Advertisement
Published: November 18th 2006
Edit Blog Post
Lakes Tekapo & Pukaki We braved the strong winds and drove inland to Lake Tekapo. We’d planned to spend the night there, but after taking some photos of the bright blue waters and the mountains beyond we found that the town itself didn’t really merit a long stop, so we pushed on to Lake Pukaki.
Lake Pukaki is surrounded by impressive mountain ranges all forming parts of the Southern Alps, but Mount Cook - NZ’s tallest mountain - dominates the views. The Maoris call Mount Cook “Aoraki”, which means “Cloud Piercer” and that’s exactly what it does.
We found a viewpoint of the Lake and Mount Cook beyond, with public toilets and no signs about overnight camping, so we stopped for the night with the best free views we’re ever likely to get. We watched the clouds drift across Mount Cook as the sun went down and the fresh, clean sky turned pink.
Mount Cook/Aoraki National Park The next morning we drove along the edge of Lake Pukaki in to Aoraki National Park. After a kick-starting coffee and some refreshing lungfuls of mountain air we set out from the village on the Hooker Valley trail. Fortunately
the walk was fairly easy so we could just enjoy the incredible scenery.
We followed the valley over two swing bridges, between snow-capped giants with vast glinting blue glaciers, and past heaped moraines until we reached a lake with chunks of glacier ice drifting across it.
After the second swing bridge Mount Cook loomed large over the valley. Unfortunately, the cloud never quite allowed us a completely clear close-up view, but Mount Cook is still one of the more memorable things we’ve seen this year and on another cloudier day we may not have seen it at all.
Otago Region Dunedin & Otago Peninsula From Aoraki National Park we drove out of Canterbury in to the Otago region to the city of Dunedin. Dunedin (Celtic for ‘Edinburgh’) is the South Island’s second city. It was the destination for a job lot of Scottish settlers way back when, hence the statue of Robbie Burns in the city centre, the tartan uniform worn by the local school kids and the high proportion of ginger-haired people wandering the streets.
Gold-rush wealth in the late 1800’s has left some grand architecture and NZ’s oldest university. It’s also
Lake Pukaki
Us with Mt Cook in the background the location of Cadbury’s NZ factory. NZ’s Cadbury’s is infinitely better than the North American stuff but it’s still not the real deal, so we gave the Dunedin factory tour a miss, but Rod managed his own tour of Dunedin’s mountain-biking trails.
Due to an editing error…OK, cock-up…we don’t have any photos of Dunedin. Oh, well.
We left Dunedin via the nearby Otago Peninsula. This beautiful peninsula feels like Cornwall and the Lake District rolled in to one. We’d hoped to see the local Albatross colony or some rare yellow-eyed penguins, but there was an entrance fee for both so we had a coffee and enjoyed the free views instead, and then began the scenic drive through the Catlins.
South Otago to Southland - The Catlins The Catlins is a pretty area of forests and wildlife-rich coastline….it has none of the drama of NZ’s mountains, but we spent a pleasant few days driving through it (from east to west).
On day one we stopped at rugged Nugget Point, where we finally saw some seals albeit from a distance, and then at Purakaunui Falls, before we headed down yet another dirt track (there have been a
Mount Cook
View over Lake Pukaki (and our nice free-camping spot!) lot of those!) to Purakaunui Bay’s Department of Conservation campsite in a beautiful setting. DOC campsites are very basic but very cheap too, and often in idyllic isolated spots. Rod picked up his first sandfly bites (much worse than mosquito bites) and we had a night of wine and cards.
Day two involved lots more driving on dirt tracks to lovely Tautuku Bay and then to Slope Point, the southern most point of the NZ mainland, where we walked to the cliff edge and got seriously wind-swept.
Fiordland - Te Anau & Milford Sound At Invercargill (retail-park hell…much like Bolton), we turned inland towards Te Anau and NZ’s Fiordland National Park. After scary driving in high winds we arrived in tiny Te Anau safe and sound. With the wind still blowing and rain falling we didn’t hold out much hope for the weather on the Milford Sound cruise that we booked for the following day, but we had a relaxing night at possibly the best campsite in the world (Te Anau Great Lakes Holiday Park, in case you’re planning a visit).
The next morning the weather was surprisingly calm during the spectacular drive up to Milford
Sound. We followed the winding road past impressive mountains and through dark and damp Homer tunnel and arrived at the Milford Sound car park to be greeted by a gizillion sand flies - arrrgghhh! The little b*****ds are everywhere!
Milford Sound (which is not a sound at all, but a ‘fjord’) proved to be magnificent. The combination of tectonic movement and glacial carving has created formidable, steep cliffs with lots of waterfalls cascading down to eerily calm waters. Very bizarre, then, that it’s named after the Welsh Milford!
The tectonic movement gives Milford Sound one earthquake a day on average (quakes measuring over 7 on the Richter Scale are not unusual). Thankfully we didn’t feel anything during our visit other than the effects of the Tasman Sea when we reached the end of the fjord.
Milford Sound definitely leaves you feeling pretty small and insignificant in size and time…. and even though we lucked out with a dry day (they get 6 metres of rain there a year) the grey skies mean that the photos don’t really do the place justice. Hopefully, though, the boats in the photos give a sense of scale. The pictures of the
Mount Cook/Aoraki National Park
Glaciers on the Hooker Valley walk wildlife turned out a little better: we saw a pair of rare yellow-crested penguins and several fur seals.
We finished our trip to Milford with a walk to Key Summit, which is part of the Routeburn track (one of NZ’s multi-day Great Walks).
Bikers’ corner Dunedin was my next biking spot. I slogged my way up a deceptively long and steep road to get to the summit of the forest area (passing very close to the steepest street in the world - but I resisted a detour!) There were a few confusing signs about the area being closed, but as they weren’t very clear, I carried on anyway…. And killed a few fun hours on the nice singletrack trails that had been built by the local MTB club (there’s a theme here), finishing with the long downhill track (and I mean full-on downhill course - though I nipped round the scary big jumps along the way) back into the city.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Advertisement
Tot: 0.128s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 11; qc: 25; dbt: 0.0745s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Mike H
non-member comment
not worn out yet then?!
I'm amazed you're not worn out yet.... other topic - what do you reckon to NZ for cycle touring....