New Zealand - South Island - The Western Half

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Nelson

From Picton (which for us was in the eastern half of the mainland),we drive to Nelson. It’s been described to us as an interesting town & it’s close enough to the Abel Tasman National Park which we have been recommended to see by various Kiwis we‘ve met on our travels - not least Paul & Karolina who we met in Nepal & who we hope to see again in Wellington the capital. We stay at the Accents on the Park hostel, Trafalgar Square @ $79 per night. It’s a beautiful old NZ house similar in style to the Queenslander wooden houses in Oz. This is big & charming. Royce the guy in charge is very helpful. Only complaint is that they advertise free Wi Fi - what they actually give you is ½ an hour Wi Fi access per day free & the rest you pay for. We also have to pay $3 per day parking which they don’t mention in the adverts or tell you about when you book.

As it’s a Friday, we are in town for the Twilight Art Market - with a live Jazz band in the main square at the top of the main street - just below the modern cathedral (C of E) on a small hill. The atmosphere is great as the sun shines & other than a dozen stalls with various arts & crafts, there are a lots of folks eating and drinking al fresco and generally having a fab time - who said anything about a global downturn or recession!!. The town centre is very colourful helped by hanging baskets outside the stores all down the street full of flowers of various colours & varieties. There are some amazing buildings in Art Deco style also brightly coloured which add to the feel of the place.

We end up - on good local advice - by the Waterfront (a short drive away) for the sunset & a Fish & Chip supper on the Board Walk with an Alan Scott Pinot. The Haven is the main chippy in town & when we arrive it’s full of waiting customers - we end up waiting 45 mins which is no sweat as the evening sunset (at about 9 pm) is glorious as is the food when it finally arrives. Next day we decide to do our own thing with a fish & scallop medley with kumara - it’s what they call a sweet potato and it‘s really popular in NZ.

The local visitor centre is a mine full of information & they book us onto the water taxi trip so we can hike what’s considered to be the best bit in Abel Tasman National Park.

Abel Tasman National Park

We have a 7.15 am drive to Marahau which is 1 ½ hours away to catch the water taxi to Bark Bay. The road winds up and down hills and around mountains yet we pass quite a few folks on bikes. NZ folk seem to be into serious cycling - we are not talking Amsterdam on a bike - this is the tour de NZ all the way - hills, mountains - you name it - this is their holiday!!! We also take the Dehra Dun Road on the way there - strange place for a name like this - it’s Indian init!! We get to the starting point & after a lovely coffee, set off for the day.

The Water Taxi trip which takes about an hour is quit entertaining & informative about the area & it’s history. The walk from Bark bay to Torrents Bay is about 7kms tracking the coastline and giving great views on to the bays below. The track goes through rainforest: huge ferns, palm trees, lichen covered trees. It’s warm and sunny though clouds are moving in. We find a lookout over the Bay which is the perfect spot for our picnic lunch with awesome views - the tide is coming in so the beach transforms before us. Lunch is accompanied by a Mud House Pinot from Central Otago which is excellent. Then it‘s the final 4kms on to Anchorage - we have to go the long way around and the rain sets in before we get to Anchorage beach - our pick up point for the water taxi back to Marahau - but at least it‘s warm. As the wind has picked up we have a very choppy ride back but it’s been a good walk.

Punakaiki & Hokitika on the famous west coast

It’s M’s birthday! So after breakfast & the customary opening of cards from the girls, emails (e - cards) & texts from friends, the drive to Punakaiki on the Tasman Sea coast, is on. It starts off well in Nelson with the sun shining but after an hour or so the weather closes in & the rain comes down - they do say you can get all four seasons in one day here - how true. The drive is through some lovely countryside & hills which means plenty of winding roads & slow progress. We eventually stop off at Punakaiki for lunch at the local tavern - a pie & a good burger washed down with a Monteith beer - nice & cold - similar to an ale in the UK. The Kiwi thing seems to be to serve all food with tomato sauce, however if you want vinegar with your chips you could be charged extra. Lemons wedges though come free. Strange habits. We are really glad we changed our minds about staying here over night. The town is about 100m long if that & doesn’t really have much to commend it. However, it has the famous Pancake bore holes - which sounds more mysterious than they are. Essentially the rock structure is sections of eroded rock layered 2 inches thick on top of each other - hence Pancakes. Over time the sea has created huge caves & holes in the rocks and at high tide the waves causes the water to gush up at great speed - hence the bore hole. All this can be seen off a path alongside the rocks - which takes 20 mins to get around. Highlights done & dusted - but no T shirt!!!

The vegetation in the area is tropical & different from what we have seen thus far, with the unusual Nikau Palms all over the place, interspersed with huge fern leaves (we can now understand why the Fern leaf is the national symbol of NZ) & rhododendrons etc growing wild on the road side & on some of the Hills. We pass “Penguins crossing signs” which are new for us! After a less winding drive we get to Hokitika & the sun comes out. Hokitika is quite a large town, famous for shops selling ponouma (jade) and bone carvings & paua - a large oyster like shell that they polish to give a beautiful iridescent finish. The paua meat is a bit like abalone apparently. The seashore looks very wild with pounding waves and lots of driftwood left on the shore. It’s a photographer’s paradise - with the right weather.

We book into the Birdsong hostel and get the only room with a view to the sea and a private balcony! Happy Birthday M. It’s beautiful & instead of our initial plan of sitting by the sea with wine & fish & chips - we are now going to sit on our own balcony on the first floor & enjoy the view & roaring sound of the sea across the road.

Neil, the hostel owner from Cheshire, recommends we visit the Woodstock public house, The Royal Mail Hotel, which we do. It has a full house with live music (largely Country music) provided by a string of different local folks - it didn’t feel like NZ - more like Nashville with a Kiwi accent. Folks playing banjos, harmonicas, accordions, drums etc dressed in their country finery. The food menu was interesting so we got a “Drunken Wild Boar” meal to take out to have with our fish & chips - washed down with a fine Pinot courtesy of Alan Scott Wineries. We try paua & whitebait patties though neither really impresses; can’t taste the whitebait and the paua is gritty and non descript - fish was good as usual though and served in news paper - a long lost custom in the UK..

We webcam with Romi & John to wish M happy birthday - though our cam isn’t working so they can’t see us, but the girls don’t have the webcam with them so we exchange texts.

As it rains next day we spend the morning catching up with emails & booking the flight to the Cook Island & the car from Wellington etc. Then as we are about to leave the sun appears glorious & hot so we nip into town to pick up some Jade & Paua souvenirs. After some pies for lunch & shopping for a picnic lunch at New World for our trek on Fox Glacier tomorrow, we head off on the 2 hour drive to Franz Josef.

Franz Josef

Franz Josef is a small town, largely a base for hikers to walk the FJ Glacier which is clear blue crystallised ice down the valley - one can see it from a distance & it looks out of place among the green Alpine & Rain Forest covered hills. We are staying at the Glow Worm Cottages in the centre of town @ $55 for a double with shared facilities. It’s pretty good with BBQ & free hot pool (about 85 degrees). The sun has come out here as well & is hot hot hot!!

We had planned to do a ½ day glacier walk here but folks seemed to think we were mad doing this & Fox, so we decide just to go for Fox. However on the next day having done Fox we feel we just have to go & see the FJ Glacier too so do the 1 hour walk from the car park to the viewing point of the terminal glacier. Given the unfortunate deaths of a couple of young lads recently (at Fox) who ignored the warning signs no to go beyond the barrier we go no further but can see that it is a much steeper ascent than Fox - so good call us! We are glad we made the trip & we did get some pics as well.

Fox Glacier

We had already booked the day long walk for the Fox Glacier, which is about 30mins drive from Franz Josef while we were in Hokitika - thanks to Neil. We arrive well in time (only forgetting our YHA cards - so no discount). The groups assemble at the boot room to be kitted out with the right gear, thankfully it’s a good sunny day & rain isn’t expected. We have to have special boots to take the crampons for walking on the Glacier which is a short drive out of town. Fox township is small compared to FJ - only 250 inhabitants. The trip is with aptly named Fox Glacier Guides. FG is pretty impressive as we approach it on the river bed. The blue ice is clearly visible & the size of the glacier is enormous.

We are guided through rainforest (a unique feature of NZ is the rainforest co-existing with the glaciers) up 800 steps & put on crampons to go on the ice. It’s surprisingly easy & Jonathon our guide is pretty informative. The Maori legend about how the 2 Glaciers formed tells of a young man who lived in Fox village & was a good mountaineer who travelled the hills a lot. He met & fell in love with a young ice princess. However, one day he slipped & fell & was killed. She was so sad that the tears from her left eye created FG & those from her right FJ G (they are close to each other & are only separated by a hilly range). The walk takes us quite close to the top. We see some amazing blue crevasses & a hole that C has a go at getting into - just for the photo opp. M thinks it’s madness as it just about gets a human in crouched over. It’s a really good trip which we would recommend to anyone.

For dinner we do a mix of pizza take out and home cooking - roast lamb pizza is delish! And then collapse. All this fresh air…

Before we set off the next day we have breakfast by chance with an elderly US couple from Vermont who are spending their stimulus cheque from the government travelling NZ - as a protest. So much for reinvestment in the country?!. However, they have been up early to watch the inauguration ceremony & history in the making. The first black president of the US. We should have watched ….. We get off reasonably early for the drive to Wanaka, and out of the kitchen window get terrific views of another area of snow and glacier. The cloud cover had hidden it yesterday.

Wanaka

The route goes back down the road to Fox but this time we go to Lake Matheson - formed by a lump of dead ice from the glaciers at the last ice age - and which, on clear days, give spectacular views and reflections of Mt Cook. The weather is pretty good but unfortunately not at Cook so we don’t get the view of the summit - though we do have a lovely rainforest walk and some lovely reflection pics around the lake. Best of all though is the café at the car park! It’s pretty new and has an amazing design with full glass frontage and a mix of seating and internet stations - and excellent coffee. Gives us great ideas for the design of a new business venture!

The drive to Haast is, as usual, wonderfully scenic - going inland then on to the coast and all the way waterfalls, rivers and sea and all of the greatest clarity and blueness. The roads are lined with shrubs, ferns, palms, rhododendrons’ and agapanthus’ and in places look like well manicured gardens! We stop at Haast township for fuel (we’ve learned form Penni to fill up whenever we can as it can be many miles between petrol stations - and the more remote, the higher the cost it appears) and lunch - snapper and chips and a whitebait fritter sandwich (the local delicacy); the whitebait is much better this way - you get more of the delicate flavour (NB whitebait here is nothing like the stuff we get in the UK - more like very baby eels?).

The journey from Haast Township sees us pass hordes of run over possums (apparently brought here illegally & are overrunning the country & being a nuisance - as rabbits are in Oz) & it’s raining once again (they do say the west coast is wet & rugged - right first time!). We go through the Haast pass then through the Mountain Aspiring NP with some awesome views of the hills & valleys covered in low mist & a pristine blue river flowing through the landscape. Sadly there is hardly any opportunity to take a picture as the roads are narrow & winding with no lookout or quick stop spot. We’ll just have to remember them. C (who’s writing this) can’t quite get over the stunningness of the scenery (suggestions for an alternative to “stunning” greatly appreciated - M is teasing me relentlessly for over-useage!). One can make out in the distance the snow covered peaks of the Mount Aspiring range - fabulous. We are soon travelling along side Lake Hawea & then Lake Wanaka before we hit the main town.

Wanaka is a lovely town on the edge of the lake with a back drop of dramatic hills (not unlike the Brecon Beacons) on one side and rolling hills on the other. It has an attractive main street, quite a few boats on the lake and is the place we had planned to do a skydive. However, the winds are gusting too much so we enjoy the sights instead. It has to be said - considering this is summer, it ain’t that hot! The wind really cools things down. We do, though, book white water rafting for Queenstown - I mean when it’s cold and windy why wouldn’t you go out on a rubber boat in freezing cold water!!

Holly’s backpackers isn’t one of the best we’ve stayed in (we’ve been using the BBH Backpackers Hostel guide for booking places as it includes ratings for each hostel which up till now we’ve found very reliable). However, it’s fine for a night. We try a local brewery ale, Cardrona, from Kai Whaka Pai (Food made Good in Maori) - a local bar which plays good tunes. Music on the radios & in café bars is largely middle of the road stuff - the Beatles a lot & other 70s to 90s bands. Then back to Holly’s where M does a nice fish dinner.

Next day, the sun has come out and the place is transformed! Kids are swimming in the lake, and we wander around town discovering lots of nice looking eateries. They‘re quite creative with their business names - Wanna Take Away or Wana Cab. It would have been nice to stay here longer. Wanaka is much less touristy than Queenstown and seems to be “shy” of promoting itself against it’s flashy neighbour. C picks up yet another property sales paper!!

Queenstown

We get to Queenstown mid morning & the weather is still glorious & hot. We
book into the YHA on the Lakeside & have & have a great room with a view & balcony over the lake - not bad for $76. Lunch is a hurried fish (Rig & Perch) & chips at Aggy‘s Shack - then off to a White water rafting trip with Queenstown Rafting on the Shotover river. We go to Arthurs Point the starting point via a narrow track alongside the mountains which has steep drops on one side and certainly seems narrower in places than the minibus and boats we’re pulling behind! Jasmine, our pink haired driver does a sterling job though. The guides seems to take a special delight in taking the piss out of the Aussie’s - we‘re told it‘s an inferiority complex reaction to their bigger neighbour. Very amusing.

The rafting is superb despite the sandflies (which prefer M over C - makes a nice change for her). Nolan, our guide, from Memphis (?!) is great and we avoid any tips or spills - though one of the other rafts isn’t so lucky. We go down various rapids with names such as the Tunnel (a stone cut tunnel which is great), Toilet and Oh Shit! And get thoroughly soaked in the final dip but it’s been great - and the scenery was stunning when you weren’t paddling for your life.

Dinner is at Fergburgers - a sort of Gourmet burger kitchen. It was packed - they have definitely got the recipe for success. We had a lamb & a venison burger with fries dipped in Wasabi Mayonnaise & fried calamari. After taking in the town by night it’s off to our fancy abode overlooking the lake. M is tired so misses the only clear night we have had so C is left to admire the southern stars - though they fall short of what we saw in the Oz out back 10 years ago because of the light pollution in the area. So next morning it’s off to Lake Tekapo as the weather is good hoping we’d see Mount Cook …………. Time will tell.

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