Day 5 - Franz Josef to Christchurch

 Long drive day = (whiney) comments (mainly from just one child (DP)) about... 

1. not stopping 
2. back seat comfort, or lack thereof
3. hunger

Responses

1. shoosh there little man - sometimes life is about the journey, not the destination
2. it's hilarious - I'm the smallest person in the car and I get the biggest, most comfortable seat ALL THE TIME
3. and your last Combantrin was when?

Anyway - off to an ouchy start...

Followed by an almost immediate breach of point 1...

And then tension for DP - was it ok to break point 1 to fix point 3?  No answer - too busy eating not one but two pies.

Fuelled up it was time to cruise from the West to East coast via Arthur's pass, that included crossing this...

and scenery like this

And then EXCITEMENT plus!! 

Time for the cave stream - a pretty innocuous name for an adrenaline laden 1 hour adventure extraordinaire that involved an exhilarating 594m slip trip fest through an underground cave stream in the PITCH BLACK.

There are many brochures and websites that tell you exactly how to prepare for the cave stream walk that we read after we'd been 😆.  Hence the difference in preparation between the group on the left and Danny P on the right - and this was just the start of amateur hour.

Mistake Number 1 - rocking up to cave entrance without torch.  Rectification - 30 minute walk from cave entrance to car and back again with small torch.  

Mistake Number 2 - not checking torch batteries.  No rectification. 

Mistake 3 - forging into cave anyway. Rectification - sneakily waiting for 2 groups of non-amateurs with large working headlamps and carefully placing Price party in between them.

And so began an adventure - some (JP) may have called it an ordeal.  Onwards and upwards through a skinny splashy rocky chilly squishy dark crack in the ground!!  And oh goody - there were eels!

Amateurs ready for anything!

What it looks like inside the cave stream

Map of the route, wiggle baby eels and the tricky exit from the cave

Whoo hoooo. That was one of the coolest things ever! 

And then off we popped to the next attraction a mere 2kms away...Castle Rocks.  Also cool, but not in an adrenaline-laden, eely kind of way.

Very pretty flowers everywhere and the weather was perfect..

Then on to Christchurch and out to dinner....

Very nice Mexican but teensy weensy serves

And afterwards a stroll to get Gelato where we stumbled across a bunch of buskers belting out a bunch of Split Enz covers and yep he was singing I See Red!! 

And if that wasn't enough for one day the boys went indoor bouldering while we checked out a cost-co sized supermarket called Pak 'n Save.

Truly knackered after all that and am still in bed now at 10am the next morning.  Been awake though and spending waaay too long doing this blog post!

Day 4 - Franz Josef Glacier

 Franz Josef is a nice little place - much smaller and quieter than Queenstown, with a main street with the Southern Alps in the background that looks just like this...

First up this morning was a bunch of small walks to check out the glacier.  We're determined to do a minimum of 10,000 steps a day and these knocked off a solid 9,000.

Here's some of the sights....

Road to the start of a series of short walks, including one to view the glacier terminal face, one to the Peter's Pool for a cool reflection of the glacier terminal face and one to another excellent suspension bridge (a personal favourite 😄) that had nothing to do with the glacier terminal face!

First walk to view the glacier TF...

Penny Price visits Peter's Pool to see the reflection of the glacier TF

and a suspension bridge minus kiddies, they went a different way that they thought was shorter and they were right, but we got to muck around on the bridge - win win.

After our walks the boys had a round of frisbee golf and M and I nipped over to Okarito on the coast, where we saw this....

and this...

all in all frisbee golf was probably the better choice 😖

And after all the walking, plus the excitement of Queenstown over the last couple of days were were all a bit knackered and crashed BUT like troopers we rallied in the afternoon for a spot of made up games catching bottle tops (as you do!).  Interesting to see the different demeanours mid-game.  Jeremy cool.  Emily calm.  Daniel a stress head from stress head's ville.  Not sure if you can tell this from the photos below...

And then there was this... no words....

And finally we got a sneaky visit from some NZ wildlife....

Right now Steve is attempting to teach the kids Euchre.  It's not going well.  Also makes me realise our family contains only Chiefs, not an Indian in sight.  Makes for some very robust conversation 😄

We are vaguely contemplating searching for glow worms later on but it doesn't get dark here until about 9:30pm so it would be waaaaay past my bedtime. Jury is still out on this one....

Day 3 - Queenstown to Franz Joseph Glacier

OMG - in shock.  Somebody who's name starts with J got out of bed when asked and was not, I repeat NOT the last one ready.  That honour may just have gone to somebody who's name starts with P.  Yep - a pattern here and yes I've been having multiple shockers 😒 ('unamused' emoji) 😎 (smiling face with sunglasses emoji)

So - off we popped at a respectable 8:30am heading north to Franz Joseph via some very windy roads and spectacular scenery...

Until we got to the super cool Blue Pools, with this view from the car park.

It was a 20 minute walk through open fields and mossy forrest and over a wibbly wobbly suspension bridge

to get to here - the beautiful Blue Pools!!

Where Daniel, still feisty from his bungy, jumped up and over not only the railing but also the wire suspensiony part of the bridge - hence the superior height and projection.  

Steve feigned disinterest for all of a minute then he had to up the ante with an (over rotated) backward flip.  

BUT the heroine of the day was Miss M.  She ummed and ahhhed for a while, claimed she couldn't jump because the sun had gone behind a cloud - but then it popped back out and there went her excuse.  So, over she went, probably more worried about a wardrobe malfunction with the minuscule bikini than the height.    

To say the water was fresh may be an understatement.  Poor little poppet did some serious hyperventilating before a quick re-arrangement of small bikini scraps and a swift exit.   

The Blue Pools were the highlight of the day 

And tuckered this little fella out...

🤣😂🤣😂

Day 2 - Queenstown

Off to a ridiculously slow start today - kids still asleep, me farting around with the blog, Steve watching Netflix.  Then faffed around trying to set up phones for another hour - mine still isn't sorted 😖

So nice and early at 11am we headed to Kawarau River and hadn't gone far at all when we stopped to have a look at this

and this

and this was just a random road stop instigated by me that was met by a few whinges and horn beeps just as I was taking photos. A bit silly as I'm the only driver which gives me complete, ABSOLUTE and TOTAL scheduling control, not that the power is going to my head at all 😎

and then we had a bit of a look and a cheese sample here.  Steve and I tasted a goat/cow milk a cheese we both adored - it cost a bomb but was just so good we couldn't resist a small wedge.  Anyway - it's lost.  Bought it, put it down somewhere - gonski!  At least it wasn't me this time.

Perhaps we (as in Steve) lost the cheese because we ended up being in a rush to get here - Kawarau River...

So that Danny P could get ready

For this...

Whooo Hooo!

And then it was back to Queentstown and straight up the Skyline Gondola for some phenomenal views and 5 excellent luge rides.  I was a dumb dumb head and forgot to take photos of the gondola bit and just ended up with 3 very silhouetted shots of the kids whizzing down the hill.  More practice with the new camera required!! 😝.

And yes - I know you're probably wondering who was fastest.  Well ahem, cough, cough, it may just have been a tie between Jeremy and ME!!!

Turtlecoin Running Stickerfrom Turtlecoin Stickers

Day 1 - Sydney to Queenstown

4:20am - 2 leapt out of bed, 2 were a bit whiney but managed to get up and 1 was in total denial, tucked their head under the covers and rolled over.  I will not say who did what but Jeremy may have been yelled at just a bit.

And speaking of yelling - we had a vote yesterday on the drive up from Canberra on who was the most annoying.  Much to my disgust I got one vote and it was from Miss M for yelling.  "I don't yell" I yelled. Jeremy also got a vote but Steve took out the winning prize with 3.  Voted off the island before he even gets there 😂🤣

So - yelling over we set off with Timmy at 4:35am and drove for about 500 metres at which point the yelling re-commenced because I forgot my jumper.  Damn!  That's two delays because of me.  Extremely poor form 😡. And worse still - I was squished in the very back of the car so Tim and Steve went looking for it and they couldn't find the bugger.  Double whammy - delay AND no jumper. 

Anyway - got to the airport at around about 5:20am, proceeded to do everything check-in related ourselves (has anyone been to the airport recently??) and of course did it very efficiently and next thing - wha la - we're in the departure lounge window shopping.  I don't remember it being quite so upmarket...

with so many of these....

Spot the odd one out

The flight was just under 3 hours and was spent eating breakie and watching the very good pyschological thriller "Don't worry Darling" staring Florence Pugh and Harry Styles.  

Flew over spectacular mountains before landing in Queenstown, picked up our car at the airport and headed on into town.

Here's our first look..

with a bit of swimming thrown in

and a visit to Queenstown Park

complete with my all time favourite...

and a stumble across an ice hockey game...

capped off with dinner

Not a bad first day 😀

Sydney - last sleep!

This morning we left the kids with a bunch of jobs whilst we did the Parkrun and had coffee, then fluffed around for about an hour before a reasonably on time 11am departure for Sydney.  I forgot to move my car off the street so caused a 4 minute delay.  Poor form! 

I had bagsed in advance not to do the Canberra to Sydney drive so it was a joint Daniel/Jeremy effort and they both did just fine! I did not one, not two but three cryptic crosswords on the way.  Finally getting the hang of them - it's only taken about a year.

We were all a bit zonked at Timmy's and flopped around until dinner - yummo Japanese at the Sushi House in Turramurra.  Then it was off to bed nice and early in an attempt to squeeze in a decent amount of zzzzz's before our 4:20 am start the next day.....

New Zealand 2023!

It's been over 9 years since my last blog post.  Can't believe I even remembered how to log on.  There's hope yet 😏

So - this is definitely the most significant holiday venture for the Prices since the epic, unbeatable 15 months in the UK.  The kids are bigger and have more opinions about things, not necessarily a good thing.  Steve and I are wrinklier and can't remember stuff, definitely not a good thing.  Lucky though we're both pretty fit and have managed, for the most part, to avoid middle aged spread - got to look for the positives!  

And we're all going to need to be reasonably athletic because there's some serious walking coming up, mainly because we've spent all our money getting there and finding somewhere to sleep each night so have nothing left for activities - so walking it is ☺!

Here's the plan...

16 glorious nights in the South Island, starting and finishing in Queenstown, heading up the west coast, nipping across to Christchurch and then back down the middle, zig zagging over to the east coast before cruising around the southern tip, then up to Milford Sound and finishing back in Queenstown, all of which looks like a bit like this...

We're pretty excited and all finished packing a couple of days ago except Jeremy - he's dragging the chain.  I have a sneaking suspicion this may be a recurring theme over the next 16 days.

Next stop Sydney tomorrow and then Timmy (bless him) is going to drive us to the airport at the crack of dawn on Sunday.  2 more sleeps!

My final post

Well I've done it - new colours, new title, new blog.  If you'd like a look - just click here.

I'd love to hear from you if you do venture over that way. It's a bit of a black hole in blogger land sometimes in terms of who looks at the blog and what you think. Please feel free to drop me a line at pricepoppets@gmail.com J

And one final word about "Going places" - I'm going to look at printing it - yep - all 300 odd pages of it.  It is such a good record of our adventure (and what an adventure it was!) and a nice coffee table version will be just the ending it deserves.

And some final words about our time away.  I loved it. I love the UK.

I loved seeing the relatives, soaking up the history and exploring the gorgeous countryside.

I loved sitting in English pubs and walking through snow covered meadows.

I loved our house and the green fields next to it.  I loved going to photography club with Ian from next door.

I loved the trees and the grand old country estates.

I love the hedges and old stone walls and the skinny lanes they lined.

I love the rugged coastal cliffs and the quaint old cottages.

I love London with its big red buses, the Thames and Big Ben.

I love Edinburgh and all is historical glory.

I love it and I feel at home there.

But most of all I love that I shared it with my family, who I know loved it too.

What next?

What to do with this blog?  It's been a big part of my life for the last 15 months and I already miss the idea that the adventure is over and that this won't continue, at least in it's current format anyway.

I love that I've got such a good record of what we've been up to and how the kids have skipped, laughed and thrived their way through our time away.  It has been such a fabulous ride, better than I could have hoped for and although the excitement of new and unchartered territory has gone, life certainly still goes on.

And for that reason I'd like to keep on blogging.  The posts won't be as exciting, the scenery not so stunning, but the people will be the same and this time round we'll be doing normal family day stuff.

I need to come up with another name - I think, sadly, that "Going Places" has come to an end.  I need a new beginning again, I've got a few ideas, just give me a few days and hopefully I'll have something up and running....

Watch this space J