My Two Nights Behind Bars!

In Napier Backpackers Prison!

We'd heard along our travels of people staying in a hostel that used to be a prison, we'd also heard that it was suppose to be haunted but thought it'd be cool to stay in a prison cell all the same!

When we got there, the realisation hit us...this used to be a prison! You entered a big wooden solid door to get in the place being shown to our cell (cell 18) on the south wing, where the door that was bolted from the outside. Inside the cell itself was quite confortable! All around the place were clues it used to house criminals...a room called Death Row, messages and names carved into the walls, out the back there was the Hanging Yard and graveyard where those executed were buried standing up!

I wasn't that freaked out on my first night but then we did the Prison tour the next morning and learnt that the prison used to be a lunatic asylum before it was a prison. I suddenly got the shivers...if I had learnt anything from films, it's that ex-lunatic asylums spell trouble! I started watching where the hostel's cat's eyes lingered in the hanging yard (on a bird's nest as it turned out) and that night after dinner while watching Black Adder, a fellow traveller told of how people have heard voices and seen a ghostly woman walking through the corridors. It was not so easy to get to sleep that night, especially as I was straining my ears to hear something!

The rest of Napier town was rebuilt in the 1930's after the big 1931 erathquake so all the bulidings are Art-deco...very pretty!

Wellington Movie Tours: The Final Installment of our LOTR Tours!

Yes, our third and final Lord of the Rings tour took us out to the outskirts of the city and up on Mount Victoria. Our tour guide, Ted first showed us a plateau to overlook the city that also was the location of two scenes from the movies. The great thing about Ted's tour was he carried a laptop around with him (even in the rain that day) and showed us clips of the film so you could look at the scene, then look at the scenery and actually see it, instead of just pretending I could remember the scene they're talking about, it was right there in front of me!

So we saw a lot of scenes filmed on Mount Victoria from the first film used as the outer woods of Hobbiton: where the four hobbits tumble down and land in a heap on the road from the "Shortcut to Mushrooms" scene, the path where Frodo shouts "Get off the road!" (see picture above but have to imagine the hitchcock effect) and the scene where they all hide under a tree root from the black rider (did our own version - minus the tree which wasn't there)! We also did our own photo version of the tumbling hobbits with the provided handy props (including a well crafted broken carrot)! and directed by Ted. Such fun!

We also had time to see the boat used in King Kong where they had painted rust on to it, and now all that's left is the rusty-looking boat. We were told about up coming film projects and even had time to skulk outside the Weta Studios and take stalker-type pictures of the figurines (a mighty lifesize one of the orc Lurtz) they had up in the windows...including one from the film "Labyrinth"! Me and Jen saw it and squealed..."Labyrinth!", the two younger girls on the tour had no clue what the 80's film was! It was a sad, sad moment!

There and Back Again.

Well, soon...all too soon it was time to say goodbye to the beauty South and head up back to the North Island. After passing many a sheep (with their little lambs) as we cruised through the Marlborough plains, it was a hop on to the four hour ferry journey back to the looming cloud of Wellington city! Luckily the sun was out so I could enjoy the Marlborough Sounds along the way and once in Wellington we had a free meal to look forward to in the bar next to our Normads hostel: Nachos...yum!

Christchurch & Kaikorua

Back on the road and with a crazy, loco bus driver to boot. We spent the journey to Christchurch all doing the driver's crazy music quiz. It was tough with the likes of "Right Said Fred" popping up but me and Jen did pretty well or so we thought. Christchurch is basically the UK. It's a large uni city so we spent our time shopping!
Then it was on to Kaikoura, which was a sweet little town. We decided to spend a day walking around the Kaikoura Peninsula. The strangest thing happened...it was sunny and 18 degrees so we had to de-layer! The first time since arriving in New Zealand. Still nothing can get me to give up my cosy thermals yet! Well, perhaps Fiji will.

It was another long but really nice walk in the countryside and also by the pacific ocean. There were lots of sheep and some of them had cute little bouncing lambs. You could keep hearing these tiny little pathetic "baa's"...they were so sweet! Then we turned a corner to see the sheep walking by the sea shore - seemed a bit of an irregular sight and that was followed by looking beyond the sheep to the white rocks that were completely covered in fur seals! They looked like a load of black leeches from where I stood so out came the binoculars! It was cool to see so many of them and see them having fun in the sea! After that seal colony we came across another but before that I had another encounter with a cow...this one had a crazy look in its eye and not much separated us one I'd gone over the fence into it's field....But I think I successfully stared it down!

After a hard days walk, the next day was spent on the beach enjoying Kaikoura's famous Fish n'Chips! Now, my dad had told me about New Zealand's gangs, but he didn't tell me about the "Seagull" gang that surrounded us once they'd seen our food.

They edged nearer, flapping their wings menacingly but it seemed like a standoff that was going nowhere until one took the chance and swooped at Jen's fish and got some. She went crazy and ran at them, screaming! I looked on in shock - but it did the trick! That was until I took pity on one with a bad leg! I'll never learn!

Snow in August!

It was time to leave Dunedin behind for Lake Tekapo, which is on the other side of the Mount Cook we had previously been seeing from the west side. We stopped on route to see a very strange pale blue lake apparently the result of "rock flour" from glaciers but to me looked like blue bath milk.

We stayed in a little hostel along the lake front and the next day we woke up to snow! So we decided to climb the thus snow-capped Mount John (1031 metres)! Armed with muesli bars, an orange and cucumber sandwiches we began our ascent up through the snow! It was really pretty with the snow resting on the pine trees and the surrounding mountains now completely caked in snow. We took our time, finding fresh snow to tread upon, to have a snowball showdown (where we both missed each other...so useless!), making two miniature snowman by the path side plus there was even time to make a couple of snow angels! Then it was up the slippy, powdery snow to the top view point but with all the snow we'd gone off the path a bit - if only we'd had a sledge and huskies! But we soon made it up and had a fantastic panoramic view of the mountain range and lake to eat our sandwiches by.

It was then a more relaxing tramp down along the lake edge back to the hostel for a nice Sunday dinner of salmon, potatoes and broccoli spouts...all free thanks to a peculiar but generous woman from South London that off loaded her food on to us!

"Carla and The Chocolate Factory"

One last day wandering around Lake Wakatipu in Queenstown and a special treat to the fudge shop to pick up some Creme Brulee Fudge (yes it is as good as it sounds) then it was on the road again...this time to Dunedin via the Otago central region where we passed a lot of fruit and a lot of sheep! The scenery changed from the brown grasses back to fresh green fields. Dunedin is a very Scottish city and it's name actually means "New Edinburgh". It's a massive uni town set amongst hills but more importantly it's the land of Chocolate! It has the Cadbury World Chocolate Factory and does visitor tours which we of course were obliged to go see. It was great, the smell of it, the free chocolate, seeing them make Easter eggs (made June to January), more free chocolates and the finale...a 1 tonne water fall of Cadbury's milk chocolate. If it fell on you, it really would be death by chocolate. It was also an educational tour. I learnt loads, can't remember much now as the free chocolate probably rotted my brain...but I remember it was very interesting!

The next day it was time to walk off all the chocolate with a very long walk to Otago Peninsula, home to lots of wildlife! It took a few hours to actually walk there before we began the nature walk that went (to much of our dismay) up along a long muddy path with scattered sheep droppings, up through thorny, spiderweb infested bushes and up a steep, steep hill! But I really enjoyed it as the weather was gorgeous and views were lovely, if not a bit confusing; with a very English-looking countryside one side but the pacific ocean on the other. Its the only place you'd see Penguins walking amongst Sheep! After a close encounter with a crazy looking cow, we made it up to the War Memorial for lunch and a windy view of Dunedin before making our way down and a long walk back to the hostel with aching feet and covered in what I can only hope was just mud!

The next day was a mighty, brisk morning walk up the Steepest Street in the World: Baldwin Street, Dunedin, NZ. All this walking is going to make may legs drop off. We had heard it was a popular street the students raced each other down in shopping trolleys...idiots!

LOTR and Milford Sound!

Whilst in Queenstown it was also time to do a couple of trips. The first being another Lord of the Rings tour which turned out to be a great way to see the scenery out and about. It also turned out to be a personal guided tour as me and Jen were the only ones on it that day!

It was a fab little day spent driving to the various filming locations such as where Aragon fought the Orcs, where Sam and Frodo saw the Oliphants, where Isengard and Lothlorien where, where the flight to the ford and the kings pillars on the River Anduin were situated..plus so many more. If you don't know Lord of the Rings well, just be assured it really was a day of "oh yeah, I can see it now" for us film fans, as well as plenty of "ahhh's" and "oooohhh's"! It was great to see a bit of Glenorchy and Arrowtown that lay a little outside of Queenstown. Arrowtown was strange as all the streets were named after counties in the UK so I hunted down "Berkshire Street" and got a snapshot! Result!

We must've saw over 10 locations as well as seeing the lands that Peter Jackson and Sam Neill (from Jurassic Park) owned...I shouted out "Hello Mr Neill!" as we on drove past. They both bought land to conserve it's native plant life and make sure it's not built up on...always nice to see Hollywood doing it's part!

The next day was a early trip out (7am) to Milford Sound...a bloody long way away as it turned out but with a few stops here and there for photos whilst driving into Fjordland National Park (NZ's biggest). We went to Lake Te Anau (2nd largest NZ lake) which meant I'd paddled my muddy boots in all the top 4 largest lakes in New Zealand! Quite an achievement for my boots. At one stop we even saw another cheeky, "Kea" Mountain Parrot. They're such funny creatures as they bound about and come right up to you looking for food. But you shouldn't give them food as it makes them crazy as we saw when someone gave a Kea a cookie....it went hyper! We finally got to the cruise boat at 1pm ready for a free lunch! Brilliant! Then went outside to enjoy the mesmerizing sights of the most famous Fjord. A Fjord is a valley carved by glacier and encroached by water. So it meant you sailed through sheer cliff sides dotted all around you with freshwater falling down them directly into the ocean. It really was pretty as they sailed the boat right into the waterfalls. Also we saw more fur seals!