LET THE JOURNEY BEGIN

Some call New Zealand "the land of the long grey cloud" and my personal favourite adaption of that, from a South African point of view anyway, "The land of the wrong white crowd!"- It's the birthplace of Dan Carter and a country full of moarning rugby fanatics wondering how the hell they managed to cock up another world cup.

You see, rugby is not just a sport in New Zealand its a religion and passionate does not even begin to describe the kiwis feelings towards the great game of rugby. We were lucky enough to be in Auckland in the lead up to the big occasion - the rugby world cup 2007 and be a part of the excitement and expectation. Auckland's main street had massive clocks counting down the seconds to the start of the tournament - the people all so friendly and chatty and excited for what was surely theirs for the taking - I hope that didn't change too drastically after the quarter final playoffs -we were outta there by then!

Anyway, back onto the weather... In any other country our excitement would've been well and truly drowned. Even when it seemed destined to be a great sunny day, the clouds were looming and would without forewarning suddenly engulf us and and we would find ourselves fighting the on-off drizzle again - we could've just been in a bad 3 week spell possibly???

Nevertheless you have to hand it to the kiwis for their outdoor positive friendly attitudes. People are out and about making the most of it all, running, cycling, tramping, paddling, rafting, jumping out of planes - you name it they will be doing it - forget about complaining about the weather - there's no time. It seems the kiwis motto is "There's no such thing as wrong weather - just wrong clothes".

I guess some of their "crazy" zest for life attitude rubbed off on Dee and I and we felt almost compelled to get involved and be part of the infectuous vibe - Without knowing it we were swimming with dolphins, jumping out of aeroplanes, rafting down waterfalls, hiking, tramping, dune boarding and just exploring some of the most beautiful countryside on offer.

They say a Picture tells a story of a thousand words - and with views like this who can blame the kiwis for not paying much attention to the clouds above them...

A beautiful sunset near lake Wanaka with NZ's most popular inhabitants.
(apparently sheep outnumber humans 10 to 1 in NZ)

Sunset over Lake Wanaka, just be-a-utiful

Dee getting up close and personal with the iced walls of Frans Josepph Glacier

The view up along one of the glacial walls at Franz Joseph - something out of this world!

The serene beauty of Abel Tasman National Park

A murky green sulphur pool in Rotorua - looks like my old digs pool!

Hot Sulphur pools - Rotorua

Shew!! 1 times successful jump out of aeroplane at 12000ft! Tick!

The beauty of Ha Hei beach on the picturesque corromandel peninsula

Cathedral cove - Corromandel peninsula

The beauty of Cathedrals cove - corromandel peninsula

The endless 90 mile beach

Dune riding on the dunes of the 90 mile beach

Tasman sea meets Pacific ocean

Cape Reinga

Mucking around on another beautiful beach up in the northland

Hole in the rock - Bay of islands

Our dolphin friends - bay of islands

Whangarei Heads coastline

Auckland skyline

Rafting down waterfalls!

Caving in Waipu caves

One generally is fulled with nothing but romantic ideas when thinking of horse riding along the beach - 2 newly weds, alone, galloping along a beautiful stretch of untouched pristine coastline...

This is clearly not the case when one signs up to go horseriding with Bryan - the village psycho, who comes across from the outset as being a few chocolates short of a chocolate box and disturbingly a bit too attached to his horses!

Bryan lives in a caravan in a paddock with his 4 horses looking out at the beautiful entrance to the abel tasman national park and its coastline - but he intends to move very soon due to the fact that he wants to settle high up on a hill somewhere due to the imminent threat of a flood. Also he is highly pissed off with how society screws every last cent out of everyone and charges people for electricity and water usage - he wants to build himself a well.

I tell him I am an engineer - which goes down like a wet fart. He then proceeds to tell us how his beautiful horses will only play up when they can sense if someone doesnt know what they are doing. Enter novice riders Dee and Drew... I can see my horse hates me already and I haven't even gotten on him yet. Dee is looking like she wants to run for the hills.

Nevertheless we get a brief 1 minute speel about how to ride these precious horses interspersed with plenty of rantings about government and corruption and the end of the world stuff. Charming! I think he mentioned somewhere in there George Bush but I am not concentrating on him now as I am merely trying to send happy thoughts to my horse who looks ready to bolt at any second.

We manage to get on our horses without falling and off we trot - luckily Dee's and my horse are quite used to just following Bryans horse so we dont have to do anything - except hold on and act like we know what the hell we are doing. The kicker to our romantic ride is that Dee's horse hates my horse even more than my horse hates me - so we are separated by at least 20m at all times - very romantic! Any infringement on this causes both horses to rear up and buck madly - which is great news for us as we have no clue how to control or hold on to our horses.

My horse luckily for me fancies Bryans horse and sticks to him like glue, so I get to have a 1hr lecture on how screwed up the world is and how armageddon is coming (Nostradamos predicted it after all) - all the while my horse is continually thrashing his head up and down covering me in spit! Bryan seems unphased by this and by the fact that Dee is doing her own thing 20 odd metres behind us.

I tell you romance doesnt get any better. The hour lesson seems to drag on for days and at the end of it all we scuffle off our horses , thank crazy Bryan for his lovely horses and scintilating commentary and bolt off as quickly as possible to our campervan, aches and pains all over from trying to sit correctly on the horse without having a clue how to do so.

"Hurry up love - we r leaving NOW!" as we speed off as quickly as possible in our clapped out combi - all too keen to get the hell outta there - which is a pity as it was a really beautiful neck of the woods - as shown in the photo below.

Hint to fellow travellers - GO HIKING IN ABEL TASMAN! Far more enjoyable - unless you know how to ride skittish horses that is...

When we signed up to go Dolphin watching, we never thought that we would get the experience of getting to swim with them. That kind of stuff only happens on Walt Disney movies, and when it does, the Dolphins come right up to you, cure you of all personal hang ups and illness, let you ride on their backs, flip you in the air, and give you a new lease of life.

So when the giant Maori skipper of "Dolphin Adventures" offered us to jump in and have a swim with these critters, I was only too keen. The fact that the water was about 5 degrees did not phase me, and neither was the fact that we had to get changed into wetsuits in front of the entire boat. But hey, whats a bit of bum cheek and boobin flashing going to harm anyone??

The Dolphins were swimming madly in and around the boat, this was going to be my Disney moment. Irish mate April and I waddled to the side of the boat in our luminous yellow flippers, goggles and snorkles, and in we leapt reeling from the cold of the water.

They say that you have to interact with the Dolphins if you want them to play with you and it is amazing how this reduces people to their lowest level. People were making noises that sounded like a dying cow, some were letting out high pitched squeeks, some were clapping, some were flapping their flippers around and others were just choking and hyperventilating from the salt water.

Drew stayed behind as chief "Dolphin-Pointer-Outer-From-Birds-Eye-View". And kept shouting "they're behind you, they're infront of you, they are underneath you, swim left, swim right" It felt a little bit ludicrous and after a short while and a lot of energy the dolphins seemed to disappear.

So with the waves splashing salt water and hair into eyes, we made a very unglamourous exit shivering, coughing and spluttering, and started making our way home.

Next thing a 2m dorsal fin appears on the horizon, and skipper, starts skipping and getting excited about killer whales lurking about in the sea. He then excitedly tells us that Dolphin is the food of choice for this big guys which is possibly why they disappeared.

Lucky the sheer lack of grace in the water made it easy for the Orcas to see which was which on the menu and we all got off unscathed.

So double whammy for us. Whales and Dolphins in the same viewing.

And with that, we headed back to our Campervan for another night of 2-minute noodles under the stars.

* Couple of extra pics of the 90 mile beach, our campervan, hole in the rock, larking about on the beach