"One Ring To Rule Them All"

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They say that the south island is more spectacular than the north, its certainly bigger and got less people and with so few people in such a vast expanse ominously the locals have apparently 'adapted' to become a "rugged" and "individual" breed. Our plan was to travel down the length of the west coast on State Hwy 6 as far south as Queenstown and then double back crossing over to the east coast to finish in Christchurch; and in another 16 days and 2000 kilometres thats exactly what we did.

Across the Cook Strait the ferry winds its way through the convoluted maze of waterways known as the Marlborough Sounds and into Picton the gateway to the south. We didn't hang around and having established a route we made for Westport. It was about time to do some laundry, although I wished I hadn't. There was an incident and the police were called... someone had stolen the laundry out the dryer, specifically my t-shirt from Vietnam and a pair of Sian's underwear - we were dealing with a rebel communist in pink panties, but we never did catch the culprit, weird.

The next day we moved on driving south flanked by the Tasman Sea to our right, we first reached Tarauran Bay 'sheltered anchorage', home to a fur seal colony and then Punakaiki, famous for its pancake rocks, formed by a layering weathering process called stylobedding the limestone is thought to look like a stack of pancakes. That night we reached Greymouth - the big smoke of the westland born in much the same way as many other New Zealand settlements from the gold rush of the 19th century.

We passed through Hokitika, this is pounamu (jade/greenstone) country, a mineral steeped in Maori tradition used mainly for decorative jewellery but unfortunately due to demand your authentic New Zealand jade souvenir has probably been imported from Russia. Further south we entered the Westland Tai Poutini National Park and another complete change of scenery as this is glacier country. Potentially one of the main attractions of the west coast as no where else in the world at this latitude do glaciers come so close to the ocean and therefore this makes them readily accessible. Our first stop was in Franz Josef, with a glacier of the same name that Austrian Julius Haast named after his emperor, here we walked to the glaciers terminal face before settling in the Fox township a little further south again. The Fox township has a very subdued alpine charm and is home to the less commercially developed Fox glacier, but it does have a minted boiled sweet named after it. This river of ice was named in 1872 by New Zealands prime minister Sir William Fox and due to the west coasts endless rain this facilitates an advance of about 1m a day, 10 times faster than any glaciers of the Swiss Alps and this staggering development leads to an ever changing environment that we paid to explore. We did a full days hike, complete with crampons on the ice which was cool (no pun intended) exploring small ice caves and negotiating small crevasses and saw relatively absolutely nothing, its huge.

Further south we moved into the Otago region and Wanaka. It has a nice lake and Puzzleworld but we were here for Queenstown - a town fit for a queen on the banks of Lake Wakatippu. New Zealand is referred to as the worlds adventure playground and Queenstown is definately at the heart of this, it is afterall the birthplace of bungee as we know it. Oscar Wilde said there is nothing to fear but fear itself but he had never done a bungee and I assure you the AJ Hackett Nevis makes your arse hairs curl. The bungee in Taupo is childs play in comparison as suspended 134m above a very fucking big gorge from a very fucking small cable car with a very fucking long piece of elastic tied to your feet there is only one thing left to do... Jump, and the 8 seconds of freefall gives you enough time to think about what to have for lunch. You can probably think about what to also have for tea and supper in the time it takes to hoist you back up while you're dangling upside down but I was too busy trying not to pass out.

Leaving Queenstown we headed east into Mackenzie country, the region of Canterbury and for Mt. Cook/Aoraki National Park. It was absolutely freezing, dropping to minus 3 degrees at night so by this time the novelty of sleeping in a campervan and a diet of instant noodles was wearing thin. In the morning we trekked to a viewpoint of Mt Cook the training ground for the revered Sir Edmund Hillary before being the first man to reach the summit of Everest. We made our way now to Christchurch passing Lake Pukaki and Tekapo on the way. These lakes have an amazing colour that can only be described as blazing turquoise - this is derived from the suspended glacial sediment 'rock flour' that refracts the sunlight giving the water a milky quality and being very photogenic this is a massive haunt for, guess who, the bloody chinese their cameras and their fucking peace signs.

Well Christchurch is just 'bleh' and the end of our New Zealand adventure. I've loved it here, its simply the great outdoors with a hundred synonyms to describe that and it now holds a place in my heart - I'll always buy New Zealand lamb.

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