Hello again!
Blog post number two is finally here! This is an overview of our adventures on South Island. It’s actually been fully written for some time but a lack of decent Internet has prevented me from posting it. As before, let me know of any typos etc. Hope you enjoy it!
MARAHAU AND THE ABEL TASMAN NATIONAL PARK
We took a ferry across to South Island from Wellington which took us 3 hours. The weather was somewhat turbulent…Rich turned an interesting shade of green! I get carsick all the time but for some reason I wasn’t bothered at all by the rough seas in the Cook Straight and managed to complete a full watercolour illustration whilst we were making the journey! Anyway, we arrived in the small town of Picton in the evening and camped there for the night. Afterwards, we drove across to Marahau via Nelson. Nelson is a nice little town with some cute cafes so we had lunch there. Marahau is a little town right on the edge of the Abel Tasman National Park. This stunning National Park has stretches of golden beaches all along the coast which are surrounded by protected rainforest. There are loads of walks in the area and we decided to try our hand at ‘through hiking’, which means basically that you’re hiking along with your tent and camping gear and everything and camping along the way. The stretch we did was a 3 day hike which is a segment of one of the NZ Great Walks. We caught a sea taxi in the morning which dropped us off at Aworoa (and by dropped off I mean it reverses onto a beach and then you jump out and wade to shore!). The sea taxis are kind of like guided tours too. Our driver took us to the highlights of the coast on the way and we got to see a seal colony and some stingrays too. We hiked from Aworoa to Bark Bay where we camped for the night. This camp ground was basically an island with sea all around us. It looked out directly east which meant that the sunrise could be seen from our tent front door in the morning!
So that night it rained pretty heavily. Our little island was covered in trees, and as we were walking to the outdoor sink to brush our teeth in the pitch darkness I commented to Rich that it was a bit like the Blair Witch Project (which if you’ve ever seen it, is filmed a lot just using light from head torches). Anyway, we got to the gazebo thing where the sinks were and shone our head torches around a bit, and a figure came into view. He was sat perfectly upright and perfectly still, facing away from us and seemingly staring into the back wall. His hair was light blonde and his skin was really tanned. If you’ve ever seen a resuscitation doll, he looked just like that from the back! The first thing that crossed my mind was, someone has put a shop mannequin in here as a sick joke! Then I thought…who would actually do that out here in the wilderness?! It had to be a real person, sat perfectly upright in the pitch blackness in the middle of the woods just staring at a wall… so obviously me and Rich started nervously laughing. The mannequin stayed still. We started furiously brushing our teeth whilst exchanging panicked glances. The mannequin just sat there. We are such wusses that neither of us would dare to look at his face! After we’d done we sprinted back to the tent doing that high-pitched hyena laugh that people do when they’re freaking out. Then we zipped into our tent and we did not leave until morning! Maybe it was one of those stories where you had to be there to get it, but mannequin man crosses my mind at every campsite we’ve been on since! We think he was actually one of those super serious hikers with one of those awful tiny coffin tents who had decided to sleep upright on a hard bench instead of out in the rain in his coffin. But seriously, who sleeps that upright?! Scared the shit out of us!!!
So, that morning it had finally stopped raining and Rich made us coffee on our little camping stove. This fantastic bird suddenly appeared out of the bush and poked his beak into the coffee. He kind of looked like a kiwi but with a fatter, shorter beak. He seemed hungry so we fed him some crackers (don’t worry, they were whole grain with quinoa!). If the cracker was too big he did this amazing thing where he wound himself up and smashed it with his beak. It was such overkill that it was hilarious and we decided to call him Jackhammer bird. We’ve since found out that they’re called Weka birds and they’re known for being quite charismatic!
That day we packed up our soggy tent and hiked to Anchorage, the next bay we were due to camp in. It was another gorgeous golden beach which was only spoilt by the rainy weather. As a footnote , a lot of New Zealand beaches have these horrible little beings called Sandflys living on them, which look a lot like harmless little fruit flies but they’re actually demonic and will do whatever they can to eat you alive. The difference between a sandfly and a mozzie is that Sandfly bites are smaller and a bit less itchy but you can really feel them biting you the little buggers! So I soaked myself in 55% DEET as usual. They still found my ankles though.
After Anchorage (which was happily mannequin-free), we did our final trek back to Marahau and treated ourselves to a massive pizza in a restaurant by the beach! Carrying your world on your back is pretty hard to be honest! We invested in lightweight camping gear before we came to NZ but even so, when you take into account clothes and food and the extra weight of a completely soaked tent, it wasn’t easy! It was another 3 days without showers too but I guess we’re getting used to that now!
FRANZ JOSEF GLACIER
The next day we took an epic drive all the way from Abel Tasman down the west coast of South Island to Franz Josef Glacier town. It was misty when we arrived after 7 hours on the road so we couldn’t see the glacier anywhere. The town itself was bustling, and filled with loads of restaurants and bars and things to do so it looked promising anyway! The following afternoon we went on a ‘heli-hike’. Since 2012, the Franz Josef glacier has been pretty much inaccessible by foot so helicopters operate every day from the town to deposit tourists into the middle on the glacier. The helicopter ride was short but amazing, even with the gloomy weather, you could see the entire glacier stretched out in front of you and it was amazingly blue! I’ve never been in a helicopter before and I was put in the front, being the smallest person in our group.
We landed on the ice and then were taken on a guided trek through crevasses and up to about halfway up. We were lent warm clothes and crampons so it was surprisingly easy going. Occasionally, massive blocks of ice would come crashing down up near the top of the glacier. We were perfectly safe where we were but the noise was pretty incredible!
Sometimes you could see down these holes in the ice that seemed to go on forever. It was seriously cool! Our tickets also allowed us free entry to the thermal hot pools afterwards so it was a pretty good day overall!
The next day was so unbelievably rainy we had a pretty relaxed day indoors. I worked on the blog and Rich booked our next batch of accommodation. In the evening we settled down to watch a movie and I thought it would be a good idea to watch ‘San Andreas’, seeing as we were currently sitting on the fault line between the Pacific and Australian plates. About 40 minutes into the movie, this incredibly loud siren started to go off in the valley which sounded exactly like those used during the blitz to send people into the air raid shelters. We obviously started panicking and ramming our feet into shoes. I started grabbing random items and stuffing them into my pockets(God knows why!), expecting any minute for some kind of highly destructive event. The conversation that followed was hilarious on reflection, so I’ve written what we remember of it below:
Rich – “What the FECK does that siren mean?!”
Jess – “Oh my god it’s a tsunami. Or an earthquake?”
Rich – “You can’t predict earthquakes! We’ve just spent 40 minutes watching a film about how you can’t predict earthquakes!”
Jess – “Then it’s a fecking tsunami!”
Rich – “Don’t worry our guide yesterday said we were 700m up! We’ll be fine!”
Jess – “That was when we were ON the glacier! You can see the bloody sea from the road!”
Rich – “So what shall we do? Just start legging it up the mountain?!”
Jess – “I don’t know! Why don’t they teach tourists about these things? Shouldn’t there be some type of earthquake/tsunami 101 when you land in New Zealand?!”
Rich – “Maybe we should go outside and see what everyone else does?!”
Jess – “Yeh ok!”
Rich and Jess then flee their room and join a handful of other bewildered tourists in the torrential rain outside. The siren then stops going off and we all become aware of native New Zealanders and people ‘in the know’ laughing and pointing at us from the kitchen area. Soggy and embarrassed, we quickly scuttle back into our room!
So as it turns out, small towns in rural New Zealand have volunteer fire brigades. The siren is actually used to muster the volunteers, so what we heard was actually just a drill. Fantastic. My hands were still shaking 10 minutes later when we settled back in to finish watching our film about the complete devastation of San Francisco.
On reflection, it may have been a poor viewing choice…
WANAKA
We stayed one night in Wanaka which is a cool little town next to a gorgeous lake. There are mountains nearby too with a small ski resort but obviously no snow yet! There’s a pretty relaxed vibe here and I imagine it would have been really great in high summer. Unfortunately it absolutely peed it down the whole time we were there!
TE ANAU
Te Anau is another cute little town by a lake that many use as a base to visit Milford and Doubtful Sounds. There’s pretty much no accommodation in the sounds so your choices are either to get up early and do the two hour drive yourself, book a coach trip, or fork out a small fortune to stay on a boat and float around in the sounds for the night. We chose the first and got up super early to take Jim on his first trip in pitch darkness down some pretty hair raising bends! There was a considerable amount of emergency braking during the trip as rabbits kept running out and zig-zagging in front of the car! The journey includes this epic tunnel hacked through a mountain and some amazing views which we enjoyed on the way back.
MILFORD SOUND
There are a number of different tours of Milford Sound that you can book. Some involve kayaks and some involve boats. We booked a trip which allowed us to kayak for a couple of hours in the morning and then chill on a big boat in the afternoon. We figured it would mean we’d get to experience the sound at water level from the kayak and see the parts we wouldn’t have time to get to in the kayak by boat. We were really lucky with the weather as it rains A LOT in the fiordlands. Milford sound is an absolute stunner, as you’d expect! In the kayaks, we got to get right up close to the waterfalls, sheer cliff walls and a gorgeous New Zealand Fur Seal who was basking in the sunshine. Interestingly, the Fur Seal is actually New Zealand’s only native mammal – before humans started introducing possums and rabbits etc, ground birds like the Kiwi were the only things roaming around in the undergrowth. I was really surprised to learn this as I can’t imagine a wilderness without furry beings scuttling around.
After kayaking, we boarded a large boat for a full tour of the sound. They also gave us a little portion of fish and chips during the cruise – traditional New Zealand food apparently!
QUEENSTOWN
Queenstown is a really fun town on a gorgeous lake surrounded by rivers and mountains. Queenstown is famous for its adventure and extreme sports and is the place people generally go for sky diving, bungee jumping, jet boating and anything else in between. It is a really lively town that was rammed with backpackers, many from Australia who had flown over for the Easter long weekend. We booked to go canyoning here and it was frigging awesome! You basically get given these really thick wetsuits and helmets and then you travel through a river canyon via a variety of means. In our trip we did abseiling, zip-lining, an abseil-zip-line combo, jumping off cliffs into pools, wading through the water and just floating along in some parts! It was really good fun and pretty scary at times; especially one particularly high jump into a deep pool. I would definitely recommend giving it a go!
One really important thing you have to do if you go to Queenstown is have a burger at Fergburger. Fergburger is an absolute institution – we found it on the street by the sheer volume of people queuing to order their burger. They have an impressive menu of the hugest and most delicious burgers you will ever eat in your life! I went for the Mr Big Stuff and Rich had the Big Al, both classic beef burgers and as big as your head! We even managed to grab two stools by the window which is a miracle in itself! Most people had to scurry off with their burgers stuffed under their jackets to find somewhere out of the rain for them to eat! It’s not even that expensive to eat the best burger in the world; around £8 is all it’ll cost you (aside from the air fare to NZ). Anyway, we couldn’t recommend it more. Seriously, I’m writing this in bed and my stomach is now rumbling just thinking about it. Damn, that was a good burger!
CHRISTCHURCH
Our lodgings in Christchurch were a hostel operating out of a converted historic jail (Jailhouse Accommodation). It sounds grim but actually the whole place had been painted white and was actually quite light and airy. Our room was an actual cell with a metal door and everything. I’d definitely recommend it for the novelty. Plus if you’re a bit nervous about earthquakes it’s nice to stay in such a solid building that clearly has already withstood quite a lot of shaking!
Christchurch itself was a bit of a shocker. It has been five years since the earthquake happened but it seemed so much more recent. In the centre of the city, many historical buildings are propped up by seemingly permanent scaffolding. There are areas of wasteland dotted throughout the city, the scars of flattened buildings that are now used as cheap car parks. There are cracks in the pavements and condemned buildings covered in graffiti. The city is a hive of construction. Everywhere you look there are cranes and high vis jackets and the sound of drills and hammering. In another five years, this city will be completely new; a complex of brand new shiny, earthquake-proof buildings.
To kick-start retail after the earthquake, a scheme called Re:Start enabled businesses to operate out of shipping containers in the area where the main shopping street used to be. We really enjoyed strolling around this area: the containers seem pretty permanent now- they are all painted in vivid colours and have huge glass windows built in. Many have little gardens around them too. The whole place has a festival feel to it and is a great place to grab street food or have a coffee in the sunshine. It makes a stark contrast to other areas of the city. When we went out in the evening, we found many of the streets to be eerily quiet. We didn’t feel threatened but it was an odd feeling. There are pockets of bars and restaurants here and there; some operating out of unusual things like converted buses strung with fairy lights but in between them there are vast expanses of nothingness.
We visited a hipster bar/restaurant called C1 Espresso that night. It operates out of an old post office and if you order certain things from the menu it gets delivered to your table in a pneumatic tube which is pretty cool! The most funny thing about this place was the bathroom situation. I made Rich go first because I hate finding toilets in restaurants and when he got back this is how he gave me directions:
“Ok so the toilets are in the far corner. If you stand in front of the bookshelf it will slide open. Walk down the corridor and choose the door with the Princess Leia figurine stuck to it. It’s quite pleasant in the toilets because Steven Fry is reading Harry Potter”
Says it all really!
SOUTH ISLAND
So, South Island is pretty stunning. It’s more mountainous and scenic than north island and everywhere you look there’s another lake or stretch of forest. It really is beautiful. We’ve really enjoyed our time in New Zealand. It has literally been non-stop adventure for a month and we are very sad to leave. On the plus side we are now flying to Sydney to start our 7 week Australia adventure so it’s not all bad!
More adventures to follow!
Jess & Rich
This entry was posted in Uncategorised- abeltasman
- adventure
- Christchurch
- franzjosefglacier
- glacierhike
- milfordsound
- Newzealand
- queenstown
- roadtrip
- southisland
- teanau
- Travel
- travelblog
- travelblogger
- wanaka
- Wellington
