Into New Zealand

Over to NZ
Monday becomes Tuesday

Our flight from the Cook islands was at 7am, so we had to be up pretty early. Luckily we'd managed to get hold of the airport transfer company the night before after days of trying and had at last arranged a pick up for 5am. We were packed and sat outside at 5am, providing a mosquito buffet for quite a while and there was no sign of our pick up. We thought that as we'd booked it late on a Sunday afternoon that they may have messed up the booking, but just after we went inside to ring them at about 5.25, they turned up, much to our relief.

On arrival at the airport, we were all decorated again, this time with big long shell necklaces, as we left the bus. Checking our bags took all of 5 minutes, with the help of a massive, camp as hell, Mauri bloke (thats a strange thing to get your head round I assure you). We were also told we had to go and buy departure tax. This is a fee of $30 each to leave the country, which no one had thought to mention at any point...

With our tickets stamped we headed through security, which was all pretty straight forward until some jobsworth on the scanner said the bags we had our liquids in exceeded regulation width and we must go back out through passport control and buy a new bag from the shop. After queuing again we got through into the departure lounge. The departure lounge was a loose arrangement of shops in a big open garden space, most of them selling the same alcohol at the same prices, with a couple of souvenir shops thrown in between. As we got called to the (only) gate, we were once again treated to some great local music, with a different chap sat on the same seat, singing melancholy goodbyes to us as we began to head out onto the tarmac for the flight.

The flight into Auckland was pretty average, but the breakfast was good (some chicken sausage thing, with a spinach and mushroom omelette and some relish. After a big long silly quiz on paper and then verbally about how many widgety grubs we'd been eating lately and how many farmers fields we'd ploughed, we were in New Zealand. Having crossed the international date line halfway, our 2 hour flight actually took 26 hours (going from -10hrs to +12hrs gmt). We transferred to the internal flights terminal and after a boring 2 hour wait, onto our flight to Queenstown. We had 2 of three seats in the row, the other occupied by a nice oldish New Zealand woman. She had some pretty good advice about places to see and things to do, but as we were to find out, everyone in New Zealand has good advice about where you should see and no one ever agrees!

Another 2.5 hours of flying later and we grabbed our bags; the first 2 off the belt no less, and jumped into a taxi for the short trip to the hostel.

Queenstown

We arrived at Reavers Lodge, a hostel on the hillside behind Queenstown. After a swift booking in we went for a look around the hostel. The room we had was great, with it's own lovely double bed, that I'd be happy to have at home, clean linen, towels etc, all pretty new. There was a TV complete with digital, an en-suite, toiletries for both of us, a full sized fridge, kettle and toaster and a large selection of tea and coffee to get us going. We also had 2 view windows, one over the lake to the right and the other to Queenstown in front. The hostel had a secluded patio area, with heater, BBQ and a hot bubbling spa pool. The living room was huge with loads of sofas, sky tv, computers, vending machines, pool table and 4 dining tables. The kitchen had 4 full size cookers, 4 sinks, 3 microwaves and was massive. No sitting around like in most hostels; while someone attentively burns a pizza.

After a quick inspection we headed into town to explore and to gather some food (and wine (and beer (and vodka))). Queenstown seemed really nice, but we didn't explore very far, by order of our hungry stomachs! After dinner our plans of going out for a few drinks evaporated as we passed out asleep, shattered at about 7.30.

Wednesday - Queenstown

Today we explored Queenstown properly. It's a lovely place, very relaxed and whilst being geared towards tourists, wasn't as full of them as you may expect. Most of the attractions are adrenaline filled acts of stupidity, so the tourists that had come for that kind of blended in with the locals anyway, who seemed to be mostly snowboarders or bums. We grabbed a Thai take-out for lunch from the shopping centre, which was actually a lovely meal, fresh from the wok. We'd resolved to actually go out tonight so we headed back to the hostel early to get dinner going. We'd noticed that if we let it go dark, then eat, we seemed to go right to bed, so this time we wanted to eat early and see how that worked out.

As we left to go out we realised it had started raining, really hard, so after adding layers, we headed out into town. The first bar we came across had a huge roaring open fire, which we sat right by for half an hour drying off. We chatted to a couple of snowboarders who were drinking away the time until the snow came and I managed to insult a Mauri girl, totally by accident, whilst talking about the Cook Islands. It seems the connection and respect that the Cook Islanders feel for New Zealand isn't reciprocated whatsoever from this side.

We wandered off in search of a more lively bar and met a bunch of English people in the street. They were all quite young but they'd been here a while. We went to a bar called Buffalo which we'd been recommended and luckily for us, the guys we'd met had 2 for 1 drinks passes, which saved us a fortune. We stayed in there drinking with them for a good few hours, having discovered Monteith's Radler, a beer brewed with lemon, served on draught.

Thursday - Queenstown & Beyond

The next day we both felt like death in the morning, but as we were picking up the camper and checking out of the hostel there was no time for self pity. We packed sharply-ish and went to ask if we could check out a couple of hours late so we could leave our gear in the room while we went to collect the campervan. That was cool and even better, as we were trying to figure out where to get the bus from, one of the guys from reception offered us a lift as he had something to do out that way anyway. After another set of instructions on where to go and what to see, we were dropped off at Jucy Rentals office by the Airport. After going through the motions with 2 girls that may never have worked a day there before in their lives (to be fair, they knew what the forms meant..) we were shown out to our van. It was a nice big silver thing with some silly drawings on the side, with a huge list of functions and extras on board. Unfortunately, the girls showing us had no idea where any of it was or how any of it worked and pretty much left us to 'figure it out as you go'.

After a shaky mile getting used to the automatic van, we returned for our gear and to check out of the hostel.

If anyone is going to go to Queenstown, Reavers Lodge is definitely worth a look.

From here we set off for Milford Sound, reputedly one of the most beautiful places on the planet. It's close on the map, but there's no direct route, it's actually a 350km or so drive all round the houses. Progress is also pretty slow when you have to stop the van every 500 yds to take another lovely picture. Heading down the motorway (This is a very loose term over here, a country road at home would more than qualify) we noticed primarily, the scenery at every turn and the massive abundance of animals. There's the Hawks, another one round every corner, dominating the skies looking for the next kill. There's hundreds of cows, hundreds of sheep and field upon field of deer. The beef and lamb are the cheapest meats here and it's no wonder, you really can't find a spot from which you can't see one or the other at the very least.

On the way to Milford Sound, we found a nice little town called Te Anau where we stocked up a little and then pulled in for the night at a campsite a little further on. My god it was cold! We were by a lake also which soon proved a bad idea as I had to spend 2 hours after opening the door, killing mozis in the van. Another early night tonight.

Friday - Milford Sound - Te Anau - Queenstown (again)

We made great time getting to Milford Sound in the morning, however as we drove on we gained a lot of altitude and soon passed into winterland; heavily winding roads, white scenery and sporadic blizzarding. We reached our highest point driving straight towards a towering white mountain, eventually seeing a small black void in the face of it. The tunnel was what you imagine as a small kid, a cramped dirty hole, cut roughly a few hundred yards through the mountain. Dingy, faltering little electric lights buzzed with an air of futility, loosely marking out the route down the one-lane passage, which seemed to suck the power out of even the strongest full-beam headlights. I'm not sure how the coaches were supposed to get through to be honest. The other side of the tunnel was pretty scary, stirring down a near vertical hillside with the steepest road I've ever seen winding around it, covered in the still falling snow. It took quite some time to get down from here in first gear, but as we got lower, we began to notice waterfalls gushing from huge points on the rockface, gaining weight as they fell by picking up the abundant melt water lower down.

Suddenly it was sunny, in a matter of seconds the whole landscape changed (as it does so very, very often here) and we were flying down an easy road in unbroken sunshine, a little later we were pushing through dense forest, then shortly after that we were in another valley, this time it was lush and green, with loads of wildlife around and again the sun was shining. We pulled into the car park at Milford Sound and booked ourselves onto a scenic cruise (we'd been given a 2-for-1 voucher with our car keys so it worked out at about 13 quid each). With time to spare we had lunch in the van and a little wander, arriving a little early for the cruise.

The cruise through the Sound and out to the Ocean was breathtaking, a really impressive natural landscape that's been completely spared all human interference. The tour lasted about 90 minutes, culminating with a stop at the foot of a 200ft waterfall thundering from the mountainside into the Sound. Those of us at the bow of the boat were suitable soaked, but it was all good fun and I just hope the pictures manage to convey even the slightest idea of what it was like. We met a couple of Kiwi girls from the north island on the tour, the parents of one have a campsite at the far north of the north island and they offered us some free nights if we make it that far up.

Back on Terra-firma we made a swift exit, with a view to making it back to Queenstown the same day. We fired back, actually reaching the speed limit for the first time en-route. I almost killed a hawk that was feasting on some fresh road kill on the road through one of the forested sections, getting us to Te Anau where we parked up to get dinner. A swift meal of reheated sausage pasta and we were back on the road, with Charlotte at the wheel. Night fell soon after we'd left Te Anau, followed swiftly by more blizzarding, this time though we weren't in the mountains. Conditions went from good to awful to bad to just OK over and over, which slowed us down much more than we'd hoped. We swapped drivers by the side of the big lake, where the road became windy and the left of the van was looking down a 200ft cliff for most of it.

We arrived back in Queenstown some time after 8, somewhat tired but pretty up for going out. We had a few drinks in the van before stepping out into the rain once more and heading townwards. We started in the same bar as the previous night, though we had to leave when the fire brigade turned up believing the flat upstairs to be ablaze. The alarm had been sounding a while but everyone ignored it, as you do nowadays.

We crossed the road to the next nearest bar and ordered a couple of drinks. As I was paying a nice Chinese woman pointed out that a $100 note had just fallen from my open wallet. I thankfully picked it up and replaced it, realising as I did that I'd never in fact had a $100 note in my wallet this whole trip. There was however only us stood there and not really anything honest to do about it but be thankful. A little later we were chatting to some English guys that had a house in Arrowtown, an old gold town nearby that we were planning on visiting the day after as we headed north. They were all pretty up for a party and we were soon moving on. A few bars later everyone was pretty sloshed, I figured we should go home but Charlotte was having none of it and a few hours later we were still at it. We eventually left World Bar at whatever time in the morning and I led us home in completely the wrong direction.

At this point, Charlotte couldn't really stand up any more, but was fully aware that the bar we'd finished at was round one single corner from the car park in which we were sleeping. I knew better though and led us on a nice walk up a hill on the other side of town. It was good exercise if nothing else... When we got back to the van, Charlotte's way (ie the right one) neither of us is sure what we did, but we were woken at 7am by a man from the council, telling us we weren't allowed to freecamp in Queenstown and must move promptly.

Saturday - Arrowtown, Wanaka

I think at this point we'd probably been in bed for about 3 hours, the hangover was setting in but we were both still pretty well pissed. Unfortunately however, we had to now get ourselves and the van out of town, which left us only one choice. The worst 10 minute drive of my life later, with Charlotte passed out again and rolling around on the bed in the back, we arrived at a viewpoint by lake Wakatipu, promptly lapsing back into unconsciousness until about 1pm.

Having slept so long in the end left us both feeling relatively OK, and we were soon off again. We stopped off to get a car charger for the phone and a new battery charger (the compact one I'd got on offer from Woolworth's before we left is perhaps the most useless piece of electrical equipment I've ever owned) and a few more supplies from the cheap supermarket before heading on to Arrowtown. We also called in at the Jucy place as our water pump switch was broken and the DVD player had no remote so we couldn't access our music. They gave us a new DVD player and promised to ring a guy in Wanaka who could fix it for us tomorrow.

Arrowtown was only about 20 minutes away, though this took a while as dictated by the scenery along the way. We had a walk round Arrowtown, which was nice, restored to it's appearance as an old gold rush town, however there wasn't much to do that didn't involve spending cash in shops or restaurants. We stopped for a photo and had a strange encounter with a young crack-head. He was with 2 girls that didn't seem to have much going on, but he turned round to us and looked at the camera and started repeating "Are you actually smoking drugs?". The camera in my hand didn't seem to have any smoke coming from it but who knows... He eventually wandered off, clutching a bottle of beer in a claw like fashion, up by his shoulder, his crumbling teeth wide apart as he cackled to himself. On that note, we wandered off the other way and bought a hot dog on a stick. I think they're called corn dogs, but this was just labelled as 'hot dog stick'. Charlotte picked up a nice necklace from one of the shops, made from local Paua shells and we headed back to the van to press on.

Aiming for Wanaka we came across a viewpoint, across most of the area from valley to valley. The day was darkening and I thought the place would be great for a sunset, so we stopped here, Charlotte kindly made dinner while I messed about with the camera for a while waiting for the sun to go down. By sunset there was about 6 professional looking photographers all waiting for the same thing, I felt a bit feeble with my little point and shoot camera but never mind.

After the sunset and a hearty beef tandoori, we pressed on to Wanaka, arriving with just enough petrol thanks to Charlotte's easy driving, using the hills for acceleration the whole time. We refueled and found a nice quiet spot to sleep, off a little road under a big tree.

Sunday - Wanaka, Queenstown (yes, again)

Upon waking up and being somewhat startled by the view; a huge lake, surrounded by a world of autumnal colours and snow capped peaks, we realised that we still hadn't done the big bungy jump in Queenstown, the top of our list of things to do. We went to the garage in Wanaka to get the button fixed, but it was closed beyond doubt and all the phone numbers rang out. From here, we went to visit the Puzzling World, a local attraction that seemed pretty interesting. It was cheap to get in, and had loads of illusion rooms and a frustrating maze in which we found all the targets but then couldn't get out!

After here we headed once again to Queenstown, booking in for the afternoon bungy as we set off. We were debating which jump to do but Charlotte insisted that it was pointless coming this far and not doing the biggest bungy there was. We bombed it back for our appointment with the Nevis, stopping for a swift lunch by a lake outside Cromwell.

The Bungy

We arrived back in Queenstown with a bit of time to spare, so we went and signed in at the bungy centre before grabbing a 6" SubWay between us (not an empty stomach but not too much..). Charlotte was now really regretting her decision to do the biggest jump and didn't really speak much. We boarded the bus to the jump with 17 other people and set off. Everyone was pretty nervous as most people hadn't done it before and didn't really know what to expect. The final approach to the site is on a private road, loosely cut into the side of a really steep mountain. We were wondering if the bungy could possibly be any worse that the drive up there!

As we arrived at the bungy site, we were given harnesses and re-weighed before being allowed out to the viewing platform to wait for our jumps. The jump site itself was actually a little metal box, suspended 600 feet over the Nevis river on 3 metals wires, stretched between 2 mountains. Access to the 'pod' was by a smaller metal box that creakily shuffled it's way along the wires. Unfortunately Charlotte was called 2nd. As her friend I went along to be there for the jump also, which I thought was nice of them as I wasn't set to jump for a bit. The atmosphere in the rickety 'pod' was quite strange, a sort of excited apprehension, one that was to be mixed with relief as the jumpers started coming back up, still alive.

The first guy jumped and came back saying how awful it was, but everyone seemed to be thinking there own thoughts at this point. The floor of the pod had big glass sheets in it, so the whole time you could see the immense drop beneath you and the roaring river, in pretty basic detail because of the height, winding around the bottom.

Charlotte's turn came and she was surprisingly calm, stepped up to the ledge and after giving me a wave, leaped headfirst into the valley below. The jump lasts for 8 seconds before you bounce back up, about 450ft of falling altogether. Charlotte came back all smiles, with the obligatory bloodshot eyeballs, saying she wanted to go again!

After a drawn out hours wait, my turn came about. I was a little more tense I think as I'd had too much time to sit and look down, but I also couldn't wait to do it. After a 3 count I jumped off, trying my best to hold my dive position as I fell, which I guess I did as the guy running it apparently gave me some applause for the dive as I fell. Trying to keep your eyes open as you approach 200km/h is quite tricky and as I got to the bottom of the drop I was staring out through a scrunched red face, gritting my teeth and trying not to flap about wildly. The bungy spring was surprisingly smooth, you could only really tell it had pulled from looking at the valley walls to find yourself travelling up them. The recoil on the rope was about 150ft, more than the total height of the second highest jump in NZ. Floating around in space it's a funny feeling as you wait to be retrieved, relief, excitement and adrenaline all at once. The leg clips were on a little release pull, so you could right yourself to be pulled up, however the guy before me had returned upside down and I soon realised why, I had to get the thing with both hands, dangling upside down and wrench it side to side, only on about the 5th attempt did it snap loose. Most people on that rope (they change the bungy rope every few jumps) managed to return upside down...

After the jump we went back for some food, looked at our vids and got a free t-shirt. We decided to buy our jump videos, the 2 of us on one DVD for a big reduction, so we have that to bring home with us.

The drive back to Queenstown was decidedly more lively and took a lot less time. Charlotte's heart began to hurt on the way back though which was a bit worrying, we thought she may have pulled a muscle.

Back in town we ran back to the van (it was raining and about -2 degrees) and planned our next move.

We realised we'd done almost 1000km now and were sat 500yds away from where we started and as such we should make some progress. We drove into the dark, back to the spot in Wanaka where we'd spent the previous night.

Monday - Haast

Monday morning saw us visit the garage in Wanaka, the guy said he'd have to order a switch in and would be the afternoon. I'd already bypassed the switch with a piece of metal stripped from a bag tie so we had the pump working and as such, decided to leave it and head on.

The day was one of driving, stopping by north lake Wanaka for lunch, then on through Mt Aspiring National Park, through the gates of Haast (actually just a small steel bridge with an ominous name) to Haast and Haast Beach.

We arrived in Haast, bathed in sunshine, mid afternoon and drove towards the beach. The temperature was up to about 14 degrees now and this seemed near tropical to the borderline freezing we'd been dealing with further south. We decided to get a campsite for the night as there wasn't really anywhere to freecamp and so pulled into the cheapest holiday park we could find in our guides. The rest of the day we sat in the sun, drinking beer and playing cards. We cooked up bangers and mash in the camp kitchen before going to chat to some fisherman from Christchurch that were on a club outing, sat round a table mechanichaly heading and gutting the days spoils. We talked to them for a bit but realised we'd had a few and so we retired and left them to it.

Tuesday - Fox Glacier, Franz Josef Glacier

We rose on Tuesday with a pretty full day ahead, but found time for a nice cooked breakfast of scrambled eggs on toast in the warm kitchen before setting off for the Fox Glacier. It took around 2 hours to get there, via a salmon farm we passed and fed the ducks (it was meant for the fish..) and we called in at the Fox township for milk, bread etc before heading to the glacier. We weren't sure of how long anything was going to take, so we dived out straight onto the trail up to the glacier. It only took around 20 minutes or so to get to the glacier, which was pretty impressive. It was smaller than I'd imagined however, but the road up to the car park and the trail beyond, had many little signs detailing the recession of the glacier in recent years, which was actually staggering. We messed about taking pictures for a while before heading back to the van and on towards Franz Josef.

A dinner of noodles (for a change...) in the car park and we realised how late it was getting. We opted to skip the hike to the base of the glacier and instead take 2 shorter walks up the hills either side to the best views, which would mean it would still be daylight when we saw it. The Franz Josef glacier is much more impressive and if I was to go back, I think a day trip up it would be great, but is beyond our budget and time frame at the moment.

From Franz Josef we continued on our route, eventually stopping for the night on a small site by Lake Matahi. We had a quiet night of reading, during which I finished Kane and Abel, which my mum had insisted I read and I was pretty gutted to finish it, I really didn't want it to end.

Wednesday - Ross, Hokitika, Arthur's Pass National Park

From the lake in the morning, we ploughed on, stopping in an old gold town called Ross for a coffee and to empty the facilities. Ross was like Arrowtown only smaller and less commercial. They had all the gold panning and whatnot going on and we arrived just after a touring bus full of people travelling NZ, so it appeared pretty busy. We took some silly photos in the your-head-here type things before pressing on to Hokitika.

Hokitika was really nice, had a lot of Jade and Bone studios, including a couple were you could make your own Jade jewellery. We were going to do this until we saw the price and swiftly moved on. We wandered around here for a while, got some fudge from a little shop we passed and generally just took it in. It was a nice town, plenty to do but not over commercialised or anything. It reminded me of Te Anau, but with more to do. We visited the supermarket (again) before chugging on towards the National Park. It was a pretty grim day, the drive reaching the clouds and a basic white-out for a while, so once we got down from the high grounds we found a quiet place to camp and settled in for the night.

Tomorrow (8th) we'll be heading into Christchurch and then north from there, we'll try and get another update sooner than this one was from the last.

Speak to you soon,

Jamie & Charlotte

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