Eee Its turned out nice again !!

Well its’ the final few days and we have a great resort on the Island of Sentosa – just off the Singapore mainland. We had a wet start when we arrived on Sunday – early evening - just missing torrential rain - which unfortunately showered into Monday as well. Our first real wet day – but it was still very warm and humid. Today (Tuesday) it is back to ‘wall to wall’ sunshine and we hope for a good day tomorrow – our last day. We are using these three days to really relax and soak up the sun – it is sun loungers and pool – no coach and no sightseeing !!

Below are photographs of views from our bedroom and one from around the resort itself.

The resort of Sentosa has been purposely developed for ‘holidaying’. Not just for tourist but for the Singaporians as the local populous like to be called. It is a well maintained resort but as we found out on Monday (a Bank Holiday) it was packed !! Apparently 500 people had breakfast all roughly at the same time so you can imagine the bedlam at the serving stations !! But we muddled through !!

The Hotel Beach

You will see a marked change in Susan since she visited a Chinese Herbal Healer/Faith Healer to do something about her newly attained holiday figure. It’s certainly worked on the weight front but I’m having difficulty accepting her new contours!!

Slimline Sue at Breakfast today

Well this is goodbye from the Blog …. Hope our readership have enjoyed the written dialogue and we look forward to catching up with you on our return to Wilmslow – some sooner than later !!

Bye for now

Ian & Sue.

Were not crowing we are just Baying !!

What a place for’ R&R’ the Bay of Islands proved to be. We effectively had three days in one of the most idyllic area of North Island if not NZ . The hotel we stayed in was situated right on the shoreline of one of the many bays that make up the Bay of Islands. The actual township was called Waitangi which was where the treaty was signed to bring peace between the Europeans and the Maoris. Enough of the history I am sure you want to see some ‘piccies’ of the areas we were so enamored with - so here goes. This is a shot of the view from our hotel room across the bay

This is a shot of the view from our hotel room across the bay

This is view of some of the islands that make up the ‘Bay of Islands’ as there are 140 declared islands the shot only shows some which are most picturesque. Taken from the air (obviously !!)


We took a plane excursion to Cape Reinga the furthest accessible northern point of the North Island along a shore line called the 90 mile beach – which is in fact 63 miles of unbroken beach and is quite a site to fly over. We can now say we have done the equivalent of Lands End to John o’ Groats of New Zealand where Stewarts Island is Lands End and Cape Reinga (John o’ Groats).

The flight took us over a majority of the islands and we had good weather so hopefully Sue’s video replicate the scenes we saw for some of you luckily enough to be bored with our holiday video when we get back !!

Today we have journeyed to Auckland in preparation for our return trip home. We have a single night here and then take a flight on Saturday midday to Singapore. We will be at Singapore for three days; then back home. We will sign off from Singapore so be sure to look at the final epistle from the Wilmslowbunnies !!!

Holiday Eruptions !!

Hi All

Well the visit to Rotorua lived up to expectations. The land of the stink bomb !! Actually the smell of hydrogen sulphide was not too bad – if you stood up wind of the fumaroles !! I was expecting more of the volcanic landscape but it was so green. Many people had houses right in the thermal area (as it is called) and the fascination was that from time to time they found they has steam emanating from the their lawns and in some instances houses had to be moved from one side of the road to another because suddenly they had steam or bubbling mud pools in their gardens or appearing under their house. This is taken all in ones stride !!

Whoops the side of the mountain's gone !!

Sue and I took an air flight over the area of Rotorua to see, from the air, the crater and fault line of the last volcano to erupt (on land) in Rotorua and the photograph shows the extent of the crater formed. Deaths did occur as the seismic monitoring was virtually none existent in the 1800's but today the area is one of the most monitored areas by geologist. In one of the shots taken by Sue on video is a ‘hump’ on the side of the volcano which will become a new crater/volcano in the next 2000 years as geologists are measuring the growth of the dome to be 5 cm per annum.

Yes we did manage to see a geyser – but missed the big blow by minutes so the picture shows the little plume just minutes before the big one !! Blink and you can miss a lot !!

It's about to spout !!

Enough of the geologist stuff the town itself was a mixture of old and new buildings and has a crisscross of shopping streets some full of yes, you’ve guessed it souvenir shops, but others shops with the traditional ‘settler/colonial frontage. Most of the Administration Building were typically British in character with new building taking on the ‘wild west’ look !!

Now we are in the ‘Bay of Isands’ for three days R&R and from what we have seen already then ‘R&R’ it will be – but that will be another posting so for now it’s from Ian & Sue.

We've met our Waterloo

Hi All

It’s great to have the sun on ones back for a few days and this is what we have had leaving Nelson on Friday. We entered into Picton for our transfer to Wellington (North Island) and it was a glorious day – a millpool for the crossing and the sun beating down – same today (Sunday) as we walked around Wellington the country’s capital. Picton was a very quaint seaside town and we wished we had more time there. They had developed a great waterside park for the family – and it was great to lay in the sun and have a ‘picnic meal’ before we went on the boat.

Picnic at Picton

Today in Wellington we have done the Wellington Heights by tram as the picture shows and then walked around the botanical gardens looking at the herbaceous borders which were still in great bloom.

The Tram

Later this afternoon we took a habour cruise for an hour and I enjoyed just lying out in the sun and soaking up its rays. Wellington looks like a typical British moderate seaside town with a centre of skyscrapers for NZ Headquarters of major banks and commercial enterprises. Looked quite odd as the HQ’s were all clumped together as I think the photograph indicates.

Wellington Centre from the Cruiser !!

Tomorrow we are off to Rotorura the land of the geysers and boiling mud pools so hopefully we will get some interesting photographs then….not too worry Sue too .... much but apparently New Zealand is expecting the eruption of a volcano soon – anytime in the next 1000 years but fingers crossed mother nature does not chose Wednesday as the date for it !!

Cheers to all our readers and we will be in touch later in the week.

Ian and Sue

Wow what a Ride….

I have dedicated this posting to our day in Franz Josef which has been outstanding. Mainly because we shook the piggy bank and decided to take a helicopter ride over the Southern Alps which host Mt Cook and Mt Tasmin and the two famous glaciers Franz Josef and Fox. The weather was unbelievable for the area in that it has been blue sky from dawn to dusk and temperatures 24./25 a real ‘Indian summer’ for the New Zealanders.

Below I show four particular shots taken by myself (oh and Sue of course) to try and let you imagine the scenery we encountered. The highlight of the ‘helicopter’ ride was the landing on a snow field and the views from that field. Luckily for us there had been some snow over the past 48 hours so the ‘soot’ from the forest fires in Victoria Australia had been covered over. The temperature was still as it was at sea level and we had wrapped up for what we thought would be low temperatures but with no wind there was no heat loss and we sweltered !! My ‘boo boo’ was that when Sue came to take videos from the helicopter I had forgotten to put the memory card back onto the camera. The sky was not the only thing that was blue the ‘whispered’ language from Sue to me was of the same colour !! 2nd faux par – this holiday Sues says THERE WON’T BE A THIRD !!

Hope you enjoy our shots….

Sue and I on the snow field which is just below Mt Cook

The Fox Glacier

The Franz Josef Glacier

Mount Cook (From the snow field)

Bye for now be in touch soon….

I hope all our readers have had a great weekend – we certainly have !! It started well after a wonderful Friday and Saturday on Milford Sound a majestic fiord in the southwest of the South Island. Not having seen the Norwegian Fiords I cannot compare but what we have seen was simply stupendous. The way the mountains seem to project out of the sea as sheer vertical cliffs was breathtaking. We were so lucky to have what was the sunniest day of the year so far in the Fiordland (where Milford Sound is situated). The camera, both stills and video, cannot capture the scene as seen by the eye but Sue has done her best so hopefully we can share our memories of the excursion to Milford Sound with you.

For those who want to know more immediately these ‘Sounds’ were formed by the glaciers which have subsequently melted. But formed in basin of very hard rock - the scars you see on the rock faces are those formed by the movements of boulders in the glaciers on the mountain sides. No other erosion has taken place - the rock which constitutes the side of the fiord is too hard to be eroded by wind or rain !! Apparently the real spectacular shows are when it rains as the water simply cascades off the sides of the fiords in great waterfalls into the Sound. Because we had the sunny day we had to make do with the crystal show of the sun glistening off the minerals in the rocks – shame !!

From Saturday evening to day Monday we have spent in Queenstown – a large city on the shore of one of New Zealand largest lake - Lake Wakatipu. Queenstown with its neighbour town of Arrowtown arose because of the gold rush of the mid-late eighteen hundreds when gold nuggets were found in the Shotover River which feeds into Lake Wakatipu. This river flow is the one which has produced the greatest amount of gold nuggets – alas it is ‘panned’ no more. Arrowrtown is just like a typical ‘Western’ town you see in American Westerns – but the only robbers in town are the souvenir traders. We took a ride today (Monday) on the Gondola up the side of one of the ‘mountains’ that overlooks Queenstown.

The views were stunning – again what the camera sees is a less than an adequate view of what the eye sees however I have replicated one of the shots to give you an idea Tomorrow we are off to Franz Josef Glazier – which is still one of the biggest in NZ. If the weather holds as it has today then we expect to be ‘blown away’ by the scenery. If it is windy and rainy we will just be blown away !! Will write more towards the end of the week

Hello from Invergargill - the southern tip of NZ

Today Thursday 26th we are venturing onto Stewarts Island which is just offshore from Invergargill and is termed an ecological island with spectacular views and bays I hope that we will see something quite unique to NZ. Yesterday we went to a local Museum in Invergargill which house (for some unexplained reason) a prehistoric reptile – a tuatara. Apparently this reptile, which resembles a lizard is supposed to be a possible missing link between the dinosaurs and birds. The reptile has feather like bristles along its spine and a mouth which is more akin to that of a bird. These reptiles were ‘saved’ from extinction by being resident in a small area of NZ, although they were prevalent throughout the globe, this colony was saved. They have remained unchanged genetically for over 150 million years. A curator of the local Museum has become an expert in ‘breeding’ these reptiles and has the distinguished reputation of being their savior. The ‘beast’ I have been talking about is shown below


On a lighter note we are still amazed on the natural beauty of the countryside. It’s has been a ‘wet’ summer and so the grass and the hedgerows are very green and in the late summer sunshine look very attractive. We saw lots of rolling hills just as one would traveling around southern England and many small hamlets – the main building being a bungalow !!
The standard of hotels has been great and the New Zealanders very friendly and quite knowledgeable of events in the UK. Certainly knew were there to escape the cold blast we had from Russia early in February !! We have not checked the weather in the UK - we just hope that you are seeing a sign of spring !! Will write more after the weekend.,

To Boadly go to Dunedin

We finished off our tour at Christchurch on Sunday in glorious sunshine. We took a gondola as mentioned in our last log and the views were spectacular…. Sue took some great videos to show – I’ve unfortunately deleted them whist sorting out the facets and features of the video-editor. Know how it works now but some lost videos later!! Me in dog house must spring to mind.
From Christchurch yesterday we took the coach down south to the next big town of Dunedin – so called as it has a great Scottish heritage and the name if formed by amalgamation of Dundee and Edinburgh – first impressions as we pulled in yesterday was of a ‘Scottishness’ with a statue of ‘Robbie Burns’ overlooking the town centre – all road with good Scottish names Today we tour the city and also go to on a very scenic route to visit the Taleri Gorge but more of that in the next posting. On the way to Dunedin we stopped off at a place on the coast called The Moeraki Boulders which are very unusual and very particular to this place in New Zealand. Below are two pictures of such boulders.



(I just had to crack one)



They are formed through time by the encasement of sea creatures in soil elements akin to cements which is tossed by the sea and forms sphere-like shapes. Much like rolling a small snowball to make a rolly-polly snowman. Over time they have settled in the sea bed – which is mud based and not sand and with passage of time have been elevated into land areas adjoining the seas and are now been washed out of soil based cliff faces. Well it sort of that scientifically!!

Just to sign off it is true that NZ is a country of four seasons ….. on Sunday we 24 degrees of sun and yesterday a low blew in making it feel like 7 degrees and pouring with rain.. Hopefully it will change back again today (Tuesday Morning).

Living in a parallel universe

Gosh Christchurch is so 'English' Yes we had rain on landing and by lunchtime out pops the sun !! Today (Sunday) it looks as if it is going to be brilliant. Off to see Christchurch from the hilltop taking a gondola from the low heights to the high heights. Plenty of scenery promised so the camera will be in great use. What is truly amazing is that the plants are so much like the ones in the UK - suppose has to be as they emigrated here with their 'masters' but they much bigger. for you hoticulturists amongs you the rose garden we visited yesterday was so wonderful - all varieties of rose petals and big !! Talking of 'freebies' as I was last time we managed to find a cavery which did the equivalent of the three pound fifty meal but offered as much as you could eat and covered three courses. No I did not make a pig of myself - but can't vouch the same for Sue..... Hope all our readers are well. Will update more; especially after today.

PS Marlene if I've made any spelling and grammatical errors please forgive me - I am on holiday !!

Must use the 'freebie'

Just had to take advantage of the free access….. we are at Chiangi Airport awaiting our flight call. Have had a good morning on a cruise around the mad !! shipping lanes around Singapore habour and then stopped off at Kuzu Island which is a refuge for the turtles, How they manage to navigate around all the ships anchored up beggars belief ….. no wonder the Singaporeans provide a sanctuary for them. They need it !! Weather remains hot and humid but I think we are heading for ‘Mancunian weather’ at Christchurch seems a cool 13 degrees and raining !! I can ‘see’ you all smiling…. fancy spending all that time in the air just to get weather like home which is free as well !! Actually I hope you are all okay and looking forward to the onset of spring….we will be enjoying late summer in NZ so maybe we will be enjoying a few ‘harvest festivals’ in the towns we visit. Enough now …. Will sign off and go and seek another G&T,,,,, Ian & Sue.

Here we are Gin Slinging it

Arrived safely in Singapore to a warm 36 degrees…. I think I can just about handle this !! Flight great as one would expect with Singapore Airlines – passenger attention was superb nothing was ever too much trouble and if Sue kept having the champagne then trouble there could have been !! We are off to a ‘Welcoming Party’ this afternoon to meet other compatriots on this holiday. Ones we have met so far are very friendly and seem to be of the same ilk as ourselves. Spent most of the day around the pool and here are few photos to give you an idea of the luxury we are enjoying. So far so great. Will update Blog when we get to Christchurch which is on Saturday/Sunday next.

This is the very beginning

Well our bags are all packed and ready to roll.... well I hope not roll in reality as I'll never stop them !! Tickets and passports are safely stored away...... just hope Sue can remember to find them again. We won't be sad leaving the backend of the winter but sad to leave all our friends for 5 weeks still if I get this hang of 'blogging' you'll be able to share our venture with us. I sign off now and see if this training exercise has been fruitful and I can see this effort posted on our blog.