South Island adventures

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Hello all, so I said farewell to Christchurch for the timebeing. The trip is supposed to finish there but the hotel is in the red zone so not hopeful we will be able to stay there. Never mind - that's 10 days away and for the tour company to worry about, not me. I am beginning to feel like a broken record and am running out of ways to describe the landscape of New Zealand so I'll just sum it up in one word and say no more about it - STUNNING! You'll have to see the photos when I get back to see what I mean. The thing about it is that it is unspoilt and as such has not changed much since the land was born millions of years ago. There are no significant population increases requiring new towns to be built and so much of the land is untouched and it is claimed that it is one of the most unpolluted places to be because some of the lichens that live there need an unpolluted environment. Anyway - I'll stop going on about it now, you get my drift so I'll just tell you about the highlights of my trip round the South Island.

Greymouth is a small town and quite quaint. We had a couple of hours to kill after breakfast before getting back on the original itinerary so I headed to the supermarket to get a few bits and bobs, grabbed a coffee and sat in the sunshine. Although we had sunshine it's officially autumn here now so there is a freshness in the air and I have waved goodbye to my tan but nevertheless it was a very good cup of coffee - they know how to do a good flat white here in NZ. Upon leaving Greymouth we headed to Punakaiki where there are blowholes and rock formations that they call Pancake Rocks - the way the weather and sea has battered them they now look like stacked pancakes - hence the name. So New Zealand is just as straightforward as Australia - what do these rocks look like? Pankcakes! So let's call them Pancake rocks - simple! Had my first experience of a New Zealand culinary delight - Hokey Pokey ice cream. This is the 2nd favourite ice cream flavour behind vanilla here, and with good reason. It's vanilla ice cream with bits of honeycomb in it - yummy!!!! Our hotel was literally on the beach - we stumbled out of our rooms, across the road and onto the beach. We had been warned about the sandflies here and one of the little buggers must have found the only bit of me not covered in Jungle Formula. Luckily I don't react badly to insect bites so it was an inconvenience more than anything else but I had learnt my lesson about sandflies! After a pleasant night in Punakaiki listening to the sea crashing against the shore we headed to Franz Josef. It was on the way to this little alpine town that I experienced another first in my life - a toilet that is just a very long hole in the ground! They looked like normal toilets from the outside but I knew something was different when I got in. I won't go into details but it's a strange experience and there's quite a draught!!!!!!!!!!! And it wasn't warm air - but I suppose that hurries people along and keeps the queues down. We were in Franz Josef to see the glacier but unfortunately it was pouring with rain so the view wasn't great but I wasn't worried because I was booked on a helicopter flight the following day that lands on the glacier - I was beyond excited!!!! Mother nature had other plans though and it poured down with rain all night and I knew if it was still cloudy and rainy in the morning the trip would be off. All I'll say is that while it tried to clear up a bit I didn't get to go up in a helicopter and I am so disappointed.

Moving on..... we headed towards Queenstown through some more great scenery and great waterfalls - if there was one good thing about the heavy rainfall it was it created lots of temporary waterfalls all around the mountains and made the permanent ones more spectacular. We picked up a group of stranded german toursits. Our coach wasn't full and their coach had broken down so we took them to their next destination which wasn't too far out of our way - apparantly that's how things work on the tour circuit - you help each other out no matter what company you work for. We arrived in Queenstown and we went up to the Skyline restaurant for the night. What a place - you have to get a cable car up there and I have never been on one that steep - it's practically vertical! The views from the top were great but I wasn't really dressed appropriately so I dashed out to take photos and ran back in again before I froze! I went to see a Maori cultural show which was really interesting and was dragged up on stage to practice twirling my Poi - I'll explain when I get home! The following morning I went on a jet boat down the Shotover river canyon. Basically this means speeding up the canyon, very close to the rock faces and doing lots of 360 degree turns in the water before speeding off again.Thankfully I wasn't driving the boat but the guys who do are very experienced to get us as close as we did to the rocks. It was a fantastic experience and I spent most of it laughing hysterically as I typically do when doing something like this. Would recommend you do something similar if you ever get a chance. After Queenstown we headed into the Fjordland National Park to Milford Sound passing more waterfalls on the way and some spectacular engineering feats to build tunnels throug hthe mountains in the early 1900s. Milford Sound is well worth a visit. Very serene place. We cruised out to the Tasman sea - hoping to see dolphins but so far they have alluded me on this trip. The boat backs into some of the waterfalls on the way back to the dock and the hardy people on the boat (AKA the stupid ones - it was cold!!!!) stay outside to get a different experience (a wet one) of the waterfall. I was fine viewing it from inside the boat. We saw seals and plenty of seagulls but still no dolphins for me. After a night in Te Anau we headed to Dunedin but I'm afraid to say I'd lost my tourist mojo today and didn't feel like doing anything so I just wandered round town. It's fair to say that at this point I'm ready to go home - I've been away for almost 8 weeks now. The following morning I feel better and we head to Lanark Castle which the locals think of as old but of course it was only built in the late 1800s and isn't really a castle like what we have in England but I let it go - they are proud of it and it is a lovely place with stunning gardens. From Dunedin we head to Twizel, a small town in the Mount Cook National Park. Now the weather isn't always favourable to a sighting of Mount Cook - I suspect even less so when a coach full of tourists turns up but the top of Mount Cook was visible when we arrived so we decided to go to the lookout for photos in case we weren't in luck the following morning. STUNNING and as we are heading into autumn here there were the first snowfalls of the season which made the photos even better.

And so my tour is coming to an end. Not many funny stories to tell but this is a beautiful place and if you want to see somewhere untouched by the demands of a modern day world where life is simple then NZ is the place for you. I love it. We found out a few days ago that we were heading back to Chrsitchurch for our last day. We were staying in a hotel on the edge of the cordonned off area. There were some nervous people on the coach but I figured the tour company wouldn't put us there if it was too risky and life has to go on. Before we reached Christchurch we visited a working sheep farm and met a very down-to-earth farmer and his wife who don't make enough money out of farming these days so have turned to tourism to help the finances. We saw a sheep being sheared and saw the sheep dog at work - a short haired border collie - quite bizarre when we are used to the long haired variety. A fun hour finished off by the best lunch I've had in ages. Lamb and beef from the farm with potatoes and peas from the garden - simple food cooked well. I've tried to like lamb whilst I've been here but I have yet to be converted and decided that if this lamb chop didn't convert me then nothing would. With pavlova for dessert and an excellent brownie with coffee we all headed back to the coach expecting a quiet run into Christchurch as we all slept it off!

Whilst it was clear the hotel had some damage from the quake it was reassuring to see the green sticker in the window which means the engineers have been in and declared it safe. That said Christchurch is still experiencing aftershocks so I went into practical mode and put steps in place in the event there was a big aftershock. I cleared a path from the bed to the table and put my rucksack under it so that I had somewhere to take cover and would have my belongings with me in the event I needed to be identified. I also slept with my rings on for the purposes of identification. A morbid thought I know but the news here has had the coroner begging people to come forward with any information that might help identify the bodies of victims that are so damaged that a visual ID is impossible. Anyway, I'd not turned the light off for much longer than 15 mintues when I felt the first aftershock. It was a strange experience - no noise, and nothing rattled but you could definitiely feel it. Lasted no more than about 15 seconds then it was over. Apparently there were about 8 aftershocks that night - I was woken up by the one at 3am but slept through the others.

So my time on the South Island is at an end and I said goodbye to my fellow travellers. Again I have met some great people and I have holidays for life in Southern California whenever I want them! I headed to the airport for my flight to Auckland. Just 4 days left before I head home, what exciting adventures can I squeeze in before coming home? Bye for now, next update from the Bay of Islands.......

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Photos

Percy & Monty
I wasn't the only person to have a travel companion

Pancake Rocks
...cos they look like pancakes!