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The first few days of our New Zealand adventure could not have gone worse, after safely arriving in the earthquake ravaged city of Christchurch, we collected our Jucy campervan. We were really excited about having a home on wheels to tour the country as it meant no more packing and unpacking every few days, no sharing with lots of people in dorms. And no carrying our heavy backpacks for 4 weeks, bliss. But it didn't quite work out like that. After driving around the city and stopping at McDonalds to use the free wifi we discovered our notebook no longer wanted to connect to the internet, this was the start of things all going Pete Tong. We wanted to book our own campervan hire insurance as it cost $25 per day to do it through Jucy, but we couldn't get online, so we chanced it. It started to get dark, so we picked up a DVD and then headed to the supermarket to grab some beers and snacks. After not a lot of sleep Jay headed towards the 15m high underground car park and didn't even think about the height of our camper, crunch! Cue Jo yelling at Jay to reverse...
we had scraped the roof, which had subsequently cracked all the plaster around the shower cubical. Because we didn't get the insurance our excess for a single vehicle accident was NZ$4,500 (£2,200)! At first we thought hang on we can get this fixed ourselves and they'll never know. Two minutes later someone knocked on the door of the camper, of all the people in the world, it was a girl who worked for Jucy the rental company. Her last words were, 'so I'll guess, I'll see you tomorrow', we had to pay the full excess and then they gave us a car for a day while they sorted a replacement camper.
We spent the next day moping around Christchurch and the following day picked up the new van which was even bigger! A full on house on wheels. Jo took the keys and said 'I’d better drive this time', a couple of hours later, while Jay was in the butchers haggling over the price of mince, Jo went to turn around in a small street and caught the top corner of the new camper on the side of protruding apartment balcony. You couldn't make it up, and this was
actually April Fools Day too.. unbelievable. We had to go back to Jucy again with our tails between our legs, luckily this time we did have insurance so it cost us nothing more. However, all parties agreed that we should just take a car instead! After that we couldn't wait to get out of Christchurch. The one positive was that we stayed in a lovely hostel called Vagabond Backpackers and after a few glasses of wine we were on the way to forgetting our nightmare couple of days. The next morning we left for place called Akaroa, a beautiful little French colonial village on the central coast, extending out on its own little peninsula. The drive was steep and windy up the mountains but it was well worth the trek. We spent an hour or so by the jetty and on the stony beach taking in the views and then decided to stop in Vagabond once more as we had to pass through Christchurch on the way to our next destination and time was ticking.
The following day we left for Lake Tekapo, for a one night stopover. We drove to the top of Mt John to take in
the exceptional panoramic views of the powerfully blue crystalline lake nestled amongst a number of mountains and beautiful autumnal coloured trees. The colour of the water in many parts of New Zealand is indescribable. Many of the lakes, rivers and the sea look bluer, brighter and crisper than anywhere else in the world. It makes many of the locations we visited look simply gorgeous, and they'd be pretty stunning even with murky brown water.
Mount Cook was our next destination. Unfortunately the weather took a turn for the worse and it rained most of the day, but we still managed to get some good snaps of the big snow capped peak and did a walk to see the Tasman Glacier and a number of huge chunks of bright blue ice which had broken away from it floating down the river. After a few hours here we made the decision to push on to Queenstown, despite only an hour of daylight left and a 3 hour drive ahead. We arrived at the extreme sports capital of the world around 8:30pm and checked into a cool hostel called Southern Laughter which had all its walls covered in cartoon jokes, limericks and
humerous anecdotes. We spent a couple of days there admiring the beautiful landscape and deciding what activities to do. We also took advantage of the hostel jacuzzi and played a round of frisbee golf in the park. Whist on the internet we discovered an amazing website called bookme.co.nz, which allowed us to book some experiences for the fraction of the usual price. A Milford Sound Cruise and the Skippers Canyon Jet Boat trip. We timed the booking so we could complete the Milford Road scenic drive, enjoy our cruise then come back for a few more nights in Queenstown before moving back up north.
The next day, we made our way to Te Anae, the nearest sizeable town to Milford Sound and had a wonder round and some fish and chips before getting an early night. Our cruise started at 9:30am and it was a 2 hour drive to the harbour. We woke at dawn and made it to the check in desk in good time despite stopping a few times for pics. The cruise was immense, made even better by glorious sunshine throughout. We floated passed the stunning cliffs, flowing waterfalls and towering mountains – some covered in
trees, some bare apart from a snow capped peak. The sun, and the water combined to make the landscape appear simply breathtaking. On the way back to the harbour the captain drove us right into one of biggest and most attractive waterfalls, you could feel the force of the water crashing down from 10 feet away and as we got closer it was like hovering towards the ultimate power shower, so much fun. We even slowed to view some seals splashing around and climbing up the rocks to wave at us. On the way back down the Milford Road we took our time to enjoy the scenery and stop off at various points including: The Chasm, The Homer Tunnel and Mirror Lakes.
Back in Queenstown we treated ourselves to a night out and joined up with the Irish lads from our room and a few others and did a bit of a pub crawl, which ended in the essential trip to 'Ferg Burger' a legend in these parts. People come from miles around to sample these gourmet burgers and they had come highly recommended. The permanent queue from when their doors open at 8am to when they close at
4am are a sure sign of its popularity. Lets just say we were not disappointed.
We spent the next day relaxing and planning the remainder of New Zealand and then on Saturday we made the most of the sun by taking the Gondola Skyline to the top of one of the highest peaks in the town. As we arrived at the top we soaked in the panorama of Queenstown and the beautiful backdrop of the mountains and watched a timid lad jumped off the bungy ledge set two thirds of the way up the mountain. Then we took the ski-lift higher to the luge starting line and began the first of 6 races, after several near-collisions, lots of tooing and throwing, and Jo wearing socks on her feet and buying gloves to fight the chill on the ski lift – the final result ended 3 races each!
On Sunday, without much planned Jay joined our Irish room mates and signed up for a 5 a side football tournament. The weather again was pure sun and Jay and his team mates were motivated by the promise of a $100 bar tab for the winners. After four wins and a
draw they found themselves in the final. Alas it was not to be as they lost a close encounter 2-0 to the team that everyone loved to hate. They still got a $50 bar tab though and duly spent it that night at a local bar.
The following morning we got up early again for our jet boat excursion, our transfer minibus took us down the old Skipper's road gold-mining route, which took us past several hotspots used in scenes of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, including the gates of Mordor. It took us an hour or so to get to the point in the Skipper's Canyon where our flashy speedboat was waiting. We adorned some waterproofs, hopped in the boat in anticipation, had a short safety briefing and then whizzed off down the canyon, speeding under rocky arches, racing past the sharp corners of the canyon walls at 80kph and doing 360 degree spins. Great fun. Once we had decided that we'd do a skydive in the north island, all that was left to do in Queenstown was have another Ferg Burger! Oh and we also won $34 on the NZ lottery! Things were looking up!
After leaving Queenstown, we made a short stop off at the old gold-mining village of Arrowtown which hasn't changed much since it was a booming hotspot for those caught up in the gold rush in the late 1800s. It had the feel of a wild west movie set, apart from the cars that is. Many of the shops and services have kept their old building façades from when the town was first founded, so we had a wonder round feeling like we'd gone back in time for a short while, then we were off to Wanaka.
Wanaka is another pretty town, with a picturesque lake as the centrepiece. They had what they called the Festival of Colour going on when we arrived, we weren't quite sure what it was all about but there were big works of art by local people beside the lake and they had used the paving stones that went around the lake to document significant events from the year AD1 to present day on them in chronological order, giving us a free history lesson. We watched a stunning sunset over Lake Wanaka (one of the best yet), then chilled in our hostel. The next day
we checked out the Puzzling World attraction briefly, before setting off for the famous Fox and Franz Josef Glaciers. As we were leaving we decided to pick up a hitchhiker, to have some new company and hopefully recoup a bit of petrol money. Kat from the South of England came with us all the way to Fox, happy to stop off at numerous points along the way for us to take pictures at a number of beautiful postcard perfect locations. We even saw what looked like a young whale swimming and splashing around in the distance from a coastal lookout. By the time we made it to Fox and dropped Kat at her hostel it was already dark so we decided to stop there too. It was an old school NZ hostel (i.e. very trusting) with no room keys. Kat was in an empty dorm, so we decided to sneak in without paying which worked a treat. Just down the road from the hostel there was a glowworm dell off the mainroad, basically a little forest walkway where you could see glowworms lighting up the darkness amongst the trees. We had a little wander through and inspected the flashy little
insects, before making some dinner and retiring to bed.
The next day we decided to walk as close to the Fox Glacier as possible, without paying to do a guided walk. It was about 40 minutes walk from the car park to the the boundary line which you're not meant to cross, but although there was a reasonable view of the bottom of the Glacier from there we wanted to get closer. At the boundary where only guided walks are meant to pass there is a board with newspaper articles about people that have died after crossing the rope unsupervised, but the write ups made these people seem quite foolish in their exploits and it looked pretty safe, so we jumped the ropes and headed towards the top of the glacier to get a closer look. There was a couple in their late 60s who'd gone before us so we figured if they can do it, so can we. It was really beautiful from the top, basically a mountain made of glorious blue ice. You could literally feel the coldness of it from 10 metres away which is as close as we went before heading back down.
We
thought about doing the same at Franz Josef but by the time we got to the town it was really raining and we figured it would look pretty similar so we moved on to Hokitika the jade capital of the world, where we had a look around the jade museum and naturally Jo bought a jade necklace (it was in the sale though and a bit of a bargain at $19NZ about £9). We then drove through Arthurs Pass National Park which was a lovely stretch of road with lots of big trees and snow capped mountains. We even managed to save a wondering baby hedgehog from the perils of the road by escorting it back into the bushes.
To break up the journey to our next stop Kaikoura, we reluctantly stopped in Christchurch again overnight and then the next morning made the hour and a half drive to one of our favourite places of the whole trip. If you like marine mammals, this is the place for you! Before sundown we went to visit the seal colony, which funnily enough is right by a car park. We got right up close to lots of huge seals which were
just chilling by benches and cars completely unphased by all the tourists gawping at them . We also booked a trip to swim with wild dolphins when we arrived as this was the main attraction. But this was no ordinary dolphin swim. The bay of Kaikoura has such a rich and abundant source of food for sea mammals that over 2,000 dolphins return to the bay every single day of the year. Our excursion involved selecting our wetsuits, fippers and snorkles, then watching a short briefing film before hopping on a bus to the docks. The boat was motoring for less than 15 minutes when it caught up with a huge group of dusky dolphins, which are one of the smallest of the species in the world, 'dusky' is a very fitting name, as they have beautiful hazy grey and white markings. The group were ushered to the edge of the boat and once the propellers were off we all slid in to the chilly water. We soon forgot about the cold though as we swan towards a huge group of dolphins bobbing and weaving in and out of the water and doing backflips and somersaults in the air. We
had been told to attract them by 'acting like a dolphin!' Which meant keeping our arms by our sides and just swimming with our legs, and making lots of high pitch squeaking noises. People were a little embarrassed at first but pretty soon everyone was going for it and it worked a treat! It wasn't long before we had the amazing creatures swimming all around us, sometimes bolting past at what seemed close to the speed of light, other times they slowed to observe us, occasionally swimming around us in circles as we mimicked them. Such an amazing experience watching these gracious porpoises take so much interest in us, offering us a permanent beaming grin. Each time the boat crew decided the dolphins were on the move the horn sounded and we swam back to the boat, our vessel then sped ahead of the duskies and we splashed in again to enjoy more of the same. We were allowed 5 goes altogether (the maximum number of drops allowed by the DOC (Department of Conservation)). Once we ascended from the icy water for the final time we were offered hoses spurting out hot water to flood our wetsuits, then a mug
of hot chocolate and some ginger biscuits. But that wasn't the end of the excitement, the boat manoeuvred carefully past the dolphin's playground and we all watched in awe as they entertained us once more, bobbing and weaving, somersaulting and back flipping and dashing alongside the boat in twos and threes.
After we were back on solid ground, we got ourselves sorted, had some lunch and moved on up the coast, but, before too long we were stopping again to follow up on a tip off we got from a Mancunian lad we met in Wanaka. Around 20km north of Kaikoura is a hidden treasure and a wildlife wonderland. A discreet pathway off the main road which guides you past a stream flowing from the sea to a picturesque but dimmly lid waterfall hidden in the trees. The special part of this place was that is was actually a seal pup nursery, where around 40 baby fur seals had congregated to frolic and socialise in the pool below the waterfall. We spent about an hour watching them and encouraging them to come closer so we could get a close up of their cute faces. Sure enough some of them
had the bravery and curiosity to come right up to us. Even though the rain was trickling down through the canopy of trees we found it hard to pull ourselves away from observing their playtime. Eventually we moved on and after a long drive got to Nelson, where we were to stop for the night.
Funnily enough when we went to check in at our hostel we recognised a familiar face at reception, it was Angela a Spanish girl we met at Lake Tekapo. We settle in to our accommodation and agreed to take her with us to Abel Tasman National Park the next day.
The following day the three of us checked out and headed to Marahau, right near the entrance to Abel Tasman. We spent some time deciding which boat trip / walk to do around the park the following day and eventually made our selections. Angela opted for a more challenging walk than us, but we still set ourselves a reasonable goal, with a four hour trek through the best parts of the coastline walk. The next morning we got up early and our bouncing speed boat took us past split apple rock and a
tiny island with a seal colony en route to Torrent Bay and the start of our walk. Although a little chilly, the sun was shining and there was barely a cloud in the sky, which gave us further motivation. The walk took us to a number of lovely scenic lookouts over various bays, beaches and lagoons, across rickety swing bridges over crystalline blue rivers and through lush forest. When we got to our finish line at Anchorage Beach we felt proud that we had completed the hike within the recommended timescale and spent sometime enjoying the caves and old inscriptions in the rocks which looked to be tributes to old sailing boats. Angela, although opting for a walk around 3 hours longer than ours, arrived less than an hour after us and we all got the boat back together, this time the sea was rougher and we were getting launched into the air and dropped back down at regular intervals on the choppy ocean ceiling, good fun though.
The next day we drove from Nelson to Picton to catch the ferry to the north island and were sure to take some snaps of the Marlborough Sounds as we floated
past. Next stop Wellington.
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