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South Island

K- And so we arrive on the South Island! Actually we have been here for well over week now but we haven’t stopped for more than 5 minutes to write an account of our adventures. After a 30 minute drive we arrive in our first destination – the small village of Renwick, just outside Blenheim and right slap bang in the middle of the Marlborough wine region. We hire bikes and armed with a map of free tastings, hit the wineries! There is a huge wine festival in town so thankfully most of the places are really quiet – we don’t feel remotely guilty about filling our boots for free! We buy a nice bottle of sauvignon blanc from one place and decided NZ does great white wine (especially Riesling) but fairly rubbish red (T – Kiwi’s all buy Oz Reds). The weather is rainy and cold and our hands freeze as we peddle along but the scenery more than makes up for it. Our lovely hotel room (no tent tonight) has TV so we feel all nostalgic watching Midsommer Murders (T- This has never happened before…) and eating Cadbury’s fruit and nut!

The next day we head all the way down the coast to Christchurch – a long drive. However, we had been told to stop off on the way in a place called Kaikoura. We were glad we did because it was a nice little town complete with its own fur seal colony just on the outskirts. Tom took loads of photos of them and it was cool to see something like that just by the side of the road.

A few hours later we arrived in Christchurch – we were staying the night with Richard, Linley and Max, a family who used to live next to Tom’s family. They had a lovely house which had been damaged by the earthquakes but luckily was still safe for them to live in. Linley gave us a ‘tiki-tour’ of the town and we had a walk around the outside of the ‘red zone’, which was a surreal experience – all these buildings destroyed or damaged and a town centre that was totally silent. Still the residents are making the best of it (T – Great pop-up shops have been created using shipping containers) and in the evening we went along to celebrate the Chinese New Year in Hagley Park – the new unofficial town centre. It was lit up by some really clever paper animal lantern displays – I liked the turtles and pandas the best!

T - Richard, Linley and Max were really welcoming and true hosts, we stocked up on travel tips, had a wonderful night’s sleep and were really pleased to have caught up with each other – thanks guys!

K - Another day another car journey – not that I’m complaining – I love driving! And New Zealand is just built for touring – the problem is every journey takes longer than you think because of all the photo ops! (T - Moeraki Boulders, being one of them: curious spherical boulders in the middle of the beach) This time we drive as far south as we are going to get – to the ‘Scottish’ city of Dunedin – a metropolis of nearly 70,000 people – wow!!! It is supposed to be like Edinburgh – yes it did feel Scottish and was nice enough but nowhere near as charming as the real thing. We were here to see the wildlife – in the form of more seals, shags, black swans and albatrosses so we drove to the Otago Peninsula and had fun spotting the massive birds coming in to land on the cliffs. We had received a tip off in Blenheim that there were sea lions on Alan’s beach so we drove along a dirt track and there they were! Three of them – stinking to high heaven and sleeping on the beach (needless to say we kept our distance)!

Then unfortunately I managed to pick up a horrible stomach bug – the local doctor thought it might be appendicitis so sent us off to the hospital! A few hours, profuse vomiting and some morphine later they ruled out both gallstones and appendicitis – phew! That little episode cost us nearly 500 dollars – thank goodness for travel insurance eh?!

Anyway – feeling slightly better we headed off across the bottom of the island to the Milford Sound. We drove across real LOTR country and Tom actually shrieked when we saw our first snowy covered peak! (T – I think I bellowed in a manly fashion actually Kiran, similar to a deep, sonorous alpine horn) We pulled into the town of Te Anu – last stop before the Milford sound and our last chance to stock up on food, booze and more importantly petrol. The road to the sound is 119km long and the signs say allow at least 2 hours for all the stops for photos. Well we stopped at least 5 times and in the end Tom resorted to sticking the camera out of the window which produced some pretty interesting photos. Just before the end of the road you have to drive thought the Homer Tunnel – its carved right through the bottom on a gigantic mountain and scared the crap out of us as we bombed though it. A single lane with only dim overhead lights – I made sure the bonnet of our car practically kissed the back of the campervan in front!

At last we arrived at our destination – the Milford Sound lodge – right next to the sound itself. Again we were camping, which was fine except for one thing – sandflies! We had been warned in advance that these ‘flying fangs’ were everywhere on the west coast so we had come prepared with industrial strength repellent. Still, it doesn’t stop them swarming you every time you go outside, however, thankfully, it did stop them landing on us and sucking our blood – nasty little buggers!!

After a relatively peaceful night’s sleep we were up early for a real highlight of our travels so far – a cruise on the Milford Sound itself. We had booked a place with a company that offered small boat tours and were really lucky in that it was just us and 10 others on the trip. For two hours we did a loop of the sound and it was incredible. The water was the clearest dark blue and the towering mountains just came straight out of the water – our boat felt so tiny in comparison. The sound is on a major fault line and experiences thousands of mini quakes a year. We had pointed out to us one large fault line and several sub-fault lines – the mountains had literally been cracked apart – scary stuff!! We saw lots of wildlife including a juvenile male fur seal colony who were happy to pose for photos. Here, you really felt like you were in a totally pure, unspoilt place and we were so glad to have seen it. (T - Can you believe that the guy who discovered it originally named it ‘Milford Haven’ after his home town??? Best day in NZ so far!)

Once back on dry land we did some dry river bed exploring and saw a really cool waterfall/rapids called the chasm. Here we got a chance to see the vandals of the bird world – alpine parrots called Keas that hang around in car parks waiting to destroy hire cars. They are really cheeky but very intelligent – apparently, one will pose for photos whilst the other one is stealing your shoelaces, food etc!

Feeling very humbled by all of this breath taking scenery we made our way back down the Milford road 119km back down to Te Anu to stock up on some much needed petrol and coffee before continuing our journey to Queenstown…

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