Day 224 Monday, March 14th. New Zealanders return to Christchurch.

Page 2 of the local paper here has a full page of messages from the government to its citizens. (paraphrasing):
“Welcome Home-Information for residents returning to Christchurch”
1) Recovering after the earthquake.
Firstly check with your neighbours and ask them if they have power, water and electricity. Check [gov website} for advice.
2) Can I enter my property safely?
If your property has been red tagged then do not enter, it is unsafe. Consult with a structural engineer on what needs to be done to make it safe.
3) Emergency Accommodation
Call [number] for temporary housing.
4) Water.
If your property dos not have water ask a neighbor to run a hosepipe over the fence. Water can also be obtained from the temporary tankers roaming the city. All water needs to be boiled until further notice.
Portable hot showers are at 6 locations throughout Christchurch.
Stay away from rivers and estuaries because of sewage overflows.
5) Rubbish
Organic, recyclable and rubbish will be collected as normal.
6) House damage and repair.
For all damage under $2,000 go ahead and arrange for the work to be done, keep all receipts and file a claim with the government. For repairs over this amount contact the government for an inspection.
7) Recovering your car from the red zone
Call [number] but please be patient, all red zone areas remain dangerous and it may take weeks to reclaim all cars.
8) Maori Support Services
[numbers to call]
9) Ethnic support
Foreign language support [numbers]
10) Coloured placards on businesses.
Green = safe to resume business
Yellow= entry permitted with an engineer in attendance.
Red= no admittance until a detailed engineering report has been submitted and evaluated.
11) Memorial Service, Friday, March 18th
Please walk, bike or bus to this service.

We see lots of Japanese tourists here walking around...I would like to talk with them but don't know if I should or how.

Day 224 Monday, March 14th. Te-Anau through Queenstown to Glenorchy

We stopped at Stu’s place on the way to check out his fly fishing shop and guided fishing tours. NZ$750/day for max. 2 people and NZ$500 per ½ day. Clearly a life-long passion for this 30 something man with pictures of him as a boy in Scotland, with his Grandad, winning all sorts of prizes for fly-fishing plastered all over his shop walls. We would like to do this but he’s booked this week and, anyway, it’s blowing a gale today and it was difficult to keep the van in a straight line while driving.
We stopped once again in Queenstown for a coffee but then drove to Glenorchy to stay the night. It’s raining hard now and looks as though it will do that all night and into early tomorrow, we will see if we can get any hiking in tomorrow. Omelettes in the camper van for dinner and we’ll read our books and listen to the rain.
We actually went for a riverside walk (“Diamond Creek) in the drizzle.
The two pictures of Christine show that we have moved from a summer in Australia to a Fall/Autumn in New Zealand in just two weeks. It's all great.

Day 223 Sunday, March 13. Milford Sound cruise and then back to Te-Anau.

Well, we slept well in the dorm room with Carl and Jay last night and they were deep sleepers since Christine’s snoring didn’t wake them. Or my night trip to the bathroom. NZ$33/night for each of us. Hot showers, communal kitchen (an experience in itself with a middle aged man cooking himself some rice and chopped up sausages and a French group doing a seven course gourmet meal and talking in French just to show off) and a lounge area for everyone to mingle.
We took a cruise on the Sound for 2 1/2 hrs.and paid NZ$80 each and it was very good. We had a naturalist guide and so had lots of detailed information as we went along. We were pretty lucky to get some sunshine as well, this place gets about 30’ of rain per year; 220 days of rain; about 80 days of grey and then some sun. That’s not too bad, somewhere else on NZ gets 54’ of rain per year). It’s actually fortunate to be able to see it during or just after a rainfall since the sides of the Fjord are apparently just covered with thousands of madly rushing waterfalls.
This place was named by a Welshman but it’s actually a mistake-it’s a real Fjord and not a Sound since it’s v-shaped bottom (about 1,200’ deep) was actually carved by ice and not a river. (Hey, I paid to get told this stuff).
We stopped at Deer Creek for a river-side lunch on the way back to Te-Anau where we will spend the night at a Top Ten campground (NZ$46/night).
We would recommend making the Milford Sound visit and cruise but suggest staying in Te-Anau rather than Milford Sound. It’s a 2hr. drive each way and so an up and back trip and the cruise can easily be done in a day.
1st 2 photos are of our lunch stop at Deer Flat coming back down from Milford Sound to Te-Anau and the others are from the cruise on the Sound.

Day 222 Saturday, March 12th. Milford Sound at sunset

Day 222 Saturday, March 12th. Wanaka to Milford Sound. Sleeping with Carl and Jay.

A big day of driving today but absolutely beautiful countryside all the way. Rather like Scotland but with the sunshine. We are headed to Milford Sound and want to sleep there tonight so we can get on one of the cruises around the fjord early on Sunday.
We loved Wanaka and were a little sad to leave but then we had a great drive up over another mountain pass and down into Queenstown for a Starbucks coffee and a shared pastry. Like all of NZ, Queenstown offers a lot of outdoor activities including a gondola ride to the top of the nearest peak and jet boat tours of the large lake the town sits next to. This is ski country and so all of the winter activities are evident as well, x-country skiing etc. Queenstown seems a nice town but we’ll be back through in a few days and so, for now, we move on and reach Te-Anau to get more diesel and propane since there isn’t any to be had up at Milford Sound, a 240km round trip from here.
Te-Anau is stunning. It’s set on the 2nd largest lake in NZ. It’s Saturday and so all the locals are outside along with tourists, there is a sailboat race going on and everyone is picnicking alongside the lake and so we stop for lunch from the camper and join them.
Now it’s 4.00pm or so and we have to get over the final mountain pass to the west coast and Milford Sound and so we head out and pretty soon cross the 45° latitude line and pass lots of signs asking us to stop, slow down and take fly fishing trips. I hope that we will find time to do just that on our way back north next week but, if not, that’s just the sort of thing that will bring us back for a 2 month trip to New Zealand.
We have to go through a very long one-way tunnel to get to Milford Sound (15 minutes between traffic signals) and we don’t talk a lot going through but then I ask Christine what she was thinking about during the trip inside the tunnel and she tells me that she doesn’t want to talk about it. But it’s on both our minds-what would happen if an earthquake hit now? The news from Japan has reached us.
We get to Milford Sound around 6.00pm and the one campsite is full so our only option is to share a double bunk bed dorm room with two guys from Canada, Carl and Jay. They are back-packing around NZ using buses and seem to be doing OK with the, apparently, good bus service here. Christine wants the bottom bunk but I tell her that could make it very difficult for me with my nighttime bathroom visits and so she agrees to take the top but I know she’ll spend half the night worrying about falling out. We’ll see.
1st photo is the start of the climb over the Southern Alps to Milford Sound and the next is Te-Anau lake. Next 2 are of Queenstown.

Day 221 Friday, March 11th An attempt at “Rob’s Peak”.

Well we started late. What with the morning rain and the show we wanted to see we got to base camp at 4.45pm and looked up the 4,500’ to the summit and said “yeah, we can do this”. Then, after climbing straight up for an hour we met some young and fit looking climbers coming down and they told us that it was a three hour climb up and a two hour climb down. We climbed for an hour and had spectacular views back down over Wanaka and its lake. Then a 45 minute walk down and a rush to the shop for food for dinner (paté and salmon) and a quick beer in one of the local bars.

Day 221 Friday, March 11th. Scottish Kippers and toast for breakfast

--in our camper at Wanaka. Rained this morning and so took it easy in the camper van and waited for the sun-which came out and so we visited the big agricultural show here. All the tractors you could want to buy. Also show goat contests. The judge explained that the ideal female should have big hips, a little narrower at the shoulders and an amenable disposition. I raised my hand to offer a different opinion but he wouldn’t give me the opportunity to speak. Next came the Billy Goats but we moved before the criteria description became to raunchy.