I can't really comment on whether or not I heard them on the radio. Lady Luck's radio was truly shocking and didn't pick up any station for longer than one song and we eventually gave up on it but we did hear Adele, Ellie Goulding and The Wanted so I'm sure they were played at some point.
However, in the shops I did spy 1D trading photos and many books plus a huge photo of Harry Styles on the front of a girlie magazine. I think NZ has been successfully conquered.
Two words; 'Amazing' and 'Country'! I have absolutely loved my time in the country that's probably the furthest from home on this trip. If anyone ever gets a chance to go to the land of ferns and kiwis I would urge them to go. I loved travelling around in our campervan Lady Luck and seeing beautiful mountains, forests and my first ever glacier plus I even stepped into the magical world of Hobbiton too.
The wildlife has been a big part of the visit and it wasn't planned that way which makes it even more amazing; I've swam with dusky dolphins, watched rare blue penguins come home from a days fishing, walked near fur seals and seen a wild kiwi wandering through a rare kauri forest at night and the bit that makes it all is that every one of those animals were 100% wild.
It's probably the first country where I can't really think of anything really bad happening like getting ill, lost, having bad weather etc so long may this luck continue into Australia and beyond!
The photo: In one part of Christchurch, after the earthquake, a shopping precinct was created out of those huge, metal shipping crates you see on massive ships. There are two storey clothes shops, little cafes and even this bank in an area called Re:Start.
On the 22nd February 2011 the Christchurch Earthquake killed 185 people, injured thousands more and made international news. It has been just over two years since that day and lots of people are working hard to get Christchurch back to it's best but the city is still recovering. There is the occasional aftershock, a large area in the centre of the city named the 'Red Zone' is fenced off and closed to the public because of unstable buildings, houses on the city's outskirts are empty and boarded up and roads are uneven with cracks in the pavement centimetres wide.
I met a lady who was in the city centre when it happened. She was in a shopping mall and just sat on the floor, being near the food court she could hear all the crockery smashing as it hit the ground and she had to walk past so much rubble and damage on her way home. She told me that it took her three weeks before what had happened had properly sunk in.
Did You Know?: The earthquake did so much damage (Like destroying Christchurch Cathedral, pictured) because the centre of the 'quake was only a few miles outside Christchurch and it happened around lunchtime, a busy time for any city.
This is me on one of the 55 million-year-old Moeraki boulders, famous for being naturally spherical/ball shaped.
Weirdly, they all started off as a regular sized pebble or shell that sunk to the bottom of a quiet seabed. As they settled, lime formed around them and as the many, many centuries passed they grew and grew. That original seabed is now raised above the sea, in the form of cliffs, and as the water washes away the softer rock it leaves the boulders for all to see.
There are loads on the beach, big and small, and who knows how many more still to be revealed?
A roadsign with penguins on is not your everyday roadsign. Oamaru, though, is not your everyday place, it is home to the world's smallest penguins; the blue penguins. While staying in the town I went to the colony which is looked after by scientists to help protect these rare birds.
My visit kicked into life just after sunset (About 8:30pm) when I heard some squaking on the water from my viewing seat. Within a few minutes these penguins, which don't get much taller than a 30cm ruler, had negotiated the waiting seals and waddled up the rocky beach face on their way home after a long day catching fish at sea.
In the first gang, 32 tiny blue penguins emerged together and made a run for their holes through the fence that protects their colony from predators. These are possibly the cutest animals I've ever seen and every so often one would fall over onto it's belly before getting itself back up and running that extra bit quicker to catch up with the group. Once through the fence they all split up and head slowly towards their nest boxes to share their catch with their chicks.
Blue penguins pair for life and when those parents in the nest boxes know penguins are coming back they call out to their partners to direct them home. It didn't take long before the colony was alive with penguin calls. In total nearly one hundred penguins were at the colony that night and it was great to see such rare birds in the wild being cared for by conservationists.
Did You Know?: A blue penguin chick only takes two months to fully grow and will have around 10,000 feathers when it heads into the water!
Here is some Maori art painted on a rock face. Maori are the native people of New Zealand which means they lived here for many centuries before any European explorers landed in the country. In fact, there was one drawing at this site of a European boat arriving on the nearby shores.
Rock art like this is now very rare as lots of other sites have unfortunately been destroyed by nature or people. Takiroa is one of only three remaining sites in the whole region (There used to be at least twenty).
This is a photo of Fox Glacier. A glacier is pretty much a frozen river and it moves through a valley shaping it as it goes. It might not look like it's moving at all but it is and it is immensely powerful, it will rip boulders the size of cars from the mountainside and carry them along with it while it crushes smaller rocks to dust. To give you an idea of it's size; in this photo there are a group of people walking on the glacier's surface. Can you spot them?
Did You Know?: Fox Glacier is moving at a speed of just under 1m a week. That's about 10 times faster than most other glaciers in the world. It's a speed demon!
What a morning, the 4:30am wake up was worth it! I am currently sat enjoying a breakfast after spending the early hours of this morning swimming in the sea with wild dusky dolphins! After donning a wetsuit, some flippers and snorkel mask onboard a boat I slipped into the sea, started to swim around and within a couple of minutes some dolphins were darting past me.
The visibility wasn't fantastic so we were encouraged to make noises but not splash, the noises make the dolphins curious so more come to investigate but splashes scare them off. We did three separate dives and at one point I had two circling around me under the water as we studied each other.
The company we chose to go with also work hard to not do any damage to the dolphins or their environment. The animals are truly wild, not trained or encouraged to interact with people in any way so the fact that we got to see and swim with them was absolutely incredible. A day to remember.
Did You Know?: A group of dolphins is called a pod.
Lady Luck had her first bit of bad luck last night. Driving down Highway One, on a road having a new surface, a vehicle coming the other way caused a stone to flick into our window and caused quite a large chip.
If chips are left alone they can cause a crack next time you go over a bad bump and we didn't want that so this is a man called Nick giving Lady Luck a bit of TLC and repairing the crack by pouring resin into it. She is now almost as good as new.
Only an hour or so into our first journey on the South Island and we came across these guys down on the rocks by the roadside; wild New Zealand fur seals. There were at least 100 seals swimming in the sea or relaxing on the rocks and in the photo you can spy a bunch of younger ones crammed into a larger rock pool splashing about!
Did You Know?: Before hunting started in the 1700's there were more than one million fur seals in this area but although hunting has been banned for over 50 years now there are only around 100,000 left.
I have just seen the most peculiar combination of animals as I travel on the ferry to New Zealand's South Island...I just spotted three wild dolphins jumping in and out of the sea only a couple of hundred metres from the side of the ferry and then, off all the creatures to spot thousands of miles from home, I saw some Hereford cattle mooing away in a transportation truck on board the ship.
There can't be many places in the world where you can spot Hereford cattle and dolphins within seconds of one another!
Check out these pools I visited today near the city of Taupo. The green colour of the water is made by the natural minerals that occur in the unfiltered water but the colour is not the most interesting bit; This pool was naturally 39°c today, that's warmer than a lot of people have their baths! In fact the only machines used to make water this warm were to COOL it down from it's natural temperature which is even hotter.
This is still in the area of New Zealand with a lot of geothermal activity and the temperature under the surface heats the water up on it's journey before it comes out from springs much hotter than we are used to in the UK. It was weird to swim in it but it was very relaxing and I much prefer this type of geothermal activity to having egg-smelling steam blown in my face!
We have just travelled down New Zealand's 'Thermal Explorer Highway', a road through an area of New Zealand famous for all it's underground activity, and look what I stumbled upon...this alien-looking bit of land is a natural thermal vent in the earth's crust.
You can spot the steam coming right out of the ground as water below is naturally heated up to hundreds of degrees. The green colour is caused by sulphur forming on the surface and it makes one almighty pong. I was unlucky enough to have my mouth slightly open as the wind changed and blew towards me...think of an egg sandwich left in a hot car all day and you'll be close to imaging the smell! Not nice!
Just down the road from here was a bubbling mud pool the size of a football pitch too. It looked just like a giant chocolate milkshake that someone was blowing bubbles into through a straw with the occasional eruption of mud spewing a few feet into the air.
Discovered by a Maori chief and an Englishman over one hundred years ago, Waitomo Caves are a very special place. Inside, glow worms dangle from the ceiling up above making a perfect copy of a clear night sky. There are thousands of the worms in each cave and each one makes a tiny, bright blue light to attract prey that gets caught in their sticky, dangling threads.
Nobody was allowed to take photos inside the caves so this photo was taken as our boat emerged back into the sunlight of the outside world. If you want to see a picture of the glow worms yourself I would recommend searching online for some.
Did You Know?: Glow worms will spend up to nine months dangling from the ceiling before turning into a bug that has no mouth or stomach and only lives for a few days before starving to death!
In the photo you can see me pretending to be a hobbit! Don't worry, I haven't gone mad, I was simply at Hobbiton, the location of filming for all 'The Shire' scenes in the 'Lord of The Rings' and 'The Hobbit' trilogies (All the films were filmed/will be filmed in New Zealand).
I was very excited to look around the set because I have seen all of the 'Lord of the Rings' trilogy and am currently reading 'The Hobbit' on my Kindle. It was so realistic that I wouldn't have been surprised if a hobbit had popped out of a circular door and headed off to pick some vegetables from the patch.
Did You Know?: Weta Digital is the effects company behind the films. They are named after an insect that lives in New Zealand and is also the largest insect in the world. Search for a picture of them and see what you think.
Last night I got to see an actual kiwi bird in the wild! Kiwis are the national bird of New Zealand, they can't fly and can live for around 40 years. It was very exciting as we had to wait until dark before venturing out into the forest next to our campsite (One of the few campsites in New Zealand found next to where wild kiwi roam) to start our search.
It is not good for kiwis to see bright lights so we wandered in to the forest with our dimmed torch. Our campsite was only small but other people came from further away to try and spot the birds and as we walked through we passed a number of people waiting quietly. Eventually, Nadia and I got to a deserted area and stood patiently and silently in the darkness with our torch off. After a few minutes we heard some rustling on the ground, a few minutes later and it had gotten closer. We decided it was time to turn on our dimmed torch and as we shone it around we spotted it! In amongst the undergrowth was the rare, brown bird foraging for food. It was much bigger than I thought, about the size of a small chicken and it stayed hunting for insects for a few minutes before disappearing off into the night.
It is probably the most exciting animal I have ever seen because; a) It was in the wild b) We found it ourselves and c) They are famously hard to spot.
Obviously, without being able to use a flash I couldn't get a photo but I have attached a photo I took the this morning. The forest we were in was a rare Kauri Forest and this is a photo of a large and rare kauri tree.
Did You Know?: The kauri tree in this photo is about 14 metres tall and over 1200 years old! It now has other plants living on it's branches but when it was younger it was so small that a kiwi bird could have crushed it if it stood on it!
Here's our home for the next couple of weeks! Her name is Lady Luck and I'm hoping that it doesn't turn out to be ironic.
We head off north today to get to the top of the country before starting to travel south through both islands and we plan to stay in campsites on our way and visit a few friends too. Regular access to the internet is going to be rare but I'll try my best to post as often as I can. I can't wait to visit some of the sites New Zealand has to offer.
Today was my first day in New Zealand so it was time to go exploring in a new country. I ended up heading to the top of the Auckland Sky Tower, the tallest structure in the entire Southern Hemisphere. I was told on the lift that it was safe to lean on the glass of the observation deck so I decided to test it, I was only just over 220m up after all! Thankfully, despite the slight scariness of it all the person in the lift wasn't lying and it held firm. Phew.
Tomorrow our New Zealand adventure begins properly as we pick up our camper-van and start off heading north, I can't wait.
(I hope you all had a lovely February 17th by the way, I hope I didn't miss anything!)
Look who I found on the money in New Zealand! The Queen appears on the money here because New Zealand is part of the Commonwealth. That's a group of over 50 countries (Most of whom were in The British Empire) that share lots of things like good trade and our queen, Elizabeth II, is the current head of The Commonwealth.
It also makes me feel more at home!
