cast and crew of a new X Men film, which is filming out here at the moment. So cool!

I was Sooooo pleased to get back on the ground - those little planes terrify me. But the views were worth it. I had a very tiring, very sore drive back but I am off to bed now with an orange and have all day to rest here. Hopefully a trip to the hot pools will sort me out.

It was such a good day, and it so nearly didn't happen. I met several very grumpy tourists today, it did slightly dampen my spirits but they will soon be forgotten and I have so many photos and memories which will remain.

I had absolutely the most amazing night last night.

After a day in bed feeling wiped out I met a guy called Fraser at 9.30 and we drove out to lake Alexandrina. I then had three hours of astrophotography. He has $60,000 worth of equipment in terms of telescopes and cameras, which I got to use.

He set up the equipment and then showed me his very clever toy - it's a piece of software that knows exactly where all the stars, nebulas etc are. He tells it which one he wants to see and the telescope moves by itself until it has located the correct thing. It took about an hour to get each photo (I was out for three hours and completely froze my nuts off it was so cold) because we had to take several photos each time - with different exposures so they could be layered on the computer to get all the detail. We then edited them out there among the tussock grasses on his laptop with Photoshop; bringing out all the colours.

It was incredible. I love astronomy and I love photography so what a great mix. I saw the southern cross, and photographed things like the orion nebula and the tarantula nebula. I am so pleased with the photos - I thought we would be photographing constellations and wouldn't pick up much detail. But the end result in each case was stunning.

I am putting one photo here that I took - it's nowhere near one of the best but I want to save those to show them to people when I get home. And it's a big file, so I have no idea what will show up here. But it will give you an idea. My neck and elbow gave me a lot of trouble last night so I am off to the hot springs today. What a life! What a trip!! Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would experience a night like last night.