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Published: April 27th 2013
Dunedin, Catlins, Te Anau, Queenstown, West Coast, Arthur’s Pass, Picton
This week, I turned tour guide and took my dad to some of the highlights from my time on the South Island. First we headed to Dunedin and the Otago Peninsula, where we saw Albatrosses and seals but no penguins this time. In the evening we shared a large seafood platter at a restaurant on the Octogan. Next, we headed down to the Catlins, calling at the picturesque Nugget Point on the southeastern corner. We stayed at Curio Bay, the location of my first penguin sighting and weren't disappointed, as we saw several yellow-eyed penguins waddling around on the petrified forest and playing in the water.
The next day, we carried on to Te Anau and booked on the Doubtful Sound tour for the next day, which would give me the opportunity for comparison with Milford Sound and my dad his first experience of a New Zealand fjord. The journey to Doubtful Sound required a trip boat across Lake Te Anau, followed by a coach journey, which stopped off at the Manapouri hydro-electric power station on the way. This is New Zealand’s largest hydro station, with a capacity of
850 megawatts. Having left a fine Te Anau at sunrise, we found Doubtful sound shrouded in low cloud, which made for a more atmospheric experience than the Milford Sound trip. This was added to by the remoteness, as there were very few other boats on the fjord. Bumping into people I had met previously was becoming a common experience, as we were joined on the cruise by Hélène from Belgium, who was in the same dorm as me in Dunedin. In the evening, my dad took us to the Redcliff restaurant, which had been a favourite of the cast of The Hobbit when they were filming in the area - it is to see why, as the tasty, hearty food was just the thing hobbits enjoy.
The next day, we travelled to Queenstown, giving Hélène a lift. The scenery made it hard to focus on the road and the gondola to the mountain cafe, where we had lunch the following day, was a real highlight, as the pictures hopefully convey. In the evening of our day of arrival, my dad and I did our best to subvert the Good Friday drinking laws, which only allow drinks to be consumed
with a meal (a rare quiet night in Queenstown). We managed four pints.
We continued our journey north from Queenstown, passing through Wanaka and making it as far as windswept Haast on the West Coast. The weather deteriorated the next day, as we supposedly drove past the Fox and Franz-Josef glaciers in low cloud and driving rain (hence the lack of pictures). We stopped for our final night in the campervan, which now felt like an old friend, at Jackson's Retreat on Route 73.
The next day, the weather cleared and we continued down Route 73 (in the opposite direction to
last time) towards Christchurch. I didn't remember the scenery being so outstanding and I would have stopped for more pictures had we not needed to get back to the depot. We exchanged the campervan for a car and had to call on the reserve driver (my dad) to get us up to Picton on a day in which we covered over 300 miles. We stayed a few kilometers from the town at Waikawa Bay, which was a pleasant setting for our evening meal on our last night on the South Island.
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Kate Birch
non-member comment
Atmospheric
These pix look pretty atmospheric Graeme.Seems like NZ is full of not a lot! Do let us know when you meet up with Alice as her communications aren't the best as her phone doesn't work! Enjoy Buenos Aires and Argentina. Love Kate, Keith and Belxx