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Published: April 29th 2010
So with exactly three weeks left in New Zealand (NZ going forward) at 10.30am in the morning of April 13th we made the three hour crossing over the Cook Strait from Wellington to Picton. All things considered it was a very smooth ride. I have heard horror stories here of some people huddled up in a corner being or at least feeling very sick whist others have enjoyed the benefits of club class drinks, not thinking of anyone particular here Heather, Nick, I didn't get any club class drinks! But no it was a very smooth ride providing some beautiful scenery to view on the ferry journey, especially when entering the Malborough Sounds.
Nelson and Motueka As always with no real plans, just a rough guide to head west from Picton towards the Abel Tasman National park and then South along the west coast to Queenstown, we set off in the Jucy Cruiza and headed for Nelson. The drive out was pretty spectacular, the scenery amazing through the Malborough sounds, the weather a little less so as it tried to rain constantly and generally just ended up drizzling. Not really knowing where we should stop but having read in
Hang glider being towed by the plane
Very cool way of getting up in the air!the lonely planet that Nelson was a nice place we decided to call an end to the days travelings there. We had intended to make the 2km journey into town that evening from our campsite for a few drinks but as it rained constantly we didn't bother, so we never really got to see Nelson other than a quick drive through it, still it looked nice. We awoke to pretty good weather, blue skies and white clouds and this was the day that Tracy had decided she would knock off one of those 'must do' things in NZ/life generally, it was hang gliding time.
Not too far from Nelson and en-route to the Abel Tasman, we stopped at Motueka and Tracy undertook that 'must do'. Interestingly enough, Tracy and her tandem hang-gliding master didn't actually launch themselves off a hill or something like that but were dragged along a run way by a plane that continued to drag them to a few thousand or so feet before disconnecting and letting them go for it, it looked all very cool and Tracy managed to get a few birds eye shots of Motueka. I think she enjoyed her 30 minutes or
so, however I am not so sure she thought it was the thrill of a lifetime and I had a feeling right then that we would be looking for something more adventurous down the line.
Abel Tasman So hang-gliding done, we made the short drive further north west to the Abel Tasman National Park. It is interesting to note that seaman Abel Tasman (who founded Tasmania too, which was eventually named after him, initially it was called Van Deimans Land) has a park in NZ named after him, yet he never stepped foot on either island of NZ ever. He did discover it but when he sent four fellow sailors out to make landfall on the north west coast of the south island of NZ (where the park now is) they were pretty promptly killed by the Maori people of the day and he decided to hightail it out of there.
Oh well, anyway, we booked ourselves in for a full day's kayaking the following day and spent the rest of this day just killing time, we did however take in the Split Apple rock, quite cool, basically a very big boulder that has been split down
the centre and sitting open like an apple. I have seen pictures of people standing in it, but given that the tide was on its way back in and the water was damn cold, Tracy and I both decided against this photo opportunity.
So up bright and early (the 15th now) we took off on our day kayaking trip with Marahau Sea Kayaks. There was just five of us, including the guide, on the trip so a pretty good group size and Tracy and I shared a kayak with yours truly at the back doing the driving. Now Tracy had toyed with the idea of going swimming with seals instead of kayaking, but I guess I talked her into the latter and we did this instead. However our guide, who heard this, took us off up the coast line to a little enclave where he said their were often baby seals there, right enough their were a few. It took Tracy sometime to do it, but eventually she jumped in the cold water and swam around with the seals. They weren't that big maybe three feet long, but they were very playful and not shy at all, certainly it
made Tracy happy. The rest of the day we just kayaked back down the coast from Onetahuti beach to Anchorage Bay stopping for lunch at North Head where I got bitten over a hundred times (I am not exaggerating) by sand-flies. I didn't think too much of it at the time as it didn't really hurt that much, big mistake as 48 hours later they itched like hell and continued to do so for about 72 hours, the moral of this is don't underestimate the sand-flies if you ever come to NZ. Other than the sand-flies it was a very good day, I enjoyed the kayaking, though we were both knackered at the end of it, and the scenery from the water was beautiful but was it worth $200 each, I don't think so, if anything maybe it was a little too long kayaking and all very much same same, we probably should have done a half day kayaking and a half day hike, still you live and learn.
That evening we sat and had a few drinks at a local bar next to the caravan park and watched the sun set, it was very picturesque looking out in
the distance at the Marlborough sounds, this I think made the trip worth it in itself. We did discuss doing a day hike along the coast line the next day, but in the end decided that time was precious and that we should keep moving west and south, so the next morning we were up once again and on the move.
West Coast Ultimately we drove to Punakaiki, home of the pancake rocks, not all that far as the crow flies but with those traditionally long straight kiwi roads it took quite some time. I shouldn't complain though as the scenery was absolutely spectacular getting to Westport and then the drive down the coast was equally amazing. The road hugged the coastline for miles going round mountains, it did remind me of the 'Big Sur' in California. As I said we settled in Punakaiki, which was nothing to write home about, a very small town with little there other than the well known (at least in NZ) pancake rocks. To be fair they were impressive to see, they did look like long pancake shaped thin grey rocks all stacked on top of each other, like, well like pancakes,
obviously a lot bigger than pancakes but I am sure you get the idea. Apparently they look best at high tide when the water is blowing through them like a blow hole, but that was around 1pm and we were too late this day and we already had plans for the next day, so we would just have to imagine it.
At this point our plan was to continue down the west coast towards the Franz Joseph and Fox glaciers, however we had seen a flyer for a knifemaking course in a small place between Punakaiki and Greymouth called Barrytown. For some reason this appealed to Tracy and I as something different to do, so once again up bright and early the next morning (April 17th) we shot off to Barrytown and our 8 hour/$120 knifemaking course with Steven the knife maker and his wife Robyn. Well I thought it was a brilliant day, I would definitely recommend this to anyone. You start off with a bit steel, wood, brass and some pins and 8 hours later you have a knife. We had to heat the steel to some ridiculous temperature and then batter the hell out of it
with different hammers on an anvil to give it some form of shape, then cool it, we were forging the knife apparently. Later we would cut the wood to fit the knife and then pin this and the brass all to the knife and then continue to shape it. Anyway this went on for some time along with sanding it and polishing it and eventually staining the wood, at the end of the day we ended up with what I think are pretty damn good knife's even if they are heavy and perhaps a little big in the case of my knife. As I said it was a very fun day.
From here, that evening, we made the short trip south to Greymouth where we decided to camp for the night. Greymouth is apparently the big smoke on the west coast of NZ. Well it just served to let us know how small other places were going to be. Whilst Greymouth is not a small town it was no bigger than Hamilton in Bermuda or Wolverton in Milton Keynes, basically a couple of two hundred meter main streets downtown with ten or so pubs in it and thirty or
forty shops in the whole town and you have it. Still its one claim to fame is that it has the home of the Monteith's brewery in it which I felt compelled to visit. So that evening Tracy and I stumped up the $25 each to partake in the brewery tour which also included dinner downtown in one of the bars. The tour was pretty fast and I got the impression the guy giving the tour just wanted to get off home, but having said that I thought the tour was informative and best of all it included a sample of all 6 beers they currently produce along with a couple of half pints of your favorite beers, so all's good then. Dinner in town was at a bar that made Docksiders in Bermuda look classy but still the food was petty good, bit ironic though as the brewery is trying to market itself as a classy craft beer and in their home town they are selling it out of a dump of a place whilst just down the road Speight's Ale house (Speight's being another brewery) is a real classy looking bar and their home town is Dunedin which
Our group's completed knives
Ours are the 2 on the left, the materials from which they were made are below is hundreds of km away, typical.
Next day we did very little other than make the few hundred km journey south to the Franz Josef
and Fox Glaciers, we did however book ourselves in for a days hike the next day on the Franz Joseph glacier and put on hold the idea of doing a helihike for the day after to see what the weather would be like.
Glacier country So, at what seemed to becoming an all too regular occurrence, we got up bright and early (around 7am) to start our 8.15am glacier hike. There are probably not enough superlatives to explain how amazing both the glaciers (Fox and Franz) were, I am told they are two of only three in the world that exist between forest climates, i.e. trees and cliffs on either side of the glacier, which pretty much seems to come all the way down to sea level, it's an amazing site. Though the flyer says you spend 6-7 hours on the glacier I think it was more like 5 hours, the rest was spent getting gear on and off and getting to and from the glaciers including the near hour walk from
the car park to the terminal face of the glacier, having said that 5 hours was most definitely enough. I have never been on or inside a glacier before and it was some experience squeezing between tight canyons of ice and walking into pure ice caves. The highlight was at the end of the tour where we walked though a 15 meter long ice tunnel/cave that had only formed recently, it was spectacular.
Whilst on the glacier and prior to this we had been discussing the idea of a helihike as well, but after speaking to our guide and reading other peoples blogs we decided against it in favor of a helicopter flight over the glaciers itself. This lasts longer than the helihike (at least the helicopter flight bit does) and its quite a bit cheaper too, $150 cheaper. So on the advice of our guide and others we booked ourselves in for a $240 helicopter ride of Fox and Franz glaciers, Mount Tasman and NZ's highest mountain Mount Cook from the town of Fox.
We woke up (April 20th) to minor clouds but as we weren't flying till 10am we told ourselves that it would clear and
be fine, so we shot off to Lake Matheson for a what was supposed to be a an early morning walk around the lake to take in the views of the mountains (Cook, Tasman etc) that reflect off the lake. To be fair we were the first there on the walk at just gone 7.30am, so it was all very pretty and serene and we did get some nice photos of the mountains with the lake reflection, but the ducks were not playing along splashing around all the time and the clouds started moving in which was not good for late attenders to the lake to take photos and not good for our helicopter flight in an hour or so.
Feeling a little downhearted with the clouds continuing to move in we made our way back to the town of Fox for our helicopter flight (which was delayed 30 minutes) to be told by the guy at Mountain Helicopters that the weather was glorious today, not sure if he was high or had x-ray specs on or something, but it sure looked cloudy to me. Still he insisted it was great and he was right. The clouds were pretty
Lake Matheson view
Mt Cook (right) and Mt Tasman low lying as it turned out and above the cloud level it was sunny and amazing. The flight lasted for 40 minutes and we flew over the Fox, Franz and Tasman glaciers, also over Mount Tasman and around Mount Cook, we even set down at 7500 feet for a few photos, amazing, absolutely amazing. Tracy thinks the Helicopter flight has been the highlight of NZ by a country mile and quite possibly of her whole trip thus far, big statement I think, I might agree on the NZ bit, but the Great Wall trek I thought was amazing too. Anyway the point being the helicopter flight was amazing, anyone if you ever come here, do a hike on the glacier but don't do a helihike, do a helicopter flight instead, you see far more and the cost of the hike and the flight together is the same as the helihike alone.
Feeling extremely satisfied with our helicopter flight, we headed off towards Lake Wanaka, stopping briefly at the Fox glacier to walk up to the terminal face. The trip to Lake Wanaka from the glaciers took 3-4 hours I think, but the drive was great, some fantastic scenery to
look at and for much of the time it seemed like I was the only one on the road. The further inland we kept moving to Lake Wanaka the more the cloud disappeared till all we had was blue sky and nothing else, beautiful.
Lake Wanaka The freshwater lakes of Wanaka and Hawae are huge, I mean enormous, with the town of Wanaka sitting right on the lake giving it a very picturesque setting. The town is nice but small, it seemed bigger than Greymouth right enough, but its quality is in that I thought it looked clean and quite classy, especially being by the lake and not that busy at least when we were there. The town has recently started competing with Queenstown on the adrenaline activities front by also offering skydives, kayaking and jet boats to name but a few things. We didn't really fancy any of that especially as we had already spent a fortune on helicopter flights at the glaciers, skydive in Taupo and hang-gliding in Motueka already, so we stayed the night and just enjoyed the views and scenery at Wanaka.
We had toyed with the idea of doing some hiking the
next day around Wanaka but having recently hiked on the glacier, we felt we had done enough walking already, basically we were feeling lazy, so we decided to wave goodbye to Wanaka and go see what all the fuss was about at the town one hour south of it, namely Queenstown.
On route to Queenstown we stopped at a little town called Arrowtown, whilst not much there it was very pretty, it looked like something out of a western movie set with the way all the buildings looked, shame about all the cars then. It did have a small festival on as well, which gave it quite a community feel and we had considered staying the night, but with Queenstown less than 30km away we just couldn't do it, so on we went.
Queenstown Queenstown is some place, the drive in from Wanaka (via Arrowtown) is quite amazing as you are literally at the top of a mountain and you drive to the bottom of it where Queenstown is. So the view coming in to Queenstown is quite something. As for the town itself, well it's pretty touristy and very popular with the younger generation, with quite
a lot of shops and bars. The town is all about the adrenaline filled activities and of course this is where bungy jumping was founded with the AJ Hackett company. They are still the only company there offering bungy jumps at 42 meters and 134 meters but you can do all manor of other things now with numerous other companies such as Canyon swings 250+ meters, jet boat rides, white water rafting, white water body-surfing, the list just goes on and on. Plus it doubles as a ski resort town in winter. We stood on the main street (Shotover Street) watching all the people milling around considering whether or not to do a bungy or canyon swing ourselves when some kids were talking about doing it, one saying “There is no point doing one jump at $200 odd when the next one only costs $30, so I am gonna do three” and off he went to pay for it, amazing the lack of fear in the young. Tracy couldn't do a bungy as she had her eyes lasered a few years ago but wanted to do the canyon swing, it really didn't float my boat, at least that's my story
and I am sticking to it, plus its damn expensive and she wouldn't do it without me so in the end we didn't do anything other than walk around town centre and take in a few bars.
Deciding not to do anything in Queenstown we realised there is little point staying so we decided to get out and get on it with Milford Sound being the next stop, so on the morning of April 23rd we left and off we went. I do feel we didn't make the most of Queenstown and wonder if I will regret not doing a bungy jump or something like that, but it really is damn expensive and you can't do everything, otherwise you would be broke, plus I did a skydive a few weeks ago which if you haven't done it, I can tell you I think it is a pretty fine adrenaline rush. Anyway as I say it was Milford Sound next and that is where I will end this second chapter of the blog for Tracy to bring us the third and final chapter of our NZ travels next time.
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Kirsten
non-member comment
A-W-E-S-O-M-E
This sounds great! Better than Australia?!??