The last three weeks in New Zealand's South Island have been incredible. We have been blessed with beautiful Spring weather (we have been very lucky apparently), saw spectacular scenery, had our fill of wildlife, enjoyed camping in beautiful and remote areas, completed some epic walks and jumped from the third highest bungee in the world: I urge you now, make sure you visit the South Island of New Zealand in your lifetime, you will not regret it!
We left Abel Tailsman after squeezing in some relaxation on the beach, to rest our legs, and started the epic drive down the South Island's west coast to our first Department Of Conservation (DOC) campsite at Lyell, an old mining village. The DOC campsites are amazing. They are small, basic, with just a toilet and (usually) drinking water, only cost $6 pp and are in remote locations. The campsite at Lyell was beautiful, surrounded by sun, hills and mountains. We were in near luxury until we were 'blessed' with our first sand fly encounter. Unfortunately like Scotland's West coast has midges, New Zealand's has sandflies. And like midges, they are annoying, bite you, make you itch and make you curse them. A lot.
Anyhow, after a good night's sleep in our tent, we headed south, visiting the pancake rocks (a rock formation in the sea stacked like pancakes) and arrived at our next DOC campsite. By this point we hadn't had a shower for 24 hours, so Beeds decided to wash in the lake. At this campsite we were also glad to meet other actual tent campers as we were starting to think we were the only one's and enjoyed our first possum experience. Three possums stole bread straight out someone's bag and didn't care one bit when we tried to scare them off. Rather it stood with the bread just hanging out its mouth! They are viewed as pests here, and regularly we saw signs offering money in return for their fur, but unfortunately we were without our gun and sling shot at this point, so instead we took pictures!
Our next stop was to see the impressive Franz Josef Glacier. It was pretty spectacular but unfortunately it was very overcast.
On the same day we started another overnight walk at the Coplands. This particular walk isn't as commonly covered by tourists and as such the path was a lot more challenging. We climbed for five hours, carrying our gear (pak yak beeds taking the bulk) and it was definitely hard going. However, we were rewarded by walking alongside with the most beautiful ice blue river, flowing from the nearby glacial mountains, and when we reached the top, views of mountain peaks and a chance to bathe in natural hot springs. To top it off Beeds also carried a bottle of red wine, and enjoying this in a hot spring was pretty relaxing!
By the following day neither of us had had a proper shower for three days so our plan was to first visit the impressive Fox Glacier and then head to Wanaka via the windy road of the Haast Pass, which is only open between 8-5pm. However, the second part of the plan didn't quite happen! Driving down the West Coast you literally spend the journey going 'wow, look at that mountain on your left', then get round a corner and are awed by the stunning coast line. The place is just so stunning we ended up stopping in the middle of the Haast Pass at a beautiful DOC campsite and ended up washing in a FREEZING river! However, with these views in the background, it was more than worth it!
Fox Glacier
So our mission for the next day was to complete the remaining two hour journey to Wanaka. It took us seven! The weather was stunning and the views epic. We also squeezed in jumping off an 8 metre bridge into freezing water and sampled the traditional local whitebait patty. Yum!
When we finally arrived in the lovely town of Wanaka, we walked along the lake to discover it was sailing club night. Beeds was a little green eyed at all the folks out on the water and luckily for us a very generous Welsh man (there seems to be more British than Kiwi in the tourist towns aka 'Pomaka') noticed his envious stares and offered his Laser to take out onto the water! We of course said yes. However once on the water we discovered we were in the middle of a race, when a man sailed over to us to say it was cancelled due to lack of wind. It was all very comical as 1, we didn't know we were partaking in a race, 2, everyone else had much larger sailing boats and 3 Beeds had cracked open a beer, which a guy from another boat had handed over to him!
The very kind Welsh man then let us take the boat out the following day. The weather was glorious, but unfortunately the wind died very quickly, when we were in the middle of the lake. And when I say there was no wind, there was actually zero wind. Beedie had to get us back ashore by swimming and pushing the boat. I really hope no one saw us!
After a great couple of days in Wanaka and an added walk up the local hill, which looked very like Arthur's Seat, we headed to the much hyped Queenstown. However, first we made sure we stopped at the Cardrona hotel for a picture!
Our plans for Queenstown were to have a night out, for Beeds to complete three bungees in one day, both eat a 'Ferg burger', partake in the Luge and frisbee golf, aka Frolf.
We were there for three nights and two days and managed it all! To add to that I also put aside the fact I'm suffering an injury and joined Beeds to do the highest bungee at 134m and we both did the worlds longest rope swing at 300m and a 70m free fall.
Having been with Beeds for eight years, I have a good knowledge of how he likes to put himself in dangerous situations, hurt himself and try anything which will provide him with a little adrenaline. It didn't really surprise me then when he backflipped his first ever bungee at 47m, asked to be dipped into the water on the 43m bungee (causing some blood vessels to burst) and wasn't all that scared when he jumped 134m. I on the other hand was bricking it. I stood for about ten seconds at the edge whilst the man pep talked me and then just had to fall head first. Oh my word did I scream! The free fall lasts for 6 seconds and all you can see below you is a river. The worst part for me though was when you bounce back up to 70m and fall all the way back down again! It is just so unnatural and against human nature to fall like that! But, despite the knowledge that I probably shouldn't have done it, I'm glad I did!
We were both on an utter high and just to consolidate this day of madness we finished it off by doing the rope swing together and eating the famous Ferg Burger. It really was a great day!
Luging! Aka Mario Kart.
Our night out!
Beeds backflipping off a bungee overlooking Queenstown!
Dunk me in the water please! (Nutter)!
We jumped from the hanging platform! Just incase you forgot, it's 134m!!
Just a small burger whilst sporting the 'I've done bungees hat and t-shirt.'
Queenstown is great; it's an adrenaline junkies paradise. But it also requires a lot of money, for you to be about 21 and not mind that most of the people who actually work there are not in fact New Zealanders. So after three nights, we said bye with our pockets a bit lighter and our senses nearly back to normal. We then headed south to the beautiful area of Milford Sounds and the start of the Routeburn track.
We had a beautiful campsite the night before the start of the walk, with just one other camper next to us. However, the sandflies where horrific meaning we had to wear these for the evening!
The Routeburn Track is another of New Zealand's great walks. At this point we continued to be blessed with perfect weather and enjoyed amazing sun and views.
If you zoom into the pic below you will see the hut we slept in next to the lake. As there are no showers at these facilities, we had a dip in the lake. But with water being snowmelt running off the mountains, we were out as quickly as we went in!
Starting to realise we were becoming slightly short of time for everything we wanted to do, we spent our second day of the Routeburn by getting up early, descending down the hill and heading straight to the beautiful area of Milford Sound. Milford or Doubtful Sounds are a must for tourists in NZ. The drive out to Milford Sound was spectacular and we both agreed it was actually more impressive than the boat trip out towards the Tasman Sea. The road, like most in NZ, was slow and windy, but made even slower by our constant gazing out the car windows!
Below is a pic of one of the many waterfalls and a rainbow caused by the spray from a waterfall, at the same height as our boat!
After an amazing two weeks in the north of the South Island, and travelling the length of the west coast, we decided to drive the south coastal scenic route round the Catlins. It continued to be beautiful, but instead of mountains it was filed with beautiful rolling green landscape and actually looked a lot like the Scottish Borders most of the time! We spent a night at Curio a Bay where we were lucky enough to see three wild Yellow Eyed penguins (one of the rarest in the world) and a sea lion crawl onto the beach. The Penguins were adorable and made us laugh a lot with the way they waddled!
Next we headed to Dunedin. Dunedin is the South Islands second biggest city with just 120,000 people (the South Island has less than a million) and is named after and architecturally based on Edinburgh (Dunedin is Gallic for Edinburgh). The city was nice and it was fun seeing all the Scottish street names, but modern Dunedin really doesn't look like Edinburgh! However, to be fair we did go to the settlers museum and the resemblance of buildings from the early Scottish settlers was definitely evident.
Also, whilst in Dunedin we discovered they have the steepest street in the world! We first of all walked up it, then drove up it and finally after reading each year there is a street race up it decided we would attempt to run up it. It must have only taken about 1 and a half min or so, but it nearly killed us. Our teeth were sore at the top from the huge release of lactic and it took us a bit time before we stopped feeling sick! It was crazy steep!
To continue with our leanings of the British settlers in NZ we headed north to a small town called Omarua and were very lucky to be there the same weekend as their annual Victorian festival. It was great fun seeing all the locals dressed in Victorian wear and showing of their British heritage. Beedie got over excited and also decided to join the men with their Victorian styled moustaches and beards. However, we were both laughing quickly when he realised that without the rest of the costume he actually just looked a bit like a gay 80s movie star!
As well as it's Victorian heritage, Oamaru is also famous for its hundreds of small Blue penguins which nest around the harbour. We were very lucky to find a spot next to a small shed were the penguins had their nests and watched about twenty coming ashore and crossing a road just metres from us. They were very cute, but so slow! They spent ages cleaning themselves, two even mated in front of us(!) and then took about thirty mins to work up the courage to cross the little road to their nests. As a spectator you have to stay still and quiet as not to scare them but I did manage a few pictures!
Our next and nearly final stop was a drive north of Christchurch to a small town called Kaikoura where we had a very early 4.30am start to swim with wild Dusky dolphins at 6.30am! I have to admit, swimming with dolphins isn't something I have ever been overly ambitious to do as I don't like the idea of swimming with dolphins in captivity. However, this trip was excellent, the boat takes you out to a well spotted dolphin sight, does not feed them to draw them in and if you are lucky enough to see dolphins then you go into the water and they swim around you. It turned out our group were extremely lucky as the boat only needed to stop once and the dolphins kept approaching us. We were told to make high pitched noises to attract them and try to dive lots so they would be interested in us. My noise sounded a bit like Sharapova playing tennis whilst Beeds went for more of a sea lion type noise. Apparently he was attempting to encourage inter species relations!
At one point I had one about a metre from me and it did five turns round me as I tried to turn to keep up with it! Afterwards the boat took us to another spot where we must have saw a pod of about eighty dolphins including a few baby ones swimming alongside their mothers. Some were showing off diving, jumping and flipping out of the water and so many swam alongside the boat. It was incredible. To top the day off we did our final mountain climb in more gorgeous weather and picked mussels, pauau and goosenecks from the coast line for our tea! We were shattered!
Our final day and a half was spent in a rainy Christ Church. We really liked Christchurch and it was sad to see the devastation the earthquakes caused in 2010 and 2011. The centre is full of rubble from torn down buildings and empty shops/offices which are yet to be torn down. However, the city seems to certainly be coping with the challenges. There are pop up cafés all over the place and a really cool shipping container shopping mall. We also went to the 'Quake city' museum, which was fascinating, but hearing the accounts of people's experiences and loved ones dying was heart breaking.
All in all NZ has been amazing. The North and South Island are beautiful, but it's the South Island which has certainly caught out attention.
We are now waiting to board our flight to Vancouver! We take off at 3.15pm on the 22nd and land at 12.05pm on the 22nd. Beeds is fed up of me saying this, but it really confuses me!
Bye for now. :0)
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