Our trip to Central Otago region of South Island

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April 23rd 2008

Published: August 13th 2008

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Pinky and The Brain

Rakaia River

That is a jetboat down there!

April 14 - April 22, 2008. Central Otago adventure!
We flew from Wellington to Christchurch ($29 one-way fares!) to experience a Southern hemisphere autumn in one of the most beautiful areas of NZ.
Emily found a relocation deal online with the vehicle rental company Jucy, who market themselves as the "best second-tier rental company in NZ." We got a campervan, an RV -- the Jucy "CHARGA". It was a 3-berth van and the camper part was pretty cool. The only real drawback was that it was an older model of Toyota truck and mechanically the vehicle had definitely seen its better days; it really felt like we were driving a little semi with a transmission that was about to drop. Oh well, it only cost us $2 a day - that's right, only $2 a day. Em got us a great deal on that relocation special.
We drove the Charga from Christchurch down to the South Canterbury region where we visited the Peel Forest and then were off to Mt. Cook National Park. At Mt Cook we hiked an awesome trail to the Hooker Glacier; when we got to the glacier face we were surprised to discover an alpine lake filled

Rakaia River

with icebergs - too cool!
We then went to Wanaka where we hiked up & down Mt Iron and then went to the lake and rented a 2-person ocean kayak to paddle around for a while - amazing experience.
The third day we arrived in Queenstown to drop off the Charga and rent a 4x4 SUV. We got a Toyota RAV4, which was nothing too flash, but good enough to take us around the 4x4 off-road trails in the area. We had checked out a few 4x4 trail books from the library that told us which trails we could do with the type of vehicle we had - a great idea that really came in handy. The first off-road trail we did took us south of Queenstown (south Lake Wakatipu) to the Nevis Valley trail. It was a beautiful day and we ended up doing 32 river & creek crossings over the course of about four hours on the trail. We saw the ruins of the old goldfields and on the way up the mountains leading out of the valley we got some great views of Central Otago at dusk.
The next few days saw us visiting many of the

Peel Forest

Emily at Emily Falls

small towns of Central Otago: Cromwell, Clyde, Alexandra, Ophir, St. Bathans, Naseby, Ranfurly. We headed down to the old village of Styx and started another 4x4 trail called 'The Old Dunstan Road'. During the gold mining years in the late 1800s, this road was one of the only ways to get in and out of Central Otago; altough we were in our comfortable, little, warm RAV4 -- driving over the rocky, muddy, and snowy trail really made us think about how cold and treacherous that journey would have been 130 years ago in a horse-drawn cart.
We picked up another relocation special vehicle (this one was free! we only had to pay for a tank of fuel) in Queenstown and headed back to Christchurch - we got to see another great sunset over the airport prior to flying back home to Wellington.

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