K9Dad

Thanks KiwiPete! Lots of good information there! Especially the part about doing Doubtful Sound instead of Milford! Or in addition to! I really hesitate to let my twin brother (he has never been to NZ) miss the drive to Milford! The information about the Salmon farms is also very interesting as I have absolutely no interest in fishing but love to eat fish! For me fishing should be done with a seine, a credit card, or dynamite. My previous experience with the southeast part of the south island is one of boredom, flat land, and sleeping a lot...when someone else was driving of course! Right now our plans are to return to Queenstown from Te Anau then jog over to the east side of the mountains and head for Mount Cook. So we probably will completely bypass the Catlins. Thanks for confirming my suspicions about spending half a day in Arthur's Pass. I am curious about having written "crayfish" beside Kaikoura on my map from my very first trip. I do remember buying a big one from a processing plant somewhere. Might have been there. Is that an especially active cray area? It sounds like you can buy them from roadside stands from your description. We sort of cheated last trip and bought some directly from a fisherman on the other side of the island from you. That seemed to be breaking the law because of a quota system and was done with a bit of secrecy. The old streetcar/bus dinner trip in Christchurch sounds like a touristy blast! Oh, I have been in contact with a couple of motels in Christchurch, The Airport Gateway Motorlodge, and the AArburg Airport Motel. I see from Google Earth there are a couple more along Roydvale Ave. Know anything about them? Again, thanks a lot for the information!

I just thought of another question...and I do apologize for the long post. My kid did mention that most folks on this board tend to have short attention spans and fall asleep after reading even one complete sentence. My question is, what is the approximate price of diesel right now? That way I can start to plan on how much money to bring along.

Ok folk, now that I have been officially accepted by your site, Hello! Right now I have my vacaton in Kiwi Kountry pretty well laid out. When we arrive in Auckland we are staying at the Ventura Inn, a short distance from the airport. The place was suggeted by the company we are renting our Caravan from. We are still looking for a place in Christchurch for our last night(s) before flying home. I have quotes from the AArburg Airport Motel ($150 for the four of us), and the Airport Gateway (a variety of accomodations ranging from $165 to $265 depending on our desires). There is another place there that looks interesting (good reviews) but doesn't seem to have a web site, and that is the Airport Delta just up the street from the Gateway. We are not yet sure how long we will be in Christchurch and when we will turn in the Caravan, but it will be just for one or two nights. We were also thinking of taking the train from Christchurch to Greymouth and back just for the scenery. My wife suggested we get off in Arthur's Pass and do the town while waiting for the train to return. I looked at Arthur's Pass on Google Earth and my conclusion is that a set of four 70 year old tourists could spend at least 10 minutes doing the town. Our days of treking and stuff are long gone. So, short of sulking in a coffee house for four or five hours or sitting by the magic hole in the mountain waiting for it to spit out the train, I didn't see much there. Last time we were in NZ was 23 years ago. My wife and I became so tired of the faint taste of mutton in everything that we searched the stores vainly for something familiar like a can of Spam. I see now it is readily available. We found out back then that McDonalds even added a bit of mutton grease to the oil they cooked with since the locals expected that slight taste (so we were told). Of course to us, it was not a slight taste! They say you are what you eat, and back then I marveled at how even the odor in a men's room had a faint mutton smell. We loved New Zealand of course, and we loved the people! And we loved the "slightly different" aspect of things (except for the mutton). Want a six amp fuse for one of your household circuits, just put two wraps of three amp wire on the terminal posts feeding the circuit! Here your house would be condemed and sealed for wiring like that! Car windshields (or windscreens as I think they were called) were tempered glass and not safety glass like we are required to have here. So a road rock could well give you a lap full of road diamonds and a blast of wind and rain in your face! Is that still the case? I can't wait to get my hands on a Chinese gooseberry (Kiwi fruit) picked ripe instead of rock hard, and to see my twin brother's reaction to Vegemite or Marmite. Do they still have signs saying "metal surface" to warn you of an upcoming gravel road? It took a lot of research to discover the history of that term! Oh, the history of the Plunket room, http://www.monumentalstories.gen.nz/bio_98.html. Or a bit of history. Although originally established for the welfare of mothers and children, Plunket rooms were open to the public and always had nice public toilets. When we were last there, Crayfish fishing was on a quota system to protect dwindling reserves and a fisherman could only sell his catch to a processor. We managed a black market contact and bought four tails (they were gigantic) directly from a seaman cleaning his catch in a secluded spot. Hope we can manage the same thing again! Not that I want to help decimate the species or mess with the system, but there is just something different about fresh catch! I also remember a place, a lake, (was it Taupo) where you could buy your way into a fishing trip, catch a lake trout, and local restaurants would cook the thing for you! We had an Aussie lady doctor (young) hitch-hiker with us for a time (those Aussies have NO modesty ) and she kept trying to catch one of those nasty looking New Zealand eels that she vowed she was gonna cook for us. Fortunately she never did. We picked green lipped mussels from the rocks off mussel point near Okuru and hope to do so again. The tide was in and we were up to our shirt tails in surf. We had a relay set up with two pickers who tossed their catch to people on rocks who relayed them to a person on the beach with a bucket. We ate till we just couldn't eat any more! From Auckland, we plan on driving north through the Kauri forests to at lest Kaitaia. then back along the East coast. We will circle the Coromandel then hit the Rotorua area. From there east to circle the East Cape then back across the center of the North Island to Taupo and on southwest to Stratford. Then down to Wellington and the ferry. We will drive the west coast of the South Island down to Haast where you have to go inland. Queenstown of course is on our list. Last time we rafted the Shotover River but I think my whitewater days are behind me now. We will drive on to Milford Sound and then backtrack as far as Queenstown. We will avoid the eastern plains at all costs. From Queenstown we will drive to Mount Cook, then cross the flatlands to Christchurch. A final optional excursion might be to take the train through Arthur's Pass to Greymouth to buy that jade we should have bought when first there and back. Then we fly home. And oh by the way, should any of you NZ people want to stay out of the way as two old farts try to navigate a caravan down the wrong side of the roads, I could post an itinerary.