Home

Well its been an amazing trip and I still have much to write, describe and discuss. The final hotel was a bomb and I shan't be recommending them to anyone but overall the trip was magnificent, the Junior Grendels are exhausted but happy and Mrs Grendel looks back fondly on surviving.

It is great to be home and I am looking forward to some routine again, including work on Monday. They boys are looking forward to vegging out without 'Dad' rousing them out of bed in the dark to go climb something cold and steep - and possibly geologically active.

Mrs Grendel is glad there are no more boats.

And finally - here is the image I mentioned weeks ago - shot through the lens of a telescope on Mount John - a bit ragged around the edges but I was holding the camera over the eyepiece.

The Big One

By the frantic note in the voice of the morning TV show host you'd have thought that the entire nation was about to be inundated by a Tsunami today. It was sad to see that television host in NZ are just as appallingly rude and stupid as they are in Australia. One host all but accused a spokesman for local Civil Defense of incompetence simply because he refused to speculate based on rumours alone.

There was no giant wave that hit us here - only the islands of Western Samoa and American Samoa and it looks terrible for them.

We arrived safely in Auckland today and still have a vast backlog of tales, reviews and adventures to write up - I think most of these will be done once we get back to Australia as the internet facilities have been patchy in supporting image uploads and edits.

The last few days have been spent touring Taupo and Rotorua and we managed to visit a Maori village (a real one, not a tourist-built village), enjoyed watching a hangi cooked in the boiling water of the thermal pools and then rode luge downhill near our motel. Junior Grendel Number One surprised us once again by riding not only the luge but the chairlift. He took his own luge down after an initial tandem ride with me and fell off three times and got up laughing each time.

Scared ten years off me!

Or added ten - not sure yet.

Here are a few choice moments from the last few days - and as always, click to enlarge!

Geology

Geology - everywhere has it but some places have it more than others. I had a rock pickers dream drive over the last ten days, and I also noticed that everyone else loves the rocks - and tends to make piles of them!

Amazing photos

I have some amazing photos - I really do, but this particular internet kiosk is perhaps the most useless that I have found - it is in our hotel in Palmerston North and while most of these systems work pretty well and allow you to edit images using a basic tool like Irfanview, this one has nothing. SO I can't show you the great powder snow that fell on us as we drove through Saint Arnaud, or the pale face of Alli as we crossed Cook Strait into the teeth of the same low pressure system that brought the snow.

I hope to do a little photo editing tomorrow - and I'll post up some images then.

I can say that this morning I had my best coffee so far - in Wellington. By and large the standard of coffee and food over here is very high and I don't like to make comparisons but this was really outstanding - Floriditas in Wellington - I got the tip from "Grab Your Fork" an Aussie food blog and it was bang on the money and provided a good rest and recovery stop for us after an early start and moderately rough trip over the Strait (actually it was pretty calm but Mrs Grendel does not do sea travel at all well so for her a 1.5 metre swell might as well be a hurricane).

I have to catch up with a lot of the cafes we have visited over the last few days - there have been some goodies, and I'll also review a few of the places we have stayed - and a few we wish we'd stayed in, like Lake Wanaka.

We are on the journey North to Auckland but stopped by Palmerston North to visit friends and we have had a great time - we have another day resting here before heading for more adventures in Taupo.

The Astro Cafe

Barista Fraser Gunn is also a superb photographer. We got to be impressed by both the photos and the Supreme Coffee he served from his perch high on Mt John at the University of Canterbury's Observatory.

Given that 2009 is the International Year of Astronomy and that both the Junior Grendels are proud owners of Galileoscopes, we could hardly pass up a visit to an observatory that also hosts a great cafe.

This cafe has to have one of the best views in the world and it was well worth the steep road trick up the mountain to drink in the view - along with a coffee.

Junior Grendel One and Two wasted no time at all in giving us both heart failure with their antics on the steep sides of the mountain.

Fraser had a small scope set up on a tripod with the view over the ski fields nearby - I managed to wedge the camera over the lens at just the right angle - and as soon as I can extract the images from my card I'll post them up - in the meantime the following spread of Grendel adventure pics should be satisfactory!

If you are passing Lake Tekapo ever in your life I highly recommend that you take the turnoff to Mount John and drive up the hill. Simply amazing. They also do night tours at the observatory, leaving on a minibus from the town below, and although I missed it (too tired!) it looks like a great night's viewing.

Lone Pine

I grew up on a hill above the Brisbane River - right across the river from a Koala sanctuary called Lone Pine.

I went there often as a child and even braved the muddy tidal flow of the Brisbane River to paddle over to the Jetty from our side of the River to Lone Pine to ride the wake of the tourist ferry as it arrived and departed.

We took the more sedate route today of the drive down Fig Tree Pocket Road and the Junior Grendels and Mrs Grendel got to experience the same thing that I did as a child - and it has barely changed at all.

We fed kangaroos, cuddled Koalas and captured crocodiles.

Junior Grendel Number Two declared it "the best day of his life". Junior Grendel Number One claimed total awesomeness for Lone Pine.