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Published: January 2nd 2007
Our Qantas flight got us to Christchurch very quickly, so quick in fact it must have been why our 3 hour lecture on where we should visit on the South island by campervan Bob (our racist campervan supplier) seemed to go so slowly. Finally escaping campervan Bob and with half of New Zealands rainforest in the form of tourist pamphlets, we headed to the French township of Akaroa, on the Banks peninsula, an hours drive east of Christchurch. It was here that Donna bent Neil's arm into swimming with dolphins by saying things like 'Its something I always wanted to do!' (imagine the big puppy dog eyes), although the line was drawn when Donna said 'Its just that I've always had a strange connection with sea mammals'! It was in Akaroa that we first experienced the main problem with the South island. We can't stress enough how big this propblem is! The problem being that every single lookout / pleasant town or village / major/minor tourist attraction and approximately a 10km radius around these does not allow freedom camping (camping off a high charging camp site) or sleeper/campervans to park overnight. New Zealand being a nation that prides itself on being
the place for backpackers and camping HAS to sort this problem out. We lost count of the number of campers that were driving around late at night looking for a spot to park. Yes, there are plenty of holiday/motorparks you can park up at but when these charge an average of $30 for an unpowered site (i.e: a flat bit of grass) and this is if you can find a site with free spaces (bear in mind this was close to Xmas). It seems that the townships on the south island have got really clever at milking the cash cow campers by placing the 'No Camping' signs in so many places that you have no alternative but to not stop anywhere near these towns or pay the extortionate fees demanded. We thought that this behaviour could be attributed to the snooty french in Akaroa but no overnight camping signs became a common sight throughout the south island.,...very disappointing. So instead we parked at a picnic site next to a beach where the dirty campers were allowed to live for the night and it only took an hour to find.
We set off to look for and then swim with
the Hector dolphins, better known as New Zealand dolphins as they are native there, being the smallest and one of the rarest dolphins in the world. Take at look at the video to see just how excited Donna was to do this! The dolphins got so close to us in the freezing Pacific ocean and two even swam through Neils legs...a real experience of a lifetime (thanks to Donnas parents for the xmas money that enabled us to do it!).
Arriving back at the sleepervan after our jaunt in the Pacific unusually the engine wouldn't start. We don't know why this was, maybe it was because Neil decided that it would be better to leave the lights on during the day in case a sudden dark spell was to come upon us (this was middle earth after all). A quick call to the mechanical wizard Gandalf (a gruff Kiwi AA man) who magically started the van with his magic leads and we were soon on our way to Lake Tekapo in the centre of the south island.
Lake Tekapo had the most amazing blue water and would have been lovely to park next to were it not for
the many 'No camping' signs everywhere. So we picked a nice spot, 6km away, a 100 metres up a mountain with a view of a Lupin research facility instead. It was another one of those places where horror films come to mind and imaginations run wild. Neil woke up the next morning after having a nightmare that a mutant triffid Lupin had swallowed the van!
The scenery around Queenstown was very Lord of the Rings and any die hard fan would have identified many film locations. We however spent most of our time looking for a place to park which allowed campervans overnight. That is, between jetboating and watching Casino Royale at the cinema. We thought the film was excellent but the jetboating was disappointing for the price. Although it did the famous 360 degree Hamilton spins there wasn't enough speed (ony 85 km/hr) or near miss canyon wall dodging for our liking. Since our 7 metre waterfall drop we have developed a taste for white knuckle activites! Like Rotorua Queenstown had a wannabee yuppie flavour to it. What was obviously once a budget backpacker haven has now turned into a tourist town full of expensive clothing shops, wine
and espresso bars, sushi restaurants and other expensive eateries. After a night of parking in a village pub car park we high tailed it out of there asap with a view to getting a more affordable or convenient spot at Lake Wanaka further north. But again Wanaka was ruined by snooty Wanabe yuppies in their holiday home condos. Now we know we may sound like yuppie snobs but honestly why should a bar of chocolate or a bottle of water cost four times the price of Christchurch prices?
Queenstown and Wanaka were two places we first had the feeling we had very little money as backpackers but nevertheless this didn't stop us admiring the amazing scenery. Its strange how these blog entries seem to be reading as a crticial and sarcastic analysis of the countries we visited. But truthfully we think this is often the best way to give people a flavour of a country. Although these two blogs have read like a criticism of New Zealand we have really enjoyed the country.
Arriving into Haast on the west coast was an experience in itself. One minute you are in alpine and snow topped mountain territory, the next
minute you are sitting on a beach looking out onto the Tasman sea. This was typical of most of the scenery we encountered as we drove up the west coast, however this was not before Donna found us an excellent sandy beachside camping spot. You would think this was such a good spot we could not leave. In reality we could not leave because our back wheels were buried in a foot of sand or the correct term for this we later learned was 'bellying it'. It must be said that Haast is not the type of place that you want to spend a lot of time in for the following reasons:
A. Its like Royston Vasey from the BBC series 'The league of gentlemen' i.e: unless you are local you don't get very far.
B. The only petrol station has an attendant who probably from several generations of in-breeding has resulted in him having a hobbit like appearance. If only we could have taken a picture.
C. The only people that had a phone for us to use was the nearby Erawhon hotel. The owners (Tubbs and Edward) obviously did not wat to be bothered by
2 silly tourists stuck in the sand at xmas time and looked at us in distaste when we asked if we could freephone the AA.
D. The place had shitloads of sandflies and playing in the sand around the buried tyres was not the best idea.
Two hours later the only AA man for 200km arrived, apologising for the delay which was due to him being out flying his plane (as if this was a reasonable excuse!) and we were towed to solid ground. Following this bellying experience we smoothly left Haast at a steady 150km/hr. Now covered again for the second time in our backpacking experience in itchy sand fly bites and feeling pretty dirty having not washed in 4 days, we headed for Fox and Franz Josef glaciers. The glaciers were nice to look at but certainly not worth the $350 helicopter ride up there so we viewed from a distance and pretended to know what a glacier was (isnt Fox glacier a mint?) and then tried to locate a campervan park. But like in a famous book we once read there as no room at the inn. Fortunately there was room at another backwater place
called Whataroa where the local hotel allowed us to park in their back garden with the cows for $10 and gave us access to the toilets and hot showers which was good as we needed to clean more socks and knickers. To celebrate this luxurious bargain we popped open a bottle of Argentinian Chablis whilst havig a spectacular view of the southern alps around us whilst thinking this isnt a bad way of spending xmas.
A few general obsevrations we have made whilst in New Zealand:
1. The kiwis we have encountered have on large been very friendly with anyone from supermarket managers to random shoppers stopping us to strike up a conversation.
2. Neil has been keen to develop his new skill of HGC hand signalling. Its odd but it seems that because we are driving a vehicle larger than a car that all other drivers of large vehicles seem to make some sort of hand gesture to Neil..no not a rude hand gesture but a friendly wave or a flick of a finger on the steering wheel. He has been keen to try out this strange trucker code and has been 'practising on empty stretches
of road asking Donna if it looks right. He hoped one day on our travels in NZ that we could stop in a trucker cafe so he could grab a coffee with what he thinks are now his trucker buddies.
3. There seems to be two kinds of campervanners in NZ. One type is the veterans of the campervanning experience usually aged 50+ and are well accustomed to getting a bed ready in the back of a vehicle no bigger than a Citreon Picasso and seem to have campervanned every country in the world. The other type are like ourselves, late 20s, early 30s couples who don't even know how to turn on a 2 burner camping stove and whilst trying to evade a single sandfly for fear that it will kill them, manage to set themselves on fire.
4. Finally, Kiwis have a characteristic which most Brits and Europeans seem to lack. That is they will gladly take the piss out of themselves if it provides good humour. A prime example of this is the picture of the SEX van (please refer to this and read the caption) and when we passed through a village which had
the ugliest power station we had ever seen, it had a sign next to it gladly acknowledging the power station and accepting it by having a caption which read ' Our Taj Mahal'.
So back to the blog. We left Whataroa to experience the most scenic drive of our time in NZ along the west coast. What with the mountains, glaciers and passing though too many types of vegetation to count with and beaches as well, its no wonder that the Kiwis voted this drive as number 1. We stopped off at Punakaiki (Pancake rocks). The rocks were quite cool but more exciting was seeing a seal colony at Cape Foulwind. There were loads of seals, including younglings and even a couple of seals having sex. Donna was disgusted at this saying 'not in front of the kids', but Neil was fascinated, even going so far as to shout strong encouragement to the bull with phrases like ' Go on son, get ya flipper on that big rock and give it some welly!'
Crossing back across the south island on the final leg of our journey to Christchurch we needed to find a good free spot to camp
Look at the colour
Lake Tekapo again...for the night. So we managed to find one of our familiar scary spots in a forest next to a rusty swingbridge, 20km from the nearest town. This time, however, we had good reason to be scared as a mysterious white pick up pulled up further down the track and in the middle of the night we heard rustling and voices right outisde the van. To say we were crapping ourselves was an understatement, so much so that Neil was to scared to go otuside the van for a wee and so he used the sink in the van instead. Disgusting, but this was the most scary experience we had had yet. Maybe they were just fisherman or were peeking through the curtains to see what we had worth stealing, but maybe the sight of Neil contortioning his body so that he could dangle his todger in the sink scared them away. So the next night (xmas eve) we found ourselves a nice motor camp at Hamner Springs and parked the van between a gay buddhist kiwi and a Russell Crowe look and sound alike. Russ is orginally from the UK and as he told us about his mother we
half expected him to say 'So I fed her to the lions', he was that much like the Gladiator actor.
Christmas day was strange in NZ because we were in a campervan, the weather reached a sunny 26 degrees and instead of a traditional turkey roast dinner we had a pot noodle and stretched our budget to chicken and new potatoes. We now head to Singapore for a night and a quick shopping spree to replace our now munchkin sized (Arg laundry!) clothes, and then we head to the sheer luzury of an actual hotel room with a tv, pool and so we are promised a nice cosy bed. Yippee! bring on 2007. We are very exicted about the next leg of our journey, not only because we will have an actual hotel room and a beach but also because when departing from Christchurch airport we can use their free shower facilities...not that we are particularly dirty but because we are once again running out of clean knickers and socks!
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