Advertisement
Published: October 24th 2008
Edit Blog Post
After an exceedingly cold and frosty night spent in the car park on Picton Harbour we woke early to head for somewhere a little more picturesque, and quite frankly to thaw out. It didn’t take us long to find it. It was one of those icy cold mornings, but with clear blue skies and crisp air, and the mist was lifting off the water. The Queen Charlotte Drive is a winding coastal road that meanders around the northern tip of the South Island towards the Abel Tasman National Park. We didn’t see another vehicle for miles, just stretches of calm sea water and the dramatic hills of the peninsula across the bay. In fact, New Zealand is a bit on the quiet side, with a population of just 4 million over the both islands, but with most of those people living in and around Auckland. It resembles that feeling when you have said the wrong thing to your partner and all you are getting is the silence and the painful feeling that it will last a while. We drove for miles at a time without seeing anyone else. The route had stunning scenery, and we soon spotted our first glimpse of
snow capped mountains, while walking on the bay at Glenduan, which had a pod of dolphins swimming close to the shore.
We drove all morning as we figured we had a lot to see in a relatively short time if we were to cover it all before the ‘in laws’ arrived. By the time we reached Kaiteriteri beach it was lunch time, and what a great spot.…..Golden sands and clear waters, and again the snow capped mountains in the backdrop, and although it was still cold, the winter sun provided some heat on our backs. After lunch we pressed on with the sounds of the 80’s egging us on….Paul Young, Heaven 17, Santana, Eagles, Hot Chocolate, Frankie Goes to Hollywood…such classics!! And they love Atomic Kitten - well someone has to I suppose! That makes it Jack and the whole of NZ as their biggest fans. Classic radio is really popular in NZ, in fact it’s hard to find anything else on the radio, they are seriously stuck in time. It took us all the way to The Abel Tasman NP, which was looking stunning in the sunshine. We were still getting used to the cold weather, since leaving
the tropics and although the sun was still shining, it was getting progressively colder. We booked into a campsite and chilled for the afternoon, planning a trek for the next day. We were the only ones in this campsite, and we soon learnt that it was going to be a lonely few weeks, as it was off season and there literally no one around.
But the next day brought a change of weather; it was tipping down and windy. In fact, we learned that it is a lot like the UK, it rains A LOT. As ‘Crowded House’ sang (they are in fact Kiwi and not Australian, although the Australians try to claim them) there really are 4 seasons in one day, it can be beautiful one minute and gales and storms the next. What actually happened, however, is that it did not stop raining for about the next 7 days…Our trek was a wash out, although, we went as far as we could before abandoning it.
We next headed across land towards the western side. If we couldn’t walk then maybe it would be perfect for white water rafting, which was on our wish list. We headed
to the little town of Murchison, which was a bit like stepping back in time, and as it was nearly 4pm everything was closed. So, we did a spot of freedom camping by the river until the next day when we could make enquiries about rafting. Then, it was onto Westport where we would wait until the conditions were right for rafting, as apparently there was too much rain and the rivers were running too high!
We also encountered another problem, Stu had cut his foot on a reef some weeks earlier in Fiji, and having already dressed it several times and had a course of antibiotics, he managed to take a turn for the worst and it started to look nasty again. As you can imagine this led to a very grumpy Stu, and as he had already exhausted my bag of medical supplies, with this and all the previous ailments, we had to visit a local Dr, who was quite convinced there would still be coral in the wound and attacked his foot with a scalpel, with no anaesthetic….I was deeply concerned and sympathetic at the fruitless ordeal…..honestly….
$100 worse off, but suitably antibiotic-ed up, we
spent the next 3 days milling around Westport, while Stu recovered from his grumpiness. The rain was pretty much constant, although the odd break in the clouds allowed us to marvel at the snow capped mountains in the distance and the stormy seas out to the west. We were also close enough to visit the local seal colony of maybe 50 or so animals, with a great viewing platform. The poor weather and bad foot meant that we abandoned the rafting idea for now, and moved south towards Greymouth.
We detoured and spent a night at the Punankaki Pancake Rocks and Blowholes, it was an amazing sight especially with the stormy seas surging up and hail stones beating down. Due to the foot problem, we thought that we would give it another week or so before we considered skiing, which was our original plan, and instead head towards the famous Franz Joseph and Fox Glaciers. It really was quite a distance, so we stopped at a small community camp site with an honesty box at Okarito for the night.
The day we arrived at Franz Joseph, the weather had cleared and the sun had come out. It was
really fantastic. So far, the weather had been misty and grey, with very poor visibility and some tough driving, then it changed completely and it was a real pleasure. We passed the mountain range that was made famous by the ‘lighting of the beacons’ in LOR’s 3, as well as many other noteworthy spots from the films.
The Kiwis are hardy folk, especially in the South Island, they brave extreme, but beautiful conditions. It really feels remote and distant, with miles upon miles between villages. They are truly lovely people, less brash then the Aussies, and, due to the rugby probably, they all know where Wales is. They are extremely polite and helpful, and it was a pleasure meeting them.
Anyway, the glaciers were every bit as spectacular as we imagined. The foot was still not good enough to go glacier walking (which had to be guided, with proper gear, crampons and so on) so we just walked to the face of the glacier for some great photos. Fox Glacier was about 30-40K away and in our opinion was the better of the 2. The car park was only a short distance from the glacier face, and the
weather had gone back to being grey, this time the air was heavy with snow. We were given grave warnings about the weather from the locals, and advised not to drive any further along the route south, through the Haast Pass, as we could get stranded, but we thought we would give it a go anyway, we had plenty of food and gas if the worst did happen. As is happened it was fine and we stopped just before the Haast Pass at a DOC site at Lake Paringa.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.14s; Tpl: 0.015s; cc: 10; qc: 47; dbt: 0.0969s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb