New Zealand Food

Hokey pokey ice cream (but the woman who sold it to me was French, so she called it ‘okey pokey)

Fush and chups (and a battered oyster and mussel on the side) with Lemon and Paeroa (marketed as “World famous in New Zealand”)

A lamb salad (from the “light bites” section of the menu! Look at the size of the thing!)

Lamb curry

Lamb pie

Lamb pizza

A “small” lamb shank, a steak, a man eating a steak

Lamb stirfry

Lamb a la Stair

A kiwi fruit

A feijoa drink. Mr Beet had to coach me in pronounciation before I ordered it.

A “Kiwi as” Chocolate Fish. Bloody horrible.

A feijoa – an acquired taste, but not unpleasant.

A lamington. I think they might actually originate from Australia, but the NZ version is bigger and pinker.

A Moro bar. It’s as if a Mars Bar has gone into the witness protection programme.

“Famous” Tuatapere sausages. Maybe we didn’t get the right ones, because they were cheap and nasty.

Venison and kumara (which I’m pretty sure is just sweet potato, but it sounds more Newzealandy to call it kumara)

Boysenberry juice. A boysenberry is apparently a cross between a raspberry, a blackberry and a loganberry, first grown by somebody called Mr Boysen. I can see why you would be tempted to name the food you just invented after yourself, but maybe not if your name sounds quite a lot like “poison”.

A drink infused with traditional Maori medicinal plant makomako.

“Pavlova”. Or at least, the menu called it pavlova, but it’s clearly just a meringue with berries on the side. But I was thrilled because it’s as close as I got in 6 weeks of pavlova-hunting. If you go into any NZ souvenir shop or tourist information centre, you can buy pavlova aprons, ornaments, tea cosies, recipe books etc etc. It’s the national pudding. But you can’t actually buy one anywhere. And believe me, I looked!

Mr Beet’s Beer Chronicles – New Zealand

So many microbreweries, so little time…

Renaissance Pale Ale

The Sawmill Pale Ale

Monteith’s Radler bier

Speight’s Distinction

Swine lager

Tui

Mac’s Gold lager

Mac’s Sassy Red

Mac’s Hop Rocker

Stoke Amber

Steinlager

Winnie’s Pale Ale

Monteith’s Original

Emerson’s Bookbinder

Emerson’s 1812 Pale Ale

Mac’s Great White

Tuatara

Three Boys Porter

Monteiths Gold

Monteiths Summer Ale

Moa

Fiordland Pilsner

And the winner is: Mac’s Sassy Red, with honourable mentions for Emersons and Renaissance.

parkrun on tour – 22 April 2012

For our final parkrun in New Zealand we were back to where we started.  A nice run around the Auckland Domain, with Mr Beet for company. 

Farewell to NZ

Our final few days in NZ were spent as follows:

Lake Tekapo —> Kaikoura

Went on a whale-watching trip.  Didn’t see any.  Got refund.

Kaikoura –> Hanmer Springs

Spent whale-watching refund on thermal spa.  Soaked in hot water all day.

Hanmer Springs –> Christchurch

Went to wildlife park on the understanding that they had pavlova there.  They didn’t.  Went to different wildlife park.  Saw kiwis! 

Did a parkrun.  Returned Ivor the campervan.  Was emotional at having to return Ivor.  He served us well.   

Christchurch –> Auckland

Search for pavlova.  Only find it as part of three-course meal for $70: screw that. Do parkrun. 

Auckland–> Santiago de Chile

South America: here we come!

parkrun on tour – catch-up parkrun

I was four parkruns in deficit when I arrived in New Zealand, and had grand plans of catching up. I did do an extra parkrun in Hagley Park in Christchurch, so that’s one down, three to go. Trouble is, I’m about to go up to some silly altitudes pretty soon and running is not going to be its usual joyous experience.

Mt Cook and Lake Tekapo

Mr Beet’s appetite for penguin-spotting duly sated, we head back inland to take a look a Mt Cook.  It is NZ’s highest peak, and although it is only about a tall as Mt Fuji, it is definitely only for proper mountaineers and not puny tourists, so we have no plans to climb it.  We are here just to have a look at the snowy peaks, because Mr Beet loves mountains and hasn’t had his usual skiing holiday fix this year.  We also get to look at another glacier.  You would think that we would have seen enough big bits of ice by now, but this one is a bit different.  Because of the geography, the melt-water from the Tasman Glacier doesn’t pour off into a river like at the Franz Josef and the Fox.  It forms a lake, the lake-water then melts the glacier and big chunks break off to form floating icebergs.  I never planned on seeing icebergs on this trip, so that’s quite exciting.  We take a little boat trip on the lake and get to touch, taste and generally admire the ice.

Later that day we drive to Lake Tekapo.  This is pretty much the middle of nowhere, which makes it a good spot for an observatory.  If you live in London and then come to NZ, you will be amazed by how many stars you can see.  So we signed up for a tour of the observatory where you get shown around the night sky and get to have a go on some of the big telescopes.  The observatory in top of a mountain so it’s chilly by night, but they provide you with enormous padded jackets to keep you warm.

It was meant to be cloudy, but we were very  lucky as it cleared just at the perfect time and visibility was great.  There was no moon, which was good as to an astronomer the moon is just light pollution.  We could clearly see the Milky Way and through the telescopes we got good views of Mars and Saturn.  Astronomy is a pretty mind-blowing subject and we were well and truly impressed by some awesome statistics about the number, distance and size of stars that I immediately forgot, but which were very impressive at the time.

More pictures from Mt Cook on Mr Beet’s flickr page.

parkrun on tour – 14 April 2012

I thought Friday 13th had passed without a hitch, but I was caught out by the time difference.  When I went for my usual Saturday morning parkrun, it was still Friday 13th at home and I am obviously still on UK time as far as the fates are concerned.  The location was Allan’s Bay on the Otago Peninsula and the bad luck involved two very big boisterous dogs with sharp toenails, who obviously thought that my running meant that I wanted to play.

Apart from that, it was a nice run.  That big lump in the front of the shot is a slumbering sea-lion.

Penguin Spotting

From Milford Sound we head South, through Tuatapere “the Sausage Capital of NZ” and round to the South-East corner of the island, which is called the Catlins.  It’s a grey and windy day and the Catlins is pretty empty of everything except sheep.  It feels a bit like we are in the Falkland Islands or somewhere else remote and weather-beaten.  Our destination is Nugget Point, which has a little lighthouse.

Mr Beet has declared that he will consider his NZ holiday a failure if he does not see a wild penguin, so we have come here specifically to try to spot some endangered yellow-eyed penguins.  We arrive at a couple of hours before sunset, which is penguin o’clock.  We are in luck as we spot a couple coming ashore.  We also see some seals lolling on the rocks at the bottom of the cliffs.

The next day we drive on through Dunedin to the Otago Peninsula, another wildlife hotspot.  Here we see many more penguins and we also get to share the beaches with some great big sleepy sea-lions.

More pictures of the Catlins and the Otago Peninsula on Mr Beet’s flickr page.

Milford Sound

A sound is a squiggly wiggly bit of coast.  There is a more specific definition, but according to that Milford Sound isn’t technically a sound, so I’m sticking to the “squiggly wiggly” definition.  We are kayaking there.  Our arms are still pretty sore from climbing the other day, so we’re hoping for a nicer calm day.  Obviously the universe thinks we need more upper-body training, so we get strong winds.  It’s also chilly, so before we do anything we get kitted out in thermals and fleeces under all our waterproof layers.  It’s a bit different to last week, when we were kayaking in Abel Tasman and I was in my bikini.

For the first time, I have a go at sitting in the back, which means that I am responsible for steering and Mr Beet is responsible for photos.  This role reversal leads to a bit of “front-seat” driving, as Mr Beet keeps telling me to go left or right, and I keep telling him to take photos of things.  The winds make everything a bit like hard work, so we can’t go too far out towards the sea.  We spend most of the time trying to stay close to the edge and sheltered from the winds, but occasionally we need to cross a body of water.  This involves digging very deep and paddling like demons.  But on the bright side, it does mean that on the way back, we can just sit there and let the wind blow us home.

More pictures from Milford Sound on Mr Beet’s flickr page.

Queenstown – Adrenaline Capital of the World!!!!!

Yes, five exclamation marks.  Queenstown is that sort of place. 

We arrived in Queenstown over Easter, which meant an early morning sugar-high before we’d even had our regulation shot of adrenaline. 

I will use the universally understood Nando’s scale for describing how adrenaline-filled our activities in Queenstown were. In order to manage expectations, I will remind you that earlier that week I had balked at jumping 5m into a river. Therefore, you can rest assured that I did not venture into the realms of “extra-hot” i.e. sky-diving, bungy-jumping etc.

1.  Jet-boat ride (medium)

The famous Shotover Jetboat takes you at ridiculously high speeds through a narrow gorge. At some points you feel like you could lean over and kiss the rock. Just when you are getting used to that, the driver gives you the signal to hold on and spins the boat 360 degrees, soaking everyone. Great fun.

2.  Luge (medium)

We went on the luge in Rotorua and it was good fun, so we did it again in Queenstown. Only this time we raced each other. Mr Beet pretty much thrashed me 5-1, but it wasn’t for want of effort on my part. I kept going up on two wheels and crashing into the barriers – I still have a big bruise on my hip.

3. Mini-golf (Lemon and herb)

A close match, as the golfing incompetence was evenly divided between me and Mr Beet. You can see him sinking a shot here, and in the end he just edged it 103 to 104.

4. Paragliding (Hot)

I’ve tried paragliding before, and it was fun but did involve me being dragged along the South Downs on my face.  Fortunately, I avoided that fate in Queenstown, with a very smooth take-off and landing.   Here’s a video of me doing some spins and coming in to land.  Apparently my landing problem last time was due to my not running enough on landing (I maintain that it was not my fault as my feet weren’t touching the ground so how could I run?), so this time you can see I was running for my life and the pilot has to tell me – stop, it’s not a marathon! 

5. Via ferrata (Hot)

The steepest and most challenging via ferrata that we have done.   The climbing sections were tricky in places with a couple of overhangs and some pretty long abseils to get back down again.  I wasn’t really nervous at any point, but the guide seemed convinced that I was and kept talking me through things gently and then saying that he could tell I was a bit nervous about that bit. I obviously have a nervous-looking face, whereas Mr Beet looks like a climbing ninja. 

More photos from Queenstown on Mr Beet’s flickr page. You’ll be tired just looking at them.