Easter Break - Saturday 17/4/10 - Kaikoura to Nelson

The next morning we wake up to one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. The mountains line the ocean and we discover that it had just snowed the day before, so those white caps up there wouldn’t have been there if we had showed up just one day earlier. We decide we’ll walk along the coast where there are supposed to be some seal colonies. Before we even get started on our walk, we’re greeted by a group of seals basking on the shore. We look back across the water to the mountains before heading off along the coast. Up we go to walk along the cliff edge next to the water. A sign greets us at the top indicating which mountains we can see from this vantage point. The shoreline below us is white and curving and the water is clear and blue. Along the way we can see seaweed lapping in the waves. We decide to venture down along the beach, but we have limited time and if we encounter a seal colony we’ll have to turn back. As luck would have it, we do run into a seal colony, but they’re far enough away we can make our way around them without turning back. They’re still close enough to keep us on our toes and give me a few good shots from where we stand. All I can think about at this point is the sing on the beach telling us not to try and roll the seals; which of course, is just about the stupidest suggestion I’ve ever heard. I think anyone who actually would think to roll a seal should get a little love bite from it. As we pass the seals a couple of them pick their heads up to get a better look at us. I get the sense that maybe one or two of them are males wondering if we’re going to take their women. All too soon it’s time for us to leave to get the car returned to Nelson. If I could do the trip over again, the only thing I would change is more time in Kaikoura. I could sit and stare at those mountains across the water for hours. At least as we leave we get to see the mountains for quite some time as we travel at their feet. Just as we’re leaving town, we get one more little surprise. Some people have stopped their car along the side of the road and are looking out to the ocean with a camera. Turning, we notice there are things out there jumping in the water. We decide to pull over ourselves, it’s not long before we realise those things are dolphins jumping way off the coast. There must be twenty of them out there, leaping high in the air. They seem like they’re playing, though they’re probably fishing. It’s amazing how high up they can jump. They’re too far out for me to get a really good picture, but I do end up with something of one jumping. We spend much of the day driving, ending in Nelson and then finding a nice little hostel with a very kind owner, and his wife and son, before dropping off the car. We debate going to the beer fest they’re having in town, but decide it’s too far to walk and we don’t really want to pay. Instead we walk into town and get ourselves some dinner. A great little pizza place, where they serve us some NZ beer and talk us into a dessert pizza. It’s nothing I would go for again and takes forever to get, but is still tasty. We end the night by watching the sunset from the steps of the church and then getting my dad packed for his early morning departure.

Easter Break - Friday 16/4/10 - Timaru to Kaikoura

The day’s goal, other than to reach Kaikoura by night, is to see Akaroa. Along our way we pass through the town that is home to Lincoln University and I take the time to think of Sandy and get a look at where she first experienced New Zealand. Compared to Palmy, the place is almost nonexsistent. If she thinks Palmy’s got nothing going on, I can’t imagine what she must have thought about and done in this place. However, it’s a majorly agricultural school, so I’m sure she loved it and it’s not quite as far removed as Hampshire; I’m sure it’s a place I would have enjoyed. After a long windy way in we reach Akaroa, which is a French – English village (the only French settlement in New Zealand) some 85km from Christchurch. The town sits in an ancient volcano, which doesn’t seem to bother the people living there, though the last eruption was some half million years ago. The ocean has entered via channels made by stream erosion over the past years since the volcano became dormant. There is actually a second volcano that is the town of Lyttleton and together the two volcanoes make the Banks Peninsula (pronounced Peninshula by our wonderful Kiwi cousins). Akaroa is the larger of the two volcanoes, but the way we go, we end up driving through both of them; in Maori the name Akaroa means “Long Harbour.”

We drive a long and winding road to make our way to the small town, a place I’m told is a must see by my friend Winnie back home. When we finally crest the hill that leads into the village, we see a peaceful harbour filled with boats and a quaint French looking village at along the shore. While all appears peaceful today, the area was quite violent back in 1832 and lead to one of the most important events in New Zealand history. The Captain of the British ship Elizabeth, John Stewart, helped the North Island Ngāti Toa chief, Te Rauparaha, to capture the local Ngai Tahu chief, Te Maiharanui, his wife Te Whe and his young daughter, Roi Mata. The settlement of Takapuneke was sacked. Concern over the complicity of John Stewart, along with other lawlessness among Europeans in New Zealand, led to the appointment of an official British Resident James Busby to New Zealand in (1832). This was the first step in the British involvement that led to the Treaty of Waitangi.

While I take very few photographs of this part of the journey, it is still amazingly beautiful. All along the way are endless perfect beaches and sunny blue skies, quite the opposite of what we were experiencing down in the bottom of the south. We eventually wind our way along the ridges to Lyttleton, the smaller of the two volcanoes.

Just over the final pass we get our first view of Christchurch. This city is massive; it seems to stretch on and on forever. It’s an amazing shock to the system after all the farmland along the way, with almost no people anywhere. I can immediately tell I don’t want to spend time here and am somewhat thankful we didn’t make it to sleep there the night before. It takes us quite a while to make our way through the traffic lights and out the other side of the city after a quick petrol stop.

Our next journey is somewhat inland, with a peak here and there of the ocean, but there’s virtually no stopping all the way in to Kaikoura. We make it there just after the sun sets and get a general idea of the beauty of the place before darkness takes over and we find our hostel. We take a walk to the grocery store to get our last supply of food for the night and lunch the next day. I can’t believe my dad will only have one more day here and in two days I’ll be heading back to school. It’s gone by incredibly quickly and I want nothing more than to continue the experience. I joke with my dad that he doesn’t really need to go back and neither do I, we can just tramp around the north island next. This is of course not a real possibility, but we enjoy our last bits of time in NZ by soaking up the heat of the spa tub they have at the hostel. This one is quite nice in the sense that it’s like a little swimming pool and we have the whole outdoors to ourselves, but, as seems to be the Kiwi way, the water is only just at body temperature, which is not quite warm enough to massage away the aches of sitting in a car all day. We finally muster the courage to run through the cold back to our room before making dinner.

Easter Break - Thursday 15/4/10 - Dunedin to Timaru

We start our morning with a trip downtown to the museum. We only have so many coins and so much time to get through the museum and pay for the meter. So we plan a short visit. I’m once again majorly impressed by the Kiwi ability to design a museum that never stops pulling you in. We both get majorly caught up and decide to put one more dollar in the meter. However, we end up separating and that causes us to leave the museum almost an hour after we originally planned. Now we’ll be pushing it to make it to Christchurch by night time and I have to cut out a visit to Sandy. However, we do have enough time for one quick stop to the steepest paved street. This is the kind of road you would never want to drive up or down, without the danger of your car falling down the hillside. We walk up and take a look around, admiring the work that must have gone into this road. But we only get so much time before we have to hit the road again. We get to drive though Palmerston on the way, which makes me think about Palmerston North and how soon I’ll have to be back there learning and working again. But it’s almost hard to imagine now with all the amazing things I’m seeing and doing. It’ll be the final semester push when I get back and I’ll have to be working nonstop to get it all done. Our next stop is to the lighthouse and boulders of Moeraki. Just before coming here I read a book by Keri Hulme called The Bone People it was about a woman who had a house built like a tower and Keri supposedly used the lighthouse as inspiration, so I figure it’s worth a visit, but I have no idea what I’m in for. First off, it’s way, way off the main road. But this proves to be quite worthwhile. We decide to walk out to the penguin hide, not so much because we believe we’ll see anything, but to look at the ocean. However, we’re surprised to find the rocks covered in seals. They’re stretching and looking quite happy, basking in the little bits of sun. Once in the penguin hide we look out to find another giant seal lying happily on the beach. After just a few minutes of looking we get another couple of visitors. Out of the ocean emerge several yellow eyed penguins. We watch a couple of them wander up the hillside together and one seems to take guard at the top. After a while several more come out of the water to join them. Eventually they all disappear into the bushes and we decide it’s time we took off, we took quite a detour getting here, but I think it’s very worthwhile since I’ve wanted to see penguins the whole time. I’ve seen them in a zoo before, but there really is something wonderful about seeing an animal just hanging out in its natural environment. Our final stop along the way is a little further down at the Moeraki boulders. These are fairly famous rocks, though we only manage to catch them when the tide is high, so there’s little to see. But the Maori legend tells of how they got to be there. Many years ago, when the first sons of the gods came to inhabit the islands, they came by boat with many eel baskets, calabashes, and kumara. A storm came and destroyed their ships. The backs of the ships became the Southern Alps and the food baskets became the boulders you see along the beach. What’s interesting geologically about these rocks is that they were formed like pearls. Meaning, the inside started first and they grew outward. They are hidden beneath the beach and are exposed with coastal erosion. They are also almost all entirely spherical, something quite alien to see along the beach. By the time we’ve seen it all we realize we’ll never make it to Christchurch before it’s just too late to want to keep driving so we decide we’ll make it to Timaru and stay there for the night. Once we’re there, we locate a hostel quickly and settle in for the night.

Easter Break - Wednesday 14/4/10 - Owaka to Dunedin

We’re now working against the clock, with the ultimate goal of getting to Kaikoura and then Nelson for the car return after that. Kaikoura is supposed to be one of the majorly beautiful places along the way, so we plan to see what we can before cutting away from there. So the goal for this day is to make it to Dunedin. And we’re greatly successful, the next day is supposed to be set aside for Christchurch, but we’ll leave that for later. The east coast has somewhat less to offer in the way of visual splendour, so we make our way along quite quickly. We do however stop for a walk out to a lighthouse where we get our first glimpse of some seals. They’re so far below us that really I can only see them by zooming in with my camera and looking at the pictures later. They even have babies playing around in the water, which is endlessly adorable.

The peninsula with the lighthouse on it appears to be a spectacularly popular seal colony home. While this has been a nice sighting, I’m hoping for a bit more; ones that I can perhaps wee without the aid of a camera and computer.

We end our day’s journey in Dunedin, a city with a major university for the south island. We search for quite a while to find somewhere to eat before finally settling on a nice looking little student place. Here is where I get my first taste of venison, in ravioli form. My dad goes for the lamb, to get a feel for where all those sheep on these islands get to. After a pleasant meal, we make our way back to our hostel and try to plan the next day. I want to get to see Sandy, but I know we’ll be pressed for time. We decide to stop in the Otago Museum before leaving town.

Easter Break - Tuesday 13/4/10 - Te Anau to Owaka

Our next car ride proves to be less entirely visually stunning, but enjoyable none the less. We decide to stop for lunch along the road at the beach and as we’re driving out we come across some Scottish Highland bulls. And these guys are massive, I mean massive. The picture doesn’t do them justice. They were like the living relatives of the Woolly Mammoth. We jump around on the rocks for a while having watched some surfers paddle themselves out to the open ocean, standing on their surf boards with something like canoe paddles. Just as we get back in the car and start to make ourselves something to eat, the rain begins again. So we leave that spot behind and continue our way through Invercargill to Slope Point. Slope Point is the furthest point south in New Zealand without travelling to Stewart Island. We’re more than halfway to the South Pole from the Equator, the furthest south I think I’ll ever go without some serious snow gear. Slope Point is located way the heck out in the middle of nowhere on a private sheep farm, so it’s closed during lambing, which lucky for us is in the spring months of October/November. We hit the road again, hoping to make our way a little further than we do. But we make one spectacular stop along the way, we really make several, but this would be the one worth a mention and a photo. The sun is setting and we pull over to let someone go by and take a quick look at the ocean. What we come across is one of the most perfect beaches we’ve ever seen and a sunset worth remembering. Again, this is a place where words do not suffice, but the pictures do it a bit more justice. The hostel we end up staying in is one of nicest we ever get. The beds are far removed from the kitchen, though the place is small and there is only one other (German) guy staying there so noise isn’t really an issue. The shower is hot, but has the softest water of all time and I feel slick getting out. But the best thing of all is there are electric blankets on the beds. We turn ours on and snuggle in for the night.

Easter Break - Monday 12/4/10 - Milford Sound

We’re up bright and early to start out on our drive to Milford sound. We know there’s a long road in and out with no petrol along the way and many interesting stops. We also know there are boat rides out into the sound leaving from the end of the road regularly during the day and we’ve been told they’re quite worthwhile.

After a quick breakfast we head out on the road. There’s rain forecasted for the whole day, up to 500mm they’ve said. So we plan to be wet and layer on the clothing. Of course, with rain comes rainbows and I catch a glimpse of the first one in the rear-view mirror. We get a good look back up the valley as the mountains begin to close in on us, the clouds sink in for the day, and the rain starts up. Once we enter the narrow gap between mountains the clouds are thick above us and the water is falling steadily, but not yet very heavily. We see just a few waterfalls along the way before making our first stop. As we’re driving, we approach a bridge where a car is moving very slowly. So, naturally we do the same across the bridge to discover what it is they are looking at. As soon as we see it, we know we need to stop. So I make a quick U-y and go back across the bridge to turn in to a little parking spot. This is one of the most breathtakingly strong waterfalls either of us has ever seen. It’s so loud we can hardly hear what’s going on and it’s so beautifully placed, there’s just no looking away. That is until a car comes by and pushes us off the bridge. I do my best to manoeuvre my way around taking pictures without either dropping my camera into the swiftly (an understatement) moving river or allowing the rain to work its way into some important electronic piece.

We move on, stopping now and again for a photo op of the never ending waterfalls pouring down the mountain sides. The thing about Milford Sound is that there are really no words to describe it. Coming back from the trip, I had people ask me what my favourite thing was and I kept saying Milford Sound and Kaikoura (more on that later). They of course would ask me why Milford and I would be hard pressed to explain. It would go something like this: “Why was Milford Sound your favourite?” “It was so beautiful, there were just so many . . . waterfalls.” See? It just leaves so much to be desired in a description. Even now I don’t believe I have the words, so I’ll leave a lot of it up to the pictures, but in all honesty, it’s really one of those places you have to see to believe and understand. I could spend an entire day describing how you take one look and think there are three waterfalls on one cliff face, but then you look again and you see that there are thirty little ones feeding into and out of one big one. How the clouds hung in the air above us and made the mountains appear to go on and on up forever and all that water was just part of the mountain, no coming from somewhere else. How the road wound around and around with the same endless grey and water, but the view was always different. How it felt as though this must be some other strange world, one completely disconnected from the rest of New Zealand and certainly from the rest of the planet. How we seemed to have gone into some time trap of a place that had never evolved and never would, but would remain in its continuing majesty forever. And I would begin to do it some kind of justice, but there are still no words to describe how one feels looking at this stunning piece of nature and seeing something they have never encountered before.

Eventually we wind our way to the tunnel. This is something like the longest tunnel in NZ with the most alpine set of traffic lights and home to the ever curious Kea; a giant green parrot that has a particular liking of shoe chewing. Tourists love to drive by and then feed the parrots as they wait for the light to change to green allowing their passage through the tunnel, but these cheeky little guys will eat the rubber caulking around your windows and have been known to put nicks in the paintwork. While we see no Keas in our short wait, we do see a last patch of remaining snow at the bottom of the mountains, which has formed itself into a sort of tunnel. Once we get our green light we make our way into the tunnel of rock and find the whole thing slopes down and down and down. It seems to almost never end going down and I can only imagine how deep we are as the clouds covered the tops of the mountains above. We emerge into a giant ampetheatre of rock. It’s no wonder they had to build a tunnel through. The mountains have formed together, creating the world’s best defensive line. Any original Maoris coming in from the sound would have met this and had to turn back, there would be no way though and the rock face is too sheer to climb, especially with all the water coming down. At this point the road starts to wind downward, closely, in on itself and my dad starts to panic we’ll fall over the edge again. But with my trusty driving skills we make it to the bottom harm free. By now we’re practically at the water, just a short jaunt through more waterfall covered cliffs, but now they are moving further apart, letting the valley open up for us more.

We book ourselves for a boat tour and then decide to take two short walks while we wait. The first one takes us along the waterside and onto the beach area. We poke around looking for living things in the water and find almost none. We then take a little hike upward for a few minutes to get a view out to the sound. After a quick break in the super heated cafe to dry our clothing just a little before the boat ride, we make our way along the covered walkway to the boat launch. We have a good sized boat, not one of the largest, but not the smallest either, so it’s quite comfortable and all the free coffee and tea you can drink. This boat ride beats any other I’ve ever taken. The views are breathtaking and the weather, while it doesn’t stop raining, it certainly cooperates enough to only drizzle a bit. One of our first major landmarks is Mitre Peak, a tall peak almost invisible in all of my pictures, but there none the less. We even manage to get a couple of fairly clear moments where we can make out the tops of the cliffs quite clearly. After a while, and everyone’s already wet, our captain decides to show off a bit and manoeuvres us under a waterfall so that the spray hits those of us brave enough to make our way onto the top observation deck with no roof. The blast is powerful and I can feel it pushing me backwards as we make our way under the water.

Eventually our captain gets bored and we back out and move our way closer to the open ocean. A sudden patch of warm air surprises us and is greatly welcome for the few minutes we get to enjoy it before the sudden blast of the Tasman Sea hits us with cold wet wind and freezes us again. Along our way we encounter a few fur seals sleeping on the rocks, their picture eludes me as the boat sways more strongly close to the rocks. However, they are cute and peaceful and quite close to the front of the boat. Our captain brings us under another waterfall just as my clothes were starting to dry out a bit from our few moments of warm air. Our final major landmark (or watermark if you prefer) is the largest (in the sense of volume) waterfall in New Zealand. The upside to being in this place when it’s raining is that everything is much more alive in the water world. The waterfalls are so much more vivid against the rock and they are so much more powerful.

After this we head to the car where we get the heat going to dry ourselves out and start our trip back to the hostel as it’ll be dark soon. We have one last stop along the way we want to check out, it’s called the Chasm. It’s a short walk into the woods before a dull rushing noise begins. The bottom of the falls can be seen rushing through a chasm of rock below our bridge, but it’s not until we make our next turn that the full on noise and power reach us. It’s a deafening boom and you know immediately that if you feel in you would be done for in seconds.

When we make it to the tunnel, we just miss the green light. However, after the red light ends, the light turns off all together, so we are left to fend for ourselves. Trusting that we’ve been through it once, there are pull off bays and it goes only upward, so affording a view up the entire tunnel virtually to the other entrance, we begin our way through. We don’t meet a sole going through and I figure, since no one lives out there, no one will be travelling in to Milford Sound tonight anyway. I’m proved wrong though as several cars pass us on our journey out. We spend the entire time from the end of the sound valley back to Te Anau in total darkness.