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Published: March 31st 2006
After leaving the sun and warmth of the Coramandel I arrived at Christchurch airport and immediately started pulling out the jumpers!! I met up with Helen who, having arrived on an earlier flight from Welly, was slowly loosing the will to live.... apparently 3 hours at Christchurch airport is a bit too long! We eventually got our Ezy hire car.. not so easy as the company name would have you believe... and finally hit the road down to Dunedin, which was where we planned to spend the first night. The drive down wasn't particularly interesting scenery (think flat farmland) but we had some nice stops at Timaru, Omaru and the the Moeraki Boulders where Hels and I suprised ourselves at just how many photo's you could take of rocks! To be fair they were pretty impressive rocks.... formed some 60 or so million years ago these boulders have emerged from the cliff as sea erosion of the cliff face gradually exposes them. They are almost perfectly round, but were formed that way rather than being eroded into shape by the action of the sea.
As a school trip arrived we took it as a sign to leave and continued down
to Dunedin, stopping to look at some New Zealand fur seals on the way. Being a Saturday night we thought we'd see what Dunedin night life was like... and I met a lovely farmer from Middlemarch, who had a farm with some 25000 sheep.... sounded a lot to me but Helen didn't seem to think I was farmers wife material so we moved on ;o( On the Sunday we tested the shopping in Dunedin and then drove out to the Otago Peninsula for some wildlife spotting. Whilst we didn't see any albatross (not windy enough for them to fly) or penguins (too early in the day and the wrong season) we saw a huge Hooker sea lion and lots of birdlife... oystercatchers, a spoonbilll and so many more that we soon exhausted our ornithology knoweldge!
We spent the next two days driving down through the Catlins. For me the first day was the best - sunny and a lovely coastal drive past km after km of empty beaches. We had a couple of stops along the way, notably Nugget Point where we saw lots more seals and got to see some hundreds of birds flying in a V formation
low of the water... well I thought it was impressive! We'd met some girls in the hostel at Dunedin that had seen Orca's when they visited, but unfortunately we weren't so lucky. We drove on to Surat Bay where we were almost falling over Sea Lions there were so many. I was suprised how large they were, much bigger than the seals we'd seen, and I really wouldn't want to get in the way of one!
We'd had grand plans of camping overnight in the Catlins... Helen had bought her saucepans and we'd borrowed Megans tent especially..... as the day wore on though the rather grey sky, cold weather and the thought of sitting in a cosy hostel with a glass of red vino and watching Desperate Housewives was just too persuasive!!
Our second day in the Catlins greeted us with rain - that combined with a landscape of green hills and sheep kind of reminded me of Wales. Anyway it was perfect weather for stopping at the pretty McLeans waterfall. We moved from there on to a place called Niagara Falls for coffee.... think small stream rather than any resemblance to its north American namesake. Next stop
was Curio Bay, famous as being one of the worlds best fossil forests at some 150million odd years old. It was here that we also got to see a yellow eyed penguin. It was completely unexpected as it was lunchtime and we'd been told that you typically tend to see them at dusk. But he happily sat there at the base of the cliff preening himself and completely ignoring the fuss that he caused amoungst those around him! We tried to spot Hectors Dolphins at Porpoise Bay but whilst they had apparently been seen earlier in the morning they'd now decided to go elsewhere. So we continued south to Slope Point, the southern most point in the south island, and then to Waipapa Point, the scene of New Zealands worst shipping disaster in 1881 when 131 died following a shipwreck.
We'd opted to take the ferry from Invercargill over to Stewart Island rather than fly and on the way out we had a perfect journey... the rock and roll journey back however convinced me that I'd take the plane if I ever come again! Unfortunately because we just had a week away we only got to spend one night
here, but I think it's somewhere I would come back to. We stayed in the main town of Oban (in this part of NZ everywhere seems to either have a scottish name or at least a scottish street name... north is more english with an oxford, cambridge and brighton to name but a few) and did a number of short day walks from there... including the Ryan Creek loop which saw us squelching our way through oodles of mud - by the time we got to the muddy part we were half way round so decided to keep going rather than turn back... and fortunately made it to the end cleanly and with no lost footwear despite Helens best attempt at a fall! For our one night there we ventured down to the local pub for a few beers..... with a population of just over 600 on the whole island there is just the one pub.... and caused some entertainment with the locals... we met the DOC guy, the garage owner, the young tearaway who'd written off his car and run up 1000's of debt, the new bar maid they were all scared off.....
After leaving Stewart Island it
was back to Invercargill and then to Queenstown. We stopped in Glenorchy for lunch and the drive there was beautiful. In the evening we met up with Sam who is living in Queenstown and she took us out for a night on the town after dinner, a few drinks and some hilarious darts drinking games and shooting of paintball guns at her house!
Finally it was back to Christchurch and then Welly for my last few days in NZ, some last minute shopping and of course a few more leaving do's! On our first night back we had a girlie trip to the ballet and then everyone got together for a few beers and a curry on the second night..... drinking on a Monday night is a bad idea even when you don't have work the next morning! Finally on my last night I got back to Megans, where I was staying, to be handed a cup of tea by Ails and then be cooked dinner by Hels and Ails whilst I got on with stressing about accomodation, money and packing!!! Thanks for a great last night guys - the best one I could have had.
I'm in
The view from Nugget Point..
alas no Orca's but lots of seals on the rocksSingapore now... shopping heaven! M&S, Top Shop, Warehouse, French Connection, Espirt.... except all I can see is Megan inspecting my packing on my last night in Welly and telling me I really didn't need all the Tshirts I was planning on taking.... And she did such a good job that I only had 14.5kg in my bag out here... so maybe I can treat myself now??? ;0) Anyway it's hot here and about to rain again so I'm off to try and squeeze in a swim in the rooftop pool before it starts. Tomorrow I'm up early and off to Borneo to meet Sam and Katie for a wee jungle adventure!
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