The end of the road

Or, courtesy of Beamer, epi-blog

Stew:

Well, we've handed back the motorhome and fly out of New Zealand tomorrow morning. We still think of it as 'our' motorhome, but hope it will now offer others some of the wonderful adventures we've enjoyed.

We don't fly directly home, but as we leave New Zealand it's time to close the blog - though like the motorhome, it's hard to imagine daily life without it. Special thanks again to Alan Bannister for setting up the blog, and to everyone who's shared our journey through it. Hope we've brought a little entertainment to you. Apologies for everything there's been too much, or too little, of for your taste.

I was going to apologise to those who are turned off by football references or atrocious humour, but I guess they probably left us some time ago. At least they were spared the lawn moa.

What makes New Zealand so special for this kind of journey? Perhaps it's the unique combination of ingredients: scenery, climate, facilities, people. If one incident sums it up for me, it's the town where I returned to the motorhome after we'd exceeded our parking meter time. The traffic warden was there, surveying our illegal vehicle. I explained that yes, we'd exceeded our time and would actually like a few more minutes. He smiled, said it was fine ("good as gold") and wished us a happy rest of our holiday. What a great country.

Barb:

Yes, it has been quite a journey. To think up such a trip is one thing, to actually do it another! My thanks go to all of you who took our journey with us. This blog was a big postcard to you. To those who had already been to New Zealand, I hope you re-lived it; to those who have not been here, I hope you had fun vicariously with us as we went along. And to our new U3A friends here in New Zealand, thanks for your welcome and cameraderie.

So from Aotearoa and in fine New Zealand fashion, Pokarekare Ana - Now is the Hour When We Must Say Goodbye. This adventure will be forever with us.

Full Circle

This time we went straight rather than left, and back to Christchurch - our last campsite before returning the motorhome tomorrow. Tonight's task is packing, with two things hard to grasp: (i) how the seven weeks have disappeared and (ii) how many souvenirs we've accumulated. Even the extra piece of luggage, bought along the way 'just in case', isn't enough.

Today's weather has been miserable - mist, low clouds and rain, as if New Zealand were as sad at our impending departure as we are. We're ready to be heading home, and our football team clearly needs us, but this has been a journey which exceeded every expectation. We'll try to summarise things in our final blog tomorrow, but it won't be easy.

One thing's for sure: writing the blog, and knowing one or two of our friends out there were reading it, has been a big part of the fun.

Meanwhle back to eating up our foodstuffs, accompanied by one of the world's great white wines in a couple of plastic cups. Barb and Stew's camping style exemplified...

New South Whales

OK, that's the last Wales/whales pun...maybe.

The second whale trip was great. That's partly because each whale watch is different - a bit like football matches, but with less chance of disappointment. And also because this was an action-packed trip: seven whales (the average is one-two), including the rare sight of two sperm whales together and a tail-slapping demonstration. The whales are less frisky than the dolphins, but a sight easier to photograph.

Which left Barb a peaceful afternoon to read in the sun, so we both had a good time.

Starting to think about our return home, though it's still a little way away. We hand back the motorhome on Saturday, fly to Singapore on Sunday, then have a few days at an island resort before flying to London overnight 28 Feb-1 Mar.

Steve is planning his lecture tour...

Kaikoura revisited

The hard part of today was done early: getting to the ferry terminal for our check-in. Another smooth crossing - we've been lucky with that, as with much else - saw us in Picton, South Island by lunchtime.

So we pressed on down the coast, back to one of our favourite haunts, Kaikoura. It's the base for the whale and dolphin excursions, and a seafood centre (though the signs are pretty subtle, as above). It'll be a test of our will-power, to resist the restaurants and eat up the food stocks in the motorhome as we should.

We're here tomrrow, so a dilemma: if we do another whale/dolphin trip, will it another thrill or an anti-climax? We've decided to go separate ways: I can't resist another look at the whales, while Barb argues with impeccable logic that when you've seen one whale, you've sort of seen them all, so she'll stay and catch up on some reading.

We're getting ever nearer Christchurch and the time on Saturday when - hard as it is to believe - we'll be handing back the keys to the motorhome.

Farewell North Island

We're now camped just outside Wellington, in the fine city of Lower Hutt (the one with the Esplanade). Tomorrow at 7am we check in for the ferry, taking us back to Picton in South Isalnd and another step towards returning the motorhome in Christchurch.

Today was in many ways a typical travel day. After a light breakfast in the RV, we put some miles behind us then looked for a good spot for mid-morning coffee and muffins. This time we found an outstanding one (couldn't resist the sign, above), run by an exile from the East End of London.

For better or worse, she recommneded the clothes stores in the next-but-one town; we duly stopped and gave them some business.

Hope you've enjoyed the photos on our blog. We have some good ones, but there are other pictures we'd have loved to add if we could have stopped - sudden vistas from twists in the mountain roads, distinctive signs by the roadside, and yesterday's golf course full of sheep.

Speaking of which, Steve is not in best grace here. Not only has he upset poor Lamb Chop, it now seems he's lavished so much on Agnes that he's hit the limit on his Baaclaycard. Oh dear.

Making tracks

Travel update

These few days are about covering the ground, as we head for Wellington and the return ferry to South Island on Wednesday morning. So we're motoring south, this time keeping to the western part of the island (having come up the eastern side).

Waitomo and its caves are about halfway up North Island. Today's journey has taken us south-west, almost to New Plymouth before turning south and finishing in Wanganui.

A rainy day was no problem for the driving, but meant we again missed seeing a major mountain. In South Island we were thwarted by the weather from seeing the glaciers and Mount Cook; this time it's Mount Taranaki that was lost in the clouds. Oh, well..

By the way, an interesting part of yesterday's trip was seeing some skeletons of animals that died in the caves - including a moa. A large flightless bird, the moa became extinct around 500 years ago; in its day, though, there were several different types. I'm sure there was a grass-eating one, which we could call ... the lawn moa.

On that note I should probably finish.

Secrets of caves, glow-worms and sheep

Planning this week's itinerary, it looked as if we'd have to miss out on one recommended thing: the glow-worm caves of Waitomo. Sure, one or two people had strongly advised us to see them - but they're just worms, right?

Well, no. Because of our good progress yesterday we DID manage to fit in a visit, and thank goodness we did. We're not the most intrepid cave explorers - but these are stunningly beautiful, as you glide in a boat through a profound darkness illuminated only by the thousands of light specks created by the glow-worms. A different world, and a memorable one.

Again, we chose rightly to join a specialist tour that took us to slightly more remote caves and gave our small group a more personal touch. These are the caves chosen for David Attenborough's 'Life on Earth' series.

Now, Lamb Chop. Look, I'm very sorry but you only have yourself to blame. You had Steve captivated by your messages, but where was the follow-up? No promises to meet, no contact details - in short, no commitment. Meanwhile Agnes is here in the flesh, Steve says she made sheep's eyes at him, and - well, you know how it is.

You still have a chance, but you need to think carefully about this relationship. Some reading may help - you might try "Rams are from Mars, ewes are from Venus". Don't give up.