Advertisement
Published: January 22nd 2010
Edit Blog Post
Christchurch Our first destination in New Zealand and our last day of civilisation in the Ibis hotel off Cathedral Square. Having just stepped off the red eye flight from Tokyo at 9am we were a bit dazed but spent an enjoyable few hours pottering around the old buildings and huge park in the sun. It just so happened that a busking festival was starting so we had a bit of free entertainment too from a guy who had flown in all the way from London. Typical. You come how many thousands of miles and end up being entertained by someone who you could have just gone to Covent Garden to see. Having said that though he was good. After a four hour siesta we tucked into sizzling platters with sticky rice and miso soup at the Japanese/Korean restaurant SuKo - fantastic. Many of the restaurants seem to be BYO so we popped into the Liquor Store and picked up a wonderful R?? Malbec. Would have been half the price in the UK but that's not going to stop us.
Road Trip We had been looking forward to this day with a bit of intrepidation: picking up our Jucy Cruisa and
doing the longest drive of the holiday from Christchurch to Queenstown (6.5 hours). Looking back we were a bit naïve when the Jucy team just said 'you've seen the video about the van haven't you' and handed us the key. With the long journey in mind we just hopped in and set off (after first feeling a little bit disappointed about the seventies kitsch and smaller than it looked on the DVD interior). That attention to detail deficit left the first hour full of questions about whether either one of us had seen the pillows / duvet / plug sockets / power cable in our cursory glance around the vehicle's sub-seat storage. Trust us, take a bit of time checking closely for everything before you leave if you ever do the same.
This would have also helped us work out how to drive the thing. Being a) a van, b) diesel and c) automatic this was tricky when we weren't used to any of these. For a long time we had no idea what the different gears were, let alone the O/D setting or the big red button with Japanese writing next to it (ejector seat?) We haven't yet
pushed it to find out. Maybe four weeks with just each other for company will pique our curiosity...
Anyway after much revving we got on our way. We were on the road from 9-6.30 with just a few short stops in Geraldine for a cheesery and chutney store where we bought three jars of essential condiments - one for each week we are in NZ - and Cromwell in Central Otago for our first wine tasting session at
Wooing Tree. We came away with a 'blondie' - champagne without the bubbles (or white Pinot Noir) and resisted their extortionate red Pinot Noirs (supposedly the best in the world in 2007 but we couldn't taste it. Good, but not mind-blowing.)
Once sited in Queenstown I am afraid to say we had to use the Jucy helpline when we couldn't work out how to un-plug the heated towel rail (not as posh as it sounds, trust us). The lady agreed that we would have to pull out the microwave to get to the plug so we did not bake from the heat. This involved unscrewing it from its compartment and pulling it out of its hidey-hole. After much elbow power and
a lot of loose screws we realised actually you just had to look in the cupboard above the cooker to get to the plug which we had inconveniently hidden behind our earlier chutney and wine purchases...
Queenstown is the adrenaline capital of NZ and we thought it might be a bit in your face but were pleasantly surprised. Except for the fact that it rained quite a lot. Hazard of the fjordlands I'm afraid. Steaks were on the menu at the Beefeater restaurant (nothing to do with the English chain!) and we woke up to find that the rain had finally stopped so went out for a jog down to the lakeside. This soon turned into a full on hike halfway up a mountain toward the top of the Skyline gondola, only cut short by our need to check out of the site by 10am. We just made it and popped into the gourmet Mediterranean food shop for more “essential” provisions such as olives, avocado, dried apricots and seeded grainy bread, before leaving for the spectacular lakeside drive to Te Anau. On the way we realised that we hadn't actually done the adrenaline thing in Queenstown, mostly due to
the weather, but I'm sure we'll make up for it soon...Wanaka is still to come.
So we are now at the gateway to the fjords and have booked our day trip to Milford Sound for tomorrow. Finally we have an afternoon to relax so we pottered around the charming little town and chilled out at our lakeside pitch. We promised ourselves that we would cook as we have eaten out for a week - but in the end we just couldn't be bothered so settled for a 'nibbly tea' with the leftovers from our gourmet shopping. After the size of the steaks last night we have survived a meat-free day, the sausages will keep until tomorrow.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.068s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 8; qc: 24; dbt: 0.0345s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1mb
Rachel and Phil
non-member comment
Great idea to do a blog! We've really enjoyed reading about your exploits so far and had a chuckle at your campervan troubles. Push the red button, go on! We'll definitely keep checking in to see how your trip is going. Have fun :)