New Zealand

Day 1, Monday 2nd March: Sydney – Auckland

After two months of living the high life in Sydney the realisation that we were about to trade our spa and Harbour view for life on the road inside a 6x4m tin sunk in as we ate the remainder of our home-baked goods in the airport lounge before the highly vicious Sydney Customs team could confiscate them. The transition was momentarily forgotten during the three hour Air New Zealand flight in which I managed to split my viewing time on the in-flight entertainment system between the newly crowned Oscar winning Slumdog Millionaire and everyone’s favourite tonsillitis recuperating sequel Madagascar 2. The Air New Zealand service was fantastic though this is probably largely down to the fact that you could start using the entertainment system as soon as you boarded the plane instead of having to wait until you were in the air and that they served an incredible roast chicken and potato salad lunch.

Arriving at Auckland airport we were transported two hours into the future of New Zealand’s timeline and caught the shuttle bus into town. The journey was a tad bizarre as every time the bus stopped at traffic lights the female driver would get out of her seat and start fiddling about with various parts of the bus until the cars behind beeped to let her know the lights had changed back to green again. Apart from that we were dropped off almost outside the hostel I had booked and were upgraded as they had lost the reservation in their system and so we ended up with a private ensuite room with a television. On the downside it had no windows and the graffiti on the bed slats about the oven like sweating of the cell rang true...We tried to spend as little time as possible in the room heading downstairs to make the most of the free evening meal included in our booking – a welcome plate of nachos and chilli – before exploring the town in the fading light of dusk. The city, as we had been pre-warned, held little of attraction except its charming harbour which was moored with some historic looking sail boats and looked out over the city bridge. We ended up in a robust pub off one of the Queen Street side streets to celebrate the next stage of our adventures and then had to muster all our will power to resist one of the burgers from the White Lady burger truck parked outside our hostel: a vintage carriage towed into position by a small train and lit up in neon fairy lights!

Day 2, Tuesday 3rd March: Auckland – (Christchurch) – Kaikoura

Waiting to catch our connecting flight to Christchurch the morning was spent sorting out the remaining details of our New Zealand travels in which we discovered that you can’t buy a local sim for less than $35 unless you are staying for longer than six months in which case you can only get a local one by signing up to their twelve month package and that if you are willing to take the risk of booking your campervan when you get to New Zealand you can get some great deals!

While we had been diligent in our research and booked a campervan well in advance for our south island travels we had experienced lots of problems in finding any company that would provide us with a van in Wellington to drive to Auckland without charging an extortionate relocation fee to first drive the van down to Wellington for us to pick up. The prices we had been quoted were almost as much for the cost of our south island van but for less than half the duration. Stumbling around the Auckland depots we eventually managed to locate a company who had a couple of vans loitering in Wellington desperate for someone to drive them back to Auckland and so we gamely signed up waiving any relocation fee and bartering a $25/day reduction into the cost!

It was a relief to board the self check-in flight to Christchurch knowing that everything was sorted and the forty-five minute flight soon whizzed by and we were in Christchurch airport ringing Explore More and being picked up and deposited at their extremely busy depot. Having got the dates slightly wrong and booked the van for pick up a day later than we wanted it we had to speak to several personnel before they grudgingly agreed to change the dates and provide the van on our arrival so that we didn’t have to waste a day waiting to start our travels.
We were introduced to the boringly named Andy H as our new home for the next three weeks and after completing all the routine checks, securing our free DVD player and DVDs and making the most of the discounted shopping vouchers at the New World shopping centre we were allowed to go! Driving through Christchurch’s suburbs was like driving through a typical English suburban town both in architecture and climate and it was only as the highway began wounding its way in between the eastern mountain range and the sea that we felt like we had entered a new country. The road along the coastline revealed New Zealand in all its rugged glory and we followed the train tracks through the tiny holes in the mountains until we arrived in Kaikoura just as night was setting in.

We had been told that New Zealand has a liberal policy towards free camping and as long as there are no obvious prohibited signs you can camp overnight where you please. Keen to take advantage of not having to pay the extraneous Campervan Park fees and embrace the true hippie lifestyle of unclipped travelling we parked up in the Whale Watch seaside carpark and enjoyed our first night overlooking the waters that we were about to carve through on our search for sperm whales!

Day 3, Wednesday 4th March 2009: Kaikoura – Picton

To mark the first proper day of our New Zealand adventure I woke up early, just as the sun was breaking above the horizon of the water in the cloudless sky, and booked us into the whale watching tour. A couple of sea-sickness pills popped later and we had boarded a small catamaran and were bouncing along the waves out into the ocean. We had to sail out to where the ocean bed drops to 800metres deep and the lone male sperm whales, who have left their pod and are waiting for full sexual maturity before they return, feed and graze in the deeper waters. The early tours are usually best to catch sight of the whales and were extremely lucky spotting four sperm whales in the first forty minutes and being drawn alongside to watch them resting at the top of the water before performing a spectacular tail turn and diving down to feed for between 45-60 minutes. Because they have collapsible lungs that allow them to descend up to 3000m for as long as two hours the average sighting per trip is 1.2 whales so to see four we were incredibly lucky that the whales were not preparing for or already on any deep water feeding while we were there. In fact, the hardest thing was not spotting the whales but fighting the pensioners to get out of the carriage and onto the deck. While the catamaran was moving we all had to sit down in the seats on the lower carriage until the signal was given that we could get out and progress either to the side of the boats or up onto the deck for a better vantage. There was always more than enough time for everyone to get into position and have 5-10 minutes viewing time but as soon as the signal was given the pensioners had their sharpened elbows and booted feet ready to trample you and push you out of the way so that they could get up first. I felt like I was back at primary school rushing to be the first out into the playground! I admit that when the first whale was sighted I was in prime competitive mood to get up and out first, though not to the detriment of black-eyeing my fellow seamen, but once you realise that there is ample space and time and that you won’t miss out on anything by being last out I realised there was no need for pushing and shoving but even after the routine had been well worn our grey haired companions were still ready to push you overboard lest you dare step out before them!

After the whales we travelled back closer to the shore line and found a 200 strong pod of playful dusky dolphins who as soon as they saw our boat came racing to check us out in dizzying somersaults. The promiscuous mammals mate three-four times a day with whoever they can find and have to keep half their brain alert all the time just to remind them to breathe! We were soon surrounded by the dolphins and became extremely envious of the small boat of tourists who had paid to come swimming with them. The final stage of the tour whisked us over to the white rocks where the seal colony was resting and we were able to watch the baby pups taking their first swimming lessons in the natural pool carved out at the base of the rock.

I had been a bit wary of going on the whale watch, a combination of apprehension towards mass-tourist engineered projects and a wariness of having inherited my father’s sea-legs, but it was worth all $140 and was the perfect way to start the trip demarcating the transition from Australia and throwing us back headfirst into the travellers’ mindset.

Back on unmoving land we embarked upon the well reputed Kaikoura Peninsula walk, a three hour loop that took us across the rugged clifftops with spectacular views of the many sheltered turquoise bays and wound back through the historic sites of the old whalers town including Fyffe’s House, the last remaining cottage of the town’s formerly bustling whaling industry. Famous for its crayfish I couldn’t resist the shack bar serving up fresh seafood on the route back and indulged in a bargain platter of crayfish fritter before getting back inside the van and driving northwards along the coast.

By late afternoon we had reached Blenheim, a rather ugly town but situated in the centre of the Marlborough Wine-making region. Passing by a huge hillside fire in Seddon that was reminiscent of the bushfires we had just left behind in Australia we stopped off first at Montana’s for a wine-tasting session before progressing to Lawson’s Dry Hills where getting in at the end of the day’s tasting seemed to take full advantage of the taster’s proclivity for her wares sampling the full range and ending up with a hugely discounted Pinot Noir to take back to Andy H!
We ended the day in Picton a small picturesque village nestled in a valley between two mountain ranges on the waterfront that harbours the ferry that shuttles between the north and south islands. Taking the next step of the free camping we bathed in the marina much to the amusement of the locals sat on the lawns and then went off to find somewhere to camp. Following the signs for the Victoria Domain lookout we wound up one of the hillsides and emerged into the clearing looking down on the waterfront town. With the sun setting over the opposite hillside we had dinner overlooking this incredible vista shared only with two girls in their van at the other end of the clearing.

Day 4, Thursday 5th March 2009: Picton – Abel Tasman

Our scenic night time location had become filled with keen ferry snappers when we awoke and poor Andy H was surrounded by the nautical equivalent of trainspotters flashing their extra long SLR lens cameras while we attempted to retain some dignity breakfasting from our vantage spot.

Leaving Picton we took the wiggly Queen Charlotte Drive road along the northern coast to Nelson. While not for the faint-hearted it offered further stunning vistas of rural New Zealand although my enjoyment of these were distracted by the numerous crosses erected on virtually every hairpin bend in memory of fallen drivers.

Nelson had been sold as the artsy, cultural capital of New Zealand and so I was looking forward to reaching it but failed to remember that what is “bustling” and “vibrant” in New Zealand speak is often parochial and introspective in comparison to the same adjectives used for Australia or the UK. Nelson was actually disappointing in the fulfilment of its expectations and an afternoon of wandering around the mock-Gothic Anglican cathedral (with its brilliant Hot Topics newsletters each exploring a different current issue within the framework of the Anglican teaching from Pacific Island climate change to the war in Darfur), perusing the second hand bookshops that doubled up as bohemian clothes shops, eating cake and purchasing woollen blankets we decided not to spend the night and instead try and push onto the Abel Tasman region so that we might be able to get in a full day’s walking.

Reaching Abel Tasman was not actually difficult and in spite of the weather was a pleasant drive passing through the fresh fruit and veg roadside vendors of Motueka and then winding up via the golden beaches of Kaiteriteri. Unfortunately reaching the wilderness of this National Park in the very north-western corner of the island we entered the captive tourist market in which the strict No Camping prohibitions meant that in spite of our best efforts we eventually had to check into a Campervan Park in Marahu for the night which at least provided the consolation of my first shower in four days! The sleeting rain that had been falling all day grew to a crescendo as it crashed down on the roof of the van throughout the night leaving us with little hope of being able to tramp the following day.

Day 5, Friday 6th March 2009: Abel Tasman – Murchison

In spite of my fears about the weather which was continuing when I woke up as much as it had when I had gone to bed by the time we had showered and breakfasted it had remarkably come to a halt and so we decided to risk the still greying sky and venture out into the National Park.
The Abel Tasman Coastal Track is one of the most famous walks in New Zealand which takes between 3-5 days to complete and involves complicated tidal calculations in order to be able to pass all its incoming waters at the right time. With Rich not keen on the idea of tackling the whole loop and camping overnight we opted for the one day tramp which took us all the way up to Stilwell Bay and back down the coast.

The 14km walk took us about 4 ½ hours and was well worth braving the showers that broke and threatened to turn into deluges before departing as quickly as they broke and leaving bright sunlight to mop them up. The path wound its way across the cliffs underneath a jungle canopied track that offered enticing peeps at the paradisical turquoise waters and sandy bays that popped out through various clearings and offered breathtaking views across the Tasman Sea.

We reached Stilwell Bay in time for lunch and enjoyed an isolated home-packed picnic on the beach that fortified us for the return journey that saw us arrive back in Maharu a couple of hours later and in the usual spirit of our travels saw us reward our hard work with a couple of cakes that we ate with homemade tea on a bench overlooking the sea.

A little sweaty from the walk and without showering facilities we drove back via Kaiteriteri in order to take a more natural hygienic bathing in the sea. The beach was quite busy and those sunning themselves on the sand were treated to the spectacle of an oversized campervan pulling up by the water and unleashing two British guys who ran from their seats into the water and then two minutes later dove back into the comforts of the van to towel themselves down and reverse out as quickly as they had arrived!

Driving back through Motueka to pick up dinner I experienced the first successful, strange New Zealand driving manoeuvre that we had been warned of when we picked up the van. If you are pulling left out of a T-junction you must give way to the person opposite you pulling out right into the same lane. This bizarre legislation has seen me pull up at every junction in confusion waiting for the guidance of my fellow drivers to beep or flash their lights at me until I acted according to their rules but finally on day five in this country I mastered it!

With daylight savings still in force and providing the grace of a good couple of hours of evening driving we carried on towards the West Coast. To do this we entered the Gowan Valley which was the first place that truly reminded me of the Lord of the Rings trilogy! Plunging through the valley with steep, craggy mountains soaring up to the sky, their tors hidden in the mist of low-sliding cloud mist, I could just imagine Frodo and Samwise trekking their way through the terrain!

As night fell we managed to locate a picnic spot nestled into the plateaus of one of the mountain ranges and set up camp for the night trying to avoid plague of hungry sandflies circling our van...

Day 6, Saturday 7th March 2009: Murchison – Lake Mahinapua

Woke up today to find that I had been massacred by the sandflies. While I seem to have remained impervious to the attacks of the mosquitoes as in Belize I well and truly fell prey to these vicious mobsters, barely able to see a part of my lower legs, ankles or feet that wasn’t swollen in the red bumps of their fang marks or smeared in the blood squashed from their full bellies where I had managed to swot them.

The distraction of the itching was taken away as we passed through the Buller Gorge and entered the true wilderness of New Zealand’s rugged beauty. A quick petrol top up in Westport to see us through the fuelless roads of the upper West Coast and we tackled what the Lonely Planet has described as one of the Top 10 drives in the world.

The hype failed to disappoint as the highway gripped the edge of the clifftops battered by the full weight of the ocean throwing its foaming mass against the granite boulders. The recession of the land was clear in the wastrel of isolated stacks and stumps littering the shallows of the shores like the fallen soliders of a retreating army engaged in a slow, bloodied war of attrition that they knew they were destined to lose but fight every step of the way. Similar in landscape to the Twelve Apostles in Australia but even more feral and untamed it was a breathtaking drive that provided plenty of photo opportunities due to the enforced snail pace imposed by the treacherously winding roads.

We stopped off at the Pancake Rocks for lunch and were enjoying a homemade Ploughman’s in the safety of our van when a Japanese couple in their monstrous Winnebago tore into the back of us whilst attempting to squeeze into the narrow parking berth adjacent to us. Fortunately, given that we were stationary and they were only trying to park the damage was limited to a broken back light and a nasty rip in the bumper and rear left panel, but which came accompanied with that awful grating metallic gnashing that sounds far worse. We had to get out of our car and direct the Japanese driver back out because his attempted reversal out of the berth would have ploughed straight back into us. When we finally extricated him from it he jumped out of his car and started pulling desperately on a cigarette while his wife gave us their insurance details. It was only the second day of their holiday and they were both quite shaken by the accident but it was all perfectly amicable and we ended up wandering around the Pancake Rocks with them exchanging travel news! It was a relief to us to only be hiring the van and fully insured so that after reporting the accident to the company we did not have to worry about anything else unlike the many histrionics of Andy H’s great-grandfather, Stubby!

The Pancake Rocks are named so because the rivets in their granite formation make them look like a pile of stacked pancakes. They were beautifully set out in a small coastal park that took you around the cliffs through a series of bridges and tracks that offered perfect panoramas of the coastline. The park also incorporated the blowholes into its layout but given that these perform only at high tides (which on the day of our tour were as far as they could possibly be from our lunchtime visit at early dawn and very late evening!) we were unable to see them in action.

Trying our best to leave the Pancake Rocks well after the Japanese couple had departed we headed on down the coast towards Greymouth where the ocean became more manageable and less petulant as it reigned in its aggression. Disappointingly Greymouth seemed to have followed suit offering a drab city that aptly suited the dull description of its name and not wasting any more time gave up on the supposedly impressive flood walls and headed for its more colourful sibling further south.

Hokitika is best known for hosting the annual Wild Foods Festival every year which we were sadly one week too early for as I would have enjoyed sampling some of the more weird and wonderful New Zealand dishes! Instead we pottered around the cafe looking longingly into the closed patisseries and marvelling the eccentric arts-house cinema before deciding to push on and end our night at somewhere we could camp for free.

In the end, after many unsuccessful diversions, we opted to spend the night at Lake Mahinapua. I had endured enough anxious moments on the bottleneck single lane bridges that are unsighted at one end and force you to have to guess whether there might be any oncoming vehicles. This wouldn’t be so bad if the bridges didn’t also traffic the trains and offered no supervision of access or warning of impending carriages! I suffered nightmares of making it halfway down the bridge only to see a train approaching and having split seconds to jump out of the doors and plunge into the rivers while Andy H and all my worldly belongings were smashed to smithereens.
The campsite is part of the Department of Conversation (DOC) set up that provides beautiful pieces of land for very cheap prices for travellers. For $6 each (the equivalent of two British pounds) we were able to park our campervan anywhere within the grounds along the stunning lake and enjoy the facilities on offer (no shower – that’s why the lake’s there, it even has a cove named Swimmers Bay!) and stroll along the many paths that bordered the water in the evening dusk and watch the sun set.

We made friends with an elderly gentleman parked up in his campervan who had embarked on a driving tour of the country with his wife when he was younger. She had passed away three years previously and he had forced himself to get the van out again and follow the route they had taken revisiting all the places they had stayed at. He said it was the hardest thing he had ever had to do but that he was enjoying the memories that it was bringing back. As well as imparting several tips about where to head next (he was driving up the coast while we were heading down) he was also able to explain the strange phenomena of helicopters passing overhead with what looked like garrotted executions swinging from ropes attached to their undertows. Apparently these are local hunters who go out in their helicopters shooting deer and then tie them up and bring them back home flailing through the sky. It is certainly a unique take on hunting and one of the most bizarre things I have ever seen passing through the sky!

Day 7, Sunday 8th March 2009: Lake Mahinapua - Haast Beach

As we carried on down the West Coast the full force of the climatic geography hit us. Receiving over 3300mm of rain annually that is deposited when the clouds passing over the sea hit the coastal mountain range we were treated to a good few of those millimetres with slating rain falling throughout the day without any respite.

Undeterred we stopped off at the Franz Josef glacier and donning my full rain prevention attire (Dad’s outdated rainwear, a cheap and disturbingly named “spray” jacket bought in Australia in anticipation and my umbrella which had been impaled by an explosion of melted chewing gum) ventured out. With one hand gripping the stem of my brolley and the other taking photos of the blue-iced glacier we managed to stumble across the shore of granite boulders, avoiding the tributaries of milky water rushing through, to as close as we were possibly allowed for further photographic excellence before admitting we were sodden through and stumbling back.
A quick stop in the Full of Beans cafe, where I was restored to life and warmth by a miraculous piping chicken and mushroom pie next to a table of professional travel writers who I watched with envy, and we were back on the road. Wisely we ignored the Fox Glacier and continued driving along the coast until we hit the tiny settlement of Haast that is bizarrely divvied up into three sections: beach, pass and the archaically named township.

Finding a secluded bay by the beach we pulled up for the night. The shore was reminiscent of a wasted post-apocalyptic cinematic scene with greying sand and gnarled and charred pieces of wood embedded into its floor while a rainbow tore between the threatening grey clouds and the struggling sunset. We were cheered up by the folly of a fellow campervan following us into our hideway and then getting themselves stuck in the sand as they attempted a more ambitious park! They had dug themselves out before we came back to our van and slept alongside us in awkward nonchalance!

Day 8, Monday 9th March 2009: Haast Beach – Queenstown

It isn’t far from Haast to Queenstown and so we enjoyed a lazy start to the day and an unrushed drive that took us to Wanaka for a late afternoon lunch. The highway took us on a spectacular drive that passed through the mountains first via the unnaturally blue Lake Hawea and then Lake Wanaka before arriving at the little town where we parked up by the waters and went off tramping round the lake in search of a waterfall that eluded us. Defeated we returned to the van and in vain tried to dry out our still soaking glacial clothes in the sun. Lunch revolved around a main course of wholemeal raspberry and coconut muffin followed by a dessert of orange cream muffin at the brilliant Cafe Tango.

We opted to take the shorter and more dangerous Crown Range road from Wanaka to Queenstown via Cardrona rather than the much longer highway loop. This involved negotiating the many tight hairpin bends and dodging the landslides that had caved in on several sections of the road but was rewarded by fantastic views across the valley as we wound up the mountain and then back down it.

We detoured via the historic town of Arrowtown which still retains most of its original buildings in a quaint charming National Trust environment but were unable to find anywhere to camp for the night and so had to continue on to Queenstown for the night. Passing right through the town we eventually found a DOC site on the road to Glenorchy perched right on the tip of the lake and secured our most picturesque camping spot yet parked by the water with the sun setting behind the mountains – even the festival style toilets were spotlessly clean though the water was far too cold for my ambitious showering hopes.

Day 9, Tuesday 10th March 2009: Queenstown

Having decided to check into our first campervan park we wanted to make the most of it so woke early and drove into Queenstown and booked into the Lakeview Holiday Park up near the gondola. With temperatures plummeting and a biting wind whistling through the mountains the first luxury was to indulge in the one dollar coin operated hot showers! We then plugged into the mains and charged our much used cameras and much maligned telephones.

Eventually we dragged ourselves out of the park and set off to explore Queenstown which is the adrenaline capital of New Zealand with more nosedives and bungee jumps than you can shake a stick at. I was keen to do the hang-gliding but the inclement weather conditions meant it wasn’t feasible and so I settled into one of the many coffee shops and whiled away an afternoon on the lakeside from behind the comfort of glassed windows and accompanied by a bottomless pot of Earl Grey tea!

Treating ourselves to a night out, away from the stove, we opted to dine at @Thai where I indulged in a chicken, pineapple and coconut curry that warmed my chilled bones before heading to one of the many bars for late night happy hours with live music before returning to our frozen van and being eternally grateful for the woollen blankets we had bought in Nelson!