Our Travel Blog

We woke up to a great morning, clear blue skies and warmer. Today we were heading up to Christchurch, a shortish journey of around 160km. The scenery was different again. We were in a more populated area all the way along, with towns appearing more frequently. About halfway to Christchurch we decided to turn off and explore the Banks Peninsular. This gave us a completely new set of scenery and road conditions. The peninsular was more like a small egg shaped island joined to the mainland and had  many coves coming inland. The roads started off just fine, we climbed up to around 660 metres which again gave us some spectacular views.

View From the Passenger Seat

The roads began to narrow, with sharp drops off to the side. Where there were fences along the road it was obvious that their primary function was to protect the sheep from the cars, not to stop cars falling 1000’ down the hill. The following picture was taken from the drivers side, it was a 1000’ drop!

View From the Drivers Side

There were a few craft stores along the way, one of them had some local flowers outside (and quilting material inside).

Protea

On the next leg of the journey the road changed from tarmac to crushed rock. What was equally worrying was that it was single track with very few passing places, but there were still “Road Narrows” signs all over the place. At times we were reduced to first gear, quite an interesting ride, thank goodness for traction control and ABS. In the end we went 11kms on the road and didn’t see another car until we hit the last 100m of the road!

Back onto a hard, but narrow surface I could at least get above 25 kph. One of the bays we saw was Barrys Bay, complete with colourful boathouses.

Barrys Bay Boat Houses

Tomorrow will be a relaxing one with virtually no car travel

Another dry morning, who says it always rains in NZ! Todays trip had no real agenda other than to drive to our next hotel about 100kms north. Not being one to always take the shortest route, we headed off inland towards Mt Cook, the highest mountain in NZ at over 4000m.

Along the route we stopped to see some 19^th century Maori paintings on some limestone cliffs, unfortunately wind, rain and museums had taken their toll and there wasn’t too much to see. If you look carefully you may see a guy on a horse at the top of the picture.

Maori Painting

Also at the site were a number of odd shaped rocks. Please provide a title for the picture!

Caption Suggestions Required

Driving along the road we came across a guy in a truck waving at us, sooooo friendly so we waved back. We even remarked on the bright orange sheep sign he had on the truck as we drove past. On reflection we feel he may have been trying to tell us something.

View From the Drivers Seat- Whoops

We stopped, the sheep stopped and we all just sat there. Finally we were escorted through the flock.

Thank You Officer

Along the route were numerous dams and electric generating plants, about 20% of all of the country’s electricity is generated in this area.

Hydro Dam

As we continued Lyn was finally able to get a picture of some lambs, normally as soon as they hear a vehicle they all charge off across the field (a car horn works very well, and provides a modicum of entertainment at times).

Sunday Lunch Anyone?

We arrived in Timaru with temperature up to a blistering 16c, and checked into the motel. This time we checked the cooking facilities before shopping! Home cooked shrimp stir-fry tonight courtesy of Lyn.

A windy, but dry start to the day and a little warmer than yesterday. Todays destination is  Oamaru about 150Kms North. The scenery has now changed to rolling countryside with the coast on the right side.

First stop along the way was on the cliff tops to see if there were any seals, or penguins hanging around. There were seals, but no penguins! Looking down from the cliffs we saw a few seals on the rocks and playing in the water.

Fur Seal

Next it was on to the boulders of Moeraki. These are large spherical boulders with a honeycomb centre (malteesers?) that are partially embedded in the beach. For some geological reason they only exist along a very small length of the beach

Moeraki Boulders

After coffee we headed on to our destination and checked into the hotel. On our way we saw the snow covered Southern Alps off to our left.

In the afternoon we headed into town to explore. There is a large area which was originally a wharf with may warehouses which have now been turned into stores and galleries.

View From the Passenger Seat

Tonight it was off for a “posh” meal (anniversary!) and then we went in hunt of the elusive penguin. We had two options, go to the beach and hope to see some penguins, or go to an organised penguin watch. We went for the latter, splashing out on the business class viewing area. What a great choice we made. We were able to see the penguins swimming in in their rafts (a group of 50 or so penguins), landing on the beach, waddling up the rocks and into their colony. They were as close as 6ft away.

Yet again a wet night, but woke up to clear sunny skies. We headed out to the Otago peninsular on a flat road that followed the coast around. In many places we had seen signs for Cow Poo, or Horse Manure for sale. Here it was more direct with a sign outside the farm Sheep Shit for Sale!

Along the route were more painted bus shelters, seems to be a Kiwi thing. This one had a picture of an Albatross and her chick.

Bus Shelter

At the end of the peninsular we climbed up to around 250 metres to the headland. Here was an Albatross Research Centre. Here we saw, and heard, a gazillion nesting seagulls, as well as a number of spotted shags (similar to a cormorant).

Seagulls

Looking down from the cliffs we saw a single seal playing around in the water and a couple of Albatross as well as long tentacles of seaweed.

Seaweed

Today was not the warmest of days, and together with a strong wind, it was numbingly cold up on the exposed headland. We drove back across the peninsular remaining high up for a while, giving a good view back into Dunedin.

Dunedin

Unfortunately the clear weather deserted us and the rain set in so we headed back to the motel for lunch. After lunch the weather looked more promising so we headed out again to take in some of the sites od the city. First on the list was the Railway Station built in 1903, unfortunately it started to rain / sleet / hail as we got out of the car.

Dunedin Station

The lobby floor is made up from over 700,000 small Royal Dalton tiles.

Station Floor

As the rain did not let up we did a driving tour around the Octagon (centre of the city) and past the Cadbury factory, the tower of chocolate should last us a couple of weeks.

Mmmmm

Next stop was north of the city at signal hill. As we climbed up through 250 metres we saw white stuff coming out of the clouds, SNOW! by the time we got to the hill it was snowing pretty heavily, and the temperature was down to 2c, I am sure we didn’t sign up for this.

Back down the hill to to visit the worlds steepest street, Baldwin Street. The street is a little under 350 metres (1,150 ft) long rising from 30 m (98 ft) above sea level100 m (330 ft) above sea level at the top. At its maximum, the slope of Baldwin Street is about 1:2.86 (19° or 35%). That is, for every 2.86 metres travelled horizontally, the elevation changes by 1 metre. The steepest part of the street is constructed from concrete as tarmac would melt and run down the street in the summer.

Looking Up Baldwin Street

View From the Passenger Seat – Going Down

Despite the bad weather we still saw a lot of the city, and in reality it is only the second day of rain in over 2 weeks.

Just a very quick entry tonight because it’s a long weekend (or, more truthfully there was a lot of twisty turny driving today and my brain hurts).

It rained all night, but yet again we woke to a clear bright morning. After breakfast we headed off to the city to an amazing hardware store, easily the size of a large Home Depot. It carried just about anything you would ever want for construction; in addition it also housed a motorbike museum and a few cars and trucks.

After that we headed along the coast road stopping at numerous lookouts and headlands. Todays scenery was much more mundane, but still quite spectacular. Also along the route were a number of waterfalls, and we got our daily exercise by trudging downhill to a waterfall, remember what goes down must come back up, wobbly legs by the time we got back to the car.

For the first time since we left Auckland we found a motorway (4 lane divided limited access highway), mind you it was only 5k long!

We checked into the hotel to be greeted with those great words, Mr Winch, we are able to upgrade your room for your 2 night stay; memories of the good old days.

Guess it’s back to grind after a day off from writing yesterday. Much to our surprise we woke to a sunny, clear day. Out of interest I checked on the status of the Milford Sound road. Due to more than 4 inches of rain in the area last night, the road will remain closed all day Saturday. We really were lucky to make our way through there yesterday. Sadly one worker was killed and two were injured clearing the landslide shortly after we went through yesterday morning. We headed off via the scenic route to Invercargill, about 170Kms away on the south coast. From a touring point of view, 200Kms seems to be a comfortable distance to have between hotels. We get there early afternoon after touring around a bit on the journey, and then we have the afternoon to explore the local area. Very different to our “touring” in the States where getting to the destination is the prime objective rather than the scenery on the way. Also 2-3 hours driving is a lot easier on the driver than 10-12 hour days!! First stop today was Clifden which was home to the longest road suspension bridge in NZ, loosely modelled on the one at Clifton, UK

Clifden Suspension Bridge

Todays journey was a lot different to recent days. The roads were a lot straighter and the terrain a lot flatter. A week ago we would have thought the scenery was fantastic, but after the last few days it was just OK. We have been spoiled for life as far as scenery is concerned.

View From the Passenger Seat

After Clifden we headed onto Tuatapere where, according to the guide book, was a store called “Yesterdays Cafe”. Given the quality of NZ pastries we made this our morning coffee stop. The cafe itself is a museum of articles from the ‘60s, including 60’s LP’s playing on ‘60’s “Radiograms”. The pastries didn’t disappoint either. The town itself must have had an artist or two as there were murals on many buildings.

Bus Shelter

Washrooms

Approaching Invercargill, we hit the outskirts some way back from our destination. Normally there are no outskirts; could we have discovered a really large town. The answer is yes, they have traffic lights, roundabouts and 4 lane roads!

We checked into the motel, what a surprise. There was a separate bedroom and bathroom as well as a living area with two sofas and 32” LCD TV. The kitchen even had a cooker! All for around $80 a night.

We headed out through the town to Bluff, which is almost as far south as you can go in NZ. On the way there we saw numerous old American looking cars. In fact they were taking over the place. By the time we got into Bluff the cars were everywhere. It turned out all the cars were Chrysler Valiants which were originally produced in the US and then manufactured in Australia from 1964-1981. I guess there must have been a rally of sorts given that it is a long weekend over here. We continued through Bluff to a lookout on the south side of the town, it was about 600ft above the town, and really windy up there. We discovered a panoramic setting on the camera  so we tried it from the viewpoint. Not sure how well it will come across.

Panoramic View from Bluff Lookout

After looking at the views we headed back into Invercargill to find a quilt shop Lyn had read about, but (un)fortunately it was closed. Next stop the grocery store for food, then we headed over to the NZ equivalent of Home Depot. Since we have been here we have done touristy things, we figured it would be interesting to compare every day prices and products with those back home. At a rough guess I would say things cost upwards of 25% more than we are used to. Don’t think the pension would stretch too far down here.

Lyn here, Barry’s gone on strike for the night and refuses to write.

We woke up to a lovely sunny day, looked promising for our trip to Milford Sound, 120kms from where we are in Te Anau.  For those who don’t know about this place, it’s a one way in and one way out, the same way, terminal where you take a boat cruise along the fiord, It’s not really a sound. Today we’re lucky because the road has been closed since last Friday due to a landslide and only a portion of a road opened up yesterday afternoon and was only open from 10a.m. till 5p.m. today and will likely be closed again tomorrow due to heavy rain that is forecast. The drive there was amazing, first it was a fairly flat valley and then the mountains closed in and we went fairly high, about 850m., at that point they decided to put a tunnel in to take us to the other side of that particular mountain. I would imagine at this point the scenery would be very much like the Alps, I’ve never been. We were also at the snow line and it was exceedingly cold about 2C.

View From the Passenger Seat

General View

General View

Tunnel Entrance

Having been told to expect long delays at the landslide sight we had left in plenty of time only to find when we got there, there was no other traffic and the GO sign was turned our way as soon as we stopped, needless to say we were a little early for our cruise. We had thought there might be a small town there that we could walk around but no there is a cafe and the cruise terminal. Unfortunately although the sun was shining there was a bitterly cold wind. We did stay on the outside deck for a while. The boat sailed along close to the edge of the fiord and a couple of times decided to go right in under the waterfalls, a few mad people got a little wet. There were a lot of awesome waterfalls, some large and some small, just a lot of water coming down from the tops. We were very privileged and the guide spotted a couple of rare Crested Penguins so again the skipper went in very close to shore, they’re very small penguins and not easy to spot.

Crested Penguins

Further on we spotted some fur seals basking on the rocks. Apparently these are the young male seals that have been thrown out of the colony, they hang around here and get fat and strong and then go back and claim some females.

NZ Fur Seals

We were out for about 2 hours and the scenery was just unbelievable. Unfortunately towards the end of the sail the weather began to change, the clouds moved in. On our drive back to the motel we encountered quite a bit of snow and rain and then drove into sunshine again the further away we got from the mountains. All in all an awesome day.

The rain started yesterday evening and continued throughout the night. After breakfast we checked to see if the gondola was running, we could only just see it through the rain and mist and there were still no cars on it. Guess the problems were a little more serious than they first thought.

We headed out to our next destination, Te Anau about 170Km away. The rain continued, heavy at times, with the cloud lower than the top of the hills. As we drove along the edge of Lake Wakatipu we saw clouds of black smoke rising from the water. Closer viewing showed that it was an old steamboat, the TSS Earnslaw. We were a little confused as this particular boat was meant to be doing trips out of Quenstown and shouldn’t be this far down the lake. We stopped off in Kingston as there is a working steam train there. As we pulled into the station area there were cars everywhere and even someone riding a penny farthing bike. Many of the people were in costumes from the early 1900s. We sat in the car (it was still bucketing it down) and watched as the steam ship came into dock, it too was crowded with people in period costume. After the ship had docked the steam train arrived to meet it. We spoke to one of the people in the  crowd and found out that this year is the 100th anniversary of the launching of the steamship, and the first time it had visited Kingston in 20 years.

TSS Earnslaw

We continued on to destination through the rain, sustained by a coffee and other produce from the local bakery. We promised our selves at the start of this vacation  that we would lay off the “goodies”, but we decided the bad weather provided extenuating circumstances!

Towards midday the rain started to ease up and the sky got brighter, by the time we got to the motel the sun was shining and it was dry. We took a walk into the town to look around, and we also checked out the Milford Sound road situation. The road opened at 1PM, but would close again at 5PM and reopen tomorrow at 10AM. This didn’t work too well for our 945AM boat cruise. We managed to change the cruise to a 1245 departure, so that means no 6AM start.

We also wandered round a conservation type park that had many native NZ birds that were unable to be released back into the wild.

Murphy didn’t totally desert us today, yet again there were no cooking facilities in this motel. We had some beef we bought yesterday and a packet of rice which Lyn managed to turn into a very passable stir fry, all cooked in the microwave.

Today was one of those days. Again it was bright and sunny this morning, and ideal day to go up the gondola to get a great view of the town and the lake. The gondola was meant to open at 9AM, but when we left the room at 9:15, not only was the gondola not moving, there were no cars on it. We drove over to it anyway, only to be greeted by one of the staff who explained there was some unscheduled maintenance required, but it should be working again mid-afternoon. Now to plan B.

We headed off to Arrowtown, another old mining gold mining town. This one was a little different to previous ones insomuch that that a number of the old miners cottages had been preserved, and an old Chinese settlement had been discovered and partially restored. The Chinese came over in the late 1800’s to mine for gold but were never fully accepted by the locals and Europeans so they set up their own area. As you can see their accommodations were pretty small.

Chinese Village House

We wandered around the town for a bit until a sign for “obscenely delicious sticky buns” caught our eye. With a description like that we just had to try them. The description was accurate!

Phone Box

No real reason for the picture of the phone box, other than it was different!

We went back to the motel for a late lunch, on the way back we drove by the launch point for yesterdays flight, it is just on the snow line, to the right of centre.

View From the Passenger Seat

After lunch we again checked on the gondola situation; it was still dead. Next check was on the Milford Sound road, it was still closed but scheduled to open tomorrow, so we went ahead and booked a boat tour there for Friday.

Lyn had some laundry to do so we spent a lazy afternoon hanging around the motel. Later on we headed out to the supermarket. All the motels we have stayed at have had cooking facilities with pot and pans etc. and we really haven’t put them to use. We bought the ingredients to make a stir fry and headed back. Queenstown is hard to describe, physically it is very up and down, and for the area it is a large town, probably the largest we have seen since the North Island. As far as we could tell 90% of the stores are related to the “adventure” industry, skydiving, bungee jumping, swings, paragliding, hang gliding, boating etc. There were only 2 supermarkets and on pharmacy that we could see. I guess most of the population is transient.

Supper time. Lyn went to get out the frying pan; no frying pan, in fact no saucepans or other essentials. The final clue was that there was not even a hotplate to cook on! We had just assumed that the facilities were there…. Never assume!

Question time. What is this bird?

Bird

We woke to another sunny and clear day. After breakfast we headed off to a place called Puzzling World. This was a building that had a number of optical illusions, sloping rooms, snooker balls that roll uphill etc. It was pretty interesting and mind challenging. Outside was a 3D maze, the object being to go through the maze and climb each of the four towers in the corners. We managed to get to more than 1 and less than 4 of the towers before frustration set in. Must admit it was an excellently planned maze!

The Maze

After the maze we headed off to a quilt store where Lyn found a quilt kit that depicted NZ themes in its pattern. Now my navigator is happy!

Yesterday we crossed part of the Southern Alps on the lowest of the trans-Alpine crossings routes, today we crossed another part of the Alps on the highest of the routes, climbing up NZ’s highest paved road to a height of 1083 metres, before dropping down into Queenstown.

View From the Passenger Seat

Once settled into the hotel I decided to try and change some plans I made yesterday. I had originally planned to try and go hang-gliding tomorrow, but the forecast was a bit iffy so I called the company and switched the flight to this afternoon. We went into town and met up with the pilot who drove us up to the ski fields and the launch point. We spent a fair bit of time there just waiting as the wind was just on the limits for launching.

After 45 minutes or so it was declared safe to fly. I was “poured” into a flight suit and harness while the pilot “built” the hang-glider.

Some Assembly Required

Once the glider was assembled it was time for a briefing, then we moved to the launch point. After a short run we were flying.

View from Launch Point

It Flys

Once airborne we had about a 12 minute flight down to the landing zone. It was a great experience gliding gently above the trees,  I even got to fly it for a short  while. One tip though, don’t ask the pilot questions like “can this recover safely from a stall?” The answer, as demonstrated 3 times, is yes!

We finished off the day with a pub meal in one of the downtown pubs. Lyn got her lamb fix and I re-acquainted my self with beef wellington.

Time to relax now