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Published: November 29th 2006
Abel Tasman
Lovely morning on the beachWe survived the ferry crossing to the South Island and in pouring rain we had to run to our bus. The ferry hadn't been too bad. Just 1/2 hour delay. A couple of days earlier the normally 3 hour journey had taken 9 hours and almost everybody had been throwing up.
As by miracle an hour after we arrived the skies started to clear and by the time we reached Abel Tasman National Park the sun was shining.
Abel Tasman NP
This NP is supposed to be one of the sunniest places in NZ. It was also while we were there. We chose to go for a good long coastal hike. I would take out the first taxi boat in the morning and walk all the way back. Marijke took a later boat to a point down the road and we would meet after a couple of hours. It was a great walk with beautiful views over the sea and bays and nice beaches for a pick nic lunch and some rest. At the end of the day after 15km for Marijke and 22 km for me we were pretty much exhausted and glad the next day would be
mostly driving to the West Coast.
West Coast
From the sunniest part of the country to the most rainy part. On the west Coats they measure rainfall by meters...about 6 meters annually. Great!
The scenery along the coast was amazing again. We got to see a seal colony and also checked out the pancake rocks (Marijke preferred the real pancakes), blowholes and the 'romantic' Truman path before finding a place to sleep in Barrytown. Barrytown is pretty boring old goldminer’s town. However it's close to the beach so we could go look for some jade/green stone. These precious green stones are pretty hard to find. Actually it's believed that the stones find you...and you're not allowed to keep what you found (or bought) you have to give it away for good luck. We got back with a lot of green looking stones...none of them turned out to be anything.
Franz Josef
Franz Josef would be a god forgotten little town along the coast if it hadn't been for that amazing glacier just around the corner. I decided to go on a 3/4 day guided glacier walk and did not regret it. Ever since I visited Switzerland
Bungee
Marijke's xmas present as a kid I have been fascinated with glaciers and now I got to hike up one and look into or crawl through those dangerous 'crevasse' I had heard so much about. This huge glacier is one of the few in the world that still advances. It moves about 1m every day right now. It was amazing to crawl through the tight 'blue ice crevasses and tunnels'.
En route to Queenstown
Apparently the journey from the West Coast to Queenstown is one of the most beautiful in the country. Unfortunately all we got to see was rain, clouds and mist.
We had a short stop on the beach for a last chance to find some green stone and just before heading back to the bus I found a green stone that might be jade. Marijke owns it now and she is trying to find out if it's really jade or not.
One good thing about the rainy weather is that there are huge waterfalls all over the place. We went to see a couple of really impressive examples. I also found out that staring into a whitewater river for 30 seconds and than looking at the trees
gives you a nice 'trip' experience.
As we left the coast behind and went inland the weather became better and we finally got to see some of the great mountains that had surrounded us the last day.
Before cruising to Queenstown (the adrenaline capital of the world) we visited the beautiful town of Wanaka. The whole region provided uncountable LOTR filming locations. In Wanaka we visited the great 'puzzling world' where we had some 'strange experiences'. The whole place is based on optical tricks and mental puzzles. The labyrinth there is not to be underrated... we walked some 4-5 km through an area of about 70x50m.
A final stop before cruising into Queenstown was at Kawarau River Bridge, where we had a look at the original bungee site. I felt it itch to get up there to jump but could restrain myself from doing it... for now.
Queenstown
On arrival in Queenstown Marijke dragged me straight to a hairdresser because she felt ashamed walking the streets with me. We went for a short evening walk and said goodbye to a couple of people (Sofia and Johanna) who we had been traveling with for a while.
The next day I was supposed to go hiking but as we woke up it was raining again and I didn't feel like going into the mountains in such weather. Instead we went to the very informative Kiwi and Birdlife park to check out some of the native (and hard to spot) wildlife. The highlight was definitely the Kiwi birds themselves. These nocturnal animals look like huge furry balls on legs with a long beak. Also very entertaining to watch was the wildlife show they put on with lots of info on these birds and why a lot of them are endangered. Entrance to the park also included a 'Maori cultural performance'. Pretty similar to the other one we saw but this time Marijke was called to the stage to participate. (Actually the previous time we were both called to the stage but she let me go up there alone...nice huh). Anyway she did quite well and I have it on video... After the ladies left the stage, they asked for guys that looked scary, angry and above all...ugly. So I was called to the stage....to perform the 'haka' (a Maori war dance).
Some of you probably know this
West Coast
Spot the seal dance, because it's that thing that the New Zealand rugby team 'The All Blacks' (AB) do before each match to get psyched and to intimidate their opponents. It's something that you shouldn't mess with as the Australian team found out once. The Australian coach had told his team to turn their backs when the 'Haka' was done. The AB's got incredibly angry and totally destroyed the Australian team with a ridiculous score (45-4 or something like that). The Australian coach was fired the next day...
Anyway I got to give this dance a try on stage and managed to be at least 'ugly' (see picture).
Milford Sound
This is supposed to be the highlight of a trip to New Zealand. This Fjord is indeed really beautiful but I thought that the ride through the mountains was at least as good if not better than the actual Fjord. Must say that the weather was bad once again so we might not have been able to see the full 'grandeur' of it all. We saw some seals and penguins and I had some fun telling other tourists that there was a 'Leper seal' (actually it's a leopard seal) and they
Pancake rocks
The real pancake rocks. So called beacuse they look like a pile of pancakes all felt really sorry for the sick animal ; )
The Deep South
Next stop Antarctica... as we cruised through the most southern region of NZ. Marijke went to see a sheep shearing show (not sharing, Kiwi's don't share their sheep) and got back with tears in her eyes. We had already noticed before that Kiwi's are not the most animal friendly people and it turned out that there was quite some swearing and blood involved in shearing a sheep. Luckily she got some consolation from feeding a little baby lamb.
Next stop was Invercargill: "a city with a lot of strange people, like the ones that listen to heavy metal" according to the bus driver. We didn't spot any of these strange creatures on our little safari through town.
The next day we made our way back up along the East Coast through the beautiful 'Catlin' region. We checked out a colony of huge (and lazy) sea lions and the 'Petrified forest'. The latter being a 120 million year old forest that was covered by volcanic activity and is now slowly appearing again through the erosion. Showing some of the biggest fossils in the world.
Pancake rocks
Pancakes the way Marijke likes 'em better Dunedin
A nice Scottish town where we went to the steepest street in the world. I tried running up it but completely died after 3/4 of the way. Driving a car off it seems like a rollercoaster ride.
Another attraction is the beautiful railway station the second most photographed building in the Southern hemisphere (Sydney Opera is nr 1).
The next day Marijke took a tour of the Cadbury chocolate (some of the best non Belgian chocolate I ever ate) factory. I went for a tour of the 'Otago penninsula' and drove/walked through some of the most beautiful scenery I've seen in NZ. Beautiful rolling green hills with little white dots (sheep), dramatic cliffs, gorgeous bays with a deep blue sea in the background. This is where I got to see one of the Albatross birds. They look like giant sea gulls with a wing span of 2m or over.
In the afternoon we made our way back to Queenstown and would be passing the 'bungee bridge' once more. To my big surprise Marijke asked me a 'tandem bungee jump' as an early Xmas present... Even though after 2 earlier jumps (on previous travels) I had
West Coast
A blowhole. The sea has eroded the rocks underneath the surface and from time to time when a huge rock comes in, it will spray water up through the cracks over 10 m in the air promised my mom I was going to retire from bungee jumping. However, I felt I had to get Marijke her present.
A couple of hours later we were standing on a bridge, 43 m over the river. As we were getting the gear on, Marijke claimed not to be nervous at all. I on the other hand who had jumped twice before (from 4 and 5 times this height), I was pretty nervous and was having very sweaty hands... So I was making conversation with the guy about Lord Of The Rings locations (the 'pillars of the kings' scene was filmed just 50 m further down the river).
However when we were on the platform Marijke suddenly announced she didn't dare to jump... too late...I walked her to the edge and off we went. Good jump, I could touch the water with my hands (Marijke didn't want a 'wet jump'). You know how they say that 'giving a present is just as good (or better) than getting one'...It's so true!
Queenstown again
After I got the taste of the adrenaline from the bungee jump, I decided to sign up for one more of those 'crazy activities': River
surfing. This one was recommended to me by a couple of people and it turned out to be the coolest thing so far. It's basically white water rafting but without a raft but with a small body board instead. It looks pretty crazy and it is actually even crazier than it looks.
That morning I had some trouble getting crazy party animal Michael (fellow traveler from Gavere, Belgium) out of bed at 8am but we made it to the river anyway. We got a crash course in surfing the river and than went on our way. After only 100m we hit the first rapids and it was nuts. I got thrown from here to there but had heaps of fun. We also got to jump under with a current and jump out of the water 5m further downstream, we got into some whirlpools that spun us around until we nearly got sick. 12km of river were finished in no time so we got do the whole thing again. With some experience we were more relaxed and began to feel the river a bit or so we thought...as I found out when I was trying to jump on the rapids as
high as possible and ended up missing one wave and got it on my head instead... blub blub.
The whole thing was a huge work out as I found out that afternoon when I was trying to climb a mountain and had to go back one hour short of the summit because I was totally exhausted. On my way back down, I decided to get myself one more 'fix' of adrenaline and took 'the luge' down a part of the mountain. It's small carts which you drive down something that looks like a bob sledding piste. They go pretty fast!
Towards the East Coast
We left Queenstown the day after before our months budget (and that for the next month) was totally ruined.
It was nice weather and now after 2 weeks on the South Island we finally got to see MT Cook, the highest mountain in NZ.
About our time on the East Coast and the way back up to Auckland I'll update you next time cause I've spent too much time in these internet places already.
Oh just wanted to let you know there's 2 pages of pictures...as some people seem to have missed
the second page on my previous blog.
Take Care
J. and M.
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Prachtig
Hey Jan, Je bent al weer in een prachtige streek beland echt schitterende foto's!!! Geniet ervan. Dat Gandalf - hobbit effect is werkelijk raar - je snapt er niks van als je de foto ziet (of zou het aan mij liggen). Geniet nog met volle teugen!!! Tot binnenkort.