New Zealand, South Island
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| Church next to Tekapo Lake |
We flew into Christchurch
on the south island and were soon met by a lady from the campervan company who
transferred us to their depot to pick up our van. The van was pretty old and
knackered but it had everything we needed for the next 2 weeks, so we stopped
to pick up some groceries and off we went.
It was getting fairly late in the
day so we decided to stay put in the Christchurch area. The biggest
challenge was finding somewhere to park up for the night. In New Zealand it
used to be common to freedom
camp, which means that anyone could park up pretty much anywhere and camp
for a couple of nights.
This has now been banned in a lot of areas so unless you are
self-contained which basically means you have a toilet onboard, you are
restricted about where you can park up. We were self-contained but even so,
some places are no camping areas, especially near residential areas, so we were
a bit unsure about where to stop. We finally found a park and stopped there for
the night.
In the morning we set off to Lake
Tekapo, a beautiful spot further south of Christchurch on the way to Queenstown.
There is a cute little church by the lake and we sat and had lunch and enjoyed
the view.
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| Tekapo |
For most of the journey from Christchurch to Tekapo, we had stunning
views of snow capped mountains, and the lake was surrounded by the same rugged
landscape. After lunch we carried on driving down towards Queenstown, via Mount
Cook which unfortunately we couldn’t get too close to because of the
weather, and then stopping at a campsite for the night so we could plug into
their electric and so we could get some heat into the van – it was freezing!
The next morning, we drove closer to the toilet block before we left; it was
too cold and muddy to walk from our spot.
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| Around Mt Cook |
As we reversed out, we heard a loud
crunch. Don’t want to say too much about that particular event but why the hell
do most of the campsites in NZ put out huge boulders to mark the roads, which
can’t be seen through the back window of the van but can do a fair bit of damage to
bumpers?! Anyway...
Early the next morning we set off to complete our journey to
Queenstown. We soon arrived and parked up in the centre of this pretty town to
wander round. Queenstown is a really popular town, famous for its skiing and
snowboarding particularly in ‘the
Remarkables’ mountain range which fringes the lake at the heart of the
town.
There are loads of things to do in Queenstown but most of them centre on
snow or watersports, and we were on a budget. We are not skiers or snowboarders
either, and it was too cold for watersports.
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| Lake Hayes ducks |
We strolled around the shops
instead, and visited the underwater aquarium where you can go down under the
pier and look at the salmon, trout, eels and diving ducks in the lake.
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| Lake Hayes |
We
stopped for a mulled wine before driving a bit out of town to stay next to Lake
Hayes for the night where we were immediately surrounded by ducks and geese
looking for food. Obviously used to tourists.
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| Basket of Dreams |
After another freezing night in the van we drove back
into town to do a hike. We decided to do the Queenstown
Hill circuit which was a 2-3 hour tramp mostly uphill for the first half,
giving us cracking views over the town, including the lakes with the mountains
in the background.
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| Overlooking Queenstown |
The walk was not too difficult but the mud and hard snow at
the top was a bit precarious, especially up to the summit of the hill. The walk
took about 2 hours to complete, including stopping at the top for photos.
There
was also a cool metal sculpture at the top called Basket
of Dreams. We treated ourselves to a hot chocolate and an ice-cream at the
bottom so all those calories we burned off were soon replenished.
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| Milford Sound |
We were on our way again out of Queenstown, climbing up the
winding roads, shopping for photos of the spectacular views of the sunset over
the town, when we wrinkled our noses at each other and shouted ‘pickled
onions!’
We’d simultaneously got a strong waft of vinegar and I jumped up to
rescue the jar of pickled onions that had somehow decided to leak all over the
van on our ascent up the mountains. The van was lovely for the next few days.
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| Milford Sound |
We had a good few hours driving to our stop for the night,
just outside of Milford
Sound. This is a fjord on the east coast of the south island, discovered by
John Grono in 1812 who named it after his hometown of Milford Haven, after other
notable explorers including Captain James Cook assumed it was just a bay when
circumnavigating New Zealand. Why would you come all the way from Europe and
not even check it out properly??
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| Waterfall at Milford Sound |
Anyway, we were just in time to get on a
cruise round the fjord which took a couple of hours. It was $80 each and
included a decent buffet lunch. The scenery round the fjord was fabulous and
the numerous waterfalls were pointed out to us including the Stirling Falls and
Lady Bowen Falls. We didn’t spot any dolphins but we did see a group of fur
seals lounging on the rocks. The trip was really lovely but freezing and we
were glad to be back in the van to defrost.
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| Mirror Lake |
Our next stop was to be the Fox
Glacier. Somewhere on the way we came across a pile of stones covered in names and dates. Apparently travellers have been commemorating the fact that they've passed through the west coast of NZ's South Island by scribbling their names on rocks, so of course we did the same.
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| Mirror Lake |
Milford Sound has one road in and the same road out, so we had to
drive back via Queenstown and up to the Glacier.
On the road back we pulled off to admire the gorgeous Mirror Lake, and its perfect reflections of the mountains and plants surrounding it.
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| Graffiti rocks |
There are actually two
glaciers next to each other, the Fox Glacier and the Franz
Josef Glacier. As we were short on time we decided to do only one of them so
we trekked up about a kilometre to as close to it as we could get, which was
about 500m away still. I didn’t really know what a glacier was but it’s a
huuuge sheet of ice/snow that grows and shrinks perpetually and is
constantly moving. Fox Glacier is 12-13km long.
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| Fox Glacier |
It was a shame we didn’t have longer round the Glaciers (or
we didn’t have more money) because we could have done skydiving, helicopter
hikes (helicopter trip up and a hike on the actual glacier), and other treks in
the area, including a bush-walk at night to see the glow worms.
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| Bush walk |
This area is
really interesting because you’ve got these 2 enormous glaciers, next to
rainforest, next to the sea.
Off we went, continuing our whistle-stop tour of
NZ, to the Pancake
Rocks, in Punakaiki, where we stopped for the night.
We stayed in a
campsite this time so we could recharge our electricals, and the lady at the
reception told us about a cave down the road called ‘The
Cavern’ which we could climb into that evening to see some glow worms. This
part of NZ is a bit remote and very, very dark, and as we walked down to the
cave we were struck by how isolated and creepy it felt, with the sea battering
the rocks on one side and the rainforest on the other side. We soon found the
cave and we clambered in through the mud and water to the back of the cave
where we saw a handful of glow worms.
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| Pancake Rocks |
The next morning, we went to see the 30 million year old
Pancake Rocks which was right opposite the cave. This is a short walk along the
coast to see the huge rocks in the water which resemble stacks of pancakes
because of the way the sea has influenced the limestone rock formation and then
mud and clay has formed layers between the limestone pancakes.
In my opinion,
these rocks are just as, if not more impressive than the Twelve Apostles in
Australia.
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| Christchurch Cathedral, Nelson |
We carried on up the island towards the town of Nelson,
our final stop in the south island, where we visited the town’s famous
cathedral, Christ
Church Cathedral, and the local museum, Nelson
Provincial Museum, which was hosting a special exhibition on VDa Vinci’s
inventions.
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| Da Vinci exhibition |
We then drove on to a campsite on a farm just outside of Picton (where we were taking the ferry to the north island).
Smiths Farm had great reviews on the internet and we were greeted at reception by
a lovely guy who presented us with a warm muffin each, and told us about the
night walk through the farm to a waterfall, next to which were glow worms. He
gave us a bag of animal feed to appease the sheep and goats whose fields we
would have to trudge through, and off we went. The walk took about an hour and
a half and we were immediately accosted by some rather large greedy sheep
butting us for the food we had.
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| Greedy sheep |
We made it relatively unscathed across the
field and climbed over the fence to the next field where all we had to contend
with was cowpat after cowpat. The cows were in the field next door, so we
didn’t need to deal with them thankfully.
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| Huge possum |
After that was a field which seemed
full of possums. I think perhaps tourists feed them because they were big and
didn’t seem too bothered about us.
Finally, we could hear the rush of water and
realised we were close to the waterfall. We found the track that ran adjacent
to the waterfall and after a few near misses with some muddy puddles, we
started up the track, turning our torches off to see if we
could spot the glow worms. We’d almost given up looking when I noticed some
glowing spots next to me.
After that, they were out and proud and we spotted
hundreds and hundreds of them up the track which was really magical. This was
one of my little unexpected highlights of the trip.
We were off early to get the first ferry of the
day across the Cook
Strait to Wellington,
New Zealand’s capital. We nearly fainted when we saw the price, it was $300 for
both of us and the van, but it was a 3 hour journey after all. It was smooth
sailing all the way.
#newzealand #southisland #tekapo #milfordsound #nelson #pancakerocks #queenstown #basketofdreams #foxglacier
