Opua, New Zealand – November 2007
We spent six months in New Zealand, and aside from working on the boat, managed to fit in three months of touring the country by jeep and caravan. After arriving in Opua, a very small and friendly place, we moved down to Whangarei where we had found a pile mooring for our boat at a very reasonable price. We bought an old jeep and caravan to use for our road trip, packed the boat up and drove away to visit friends and places around New Zealand. It was good to be on land for a while, but very cosy in the caravan!
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We visited friends in Auckland, Rotorua, Picton, Nelson and Christchurch, and managed to learn some paragliding as well, in Nelson and Queenstown. The scenery was fantastic in so many places, but the very best was the West Coast of South Island. Unfortunately this was where the sandflies (tiny biting flies) were worst, so we made a quick exit over the mountains to Queenstown where there were hardly any.
Daniel, Elaine and George were driven 200km by ambulance to the hospital in Invercargill when Dan broke his arm in Queenstown falling off a trampoline. Invercargill is New Zealand’s southernmost city, in a latitude similar to Guernsey. It is where at night Orion rises to the same height in the sky but is exactly upside down! It is also where Burt Munro, of the “World’s fastest Indian†fame lived. Southland hospital was excellent and the treatment was free. In the southernmost town of Bluff, Nigel turned over rocks to get five “pauaâ€, larger versions of ormer, which tasted out of this world!
New Zealand is a land of opportunity in many ways, and it was tempting to stay.