Ok, so Christmas has been and gone now, even New Year has just passed and I think I can at last deal with reporting on the trip around the larger of the two islands making up New Zealand (notwithstanding pedants amongst you who would correctly ask about Stewart Island of course).
I guess it makes sense to describe the trip in the order in which we did it, namely anti-clockwise from Picton: I'll try not to miss anything significant out by the way.
With June arriving safely, though late, into Wellington on the Friday, we gave her no time to relax and acclimatise as we were booked onto the 10.30 am Interislander ferry from Wellington the next day. Welly gave us nice weather for the departure and as we sat in the car on the quayside waiting to be boarded, spirits were high about the coming days in Abel Tasman. The crossing skirts the southern edge of the North Island once you're away from Wellington harbour, before making a fairly short crossing to the South Island's Marlborough Sounds area. Sadly clouds appeared and masked from view the beauty of the Sounds as we were cruising slowly through them, though it cleared up once we had docked at Picton and were heading away from the place in the car along Queen Charlotte Drive (the 'scenic' route out of Picton to put you en route to Nelson).
Took us about 2-3 hours, if memory serves, to get to Nelson, driving through some nice forest after the tranquil surroundings of the coastline. Once there, we paused only briefly to sample a coffee and wander around the place (although most shops had closed already, as it was gone 4 pm) before motoring on to get to our first port of call at Marahau. This is a little place, beyond a popular beach resort called Kaiteriteri, right on the southern edge of the Abel Tasman national park, and we had struck gold with the accommodation we'd booked! Lovely little cottage in front of a paddock run by this old boy who'd been born in Marahau (about 70 years earlier!) and sorted us out for activities and so forth the following day as we found that the weather had decided not to be sunny.
We'd been toying with the idea of driving into the national park and finding a nice beach spot to sit and sunbathe for the first full day of the holiday, but on seeing the clouds our host advised on booking a boat trip up the coast to see the coastal sights and only get off when we'd reached a place called Awaroa, where there's a lovely restaurant at some lodge, nestling in the bush. On the boat trip up to Awaroa we saw some of the most beautiful hidden little beaches, really only accessible by sea, and a colony of sea lions, some of whom had just given birth to pups!
On getting to Awaroa we had lunch at the lodge, then headed into the bush down a track our host had recommended on a hour-long hike back to another beach, where another water taxi would pick us up at an alloted time. It rained during our hike back, but that didn't dampen our spirits, it was still warm and the rain just made it feel like rain forest we were walking through, rather than just the beautiful native bush that surrounded us.
That night we drove a few k's down the coast to eat at The Smokehouse at Mapua, thoughtfully recommended to us by a colleague of mine at work. Since it was a wet evening we almost had the place to ourselves and enjoyed a lovely meal, with the focus heavily on smoked fish!
The next day saw us bidding farewell to Maharau and heading inland and across to Greymouth, over on the West Coast. I think it took us 3-4 hours to get there, along mostly wide and fast state highway, and - not surprisingly - it rained much of the time. Ironically, and something of a pattern that we noticed emerging during the holiday, the couple who's homestay we were staying at were quick to point out how nice it had been of late in Greymouth: great, thanks for that! Before we got to them however, we had chance to see the Pancake Rocks at Punukaiki, just up the coast from Greymouth. Conditions weren't exactly favourable though to see the full blow-hole rainbow magic that the rocks sometimes put on.
Ashley and Linda put on a lovely welcome though and we had quite a long chat with them before heading out to Greymouth's only curry house for our evening meal. They're South African and been in NZ for 4 or 5 years, with family scattered around various parts of the globe. Linda put on a cracking breakfast for us the next morning and we left feeling positive and happy, despite the gloomy weather.
Destination at this point was now Franz Josef glacier, which we reached after about 2 hours in the saddle. Not that we could see anything particularly of the mighty glacier, since the rain clouds did their best to mask it from view as well as steadily empty their contents onto us. Nonetheless, walking down the track to the glacier, looking up either side at the lush green cliffs with mini waterfalls cascading off the tops, it felt pretty special and quite mystical.
Fox Glacier was our next stop, only 1/2 hour down the road, where we'd booked to spend a further night before attacking the leg to Queenstown. It was grim when we got there, stayed grim through the night and was still pretty grim when we left the next morning, stopping briefly to see Fox's glacier through the mist. Moods weren't exactly radiant at this stage in the holiday, having now been putting up with crappy weather for a number of days, plus the sheer volume of dramatic scenery we'd simply not been able to see because of clouds.
That said, the run up the Haast Pass across the Southern Alps that the road takes in winding its way down towards Queenstown is pretty amazing: some fantastic sights just from the roadside as you climb up and up, tracking the river Haast up to its source, before heading down into Central Otago, and - magically almost - away from the rain at last!
I can still remember the feeling as the raindrops started to cease, the clouds to thin and fade, and the loveliness of the sun once more as we got away from the West Coast...
This was a long leg of the holiday, about 4 or more hours from Fox to Queenstown, so we stopped at Lake Wanaka and had lunch, now comfortably able to bask in the sunshine while munching (in my case) on a trad kiwi burger, complete with beetroot! (Its a Kiwi thing)
Queenstown was then only an hour away and we found our motel with no trouble whatsoever, unpacked, fetched a bottle of Pinot Noir and sat on some chairs outside in the evening sun, gently supping the delicious local red. Ahead of us lay 3 more days in Queenstown, chance enough to nail the fly-cruise-fly to Milford that was the main aim of our whole holiday.
Phoning up the company who operate the trip the next morning, they confirmed that they couldn't fly since conditions over in Fiordland were dreadful (not surprising when you remember how bad the rest of the West Coast was!), and, sadly, this was the news the next 2 mornings when we rang up to see if the trip was possible. Milford Sound has eluded us this time, sad to say, though I know it'll still be there when conditions are better and we have time and money again to do it.
Nevertheless, we all enjoyed Queenstown and its surroundings. I took myself off and rented a mountain bike the first morning, locating some off-road tracks the rental shop advised me of and scaring myself doing that a couple of times. Shaz and June tackled the gardens and wandered around the lakeside while I was doing that, before we met up for lunch at Fergburgers (thanks to Brig for that recommendation, it was delish!).
That afternoon we headed up to catch the gondola for a stunning view from the top of a nearby mountain out across Lake Wakatipu and the Remarkables. Wow! Only once we were in the gondola did June pipe up with the important fact that she's a bit scared of heights...
:-)
Nevertheless, made it up and back safely, having taken pictures of not only the view but some nutter doing a bungy from a ledge just below the top of the gondola - this was one of 3 bungy sites operated by A J Hackett in and around Queenstown, the main one (I think) being from a platform suspended over the Shotover river, just out of town.
Next day we got back in the car for a short drive to Arrowtown, fighting back the gloom of again not being able to fly to Milford. What a wierd place - essentially one street, very neat and cashing in hugely on some kind of 'wild west' type heritage (though it was gold-mining that caused the town to be built in the first place) and full of either tourists or posh locals punting junior diddums around to the nativity play whilst juggling their trim lattes. Weather was good at least, and it killed a morning.
Think we spent the afternoon mulling around Queenstown's shops, eventually finding a pair of Teva open trainers in the sale at Kathmandu that I could no longer deny myself. Shaz found a nice handbag (funny that) and June got some souvenirs to take back and distribute amongst family when she gets home. Also took a spin across Lake Wakatipu on TSS Earnslaw (the one you see in all the tourist bumpf), just to go to the Glenorchy end and back really. Accompanying the noble ship's guests for most of the journey was a lady at the piano, knocking out a range of old favourites and even able to provide song books for those keen to air their vocal chords! How quaint!
Next day being our last in Queenstown, we had to vacate by 10 am, and what with Milford being a no-no again, we packed up and got back on the road. Destination was Lake Tekapo, via Mount Cook and Twizel. The scenery changes yet again when you head up inland towards Twizel, it became drier, more scorched with none of the copious green that blooms in Queenstown. Arriving quite early on at Twizel, we dropped our stuff off and elected to go see Aoraki, or Mount Cook to the non-natives ;-).
En route to Mt Cook the road takes you along past Lake Pukaki, which is the most stunning aqua/turqoise blue you'll ever see! Almost surreal how green-blue the water is, shimmering in the sunlight of a hot summer's day, it took our breath away! The lake is fed from Alpine mountain water apparently, which gives it its glorious colour. And all this, just even before you get to Aoraki, which we got to see from several angles before the road eventually ran out! 2 snow-covered peaks, rising higher even than the cloud layer gently floating across the top of the Alps, its where Hillary did his dry run before tackling Everest - bet he drank Carling! (If you have to ask, you're too young).
After seeing this highest of New Zealand's mountains, coupled with Lake Pukaki's jewel-like beauty, Tekapo was a bit of a let-down. Really not much there, ok the lake was nice, but I just couldn't see what the attraction was, nor why some developer was in the middle of finishing a large number of what looked like holiday apartments, some distance from the shoreline.
Our night in Twizel was pleasant, helped by finding a nice restaurant and it being a nice warm evening. Next day we were on the road again, 3 hours or so and we got to Christchurch.
It will doubtless seem a little odd, but I'm not going to write a lot about ChCh, although we had 3 nights there, simply because it fell quite a bit short of my expectations and didn't 'grab' me at any point - sure there are a few nice buildings and the gardens and river are ok, but otherwise it was just a kind of large town with not much character. We found time to go to the cinema for pete's sake! (Saw 'Elizabeth the Golden Age' which was rather good actually).
Part way through our time in ChCh we realised that 2 nights in Blenheim was probably overkill, so had cut it back to 1 night and brought the ferry home forward by a day. Getting to Blenheim after 3 nights in ChCh, we realised this had been a good - man, the place was barren! On the good side, this is Marlborough country! So vines all over the place, resulting in some very fine bottles that come from the region each year. On the down side, the dreary outpost that is Blenheim meant we felt good about going home the following day, after the obligatory trip to a cellar door or 2... ;-)
With a Picton ferry to catch at 1.30 pm, we knew we could easily fit in a couple of vineyards, so headed firstly over to Allan Scott's to sample some of their wares, followed by Framingham to sample some more wares! In both locations the quality was excellent and we got 5 from the first and 6 from the second, all good stuff. The lady serving us at Framingham was English in fact, having moved out here and bought a vineyard with her husband a few years ago! At the moment they just grow for one of the bigger producers (and work for the competition in the meantime, clearly) but she was very positive about their time here so far.
And so the last leg of the trip was from Blenheim the short distance to Picton, to catch the ferry back to Welly, and then go and pick the hounds up from the kennels.
Anyway, of the million or so pictures taken with my trusty Nikon, here's the link to about 40 of them, which are probably about the best from the holiday:
Just click here, then select Slideshow
Tuesday, January 1
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