NZ - South Island taster

To get to South Island I sailed the Cook Strait, across the small channel and through the Marlborough Sounds, a maze of inlets and headlands. I spent a couple of days in Picton, where the boat lands. It’s a great wee town with some lovely local walks around the nearby peninsula and longer walks for anyone with more time. I was coming to the end of my time alone and decided to tackle something which always seems taboo for women, going to the pub alone! So I took myself and my book off to the local Irish bar and sat with a drink, something I’ve never had ‘the bottle’ to do before. By the end of a great night there was a table of 6 of us, who were all alone but sitting together. I realise people do this all the time, but I never had and it was liberating to be able to go out and have such a great night without my friends around me.

Getting the bus to Christchurch I had excitement in my belly knowing that when I reach my destination I will be greeted by friends from home, a far off place I haven’t seen for so many months. After a fun evening catching up we collected out camper van and got on the road for new adventures. We had a stunning introduction to the South Island driving through Arthurs Pass, one of the pathways through the massive mountains surrounding us. We spent our first night camping near a town called Hari Hari on the banks of a beautiful lake with plenty of greenery surrounding us. Our first big day out took us to the two main glaciers of New Zealand tourism, the Fox and the Franz Josef which are situated along the west coast. Taking in the stunning scenery on our walk up to the glaciers, the rivers are fresh and inviting with pristine waters of opal green, the mountains and cliffs around us are home to a wonderful collection of waterfalls, trees and birds and the walking trails are beautiful. While we didn’t take the time or effort to go on to the glaciers, partly due to the dodgy weather in the area, we thoroughly enjoyed walking the routes provided to take in the local scenery. En route to Queenstown we stopped in to view the blue pools which are just slow parts of the river where the crystal clear water collects and create stunning little pools tinted by the glacial colours. It’s tempting to jump right into them, and one of the visitors did that very thing, jumped off the bridge into the water! With a rather cool Antarctic breeze blowing through, a brief dip in a glacial pool is probably a pretty fresh way to start the day!

Queenstown is a lively hub of activity where all manner of extreme sports are available to try out, it is the gateway to Fiordland, the base for ski slopes, the home of bungee jumping and the destination of travellers of all ages with all sorts of different agendas. Our first activity was jet boating, we spent an hour blasting our way up the river behind the Remarkable Mountains, mixing natural beauty and serenity with occasional 360 degree spins! It was both interesting and fun, travelling around 80kmph in a little boat. Afterwards we took the gondola up the hill behind Queenstown, this is the steepest gondola ascent I have experienced and in no time at all we were perched in a clearing on the shelf of a mountain. The views of the surrounding area are breath taking, Queenstown is nestled nicely in this wonderful setting, on the shore of a deep blue lake, surrounded be enormous mountains capped with snow, you can easily see why people flock to this place. From here some people return to the bottom by parasending, we opted for a short blast on their luge and then back into the gondola. The luge is a purpose built track with little buggies you can ride down for a few hundred metres, they can really flee along if you let them, round tight corners and through a wee tunnel, brilliant fun!

Our next day involved a tour out to Milford Sound. It’s a long road and so we decided to let someone else do the driving while we sat back and enjoyed the scenery, driving through deep valleys with steep slopes on either side of us, patches of snow, many waterfalls, rockfalls and the Homer Tunnel before coming out at the end of the sound where we are greeted by the familiar sight of mitre rock and the water stretching out through the sound. We took a cruise around and it was a highlight of the New Zealand trip. Fortunate with the weather we had a calm cruise with plenty time to gape at the cliffs and majestic mountains towering over us. The many waterfalls vary in strength, some thunder over the rocks while others gentle trickle over the edge of a cliff and the wind carries them away in a cloud of mist and rainbows. We were lucky with the wildlife and not only saw lots of furry seals lazing on the rocks but also spotted 6 little crested penguins. These tiny little guys don’t look like they are very much bigger than a bowling pin, they clumsily waddle around the rocks falling over and disappearing for a while before picking themselves back up and coming back into view. They have yellow stripes down the side of their head which is their crest, it’s long haired and makes them look like they have really bushy eyebrows. Such a fantastic sight, I was delighted to have seen them in the wild, they are only spotted when they are between their onshore home, up in the bushes, and the sea as they take some time out on the rocks.

Leaving Queenstown we had to pop in at the AJ Hackett bungee bridge to watch some people taking the plunge. Like a conveyor belt they went, strapped in, pushed off and rescued by the raft on the river below. While it’s not something I would like to experience I found it interesting watching the mini movie about AJ Hackett and his friends, who apparently pioneered the sport, originally by jumping feet first they developed it through the ‘80s including some international jumps and an arrest after jumping from the Eifel Tower.

Driving to Dunedin started out along a fairly slow gorge road alongside another stunning glacial river, no matter how often you see the water here a second glance is always needed as you can never quite believe how fresh and alluring the water looks. Those colours just invite you to jump right in! If it wasn’t so cold I don’t imagine we’d get anywhere, we’d be pulling in every 10 minutes to go for a swim! It is cold though so instead we thoroughly enjoy our drives, 3 Highland girls trooping through New Zealand with Scottish folk music playing on the stereo, fantastic!

Dunedin is home to New Zealand’s Cadbury factory, and while I know we have them at home we had to take the tour, it was short but sweet! Our campsite was at the beach in St Kilda, a nice rugged beach with a healthy breeze blowing to remind us of home. We went for a night out in the local bars and had a fun night, meeting all sorts of characters. The bar we went to was clearly a very local place with lots of very drunk people having a brilliant time, is it wrong to add that it was just like home? No pretences, just people letting go for a Saturday night. Afterwards we went to another bar and the people there were absolutely horrified at where we’d just come from, I don’t suppose anyone wants tourists to see the true parts of their home but to appreciate a place you have to see it’s good and it’s bad points.

Dunedin has a strong Scottish connection, apart from named after our capital city (Dunedin is an anglicised version of the Gaelic for Edinburgh) they also happen to have a Scottish festival every November, good timing on our part I’d say! We missed most of the events but were in time for the local Highland Games and got to watch their Highland dancing competition, their races, their caber tossing, stone running and most unusual for us was the competition between young ladies, they had a name for it but I’m afraid all any of us could think about was a certain episode of Father Ted when their local fete had a ‘Lovely Girls’ competition! I’m so pleased we never had competitions like this at our games day at home, it was cringe-worthy! We did enter one event, the welly throwing, or ‘gum-boot’ throwing. Mairi came third and won a prize, my welly nearly took out an old man standing nearby, Shona’s however actually hit the judge!! We definitely left our mark in Dunedin!

The next stop on this part of our tour was the east coast village of Moeraki to admire the spherical boulders that live on the beach. Created by a combination of erosion and subterranean pressure these huge marbles sit grouped together on the beach creating a big playground for people to climb on and even in, as some have broken up. Nearby is the Moeraki lighthouse, situated out on a small peninsula near the village the lighthouse looks over cliffs and beaches and also has a small track down to a penguin hide where we could quietly sit and watch the local residents. The penguins we saw here were Little Blue’s and are bigger than the previous ones rising up to what looked to be around 70-80cms. We saw two standing on the beach chatting to each other (that’s really what it looked like) and another one was standing close to our hut under a small shelter looking over its fuzzy grey baby which was sprawled out on the ground before it. It’s very special to have this opportunity, I feel really lucky again, for the umpteenth time on this trip.

We were soon back on the road and after a last wilderness camp outside Herbert we headed back to Christchurch were I’m joined by Jamie (my brother) and I say goodbye to Mairi and Shona and our campervan. Together we all took a drive out to Sumner a village on the peninsula outside Christchurch, this is my first introduction to destruction caused by 2 earthquakes in the area in 2011. The road is extremely bumpy with barriers and road works and temporary detours dotted around. Cliff edges are lined with ‘maersk’ shipping containers to stop rocks falling on to the road. Other cliffs are completely cordoned off as houses stand perilously close to the edge at the top while others are crushed in the rubble below, these houses have been condemned and the owners forbidden from returning to them. It’s a sad sight for a place you can imagine was terribly beautiful before, I can’t imagine it’s nice to have your lovely home town ripped to pieces around you and replaced with rocks and huge rusting containers. It’s an incentive to come back and help if I can, there’s so much work to be done and I haven’t even seen the city yet!

Saying these farewells is the start of the end I feel, but for now it’s the opening of a new chapter.