Advertisement
Published: April 9th 2007
Edit Blog Post
Billy Brown’s and Dunedin On the 23rd February we headed to the east coast and stayed in a fantastic hostel a little way along the coast from Dunedin: a working farm called Billy Brown’s. Billy was the owner and although he mostly spent his time doing farming work, he liked to run his backpackers as a side business. The location was excellent, being right beside the sea on rural and hilly countryside and the views out into the Otago harbour were stunning.
The accommodation itself was essentially a big wooden hut divided into rooms and done up to look nice. The hut was at the top of a steep gravel driveway leading up from the main road which hugged the coastline from Dunedin. The driveway was so steep that to make it to the top neccessitated a long run up with a heavy foot on the gas pedal. We only made it about half way on our first attempt before we started slipping backwards. Luckily Billy saw this and gave us some sage advice for our next go - don’t lift off the gas at all, even when you go round that tight corner up there! Well, it
was pretty scary every time we followed his advice (especially after dark) but it did work.
We had an enjoyable time exploring Dunedin with our friend Chris (who was over from Melbourne to attend an astronomy conference in New Zealand). One night we all went to watch the local rugby union team, the Highlander’s, play against the Bulls (a South African team). The game was not a particularly inspiring one and the Highlander’s lost it despite having one of the catchiest (and naffest) chants we’ve ever heard - we couldn’t get it out of our heads for weeks afterwards. (Not a patch on the barmy army’s theme song though - we're the army, the barny barmy army...!).
Vanessa and I also roamed through the town’s botanical gardens on a couple of occasions. These were particularly pleasant because as well as having lots of nice plant life, the gardens also housed a collection of exotic (and in some cases very noisy) birds, at least one of which actually talked to us!
Stopped by the cops: Part I After a few days in Dunedin we headed south to a region called the Catlins. On route we had a
somewhat nerve racking encounter when we were pulled over by a local copper. After hearing the sirens and pulling over we both just sat in our seats panicking about what we (or rather, James) had done wrong! When the copper came over our distress was heightened further. However, we were soon relieved to discover that we had nothing to worry about because the reason we had been stopped was that James was wearing his seatbelt in an incorrect way (apparently we could have been given a fine for such behaviour)!
The scenery in the Catlins was very pleasant, and again reminiscent of the rural and hilly parts of the old motherland. However, we did not spend a great deal of time in this region before heading West again and into the country's big mountains.
Mount Cook Our next stop was Mount Cook, the highest mountain in New Zealand. Having feared that it would be quite touristy we were pleasantly surprised at how quiet the little village of Mount Cook was. Our campsite, 20km south of the village, was even more peaceful (apart from on the first two nights when a party of 50 school children turned up!)
Hooker Valley
With Mount Cook in the background and set in a beautiful location on the shore of a lake, surrounded by mountains.
We spent a very pleasant four days there doing lots of little walks, mainly to the glaciers in the surrounding valleys. Vanessa nearly embarked on a mountaineering course which went over one of the higher passes on the Mount Cook flank, however the weather wasn’t good enough for this in the end. On one of the days we treated ourselves to lunch at the posh hotel in the village called the Hermitage. The set menu was a bargain 12 pounds for four courses (especially as they didn’t charge us a corkage fee on our fine bottle of supermarket wine) and we had amazing views of Mount Cook from our window seat!
Stopped by the cops: Part II One not so pleasant day we were stopped by the Police again, not even a week after the first time! This time it was because James had been speeding - it was a very wide, straight and deserted country road with nobody on it and he was doing the equivalent of 80 mph (instead of the national speed limit of 62 mph). The officer was
very friendly when he handed us the $230 (80 pound) fine, although James later received a more serious bollocking from Vanessa.
Wanaka From Mount Cook we went to the mountain town of Wanaka, again on the shore of a big lake. Here, we did a few short walks in the pretty Mount Aspiring National Park - it’s a real shame that we didn’t have longer as it would have been great to do some of the overnight walks here. The best thing about the hostel we stayed at was that it had a projection TV which they used to show a film every night. On our first night it was the classic film The Piano, which we hadn’t seen for a while and thought was excellent! It also meant a lot more now that we have been to New Zealand and understand a bit more about the Maori culture.
Something a bit different we did in Wanaka was to go to a place called Puzzle World, which was great fun! There is an excellent maze there which apparently was one of the first commercial mazes in the world. It was really quite tricky and took us about
1.5 hours to do the ‘difficult’ version of the maze (which invovled reaching the four coloured towers in a particular order). There were also some illusion rooms, such as a room where the faces of Einstein, Beethoven and Churchill follow you around wherever you walk, and a sloping room where water appears to run uphill!
The Fox Glacier On Wednesday 4th April we took an impressive drive over the mountain pass of the Southern Alps to the west coast and stopped off at the Fox Glacier village for the night. The next day Vanessa went on a full day guided glacier walk which was excellent and quite an experience! She got to see some impressive ice features and luckily managed to avoid falling into any of the crevaces. However, there was quite a bit of standing around getting cold and she would have liked to have had a go with the ice pick which the guide used to carve out their path.
Meanwhile, James walked up to the terminal face of the glacier and spent the rest of the day exploring the surrounding area. The highlight was the stunning Lake Matheson which on a nice clear morning
like this one reflected the mountains in the background (including Mount Cook) to provide a stunning scene. (Unfortunately Vanessa had the camera…)
Drive up the West Coast By this stage we were getting concious of the fact that we only had a few weeks left in New Zealand and so started heading up the West Coast pretty sharpish. As in the north island, the west side of the island is much rougher (and wetter) than the east coast and it was quite a stunning drive - we would have liked more time to explore this region. As it was, we stopped off at Hotikita for one night before spending the Easter weekend at the beautiful Beaconstone backpackers near Westport. The owners were among the friendliest we have met on our travels and they had built this 'eco-lodge' themselves. It only had solar power electricity and composting (not flushing) toilets, but it had been designed so well that it was a really relaxing place to spend those few gloriously hot days. I can confirm that the Easter bunny does visit New Zealand too, although for budget backpackers he arrives a few days late when the two for one offers
start...
Advertisement
Tot: 0.132s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 7; qc: 56; dbt: 0.0559s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb