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Published: July 24th 2008
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We've stopped moaning about the weather now and just spend our time gawping and shaking our heads in wonderment at this beautiful place - probably the most beautiful place either of us have ever seen. The ferry to the South Island just hinted at what was to come, no-one even bothers telling you how lovely the journey itself is because there is just so much beauty to see..
We found that the South Island was the rugged, more in your face, striking, less-developed "forward" to the North Island's more groomed, pristine,, film star looking "back". In All Black terms North Island is more Dan Carter the South Island more Richard McCaw. Both sublimely brilliant, world-class players but quite different.
By the way, they REALLY love Rugby here; think football and rugby rolled into one in the UK. We went past a rugby merchandise shop the other day which proudly displayed on it's awning "All Blacks - Champions of the World" Ummmm..... aren't the Springboks champions of the world? Didn't they beat us in the final? Weren't the All Blacks beaten by the French in the Semis? Why let the truth get in the way of National pride?
The
pics will show the sites much better than i can describe them but suffice to say we completely loved our time on the South Island especially in Queenstown and Wanaka which were incredible. You never felt cramped, rushed or unable to do anything despite it being the busiest week of the year (school holidays).
Our journey went as follows (abbreviated version):
Ferry to Picton, picked up new hired car (hyundai crapolla) then on to Nelson where we stayed the night, played tennis in glorious sunshine on fab public courts the next day and swapped car due to irritating whistling (is whistling ever anything else?). Guy in our hostel claimed he drove 795km in one day - yeah right!!
From there we went across to Arthur's Pass where we saw a beaut waterfall through the snow, stayed the night at a place called Greymouth. Pretty unremarkable place though had excellent supermarket with largest pick your own dried fruit and nut section in the world - tiny things please tiny minds - i was in heaven.
Onwards to the Franz Joseph Glacier, through snow, hail and storms. This was lovely too though, unfortunately, the first glacier we had
ever seen was Perito Moreno in Argentina - which is the biggest in the world - and next to it i think every other glacier looks slightly on the puny side. Stayed in a faux "gone with the wind" plantation hotel - revolting chicken meal in local "irish" pub - though i'm not exactly easy to please when it comes to fowl..
In Wanaka we got some more tennis in, we had to shoo some ducks off the court and enjoyed soaking up the Southern Alpine atmos (good excuse to drink hot chocolate). Visited the wonderful local "cinema paradiso" which has sofas, cars, sun loungers as seats and the staff bring you your drinks or you can get them yourself during the interval!! We saw "Lars and the Real Girl" and totally loved it. Sitting in front of us (no ear flicking please) was Chris, bridge engineer par excellence from West Hampstead who got bored rigid by us - we hadn't spoken to anyone for a while! Oh and we had a gorgeous very hot spa (39 degrees) in the snow - totally amazing till you have to get out and walk 17 metres to the changing room.
Wanaka was where our forward plans went awry - we had planned to head to Milford Sound - thankfully we were chatting about our idea to the receptionist who informed us that the road was actually closed due to snow drifts. We diverted to Queenstown and the Catlins - gutted not to see MS but also pleased to have the excuse to come back.
In Queenstown we swanned around town, went up the cable car, had lunch in the most amazing setting and back down to town by foot. Unfortunately, i rather miscalculated the distance of the walk and an hour's stroll turned into a 5 hour tramp over snow covered mountains, woods and streams - as we just got out of the woods as the sun was setting.... i breathed a sigh of relief.. would not be fun at night!! Played tennis in the most amazing setting (see photo) and then, inspired, stayed up all night to watch the Wimbledon Men's final. Thinking that they wouldn't come back after the second rain break (and at 7am our time) we let ourselves fall asleep. Doohhhh!! Incredible match..
Feeling very very tired we headed South East to visit the
Catlins planning to then head up the East Coast and back to Christchurch. The Catlins were almost totally devoid of people and were just the loveliest, windswept, unspoilt areas we had seen - very like the remoter parts of Cornwall but of course - without the Rick Stein hoards. Met a right old Anthony Perkins, our landlord for the night in Papatowai, who offered us a choice of his personal collection of 900 videos to choose from (no reception on telly) all handwritten in indecipherable scrawl and rather too many hitler-based historical dramas for my liking.
The next day we got chased off the beach by the most enormous Elephant Seal - we had just been strolling along minding our own business when this huge triangle of grey blubber just emerged over the dunes - he must have been about 200kg at least....we didn't hang about, nor did he for that matter, they can really shift when they want to. The beaches along this coast were gorgeous and so unspoilt - have a look at Nige's pics - on one beach we saw lots of driftwood, then a dead baby shark and then a dead, and very smelly seal.
But no litter at all! Curio Bay and Nugget point were just a couple of the highlights.
Our penultimate night was spent in Oamaru, essentially a stopping point on journey from Dunedin (nice lunch) to Christchurch, where we checked into another dodgy looking motel, admired the victoriana and dwelled on the site of the Moaraki boulders we saw at sunset.
Christchurch is very like England we thought, complete with crappy park tennis courts battling with tree roots, though we weren't there for very long to really appreciate it. We stayed in a hideous mock French Chateau, filled to the brim with Japanese tour parties. Had a fantastic meal and wine at "Cookin with Gas" and then went out and got very drunk playing pool and listening to live music in, guess what... the local Irish pub. Nige is winning the world pool championship, by the way...
Next stop Sydney
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