Category: Lock Down – No place like Home

We are off to join the Viking river ship Einear. We call an Uber who charges us the 13 Euro to the dock that’s on our bit of paper and it’s about as far as the train station so we all happy. We make our way, baggage in tow, to the quay but the ship isn’t there. There is a little old lady with an old bright pink carry on trundle bag who accosts us, speaking German (we think). She seems pretty angry and despite us telling her numerous times we cant understand she continues. “Did you pay?, Did you pay” she asks. Yes we said we are on a cruise but the ship isn’t here. She grabs my phone where I have the details on and babbles some more. She gives my phone back and we call the ship number and it appears they changed it but we didnt get the memo. We retrace our steps and pay another 13 euro for an Uber and go back over the river to the ship. Little old angry lady and pink bag last seen at the bus stop by the quay. We were half expecting her to turn up.

Settled into our cabin, which is all good. The checking out of cruise companions. The usual stuff and all is well with the world. We have dinner in the causal lounge and the lady next to us laughs exactly like Janice from friends and its hilarious but we cant laugh out loud, and sniggering is rude so we try and make stimulating conversion whilst trying to block it out. behave.

I am going fast because that we yesterday and i am on today. Breakfast, then a trip to the Black Forest. Lovely scenery. Interesting field’s. Big barns that are also houses. Cows on one side, people on the other and hay up the top.

We stop and see cuckoo clocks. A walk in the forest, past a bubbling brook ( we have lots of that at home), we see a big viaduct that the allied forces worked hard to bomb but never succeeded and then the Germans blew it up when they were retreating so they couldn’t be followed. Pass more pretty fields. They have flower field’s on the verges of farm land where there is an honesty box and you just go and pick your own.

Next stop

Colmar

Pinch me.

It’s fairytale pretty. It has colourful houses, and bendy roofs. It has flower boxes and streams running through it. It has obligatory churches with giant steeples.

It has these cute little signs hanging in the street which used to represent what the shop was. It’s a cloudy day so the sky wont reflect back the light I need to make my photos pop, but I really hope you get the picture.

Pinch Me.

R asked me why I liked France so much and keep coming back, I couldn’t think why. I said I liked the village life, the oldness of it and the newness to me. The exploring it piece by piece, bit by bit. I like France village as opposed to France city but I enjoyed strolling the streets and lanes of the likes of Lyon and Bordeaux If you wonder why I am raising this now it’s because I am no longer in France, I am in Basel Switzerland. We trained here and I could see the architecture change, not much but still different. Not the same. When in Mersault, biking the vines, touristing Lyon, R and I talked of “pinch me” moments. Pinch me because I am here in this amazing place, living this life, and it’s real.

So now I can say why I like France, for me it’s a “pinch me”. Basel is pretty, and nice, and easy to get around. I am pleased to be here but you don’t need to pinch me.

We get a cab from the airport and I remember why I dont like taking them in countries where i cant speak the language. I originally go for the Uber and its 13 CHF’s but i cant work out the pick up point so as the cabs are right there we do that. The driver flicks with his metre and all of a sudden its 6.50 CHF as we pull away from the street, he then does it again at the corner and by the time we get to the hotel is 18.80 but he pushes again and its 21 CHF for the 2.8 kms (to convert it is about double). I am annoyed and being ripped off feels the same in any language.

The good news is when you check into your hotel they give you a Basel card which means you can go on any public transport for the length of your stay. There is a stop right outside our door so it’s real easy, you just hop on and see where it takes you. When the locals say “its the last stop” you just get off cross the road and go back. What a great idea. We end up on the bridge over the Rhine and watch all the locals floating down the river on dry bags. We read up on it when we get home and they are called “Wickelfisch” you put your clothes in them and it keeps them dry then you float down the river. Stay inside the buoys as there are lots of barges who blow their horns loudly to the stragglers outside.

In Oto we used to do the same with a truck tyre inner. Get mum to drop us off out of town and we’d float down the river back into town. We never had any “wicklefisch” to put our dry clothes in though so what a good idea. They seemed to go a really long way so I guess they get out and put their dry clothes on and catch an ever available tram back. For us though they provided lovely entertainment from our little bar on the banks.

It’s really expensive here. The conversion rate is about double but a small snitchel for dinner, is 27 CHF plus 8 chf for a side of fries, a large snitchel would have cost 42. WH has sausage with onions on the top, 19 CHF and a side of pumpkin 7CHF.

We are at week 5 and we are to join a river cruise tomorrow then quarter finals and then home. I can feel the “homesick” malaise creeping in. I am supposed to be finding ways to deal with it so that i can stay away for 3 months at a time and have a strategy in place, but with whanau now gone off touristing and us leaving France, the call of home whispers loudly in my ear. I will drown it out with new sights and sounds and secretly start the countdown to the homeward journey.

We are staying in a hotel in this little village for two nights purely because we had a two day gap to fill in the itinerary. It was a good 4 hours drive from Ruoms with a hour traffic jam getting through Lyon. We checked the car navigation with google which said there was a 14 min delay on the road we were on but the other option was just as long, so we didn’t stray from the set path. Silly us.

The temperature has dropped remarkably and we have had to get our jerseys’ out for the first time since leaving home. Just as we pulled up to our hotel, which is tiny and doesn’t have one of those lean too things, it barely has a veranda, the skies opened and as we counted the distance between the lightening and thunder we wondered if we would be in the car for days.

When eventually its subsided to a dull roar we made a run for it. As I am nifty thinking traveller I had just put two days worth of clothes into a small carry on and we leave the rest in the car. This is just as well as we are literally in the attic, up three flights of windy stairs. No lift.

The next morning the weather map says we have until early afternoon before the thunder storms are back so we decided to rent bikes. Electric ones of course.

There is a bike path along a canal but we fail to find it and instead navigate ourselves out back country lanes where as we stop to look at our map outside a farm house a man, with a hammer, comes out and starts approaching us. Uh oh. Perhaps we are not meant to be here? But he talks to us in French and we nod a lot and we point on the map where we want to go and he says , Oui, Oui. He then speaks some more French, this time with lots of brilliant hand gestures, waving the hammer around and we nod a lot again and say merci, merci beacoup, au revouir and bike off none the wiser as to where we are or where we are going.

We manage to get ourselves back to town and waggle around the streets. They are very narrow. I can tell WH is concerned about my biking abilities in the town centre. Not so much my abilities but more my likelihood of getting run over by not staying on my side of the road. I can tell by his tone when I stop to take a photo. Which does make a pretty shot.

“You know you are on the wrong side of the road eh?” He says. “Yep, just taking a picture” I say, but actually I didn’t. I get distracted you see and then revert to what feels home, which is the left side of the road. He has untold suggestions “when you get down there just turn right”, Or “just just hop off and push across the pedestrian crossing”. Again as we exit a one way onto a two lane “you know which side of the road you are to go on, eh?” I know he is concerned but I don’t know if these suggestions are helpful or not as I sort of don’t like the tone, it feels a bit like in his head after each sentence it might sort of go like this

“You know you are on the wrong side of the road eh?” Are you kidding me you crazy woman.

“When you get down there just turn right” because you are not to be trusted to turn left

“You know what side of the road you are to go on?” FFS just get on the right side of the road – literally.

Anyway we make it back all intact and without any injuries to myself or others. I am very sure now though he will not be asking me to share the driving. Although I am sure I would be fine as I wouldn’t have my camera around my neck, although I still go to get in the drivers seat every time we go somewhere.

We are skipping lunch today as we are going to a Michelin star restaurant. Just because. I see it has stuffed frog legs on the menu.

Can’t wait…

After a night of torrential rain, wind that shook our camper and thunder booms that woke us from our sleep, the day broke with fragments of blue sky trying to cut through the grey. The plan is to go see the Blue Pools and walk the track and then then do whatever else takes our fancy.

We head off over the Haast pass and the camper poltergeist’s were back in full force, as the pot cupboard flew out and of its runner and across the floor like a scene from an exorcism. We are now so used to the cutlery drawer poltergeist that we no longer blink an eye as it jangles open, then jiggles about until it shuts itself again when you go around an opposite corner.

The Haast pass was lovely with its waterfalls and bush. We bounce in and out of our camper doing bitsy walks to check out the next attraction.

We arrive at the Blue track and it has the obligatory swing bridges, the sign on this one though is great and reinforces my point I made in yesterday’s blog. 10+1 and it’s all over rover.

We arrive at the Blue Pools and it seems par for the course this trip but of course they are not blue but a deep green. Evidently the sign says that after heavy rain they can turn Green instead of Blue because of all the sediment washing down from the hills but in a few days they will be Blue again, and we will be somewhere else. They are still very beautiful and we enjoy watching the trout swim around in the river below.

Its onward and upward as we head to Wanaka as I wish to take a picture of the Wanaka tree. Despite being to Wanaka several times I have never taken the obligatory pic. Its windy and the pic is not that great but the moment existed and is now captured in time.

We spend the night and then decide to reminisce our way through Central Otago. We leave in the rain and it chases us all day, ever threatening but never quite making landfall. It adds another dimension to the landscape.

We head through Dads old haunt of Omaka and Lauder. We check out the old Ophir bridge a quaint little one way bridge which begs to be photographed however we are bailed up by a very unreasonable and grumpy man who came from the opposite direction and demands that us in our camper and the lady in front of us must reverse despite him being on the give way and a straight line reverse, whilst we have to back up around a corner. We all play a Mexican stand off for a while but his agitation is far greater than the problem and you can only think that he has to live with that inside himself and take pity as he marches across the bridge shaking his fist, his red face contracting. The lady in front of us is not so forgiving and her language and gestures match the grumpy old mans. We reverse and don’t get a picture of the historic Ophir bridge.

We move onto Lauder hoping to grab lunch at the pub but its closed up. We chat to Graham and Esme who run the local B&B and they remember dad well and his days of holding court in the corner of the bar. They say the pub will open at 6 but we won’t hang around that long. They suggest we go to Saint Bathans and have lunch there as its interesting. So we do.

You need to ingest this jelly an hour before sexual cialis properien activity. These were cialis in uk first unveiled at the fall fashion shows. Many doctors consider that sphincter of Oddi dysfunction can india online cialis be blamed. It is not only important for the physical satisfaction in their life. //sildamaxnow.com/product/buy-100-sildamax-tablets/ Sildamax is the best treatment levitra uk for impotency try to change your habits and try to make some lifestyle changes along with intake of herbal pills like Musli Kaunch capsules.

We have the best cheese scone ever and wander around the ghost town of Saint Bathans. It is interesting and quaint and really of another place and time. We chat to the farmer having lunch in the pub and the publican behind the bar, swapping stories and drinking our flat whites. Then we decide that’s it, our road trips for 2020 are done and we begin our trip home.

I cant sign off without my tips for campervan road trips having now completed three.

Always remember that plans are never perfect, even good ones.

Check out the camper fully before you leave. Including fridge and awning.

Pack a simple kitchen kit eg picnic salt and pepper, teabags, small container of laundry detergent (+$2 coins), marmite (or vegemite), small bottle dish washliquid, extra tea towel. If you dont do this then you end up buying big bottles and throwing them away so take little ones with you.

Take a map as internet is not always available.

Pack your things in packing cases that you can put in the top cupboards.

Take a toilet bag that can hang on a hook or put your toilet bag in a duffle that will hold that and your underwear etc. Not all campground have great places to put things in the showers but they all have hooks. Although showering in the campgrounds saves WH emptying the water all the time I always take the antiseptic wipes:-)

When you take the grandkids make sure they bring there gumboots in winter or jandals in summer. Send them to the kitchen blocks to do the dishes, they get the experience and you get 10 minutes of peace.

Try and get a camper big enough that you can set the bed up and leave it that way, whilst still utilising a table.

Get a good road trip playlist.

We have a plan. A good plan. Get moving in the morning and do the Franz Joseph glacier walk, according to research you can walk along the river and get quite close. Have a great coffee. Go to Lake Mathieson and do the walk to see the reflections of the Southern Alps in the lake. This is evidently a must do.
We arrive at the enormous glacier walk car park and join the lonely DOC ute. 20 mins later we are met with a barrier that says we can go no further as track is closed so we stand and admire the magnificence of this river of ice (from a distance) and then we turn and head back the way we came..

The rivers and bridges here are amazing. The bridges all one lane traversing wide, rocky expanses that conjure up images of raging torrents rushing down from the mountains. The landscape is scarred in so many places as huge chunks of the mountains have been carved and torn from the sides to their resting place below.

We head to Lake Mathieson and again park in a near empty car park. There are two modern buildings that are at the entrance, a cafe and art gallery that have now merged into one, whilst the other stands quietly, chairs stacked and walls empty.

The walk is pretty but of course there are no planned reflections as the wind has picked up and the ripples take the view. We enjoy the view anyway and remark about how even the birds seem quiet as we complete our circuit of the lake.

Recent studies have icks.org buy levitra online proved that natural supplements are preferred than pharmaceutical drugs. Since a healthy immune system is necessary to maintaining your health once you decide tadalafil online canada to bring supplements and medicines into the picture. If you are a known case of angina, pain in the chest, irregular heart beat or sneezing you should consult your doctor about the consumption frequency and measure.This drug is potentially capable from each angle to provide its users with enough stamina required for a successful sexual encounter. http://icks.org/n/data/ijks/1482457047_add_file_4.pdf cheapest viagra online One such challenge men face in the bed is awful for every man, which visit here now viagra pfizer online eventually hurt the sexual life.

We don’t need coffee, nor food but I buy a cute pottery jug and a Xmas decoration from the lovely lady at the cafe who tells us that in total 47 people were employed between the two and now there are 7. I want to buy more and would buy lunch but we already bought lunch to takeaway at the great coffee shop in Franz Joseph so I put my pretty decorations and jug in the van and get on the road again.

Speaking of lunch we park up down the road with a view of Fox Glacier out of the window and heat up our West Coast Whitebait fritter and all is well with the world.

It’s onto Haast or at least that’s the plan, sort of, depending on what we find on the way. We stop on the coast and explore the coastal walk. The sea and lake separated by a dune yet polar opposites of nature. The reeds in the lake gracefully dance in unison back and forward with the melody of the wind. The seas southerly roar and ferocity can be heard in the background but in this space beyond the dune the calm dance is hypnotic and reminds you to breathe.

The rain begins and does not let up. We park up in Haast and hunker down as are battered by wind and rain. It’s a stormy night and as I write I think of our plans for tomorrow and wonder if I should just forget about them. I want to walk the Blue Pools track and see the Blue Pools. I want to photograph the Wanaka tree as I have seen it’s image so many times that I want to bear witness to it myself. But most of all I want the rain and wind to stop and the sun to shine.

The AA man arrived and a couple of hours later and with the extraction of the awning we were off. The sun was shining. The van was rattling and we were on our way. Not long into our journey and the pot cupboard yet again popped it’s cogs and contents, which included the glass coffee pot, made there way across the floor. Who needs coffee anyways.

We head for Hokitika gorge and it does not disappoint. The sun is warm, the sandflies large and the water an amazing turquoise. The bush is lush and the birdsong definitely reminds you that life is good.

There tracks are amazing and exceptionally well maintained. Maybe it’s the lack of people walking them as huge car parks are occupied by a handful of vehicles. There are swingbridges everywhere and whilst they are good they are not really my cup of tea. I like the ground under my feet to not sway when I walk. I also always question the signage. “Is the 20 people really 20 people? “or is it like a 2mx2m lift which says only 12 people can fit in, that is of course if they are all under 10 or tiny catwalk models. Or even better it says 12 people or 600 kilos and my mind goes crazy trying to divide the people into the kilos. Anyway I digress as it matters not because I walk the bridge alone.

The last thing that you would ever want to do whilst on vacation or a business trip is start applying solutions to the scalp! This medication can levitra sale help in two ways. Besides, consume Maha Rasayan capsules to rejuvenate the health which has been damaged viagra tabs due to excessive self-stimulation. Why not viagra canada no prescription join the rich and famous towards their goal of getting significantly larger breasts sizes. You’ll find an ‘Excludes2 note’ for the Z code while using the generico cialis on line repeated falls code – R29.6, and you can report both the codes together when the documentation supports it.

We leave the gorge and head to Franz Joseph where we check into “Rainforest Retreat”. I am getting the feeling that over this way they like to glam up the parking spots by naming them retreats although it’s hard to argue with the sentiment when you are backed into the bush. The day was topped of with the best G&T, (blackball gin and grapefruit sofa) on a sunny deck at the on-site restaurant/bar.

PS

Franz Joseph is lovely. The people friendly, coffee great, scenery majestic and as said previously the G&T’s brilliant but it is so very, very quiet. Large Accomodation businesses have one or two cars parked at them, others have simply pulled the curtains and put up the no vacancy signs. It’s great to walk the walks, and to always get a car park but it’s all comes at a cost and you can’t help but feel that a lot of people here are paying the price.

I had just spent four days moving. Two days in Hamilton, two days in Palmy. A week of chilling in A camper was sounding good. Plus This one was going to be easy we were seasoned grey nomads. We had the camper van life sussed. Third times a charm. A myriad of tui billboard ads come to mind.

We had a plan. A good plan. Pick up the camper, not the old grunter model but the newer flasher model, no manky curtains or dodgy toilets for us. It would be easy as no orientation required, we knew our stuff. We had a plan. Head to Arthur’s pass enjoying the scenery, taking picture postcard shots and arriving at Jackson’s retreat where we walk the old quartz mine trail, check out the glow worm walk at night, then do the waterfall track in the morning.

I forgot the travel mantra of, “go with the flow” and breathe. First I lost my watch then I got the camera out to make sure it was primed and ready for action only to find I had forgotten the charger. We head to pick up the camper and the pick up takes forever. An empty terminal soon filled and somehow we seemed to get to the back of queue but all was good as when we finally got the keys we could miss the tour until I opened the fridge and the pungent odour leapt out the door …… it was a sign and I should of paid attention as I pointed out the mould and rotting spills on the fridges shelves.
He offered to send it back to detailing and get it cleaned and assured me it has been cleaned as it had been ticked. Well if it’s been ticked then it must be good and by now I am so over it that I just wanted to leave.
A brief handover ensued but with fridge BO still hanging in the air I asked for cleaning product and was given a pack of wet wipes and a squirt bottle of yellow stuff that didn’t squirt.

Did I mention it was raining. Pouring actually. On the road again.

Missed the turn off for the supermarket. Stopped at the four square, ouch. Drove through the picturesque Arthur’s Pass, or at least I am sure it would of been had the rain, mist and fog cleared.

Proscar is a brand cialis shipping marketed for the treatment of benign prostatic hyperplasia (BPH) and Propecia for the treatment of erectile dysfunction. It is bioequivalent to sample viagra for free which has a brand name and Propecia?There is no biochemical difference between brand-name and generic Propecia. These drugs have been a boom to the ED affected markets and their easy availability through online pharmacies has certainly viagra cialis online eased the way of treating. . A huge number djpaulkom.tv prescription cialis on line of the girls who seem to get a placebo revealed elevated genital sensation.

we arrive at our campground and are met by the lovely owner and we park up with the plan of having a better day tomorrow as at least the forecast is for sunshine.

We step out of our camper and in a break in the rain we go to put the awning down so we can move in and out without getting soaked every time we open the door. Problem is the awning came out, a little bit, but didn’t go back. Not forward, not backward, nothing. It was all bundled up at one end and was obvious that it was never going to work. Guess they ticked that too.

There is no cell phone coverage here so WH heads up the office and rings the 24 hour 0800 help line and they will pass on the message to the team in the morning but hey if we want we can ring back then. Morning comes and at 8, WH wanders back to the lovely lady in the office and the 24hr assistance doesn’t begin until 8.30.
with contact made and an AA man dispatched there is nothing more to do than the washing of course and walk the waterfall track.

So here I sit people, 60 kms from Hokitika waiting for an AA man to come and perform miracles on our broken, lopsided half in half out awning and then we can get on the road again.

We book into the lodge on arrival and enjoy the creature comfort of a full size bed and bathroom but most of all WH gets to watch North vs South on the TV. Not sure the last time we went 5 days without TV and one of the best things was no news. With no TV, limited wifi, playlists on the radio it’s been great to get away quite literally and forget or at least not be reminded every hour about COVID and yes we still washed our hands.

We woke to lots of rain and decided to have a slow start to the day in the hope that it cleared enough so that We would not get drenched. The waterfalls spilling down the cliffs were spectacular but difficult to photograph dues to the lack of light. When the rain calmed a bit and I stepped outside to try and take a pic of the waterfalls we were Greeted by a Kea. Feeling really blessed.

We head for Queenstown knowing it’s going to take all day as we had lots of places to stop and enjoy the view. Check them out below.

You will feel safe when you use a tested and approved medicinal drugs that are administered at small doses generic tadalafil cipla to patients. Any success will be because of hard work and persistence. 3. “It’s all in the list!” 5mg cialis tablets – Perhaps this is partly true. Instead of basing an opinion solely off whether a company requires a contract, look for other alternative cures such as viagra tablet price, viagra and even cheap viagra. A catheter is used to inject generic viagra discount opacc.cv the medication into the side or the base of your penis.

well that’s about the end of the road for this trip anyway. I Feel really hurried in my blog as I know once home tomorrow I wont get to write again even though I tell myself now that I will come back to it and edit I know it’s a watery promise.

I Can’t say that we saved the best to last as the beginning middle and end were all brilliant. From Aoraki Mt Cook I felt we were witnessing a true Taonga and that continued through out the whole trip. A treasured journey it will always be.