Holiday Trip

North Island Trip–Manawatu to Drury

February 25, 2024 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We went to the North Island last month because we had been invited to a conference hosted by some Mennonites from the United States, Canada and Australia. It was held near Cheltenham, just north of Palmerston North in the Manawatu, at the home of some friends of ours who own a conference center. We spent three nights there, and the first morning a lot of us went to a nearby reserve where we walked a track around some native bush.

This isn’t native… but it was pretty interesting! I’ve never seen such huge bamboo. We have stands of it here on the Coast, but it’s very small.

We also stopped at the Stormy Point overlook and had a look at this amazing river valley. Below this picture is a video clip that gives a slightly better idea of the view.

When we left Cheltenham, we drove to Drury, just south of Auckland. It was really interesting seeing the scenery that was so different from the South Island. The mountains had really interesting shapes!

I think this was Mount Ruapehu, but I’m not sure–and we couldn’t see the top of it.

We stopped here and had lunch at a nearby picnic table. I thought it was a beautiful toilet block!

Miss Joy gets carsick, so we stopped for a few minutes to let her walk around. There were blackberries there!

I was startled to see this bright red soil–the first time I’ve seen that in New Zealand!

We enjoyed seeing the sculptures in a lot of towns along the way. We didn’t manage to get pictures of most of them, but Elijah grabbed this one in Ohakune. There was a giant gumboot made of corrugated iron in Taihape, colorful cows in Morrinsville, and bulls in Bulls.

We spent two nights at a community in Drury while we accomplished our other goal for the trip–applying for passport renewals at the United States Consulate. I’ll do a post soon about our day in Auckland, but here are a few pictures of Miss Joy, enjoying being out of the van. She was delighted to find a cat!

Lake Hanlon and Home

April 9, 2023 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Our week at Karamea was soon over and we needed to pack up and go home. The lady who, with her husband, runs the campground, stopped by as we were preparing to leave and we asked her about a good place to stop and have one more short walk on our way south. She recommended Lake Hanlon, about a half hour drive from Karamea, so we stopped there and walked the track over and around a hill, and down to a small lake. Such a beautiful spot! Here are a few photos and a video I took.

This enormous rock sits in a paddock near Granity. It doesn’t look so impressive in the picture, but in real life it does. It’s the size of a house!

This is the T Rex tree in the Buller Gorge. Apparently it’s labeled on Google Earth, although I haven’t tried to confirm that.

More About Karamea

April 2, 2023 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

After I posted the pictures from Box Canyon Cave, I finally had the chance to look at Elijah’s phone. He had more pictures I wanted to use! The first two show one of the spiders the caves in that area are famous for, and one of their egg cases dangling from the ceiling of a cave. The other is a fossilized clam in the wall of a cave. Apparently there were a lot of fossils in areas I didn’t get to.

This is a picture from Esther’s camera, from the Mirror Tarn/Moria Gate Arch walk. It was near the end of the walk. I loved James peeking around the tree, and Miss Joy marching on down the track!

That evening, we went out to the beach for a cookout. With two 4WDs, we could get right out on the sand, which makes it easy to transport everything for a picnic. The only thing we didn’t have was forks and spoons for our potato salad, because I forgot that box!

Miss Joy needed some time to play by herself. She felt secure, because she was surrounded by her family, but she was definitely in her own world here, digging in the sand. She gets overstimulated very easily, and needs downtime like this.

After our cookout, we enjoyed the sunset, and then headed back to our campground. This picture is looking up the Karamea River.

Looking across the estuary.

I took this without being able to see what I was looking at, back over the top of the ute, while we were stopped waiting to pick up a boy who had been swimming up river a bit from our picnic site.

We took a day off the next day and hung around the campground. Some people went fishing in the river. Mr. Imagination caught an eel at some stage, skinned it and cooked it for breakfast the next morning. He decided he won’t be doing that again!

Some of us walked out to the estuary. It was a gorgeous day! This is the Karamea River, next to the campground.

The campground, from the stopbank. Just past the campervan in the foreground is the caravan we borrowed, and you can see Simon’s ute beside it.

The estuary by day. What I didn’t get a picture or video of was someone waterskiing, being pulled by a quad bike running along the edge of the water! I had never heard of such a thing before.

Over the course of three afternoons, we played a marathon game of chicken foot dominoes, all the way from double 15 down to double 0. It was fun–but quite a mission!

While most of the family watched a movie in the camper that evening, I went for a walk with the younger ones who also weren’t interested, and we walked along the stopbank in the sunset light. Someone made a basket with willow bark, and Little Miss was showing it to me.

On our last full day, we drove all the way to the end of the road. There is a DOC campground there, at the beginning of the Heaphy Track. We wanted to find a place to build a fire on a beach and roast some flounder Elijah caught. It rained most of the way up there, and signs at the DOC camp said no fires allowed, so we turned around and went back to where he had caught the fish. This was some of the scenery on the way up. We had already had quite an exciting morning. Part of the family was supposed to clean the fish while Simon and I ran to the little local supermarket for what we needed for cooking the fish. We got there and the heavens opened. We got drenched to the point of dripping just running across the street and into the shop! It was still raining when we were finished, so we raced across again and went into the Information Centre to look around while we waited for the rain to let up. While there, Esther called me and asked me to get something to repair a leak in the camper. When the rain let up slightly, we went to the local hardware to get it. Then, she called again and said to get a tarp–the rain was pouring into the camper! We were all glad she and Mom had been inside it when the rain started, or we would really have had a mess.

This is where Elijah had set the flounder net. It’s another estuary. See the boys in a line? That is where the net was; they were pulling more fish out of it. They pulled the net out, then, and spent the next few hours mending it. We baked seven flounder in foil packets over the coals of our fire, with lemon slices on each side of them. Delicious!

This was a rock someone found at this beach. So pretty!

MIRROR TARN/MORIA GATE ARCH WALK–PART 2

March 26, 2023 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

The highlight of our walk, for most of us, was the Moria Gate Arch. I would not have recognized the reference, but some in the family who have listened to The Lord of the Rings recognized it, and when we reached the end of the track we saw a sign that confirmed that it was named for that feature of the story.

First, we reached an overlook just off the main track, which looked down the river towards the arch. That was pretty amazing! After admiring it, we kept on walking, and the track took us over the arch! It was rather unnerving, though, because if it hadn’t been for the paving stones embedded in the path, each with a moa track molded into it, I wouldn’t have known we were over the river. The trees were just as dense on each side of us as they had been all the way so far, although if I really looked I could sometimes catch a glimpse of the water off to the side.

Then, we were surprised, when we reached the far side of the arch, to find a hole going down into the ground. We went down it…

And found this!

Parts of the area under the arch were like a cavern, and the boys, of course, had to explore everything.

Elijah took this video for me, so I could show you a 360º view.

After enjoying this beautiful place for awhile, we climbed back out to the bush above and rejoined Mom, who had chosen not to attempt these steps. (Wise move!)

We found the most amazing mushrooms here and there!

This one was bigger than an adult’s hand!

There is an incredible diversity of life on a fallen log!

I love spots like this. An enchanted forest, maybe? (See the face peeking around a tree trunk?)

Mirror Tarn/Moria Gate Arch Walk–Part 1

March 19, 2023 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

When we were in Karamea for our family holiday, we spent one day exploring the Oparara Basin. First, we checked out Box Canyon Cave, as I described last week, and then we went back along the road a few kilometers to another carpark. After we ate our lunch, we went on a loop walk that took us to Mirror Tarn and the Moria Gate Arch. This track was supposed to take about an hour and a half to walk, but I think it took us more like two hours. We took our time and enjoyed the walk. It was so peaceful and beautiful, there in the rainforest!

This is the Oparara River, from the bridge we crossed on the way from the carpark to the beginning of the track. Some of the boys walked through it!

Rainforest!

This little bush robin came very close to us. They are totally unafraid of humans. Such a cute little thing!

I took this picture of a spider web to show Mom–and then forgot to show her. Well, Mom, you can see it now! I just thought it was quite interesting.

Mirror Tarn–a beautiful place!

Another bush robin showed up here.

Can you see two bush robins checking James out? He sat quite still for longer than I’ve seen him very many times.

As I approached this bridge, James laid down on the rail where you see him and said, “They ought to put the rails closer together so people can’t fall through and get hurt!”

I’ll share pictures of the rest of this walk next time. It was so beautiful! We took a lot of pictures.

Box Canyon Cave

March 15, 2023 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

Though we didn’t want to go exploring every day, we decided to do some walking our first day in Karamea. We drove to the Opararo Basin, about a half hour’s drive north and then east of Karamea, and went all the way to the end of the one-lane dirt road. What a beautiful drive! I didn’t get many pictures of it because the road was rough enough that I was being bounced up and down so much that most of the ones I tried for ended up being blurry. Trust me, the terrain and the plant life were both amazing! The first two pictures give you just a tiny glimpse of what we were enjoying.

These fruits were ripe everywhere, and Simon was curious to know what they were, so he wanted me to take a picture. We’re still not quite sure what they are!

This was the entrance to the two caves. We were very disappointed not to be able to go into Crazy Paving Cave, since the entrance was locked up by DOC, but we walked on through here to Box Canyon Cave.

This is the entrance to Box Canyon Cave. No tour guides–just go in by yourself!

Yes, that’s Simon, with one usable arm, exploring the cave!

Miss Joy “read” the sign about the cave’s closure to her daddy, after I explained it to her.

On the Way to Karamea

March 12, 2023 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

We had a short holiday this year! We went to Karamea, the town nearly at the end of the road going north along the West Coast, and camped there for four nights. It’s a lot of work to get away like that, but it was sure nice to have a break. Most of our holidays have been road trips, sleeping a different place nearly every night, so this time was different and we all very much enjoyed staying in one place for the whole time.

This is a view of the mountains as we drove along the Buller River, towards the Lower Buller Gorge.

This piece of sculpture is in front of one of the few buildings along the road that parallels the Buller. Can you see what the mosquito is holding?

I’m always amazed at the engineering that went into this bit of the road. It’s one lane there, for obvious reasons!

We had a bicycle rack on the back of the ute we were traveling in, and it hadn’t been fastened on quite right (inexperienced person putting it on!). We stopped a couple of times to tighten it down, and during one of those stops Little Miss posed for me on top of this rock, near the end of the Lower Buller Gorge.

A view down the river at the same point.

The Karamea Bluff was astounding! We had never been up there before, so even though we were warned that there was quite a hill to get over before reaching our destination, it still took us somewhat by surprise. We stopped near the top to admire the view. This is looking south-southwest from the road.

Of course, the young people in our vehicle had to walk on the guard rail! James drove us; Mom, Esther, Mr. Sweetie, Little Miss and I were the passengers. Elijah drove his vehicle, too, with the rest of the family in it, and pulling the camper we borrowed.

See the cut in the hill? That’s where the road goes next, from where I took the two pictures above.

This was the scenery we found as we neared Karamea. It is in a flat area, surrounded on three sides by mountains and the fourth side by the sea.

I had looked online to find accommodation for us, and found the Karamea Memorial Domain Campground. The rates were actually affordable for us, and they gave us this nice, private corner between some of their gardens. We parked the camper in front, and pitched three tents back near the flax, and had ourselves a very nice place to stay.

This building was nearby. It housed everything else we needed–kitchen, lounge, toilets and showers.

The boys found the pool table first thing. Simon was overjoyed to find something he could do, after laying on the couch for two weeks! He used the rest to steady his cue stick, and was the undisputed champion of the family, with his legendary hand-eye coordination. They spent a lot of time playing there.

They even roped me into playing one evening!

We had the use of this lovely lounge whenever we wanted to relax and read or play games together.

They had a large, clean, well-equipped kitchen.

The dining room was perfect, too. We spent several afternoons playing a long, continuous game of dominoes here.

We took a portable grill with us, and cooked meals over it at least twice.

From Haast Pass to Home

March 31, 2021 by NZ Filbruns 1 Comment

On Day 12 of our big trip in December and January, we made it home! The trip was wonderful, we really enjoyed it, we saw amazing scenery and we spent time with many wonderful people—but it was time to get home. We packed up that morning in the DOC campground not too far from Haast Pass, on the West Coast side of the mountains, and then headed for the coast. It was clear and sunny that morning, and we enjoyed the amazing views of the mountains and rivers as we drove. Here we were, packing up the vans for the last time. We had put the fruit we brought on top of Simon’s van in case possums would come around during the night. We put the laundry up there, too.

When we reached the coast, it got foggy for awhile. I think this is the mouth of the Haast River.

This is Bruce Bay, if I remember right.

Another river—I don’t remember which one.

We drove up to the carpark for Franz Joseph Glacier. We ate lunch there, in the vans, because it started pouring. We had talked about walking up to the glacier, but because it was raining so hard we viewed it from the carpark and left again.

It rained off and on till after we went through Hokitika—see the rain coming down in the distance? We made a stop for fuel, but otherwise just kept on driving, and in the end we were glad we hadn’t stopped anywhere, because it took long enough to get home as it was.

From Te Anau Over the Haast Pass

March 28, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

On Day 11 of our big trip, the second-to-last day, we left our friends’ house in Te Anau fairly early and started our two biggest days of travel on the entire trip. We first drove to Queenstown, which took a couple of hours. It poured for awhile, and was cloudy the rest of the day, but the scenery was still incredible.

We drove along this lake for a long time. Queenstown is on the far end of it.

Notice the name on the brown sign? We were were going up the Devil’s Staircase here!

We stopped for a few minutes at a lookout. We would have stayed longer to enjoy the scenery, but a small person in the family had an emergency need, so we got moving again quickly.

Almost to Queenstown!

I think this is the other side of Queenstown, on our way to Cromwell.

Cromwell is a fruit-growing center, so we stopped at a few shops to buy peaches, apricots, and plums. At one, we bought ice creams for the children. Can you tell that Miss Joy loves ice cream?

This place had incredible gardens we could wander through.

This lavender farm was right outside Cromwell.

Mr. Imagination always kept Miss Joy happy when he rode beside her. They spent a lot of time playing with wet wipes. Miss Joy scrubbed her face, neck, hands and feet very thoroughly, over and over!

We stopped in Wanaka just long enough to fuel up the vans, and then headed across Haast Pass. We were no longer in the mood for any sightseeing!

Heading up into the mountains!

After we crossed the pass and were again on the West Coast (notice the difference in vegetation?), we stopped at a waterfall. We saw this log covered with piles of rocks!

The boys enjoyed climbing on the rocks and skipping small ones.

The rocks were all like these.

We debated for awhile about driving the rest of the way home, or camping in a DOC campground a little way down the road. We had about five hours yet to reach home, and it was 3:00 in the afternoon. What a hard decision! We finally decided to stay at the campground and go home the next day, according to our original plan. At the campground, we discovered a creek along a track in the bush. I let the children play in it, and they had great fun! The older boys skipped stones, and coached the little boys in building a dam, and the girls played in the water. It wasn’t very warm, but not cold, either. We had enough clothes for the rest of the way home, so I decided not to worry about wet clothing—we had watertight tubs to put them in for the last leg of the trip!

This was our last night camping with the vans!

I cooked a stew on the campstove in the small picnic area, and we thoroughly enjoyed being by ourselves again!

See how the beds were set up? It was surprisingly comfortable—and quite cozy!

Esther took several short video clips of the fun at the creek—enjoy this glimpse into our evening!

Milford Sound—Part 3—The Trip Back

March 21, 2021 by NZ Filbruns Leave a Comment

After we walked everywhere we could around Milford Sound, we gathered at the back of the vans to eat our sandwiches. It was raining, so some of us stood under the open back door; others got inside and sat in the seats. Wherever we were, the sandflies were BAD! They came in clouds, attacking every inch of exposed skin. We didn’t waste any time eating, and got on the road again quickly to escape the hungry hordes.

This is what we saw as we got on the road again. The mountains were absolutely spectacular, even through the rain.

Here we were heading up to the Homer Tunnel again, from the seaward side. Again, there were sheer rock cliffs going straight up. It’s nearly impossible to get a feel for it from a photo. I was absolutely awestruck by these mountains.

There’s the tunnel! I was quite disappointed that the light had just turned green. I was hoping we would have several minutes to sit there waiting, and soak in the grandeur of the scene.

Have you noticed the water streaming down the rocks all around?

Going down the landward side.

We stopped at a pulloff beside a waterfall. Miss Joy was asleep, so I stayed in the van with her while the others went to the viewing platform. This kea was on top of a motorhome; it rode for a little ways, and then flew back to our vans.

Miss Joy didn’t sleep long, so I got out of the van and went to see the waterfall, too.

When we moved on, the red van went ahead. Maybe I needed to feed Miss Joy? I can’t remember for sure. That left Esther and the two little girls and I together when we stopped at another overlook where we could see this spectacular valley. I can’t remember what it was called, but it was an amazing sight.

Our next stop was the Cascade Creek Nature Walk at Lake Gunn. Miss Joy needed some time to play, so I stayed in the gray van with the two little girls while everyone else went on the walk. These are Esther’s pictures.We also stopped at Mirror Lakes. A nice boardwalk led along the edge of a beautiful pond.

We were trying to get a picture of all the children, and another tourist offered to take our family picture, so we quickly organized for this.

Then, we went back to work on the children’s picture.

Miss Joy didn’t want to be separated from Mommy.

Finally, Daddy had to help keep her in place while I took the picture.

When we got back to Te Anau, we still had a few hours of daylight, so we stopped at the bird sanctuary. This is a takahe, a very rare bird. They have a couple of pairs there.

These are blue ducks, also very rare.

Paradise ducks aren’t exactly rare, but we enjoyed watching them. The mother (the one closest to the camera) was very worried that we would hurt her babies, and kept trying to get us through the fence.

This is a relative of the kea, some sort of a parrot, but I don’t remember what it’s called.

This is another parrot.

A table and chairs just her size!

A little house for her, too!

This is the view from our friends’ house. I would love to see it on a sunny day!Here is a video put together from several clips that various family members. The first clip was taken in the Eglinton Valley, on the way to Milford, by Mr. Imagination. Next is Esther’s clip of going through the Homer Tunnel, and then of going down the mountain from the tunnel. After that is a clip from sea level at Milford Sound, followed by one of the waterfall where we saw the kea. Then, there is one of Lake Gunn and a few from the nature walk.