Travelling to the South Island (New Zealand) part 1

 

So far in New Zealand I have spent my time in the North Island and it was definitely time that I went south to have a look at the island most people recommend you visit when you come here.  I will be travelling south again in March to visit the inland areas and the west coast, but it was looking like we wouldn't be able to fit in the east coast as well so I decided to make a trip there on my own.  I also have family on the east coast, so it would have been a shame to travel all this way and not actually visit them.  I was on a pretty strict budget on this trip so most of the places that I visited were either free or I wanted to see enough to warrant spending the money on them.  

Most of this trip was done on Intercity Bus using the FlexiPass and that actually turned out to be quite a cost effective and easy way of getting around.  It meant I didn't have to worry about driving, factoring fuel costs etc into my budget, and also meant that I got to look at the scenery as we drove by.  I would definitely recommend using something similar when you're travelling, just be aware you can't charge your gadgets most of the time and the WiFi didn't always work. The only problem for me was that this method meant that I only really got to see the towns and cities along the coast.  However, I knew that I was going to get to see more of the wilds later, so this just seemed like the most sensible option.

My first night was spent on the over night bus travelling from Tirau to Wellington.  Needless to say I didn't get a whole lot of sleep until the people sitting next to me got off - then I got to lie down over three seats and got about 2 hours kip.  Not to say that you wouldn't sleep getting this bus, but I've never been particularly good at snoozing when travelling and I was prepared for that.

My first stop was still in the North Island at Wellington.  I really liked this city.  It felt busy without being packed, and actually had quite a relaxed atmosphere.  There are quite a few very fancy shops there (as you would expect for the capital), but there were also some nice green areas.  

I had organised to meet up with some people there to talk paths so I decided to give myself two days there to see everything, and I actually probably could have done with more.

The first day I spent having a general wonder around the city and getting to know it a little better.  Then I headed to the Te Papa National Museum.  This contained a good selection of Maori artefacts and items connected to New Zealand's history in general, including the much debated Treaty of Waitangi.  So far the natural history sections I'd seen in museums here hadn't been great but Te Papa has really very good and, if it hadn't been rammed with people, I would have stayed there for hours.  

They also had quite an intense but important exhibition on Gallipoli during the war and I of course had to visit the Alice in Wonderland exhibition, which was a lot of fun.

Next was the Wellington Museum which contained a lot of maritime and local history.  For such a small area this place contains a lot of artefacts that give you a real picture of the by-gone eras.  My favourite bit was the section where you could see how a cabin used to be.  I always like noseying at the space saving ideas they have and that I store away in the back of my mind to hopefully user at some point in the not so distant future.  

I was pretty tired from travelling so I decided to go back to the hostel (Nomads Capital Backpackers) and relax for a bit before I meet up for some path building geeking.  Then the next morning saw me up early, all bright eyed and bushy tailed (who am I kidding), to do some more site seeing.  I knew that I wanted to spend almost all my morning at Zealandia and so I caught the first shuttle bus I could get there.

Zealandia is a pretty amazing place.  Just 2km west of Wellington it is an ecosanctuary which is, I believe, just under 30 years old and is trying to restore the area back to how it was before humans arrived.  Walking through the trees I couldn't believe how successful the regrowth has been.  

You'd think that it was centuries old, not decades. Some of the birds breeding there have been so successful that they're now moving out into the city, making tui kaka, and kereru pretty common sites now.  

Seeing the birds were pretty amazing and I particularly enjoyed watching a kaka feeding, so unconcerned by my presents that it actually moved to a branch right in front of my face.  Unfortunately no sightings of tuatara though, but there's still time.  

To be honest I could have happily stayed there all day, but I was leaving the next and I still had a couple of other sites I wanted to go to.  So I popped back onto the shuttle bus and headed to the Botanic Gardens.  These gardens don't cover a large amount of land, but they fit in a good variety of species and habitat types into that area.  

I did a good meandering loop around to try and catch as much as possible, but it definitely didn't take me as long as I thought it would.  I then treated myself to a Cable Car trip back down to the centre.

Once I had dropped off some layers at the hostel, the day had definitely gotten hotter, I headed west to walk up Mount Victoria (felt more like a hill to be honest) to the lookout, making a little detour to look at a Lord of the Rings filming location.  

Before you get too excited (like I did) the filming location is a little disappointing, but at least I can say that I went and it meant that I got a much longer walk.  The views of Wellington and the surrounding area were pretty amazing and well worth sweating through the hot weather  After that I decided to call it a day, but there's still quite a bit of Wellington to see, maybe some other day.

Day three of my travels was basically dedicated to travelling from Wellington to Kaikoura.  First was the Interisland Ferry across the Cook Straits to Picton.   This was a pretty smooth, but very windy trip.  So windy in fact they wouldn't let us on desk 10 until we got into the Marlborough Sounds area, and even then it was quite a struggle to move around up there.  

However, it was worth being blown around a bit just to get the views, though wildlife did seem to be few and far between. Based on some advice I decided not to stop at Picton, but now I wish I'd at least spend a few hours there.  I may be coming through here again, in which case I'll put some time aside to have a proper look.

And then it was back on the bus from Picton to Kaikoura.  I had been told that this was a very scenic route but I have to admit that the first half wasn't great as it mainly consisted of a wasteland of areas that used to have trees.  It was only when we passed Cape Campbell that we got views of beautiful aqua seas and blue skies.  Much more of what I was expecting.

Kaikoura is a lovely little town, which definitely has a more hippy vibe to it.  Though, if you're expecting golden sandy beaches you'll be very disappointed.  More of a grey, sort of gravelly beach which leaves a sooty types material on you.  

My main reason for stopping here was to walk the Kaikoura Peninsula with the hope of seeing fur seals, mainly at Point Kean.  They turned out to not be too visible actually at the Point, mainly because the changes made to this coast line by the 2016 earthquakes has meant that they now sit further out to sea.  

However, once I had walked around the peninsular a little bit I saw a lot!  There was even a pup creche I got to just watch for a good hour that was well worth the uncomfortable seating on sharp, jagged rocks.  I also got to see some red-billed gulls nesting and shearwater which was an added bonus.  The views on their own were also incredible.

I did try and go to the Fyffe House, which is located on the route to the Kaikoura Peninsular, but unfortunately it was closed as they were having to renovate after the damage done by the earthquake.

I then headed of to the little Kaikoura museum.  This was a nice, little museum, and had some interesting information about the 2016 earthquake.  I had thought about doing one of the whale or dolphin watching trips, but they were just a little bit out of my price range really and I also heard that there hadn't been a lot of sittings by those who had gone out in the days before, so I decided not to go and keep it on my list of things to do.

I spent the last couple of hours before I had to jump on the bus window shopping and then sitting on the gravelly, grey beach enjoying the sun whilst pretending the chilly wind wasn't there.

Next stop - Christchurch where my Uncle and Aunt live.  I got to stay with them for a few nights, which was really nice and also meant that I could use their knowledge to see some good sites.  Day one there saw me and my Aunt being true tourists in the centre of Christchurch.  

We hopped onto the Christchurch Tram as a way of getting around the centre.  These are restored trams which act as tour guides around the centre of Christchurch.  The drivers give you a running commentary of the area they drive through and you can get off and on again as many times as you like in a day.  It's mainly history based facts, but you do get some more recent information as well, especially about the 2010 earthquakes that devastated the city and from which they are still rebuilding.

I had heard that the Cathedral in the centre was beautiful but that was a no go as it was very badly affected by the earthquake and can only be viewed from behind a fence.  However, we did get to see a few other things I had on my list.  

The Canterbury Museum was really lovely and I particularly liked the Maori displays, the reproduction of Fred & Myrtle's Paua Shell House is a little bit nuts, and it was interesting to walk through the reproduction of a 19th Century Christchurch street.  And who knew that there were penguins basically the same height as me - I certainly didn't.  I also spent a bit of time looking at the Antarctic exhibited that they have as it tied in nicely with the book I was reading at the time, 'I may be some time' by Francis Spufford.  I have to say, those trips have always fascinated me.

Conveniently, the Botanic Gardens are right beside the museum so, after a cup of coffee we had a nice walk around for as long as we could stand as the temperature was beginning to hit 34∘C and I'm certainly not designed for that anymore.  

We also had a look at a couple of markets dotted around the town and my Aunt very kindly brought me a beautiful pounamu (greenstone / jade) necklace.  It's a Toki, which was originally a tool and is associated with great mana (a supernatural power which can be inherited or transmitted), power, and honour. 

We also pottered around a bit to see things like the Dragon in the River Avon ready for Chinese New Year and the Bridge of Remembrance.  It was a lovely day and getting to use the tram instead of walking in the heat was definitely a blessing, but I have to admit that so was getting back in doors. 

We had a little time to spare so we decided to have a quick drive around to have a look at some of the beaches.  We first drove to the very popular and very packed Sumner beach where we couldn't even find a parking spot.  So then we headed to the not so packed, but just as blue beach at New Brighton.  The sea looked very inviting but we opted for ice cream instead and the pier is definitely very different from the ones at old Brighton.

And that seems like a good place to stop with this post (it's already getting long enough).  It had been a pretty good start to visiting the South Island and set me up for all the walking I was going to be doing in the second part of the journey.

Tent Living

As you'll know from the blog I wrote about my goals for 2020 I'm hoping to become financial fit again this year by getting rid of my debt and building up a savings that would carry me through a whole host of possible challenges in the future.  One of the debts is due to the fact that we had to get a car while we're in New Zealand as public transport is really pretty poor here.  This unfortunately had to go on my credit card and it's important that we pay that off as quickly as possible.  I also can't work while I'm in New Zealand and that means that at the moment we're having to reduce our debts on just one income.

The only way to work around this is by reducing your out-goings as much as possible.  Now I'm not a big spender and most of the things I enjoy doing are basically free, which always helps, but there are other ways we're reducing our spending.  One of them is on food and here we've reduced the amount we eat out to practically never and are having a very vegetarian / vegan based diet.  Cutting out meat definitely helps reduce the cost of things.  The other area is housing costs.  It was difficult enough anyway trying to find somewhere we could rent for the short amount of time that we needed and the total for staying in hostels and AirBNBs would have been pretty high.  We decided that it would just make sense, both time wise and financial, to not rent anywhere but instead camp most of the time and house-sit some of the time and that's what we've done.

Luckily I'm not someone who needs a whole lot of comfort in my living quarters to be happy.  Relatively comfy place to sleep, somewhere I can hygienically go to the loo, and hopefully somewhere to wash myself is pretty much all I really need.  Vast amounts of indoor space and all the mod-cons has never really been my thing.  That meant that camping has been a pretty easy choice for us, but here's how we made it as comfortable as possible.

It's been great to find places in the area that we've been able to camp for free and even better that these places have toilets that are available to the public 24/7.  This has definitely been a real find, especially as it's meant we haven't had to rush to the nearest town every morning and instead allowed us to have a more relaxed morning routine.

Not all of these camp sites have showers and, if they do, they don't always have water all the time.  But it's turned out to be pretty easy to find places where you can shower for relatively cheap.  I mainly use the app Camper Mate for this and if you're camping or caravanning in New Zealand or Australia at any point I'd recommend it.  It covers a lot more than just places you can shower, but also public toilets, where water is available, places you can dump your grey water, camping and caravan sites, etc.  I've also found that, unless I'm doing some actually walking that day, I don't really need to shower daily and I feel just find with that.  In fact my skin normally thanks me for it.

As for the tent itself it's three person tent which we got specifically so that that extra person space would give us room to move in and store our bags and belongings.  It also gave us the extra room to put in a blow up bed, a real luxury indeed.  We would have been fine sleeping in sleeping bags on ground matts, but as we were going to be doing this for a while we decided that that extra comfort was definitely worth the cost of a blow up mattress, and it really, really has been.  One thing we did find out though was that air mattresses aren't particularly good insulators and, even in the New Zealand summer, we were still feeling cold at night.  That was until I got us a mattress protector to go under our bed sheet and just that extra layer of fabric has made all the difference to how warm we've been feeling while we sleep.  We also have a number of blankets with us and our sleeping bags if we need them.

We're using a square, roller suitcase to store our clothes in, which sits quite happily beside the air mattress inside the tent and which we leave in the tent at all times.  The reason for this instead of just keeping our items in a rucksack is for ease of access.  If we want an item we can just open up the suitcase 'lid' and do a little bit or rummaging to get at it.  In a rucksack we would regularly have to pull most of the items out and then repack again whenever we wanted something, and that just seemed like a time waster.  As we're not packing up the tent every day and we're using a car rather than our legs to get around the transportable ease that is the advantage of a rucksack were not needed here.

We did have another similar bag to hold all our additional camping gear in and which sat quite happily beside the clothes case in the tent.  However, it turned out to be unnecessary and to take up more room than was needed.  Instead we opted to put the items into smaller bags which we could move around, pack up better in the car, and get into easier when we needed items.

One contains the items we use for food prep, our plates, mugs, and bowls, cooking implements and pans, and the items we use to clean up afterwards.  The other has our stoves, gas canister for cooking, and our cutlery.

Lastly, there are the food containers which consist of one smaller, properly coolant bag in which we keep a chill block which we pop into a freezer whenever we get the chance.  This is for items we need to try and keep as chilled as possible.  The second much larger coolant bag has all our other food and spices in.  It also contains the mason jars and general glass jars which we use to make overnight oats, soak beans, store left overs etc.  I try and keep this as tidy as possible, but as it's not a rigid item at all the products pretty much go wherever they want when you move it.  It's not exactly a big deal though as I tend to keep the amount of food we have pretty low and just buy regularly instead.

For light at night we do have our phones and a couple of torches, but we mainly use this solar light which we put out to charge every day.  It's turned out to be a pretty good buy, though there have been a couple of times where we've run out of power and had to go back to the battery powered light sources.  However, as long as I remember to put it out in the sun every day it works just fine.

And, for one little touch of personality we've added the pray flags I brought at a Himalayan Craft Fair in Scotland and had in the back of my van.  It hangs in between the two entrances and is just nice to have as something that we brought with us from the UK.  Theoretically it's also protecting us, but who knows about that.

That's it really.  Not a lot of things, but actually really very comfortable and I haven't found myself being bothered about staying in a tent for extended periods of time at all.  The most interesting part is working out what you can use for double-duties.  My yoga matt, when rolled up, is also quite a comfortable seats which takes two people easily.  The large, material coolant bag is also quite a good table.  And the inside of the tent makes a pretty good cinema. 

In fact, the only real con I have found has been the sandflies.  Those things are awful and they absolutely love me, to the point where other people around me don't really get bitten at all.  Even repellant doesn't seem to keep them off entirely and they're able to find the tiniest of spots I haven't covered to have a nibble.  Oh well, you can't have everything and I just have to keep reminding myself the scenery is beautiful to wake up to......and it's free!

Paperless Productivity - Google Tasks & Keep Notes

The  first month of the year is almost up and this is the first month of me trying out some paperless productivity.  For ease I decided to start by using the software that is connected to the calendar I already use, and that is Google Tasks and Google Keep Notes.  The simplicity of both these apps probably also meant that they were a good place to start.  (In this post I'm just going to keep referring to my to-dos as tasks - it just seems to make sense here).

Google Tasks

This is a very easy piece of software to use.  You literally just open it up, link it to your Google account (it asks you to do this in the set up), and then start adding things in using the large multi-coloured cross at the bottom of the page.

Then you just add in the name you want to give the task, a due date if there is one, whether it repeats, and any additional notes you'd like to add.  It's pretty simple.

Once you have completed the task you tap on it and a quite satisfying tick accompanied with a fire work in the Google colours appears before the task disappears.

However, the task doesn't disappear of your app altogether but gets put into the completed section at the bottom of the page.  To me this seems like a very good idea as one of the things I like about a physical diary is seeing all that I've accomplished that day, week, month, and here you can do that.  Or you can choose to delete them all.

The tasks can be added on both your phone through the app and through your Google calendar, where it will actually show on each day as long as you remember to tick the tasks calendar on the left.  You  can also open the Tasks tab on the right if you want them to little bit larger and with more information.  And, of course, they sync with each other so you'll always have your tasks with you where ever you are.  The only thing I couldn't work out how to do was how to view them on my mobile's calendar which I've synced by Google calendar to.  But as I had the app on my phone any way it wasn't too much of a bother.

So what did I like about this?  I did really like having my tasks on my phone so that I only needed to take that with me instead of my phone with my diary and a pen / pencil.  I also liked the fact that I could sync them between different devices so that I could see what I had going on no matter what I was doing.

And what didn't I like?  This is going to be a little bit longer.  Firstly, and this is not something that is specifically bad about Google Tasks but a possible problem I'm going to have with all digital tasks software, I realised that I quite like the fixed space that you get in physical diaries.  This fixed space makes me feel that I can only add as many tasks as there is space in this section, and that prevents me from giving myself too much to do in one day.  I could, of course, limit the number of tasks for each day to a specific number, but it doesn't have quite the same feel.  I have a feeling this might be the same for all of the apps I'm doing to be using.

When it came to viewing my tasks on Google calendar I actually didn't like having them all sitting at the top of the calendar.  It made it look pretty cluttered to me and so I usually unmarked that calendar.  However, when I had them open as a tab I then couldn't see the calendar properly to then work out when in my day I wanted to fit the tasks in, and I like to have my calendar open as a week at a glance when I'm organising what task I'm doing when.  There are definitely times when I feel like it's just easier and more efficient to have things you're working on on two separate platforms.

I also realised that, whilst I do like quite a minimum aesthetic this layout was a little bit too stark for me.  Even if it's just my weird-arse handwriting , I like to have something that adds a little bit of character to the page I'm working on.  However, as I said before, this does make it very easy to use.

Google Keep Note

I have to admit that I downloaded this app with good intentions, but in the end I barely used it at all.  I added in my project pan for the year, but that was really about it.  I just didn't find myself navigating towards it this month.

The good thing about this app is that, like Google Tasks, it is very easy to use.  

You just click on the multi-coloured cross, decide what format the note is going to be (including tick boxes, image, or even voice recording), and you can even colour code it to fit whatever colour coding you might have in your calendar or diary.  You can also open this on the right tab of your Google calendar if you're needing to work between the two and, as you also log into Google with this one, it syncs between all the devices you have it on.

The problem I found with this app was that, as each note sites on your screen like a post it note, I didn't feel like I could write too much for each one.  As I was wanting to use this piece of software as a way of keeping all my notes together, like the research and drafts I do for these posts, it just didn't seem like a very viable option here.  However, this would be good for more concise, bullet point note taking such as shopping lists and the 1 hour cleaning lists I put together.  It might also work as a sort of Bullet Journal with each separate note being for a day, but I'm not really looking into Bullet Journaling as such as the moment so I'll leave that for now.  It is an option for the future though, but for now this app is coming off my phone.

So, not a bad start really.  Both of these apps function well for what they are and are very simple to use.  If that's what you're looking for I would definitely recommend checking them out.  It's just not quite what I'm looking for at the moment so I'll keep testing out other types of organisation apps.

Next month I'll be looking at Microsoft's To-Do and One Note.