Advertisement
Published: January 28th 2007
Edit Blog Post
So we have finally reached Picton - the last major town on our journey round the South Island the departure point for our ferry over to the capital city Wellington on the North Island.
After leaving Franz Josef Glacier we headed up the West Coast of the SI towards Hokitika. Hokitika is one of the arty capitals of NZ, and the main place to invest in the traditional souvenir from NZ - Pounamu. Pounamu is of course Nephriti Jade - Greenstone.
It is revered by the Maori's as a treasure, and a symbol of one's Mana. Pounamu ( is a highly prized hard nephrite jade found in New Zealand and parts of Australia. It is composed of chlorite and epidote which makes the stone a mid-to-dark green colour.
Greenstone rocks are generally found in rivers. They appear as nondescript boulders and stones and are difficult to identify without cutting them open. The mining of pounamu is closely controlled.
The Māori call the South Island of New Zealand Te Wai Pounamu, meaning "The Greenstone Water". Pounamu is highly valued by the Māori and it plays an important role in their culture. It is considered a taonga
or treasure, and so is protected under the Treaty of Waitangi.
Pounamu is a very hard stone and must be worked with care and patience. Today, diamond tools are often used to carve it, and it can be turned into beautiful jewellery. Much of this is in traditional Māori designs.
Because pounamu is so hard it has been used as an alternative to iron in axes and similar hand tools. The Māori club, the mere, was often made of pounamu. Pounamu artefacts were often given as gifts to seal important agreements.
Hokitika is a funny little coastal town - clearly supported by the passing hordes of kids in the Kiwi Experience, Stray and Contiki 18-30's backpacker buses. Therefore many of the Jade shops sell real tat - we were quite disillusioned and dissapointed by it to be honest. Some of the places sell bright green nasty plasticy pieces of Jade.
We had a good wander round the place - and went to a couple of good galleries- one called Tectonic Jade does a particularly good job of producing more artistic and natural pieces. There was also a brilliant glass blowing studio where we sat and watched
the guys making stuffin open kilns so quickly it defied belief - they were making complex patterns in lumps of glass which were suddenly blown and stretched into wine glasses, ornaments and bowls. There was also a great gallery of the work of a local artist who uses copper to create amazing sculptures of things like crayfish, octopi and dragonflies.
We chose not to buy any designer plastic, and headed on to Greymouth, the next town up the coast. We parked in the town centre and had a wander. We found the worlds greatest public loo. I doubt we'll be able to describe it - but it played music too us, had electronic doors, handles, locks etc - it told you how long you had to perform before lights went out and asked you if you were having a nice day. It was so funny. Stood outside you could hear all the music and speech going on inside.
We also found a fantastic little Maori gallery - run by a local Maori lady and squeezed in between the obligatory plastic fantastic jade gallery. The Maori gallery had many wonderful traditional pieces and all were from local artists, not the made in Taiwan appearance of many of the larger tourist shops.
We stayed in Greymouth overnight, and then headed back to the gallery in the morning to make a couple of investments - Clare buying a beautiful Maori Face Mask.
After Greymouth we headed up the Coast further , checking out the town of Westport en route.
Between Greymouth and Westport we also visited Pancake Rocks - a stunning coastal rock formation where the headland is unexplainably shaped like hundreds of pancakes stacked one on top of the other. At pancake rocks amazing blow holes, caves and arches punctuate the headland.
http://www.punakaiki.co.nz/
Beyond the stop at Punakaiki was just a long scenic drive all the way up to the top of the South Island - which we covered all in one day to buy us more time. We grabbed dinner in Motueka before heading to Marahau on the fringe of the Abel Tasman National Park.
The Abel Tasman NP is NZ's smallest national park, but really beautiful. It is a coastal/marine park and the best way to see it is either via tramping the coastal track or sea kayak. Much to Clare's disgust at being at sea for so long, I signed us up to a 2 day sea kayak expedition!
We had a couple of hours training the next morning, were equipped with Flares, Life Jackets, Torpedo's and Limes and were sent on our way. We had paid for freedom kayaking - i.e no guide, but grouped up with 2 English couples from Blighty and that provided us with a degree of solidarity should anyone capsize! Our route took us from Marahau in the Southof the park, all round the coast to Onetahiki Bay. In all we rowed about 15km, stopping at several islands and inlets over the couple of days. 2 of the islands harboured amazing seal colonies, one of which was populated by a number of males (bulls) and a plethora of little pups - it is pupping season out here.
Towards the end of the first day we had to row the "Mad Mile" this is a pretty treachorous bit of water - and the only bit the guides were genuinely worried we might come a cropper at. Clare and I had tried it earlier in the day on our own, but a single kayaker coming round the Mad Mile who looked much more experienced than us warned us against it as it was high tide and the swell and breakers were becoming more than sufficient to flip us.
We regrouped with the 2 other couples and waited until 5pm to tackle it again. It was genuinely pretty scary. Being only inches above the waterline in a little 2 man kayak and having 1 metre waves roll towards you was quite intimadating. We also were having to head further out into the open ocean to avoid submerged rocks and corals.
Nonetheless after a huge battle we survived it, and headed into the safety and seclusion of Anchorage Bay for our awaiting BBQ and nights stay on board Aquapackers Catarac - a brilliant floating hostel during the summer.
http://www.aquapackers.co.nz/
After a nights rest onboard Aquapackers, the weather was even better on the second day and we had a wonderful kayak around the secluded bays and headlands. I also did some snorkelling whilst Clare was resting on the beach - and saw several huge stingrays - they were really cool and I was able to get fairly close to them.
We were rewarded with high speed aqua taxi's back to Marahau which also lugged our kayaksback. It was only then that we realised how far we had travelled against the tide over the 2 days - and the sense of self achievement was huge.
We headed to Nelson that night - and caught up on food and sleep!
We had a day in Nelson - a really cool little city, and wandered round the cafe's and galleries. After Nelson we headed on to the Marlborough Wine region - where Clare made up all sorts of rubbish every time we went into another vineyard to sample their goods. We visited the Hunter Valley vineyard and Cloudy Bay Vineyard, drank everything presented to us and then headed on to Picton. I drove us as Clare was sitting next to me hicupping and giggling for the best part of 3 hours.
Overnight in Nelson I bought a sprat line and proved myself to be a totally useless fisherman.
We caught the midday Bluebridge Ferry to Wellington at midday on the 27th.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.118s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 12; qc: 57; dbt: 0.0575s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 2;
; mem: 1.1mb