Fatuous Days And Crapulous Nights

Nicola has been playing with Sven Olsen’s Brutal Canadian Love Saga (known as “The Svens”) for a couple of years now, as part of their string section. They play live gigs every time there’s a Fringe Festival, and occasionally in between. None of them are called Sven, or Olsen, and none of them are Canadian. (A Canadian chap once turned up to one of their gigs, expecting something Canadian – Celine Dion covers, maybe?)

This gig, was, however, something a little different: the launch party for their pizza box. Say what? Yes, they have released a pizza box:

Inside there are six (count ‘em!) CDs with 63 songs in total, and a big book of lyrics so you can sing along with them! During their live shows there is a rear projection, animations and clips relating to the song, with some of the lyrics on it; but they are (a) often partly obscured by the band members and (b) aren’t always synchronised with the song (deliberately). So here are the undoubted, definitive, guaranteed words to such masterpieces as Kron Of Hastings. It comes with no page numbers or index, so finding your way around it is a haphazard journey through the minutiae of New Zealand life – much like The Svens themselves.

The launch party was in one of their usual venues, the Newtown Community Centre. Food and drink had been laid on, and t-shirts were also available for sale – Nicola and I both availed ourselves of these – as well as the pizza box itself, available for the bargain price of $50! So if you feel the need to dip your toe into the fantastic world of New Zealand’s most obscure pop orchestra, get in contact…they are a limited edition of only 250 (ours is #93), and Nigel Beckford (“Sven”) would dearly love to get them off his living-room floor.

They played a few songs, then broke for a “surprise event”. This, it turned out, was getting the entire audience up on the stage to re-enact the photograph on the cover of Wings’ Band On The Run album. I will no doubt reference this when it is published.

Afterwards we went for a “burger” at Mediterranean Foods.

Butterflies

We’ve done one three-hour tour in Manuel Antonio, but decided that further exertions in the tropical heat were contra-indicated. There is, however, a butterfly house just up the road, so we decided that this wouldn’t be too taxing. Our initial intent to make ourselves look like locals by taking the bus was thwarted, however, by our inability to find the actual bus stop. Sigh. We took a taxi instead.

Although advertised as being open from 8:00am, there was no-one at the office when we arrived. About five minutes later, someone turned up to open the office. There were two French ladies ahead of us in the queue, who seemed confused about what they wanted. The fact that the ticket seller couldn’t speak French, and they had limited English, didn’t help. Anyway, they had numerous discussions about what they wanted to do, whilst we waited. Clearly, they drive BMWs when they’re back in France. Eventually, we were able to talk to the ticket seller: “Two tickets for the butterfly house, please”. Done. Simples.

The butterflies are but a short walk from the office, so we went down there. The star attraction is the blue morpho butterfly, which is large and has shimmery blue wings. Unfortunately, they spend most of their time flying, so are impossible to photograph. The only time they stop is when they want either food or sex, and on those occasions they close their wings. I did manage to find a rather tattered specimen having a rest.

There were other species as well, including monarchs, so we were able to spend a bit of time looking around. We also saw a deer whilst we were in there. This isn’t the first time we’ve seen deer – there was one poking its nose around our hotel the other night – so we went outside to see if we could spot it. Sure enough, down by the river – a mother and fawn. We also saw an agouti truffling through the undergrowth. All in all, a successful trip. We caught a cab (same driver!) back to the hotel, and spent the rest of the day lollygagging.

That was our final full day in Costa Rica. On Monday, we drove to the airport – the driver told us three hours, but we were there in 2½, having foregone a rest stop along the way. This proved wise as traffic was already starting to grind to a halt as we approached the airport. Nevertheless, we got through check-in and security in double-quick time, and through to the VIP lounge, for breakfast. As we are travelling back across the International Date Line, we will have no Tuesday this week – we fly back to Houston, take off from there on Monday, and land in Auckland on Wednesday morning.  

Manuel Antonio

A morning’s drive from Monteverde took us to Manuel Antonio, on Costa Rica’s southern, Pacific coast. We boarded the bus reasonably early in the morning and travelled in air-conditioned comfort until we reached Orotina for a rest break. The driver slid open the bus door and…it was hot! Yes, we’ve arrived in the tropics, and away from the rain forest. Expect temperatures to reach 31°C during the day, and to fall to 27°C at night.

Why is Manuel Antonio so called? No-one seems to have a definitive answer. It’s like finding a town in the UK called Dave Johnson, but not knowing  who Dave Johnson was.

It took us another hour or so to reach our destination – Playa Espadilla, in the Manuel Antonio National Park. Our room wasn’t ready for us on arrival, so we went and had a leisurely lunch in the restaurant. Our hotel is in fact in two parts – Espadilla Gardens and Espadilla Hotel. We’re in the Gardens part, which has a pool and reception but no bar or restaurant. So we need to cross the road each time we want to use those. No matter. At 2pm we returned to a blissfully airconditioned room. There are lizards to be seen all around the place - we quickly identified Lizzie, Eddie, and Guttie, who lives in the gutter. We spent the rest of the day lollygagging. In the evening we went out and admired the sunset over the beach, and found a restaurant on the main drag alongside the beach to have dinner.

Eddie Lizard

The next day, we were up early-ish for a guided tour of the Manuel Antonio National Park. Even though we started early (8 o’clock) there were crowds of people trying to get into the park. Many were in guided groups, like us, but large numbers without guides too. It reminded me of a cruise ship day at Zealandia when three coaches arrive at once. Our guide, Allan, sorted us out pretty quickly and took us down a side track to try and avoid the most egregious overcrowding. As on previous tours we’d taken, the guides all carry telescopes on tripods to view the wildlife, as it’s often high up a tree. We saw lizards, white-faced monkeys, more bats, and some birds, including the majestically-named nighthawk, which ought to be something more substantial than a species of cuckoo. And of course more sloths – both three-toed and two-toed varieties. Allan was a fount of knowledge – he’d done a degree in marine biology and had been a tour guide on Costa Rica’s best place for dolphins and whales before coming home to Manuel Antonio.

We ended up at the beach, where we took a twenty minute break (swimming optional – we hadn’t brought our togs so not for us) before finishing the final part of the tour. This is where we had a close encounter with the white-faced monkeys – they are quite accustomed to having people around, and walked along the rails of the walkways with no problem. At the end we had refreshments – iced water or tea – and melon and pineapple. The tour had ended quite close to our hotel, so we decided to walk back instead of waiting for the bus.

After a quick dip in our pool to cool down – difficult as the water is like a bath – we then headed over the road to the restaurant and poolside bar for the rest of the afternoon.

Tortuguero

Tortuguero National Park is the home of sea turtles. The coastal area for several miles up to the Nicaraguan border is used by sea turtles, in particular green and leatherbacks, as a nesting site. In the past, the locals viewed this as a bonanza, and ate the turtles and their eggs. A naturalist, Dr. Archie Carr, studied them and came the conclusion that the harvest was unsustainable, and managed to persuade both the locals and the Costa Rican government to do something about this, and change the status of the turtles from “food” to “protected species”.

We were up at 5 o’clock to get on a dawn cruise through the National Park. This is the best time to see the various animals, apparently, because that’s also when they awake and are at their most active, looking for breakfast. It had been raining all night, on and off, as it tends to in a rain forest. Nevetheless, we were all assembled and having coffee at 5:30, in waterproof gear. We all got onto our boats, and were about to set off when a particularly heavy shower started off, and Marco made the call to delay our tour to later in the morning, when the rain had eased off a bit. So we went back, and rescheduled for 11 o’clock.

At 10:30 it was still pissing down, with no sign of let-up. Marco visited us again and said the tour would now go ahead at 2:30 instead. OK, so we were hoping that the weather would have cleared up by then. After a bit of to-ing and fro-ing about which group we should go with, we were eventually attached to a tour from another resort that had space on their boat. It had stopped raining by now, so we set out into the National Park.

The park is only accessible by water – the land inside is all swampy, and there are no tracks, so there’s no other way in. After the morning’s experience, I’d decided to leave my camera behind. Cameras and water don’t mix well. As the weather remained dry I regretted this…until another shower came in, and finally prolonged rain, so in the end it was a good decision. We saw various water birds including aninga (after which our resort is named), green ibis, blue heron, macaws fling overhead, snowy egrets, and others whose names I forget. We also saw reptiles – an iguana, several caymans and emerald basilisks (also known as jesus christ lizards, because they can walk on water). We also saw and heard howler monkeys in the trees. Our guide knew what he was doing, took us to all the places where he knew animals would be hanging out – I know all the tricks of the trade now! And Freddie, the boat driver, was also good at spotting animals, in particular the basilisks. As always on such a tour, you speak about what you see, and not what you don’t, so you don’t know what you didn’t see.

Iguana

Cayman

Towards the end of the tour the rain set in in earnest, and we motored back to our respective lodges at top speed of 50km/h. There, we decamped and attempted to dry out our completely drenched items of clothing – they need to be dry for us to move on tomorrow! We may be doing one wet and one dry suitcase by morning to preserve our remaining wardrobe, particularly if this rain keeps up all night again.

Tomorrow we have a more civilised start time of 9 o’clock to get us to our next hotel.

Mammalian Predators

At Zealandia, there is a predator-proof fence, designed to keep mammalian predators out. These include obvious targets like mustelids (weasels, stoats and ferrets), cats, rats and mice; and also less obvious introduced mammals such as hedgehogs, rabbits and hares, which may not be thought of as dangerous to native fauna, but may destroy eggs, or, crucially, out-compete natives for food resources.

But there is another class of mammalian predator which has been seen more and more frequently around Wellington…and this is one that we’re more than happy to welcome. They’re aquatic predators, and fall into two groups: cetaceans (whales and dolphins) and pinnipeds (seals and sealions).

Fur seal

In recent times we’ve had the visit by Matariki, the Wellington whale – a Southern Right whale who delighted us all in July last year. A pod of bottlenose dolphins was seen in Evans Bay in January. And this month, three orca, believed to be a mother, juvenile and baby came into the harbour near Eastbourne, then crossed over and were spotted very close to the shore at Karaka Bay and Scorching Bay.

Orca came in close to the shore

Orca have a distinctive dorsal fin

Whilst fur seals colonise the Red Rocks each year between May and October, some individuals have been spotted away from their colony. In particular, one individual has been sunning itself on the rocks of Karaka Bay and Breaker Bay since May this year. More recently, a leopard seal was seen in Oriental Bay, and a juvenile individual has been relaxing on the sands at Owhiro Bay for the last two days.  

Don't get too close to those teeth

Leopard seals are apex predators.

Measure For Measure

We stayed on Waiheke for a further two days. We’d been down to Blackpool beach at the bottom of our street in search of shore birds, but they were being rather uncooperative – standing around on a patch of grass instead of posing more picturesquely by the sea. Undeterred, we set out further afield in search of Whakanewha Regional Reserve, where we’d been told there might be better prospects. Indeed, we found them, in the form of New Zealand dotterels and variable oystercatchers aplenty. We also managed a substantial walk around a loop track, and did a bit of the Dottie Track where we saw banded rails.

New Zealand dotterel

Variable oystercatchers, demonstrating variability

Banded rail

We lunched in Surfdale at Found, which, despite running out of halloumi, nevertheless managed to provide us with some decent nosh.

The following day we were back out on the wine trail – this time to Cable Bay wines, where we were welcomed by Jamie, a Canadian who was on a working visa for a year and had previously worked at Noble Rot in Wellington, so we chatted to her about Wellington and wine, whilst tasting her wares. Then we headed over to the other side of the island, to Waiheke’s most-awarded winery, Passage Rock. Again we had a good talk, with the owner and winemaker, David. We’d decided to stop there for lunch, as they also have an exceptional bistro attached, and had salmon and escargots.

In the afternoon we revisited the cultural centre to see Whittaker's Music Museum, where we learnt about pianos and other musical instruments, some of which could be played, others were "Do Not Touch". They'd been collected over a lifetime by Lloyd Whittaker

In the evening we drove out to 372 in Onetangi for our final meal on the island. Having been so impressed by them a couple of days ago at lunchtime, we decided to give them the pleasure of our company again, and they did us proud – I had the salmon tiradito that Nicola had had previously, followed by a slow-cooked lamb shoulder, and Nicola had shiitake dumplings followed by fish of the day. All delicious, and definitely gets my recommendation!

We were up early the next day to catch the ferry to Auckland, and, after dropping off our bags and rental car, headed into Auckland CBD for some lunch. Once again we were making lunch the main meal of the day as we would be at the Globe in the evening, so had burgers at Danny Doolan’s, an entirely inauthentic Irish pub. So inauthentic it didn’t even have a bicycle on the wall, which I understood was mandatory for Irish pubs.

In the evening, it pissed down. We started out towards the Globe on foot, but were eventually defeated by the weather so finished the journey by taxi, arriving in the nick of time and unfed. We managed to procure some food in the interval – chips and wine, two of the main food groups.

Despite the weather, the show must go on. The groundlings were equipped with rain ponchos and similar, and it was noticeable that the actors stayed away from the edge of the stage, which was exposed to the elements, unless forced to (at some points they have to descend the steps at the front and exit via the crowd). Occasionally the swirling wind gusted some rain at us, but for the most part we stayed dry. The play itself was well-executed, although as with all Shakespeare comedies, the convoluted plot leaves you thinking “why bother with all that?”. But they pulled it off with much comic effect, throwing in some more modern touches again – such as having wheelie suitcases to indicate that they were going on a journey. Elbow, the policeman, was dressed in completely modern police garb, whilst the other characters where in mostly period costume.

So that’s our Pop-Up Globe adventure for this year…we will probably make this an annual fixture for as long as they continue to offer it. The following morning it was back to Wellington and more wet weather.

Akaroa

 On Thursday, we took the scenic route out to Akaroa on Banks Peninsula, as it’s very picturesque. It’s a short drive out of Christchurch. First stop is at Little River, a small town whose main purpose seems to be to direct people into the rest of the peninsula. We had a coffee and tea in the café there, and planned a route around the rest. We decided to head up to Pigeon Bay first, then continue on the summit road around to Akaroa.

The summit road is so named because the whole peninsula is an extinct volcano, as is apparent if you look at a map. At Pigeon Bay, we went for a walk and spotted two kereru almost immediately. It was quite hot in the sunshine with little cover from the sun so we didn’t take a walk all the way to the end of the trail, instead turning back after about 25 minutes when we’d reached a shady grove. On the way back, a number of fantails decided to try to tempt me into taking their photographs. Fantail photography is of the type “here’s a branch where a fantail was two milliseconds ago”, but I managed to get a couple.

We drove on to Akaroa and walked along the bay shore, seeking out a place for lunch. Akaroa was originally settled by the French, and the street names and many of the businesses there reflect the French heritage. We settled on The Wharf, and had fish & chips and tuna salad for lunch. Afterwards we walked up to the lighthouse, which was originally placed at Akaroa Heads, at the mouth of the harbour, and moved to its current location by the Akaroa Lighthouse Preservation Society in 1980.

We took the shorter route back to Christchurch, passing the turn-off to Le Bons Bay along the way. Unfortunately there was nowhere convenient to stop so I was unable to take a photo for Duran-spotting.

In the evening we explored Christchurch’s dining scene, and entertainment book, once again – this time ending up in a South American bar and restaurant called Casa Publica. This offers South American specialities such as ceviche, guacamole, and espetadas. We started off in the bar with a  couple of pisco sours before heading upstairs, where we I ordered guacamole casa, which is made at the table for you, and you can chose which ingredients you want to include. I went all in with chillis, red onion, lime juice, coriander and cashews. Nicola had the chicken espetada main, which is basically chicken on a stick.

By the end we were pretty well stuffed, so we forewent dessert and headed back to our digs.

Hinterland

 On Saturday, Noosa was full of people involved in the triathlon and other related events, so we got the hell out of Dodge. We planned a drive into the hinterland to take us away from the crowds.

Our first stop was the town of Cooroy, home of the Noosa Botanic Gardens. We took a walk around there, on the lookout for bird life, and immediately spotted some moorhens on the lake, as well as what was once known as the purple swamp hen, which now goes by the more dignified name of Australasian swamp hen. Here in New Zealand we know it as pukeko.

Australasian swamp hen - aka pukeko

We also spotted some insect life.

And a catbird, which sounds like a cat.

Catbird

We then drove on to our second stop, Kenilworth, where we stopped for lunch at the Kenilworth Dairies. They make cheese, and offer cheese tastings to the passing punters in small cubes which you stab with a cocktail stick to taste. As I was posing for a picture of me with cheese, a kookaburra, who had clearly planned this, swooped in and nicked the cheese right off my stick in front of me! He then sat on the wall and ate it, looking smug. This is what he does every day, I guess.

We had a platter of cheeses and meats, and then decided to round it all off with freshly made gelato.

Next on the agenda was two parks with waterfalls. The first was the Mapleton Falls National Park, where we took the Wompoo walk around the forest, spotting a yellow robin along the way.

The final stop was a bit more arduous, as we went to Kondalilla National Park. This involves a long downhill to the waterfalls and waterhole – a journey which most people seemed to be making in swimming gear, we noted. We’d left ours in the car. D’oh! We got to the bottom where people were disporting themselves in the substantial waterhole at the foot of the falls.

Of course, walking downhill has a downside…you have to walk back uphill. We climbed and climbed and climbed, taking a shortcut back to the carpark so we didn’t have to walks so far. Even so, our phones (which track our daily steps) were inordinately pleased with us that day!

We drove home along the Bruce Highway, washed the dust from our feet, then made it to Maisie’s Seafood & Steakhouse for a well-deserved steak dinner.

Noosa Everglades

 What is an everglade? According to dictionary.com, it’s a tract of low, swampy land, especially in Southern Florida. Noosa Everglades claims to be “one of only two everglades systems in the world”. (Guess where the other one is!)

We’d booked a day trip to go cruising and canoeing in the Noosa Everglades. We were picked up outside our hotel at eight o’clock, and then toured the accommodations of Noosa to pick up all the other passengers, before setting off for Boreen Point on Lake Cootharaba, about 20 km north of Noosa. After stopping for a short while there, we then boarded our boat. Fortunately we were all in shorts, as the boarding process involves wading out to the boat! Even so, I had to roll mine up a bit. The water is distinctly brown, due to the tannins leached into the water from the tea tree plants which surround the lake.

We set out on the lake, passing some pelicans on the way, as our guide gave us some historical and nature notes along the way. We saw a water dragon, and a goanna when we stopped for morning tea (he hangs around the site expecting scraps – an unfortunate example of behaviour modification which is now discouraged), but not much in the way of exotic bird life.

Goanna, or lace monitor

Sleepy pelicans

Mirror lake

More mirror-y water

Water dragon

At this point, half of our party boarded canoes to paddle up the river (there’s no real current as such, so going upriver is about as energetic as going downriver), whilst we set off up river to Harry’s Hut – built by a chap called Harry, whose family had lived on the land before it was a National Park. He took the Queensland government to court when it first designated the area a park, won, and used the money from the settlement to ensure public access to the river and park remained.

The canoers eventually caught up with us, and we switched over to canoe downstream. Nicola and I hadn’t originally been put down for canoeing due to some oversight, but we wanted to go, so we were split up and put with other boats. I had the pleasure of the company of Eva and Peter from Munster in Germany, who were doing the whole Australia and New Zealand tour. We canoed very efficiently downstream, and saw two raptors flying overhead – but on the advice of our guide, hadn’t brought our cameras, as a boating accident wouldn’t do them much good.

After returning to shore, we then sailed back to Boreen Point the way we’d come, and again waded ashore. Lunch was served at the camp ground here – roast pork and veggies, an odd choice in the warm sunshine. There is a microbrewery on site, which boasts that it is the only brewery in a national park. Still, they made beer competently enough, so I had a pint to wash down my lunch with. We then had a short period to try and capture some wildlife shots around the place, where we saw more bird life than we had on the boat trip! We also looked out for kangaroos but failed to spot any – apparently we wandered off in the wrong direction.

We were delivered back to our hotel, and had a quick spa and swim to wash away the river water. In the evening we headed into Noosaville for dinner at the Boathouse on Gympie Terrace.