Don't Get Too Close!

The alarm blasts me awake at 8am and I lay there snoozing for a while. Then it kicks in, that we are in Australia. Sometimes it takes a while to register, especially when you are travelling from one place to another and getting yourself settled in. But after a good sleep the reality hits you. Breakfast was “served” between 8:30 and 9:30 every day so we headed down to see what delights might be heading our way. Cereal. Again. And no Coco-pops or anything good, just the bog standard value cornflakes and value Weetabix. With a distinct lack of mugs, or any crockery at all for that matter, we got some from reception and tucked in. It was great not having to worry about how much water we used washing them up or that we would shortly be having to empty the waste-water tank. Over a mug (small green plastic one for me) of coffee we got chatting to Kyle who seemed to know his way about the place, and he had a few suggestions of places for us to go and things to see. Although, he did pause before he answered, so we instantly knew that there wasn’t exactly on amazing thing that we should be looking. It did give us some options though and we then prepared ourselves for the days little jaunt.

We set off into the blistering heat (well, compared to what we had gotten used to in New Zealand) and made our way down to the Botanical Gardens just out of town. Well, we thought it was just out of town, but it turned out to be much further than we both expected and needed a couple of water breaks in order for us to get there in one piece. We wandered around the freshwater lake that could potentially have crocodiles in, but the only things we saw were ducks, fish and a weird-looking guy hanging around the public toilets. The next part of the trail was along a wooden boardwalk that took us into the actual botanical gardens, and through the rainforest, or we we assumed was a rainforest. There were quite a few things in there to keep us company, including some mound-builders (birds) and a few different species of spider. Not knowing what exactly they were we didn’t get too close, just in case. New Zealand had nothing to be afraid of, but in Australia there seemed to be any number of things out in the wild that could take a bite out of us.

A spider (species unknown)

We took in some “art” in the centre of the botanical gardens, and I put it in quotation marks as some of it was done by some school kids that were having their photos taken in the gallery, and also because some of it was pap. We had stopped for lunch in the café and as the place was much bigger than we thought we were already getting into late afternoon. By the time we had got back I was ready for a little mid-afternoon sleepy, so I crashed out for an hour as James tapped away in the hot-spot on the couch outside our room. As we had another meal voucher for that night we did our routine of hitting the offy first before dinner, but this time we just stuck to the regular red and white wine so as not to be too showy with more fizz. Dinner that time was chilli-con-carne but with such a meagre portion I was hungry for more. 20 minutes searching for somewhere to grab a little something extra took its toll and I very nearly caved and got a burger from the Maccy D’s by the sea front, but managed to find Pie Face first, a shop that sold pies with faces on them. Natch.

Pie Face

After my belly had been fully satiated we headed to The Crown for a schooner (a 15 oz size) of Pure Blonde. We supped away whilst watching the night folk go about their business. And soon enough it was time to head back to the hostel and crack open the wine (and I’m not surprised after only getting 15 oz in a glass!). We did so and tried our best to research the east coast of Australia and get a route planned in, but a dodgy Wi-Fi connection and a sudden bout of tiredness hit me for six, so I turned in at 11pm and tried to get a good solid 8 hours.

Not A Cairns In The World

It turns out that the little street-sweeper was a very busy, or a very evil, chap as he did indeed come round every few minutes. He eventually stopped, but at who knows what time, and that gave us both an opportunity to get the rest that we craved. As the next flight was due in at 7am we knew that we would need to be up and about by then so as not to have countless tourists and locals milling about as we slept. We both groggily rose from our make-shift beds at around half 6 and compared notes on sleep duration and position. When 7:30am came around James went off to speak to the information desk and he returned with relative good news – someone had handed in an iPod from our flight. So with spirits raised we collected our belongings and jumped in a taxi to get to the city centre.

The taxi driver was a complete idiot and we both hoped that the rest of the people we would meet in this beautiful country wouldn’t be as frustrating as him. But we were there, in Cairns, in Australia! As it was only just after 8am we would have to do the old wait-around-for-hours-before-we-can-check-in trick. James said that he would wait with the bags first so I set off for a wander round. Straight down to the harbour, and it felt a little bit like San Diego or San Francisco, with people going about their morning job down the sea front with dog/iPhone. Temperature-wise it was bob on and felt good to take some layers off and enjoy the nice warmth of the sun again. I found a McDonalds with Wi-Fi so we set up camp in there nursing a tea and a coffee whilst catching up on a few things.

After 3 and ½ hours we thought we would try our luck at checking in early at the hostel so we lugged our stuff down there, the all-too-familiar feeling of back-pack digging into flesh coming back to us already. We were in luck, she booked us in straight away and started to tell us all about the place. As a bonus we would be getting breakfast in the morning, and apparently a dinner at night too! Each day! What a winner. It looked like our luck was changing! The hostel was pretty much the same as all the other backpacker hostels in the area it seemed; pretty basic, with communal areas and bathrooms, but at least we had our own room. First on the agenda was to get all our stuff in order and grab a much-needed shower. A little afternoon nap was very enjoyable, and then we were off out to have another look round the place. We had a meal voucher for a place called Gilligan’s just down the road and we weren’t sure how much the beers would be in this place so we stopped off in an offy to scope out the prices. New Zealand had been pretty expensive on the booze-front so we held out hope that Oz would be better. At well over $10 for a six pack of beer we were left a little deflated. Perhaps the wine would be better. But we would not be able to grab a cheap box of the stuff for we would need to be on the Greyhound in the next couple of days and they have a very strict policy on alcohol on the buses i.e. none. Bottles of wine looked to be around the $10 mark for a non-table wine……until we spotted some for $4 each. That is about £3 by English money, which even we drew the line at. Maybe $5 would be ok, as we certainly didn’t want to be drinking paint-stripper. And then I spotted something in the chiller. A bottle of Wolf Blass sparking white for $7 and thought “why not!”. James decided to join me on the fizz we bought them and hid them as best we could in the communal fridges, hoping that nobody would pinch them before we came back for them after dinner.

The Fizz

Dinner was sausage, mash and gravy, pretty expected, but I decided to upsize for $3 more to get a little more of everything. It was obviously a ploy to get people in and then hope to keep them in to have some beers afterwards. It was never gonna work on us, as we had two bottles of fizz lined up for when we had polished off the grub. It was decent enough grub, but nothing special, and we headed back to the hostel to crack open the bubbly.

There was no real set of cutlery, pans, crockery, etc at the hostel, so we had to make do as best we could – James got himself a light blue ceramic mug and I snaffled a luminous green plastic cup. Who said we weren’t classy?! After popping the corks we settled in on the couches outside our room, where the Wi-Fi signal was reasonably strong and had quickly become our usual place of residence. We were supping away quite happily and playing a few games of cards when a couple of young girls came to ask us if we would mind if they put a DVD on, to which we, naturally, replied “fill your boots” or words to that effect. The film they had chosen was a generic “rom-com” but one that I had actually seen before. The Danish girl fell asleep after about 10 minutes and went to bed soon after, and then the Irish girl came back to carry on the film whilst me and James continued our battle of wits (+ luck) at cards.

By the time we had finished both film and cards it was pushing half 11 and as we had not slept well in the airport (surprisingly) we hit the hay straight away. As I put in the earphones to listen to the ramblings of Ricky Gervais, Steven Merchant and Karl Pilkington I was blissfully unaware that the rowdy Club Mickey outside would be told to quieten down after 10 minutes or the police would be called. Happy days.

Goodbye New Zealand......For Now

It was a relatively peaceful last night in the campervan. No weird dreams or wind keeping us awake. So we were fresh and ready to attack the day, which was our last in New Zealand. We had to make sure that everything had been refilled (petrol, water, gas, etc) and that it was reasonably clean on the inside too, so that was our first job, after breakfast of course. In the midst of cleaning out the campervan we were joined by the big fluffy ginger cat that had been roaming around the night before, and this time he plucked up the courage to jump into the campervan and “help” us out. He did this by curling up in the sunshine and pretty much just getting in the way of everything. Once we were clean, and the cat had left us for the next caravan, we were ready to get back to the Happy Campers depot, which was conveniently just down the road.

Cat......not helping

It took a while to get the campervan inspected and checked out as there were two groups in front of us as we arrived. Our flight was at half one and we wanted to be there in plenty of time, but the French girls who got there just before us were picking it up for the first time, so the guy had to go through absolutely everything, and mentioned “keep left” about twenty times. Thankfully we got away with no additional charges so we jumped straight into the courtesy car and got driven to the airport.

Once inside we checked in and waited patiently our next plane, number 5 on our itinerary. We were to be back on a Qantas plane, after our brief and not wholly enjoyable foray into Air Pacific from the LA to Auckland leg, and even though it was only a 3 hour flight we got a meal pretty much as soon as we had got on. Great, you might think. However, to use up the extra New Zealand dollars we had left over (refilling the gas tank with lpg cost us $4 instead of $25.95 as it was only a tiny one) I had bought lunch in the airport. As cost was essentially no option and I needed to spend them or keep them forever, I ordered the Double Whopper Meal, hoping that it would fill me up for the eventual trip up to Cairns. When the cabin crew came through offering the meal I couldn’t say no (even though I still had the Meat Sweats from lunch an hour before) so I accepted the chicken chasseur with a small bottle of wine. I managed to force most of it in, save for half the dry bread bun that was tossed casually on the side of my plate. Maybe it was the wine, maybe it was the overload of food a la Christmas Dinner, but I was all set for a nice sleepy afterwards.

Gotta love that leg room!

We were in Australia. It felt good to fly into a new country when it wasn’t raining (as it had been for America and New Zealand) but as we weren’t leaving the airport yet we couldn’t really enjoy it yet. We had to navigate through to the domestic airport to transfer up to Cairns, and we had about 6 hours to do so. After a short train ride (and James having issues with Barclays/West Pac ATMs) we got to the domestic airport and plugged in to recharge our gadgets. Thankfully there was a certain amount of free Wi-Fi too, so we updated, emailed, browsed and typed out a strongly-worded letter to Barclays. That last one was James, not me – for some reason I had had no problem with setting up my details for being abroad. Before we went through security again we decided to kill some time playing cards. It felt a little odd to be playing cards in a waiting area again and not cooped up in the campervan with our tunes playing, fan-heater whirring and a box of wine on the go.

This time the plane would be from the Jet Star organisation, and after checking with the check-in girl we would not be having an evening meal. Probably for the best though, as I may well have burst. We climbed into our seats on the plane and were astonished at the lack of people on board. There must have been about forty people on a plane for about 200. After take-off James took the row of three seats in front of us and we both stretched out to get some shut-eye. Which we did… intermittently. Unfortunately it sounded like the baby a couple of seats in front of us was being tortured, so it woke us up every now and again to scream at the absolute top of its voice. When we had landed and the baby had quietened down the mother said that she (the baby, or toddler as it turns out) had had a long day and that’s why she was crying. We all have long days, but we don’t scream the house down about it! At least, not on an aeroplane.

Unfortunately, before we had even boarded the plane James had given me some bad news. He had lost his iPod. Unsure of whether he had left it on the previous plane or whether it may have fallen out, it was nowhere to be seen. But there was nothing we could do about it until we landed in Cairns, so that was job #1 when we landed. When James enquired at the information desk they advised that there was pretty much nothing that they could do until 7am the next morning. Due to arriving in Cairns at 10:45pm we had decided that we probably wouldn’t be able to check in somewhere that late and that it would cost us a nights accommodation and that we wouldn’t get value for money in doing so anyway. So we drew on the experiences of our US leg and camped down in the baggage claim area for the night. Thankfully there were a few rows of seats, rather than individual ones, so we would be able to stretch out, but all the good ones had been taken long before and we were left at the busy end where all the luggage was coming through on the carousel. The last arrival came in around midnight and the next arrival was at 7am so we knew we had a fair few hours of relative peace. That is, if the motorised sweeper wouldn’t come round every 10 minutes to wake us up…

This Is England?

Our time in New Zealand was fast drawing to a close and we had one of the biggest cities to visit, Christchurch. Having been devastated by the earthquake that killed 185 not so long ago we weren’t entirely sure what we would find there, but we were sure gonna find out.

The journey to Christchurch did not take long and we had blessed with glorious sunshine for the day to ensure our last full day in New Zealand would be a pleasant one. We managed to find a free parking area by the main park and it said it was good for 3 hours, but there were loads of places available and we were sure that nobody would mind if we over-stayed slightly. Besides, we hadn’t seen any traffic wardens wandering about the place.

The park was beautiful, and it almost felt like we were back in good ol’ Blighty. As a city Christchurch is very much modelled on England, with the River Avon running through it and many roads named after English counties. We didn’t know what to expect from the place, or what to see, as the CBD is still cordoned off to the public. We went straight there so we could witness for ourselves the effects of the earthquake, and they were still very real. Shells of buildings with no windows, buildings in semi-states of falling down, cranes everywhere attempting to sift through the rubble and build new buildings. It was very strange indeed. Soon enough we needed a break from the devastation and we headed along the River Avon. There was an old-fashioned boat available for punting down the river, but it wasn’t really something that either of us fancied. It was also hot. So hot that we only needed a t-shirt, and James had to eventually seek shelter in the shade as he had not put any sun tan lotion on, nor had he done for the last 25 days.

Buildings within the closed area

I desperately wanted to try a local pie or some fish and chips, but due to the affected areas in the city there didn’t seem to be anywhere that was serving. Eventually we found a pedestrianized area that seemed to be bustling with people. There were a couple of mobile food stands with many folk crowding around so I knew I would be in luck. And I would have been too, if I had wanted to order pizza, bratwurst, souvlaki or sushi. So my desire for a New Zealand pie or fish and chips went out the window and I ordered the spicy bratwurst (which was very good by the way!) and tucked in under the blazing hot sun.

Spicy Bratwurst

There wasn’t too much else to see really, so we went back to the campervan for lunch. And what did we see as we got into the car park? Two traffic wardens inspecting every vehicle. We then realised that we still had at least 20 minutes left of our 3 hour time slot so we should be fine, and indeed we were. Many others were not so lucky though as there were plenty of tickets pressed underneath the front windscreen wipers. The next port of call was a second-hand bookshop we had seen outside of town and we managed to negotiate a deal for an Australian guidebook by trading in the New Zealand one, plus one of James’s that he had finished and 3 dollars. A decent deal, but it was no Lonely Planet. Then again, we had survived New Zealand on a non-Lonely Planet too so I reckon they are all pretty much the same.

We hit our last Top 10 campsite mid-afternoon and had a list of tasks as long as a……well, we had a lot put it that way. After dinner (using up all the leftover stuff we had – Three Cheese Pasta ‘n’ Sauce with sweet chilli tuna, Louisiana Hot Sauce and an egg chucked into the mix was actually not all that bad) we stuck a wash on and I noticed something that I had never seen before in my life. A vending machine that must be very rare. I have seen them for soft drinks, sweets, even swimming goggles, but never for hot chips! Well this I just HAD to sample. They were terrible. Hot – yes. Cooked – no. They went in the bin after seven chips.

And then we spent the night packing, tidying, cleaning, blogging, searching for accommodation in Cairns and drinking the $20 six-pack of Heineken from Reception, as it meant that we would have exactly the right amount of money for when we hit the airport the next day. It had been an unbelievably brilliant second leg of the trip and we had seen and experienced some amazing things. However, we both knew that with Australia would come proper/comfy beds, private/clean bathrooms, warm mornings and perhaps a bit more of a tan. 

Coming To An End

Today would be our last day freedom camping, and it felt odd. We had been engulfed in the whole camping thing and got into a good system for finding places and then hitting a good campsite the next day for, most importantly, a hot shower. This leg of our trip was coming to an end, but a new one would soon begin.

According to the map it would only take 2 and ½ hours to get to Christchurch. According to the map. We hit Timaru after 55 minutes of driving, which the map had said would take only 30, so we took the 2 and a ½ hour drive time to Christchurch with a pinch of salt. The plan was to get into the area outside Christchurch and find a spot to camp, and then “do” the city the next day. The plan was going well; I had researched some free camp spots on the t’internet and had 4 potential areas to investigate. When we got into the vicinity of Christchurch we headed for Spot 1, which was located on the side of Lake Ellesmere, by the coast. As we pulled up and stopped the campervan we noticed a mosquito land on the windscreen. Then another. And another. And another. There were, and I’m not exaggerating here, millions of the damned things, all swarming around the van, trying to get at us through the window. It was very much like the Alfred Hitchcock film The Birds, but with mozzies. We knew we couldn’t stay there, the hot sun and the water probably had made for a “perfect storm” of mosquitos, so we checked LAPPY 2 for the next available spot.

Two (of the million) mozzies 

Sadly, it too was by the lake, but on the other side. As was the third. So left us with one last option, which we would have to double-back on ourselves to reach. When we arrived at the Rakaia Huts we noticed the campsite that was chargeable, but nowhere to free-camp. After we had checked the map we realised that it was on the other side of the massive river, that didn’t have a bridge across it save for the Longest Bridge In New Zealand, that we had already crossed and would take us a fair trip to get over, let alone down to the free-camp spot. So, I suggested we try just south of Christchurch, as it would also mean that we could get into the city much easier the next day.

Our last spot freedom camping in New Zealand

After a few swings-and-misses we eventually found a great little spot up on Gebbies Pass which overlooked Diamond Harbour. At 150 meters high it was sure windy, and at times it sounded like voices outside the campervan. Either that or sheep. Maybe it was just actual sheep.

We Done A Din

So who’s heard of Dunedin then? Hands up. Well neither had I before we started studying our route from Milford Sound to Christchurch. It turns out to be the second biggest city on the south island. And as per Invercargill there was a strong Scottish heritage there. We had made good progress that morning and arrived at Dunedin before lunch to have a stroll round the place. There were a number of different things to see, with no one outstanding place to visit. There is a large, ornate train station, which is still in use and had a number of other tourists milling around it. There were also a couple of people who had graduated from university, and they all looked very chilly in the morning breeze.

We saw The Octagon, which is a set of roads set out in an octagon with two main roads passing through the middle, and according to the guidebooks this was THE place to be. It was alright. Nothing spectacular, and I think that both me and James were expecting something a bit more from it, as it was a pretty small octagon in actuality. You could probably throw a haggis from one side to the other. Plus it was very overcast and grey so it all seemed a bit “Englandy” and miserable. The Chinese Gardens looked nice though……from the outside. We baulked at the $9 entrance fee and went back to the octagon. We found the Public Art Gallery and spent some time examining a collection of religious art, twenty upside-down radio alarm clocks with birds on them all going off simultaneously and a small car radio with tiny tv screen that had a looped video of a rock group on it and 3 rocks place on top (which I can only assume wouldn’t be “art” without the 3 rocks) amongst other things. We were nearly roped into a guided tour around one of the exhibitions but we managed to make our excuses (that we were short on time), get stuck in the lift and then exit through the giftshop.

James "enjoying" the art

And that was Dunedin. Not much else for us to do, so we headed back to the campervan to get out of the city and have lunch. We ended up parking outside someone’s house as we couldn’t find a good spot along the main road and we were both desperately hungry. It seemed like she didn’t mind though, as she returned from the shops, parked up behind us, looked into the van to see us eating our sandwiches and went inside her house without so much as a second glance. As we looked at the map and our destination of Oamaru, we noticed another place that may be of interest to us. Not too far down the coast was Shag Point, where apparently you could see seals and penguins. After our success the day before we decided that we should give it a go and see what could see there. We parked up and walked the short trail to the edge of the cliffs and saw almost straight away a couple of seals basking in the……drizzle. We snapped away and then looked around for any penguins. There weren’t any around but there was another short trail to get to the actual Shag Point and closer to where the penguins would be. As I got closer to the information boards at the end of the trail I noticed something nearby. It was a big fat seal, having a snooze right by the path. As I approached he looked up at me and then lowered his head back into the tufts of grass. He was not bothered in any way by my presence. James joined me shortly and we revelled at how close we could get to the sleeping giant. His mate was further down towards the water, but was more interested in finding a good spot for a lay down. When the big fella yawned and showed his teeth we knew not to get too close to him…just in case.

Out on the rocks there were a load of shags milling around, but not really doing much, so we left them to it and went in search of the penguins. Unfortunately we didn’t see any, but we weren’t too disheartened; the day had already been a success!

Look! A seal!

When we arrived at the Oamaru campsite, the young girl behind the counter advised me that there were two sets of penguins we could see just out of town. We had picked Oamaru because of this reason, but to see the blue penguins would cost us $25 each, so we opted for the yellow-eyed penguins which would cost us zip. I guess you get what you pay for. Half an hour stood on the side of a chilly cliff with about 30 other tourists/locals all keen to catch a glimpse of the little creatures, and nothing. The time was right, but they just weren’t coming ashore for some reason. So we headed back to the campsite, parked up, plugged in and blogged out.

Clucking Hell

Minus 6 my @rse. It wasn’t even cold at all, not by our standards. I still reached out to stick the heater on though. We had arrived late in the afternoon to Invercargill so had not had chance to explore the town the day before, so Fridays task was drive into town and have a mooch around.

We parked up outside the Museum and Art Gallery, as it was free parking and pretty central. As we searched for the public toilets (of which there are many in New Zealand, and all of pretty good standard) we happened across a map of the Museum and Art Gallery area, which indicated there was much, much more to see. First up (after the toilets, which had automatically locked the door and then started playing Burt Bacharach whilst you paid your visit) was the bird sanctuary. Everything seemed free so we thought we would fill our boots. However, before that we tried filming a You’ve Been Framed where I fell off a piece of childrens playground equipment. I don’t think it will make it on the show.

After the bird sanctuary we saw a small Japanese garden and then made our way to the animal park. We weren’t sure of exactly where it was but we realised that if we followed the cockerel sounds we would surely find it. They had the usual farmyard animals there: sheep, goats, chickens, etc. A couple of peacocks were hanging around with some of the other birds, no doubt showing off how amazing they were and gloating to the mallard ducks that they looked so plain. Some deer and a few pigs completed the parade and then we thought it best to get a bit of culture in, so we made for the Museum and Art Gallery.

They were OK. I only say that because the main exhibition in the Art Gallery was of pictures of various natural geological features and fauna from around New Zealand, and I knew that I could (and have) take better shots than the majority of them. I didn’t really “get” the collection of hand-stitched quilts in the other room, so made my way up to the museum part which laid out much of the history of the local area. Good in parts, but we were on a bit of a time budget so we had to leave pretty soon after entering. We wandered the streets of Invercargill after that, and saw a few remnants of the previous days parade (it was for the returning Olympic athletes) but very little Scottish heritage, as the Scots settled in the area.

The next stop was Bluff, a very southern part of the island, although not the exact Southernmost Point, which lay a fair few miles to the east. It was a jutting peninsula with lots of industry and a lighthouse at the tip. Not a huge amount else to see, so we settled in for lunch before driving off towards Dunedin.

Bluff

At least, that was the plan. To get to Dunedin and camp out somewhere in the local area. However, after deciding to take the Southern Scenic Route (as it had been so nice on the previous day) we got very behind schedule. We realised that we wouldn’t reach Dunedin by nightfall, and spotted something on the map that we really wanted to check out, which would also impede our progress. Nugget Point. It was another peninsula, some way outside of Dunedin, but if the map were correct (and it very rarely was) we would have the opportunity to see penguins, sea lions, fur seals and elephant seals. Well we just had to have a shufty. Going out of our way and down ANOTHER gravelly road we arrived at a small area that had a lookout hut down on the cliffs. It was late and we still hadn’t identified our Plan B campsite so thought that we wouldn’t even see any penguins and also that we should get a move on. We entered the hut to find 4 other “twitchers” in there. One bounded up to me and pointed out that a penguin had just clambered out of the sea and was waddling up the beach. Both me and James got out cameras/camcorder out and snapped away as this could be our only chance to see them in the wild. A great little detour, and well worth the trip down the gravelly road. 

Nugget Point

Then we carried on up the trail to find Nugget Point. Again, there was a lighthouse marking the point we needed to get to (900meters from the car park) and we chucked on a couple of layers and fast-walked up there to see what was there. A lighthouse was there. Obviously. Also, a lot of seagulls way down below. But no seals. Disappointed we took some snaps and then turned to head back to the campervan. I just thought I would have one last look on the rocks down below and out of the corner of my eye I saw something move. Brownish in colour and waaaaaaay down below, but it looked like……could it be? YES! It was a seal! James managed to confirm this with the x76 zoom on the camcorder, and I think we found another one too, but light was fading so we needed to get off and find our spot to camp.

Jack Frost

Oh yeah, I was right. It was indeed one of the colder nights of our trip, and to make things worse we had parked up in amongst the trees so the plan to lie-in and let the sun warm us up back-fired as it could even reach us. Oh well, never mind. And there was no heater to switch on (no plug point in the very basic DOC campsite) so it was on with the 5 layers and out for a jog amongst the frosty grass to warm up. It was a great place to stay, with lots of little secluded areas all tucked away in the trees or down by the stream. As we had had a nice lie-in it was later than normal by the time we left. I forgot to mention in my last post that we actually found a (pretty expensive by New Zealand standard but actually still cheaper than UK) petrol pump that did self-serve so we topped up with $20 to make sure that we got back to Te Anau safely. So unfortunately (for you readers out there) there is no adventure where we ran out of petrol in the middle of nowhere. Sorry.

See? Told you it was frosty

The planned drive that day was to head through Te Anau (and fill up properly with petrol) and get as far as Invercargill in the south. It wasn’t long before we were pulling into the Mobil station in Te Anau, and the return journey from Milford Sound had been just as impressive as the one to get there. I had seen in one of the guidebooks that there was a free bird sanctuary in Te Anau, one that we had missed when we stayed there a couple of days ago. We found it just out of town and parked up. There was the usual Donations Box if we were feeling flush, but no cars in the car park. And there were no birds either. We didn’t know if they moved them somewhere in the winter or what, but as we were turning to leave we saw a couple of chubby Pukeko (I can’t remember the real term but they looked basically like fat Pukekos) wandering round in the background. We didn’t leave a donation.

We took the Southern Scenic Route rather than the highways to get us down to Invercargill. With a name like that you just have to check it out! And it was just that. A beautifully scenic route through the mountains and plains to get to the south west coastline. We managed to stop off at Monkey Island and admire a fantastic little beach with mountains all along the horizon and the sun glinting off the calm ocean. We passed a few little villages on the outskirts of town before we finally made it into Invercargill. It felt like many other smallish towns in New Zealand – everything on one main road and with houses off behind the commercial buildings, mainly car and tractor show-rooms down this way. As we drove down the two-lane road through the town we noticed a number of people lining the streets with coloured ribbons. We knew nothing of what was going on but it felt like we were returning heroes as the numbers built up on either side of the road and we carried on driving through, tempted to wave and be part of the parade but eventually just watched in silence.

Monkey Island

The campsite was cheap and cheerful, which is a norm for the south island thankfully, and we made full use of the facilities by sticking a wash on straight away to get rid of the smell of smoke from our fire from the previous night. Apparently it had been -6^o C that morning, but they must be over-egging the pudding for dramatic effect. Surely.

Sound!

Now I know that I have banged on about cold wintery mornings before, but on THIS morning the other campers were having to de-ice their various vehicles whilst I wandered past, bleary-eyed and searching for the toilets. It was so cold that I had had to reach out from the sleeping bag to switch the heater on for 20 minutes before I could rouse myself and leave the comfort and relative warmth of my makeshift bed. It was a decent enough morning, but I wanted clear blue skies and brilliant sunshine for the day as it we would be heading north towards Milford Sound.

Over a year ago I had taken part in a walking challenge at work where you wear a pedometer and enter your steps for the day onto the website and it plots your teams progress from one “starting” point across the world. Progress was going well, until Humberto broke my foot playing football two weeks later and kinda put a stop to all that. But I digest. The starting point for my team (Reservoir Clogs) was in Milford Sound. I had never heard of the place before doing the walking challenge, but after chucking the words into Google (other search engines are available……but they are naff) I saw a magical scene in front of my eyes. I knew that I wanted to get there one day, and much like the Leaning Tower of Wanaka photo (see yesterdays post) I felt that I just had to get there and have another “moment”.

It was one road from Te Anau to Milford Sound so there was no chance of us getting lost. But that wasn’t the problem we first encountered. We had only realised that there were no gas stations along the way until we had set off and I had thumbed through another pamphlet in addition to the guide book, but by that point we were already a fair way along the highway so felt it was too far to turn back and fill up. We had about ¾ of a tank left, and had at least a two hour journey there and the same again back, but would we have enough juice? There may be a gas station in Milford Sound, but given the remoteness of the place I doubted that a petrol tanker would make it through the winding roads to top it up. So with that in the back of our minds we continued our journey, catching up with, overtaking and then being caught up at the next viewpoint by any number of caravans and coaches you care to mention.

The route has been described as the best road journey in the world, and I can see why. Not long after setting off we were enjoying the sight of mountains in front of the dashboard and lush green forests out of each passenger window. The first proper stop-off was Mirror Lakes. A small lake with a number of viewpoints which have the image above the water reflected back in the water in almost perfect symmetry. It wasn’t exactly a looking-glass, as there were a number of ducks messing up the mirror effect. I half thought about trying to scare them off so that I could get the perfect photograph, but there were about 50 Chinese tourists around us so I would have looked like a lunatic. Even so, very dramatic images, but it was soon time to move on to the next stop. Further down the line we had a brief snow-ball fight, just for the fun of it and to show that we were so high up in the mountains that the snow was still lying on the ground even in the brilliant sunshine. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that. As we had got nearer to Milford Sound the weather had got much better, the sun had come out and burned away the early morning clouds.

Mirror Lakes (if you can read it!)

When we finally arrived at our destination we were not disappointed. The pyramid-shaped mountain of Mitre Peak jutting out into the bay was spectacular, and looked astonishing in the sun and calm waters. For all the other tourists we had seen heading towards Milford Sound it was strangely quiet. Well, apart from the diggers and workmen down by the harbour. Unfortunately they were extending the harbour so it wasn’t a picture postcard scene in panoramic view as there were tall cranes and all manner of JCBs surrounding the boats and dock area. A shame, but it still didn’t take anything away from the fantastic view which we had come so far for. We also saw the grave of Donald Sutherland (not the actor) and his wife Elizabeth, the first settlers in the area, and a duck-type creature follow us along a small trail thinking we might lob some food his way. Oh, and there were Sand Flies……LOTS of Sand Flies!

Milford Sound

We had seen a couple of walks on the way to Milford Sound that we had ear-marked for the journey back and we pulled in to one on the return trip back towards Te Anau. The full hike was 4 days long and ended up at Queenstown, so we just decided to have a stroll along the first part and turn back as and when we fancied it. We ended up hiking up and up and up, until we saw a sign for a hut 15 minutes away. We still had time on our hands so we headed down to find it. It was a pleasant little hut with plenty of bunk beds to house people doing the hike. We were never gonna make it to the summit so we tramped back to the campervan and headed for one of the DOC campsites on the main road. The one we had picked out, at Lake Gunn, had a place for a fire and was positioned by the side of the lake. Unfortunately there were already a number of people there, and one was starting a fire, so we climbed back into the camper and set off for the next one. 5 minutes down the road we pulled in to Cascade Creek, which was empty and had TWO fire pits. We parked up and got a fire on the go; not for any real reason, but we had just set our minds on getting a roaring fire going. After a few false starts we managed to get one going even though most of the wood was soaking wet. So now we were stinking of smoke and I got a peppered steak soup on the go and piled on the layers for what would more than likely turn out to be the coldest night yet.

Fancy A Fergburger?

Sadly, the morning view wasn’t impressive at all, as there was far too much cloud cover around to be able to see anything. However, it had kept the cold at bay overnight and it was almost warm when clambering out of the sleeping bag. James had been feeling a bit run down and had been breaking out the good old Lemsips over the past day or two, and after the woman in the Wanaka supermarket told me that she was also feeling rough I thought it inevitable that something would strike me down. I had had two instances of a cold setting up home in my body but had managed to disrupt their progress with half a fake Berocca on each occasion. That morning I thought I had better be prepared for the worst and got my penultimate banana out of the larder (the cupboards above the front seats that house bread, bananas, crisps, pillows and sleeping bags) and got another half Berocca on the go. With two cups of tea it meant that I was ready for the day ahead, although I realised that I would be needing more than a few toilet breaks when we got into Queenstown.

"The Remarkables"

Queenstown is lovely. You arrive by driving along the banks of the lake Wakatipu with snow-covered mountains in the background. These mountains are what make Queenstown…literally. It appears to be more of a ski resort than anything else and the mountain range is very aptly named The Remarkables. There were far too many gap-year students and nouveau-riche for my liking, which is a shame as the place is very picturesque. After wandering around a little and getting a feel of the place we headed to a place called Fergburger. It had been recommended to James by someone at work and judging by the queue outside we were in for a treat. Once we had chosen our big beefy burgers we placed our orders and didn’t so much as flinch when the woman said it would be 20 minutes wait. We waited the 20 minutes. We waited another 5 minutes. We waited another 5 minutes. Eventually Order 41 was called and I gladly received my burger and chips (to share) and we tucked in. Ooh it was good. One of the best I have tasted. And we had quite a few out in the US!

Mmmhmm, this IS a tasty burger!

Once we had wiped away the excess mayo, ketchup and aioli we headed to the campervan to leave the snowboarders to their après-ski and jockish behaviour. The next stop was Te Anau, on the way to Milford Sound. It was a fair couple of hours drive to get there and it looked pretty much like a lot of the small villages along the main highways, merely a stop-over place to refuel and refresh before hitting the road again the next day.

What A Wanaka

Monday morning. Ugh. No, wait a minute, I don’t have to go into work do I as I am in New Zealand! Hooray! It’s the little things in life that keep you going.

Ahead of us lay Haast Pass – a potentially tricky crossing of the Southern Alps to get through to Wanaka and Queenstown. We had been persuaded to hire some snow chains for the trip as, with it being winter, we could get stuck in the mountains somewhere and get lost for days. So we thought we had better play on the safe side. We had no idea how to use them. We had planned to have a go at attaching them the night before, but we got side-tracked with blogs and barbeques. The real tricky pass was Arthurs Pass, but we wouldn’t be going near there, just in case. Along Haast Pass there was supposedly some of the best scenery in New Zealand, and it didn’t disappoint. A few walks through forests and a few waterfalls later and we had nearly finished the journey through the Alps. And it wasn’t tricky at all. The trickiest bit was trying to get a photo of Thunder Falls through a quagmire of Japanese tourists.

Roaring Billy Falls (off to the right)

We emerged from Haast Pass into the open fields and mountains around us, pretty much all of them still covered with a light dusting of snow on the peaks. We drove along Lake Wanaka until we hit the town of Wanaka. But before then we stopped off at Puzzle World. Let me explain. Puzzle World, from what we could gather from the outside, was essentially a wooden outdoor maze that you walked around in, which seemed mainly for the kids. Outside is the Leaning Tower Of Wanaka, a yellow tower leaning over at about 60^o. This was very important for me to visit as I remember seeing a friend of mine standing under it whilst she was travelling the world and I looked at it wondering if I would ever do the same. Two years later and there I was. Another one of those “moments” we have every now and again.

The Leaning Tower Of Wanaka

Wanaka seemed nice. More of a Gap Year/snowboarding/hippy hangout than anything else. We took a trip up Mount Iron late in the day, thinking it would only be a short circuit round the hill and back in the car in 30 minutes. The trail actually went to the very top of the hill and took us well over an hour to complete, but the views……the views were amazing. And it certainly built us up an appetite for that evening.

We found a convenient spot on the side of a mountain (not within the snow zone, thankfully) not far from Queenstown, which would be our next destination, and parked up. We had carefully navigated past a lot of farmers fields and gated entrances and were just off the road with a view of the mountains. I cracked open the third box of red wine and hoped that the view in the morning would be an impressive one.

Fox's Glacier.......Mint!

Bloody geese. They had been circling our home and gabbing off since stupid o’clock in the morning. It wasn’t the best of views to wake up to be honest. A gravelly……”area” is the best way to describe it, just off from the main road. But it had been quite enough and near a stream too, so we were more than happy with it. The weather wasn’t looking too chipper either, so it looked like the walk on Fox’s Glacier wasn’t gonna happen. I knew there were plenty of other ways I could spend $109, and I would still get to walk up to the glacier anyways.

First things first though (obviously), we were to drive into the town at Fox Glacier and go for a walk round Lake Matheson. It is supposedly one of the “101 Kiwi Things To Do” and the picture in the guidebook looked great. The picture in real life wasn’t though. Mainly because of the carpet of grey that hug above us, just like being in Manchester. It was still good, but with clear blue skies and a nice bit of sunshine it would have just made everything look that little bit better. And there were more geese. Shouting their mouths off all day and generally ruining the peace and quiet. It was about an hour and a bit to get all way round the lake and it certainly got the blood pumping after a chilly morning start. Next up was lunch and then the Fox Glacier just round the corner.

Hmmmm, cloudy again...

I had bought a jar of jam (although nowhere near as nice as Coco’s strawberry preserve) in the first Big Shop in the north island and I had realised that I would need to make my way through it before leaving Christchurch in just over a weeks time. So I am now having it with pretty much anything going, morning, noon and night. But it certainly puts you in the right frame of mind to climb (up to) a glacier. As we had done the Franz Josef one the day before we knew what to encounter, so we wrapped up good and warm and set off along the rocky path.

Apparently you could get much closer to Fox than Franz Josef, and we were eager to get to the terminal face and get a closer look. The approach was much shorter and not as impressive as Franz Josef, but the view near the end was far better, around 200 meters from the ice itself. But that was all there was to do really, and it left us with plenty of time to drive to Haast, our next port of call. Along the way we stopped off at a few places of interest. Bruce Bay was fantastic, with waves crashing against the shore and hundreds of polished white marble stones with names and/or messages on them. We, of course, added our own so if you are ever visiting the area take a look around Bruce Bay and see if you can see mine and James’s stones. The first one I saw mentioned Yorkshire, which made me chuckle.

Exactly what it says on the tin

The campsite in Haast was perfectly lovely, once we had found it, and I made full use of the barbecue to cook some merguez sausages for me dinner. We couldn’t find any Premier League Highlights on the telly so we backed up photos and videos (which will become more and more frequent after the Rotorua incident) and brought out the deck of well-thumbed cards. The best card game never invented still needs some work, but I think we’re getting there…

Franz For The Memories

Cold. So cold. It had been another starry/clear night that night and the morning was much the same. Clear, sunny, but flipping freezing. I just couldn’t drag myself out of bed that morning. But a tactical move to put the heater on before removing myself from my sleeping bag soon warmed things up. It had been a peaceful nights sleep too; no waking up in the night thinking “we can’t stay here!” or “where the hell am I?!”. Just a sense of “to trek, or not to trek”.

You see, I had been exploring the idea of going on a glacier hike at either the Franz Josef or Fox glacier as they were within our sights on the map. It seemed pretty expensive to do but I had been advised that it was well worth it. Some of them had you leaving at 8am, so that wasn’t one that I was looking at. But I couldn’t decide so I thought we should get to Franz Josef, see if we can get up to it and then make a decision on Fox and see what happens. But before we got there we were going to try and find some gold!

There was a little gold-mining town called Ross not far from Hokitika, and we would be passing through it anyway. We scheduled a stop and went for a wander round, trying to “pan” for gold with a stone or by kicking rocks about in the vain hope there would be a huge nugget underneath. There wasn’t. Of course there wasn’t. These hills had been long-mined out by now. But it did give us some pretty impressive views of the nearby mountains, topped with snow. We knew we were getting close to Glacier Country.

There ain't no gold in these here mountains

Along the way we stopped off for lunch in a lay-by just off the main road. No sooner had we sat down to eat than we heard incessant parping of a car horn as a vehicle sped past us. We both rushed to the window to see………an identical Happy Campers Toyota Hi-Ace beetling by. James had only remarked the other day that is was weird we hadn’t seen any other Happy Camper vehicles, and as if by some twist of Fate we got one the very next day.

We drove into Franz Josef village a little after 2pm thinking that we would definitely be able to have a bash at climbing to the glacier before it got dark. The woman in the visitor centre said that we wouldn’t be able to get onto the ice as it was too dangerous with ice breaking apart and rocks falling, but knowing us we just smiled and said that’s ok, all the while thinking “we’ll see about that”. The walk up to the glacier took us through the u-shaped (thanks Mr Pugh) valley that had rushing streams of glacier run-off. Rocky as heck, but some beautiful sights all around us. When we finally got to the glacier edge we realised that we could go no further as there was a small fence to stop anyone with exactly our idea in mind. To be fair we COULD have got further up, but we felt we SHOULDN’T go any further. Instead we got chatting to an American couple from Utah and told them all about our trip to the USA and especially Salt Lake City. They, naturally, asked us about the Olympics and how we had got the time off work to do our trip. I thought after the Olympics had finished we wouldn’t have to hear about it, but everyone still goes nuts over it. They said they were doing the Fox Glacier Walk the next day so I said that, weather depending, I might see them there as I was still undecided about it. If it’s a nice day I will probably do it, if not……well I don’t know what will happen. 

One hell of a big glacier mint!

West Coast Massive

As I mentioned in the last post, we had heard that the weather in the south island would be worse than in the north, with more rain and much, much colder. So it was a pleasant surprise to slide open the side door and have my face greeted by warm sunshine. There wasn’t even a cloud in the sky either; what a great start to the day! And we hadn’t even been woken by the traffic buzzing past in the night or the morning. We were to be heading west, following a river valley to get towards Greymouth. There was no real reason to go to Greymouth but we needed to get some miles under our belt if we were to get all the way down to Milford Sound and back to Christchurch in time for our flight to Australia.

I’m going to have another go at the map we have as it lists the time taken to get between certain places, but they are very much hit and miss. A relatively short journey took us ages and the progress along the river valley (along the River Grey coincidentally) was disappointingly slow. We did go through some amazing scenery though, and nearly had the opportunity to stop and explore a disused gold mine but we missed the turning. Again, a signpost wouldn’t go amiss. We carried on along the river until we arrived in Greymouth. And it was pretty much a one horse town. Saying that, they probably didn’t even have a horse. They had plenty of things for people that lived there (mechanics, book stores, eateries) but nothing really for the tourists. The “highlight” was when we walked along the Great Wall of Greymouth (a flood barrier built to protect the town, which was about a meter high) ad down into town where we found a skate park with a bunch of youths having out. They hollered out asking if we were having a good day and we replied that we were. James then shouted back, “where’s the place to be in Greymouth?” to which they responded, “here”. The fact that we were in our thirties and had no skateboard meant that it more than likely wasn’t the place to be, for us at least. With nothing left for us in Greymouth we clambered back in to the campervan and drove out of town. We had spotted a good (cheap) campsite along the coast at Hokitika, so that would be our final destination for the day.

Hokitika clock tower

We entered Hokitika well before 4pm, which would give us time to see the village and have a look round before we checked in to the holiday park. The first thing we just had to go and see was the Glow-worm Dell, but there wasn’t really anything to see. They don’t come out in daylight and we couldn’t be fussed to come back at night, so we chalked it down to experience and went on our merry way. We were nearly forced round the museum, before almost seeing the one and only Kiwi at The National Kiwi Center, but for $18.50 it was a little too steep for our liking. The beach was interesting though, with waves crashing on the shore and black sand as far as the eye could see. I had never been on a black-sand beach before and it just seemed plain weird. I tried hunting for a piece of natural greenstone/jade that may have been washed up on the beach, but all I found was a green ear plug. I didn’t take it.

Black sand? OK then!

The campsite was cheap but with good facilities. It may have been cheap because the woman running it was a bit odd, or it may have been that the camp was next to the milk processing plant. Either way it did the job. 

Middle Earth

Still feeling jubilant from the night before we got ready and left the campsite in the direction of Nelson, the second city created in New Zealand. It wasn’t a particularly lengthy journey to get there but it took us longer than we thought as the road weaved left and right and up and down the cliffs along the waterfront. We had the occasional stop just to marvel at the bays and scenery that we were driving through, all resplendent even with the cloud and drizzle that continued to fall. But soon enough there was a break in the clouds and we were basking in a little bit of sunshine - something that we thought we mightn’t get to do on the south island at all.

When we finally got to Nelson we parked up and headed out towards a trek that was labelled Centre Of New Zealand. We didn’t know much about it but we thought we had little else to get up to so why not a little jaunt up into the hills. When we arrived at the trail it said on the map that it went to the actual centre of New Zealand. It all made sense. So we just HAD to do it, as I don’t think I’ve been to the centre of any country before. At least, not without knowing it. It was a steep climb to get there, but before we did we came across a Kauri tree. It had been planted in 1951 and was only about 10 inches in diameter, but they grow to massive proportions and are akin to our English Oak from back home. 

An old tree...

We got to the top of the hill and there it was, the centre of New Zealand. Not quite Middle Earth like in Lord Of The Rings, but instead there were 5 Japanese tourists and an Aussie. There has to be a joke there somewhere. So there we were, waiting for them to go so that we could take our pictures and do some videoing, and it was just lovely. It was even so nice that I was only wearing a shirt, and there was even a bit of a sweat breaking out through that. All the stories we had heard about the freezing cold/ridiculously wet south seemed to be just a case of hyperbole. On the way back we saw the Nelson cathedral and Anzac Park, but there was little else to keep us entertained. We did manage to both leech some Wi-Fi from the local Maccy D’s to finalise our Fantasy Football teams in readiness for the opening game on Saturday. And have a cup of tea too, whilst looking out for any disgruntled employee coming out to tell us to move along. Whilst we were online I had found a website that showed you were loads of free campsites were, nothing special, but just in case we couldn’t find a random patch in the darkness. So we set our sights on Clark Valley, outside Korere, off Highway 6.No facilities but we knew that we would be able to park up and do our thing without the fear of jocks parking their car right besides ours or farmers banging on our door to get us off their land.

The centre of New Zealand!

Whilst leaving Nelson I realised that we hadn’t disconnected the gas canister from the stove (no danger of explosions or anything, but it’s just better to be on the safe side) so I decided to pull over at the next availability and sort it out. I spotted a few free parking spaces on the left and clicked the indicator on. At that exact moment I clocked a guy standing on the side of the road (with a guitar and possible a sombrero) hitchhiking. He had a momentary look of glee in his eyes when he saw me flick the indicator on and motion to pull over, but that dissipated in an instant when I realised what he was thinking, looked directly at him and just shook my head. I had to pull over way down the road just in case he came running down to the campervan. With the gas disconnected we rejoined Highway 6 and after half an hour we were pulling into Clark Valley. A little too near the main road for our liking but it felt like a good place and there would be very little traffic at night, and anyway, the Toyota Hi-Ace is pretty well insulated so we probably wouldn’t hear much.