TravelStream™ news feed for member travelburnett on TravelPod's free travel blogs service http://www.travelpod.com/syndication/rss/travelburnett en-us Copyright ©2009 TravelPod.com Sun, 04 Jan 2009 17:37:59 -0500 http://www.travelpod.com http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/travelburnett/1/1230463200/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/travelburnett/1/1230463200/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/travelburnett/1/1230463200/tpod.html Sun, 04 Jan 2009 17:37:59 -0500 A mid life gap

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Auckland, North Island, New Zealand

It is a big day today as we are going to help the girls buy a van to carry them round New Zealand. Every Sunday there is a second hand car market in Auckland at Ellerslie Racecourse and it is apparently an ideal place to pick up backpacker transport. Their plan is to buy a small van with a platform in it for a mattress allowing room for storage undeneath. Claire has researched it and is confident that she will get something for less than their joint budget. I am rather pessimistic about how this is going to work and have a broken night's sleep last night as a result of that and a disco in a nearby restaurant. We get there just as the market starts and sellers are streaming in. There are at least a dozen vans that the girls can look at with prices well within their range. Most are being sold by people who are clearly small time traders despite their denials. They have rudimentary sleeping platforms and many have some plates, pans and cheap cookers. There are lots of other cars and clearly local people buy here too. More importantly there is an on-site independent inspection service which will give the vehicle an assessment before you buy for $140 (about £55). We pick a 1988 Toyota van which ticks most of the boxes although its exhaust is a bit smokey. Lots of vehicles are imported second hand into NZ from Japan where they also drive on the left. This was probably originally one of those. It drives easily. The mechanic looks at it for an hour then gives me a comprehensive debrief. He says that it needs about $280 worth of work including some new brake hoses and that the smoking is just because the engine oil hasn't been changed and is sludgy, That is apparently a common problem with these vehicles as no-one bothers to service them, He is pretty confident that a oil flush and some additive should sort it. I am still anxious about it so we move on and look at others. At these prices the van won't be perfect but we do want it to be safe and as reliable as possible. Our next choice is a diesel automatic van of similar age. The inspection shows that it ought to have $600 worth of work but that there would still be a slight question over the gearbox. The seller won't drop the price by that amount so we walk away. Eventually we return to the first van and negotiate a price reduction to take account of the work needed and more. The inspecting mechanic seems straightforward and agrees to do the work tomorrow for less than he originally suggested. We go with the seller to the post office in a nearby shopping centre (open on a Sunday!) to transfer the registration, the girls pay him $2000 (£750) and the van is theirs. The inspections won't be foolproof but even having paid for two of them, they seem like a good investment. After lunch we spend quite a lot of time in the same shopping centre sorting out sheets, plates, storage boxes etc. Mikki drives the van back to near our hotel, parks it neatly, turns the engine off, tries to turn it on again and..... nothing. The interior lights come on and the dashboard lights flicker but there is no activity from the starter motor. I feel terrible. I have guided the girls to buy something that is going to be unreliable. Even worse, there was an AA stand at the fair that I should have made them sign up to straight away. The girls set off to walk to the nearby city centre AA office and reach it as just after it closes. When they return to our hotel, Claire discovers that she has lost her mobile phone. Morale is at a low ebb. Several phone calls later, we get the AA out. The problem is dirty loose battery connections and is easily fixed. They are now signed up for breakdown cover. We also go online and arrange some basic insurance (not compulsory here). By the end of this we are all pretty worn out. I think that the girls could have done a lot of this on their own but it would have been hard and the risks are significant. We have tapas in another quayside restaurant and arrange to meet the girls tomorrow morning before we go our seperate ways.
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Henley-on-Thames, England, United Kingdom

We're met at Heathrow by our kind friends Pete and Julie who have dragged themselves out of bed to collect us. And that's it. End of the 3 month trip.We've had a great time with too many highlights to properly list. The cycle from Thailand to Laos stands out as exceptional because of the combination of demanding exertion and seeing parts of the country that few other tourists visit.  New Zealand stands due to the scenery and the positive, can-do attitude of just about everyone we met. We only regretted one stop, St Albans in Australia but it was still a memorable experience. Surprisingly, considering the active nature of the trip, a jellyfish sting was the only significant injury.So it's back to the day jobs. Until next time.
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Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Claire and Mikki walk round from their hostel with their packs and we install them in their van. It starts first time and after an emotional farewell they head off with our Hertz map to find the mechanic who is to give it a service. We go to feed the meter for our car and find Claire's missing phone flashing on the back seat in full view. She had been about to buy a new one, so we ring Mikki and arrange to meet up again on our way to the airport. The girls are in good spirits and excited about the next stage of their journey. Claire is happy to be reunited with her phone again. We present them with a lamp for the van then leave them to it. Our flight back to the UK goes via Sydney and Singapore and with stops is due to take ove 30hr so we know that we are in for the long haul. Our luggage is booked right through from Auckland. When we arrive in Sydney we find that the flight that our schedule shows as leaving for Singapore 3hr later is now not due to leave for a further 4hr after we had expected, giving us a 7hr stopover. I go to the transfer desk as there is another flight on the same route leaving earlier. It is fully booked. We try to put be positive: if you are travelling for 30hr, what is an additional 4? Experience suggests that getting upset at these common travelling hiccups doesn't help. We go to check emails. There had been no notification of the change. I check our trip details on the Qantas website. It still shows us travelling on the Singapore flight at the time that we had originally expected but flicking down the page, I see that it also shows us travelling on a different flight to London at the same original time, but via Bangkok. That flight leaves in just under 1.5hrs. We rush back to the transfer desk where we speak to a different person. He checks: yes, we can take that flight. Our bags are already booked through on the later plane so as he spends time sorting that out, we chat. He notices that I was born in Barnstaple. He has been researching his family tree and his great grandfather was a vicar there. His great grandmother on the other side lived to be 135 in Iran where longevity is apparently common. He has several theories to explain it: v healthy high salad, low meat diet and very high saffron intake. He passes us over our new boarding cards and I see that they are for the business cabin. Janice hadn't noticed and was surprised at the degree of my gratititude when we left the desk. We nip up to the business lounge for a bit of light grazing to fortify us for the next leg. It takes about 11hr to reach Bangkok where we have a stop over at about 0600 New Zealand time. We have now been awake for 24hr. Janice and I have passed through this airport four times in this trip. Just about everyone else in the business cabin gets off here and when we reboard, only about a quarter of the seats are taken. Apparently economy and first class are full. We manage to get a few hours sleep on the flat beds wearing our Qantas issue pyjamas.
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Coopers Beach, North Island, New Zealand

In Manapouri we check e-mails. Janice had sent out a Christmas message to our local friends and her in box is full of replies. Claire checks out more information on van buying. After lunch we head for Whangaroa, another picturesque village round the coast. It is a big game fishing centre and the marina has plenty of boats with chairs bolted to the deck at the back with sockets for fishing rods. You can imagine Hemingway pulling in a marlin. We do a steep walk up to St Paul's rock above the town. The final section involves hauling ourselves up with chains but the view more than rewards us. Back at the beach, the girls demonstrate their boogie board skills. I put on a frankly masterful display of surfing brilliance. The girls tell me it is "gnarly". Dinner involves using up the contents of the fridge prior to leaving tomorrow. We eat a lot of onions cooked on the barbecue hotplate. In the evening we play board games and charades
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Coopers Beach, North Island, New Zealand

After breakfast we phone the UK and open presents before getting the kayaks out for another paddle in the bay. For lunch we cook bacon and French toast on the barbecue and then relax for the rest of the afternoon. Christmas dinner is another barbecue special: sausages and chicken breasts but with bread sauce and cranberry jelly, all eaten in the evening sun on the deck Happy Christmas.
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Auckland, North Island, New Zealand

The week with Claire and Mikki at the rental house, Coopers Sands, has been a big success. It is getting time for them come out from under the parental wing to strike out on their own, We drive back down towards Auckland. This is the Saturday after Christmas and is clearly the day of the big Kiwi holiday getaway. The long school holidays in Australia and New Zealand are from late December to February. We pass a lot of traffic heading in the other direction, some of the cars towing huge boats. There are tailbacks stretching several km in the other direction at a couple of junctions. We begin to wonder if anyone will be left in Auckland when we get there. We cross the Auckland Harbour Bridge and orbit the city centry one way system a couple of times looking for the girl's hostel. It turns out that it has changed its name since the issue of the latest Lonely Planet guidebook. That causes some confusion but eventually we find it and drop Claire, Mikki and their packs outside. We are booked into the Sebel, a hotel 500m away. It was an internet deal and turns out to be rather nice. We have a suite with a balcony looking out directly onto the harbour. The girls come round. They have checked into their dorm and have already been chatting to fellow travellers. We have our meal sitting outside in the evening sunshine at Ynot, a quayside restaurant.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/travelburnett/1/1230116640/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/travelburnett/1/1230116640/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/travelburnett/1/1230116640/tpod.html Tue, 30 Dec 2008 06:09:02 -0500 A mid life gap

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Coopers Beach, North Island, New Zealand

In the morning we do last minute Christmas shopping in Kerikeri. On the way in, we drive behind a campervan with a for sale sign in the back that looks as if it would suit the girls. I tailgate it to try to see a phone number, probably terrifying the driver, but without success. In Kerikeri we dodge each other in shops as we buy presents. There is a card in the supermarket advertising the van that we spotted earlier. Claire phones up but she finds that it is being taken for a test drive at that moment and doesn't hear any more. Christmas is certainly celebrated here but the run up seems less manic and not as commercialised as in the UK. After lunch we take the house's sea kayaks out into the bay. They are moulded plastic and very buoyant. The trick seems to be to get in them at the shoreline and paddle like crazy to get through the waves to the calmer water before you are upended. In the evening the girls make a Christmas tree using a camera tripod decorated with ferns, pohutukawa flowers and card shapes covered with silver foil. Valerie Singleton would be proud.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/travelburnett/1/1230030000/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/travelburnett/1/1230030000/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/travelburnett/1/1230030000/tpod.html Tue, 30 Dec 2008 06:03:24 -0500 A mid life gap

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Coopers Beach, North Island, New Zealand

We meet up with the tour coach at the Giant Kauri Museum for a trip up the northern peninsula of north island. We are going by coach as part of the tour involves driving on the Ninety Mile Beach, classified as a public road but forbidden to hire cars. The peninsula was originally several islands, mainly consisting of sand dunes. Huge Kauri trees grew undisturbed for thousands of years until they were all knocked down, probably by a tsunami, long before man arrived. The dunes blew over them and they have been preserved in marshes since. Early settlers harvested the resin (gum) from the trees for use in the varnish and linoleum industries. At first they could just pick up lumps that were lying in the ground but when that ran out they would dig down up to 18ft looking for it. Now the trees are dredged out of bogs, dried out and the wood is used to make furniture and ornaments. The driver's commentary gives interesting background about the local history and economy and we stop off at several places on the drive north. The weather progressively deteriorates and by the time we reach the north coast, there is horizontal rain reminiscent of John O'Groats. We have a picnic lunch in the coach as it is too wet to eat outside. There are several people camping at the picnic spot and some bedraggled touring cyclists. Our hearts went out to them. The lighthouse at the northernmost point, Cape Reinga, is windswept and as I am wearing shorts and a waterproof, the rain stings off my legs. A few km back down the road, the coach drives down a stream onto the beach on the western side. We stop by some giant sand dunes for some sand tobogganing. The beach is called the Ninety Mile Beach but is nearer sixty miles long. The reason that hire companies don't allow their cars to go on it is that occasionally people get the tides wrong or get bogged down in soft sand and as a testament to that we pass a couple of car carcasses. In the evening, we have excellent fish and chips in the Mangonui Fish Shop.
]]> http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/travelburnett/1/1229943300/tpod.html http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/travelburnett/1/1229943300/tpod.html#comments Travel Blogs http://www.travelpod.com/travel-blog-entries/travelburnett/1/1229943300/tpod.html Tue, 30 Dec 2008 06:00:09 -0500 A mid life gap

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Coopers Beach, North Island, New Zealand

Sunny weather and blue skies this morning so we head to Manganoui, a little town just round the coast of Doubtless Bay. It has is a small fishing port and a few shops. Several buildings date from the early settler days and have interesting plaques giving their history. The girls check the internet at the information centre and we book a tour to the North Cape for tomorrow. In the afternoon we relax at the house and Claire goes back to Mangonui for a haircut.
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Coopers Beach, North Island, New Zealand

We drive back down the road to Kerikeri, visit the supermarket and browse the Sunday Market for locally grown fruit and vegetables. Back at the house, we brave the sea for a swim have a barbecue on the deck in the evening. I am now a convert to gas barbecues. The evening's entertainment is a jigsaw. The girls started one and soon we are all drawn in round the table.
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