Tramping around Canterbury: From Arthurs Pass to Lake Tekapo

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The following day we left for a trip to a place called Arthur’s pass in Selwyn, Canterbury. The journey took a couple of hours and on the way we stopped at a lovely little place called Sheffield. Well, it wasn’t as lovely as Sheffield, South Yorkshire but its pie shop was very good. We shared a steak and cheese pie (despite being recommended others by a random customer) and a small apple pie on the picnic table outside of the shop. We saw some stunning scenery along the way and once we arrived at the little village high up in huge mountains, we stopped to talk to the people at the information centre for information on walks that we could do the next day. The people told us that unfortunately Arthur’s Pass was due to have a storm the following day but that we should make the most of the late afternoon and evening ahead of us as it was sunny at that time. Now I still have no walking shoes, just the cheapo trainers that I bought in Sydney’s “Target” so we couldn’t go on any really challenging walks but we did manage two treks that were fairly challenging for different reasons - stones and steps .

The two contrasting approaches to “tramping” (as the Kiwi’s like to call it) couldn’t be further apart, with Cate sporting every layer of fleecy, warm clothing she could get her hands on and her cheap pair of runners, whilst I’d plumped for a pair of shorts, a long sleeve t-shirt, my walking shoes and a pair of sunglasses - one of us looking ready for a sunny Sunday walk, the other looking like they were preparing for a long hard Siberian winter. Despite this, I’m sure you can guess who finished the walk with blisters. Not Cate and her £9 trainers, but me in my Teva walking shoes ... “all the gear, and no idea”!

The first walk was a little dander up and along a river as it wound its way up a valley ... lots of rocks and boulders to navigate our way over and around ... before reaching the end point and repeating it all (but downhill and back to Bertha). Oh, yeah, our campervan is called Bertha. Don’t ask. The second walk was the one the lady in the tourist information said was the easier of two ... she was wrong. It was a little forty-five minute round trip to see a waterfall ... it sounded nice enough and we were foolish enough to believe that as we were visiting a waterfall that we couldn’t possibly be having to go uphill ... as waterfalls finish at ground level. Wrong. We spent twenty tough minutes trudging up step after step after step through the steep forest on the hills surrounding Arthurs Pass, aiming for the waterfall at the end ... when we felt like we couldn’t cope any longer we finally made it to the top and to the beautiful (if somewhat elevated) waterfall. Downhill was much nicer! That was certainly a hard slog. The best thing about the waterfall when we got there was the fact that there was a small rainbow shining straight through it - very pretty. We have been lucky enough to see loads of rainbows over here, it probably has something to do with the rain and sunshine mix.

The camping options for the night in and around Arthurs Pass consisted of two DoC (Department of Conservation) campsites that charged $6 per person per night, and one which charged nothing. Being the non-idiots that we are, we took the latter option and chalked up another night of rent free accommodation, result. Maybe we could survive on our new budget of $2 a day after all ... walking around the hills is a free activity, and if you look hard enough you can find free places to camp, it’ll all be fine as long as we don’t want to eat too regularly! The down side of staying in these sorts of camp sites is of course the toilets. Pit toilets are the most disgusting things in the world as the smell is foul and the threat of something crawling up the side and jumping up to bite you is very real. Not only do you have to visit a stinky dirty toilet often with flies flying around, but you also have to get out of the campervan into the cold in the middle of the night and find it when it is pitch black if you are anything like me. It is a real downside of living in a campervan with no toilet. Unfortunately at this camp site this is exactly what I had to do and as my loving husband couldn’t be pulled out of his sleep to accompany me I had to take the torch and creep out into what I can only describe as being very similar to what the forest area looked and probably felt like in the Blair Witch Project. I’m not joking, I was really scared!! That’s the price you pay for having the bladder of a two year old I guess! Seriously though, pit toilets aren’t THAT bad ... it’s just like being at a music festival, but without a lot of the music-based fun you’d normally be having. It’s generally ok to cope with pit-toilets as long as you breathe through your mouth instead of your nose ... you’ve just got to watch out for the ones where the air’s so thick with putrid tanginess that it’s got a taste as well as a smell, definitely not nice!

The following morning we decided that we would make our way to Lake Tekapo which is a beautiful turquoise coloured lake amongst high rising mountains. On our way, we stopped off at a cave that had been recommended to us the night before by some travellers staying in the same camp area as us. We took the short walk to a viewpoint that everlooked the cave entrance and then Matt popped back to the van to get our cereal so that we could have breakfast on a bench overlooking some lovely looking mountains. There are lots of mountains in New Zealand and all of them are pretty spectacular. NZ is pretty much scenery-central, everywhere you look there’s another stunning view ... it’s pretty tiring trying to keep being awestruck by the surroundings, but I guess someone’s gotta do it!

The idea behind the cave is that you walk through it and come out at the other end. However, there is a stream that also passes through it and although it is quite shallow in parts, it can be up to waist height in the cave and we found out that the water was almost ice cold. The caves are basically a branch of the river that’s diverted itself underground, perfect for caving enthusiasts to shuffle their bodies through the strange cold, dark and wet world, but as it’s a pretty steady gradient it’s ok for novices to give it a whirl too. As soon as we read the helpful sign saying that “normal” water conditions were waist-deep water that basically ruled out a caving expedition, but we thought we’d take a little walk down to the cave anyway to see what all the fuss was about. However as we neared the entrance to the caves we realised that we were going to have to cross the main river first if we were going to be able to get to the cave, was there a bridge? No. Were there rocks across it that we could step on? No. Did we contemplate heading back to Bertha right then and there? Most definitely. But for some stupid reason I decided to take off my shoes and socks and get wading through the river ... ok, big stream is a more apt description than river, but in this instance size really isn’t important, the important (and horrible) factor was how blinking cold the water was in this stream. I’m not talking about water that just isn’t warm, this was cold, really cold ... having just made the journey down a mountain side from very high, very cold (and possibly glacial) surroundings. Like the big, brave, macho kind of guy that I am I made it to the other side of the stream with minimal screeching and yelping, and motioned for Cate to join me. She didn’t look keen (not a massive fan of the cold) ... but I think that the prospect of sitting there bored on the other side of the river whilst waiting for me to finish gallivanting around was enough to force her into the water and across the stream (oh, and possibly the worry of me doing myself a mischief without her keeping an eye on me). I do not joke when I say that my feet became numb after about three seconds of being in that water - I’ve never experienced anything like it. After crossing the stream one further time to get to the cave we had a little mooch inside, and watched a French couple take the plunge and head right into the waist deep water (with a fair amount of screeching and yelping too) ... loco.

Lake Tekapo was the first turquoise lake that we had seen in New Zealand. They are really spectacular - they become this colour due to the glacial deposits becoming worn down and powdery. When you couple these lakes with interesting cloud formations and huge mountains, you stand there in awe. We visited a small church a bit like St Mary’s in Port Douglas, Australia as it had a pane of glass behind the alter, looking over the lake. Another attraction close by was a statue of a collie dog - strange that if you put a statue of a dog in a position where there are mountains in the background and call it a tourist attraction, tourists flock towards it. I’m not knocking it, we ended up doing it ourselves but I’m really not sure why.

After a peaceful night in another idyllic location - on the shores of Lake Alexandrina - with cool little ducks that liked to ‘laugh’ and walked their path which happened to pass by Bertha’s door. We named them Waddler and Waddler 2. They were good company! It was time for some more tramping action, this time up to the peak overlooking Lake Tekapo, Mount John. I’d earlier heard a woman in her mid-sixties mention that she partakes in the walk up the hill ... so how hard could it be? Seems we really need to improve our fitness levels, as it was not without breaking into a sweat that we finally made it up to the top. It was a little challenging but certainly not a problem...I don’t know what Matt is talking about!! But it was well worth the walk for the awesome vista at the top, we even managed to make it to the top before the rains came, result. When we finally found ourselves back at the foot of the mountain and in the safe and warm surroundings of Bertha the campervan we headed off for our next destination ... New Zealand was becoming a bit of a whistle-stop tour (whereby in Oz and Asia we covered ground with someone else doing the driving, so we often tried to combine this with a poor night’s sleep on the bus, we can’t do that here ... sleeping while driving is frowned upon apparently). Yes and it’s not even possible for me to sleep while Matt is driving as I feel like I always need to keep one eye on the road for him...I’ll let you make your own decision as to why I feel like this.

Mount Cook is the highest mountain in New Zealand so we thought we would take the journey up there to see it and perhaps do some walks too. Unfortunately, when we stopped at Twizel on the way to have lunch and speak to the person at the i-site, she informed us that a storm was due up Mount Cook which would obviously mean that walking would be dangerous. Great. So we know we can’t control the weather but this was getting pretty annoying. We decided there was no point in us going up Mount Cook if the weather was going to be really terrible as we wouldn’t be able to see anything anyway. We continued through Twizel and made our way along the scenic road to Oamaru.

Love Cate and Matt xx

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