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The Chasm
Amazing how the water has eroded the rockSo we left Queenstown on a very dreary looking day (Friday April 23rd) to head for Milford Sound where we hoped the weather was better so we could actually see it. Actually a big fiord (as opposed to a sound, don't ask me the difference), Milford Sound is one of NZ's biggest attractions, however most visitors would obviously be there in the peak summer season. It was actually relatively quiet on the drive up. We stopped at the Te Anau information centre to check on the latest weather reports which wasn't good at all, predicting very heavy downfalls starting on Sunday, so we decided we'd better get up there and out again before that (we were originally thinking we may spend a few days in the fiordland, going to Doubtful Sound as well, lucky we didn't, more on that later). The drive up to Milford Sound was quite spectacular, even in the mist that covered most of the mountains. When it rains in the area (which is does a lot, an average of 7m a year, which is a lot of rain) there are loads of waterfalls that sprout up, cascading down the sides of the huge cliffs.
I was sulking a little on the drive (don't say anything to Patrick) as I'd read a lot about how majestic Milford Sound was, so I was hoping to see it in all it's glory in the sun but I guess with the average rainfall that wasn't going to be anyway. Having grand ideas to do lots of walks from the 120km drive from Te Anau to Milford, given the weather all we did was stop off to see 'The Chasm' which was actually quite a cool site. Basically this was a really powerful waterfall (but not that big) that had rushed through the narrow gorge so strongly that it had hollowed out the rocks on both sides. Quite amazing what water can do.
Then as we drove up to Milford Sound, the clouds cracked open and let the sun through so we could get a glimpse of Mitre Peak, standing at 1692m it is supposedly one of the highest (or highest, can't remember) peak climbing directly from water. I hoped that was a good omen for our next morning when we were going to take a cruise on the sound itself (as we heard it was much quieter
Milford Sound
The little dot on the water is a 100 passenger boat early morning than later when all the tour buses come in). We went to the only campsite in the area for the night, which was actually really nice with a huge communal lounge but unfortunately very small kitchen.
The next morning we got up early to more mist and rain and although you could just about see Mitre Peak I don't think we would have bothered if we hadn't got a 2 for 1 voucher from Jucy for the cruise. But on it we went and it was probably worth seeing, even through the rain and mist. The most impressive thing was probably all the waterfalls falling off the cliffs. I'm afraid I've now seen so many amazing sights on our travels that I might be numb to how amazing things are now, but I really didn't feel as much in awe of Milford as all the guidebooks and people say.
Southlands So unfortunately because of the weather I had to leave the Fiordlands with that thought. So bypassing Manapouri, the jump off for Doubtful Sound, we headed for the Southland, the Southern area of the South Island of NZ (obviously). We were going to stop at
a few different campsites along the Southern Scenic Route towards Invercargill, but they were all so quiet, so only really stopped for a quick photo next to the big surf dude in Colac (beats some of the 'big' things we saw in Australia that they are so famous for (e.g. banana, guitar), and went onto find a central campsite in Invercargill.....which wasn't there anymore.....so ended up in a quite dreary campsite a few miles from town (although town looked pretty dreary anyway). I just asked Patrick there what the drive was like on the way to Invercargill, who then reminded me I was sleeping for most of it! First and last time actually I did that, was the early morning!
The Catlins.....nearly Leaving Invercargill on April 25 we headed further on the southern scenic route towards the southern most point of NZ but after a few miles being blown from side to side by the winds that had picked up a bit, Patrick made an executive decision to stay on the road and headed inland straight to Dunedin instead. All we were missing was a photo op at this most southern point, but also some penguin spotting, although
I knew there was some in Dunedin anyway.
Dunedin So we arrived at Dunedin Holiday Park where it was still quite windy and walked over the sand dunes onto quite a nice beach at St Kilda, and walked down to St Clair to have a few drinks overlooking the beach and surfers. This was Anzac Day, the memorial mainly for the landings at Gallipoli in 1916, but now for all wars (our equivalent of our Memorial day), but we didn't actually see any of the proceedings for it so it bypassed us completely (no disrespect to the forces there).
The next day we signed up for a wildlife tour on the Otago Peninsula, however again it was a little drizzly but apparently all the better for the animals we were going to see. The Big 4 (not being quite so impressive though as the Big 5 on safari) were albatross, yellow eyed penguins (really the whole point of the tour in my mind), sea lions and seals. Well we did see them all, starting with a trip to the albatross centre which Patrick wasn't really very impressed with given we spent about an hour looking at a
bird, essentially just a big sea gull really! You couldn't really visualise the size of these things from the look out point, but one did fly past the window and you could then see how big they were. They do stand about 1.2m tall, and have a wing span of something like 3m (as Patrick demonstrates in the photo it is quite big). Anyway, onto the more interesting stuff, we went onto some private land, and walked down a big hill (damn we'd have to walk back up that thing) to see some seals on the rocks. Quite a load of them playing around although again after the number we've seen it all gets a bit dull. But then we walked over the other side of the hill just in time to see a couple of yellow eyed penguins (the hoiho) walking up the beach to its nest. These are one of the world's rarest penguins and quite a bit bigger than the little blue ones we'd seen in Australia, and obviously I found oh so cool. We watched as the two waddled up to a nest on the hill, straight to another penguin that was already waiting there. Apparently
this would be one of the first penguin's mate and therefore just been caught red handed trying to sneak another penguin back to his quarters. Quite funny to see them having a little squawking argument before the third wheel was waddled back down the hill.
On the beach there were some quite big sea lions although most were still sleeping, only waking up in the evenings to go catch food. Some did wake up a little having a few yawns and playing with each other and it was quite amazing how close we were allowed to get. Further down the beach we went into a hide where we could see more of the yellow eyed penguins by their nests, really close as well. All in all with a slow start looking at big birds we had quite a good day.
By this point we heard about all the heavy rains that had hit the Milford Sound and South coast area, flooding roads and essentially blocking the way in to Milford Sound. Some hikers also had to be airlifted off the Milford Track, the famous 4 day hike which you have to book about a year in advance for.
Bummer for them. Good that we decided to get out of that area!
The next day (now April 27, Tuesday) we thought we'd better actually go see the town we were staying in and headed to Dunedin town centre expecting to spend a few hours there before we headed off up the coast. Well there wasn't much to the town although it's got some pretty good looking buildings including the Edwardian railway station (now over 100 years old) which is possibly one of the grandest railway station I've seen, rivaling St Pancras in London. So having done the town in about 30 minutes we looked for something else to do (deciding over a coffee in an actual cafe which is normally out of our budget!) and decided to try out the tour at the Cadbury's factory here. Well unfortunately there wasn't much processing going on in the factory but to make up for it they were giving out more free chocolate than usual, which is never a bad thing. Unfortunately most of it seemed to involve some sort of marshmallow, which obviously isn't chocolate at all and only really belongs on the end of a stick in a fire,
so most of that stuff went straight in the bin once we'd tried it! The tour was ok but no where near as big a place as Cadbury's world in England and no big discounts on chocolate like there are there either. We did however leave with lots of free chocolate and bought some more bars which we're still eating 10 days later!
Moeraki and Oamaru So we left Dunedin and headed up north along the coast towards Oamaru passing by Moeraki on the way to see the Moeraki boulders. It wasn't the greatest weather to go see, essentially, some big rocks on the beach but see them we must apparently. They were quite weird though, these big boulders of rocks just sitting there. They've been formed over millions of years by erosion of the rock from the cliffs. The smaller ones have been taken away from tourists over the years (as in the 19th century rather than recently) so only the bigger ones, which are about 1-2m high, are left there.
It was dark by the time we got to Oamaru but we could still see there was some amazingly imposing looking limestone buildings in the
Post offices in Oamaru
The first in the foreground, and newer one in the back old district which we planned on seeing the next day. So we settled up in the campsite and went out for some drinks after dinner in some very very quiet bars. Not much going on here then.
So the next day we strolled around Oamaru in the morning. Oamaru was made rich by firstly the gold rush, then the production and transportation of wool and grain, such that the town built lots of big limestone buildings during the 19th century. The buildings were pretty impressive and probably the best looking town, in terms of preservation of historical buildings, that we'd seen in NZ (which is sadly lacking in historical buildings in most of it's main towns). It was a shame though that the town was so quiet, it's not really on the main tourist trail so I felt a bit sorry for some of the shops in the old district, so I helped out by buying some hand made tiles. They did have penguins on them of course as Oamaru also has a penguin colony which we didn't visit as firstly we had seen these penguins before (little blue), and Patrick can only take so much penguin watching, and
Elephant Rocks
I made Patrick be an elephant so there was at least one in the picture! secondly the brochure advertised that their viewing platform could seat 350 people, which didn't appeal to me at all!
Lake Tekapo With quite a few days left to go as we'd left the south to get out of the weather, we decided to go inland a little before we ended up in Christchurch. We'd also read that we could do some star gazing at the observatory at Lake Tekapo so we booked that for that night. On the way I thought we'd stop in at some sights listed in the Lonely Planet. I will say that not all the sights in the Lonely Planet are worth actually seeing. We started with some Maori rock drawings which I have to say were not that impressive, actually not even remotely, which is more probably the fault of tourists in the past that have vandalized the walls, but anyway, don't bother with that one. And the second sight was the Elephant Rocks, hailed by the Lonely Planet as “sculpted by wind, rain and rivers these giant limestone boulders lie about like slumbering mutant monsters (or if you squint, a bit like elephants)”. Uh no. If I squinted any more I'd have
my eyes shut. Funny how if you give some big rocks a name you'll get some suckers to come see them! So 10km detour done we were back on the road to Lake Tekapo.
The weather hadn't improved much from the day before and actually had got very very windy so Patrick had a bit of a hairy drive to the town, although the sky cleared up as we got closer so we were hopeful for the star gazing. The town itself is obviously on Lake Tekapo which was also quite picturesque being a bright blue, though there wasn't much to it, just one row of bars and restaurants and a pretty little church.
So we were quite looking forward to the star gazing but as we were cooking dinner it started to cloud over and unfortunately the tour was canceled (well apparently for $70 ($10 less than the originally tour price) we could have gone up to the observatory and watched a dvd?!). Bit disappointing given we'd driven 170km off the main route to Christchurch to get here.
We considered staying another day to try for the star gazing again but the next morning we awoke
to a blanket of cloud so decided not to bother and headed for Christchurch instead.
Christchurch So on April 29, with 5 days to go in NZ, we arrived in Christchurch. A little earlier than we had planned but Patrick was fed up with driving and wanted to drink beer instead so we found a great place to park the van right in the centre of Christchurch and settled in for remaining time. In the 5 days we didn't really do a lot but wander around town a little, though we caught up on our film watching, going to see Hurt Locker (pretty good) and Iron Man 2 (not as good as the first one). I also went to a Christchurch Symphony Orchestra concert in the lovely Christchurch cathedral which was fantastic. Those of you that aren't interested in classical music can zone out for a couple of sentences, but they played a few pieces of Gabrieli (16th century) that were originally composed for Saint Mark's in Venice played by different groups of musicians based in different alcoves of the church. Well I'm waffling now, but it was very good. There were also some lovely old (well relatively
old for NZ) buildings here and a peaceful botanic garden (which I had a stroll around while Patrick was in the pub!).
We did move the van once to go on a little drive along Summit Road, which was the name would imply is high up on the hills surrounding Christchurch, to the lovely seaside suburb of Sumner. This is apparently where a lot of English expats now live.
The bar scene here was quite good, with lots of different areas having been done up with cool bars so Patrick got his fill (I think) of the beer drinking.
Overall Christchurch was quite a nice city, probably my favourite out of all the NZ cities but that might be because we spent more time here of course.
The end of the campervan road So we say farewell to the campervan and NZ, and onwards to South America and back to the hostels. NZ was fantastic. Some amazing scenery and we've done lots of activities (and spent lots of money!). The highlights for me were the glaciers, and of course seeing penguins, and I've actually quite enjoyed traveling around in the campervan. If the weather had
been warmer we probably wouldn't leave, and 5 weeks was no where near enough so I'm sure we'll be back!
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