Saying goodbye to Mabel
Trip Start
Nov 15, 2006
1
47
60
Trip End
Aug 04, 2007
Christchurch,
New Zealand
Thursday, April 5, 2007
The crossing was stunning, it doesn't seem that much of the trip is spent in open water and the latter half is gliding through the silent beauty of the Marlborough Sounds. It really reminded me of the Navimag ferry sailing through the southern fiords of Chile - a similar landscape but a lot warmer and with beautiful turquoise waters. As usual I missed the dolphins that accompanied us for some of the way, but it was enough to just stand on deck and look around. We arrived in tiny Picton and headed straight off to Blenheim - a pretty grotty town but the centre of the Marlborough wine region and we had a fab time visiting a selection of large and boutique vineyards. It was very different to Martinborough as the region is vast and many of the wineries are huge businesses such as Cloudy Bay which we just had to visit and get us some of their lovely Sauvignon Blanc. Sadly it wasn't quite the experience we'd hoped as it has recently been bought by Louis Vuitton so is all corporate and they didn't have any bottles of Sav left as even they are subject to quotas - ridiculous! Nevertheless we still had a few tipples and left throroughly impressed by the whole NZ wine industry - because even though it's huge it manages to retain some personality to it and produces goddamn lovely vino. We headed back to Picton and decided that we'd go and check out the Marlborough Sounds from another angle and drive along the beautiful, if slightly hairy Queen Charlotte Drive - if only for the name! It's a very winding and steep route that takes you right along some of the fingers of land that create the sounds and is punctuated by a few houses here and there which have their typical post boxes on the road, but here they have their names on for good measure. Incidentally we'd seen hundreds of postboxes dotted around the north island on the roads often in rows of 10 or so - making NZ Posties's lives a whole heap easier, but the best was in one place seeing 4 all lined up by the side of the road with not a house in sight, but positioned right in front of a cemetery ...
Eventually we reached our camping spot for the night, the obscurely named Cowshed Bay - a DOC (Department of Conservation) campsite located on a bay which when we arrived the tide was right out and the sand was completely covered with clam shells. The DOC is the amazing government department which is responsible for maintaining and managing all of NZ's National Parks, within which there are hundreds of walking tracks and campsites. They vary in facilities and are usually quite basic, but compared to any basic campsites you'd find anywhere else in the world, they are incredible. The toilet facilities are always immaculately clean and have loo paper .. when does that ever happen, you may well ask? Staying in DOC campsites was getting close to Ben's desire to stay in the middle of a very scary forest with not a soul around and get scared out of our wits in the middle of the night due to strange noises. For me, there were other people around so I could cope with the idea of screaming very loudly and someone coming to rescue us if we did indeed get attacked by a giant man-eating possum, although there was still no way I was going to the loo in the middle of the night. This turned out to be a theme with many nights spent lying awake pretending I didn't need to pee and trying to block out strange noises outside. Not that you needed to know that, but hey.
So anyway, waking up the next day with the gorgeous light and muted colours of early morning across the bay was pretty special and we decided that although we couldn't do the whole 5 day tramp (as the Kiwis call hiking), we'd walk some of the Queen Charlotte Track (one of the more popular multi-day walks in NZ). It was a lovely few hours culminating in some stunning views. Then it was out and back on the road to lovely Nelson.
Ben and I decided that we'll do a house swap some day and live in Nelson for six months. Like most NZ towns it's not exactly pretty in terms of the architecture, but the setting and the atmosphere made it lovely and it has the most gorgeous beach. We didn't spend long there, just enough time to sort out our passes and stuff for the Abel Tasman coastal track which we were going to be walking the next 3 days and then to head up to stay in the beautifully remote and absolutely tiny Marahau for the night. We arrived and had yet another walk on another lovely beach with the tide miles and miles out and then had incredible seafood at the only restaurant in town. Seafood Chowder to die for. Then the next morning we were off walking again and very excited about it.
The Abel Tasman track is one of NZ's "Great Walks" and basically is a 60km walk along the northern coast of the south island in the Abel Tasman National Park. As with all the parks it's brilliantly set up for walking although this can have the downside of heaps of people doing it. Fortunately, as we were the wrong side of peak season and we decided to do the walk backwards (direction, not style of walking) we didn't run into that many people. As the track isn't a circle unless you want to retrace your steps when you reach the end, you have to get a water taxi to take you to the furthest end of the track or pick you up if you do it the other way. I thought this would just be a little boat that pootled up the coast, but no, it was a hugely powerful speed boat and it would have been fun enough just to zoom up and down in that all day. Loved it. In the end though, we were dropped off at Anapai Bay, a gorgeous stretch of the most beautiful golden sand close to the top of the track. Once the boat had left we had the entire bay to ourselves and just sat and looked at it for a long time, before shouldering our bulging packs and setting off north to Separation Point. It was a beautiful walk from beach through lush forest to the next charming cove and then again forest and another beach. By far the most beautiful of the whole walk (for me) was the dubiously named but picture perfect Mutton Cove. All of the pictures of the beaches just look like the most idyllic holiday beaches and it is wonderful that the only way you can enjoy this is to walk or kayak and there are no hideous hotels within miles and miles. Incredible. In fact we later learnt that a policy called The Queen's Chain in NZ means that no beach can be privately owned and the public can go onto any stretch of sand. Private property can start only 2 metres above the high tide line. Now that's how to keep your beaches beautiful.
Separation Point was a dramatic headland with fur seals lolling around on the rocks where we just sat and stared into the distance and then we headed back the way we came, stopping to do the annoying sand fly dance on the lovely beaches we came across. We were heading to stay the night at a campsite called Awaroa. What makes parts of the Abel Tasman even more exciting is that you can only cross certain areas at low tide as some of the wide estuaries don't have alternate paths and are a little deep to cross at other times. We'd already come across one such episode at Totaranui where we'd taken the wrong track and ended up having to cross the estuary when it was thigh high. This was fine for me in my shorts, but Ben had to strip down to his boxers to get across ... very amusing, particularly as the water was freezing. We finally got to Awaroa about 30 minutes before low tide and spent the time deliberating the merits of walking across anyway with the motley assortment of Europeans assembled at the crossing point. Finally we figured it would be OK to cross so we squelched our way for 20 minutes, encountering water that only came up to our ankles and arriving at the beautifully set Awaroa camp on the other side. It was getting very dark so tent was hastily erected and then 2 hours were spent trying to boil water for a delightful supper - pasta and sandfly surprise - and enjoying the huge darkness and magnificent stars.
The next morning we had to get up at six and route march to Onetahuti Bay where we were meeting up with a guide who would be taking us kayaking along the coast for the day. We'd decided that whilst we were itching to walk, a lot of the second day would be in forest and the whole point of Abel Tasman is the coast and beaches. It turned out to be a fantastic idea, paddling with a great guide (Bridget - whose only downfall was to tell us a hideous story about a man and his shenanigans in long drop toilets on the Milford Track that will haunt me forever) into beautiful secluded lagoons, around islands to see fur seals and the best bit of all, bottlenose dolphins cruising alongside and underneath the kayak, so close we could have reached out and touch them. Apparently they're only spotted once a month, if that, so we were really lucky. And even better we managed not to argue once about who was steering where and when. Kayaking is fantastic and I want to do it when we get back, although I'm not sure the Thames will be as much fun, although someone (Ross I think) did tell us the other day that at any one time there are 300 dolphins in the Thames .... ?
Mid afternoon we arrived at Anchorage where we said goodbye to our kayaking chums and lazed around in the sun all afternoon, got invaded by 50 teenage boys on a school trip and the requisite sand flies, sat on the lovely beach to look at the stars until that too got invaded by both of the above and then fell, knackered into our tiny, soggy little tent and whispered about all our neighbours - camping's great, you see so much of the oddities of human beings. The next morning we were up and off early, sorely tempted to run screaming through the campsite to wake all the teenage boys. We resisted and had a peaceful morning of solitude wandering through the forests and dropping down into yet more picture perfect coves and bays, including one where we sat on a sandbank watching the waves and discussing life back home, only to smugly look at our surroundings and laugh, and another which was full of super smooth driftwood and a piece of rock that had been shaped by the waves and now looks like the Venus de Milo. And then it was all done and I sat in a café whilst Ben went to fetch the van and then off we set in Mabel to our next adventure and to stay the night in another DOC campsite in the middle of the awesome Buller Gorge. (We didn't have time to go to Golden Bay and Farewell Spit, so that and walking for a few days more around Marlborough Sound are reasons 8 and 9 to return to NZ).
The next day was all about driving down the famous West Coast on our way to New Zealand's most celebrated glaciers. First stop was just on the side of the road which ran next to the sea and gave dramatic early morning mist views of the headlands and rocks. It was like an even more dramatic version of the Great Ocean Road in Australia (although I probably shouldn't say that). Then we visited the Pancake Rocks, which are strange rock formations that are layer upon layer of limestone that look exactly as their moniker suggests and have ace blowholes that dramatically throw the waves miles (well not quite) up into the air. Then we drove through Greymouth, went to a very odd little museum that didn't really seem to have a focus and left straight away as it's not the most stimulating of towns. Next was Hokitiki, the Greenstone (jade) capital of New Zealand, which similarly didn't have much to sell it to us aside from 400 shops selling jade and then it was more gorgeous coastal scenery and finally arriving in the Franz Joseph township - the town that exists purely for tourism relating to the Franz Joseph Glacier just down the road.
We had booked ourselves on a helihike trip on the Franz Joseph Glacier. Having walked on glaciers in Argentina we were really excited about the prospect of doing so again but much higher up the glacier, getting an aerial view of these majestic frozen rivers and the chance of finally seeing some ice caves. Sadly it wasn't to be. Despite the fact that we hadn't seen a drop of the much advertised rain in the south island, and the weather had, in fact, been glorious, obviously on the one day we really needed it to be good it was pouring down with rain. Our trip to the heli offices confirmed that we wouldn't be going up that morning, so we optimistically postponed our flight until later that day and then headed 30k's south to go and have a squizz at the Fox Glacier. Firstly, can somebody confirm that this is what those clear minty sweets are named after? and secondly, it was so fantastic to see glaciers again. They really are truly incredible geological phenomena - their power and the fact that they move so much is just fascinating. Fox and Franz until quite recently were advancing - which is unusual given global warming - and apparently they move so quickly that when a light aeroplane crashed at the top of the nearby Tasman Glacier and they didn't find one of the passengers, it only took 12 years for him to pop out at the terminal face (bottom)!
Anyway, we had a great morning loving the Fox Glacier, visiting the gorgeous black and hence mirror-like Lake Matheson, trying to figure out whether we could see Mount Cook / Aoraki or not and hunting around Franz Joseph town to see if we could find the posters used to advertise a particular guiding company that strangely use a photograph of my sister's boyfriend Ross and buddies on their marketing literature. We did find one sad poster hidden away and established that Ross's boy-band-esque pout had seen him relegated for newer models... ahhh. Unfortnately our afternoon helihike was also cancelled due to the cloud, which was a real shame and reason number 10 for coming back as ever since I saw footage of the South Patagonian icecap and how it looks from above, I've wanted to fly over a glacier. So after a visit to the fabulous Franz Joseph Glacier, which you can't get as close to but we decided was better because you could see more of the ice than Fox, we headed south and inland and stayed at a DOC campsite in Mount Aspiring National Park, close to the stunning Haast Pass. As an aside, Ben has told me off for my overuse of the word 'stunning' but you try and come up with enough adjectives to describe the absolutely breathtakingly dramatic scenery that is around every corner, by every road, literally everywhere in the south (and lots in the north too) of New Zealand. It really is that beautiful.
Now this was the campsite where Ben really got his heebie-jeebie fix. Surrounded by trees and off the main road and nobody else there, we are just settling in for the night when Ben decides to go for a walk and in doing so encounters a strange man from Sheffield who is driving around in his Ute and has a massive shotgun in the back because he is about to go 'hunting'. Ben was scared into having a cup of tea with him and then neither of us slept a wink for repeatedly checking the doors were locked in case Mr Sheffield hadn't been able to find any deer to shoot and had thought of a more interesting alternative or that his tea had been spiked with something. Imaginations working overtime? You bet. The next morning (30 March) however, we realised big bad scary man, was not that at all, as he crawled looking very woe begone out of his saturated tent. We muttered sheepishly to him and each other and then jumped in the van and headed as fast as we could for Queenstown, stopping at Wanaka to have breakfast next to the beautiful lake.
Queenstown is lovely. I can understand why my friend Sarah spent so long living there. It is a lovely town, with loads of great bars and places to eat and surrounded by the most beautiful mountains and lake. It's a ski town, but doesn't have that cliquey feeling you get in the European Alps and is just as lively in the summer as the winter, or so I'm lead to believe. I was just gutted that Sarah wasn't still there to show us around. As you probably all know, Queenstown is the adrenaline capital of NZ, if not the world and the original home of the Bungy jump. Now, no matter how much we were going to get into the spirit of things, there was no way either of us was going to bungy ... just don't get it at all. However, we had both agreed before arriving that there was one hig adrenalin and high altitude thing that we would do ... and we did. Within half an hour of arriving in Queenstown I was running down a steep slope with a parachute and a guy called Clark strapped to my back and leaping into a void. Yep, Charlie-scaredy-cat and Ben not scaredy cat at all went paragliding and it was absolutely completely and utterly incredible. OK I'm not saying that I wasn't terrified and if we had thought about it some more I probably wouldn't have done it. And I clung on for dear life the entire 20 minutes and turned the air completely blue with screaming rude words, but the views and the buzz were just stunning and we have the pictures and an amusing video of me running in mid air to prove it. Afterwards we couldn't stop giggling and you can see why people get addicted to this adrenaline stuff. So whilst we weren't about to go and pay homage to Mr Hackett we set off for our next fix.
Shotover Jet.
A jet boat which seems to defy all laws of something in travelling at ridiculously high speeds so close to rocks that Ben sitting on the outside kept ducking as he thought his head was going to get mashed into the rocks. It was ace, particularly when you do 360 degree turns at full speed and just fly around in the boat. After all that excitement we needed beers. The 31st, therefore, started off a little jaded and after a bit of shopping we set off gingerly for Te Anau and the next big must-see; Milford Sound. Once again we hadn't enough time to do anything else in Queenstown or do any of the walking and lake related activities there are to do there, so that is number 11 for next time.
Te Anau is the last big town before the 110k drive along the Milford Road to Milford Sound and having dropped in, had a chat to the DOC officers about hiking in the area, we figured that there were probably much nicer places to stay along the Milford Road than that fairly inbred town (apologies to anyone that that may offend!) So we drive on to a DOC campsite called Deer Flat and spend another night in the scary middle of nowhere but by a gorgeous river and surrounded by trees with no-one else around.
The next morning we drove along the rest of the Milford Road, which has to be one of the most beautiful drives in the world. When they were in New Zealand my parents did a flight over the sounds, and beforehand I wasn't really sure why as I assumed a boat on the sound is surely the way to see it. As we drove along though, I realised that you can only see a fraction of the scenery on land, as we are so small and it is so vast and spectacular. (Next time No12). We however had a fabulous time, stopping and gaping at the ancient glacial valleys and mountains and the current glaciers glistening on top of the black peaks and we also stopped and walked part of the Routeburn Track to Key Summit to look down on the valleys around. Whilst we walked we were completely surrounded by cloud, but as we reached the top, the clouds moved and we had the most spectacular views. When we were in South America we had tried to book space on either the Milford Track or the Routeburn Track, two multiday walks that take you in to the heart of the mountains surrounding the fiords. Unfortunately we were too late as the tracks are so popular you have to book at least 6 months in advance. The Milford Track in particular is supposed to be one of the most beautiful hikes in the world and would be the other way to get a glimpse of this watery wilderness other than flying. (NT No 13) But we had a great time at Key Summit - had a proper conversation for the first time since arriving in NZ - i.e not one that involved cooking or driving or itinerary and got a glimpse of the majesty of this part of the world. And then it was onwards past The Chasm (ace waterwork affair) and through the spooky Homer Tunnel and arriving at the strange little place that is Milford.
We were doing an overnight cruise on a rather tired boat called the Milford Wanderer. It was kind of like brownie or cub camp on sea. Bunks in cabins down very steep stairs with curtains rather than doors and a crew of slightly disturbed characters who all seemed very nice, but you weren't entirely sure they hadn't gone slightly mad from being cooped up on the boat for days on end. We got on the boat and were instantly presented with views of Mitre Peak, the mountain you always see in postcards of Milford Sound and then we chugged out in to the Fiord. It really is quite spectacular. I've heard so much about it and seen so many pictures, but the peace and quiet, clear but very dark waters and lofty peaks with waterfalls, hanging valleys and snow only come alive when you're sitting in a kayak in the middle of it, watching the sun set. A really very special experience.
On getting back to the boat after kayaking in the dusk light Ben decided he'd relive his cooling off methods of the Galapagos, by jumping off the boat into the water. He somehow had got into his head that the water was warm, but as he jumped in and pretty much jumped straight back out again, he realised that the 250m deep fiord, plus glaciers melting near by, plus the Tasman Sea does not equal a bath-like swim. He was rewarded for his efforts later on though when our captain called him "Interpid Ben" over the tannoy. He was very proud.
It got dark very quickly and as it had gotten pretty cloudy there weren't many stars to view so we settled in for a night of scrabble and a very noisy game of spoons with a couple of nutty 40-something women from Wellington and Minnesota which resulted in an exceptionally grumpy fellow passenger telling us off like the aforementioned cubs and brownies - at 9.30pm. It wouldn't have been so galling if a) it had been later, b) he had actually spent any time at all on deck looking at the views during the afternoon - or indeed the following day and c) we weren't all on holiday. That kind of put the kybosh on our fun so we toddled off to bed and got up at the crack of dawn (2 April) to enjoy the early morning as one of only two boats on the Sound that morning - or more accurately the Fiord as it was created by glaciers and not rivers which is the difference between the two.
Sadly the next morning was quite cloudy so we didn't get another view of Mitre Peak, but we did head out in to the Tasman Sea with much dipping and rolling and then sail around the Sound, nudging up close to waterfalls and fur seals and generally loving every single view. I was running around and around the deck trying to look at everything from every single angle possible. Just lovely.
Now we had a bit of a dilemma. We had three days before we had to return Mabel and we were 10 hours drive from Christchurch, so that left two days and just not enough time for our desired hike along the Kepler Track, or to visit Doubtful Sound, so we ummed and ahhed and eventually decided to drive back via Manapouri, grotty Invercargill, the beautiful rolling hills and views of Stewart Islands in the Catlins and stop in Dunedin for the night. It was a long drive, but the views as always were incredible and Dunedin was a lot nicer than we had imagined. We went out for dinner and had the divine and much lauded Bluff Oysters. We had decided not to go to Bluff - despite the fact we would then have travelled from one extreme of New Zealand to the other. We were only 30 k's away but it just didn't appeal for some reason. The oysters were, however, amazing.
So a night spent in Dunedin and then we travelled on up the coast (3 April) to Christchurch stopping for a morning stroll all by ourselves on the beautiful Katiki beach and then on to view the mad spherical Moeraki boulders dotted along a beach a bit further up the coast. We decided not to head to Christchurch straight away and instead drove down the Banks Peninsula to the gorgeous little Francophile town of Akaroa. I think this part of NZ was settled by the French and they cling onto that heritage fiercely. There's lots of french sounding restaurants but aside from that it's a pretty little weatherboard town in a lovely harbour location. We stayed the night and had a drink in your standard cavernous Kiwi hotel / bar and then climbed back up to the van to spend our last night balancing on our rickety bed. Apparently you can do boat trips from here out to see the world's rarest dolphin - the Hector dolphin and a plethora of penguins and other marine life - kind of like a mini Kaikoura which is further on up the coast, but the next day (4 April) we had to head to Christchurch to drop off Mabel, so it was with heavy hearts we got back on the road one last time.
Christchurch is billed to be the most English of NZ's cities and, with the punting on the River Avon one of the top attractions, you can see why. The river is the heart of the city and it's really pretty walking along the banks. We spent the day separately mourning the return of Mabel and me trying to find shoes for Stu's wedding - to no avail whatsoever and then having spent 2 hours sorting out all the rubbish accumulated from 4 weeks in a van and realising we had about 14 bags when originally we had 4 - we gave up and went and had fabulous sushi and sashimi in Christchurch's restaurant strip.
Then our Kiwi sojourn was at an end and the last morning was spent sending back about 10 of the 14 bags of rubbish to the UK and wandering some more around Christchurch to soak up as much Kiwi spirit as we could before heading off to Oz. Things to return for numbers 14 - 17; drive along Arthur's Pass, swim with dolphins at Kaikoura, get up close to Mount Cook /Aoraki, kayak at Doubtful Sound and when we're really good at navigating, walk the Dusky Track - that said we'd managed to cram an awful lot into our 4 weeks and got a real feel for the landscape and way of life and a taster of all the wonderful hiking there is to do. New Zealand, probably even more so than Australia is all about the great outdoors (rather than the sea), regardless of the weather. (I think the climate is probably better than the UK's despite the fact that rainfall is measured in metres rather than millimetres in parts of the south island.) as it has something for everybody and it is all made so accessible and is so organised. Above all that, the people are just great - honest, generous, down to earth and fun - and examples of all the most wonderful geological phenomena in the world are crammed into such a small space that every where you look there is something either just plain beautiful or jaw-droppingly, tear-wellingly spectacular to enjoy.
If you haven't been go, and try to take at least 6 weeks to enjoy it.
Next stop Perth.
