NZ; South Island road trip, Part 1

Auckland to Christchurch

We spent most of Tuesday 13th trying to cram all of our remaining worldly goods from the southern hemisphere, into our rucksacks and carry-on luggage. We left for the airport at 1pm and spent the taxi ride there debating whether or not Graham Henry should be publically flogged for the abomination that was the All Black disastrous world cup campaign. We checked in at the Air NZ domestic terminal without any problems despite the fact that each of our rucksacks was blatantly over-packed and well over the 20kg limit, added to the additional hold all which we had packed with bedding and as many dried foodstuffs as we could find in the kitchen cupboards.

Unfortunately we were too late to request the usual emergency exit row seats for Daf and the aisle seats were not exactly consolation. On boarding we realised that we were sitting in the emergency exit row but there was only additional leg room at the window seat and it was taken by a diminutive Remuera Barbie doll in wedge heels. Needless to say Daf was NOT impressed. My incessant nose blowing and constant reference to my recent previous vomiting incident en route to Tonga did the trick, and the little dolly bird quickly moved. Apparently Daf was not the only one keen for a bit more space and a quick thinking German man grabbed the seat before I could put my sick bag back in the seat pocket in front of me! He was not so easily put off by my tricks.

Christchurch

The flight was uneventful and we had a superb view of the Ashley River on our approach to Christchurch. When our baggage finally came through on the carousel we grabbed it quickly and noticed that my tension strap had gone astray. Baggage services were quick to offer us a replacement from their wide selection of lost items. We hopped in a shuttle bus and were dropped off at out hotel, Thomas’s on Hereford St, within 10 mins. We had heard that Chch was similar to Oxford in appearance and is referred to as ‘The Garden City’ as one third of land there is garden or parkland. It certainly seemed quite tranquil and Oxbridge in character on the drive through.

Our Hostel was situated on the edge of the town centre, luckily opposite the pub which Daf’s friend Ian recommended we visit; they brew their own award winning beers and have a great reputation for their veggie and fresh local fish menu. Dux de Lux was indeed a fantastic venue and was packed to the gunnels with ladies arrived from the NZ Cup races that day in their full ‘ladies day’ regalia. We enjoyed 5 or 6 of the superb local brews, including Ginger Tom – basically an excellent alcoholic ginger beer, Black Shag – a very good stout and the Hereford Ale. Dinner from their extensive menu reminded me of an upmarket version of Henderson’s in Edinburgh but with a fish and seafood section. Informal and beautifully prepared. I had the daily special Aloo Chenna and Daf had Akaroa Salmon with honey soy fried veggies. We moved to the garden to enjoy the jazz duet who were trying to convince everyone that it wasn’t actually raining, and wandered back across the road to bed when the gas heaters could no longer counteract the SW wind and driving drizzle.

We picked up our ‘van’, which was actually a glorified station wagon, the next day after wandering around Chch for 3 hours browsing in the tourist shops for possum fur and jade products, with our luggage safely stored in the hostel. Once we realised that it was a manual we were quite excited at the prospect of the next 2 weeks of driving as the trip to Masterton in the little automatic was more like driving a go-cart.

We stopped off at Pak‘n’Save for supplies, topped up on petrol and hit the road for lake Tekapo. Our original route plan was to travel inland to Tekapo, then back out to the East coast, down to Dunedin, round to Milford, up to Queenstown and the Fox and Franz Josef glaciers then up to Hokitika, Greymouth and Nelson before heading back down the East coast through Marlborough and Kaikoura to Hanmer springs and Chch.

Lake Tekapo

The main highway out of Chch was pretty much straight, uneventful and even boring down through Rakaia and Ashburton. We figured that it should take us a few hours to reach Tekapo as its right up in the mountains, past Geraldine and Fairlie. Once we had turned off SH1 it started to get much more interesting and scenic. The first view of the snow capped mountains over the grass plains was quite exciting and very welcome. We continued to climb upwards into the hills of the Two Thumb Range and arrived at Lake Tekapo around 5pm. The sky was quite clear and the lakeside was not too busy so we found the local campground and started to re-configure the car for night-time.

It wasn’t until about 6pm that we realised we’d left the laptop in the hostel and we had no reception, no power in our phones and no idea what the number of the hostel was! He managed to get thought to them on the card phone near the lake and established that they had tried to call us at least 6 times to ask when we were coming back to get it. Since we had booked in for our last night before flying out we arranged to pick it up on our return to Chch.

We wandered around Lake Tekapo, the highest lake in New Zealand, that evening and tried to wait for the sun to set. We skimmed stones, paddled in the perfectly clear lake water and took lots of photos. The sun still hadn’t set by 8 o’clock so we headed back for our first camp dinner of...spag bol!! Parked beside us was the first of MANY camperbuses that we would encounter. Enormous things, basically cuboid in shape with tiny wheels, appalling handling on corners and virtually no acceleration. Our neighbours for that evening were a party of Germans who laughed in a loud cackling manner at everything. I named them ‘the hilarious Germans’. The sun set at around 10pm and we couldn’t see any stars.

The bed set up in the back of the car was pretty basic. A large sheet of plywood folded down over the back seats and 2 foam mattresses unfolded on top. Small curtains on an elastic cord gave us some modesty and all of our junk fitted in the front 2 seats. It was pretty tight, especially for Daf!! There was the added space from an awning which fitted snugly over the boot door down to the ground and a light on a cable which we could hang up from the top of the boot door.

Our first night was cold. Full pyjamas, hats and socks kind of weather. The sun was up at 5.30am and that’s when I woke up. We showered in the $2 coin operated camp showers, had breakfast and packed up the car to head off to Mount Cook.

The road to Mount Cook was interesting as we took a side road which followed a canal which had been built up with embankments between the hillocks, the road up the side of Lake Pukaki was here that we started to get an idea of the numbers of tourist buses that fill the South Island roads on any summer’s day. The lake at the foot of Mt Cook has a fantastic view up its length of the mountain at the top. The visitors centre was surrounded by Japanese tourists who were all taking turns to stand in front of things and have their photos taken. We got some good pics of them doing this.

On the way up to Mt Cook we passed a pack of female cyclists struggling with the peaks and taking up most of our lane. I narrowly avoided ramming them off the road with some carefully executed overtaking manoeuvres. We drove up to the car park at the foot of the summit but the cloud cover was fairly engulfing and we really couldn’t see anything. It was still cold so we warmed up with some tea in the mountaineer’s cafe and headed back down for some wider views of the valley and mountains.

Albert Town

We joined the fleet of campervans that usually skirt around places of interest around 11am. Luckily we had far less to carry in our snails shell so successfully managed to speed past most of them before Twizel. At Omarama we apparently took a wrong turn and didn’t realise this until we were about 100kms away at Lindis Pass, when we should have been at Lake Aviemore. We headed for Wanaka instead as we had been told it was worth a look. The lake was beautiful and quite quiet. We stopped for a Speight’s, visited the biggest attraction in Wanaka – Puzzling World – where we got lost in a huge 3D maze, and then found the DOC campground 5kms away in Albert town.

The DOC camp grounds have a self-registration policy which apparently is checked up on by DOC staff regularly. We didn’t think anyone would notice if we just stopped off for one night and headed at about 8am so we found a shady spot next to the river and set up camp.

The ground had basic facilities – unlit toilets and a fresh water tap. We cooked and ate dinner then wandered up to the Albert town tavern for a few 12’s before the sun set. It was a brand new, but still a local pub. We had a few Radler’s and wandered home across the bridge, only stopping in the middle to throw some big stones in at the deepest points and watching them sink in the clear blue water. By the time we got back to the grounds 5 other Britz/Maui camperbuses had arrived and were tucked up in their beds.

I awoke at about 6am and tried to make breakfast quietly but we were caught by the DOC inspectors who, unsurprisingly, found that no-one had actually registered nor paid their camp fees. We paid up our $14 and watched as she proceeded to knock on everyone’s windows and doors to remind them that they too had to pay for their night.

Dunedin

Friday and we were back on the road by around 9am and heading for Dunedin. We didn’t actually plan to make it as it seemed a long way on the map but we hoped to stop off somewhere interesting on the way. The drive back down from the mountains past Lake Dunstan and Cromwell was less impressive than the way up but we took a detour and visited the Moeraki boulders, just up the coast from Dunedin.

They look much bigger and more impressive in the photos I’ve seen. They were covered in and surrounded by Japanese tourists and getting a picture of the boulder on its own proved to be difficult. Daf did manage to get a picture of me taking a picture of a Japanese tourist taking a picture of his friend who was on a boulder.

There are around 50 of these huge round stones, partially or fully submerged in the sand at the shore line. They have been worn down over time by the sea and each has similar turtle like patterns carved into the rock.

Here is what Wikipedia says about them...

The Moeraki Boulders are
unusually large and spherical boulders lying along a stretch of Koekohe Beach on
the wave cut Otago coast of New Zealand
between Moeraki and Hampden. They occur scattered
either as isolated or clusters of boulders within a stretch of beach where they
have been protected in a scientific reserve. The erosion by wave action of mudstone, comprising local
bedrock and landslides, frequently exposes embedded isolated boulders. These boulders are grey-colored septarian concretions,
which have been exhumed from the mudstone enclosing them and concentrated on the
beach by coastal erosion.

Local Maori legends explained
the boulders as the remains of eel baskets,calabashes, and kumara washed ashore from
the wreck of an Arai-te-uru, a large sailing canoe. This legend tell of the
rocky shoals that extend seaward from Shag Point as being the petrified hull of
this wreck and a nearby rocky promontory as being the body of the canoe's
captain.

On the whole they were not all that, we took some photos then headed back to the warmth of the car.

We were in Dunedin by around 11.30am and parked the car to wander around and explore for a couple of hours. It’s nothing like Edinburgh, more like Perth. A small town with a lot of boy racers!! We wandered up and down the main streets, had a look at the old train station (now a sports museum) and bought some postcards. We found a campground out by the water front and rearranged the car again for another night. Once settled we wandered up towards town looking for a local pub. We found the MOST local pub, possibly in Dunedin, with a room full of horse and greyhound racing fanatics and another full of darts and pool enthusiasts, most in mullets or bald. Daf wasn’t wearing his “friends don’t let friends have mullets” t-shirt thankfully. It’s so much funnier in Auckland!!! We had a couple of pints of Otago Draught and tried to look inconspicuous. We watched the Silver Ferns beating South Africa and went back to the beach to sleep.

Because we were already on the peninsula we decided to head out to see it a bit further and try and see some of the endangered penguins that live by the beaches on the Otago Peninsula. It was a brilliant morning and the first few beaches we found were deserted! We continued on the windy and precarious road to Sandfly bay and walked for 15 mins before we remembered that we did not have sunscreen on and would probably die a horrible death shortly without water and shade. There were no penguins anyway so we walked back through a field of sheep to the car. Larnach castle was our next stop although the $20 entry fee per person put us off, we have plenty of castles in Scotland that we can visit if we really need to!! We came back around the northern shore via Portobello and then continued through Dunedin on the most Southerly motorway in the world towards Milford sound.

It was another uneventful country road through Milton, Balclutha and Gore with little traffic once we’d left the main highway. Several camperbuses crawling up hills and round corners were overtaken and the road started to get more interesting again once we approached the west coast once more.

Milford Sound

We approached Te Anau, the gateway to the Fiordland and sounds, around 4pm and had heard that the road, which was often closed, was open right through to the sound. We decided to try and get to DOC ground on the road to the sound and stay there giving us a head start on the bus loads of tourists who would be arriving from Queenstown and Dunedin around lunchtime the following day.

The road was pretty amazing right from the start. We passed through sprawling grass plains along the edge of Lake Te Anau banked on both sides by thickly forested mountains then climbed up into the mountains. The DOC grounds which we had passed were all too far from the actual sound so we decided to stay at Milford and get the first cruise in the morning. We reached the highest point of the road at the Homer tunnel and I was taken by surprise by the sudden darkness, steep decline in the road and water running down the walls and road. In a joint effort we quickly figured out how the headlights worked and slowly crawled down the narrow tunnel in 2nd gear trying to avoid the oncoming coaches and uneven walls. When we emerged from the apparently never-ending tunnel we were faced with a steeply falling road with sharp hairpin bends, each with a 25kmph speed limit and crumbling road edges. It was pretty scary I can tell you, as I’m not the best with heights never mind driving a fully loaded station wagon along a windy, steep, crumbly, unlit road at dusk with coaches of snappy tourists approaching at full speed from the opposite direction. Somehow I kept the car on the road and we made it to the foot of the mountain. Through the even thicker bush and to the sound, where the sun had just started to set.

As soon as we stepped out of the car it became obvious that the rumours of sandflies had not been exaggerated. We ran into the visitor centre to find out about cruises but it was shut and the bar/restaurant was filling up. We ran back to the car, swatting as we went and drove back up to the nearby campground to park up for the night. It was a well equipped and spacious site with excellent facilities and cruise bookings and info. Just in time for a few beers before they closed at 8pm we ate, showered, drank beer and went to bed. Not before spotting a few sneaky Keas in the car park begging for scraps and poking around the cars and vans.

At about 6am I woke up and took some photos of sunrise over the peaks. Covered my skin in deet and went in for breakfast. I booked the 8.55am cruise and tried to get Daf out of bed! We drove to the terminal at around 8.15am and found that we would be cruising on the tiniest of the fleet of 9-10 enormous liners up and down the length of Milford Sound. We were the first cruise of the day to take off and had fantastic views for miles into the distance as the weather was unusually perfect! We saw some little penguins sunning themselves on the rocks before going fishing and some fur seals (sea-lions) performed for us by jumping in and out of the water from/to great heights. The nose of the cruise ship, where we were sitting to avoid the appalling battle of the camera snobs that was raging on the top deck, was dipped into the foot of one of the many magnificent waterfalls along the edge of the sound walls. We got soaked and a good mouthful of the melted snow but it was great!! On the way back down the 16kms of sound we stopped in at the underwater observatory to drop off some Americans and we passed several scenic helicopter and light aircraft flights that swooped breath-takingly close to the water and cliff sides. Once back on land the sandflies were back and we ran back to the car and drove out of Milford with the windows up.

Kinloch

We were going to drive to Queenstown and stay just outside of town in a DOC site. The road was quite busy but nothing spectacular apart from the section from Milford to Te Anau again where we saw more Keas which almost climbed up Daf’s legs to his delight! We stopped off at some pools, waterfalls and chasms and arrived in Queenstown around 4pm. Driving through it seemed a lot like Taupo but with more emphasis on the ‘crazy kiwi adventure sports’ etc and bars a-plenty. We drove through, promising ourselves that we would stop on the way back for a closer look, continued on the Glenorchy road and drove past the first site thinking the next one was just a short drive away. It turned out that it was actually 44kms from Queenstown to Glenorchy then another 30 kms from Glenorchy to Kinloch, 10kms of which was down a dirt road. To be honest we didn’t think it was going to be there and were pleasantly surprised when we found not only the DOC campground with its composting toilets (nice) and amazing lakeside sheltered spaces, but also a small hotel with a bar and restaurant and beer garden!

It was a long hot drive from Milford and we tried to swim in the icy cold, blue lake but just couldn’t get the courage to go right under. We headed to the pub for a beer and tried again. The Monteith’s helped and we managed to get a good bit wetter and dry off in the still baking sun before sunset. We ate dinner whilst walking around to avoid sand fly bites and went back to the pub for some respite from the little buggars. They were pretty bad that night too and we spent a good part of that night in the car, without the awning, swatting them against the roof or windows knowing that come morning we would need to open the doors and face them again.

Come dawn, after a brief period without any flies before the sun was over the peaks of the surrounding mountains when we had bacon rolls for breakfast we packed up and drove at pace down the gravel road trying to shoo the flies of the open doors and windows. We came across the shallow river bed at the top of Lake Wakatipu where the ‘Isengard’ scenes from the LOTR trilogy were filmed. It was quite a dramatic piece of scenery but quite remote and the thought of building the scenery, shipping in the crew, supplies, equipment etc it must have been quite a feat. We drove back down the lakeside to Queenstown where we stopped for breakfast and a wander around the lake and town centre. We stopped for some breakfast and groceries but were a bit disappointed with Queenstown after the tranquillity of Wanaka so we headed on. We took the Crown Range Road which, on paper looked like a short cut, but actually turned out to be the windiest piece of mountain road that we took. It snakes up the side of the Cardrona Ski field area with 15kmph speed restrictions at each curve. Old silver did well to get us to the top, a lesser car would have disappointed.

Fox Glacier

The road then took us back through Wanaka so we stopped off again for lunch as we had not had time to make anything that morning due to our ongoing battle with the damned flies! Up past Wanaka it became gradually more and more forested and mountainous past Lakes Hawea and Wanaka and into the Mount Aspiring NP. As we approached Haast it became apparent that there is not a lot on the west coast apart from a few tourist hot spots and a LOT of camperbuses and touring coaches of Yanks and Japanese. I narrowly avoided a full blown road- rage battle with one of the many rude and ignorant kiwi males that drive at breakneck speeds in beaten up rust buckets on the un-signposted country roads in those parts. He gave me the middle finger because I slowed down to turn into a car park!! From then on I just wanted to get to Fox and have a shower!

We found the Fox Glacier township and parked up in the motorcamp just up from the main road on the right. At which point I donned my practical hat and did 2 loads of laundry, cooked dinner, made lunch for the next day and showered before shooing the persistent Keas away from pecking at the car and then sleeping like a log. The sun was amazingly bright the next morning as we made our way to see the glaciers, we got a magnificent view of the Fox glacier in brilliant morning sunlight, there was not a cloud in the sky. As we walked back down the path from the glacier face however the cover quickly came rolling in and when we approached Franz Josef we could really only see the face itself. There were hoards of climbers and walkers in brand new top-of-the-range gear, casually dawdling along with their also top-of-the-range Nikon and Kodak’s taking photos of the ubiquitous unfurling NZ fern and making hilarious attempts at making meaningful contact with the Keas by squawking in various tones and tunes up the valley, presumably to attract them so that they might take a breathtaking snap of a Kea ‘au natural’ instead of in the car park eating their windscreen wipers.

Since the road from Franz Josef to Hokitika was pretty uneventful we decided to try and make it to Christchurch to get the laptop back, via Arthur’s Pass. It was quite a outstanding drive as the road steeply climbed from the forested bushland of the west, still submerged in cloud at that point, up into the Southern Alps and past the cloud line, before dropping off down again through Sheffield into the flat, dry, Canterbury plains. We arrived in Chch at around 4pm, picked up the laptop (after a quizzing from the hostel owner about the contents of the bag, in great detail) and managed to hit rush hour traffic on the way north. We figured we’d find somewhere up in wine country to crash.