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Published: October 16th 2006
Kat writes: Booked on the early ferry bound for the
South Island we are packed up, out of our hostel, in the car, engine on and all ready to get down to the port - there is a slight problem - everybody in the city is trying to get to work, the traffic is slow and I am holding the map!
"No worries, I have a short cut!" should not really have been words I should have uttered at that point but you live and learn. After cruising past the ferry terminal (see my map reading is fine) on a one way system going the wrong way with no turn off, we started to get edgy. But after eventually turning around, battling the stand still traffic to get back and being the very last car to roll on to the ferry - we could relax and be friends as we made it!
Whales and seals
After a few hours we were on the South Island and drove south, down the east coast, to
Kiakoura. Here we saw more Southern Right Whales from the beach and walked through big furry seal colonies. You could hop over the rocks and get really
Kaikoura Bears
No this one is actually a seal but look at the size of him. close to the seals. They were great.
Arthur's Pass
From
Kiakoura we carried on down the coast, stayed overnight in
Christchurch, before heading cross country on
Arthur's Pass to get on the west coast and to
Franz Josef. Traveling on Arthur's Pass took us right through the heart of the Southern Alps. This was the South Islands first national park and is considered one of the country's most scenic routes and it’s easy to see why. Winding in places, we drove past high mountains, steep gorges and wide rapid rivers.
Glacier climbing
Having already had a wicked day on the road and on Arthur's Pass we arrived in
Franz Josef. We found ourselves a lush little hostel that offered free hot soup (really required now as the temp has plummeted) and a dorm room with nobody else in it with its own bathroom, tv and kitchenette. Sweetness! Eager to get a look at the glacier we went into town (2 shops & a few tourist companies) to book a glacier climb. Well the Franz Josef apparently gives you
"the opportunity to experience the most dramatic glacial environment available to the general public anywhere in the world. A big
Arthurs Pass
This was a really good drive from the east to west coast. Well worth it. claim that we thought we should definitely check out.
The next day we got up early, donned the crazy climbing clothes & boots they gave us, tied on our crampons and started the 5 hour return climb. The first hour, climbing the initial glacier face, was really steep and using the crampons on the ice stairs plus clipping into safety lines was a novelty. After that, no more safety ropes or stairs - just climbing up on ice. We moved from dirty muddy ice to brilliant blue ice that has been frozen for centuries. We passed spectacular crevasses, pinnacles and canyons and slid down tiny ice caves head first. It was awesome.
Along the Haast Pass to Wanaka Fest! Rock on!
Continuing down the country we took the Haast Pass route. A stunning drive - snow capped mountains, waterfalls and massive massive lakes. We had to stop many times to take a quick snap! We arrived in Wanaka just before the sunset in time to join in the Wanaka fest craziness. Basically a weekend of hard rock and roll bro! Wanaka is cool and a really 'radical knarly' place with snowboards, long hair and baggy trousers sporting 'bottom
Franz Josef Glacier 8
Kat making her way down. Good one!! cleavage' every where. The youth of today hey! 😱 We only stayed for one night but in our dorm that was enough. With two stinky boy strangers shouting about good knows what in the middle of the night and waking me up in the morning with their ass music - I was outta there. To clear our lungs we did the Rob Roy walk nearby. It took 4hrs and was hard going but worth it when we got to see the Rob Roy glacier just in time for an avalanche! Luckily we weren't in its pathway or it would have been totally not worth it!
Notorious Queenstown and shoop shoop shoop
If you ever go to New Zealand, definitely put this little town on your destination list. It is small, beautiful, the adrenalin capital and has two ski fields on its doorstep,
The Remarkables and
Coronet Peak, which was exactly why we were there. We had booked 3 days skiing and were so excited! We had a wicked time skiing and lived it up in a hotel all inclusive in our package. Lessons were also inclusive and on our first day we wanted to get stuck in. Scott skied
Queenstown
This town was one of of favourites. The mountains in the background was part of the location of 'Mordor' in the LOTR Trilogy and the Remarkables Ski Field. Pretty Nice setting eh. for a weekend a few years ago with work but the only time I skied was with school when I was 12! Not wanting to be stuck in a
'cut and stick' class I told the instructor I could do parallel turns no problem and
'yes' that incredibly steep slope over there would be no problem for me! With 30 minutes before the start of our lesson we were hightailing it up the magic carpet to the nursery slope so I could quickly learn!
As it turns out we were better than we thought and in the first lesson we progressed from beginner runs to the blue runs and came away very proud of our little selves for surviving! Those days skiing were definitely a highlight of New Zealand and we found we could actually ski. Wicked fun.
Milford Sound
On a high from skiing and fresh from a night out with a French couple that we first met in Darwin, we drove 3.5hrs to
Milford Sound to take a cruise the next day.
Milford Sound is actually only 50km away but as there is a massive mountain range in the way you have to do quite a
Milford Sound 2
Not a very nice day but still great views. detour. But the drive there is half the experience. You are surrounded either side by massive mountains and large stretches of the road in front of you have a
'no stopping' warning as there is a high risk of avalanches. We could see the paths of previous avalanches and the snow that had been cleared from the road - so we weren't stopping. Then you get to a point where the road-making-dudes just gave up trying to circumnavigate these mountains and just decide to bore a hole right through one. It is the weirdest thing to just drive on a craggy road with really rubbish low lighting straight through a huge rock. Amazing and very ‘middle earth’.
Milford Sound was one of my favourite spots in New Zealand. It was stunning. Sheer granite cliffs rise vertically upward from the ocean for thousands of feet creating a sharp rocky skyline and long drop waterfalls. The area is really breath taking and the wildlife is there too. Penguins, seals and dolphins all cruising around.
Once our trip was over we had to hit the road quickly as they were due to close it in a few hours. A weather system
Mt Cook 2
On the walk. Awesome Mountain was coming in and would make the risk of avalanche too high to use it. As there is only one road in and the same road out - if its closes you are likely to be staying there for a few more days!
Mt Cook
After a sneaky stop over in Queenstown (we love that place) we started driving north to Mt Cook. It’s the highest peak in Australasia. We did a 3.5hr walk to reach one of the glaciers and were greeted with small icebergs in a lake at the bottom, as well as a mini avalanche! But also watching Scott cross the swing bridges in the high winds was a fun!
This is a beautiful area. The surrounding lakes have some sort of natural sediment that gives them a really bright blue colour. From here we drove to Lake Tekapo (another bright blue lake!) and stayed over the night before heading to Methevan.
Take two
As we had soooo much fun skiing in Queenstown we managed to get ourselves another bargain of a deal in Methven and skied there for 3 days on Mt Hutt. Again it was wicked and we were really lucky with
Methven / Mt Hutt 3
I'm trying to put the lessons into practice. the weather. It was getting close to the end of the season and the mountain was closed the day we arrived - but for the 3 days we had our lift pass it was open everyday and absolutely awesome. The slopes were great and our skiing improved plus we tried a few jumps - some we landed successfully - some not so successfully! And getting the chance to stay in a hotel again was certainly a bonus. We had our own bathroom and everything!
Christchurch
Well our Kiwi experience was drawing to an end. We returned to Christchurch, gave back our car (booo!) and got ready for our flight back to Malaysia. We stripped our bags and drastically lighten the load. I now have a very tiny bag weighing just 14kg. Nice.
New Zealand has been great. A really nice easy country to be in and absolutely stunning. But at 6pm on 30th Sept were due to take our flight out of Christchurch to Malaysia via Sydney. A long journey but worth it as we are going back into South East Asia. Yippee!
By the way - we added some video clips as travel blog updated
and added this feature. depending on your connection it can take 1 minute or 1 hour to upload!
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Dave
non-member comment
been there seen that :)
Hi Scott / Kat thought I might as well say Hi. Reading your post makes me want to go back there although not with a small van and a broken heater. Really glad you made it to Milford Sound. Did I tell you that I left the lights on in the van there and we had to get jump started. Otherwise we too would have faced the prospect of getting stuck. The seal colonys are just fantastic. We found a few actually in the middle of the carpark pretending to be parking attendants. That pic of the bridge over arthurs pass ... I dont remember that bit .. probably because it was dark when we did it and starting to snow and we were stuck behind a very very slow truck. Hope you get to Malaysia ok you have not mentioned whre you are landing but if you can stop off in Malaca if you can really nice place. We stayed at the travellers inn not the best but fine for kipping down in. Also see if you can find the comedian taxi driver hes usually touting at the bus station in Malaca (very very funny and worth the 15 ringit round trip fare)