Advertisement
Published: February 27th 2007
Edit Blog Post
Part 1 08/02/07 - 14/02/07 Christchurch to Queenstown. Milford Sound
We spent an hour or two at our motor home depot learning about toilet cassettes and pink and blue chemicals, switching the fridge between AC, DC and gas power and various other miscellaneous instructions regarding our home for the next 3 weeks. We zeroed the trip meter, cleaned out the fridge and kitchen utensils, hit the supermarket for supplies and then picked up Jen’s parents from Christchurch airport. Next morning, early doors, we hit the road. Our New Zealand super road trip began!!
Heading south from Christchurch, our approximate itinerary was Dunedin, Invercargill, Te Anau where we would pop up to Milford Sound and then up the west coast to via Wanaka, Queenstown, Franz Joseph and back through Arthur’s Pass to Christchurch. We would then head north up to Picton via Kaikoura.
The first couple of days via Dunedin and Invercargill were mostly just eating tarmac to bring us round to Te Anau, with a couple of minor spots on the way; the Moeraki Boulders and Curio Bay.
The boulders also nicknamed Devil’s marbles (as per the Australian ones) were large spherical rock boulders scattered along a
Home from home
Our trusty camper! small section of beach. We assumed that they were made of harder rock than the surrounding cliffs - and this theory seemed true based on one such boulder hanging out of the cliff face that will one day roll down to join it’s fellow boulders on the beach.
Curio Bay is a fossilized forest where trees from millions of years ago can be seen amongst the wave cut platform. Petrified tree stumps and branches can be seen amongst the rocks. Strange slimey Marsian looking sea-weed grew huge long tentacles in the inlet as the waves washed it back and forth, like a scene from War of the Worlds.
We were advised of the location of a twinkling of glow-worms (I’m not sure what the collective noun is for glow-worms!) close to our campsite and after spreading the word to other campers, I led a short night time, torch-lit expedition along the river to where the tiny green lights sparkled out from amongst the foliage on the rock face.
I enjoyed playing with the ‘make the sheep run’ button on the camper, otherwise known as the horn and we took one shortcut of around 30km of unsealed road,
which kicked up a train of dust behind us. The camper struggled on hills and often built up a tail of faster moving vehicles, which I considered to be my comet’s tail of fiery drivers. We would virtually redline in one gear, change up and then nearly stop altogether so a lot of patience was needed on the hilly New Zealand terrain.
Just south of Te Anau, we stopped for lunch at Manapouri with a stunning view of crystal clear lake waters and this was really the start of the stunning landscapes that stayed with us all the way through to Christchurch again. It’s very hard to describe how stunning New Zealand is and amazingly when you leave one stunning place, you turn another corner and find an equally stunning perfect blue lake or snow capped mountain range, perfect crescent bay with turquoise sea or pine forest valley stretching over fields of golden grass.
The road to Milford Sound is an incredible drive. We read in advance about the Mirror Lakes, the Avenue of the disappearing mountains (an optical illusion where the mountain seems to shrink as you drive toward it) and the Homer tunnel, where every year
in April there’s a nude torch lit run through the tunnel.
We took a cruise round Milford Sound and stopped by the underwater observatory to wave at the fishes (a bit of therapy as we haven’t dived for a while) and spent the afternoon on a ‘Paddle and walk’ kayaking in the Milford deep water basin and walking up the first couple of kilometers of the famous 33.5 km Milford track, starting from Sandfly point, which as the name suggests was Sandfly hell!
Depending on the weather, Milford Sound can look dark and moody or a picturesque blue and green; equally stunning. Waterfalls cascade down from the highest sea cliffs in the world into the water where bottle-nose dolphins cruise playfully at the front of the boat. In the distance, we spotted a seal leaping out the water as it crossed the lake and then we stopped where the seals sunned themselves on the rock and one posed for the camera, staring right back at the lens.
Rare kea birds visited our camper early in the morning. There were strict instructions about not feeding them sticky human foods as it messes up their diet so I sneaked
a couple of monkey nuts to one and soon they were all over the camper van running around on the roof!!
I tried to snap some photos as we sped along in the camper, trying to capture the fascinating cloud formations in the blue sky. We headed on to Queenstown, marveling at the views of Lake Wakatipu at the Devil’s Staircase lookout and pulled into Queenstown - The Adventure sports capital of the world!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.068s; Tpl: 0.021s; cc: 9; qc: 19; dbt: 0.0382s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Patrick
non-member comment
The other foot
Great blog! Good to see you are still having fun. Also enjoying Australia a second time around! How will you adapt when you return home... By the way, when talking to New Zealanders, do you ask them which part of Australia they come from? Hasta luego