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| Mitre Peak, Milford Sound |
Hello from
Dunedin, New Zealand!
This is weird; I’ve never written the blog from anywhere else before, let alone
the other side of the world. It’s Sunday evening here and I’m just about
recovered from the first week’s adventures. It’s been none stop and if I’m not
careful you’ll be here all day so for now I’ll tell you about a few of the
highlights* (doesn’t really narrow it down at all) and fill you with the
details (and loads more photos) when I get back.
So I
eventually arrived at
Christchurch airport on Saturday 7
th April and jumped on the Red Bus
to town. I chatted with a Canadian girl who kindly let me use her map to figure
out where I was going once we arrived at the bus station – it turned out she
was doing pretty much exactly the same thing as me and meeting two friends to
drive around south island for a couple of weeks. We both walked towards the
centre of town until it became clear we weren’t going to be able to reach our
hostels.
The centre of Christchurch is completely closed to traffic and pedestrians as they pull down and rebuild buildings damaged in the recent earthquakes. I hadn’t realised the extent of the damage but it really has
destroyed the city and there really isn’t a lot going on there at the moment. I
ended up meeting Heather and Jimmy at the local supermarket where I spotted
their campervan from a mile off. It was so good to see them after their trip
through India and South East Asia – back at the hostel we chatted for ages and
played a bit of Scrabble and the Dice Game...and OK I’ll admit it, I was glad
we weren’t part of the group in the living room playing Ring of Fire. I was totally
knackered so hit the sack around 11pm and only woke briefly at about 1am when
Connie and Jenny arrived!
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| Traveling in style! |
The next morning the 3 of us packed up the car, said our goodbyes to Heather
and Jimmy who we planned to see again later in the week in Queenstown and set
off for our first destination,
Kaikoura. We arrived at the whale watching
station and found that there was a severe sea sickness warning. Anyone who has
heard about my first day in South Africa in August 2009 will know this meant a
high probability of me vomiting on Japanese tourists all over again –
nightmare. I was advised to take a little white tablet and wear gray bracelets
which I did and amazingly they worked – I felt GRIM but managed to keep my
lunch down while we watched a pod of dusky dolphins and two enormous sperm
whales playing in the ocean.
Back on the road we set off for the mammoth evening drive
all the way to the west coast and the small town of
Hokitika...we didn’t make
it. After a bit of a calamitous drive which included finding Connie’s camera
trailing on the ground outside the car and then
killing our very own bunny rabbit (the crunching noise was horrific) we decided to call it a day when we
reached Greymouth. We pitched our tents and headed the 15 feet to the beach for
a few late night beers and to listen to the roar of the rather fierce Pacific
Ocean waves.
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| Franz Josef |
We all slept like babies and in the morning packed up our tents
and set off for the relatively short drive to Franz Josef.
We checked into the hostel and headed straight out in the beautiful sunshine towards the glacier.
We spent a good few hours walking up to, on and back from the spectacular
glacier. We spotted a group of ice climbers in the distance and I’m so pleased
I had chosen not to do it – scary ++. We walked way past the ‘DANGER – DO NOT
PASS’ sign until we reached the highest and furthest peak we could and stopped
once we started to hear the sounds of rocks shifting and slipping ahead of us.
We were rewarded with stunning views of the valley created over millions of
years by the receding ice mountain. The weather started to close in and we
returned to the hostel. We treated ourselves to a slap up meal and a trip to
the hot pools where I, rather embarrassingly, slept for the whole time we were
there.
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Just south of Wanaka with
Queenstown in the distance |
From glorious sunshine to pissing down rain and gale force
winds overnight – but ‘that’s what you get in the rain forest’ said the
cheerful hostel owner the next morning. We set of for Fox glacier and spent a
considerably shorter amount of time there due to the fact that my ‘rain coat’
wasn’t so much rain coat as tissue paper...cheers Primark! We drove on through
Wanaka where we stopped for a curry lunch and to pick up some milk for the two
tea-fiends I’ve been travelling with... From Wanaka we continued south, past
Queenstown and more and more awesome scenery stopping at a few crackin’ look
out points. When we arrived at
Te Anau I pretty much passed out while Con and
Jen headed out for a wander.
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| Milford views from The Mariner |
A solid 12 hours later I was up as the sun rose over the
lake and went for my own explore of the tiny town. I walked along the lakeside
and past the
Real Journeys HQ – the company we were going to Milford Sound with. I got a coffee and bought the first of the postcards that are currently winging
their way back to the UK and headed back to the hostel to find those two still
asleep!! We again packed up the car ready for our speedy get away that evening and
walked down the road to the Real Journeys coach. Our coach driver, Brownie,
was...unique. He talked throughout the three hour drive and told us about the
areas and bits about Milford and how/why it’s named after the Welsh Milford
Haven! He threw in a few (rather lengthy) tales from his childhood and random
Maori folk law stories. Basically, he was a lovely old fella who loved a good
chat. We stopped at a few place on the way including The Chasm – an epic
waterfall/cave thingymajig. We arrived in Milford and boarded The Mariner. We
sailed out into the Sound and all the way out to the ocean. We were treated
once again to beautiful weather and a lovely picnic lunch.
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| FERG! |
Back in Te Anau, we jumped in the car, filled up at the
petrol station and set off, pedal to the floor to make it back to Queenstown
where Heather and Jimmy and Connie and Jenny’s flatmate Holly were waiting to
chow down on the world famous
Fergburger. And Ferg didn’t disappoint – wow. The
6 of us saw off our food and headed to World Bar and Winnie’s to enjoy a beverage
or two...or more. Heather and Jimmy were ‘
glamping’ just on the edge of town
and had a long ol’ drive the next day so we again said our goodbyes and waved
them off. We went for a look in a few other bars and were headed back to the
hostel when I stopped suddenly in search of the source of the thumping beats of
a Rihanna remix – so we just went for ‘one more’ and ‘a bit of a dance’.
Which resulted in:
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| Table dance standard |
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Shotover River.
We're on the back row! |
With only semi-sore heads we were up early and in search of
food –
Fergbaker to the rescue! We wandered around a few shops in search of
crap souvenirs and tacky kiwi goodies. We went to one of the activity centres
to book our Shotover Jet boat ride for that afternoon after I made it perfectly
clear that I would NOT be doing anything ridiculous like a bungy or a skydive.
We played several games of pool and got a bit tipsy before boarding the bus
which took us down to the Shotover River. I loved it and when I become a
millionaire I will be buying a canyon (maybe the Grand one) and a jet boat.
That evening we used the hot pool at the hostel where we met two guys from the
USA over here on an exchange year – once suitably prune like (and all out of
beers) we got changed and headed out for the night. And that’s where that story
ends because it’s all about fuzzy after that. I know it involved a couple from
Melbourne practising their pommy accents, and a weird 4’9” woman who was trying
to palm her son off on us (wrong tree love...), a pool table, a bar with the
roof off and a 3am Fergburger. Queenstown, DONE.
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Clyde dam rest break.
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9.40am and we woke up to the realisation that 1) we all had
raging hangovers and 2) we had to be out of the room in less than 20 mins...
the two combined made it the worst wake up ever. We spent a couple of hours sobering
Connie up enough to drive us back to Dunedin. Several hours, a couple of pit
stops and an Adele album screech-a-long later we arrived at Leith Street
Central, Dunedin. A bloody brilliant first week jam packed with New Zealand
good stuff. I knew it was going to happen way before I left the UK but I really
do wish I had a bit longer here to explore a few more places but I’m really
looking forward to seeing more of Dunedin this week and will be telling you all
about it soon.
Love to everyone back home.
Until next time,
Bren x
*Well that didn’t really work out now did it...
Ps) Sheep
really are everywhere here. Like, EVERYWHERE.
Pps) New Zealand does good pies. Great pies.
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