Advertisement
Published: August 12th 2007
Edit Blog Post
Before we start blogging about our adventures in New Zealand, we’d just like to clarify that although we are still in NZ, only just, and we are writing this at the beginning of August and due to fly to South America in a few days. Yes, we’re still trying to catch up with blogs and will probably be writing about Chile after being home for a few months!
Well here we are - Christchurch, South Island, New Zealand at the beginning of winter… goodbye suntan, those awesome plunge pools in Litchfield National Park seem a long way off now. Anyway, sticking to my sales pitch I gave to Lexa about the winter being a great time to travel in NZ, we jumped into a minibus and set off to ‘The Jailhouse’, an old converted prison that only closed in the late 1980’s and is now a backpacker’s hostel - an interesting place to stay for a couple of nights, but a tad claustrophobic and the windows are a little small! Here we got talking to Kirsty, the lady running the place and it turned out that she owns the café at Punakaiki, close to where I worked when I was
in the country before and knows Don and Hamish who I worked for. With a population of around 4 million this really can come across as a small country.
We started looking for a campervan to BUY straight away, deciding again that it was the only way to travel for flexibility and economy for the two of us. So we set off around the city on foot searching the suburbs of Christchurch trying to find our home for the next few months. We came across lots of very expensive campervans and cars in so-called ‘Backpacker’ car showrooms that just appeared to be normal garages, eventually finding a handful of reasonably priced but small, old and badly fitted out backpacker vans accompanied by their miserable looking occupants desperate for a sale and decided to look into the cost of renting.
It turned out that there were some pretty amazing winter deals on offer and it was going to be much cheaper than Oz. Eventually we got down to $31 a day (£11.50) including the ferry crossing for the vehicle from south to north island, a free ski-pass at Wanaka’s Treble Cone for one of us and a free rafting
trip for one of us near Rotorua. That gave us a well fitted out hi-top diesel Toyota Hiace, with cooker, fridge, microwave, electronic safe and I must also mention the in-van entertainment, a built-in DVD player with 10” screen, essential for the modern backpacker! With a double room in a hostel costing $40-$50, plus transport costs and the ease of cooking for ourselves we couldn’t refuse. With a bit of persuasion, ‘Ezy’ rentals also waivered the relocation fee so we could drop the van in Auckland at no extra charge, threw in free snowchains (which proved invaluable) and most importantly a couple of camping chairs…whooopeee! Because we were renting for so long we were given one of the newer vans and apart from a bald spare tyre, which was replaced after I pointed it out, DAR354 looked pretty shiny and had a very nice lady painted on the side.
After picking up some essentials we paid a visit to Brighton Beach which as you can see from the photos bears no resemblance to the one in East Sussex and stopped for the night in a campsite nearby. The next day we headed back towards town for a ‘big shop’
with the aim of stocking up with cheap food before we left for the backcountry. This brings me onto our first visit to ‘The Warehouse’ a great place to buy cheap stuff, including a few much needed DVD’s! You’ll be glad to know we didn’t blow our budget, restricting ourselves to a few of the bargain bucket films that were $2 or less - yes that’s about 75p and some were very bad! We also bought a couple of things to keep us warm in the van, as we knew that the temperature was going to drop and we would be free camping most of time without power and therefore heating. I bought a sheepskin rug to fit in with the locals and we also found a bargain fluffy blanket that has proved invaluable on nights when ice formed on the inside of the van windows and the water tap in the sink froze….
Another favourite of Lexa’s was Pak ‘N Save, a bulk buy, sell cheap supermarket that has some amazingly good deals and we have tried to track them down in each town we come to. With the van fully stocked we hit the road out of
Christchurch to the old volcanic crater of Banks Peninsular just southeast of the city.
Our first free campsite in New Zealand was a very nice spot by the sea near Port Levy, a relief to be free of the city and roaming free again. The next morning we got chatting to a local about the crazy stunts that a small plane was pulling over the nearby hills and he explained about the NZ history of ‘top-dressing’. It all started using planes leftover after the war such as Tigermoths, as farmers tried to improve the soil quality of otherwise inaccessible land by emptying bags of fertilizers out the side of the cockpit. Things have moved on a bit since then, with specialized planes and automated chutes, but essentially the devotees of this pastime still have to fly like complete nutters, skimming along a few feet from the ground and occasionally into it.
From here we were heading towards Akaroa, but with only the dodgy free tourist maps to guide us we were a little unsure of the best route. Luckily a local kindly stopped and advised us to drive over the dirt road to Pigeon Bay, but to take
it carefully as the road was a little narrow at times. As promised it was worth it, the views were amazing and Lexa was impressed with her first real views of NZ, with the scenery that to her seemed a mix of the Lake District and the Cornish coast all rolled into one. From the Crater Rim Road we dropped down into Akaroa, on the shores of the natural harbour formed by the extinct volcano and one of the NZ’s many places famed for the opportunity to swim with dolphins. We took a look at the boats, listened to the freezing punters returning after a brief swim with dolphins and thought better of it, saving our money. At the right time of year we had heard that it’s amazing and you can literally be swimming with hundreds of dolphins, so we added it to our list of things to come back and do at another time.
After a wander around the town heavy influenced by the early French settlers, we headed up Summit Road out of Akaroa. After a few failed attempts to find a free campsite, we eventually stopped at the Otepatotu Scenic Reserve, overlooking Le Bonns Bay on
the outside of the crater and also back into Akaroa harbour. At sunset we walked upto the nearby peak of Lavericks and watched a spectacular sunset with clouds forming and fading away before us.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.043s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 8; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0217s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Martyn
non-member comment
Email
Hey, you guys, your Yahoo email isn't working. Doh!