Hello to everyone again! Last time we posted it was new year, and we were waiting for our eldest son Ethan and his girlfriend Becky to arrive in New Zealand to come and pay us a visit.
So in this post we will tell you all about the wonderful time we had with them both. It was so nice to see them!
We were pretty much waiting on tenterhooks for their arrival, so we pottered around Queen Charlotte Sound. I say pottered, mostly we were just avoiding the crazy summer weather that they seem to be having this year in New Zealand. We had a blow at anchor that was a scary, 52 knots! The most we have ever experienced. The gusts were crazy, it was like a wall of water and spray that you could see coming towards you as the wind whipped up the sea in front of us. The anchor did drag, but thankfully we had enough room, and survived intact.
Here’s some pictures of us pottering about Queen Charlotte Sound. It really is a special unique place but quite a challenge too for boaties. There are lots of coves and inlets to explore, but all the shorelines are very steeply shelving to 40m or more within 200m of the shore which makes anchoring difficult.
We discovered the fantastic anchorage that is Resolution Bay, another of Cooks Anchorages when he arrived for his second trip to New Zealand in the ship Resolution. The sunsets there were really spectacular with the added bonus of starry nights and bioluminescence in mirror still waters.
At the anchorage there, it is easy to access the famous Queen Charlotte Track, and walk from Resolution Bay to Ships Coves, another of Cooks Anchorages. Its about an 8 mile round trip and I went off to explore one sunny day
I took this video of the walk!
Ethan and Becky actually arrived in New Zealand on the 4th January in to Auckland and took the first week of their holiday to work their way down North Island in a whistlestop tour.
They had a couple of days in Auckland…
They then headed down to Rotorua, where they also did a side trip to Hobbiton, both of them are keen Lord of the Rings fans, more so Ethan! They also saw some a Geothermal park and had a dabble at some extreme sports that New Zealand is famous for.
After that they drove down to Wellington for a wander around the Te Papa museum and a visit to Weta Studios
And then they jumped on a ferry to South Island and met us in Picton! It was a lovely moment to see them come walking off the ferry.
We had parked Azimuth in Picton Marina for the day to get the boat stocked up for their arrival and we planned to head out in to Queen Charlotte Sound for a few days to give them a flavour of the place.
We finally had some crew!
We headed back to Resolution Bay for a couple of nights.
Ethan was the perfect gentleman and rowed Becky all round the bay!
And we all went off to walk to Ships Cove one day.
Ethan and Becky got to experience night at anchor in this peaceful bay, seeing a star filled sky and the bioluminescence in the water.
The weather was to have other ideas for the next couple of days and it rained almost continuously, so we moved to one other anchorage in Hitaua Bay and played lots of games of Skipbo and Nomination Whist, drank beer and wine and just made the most of it. Ethan and Becky did take the dinghy out for a row in between rain showers and even got to see some stingrays!
After 4 days we headed back to Picton to park Azimuth in the marina, pick up a hire car and head out for a week to go and show Ethan and Becky some highlights of South Island.
Our first stop was Christchurch, after a drive down the coast through Blenheim and Kaikora. We wandered around the city for the afternoon, discovering a fantastic food market with a huge choice of food stalls from around the world. Ethan was able to indulge his passion for crepes! Then we headed for the botanical gardens later that day and literally stumbled upon a free outdoor performance of a comedy version of Lord of the Rings just before it started! Lord of the Rings in 90 minutes, which was very funny.
The next day we headed out towards the Southern Alps, with a lunchstop at a pie shop Ailsa and I had visited before to let Ethan and Becky sample the local pies. Fairlie Bakehouse!
The next stop was the spectacular blue water of Lake Tekapo
And we stopped the night in the little town of Twizzel, at the bottom of the road to Mount Cook, where we found a nice pub for a meal.
The weather was definitely getting better, and we had perfect weather the next day to visit Mount Cook and walk some of the tracks to see the views. Not a cloud in the sky! Here we are on the road driving towards it. We think Ethan might have been going stir crazy in the car?!
And here we are as close as we can get to Mount Cook on the walks.
We got lucky for sure to see this amazing place out of the cloud.
For the next night we stayed in a tiny place called Tarras in the middle of nowhere at a place called Gold Miners Cottage. Becky cooked us tea on the barby! They even hat an outdoor spa bath too.
The next day, we headed to Arrowtown, an old gold mining town, now a hive of tourists, but a very pleasant place all the same, and had lunch. Then we drove to Lake Wanaka for an ice cream before heading in to the little hamlet of Makora where we stayed in a bizarre Swiss chalet for the night and had a few beers at the campsite bar.
The next day we set out for the beautiful drive through the Haarst Pass stopping at the blue pools and thunder falls and on to the west coast at the foothills of the Southern Alps
We made a stop at the Hanz Joseph Glacier, but the rain and the mist came down and we couldn’t see it!
And finally we ended up at the historic empire hotel, a charming ramshackle place that Ailsa and I had stayed in, in the old gold mining town of Ross. Our intrepid explorers took the opportunity to seek there fortunes, panning in a nearby creek! When Ethan didn’t produce untold riches, Becky had him clamped in the local town stocks as punishment!
The weather improved the next day for a drive to Hokitika Gorge.
Then we headed for the night in the town of Reefton, where we had a little house on the edge of the town. We showed the guys around and went to a fantastic restaurant for pizza and sampled the local pubs. Ethan even got to play the honky tonk street piano…
The next day we wended our way back to Picton with a few stops along the way, one in St Arnaud
Wow the trip went quick! Really good fun to share it with these two!
It was a very sad day the next morning when we had to drop Ethan and Becky off at Blenheim airport for their 4 plane trip back to the UK. They thankfully had a smooth journey all the back to Belfast, a cold and wet Belfast apparently!
We hope they will come back and see us again soon? Perhaps the tropical south pacific somewhere?!
That’s all for now. Join us next time when we head on a little side trip (holiday?!) to Melbourne in Australia to reset our New Zealand visas.
Dom & Ailsa on Azimuth.