Mount Cook and homeward bound

 

While we were at the glaciers, the top of Mount Cook could just be seen peeking over the top of the nearer mountains as it's literally just on the other side of that mountain range.  However, to see it properly, one has to get to the other side of the range which can be accessed only by driving well south then directly northwards from Queenstown or almost all the way back west from the east coast.  We did the latter – the island’s really not that wide.   

This was a trip not to be missed.  Again, I don’t know what we did right but the weather was perfect and our first sighting of Mount Cook looking over Lake Pukaki was picture postcard perfect.  

 

Just prior to us leaving Opua, New Zealand had been hit with a severe storm which they referred to as a weather bomb.  This system dropped a lot of snow on the higher mountains throughout the country which is why we were getting such great snow views despite it being the end of summer.  Mount Cook was no exception – it was an outstanding sight and certainly worth the drive all the way back to the other side again.  Rising to 3754 metres, its jagged top covered with snow, it really is a spetacular sight.

As we drove closer and closer, we loved the fact that there are no literally no signs of civilisation, just pure pristine vistas in every direction.


We stayed at a campsite in the middle of the lake region where the changing leaves made me a little homesick for autumn in Canada, my favourite season there.

One of our campsites

Once we left this mountain range, we headed back to the east coast to Ashburton and Christchurch closing the gap in our circuitous route of the island.  This is the region that was so devastated by a massive earthquake just on a year ago.  Evidence of the damage was everywhere and it is still impossible to visit Christchurch’s city centre.  

Building and construction sites are the norm throughout and one can’t help but feel their pain.  Apart from driving over a mountain pass to Lyttleton on the Banks Peninsula where we spent a night, we really just skirted the outer edge of the city to move on further northwards on to Kaikoura.


Kaikoura is a holiday hotspot and popular for the crayfish caught in the kelp fields along the shores there.  Very similar to Cape Town in this regard.  However, the hopes of finding reasonably priced crayfish dinners flew out the window very quickly.  Even the little roadside stalls were hideously expensive.  I love crayfish but…..not that much!


Time to get back to Picton and the ferry returning to North Island.  Another beautiful day with calm conditions for the crossing.  A few days before, the majority of the ferries were cancelled due to severe weather and sea conditions in the Cook Straits.  We chose right yet again.

Almost four weeks have come and gone and, as you can imagine, Paul is getting a little antsy about how our dear Calypso is fairing in the rather adverse conditions that have been predominant in the Northlands region of North Island during our absence, so he wants to move a little faster now.  But not before we visit our dear friends, Otto and Lil of Vagabond who have now moved down to Tauranga. 

En route, we stopped at Napier, another city that had been totally flattened by an earthquake and subsequent fires back in 1931.  It was totally rebuilt in the art deco style of the era and remains true to this style to this day.  We loved it.  The buildings are pieces of art and even many of the shop signs are reminiscent of that period and the gardens along the seafront are exquisitely maintained in keeping with the age.   We stopped at an Irish pub to watch a bit of the final NZ vs SA cricket test and thoroughly enjoyed our brief visit.

To get to Tauranga from Napier meant passing through Lake Taupo again and we were amazed to see that there was no snow left on the distant mountains. Our timing had obviously been perfect on the way down.

Bay of Plenty vineyards

After a fair bit of research, Otto & Lil chose Tauranga to settle and set up their new business and we can see why.  It’s a beautiful town with spectacular beaches and sporting activities and also seems to be much drier than Opua.  A two-hour drive gets one to Auckland but it’s far enough away not to feel the negative effects of a large city.

We visited their factory / warehouse that they’re busy readying for the arrival of a container filled with the goods they’ve ordered and spent a day doing the tourist thing.  We’re going to miss them like hell in our cruising world but are happy to see them getting the next stage of their lives so organised.  .  Guys, we think you made an excellent choice and wish you every success in the future.

On our way back through Auckland, we stopped off to visit our Mariposa cruising friends, Andrew and Kerri but sadly Kerri was off being busy but we chatted with Andrew for a while before moving on.  We had just heard that Steve and Heidi, the great couple who so kindly gave us a weekend away last year, were returning from a month’s holiday that very afternoon so we dumped ourselves upon them for the evening.  It was wonderful to see them again and catch up.  For a while we thought we might not get the chance to visit so this rounded our trip off so nicely. 

Our return to Opua was back to rain, wind and cold and we got the impression that that’s what it had been like during most of our time away.  Horrible. 

Back on board the good ship Calypso who looked in good shape and, with her new port lights, no evidence of leaking (thank goodness).  The only little niggle was the severe winds had torn out a section of our canopy and broken a clasp but nothing too serious.

It was fabulous to be away but it’s great to be back home!

And now on to more boat projects!

PHOTO GALLERY:

Seals at Kaikoura

Back at Picton

From the ferry

Wind farm en route to Tauranga

These things are 70 metres tall!

Vineyards along the way

Scenes around Napier:

 

The white sands of Tauranga's beaches

Sheep everywhere, even on the beach

And other cute wildlife

With Lil & Ots in Tauranga

Acting like grownups

 

Farewell aboard Vagabond

Invercargill and beyond

46 degrees south

Invercargill was the next stop along the route but we also wanted to get down to Sterling Point at Bluff, the southernmost tip of South Island and just a short hop from Stuart Island, the remote and sparsely populated island that lies just to the south.  There is another ferry which goes there regularly but we couldn’t do everything and the day was cold, wet and windy – our third and final dismal day over a four week period.  

We'd heard so much about the fabulous Bluff oysters that this was on our minds so we set off in search of them. 

 Apart from the rather fancy (and exorbitantly expensive) restaurant at the point which did serve them correctly (in our viewpoint) e.g. fresh in the shell on a bed of ice, we only found them at fish & chips shops at a more than ridiculous price served out of the shell, battered and fried - not our scene.  So Bluff oysters we did not have!  Well, if we couldn't have oysters, we drowned our sorrows in a tasty pot of green-lipped mussels instead.

While we were in Minerva Reef last year before going on to Fiji, we met a chap who was crewing on a Dutch boat who lives on a sheep farm in Invercargill and flippantly said should we ever get down there, we’d pop in to see him.  So we did just that.  His name is also Paul and he happily showed us around his property schooling us non farming types a little on the ins and outs of sheep farming.  Quite captivating and very interesting and what a beautiful part of the world. 

From a high vantage point on his property, we could just see Stuart Island in the distance with beautiful rolling pastures all around.

Paul & Paul looking over the winter crop

 
From Invercargill, we carried on along the southern coastline to a region known as the Catlins Coast. At Curio Bay, we visited a rocky shore with 150 million year old petrified trees and stumps (or 180 million if you read another sign but what’s 30 million in the greater scheme of things) and were able to observe the rare yellow-eyed penguins as they came ashore after a day out catching their dinner.    

We got so cold waiting for the penguins that Paul became as sick as a dog the following day which he managed to pass on to me a few days later.  Sod!

Despite feeling like hell, he did manage to traipse along to several gorgeous waterfalls with me.  There are literally hundreds of waterfalls everywhere we go in this country.  Can’t ever imagine them having a water shortage.

Purakaunui Falls

Dunedin was our next port of call, a fairly large city with some lovely old buildings but we really couldn’t do it justice as the flu bug got the better of us.  We did, however, take a drive along the peninsular to the albatross reserve, another beautiful journey.  

Just further up the coast is a rather intriguing phenomenon, the Moeraki rocks.  These perfectly round rocks lie on the beach in a group unlike any other rocks before or after.  Just a small section of the beach with a dozen or more round boulders seemingly thrown down from above but having no relation to anything nearby.  Strange indeed.

 PHOTO GALLERY:

Swing bridge & spider's web

Continuing the great scenery

Emu

Even the loos are decorated

Sterling Point at Bluff

Tall windbreak hedges everywhere

Opening gates on Paul's farm

Surrounding views

Oyster Catcher

 

Petrified log under the water

Yellow-eyed penquin

McLean Falls

A Sea Lion

The Lighthouse at Nugget Point

Moeraki Boulders

Milford Sound

Upon leaving the glaciers behind, we continued down the coastline to Haast, turning inland alongside Mount Aspiring National Park through the magnificent Lake Wanaka region.  Wherever we looked the views were simply stunning. The road dropping down into Queenstown was a steep decline of switchbacks and, as we looked back up, the sky was filled with hang gliders floating above us.  Queenstown nestles on one of the northern curves of Lake Wakatipu, a long snake of narrow water surrounded by beautiful mountains. It was a little like coming into Lake Lucerne in Switzerland.  Such a stunning sight.

Previously, while still in Haast, we stopped to have someone look at the van’s wheel alignment which had been concerning us for a while.  However, the chap wasn’t able to get to it for a few days so we continued on to Queenstown.  Here we found a tyre specialist so had the tyres rotated and realigned.  Unfortunately, his report on the tyres wasn’t encouraging but we did what we could to try to ensure that there was no unnecessary wear and tear.  

We found a nearby campsite for the night and had hoped to see a bit more of the town the following day but our second day of rain started that night which made it impossible to do the chair lift ‘thing’ to view the town and lake from above.  Instead, we chose to head out towards Milford Sound in the hopes that, as the day progressed, the weather would improve and it did just that.  

We were lucky to come across a couple of Kea, a parrot which is known for being somewhat cheeky and for their intelligence and curiosity. Their curiosity leads them to peck and carry away unguarded items of clothing or to pry apart rubber parts of cars - to the entertainment and annoyance of human observers. Kea can apparently solve logical puzzles, such as pushing and pulling things in a certain order to get to food, and will work together to achieve a certain objective.  The underneath of their wings when they fly show a beautiful orange.

Sandflies can be an enormous problem on the west coast, landing on a person in their droves but, here again, we were relatively lucky.  These are nasty little buggers whose bite stings like mad and lasts several days.  We had been warned to take plenty of protection but fortunately, they never became a major issue during our stay.






 
Again, incredible scenery no matter which way we looked and the weather just got better and better.  The following day, we arrived in Milford Sound which just has to be seen to be appreciated.  We also knew that to do it justice, one has to either see it by plane, helicopter or boat so, as the first two options are somewhat beyond our budget, boat it was. What a thoroughly great trip!  

We couldn’t have asked for better weather.  When one considers that Milford Sound is known as the wettest inhabited place in New Zealand and one of the wettest in the world with a mean annual rainfall of nearly 7000mm on 182 days of the year, a clear day where the tops of the mountains are visible is definitely a bonus.  

The two-hour boat trip took us right to the mouth of the Abel Tasman Sea where, if you didn’t know, you’d never realise that there is an opening into the Sound there.  No wonder Captain Cook missed it.

The whole of the next day found us travelling down the edge of Fiordlands giving us a magnificent view of seemingly endless mountains, lakes and fiords. One can imagine that there are numerous areas within this region where no man has ever set foot – it’s just so vast and rugged.  There are literally hundreds of hiking trails throughout this area and, indeed, throughout New Zealand as a whole with South Island a particularly popular location for what the Kiwis call ‘tramping’.  This usually involves hiking for several days and the Department of Conservation has erected huts along these trails for overnight stays.  This is the only way one could ever visit Fiordlands other than by boat as there are literally no roads.

We’re almost at the southern tip so Invercargill, here we come.

 PHOTO GALLERY:

Two Kea

Spectacular Milford Sound

On the baot trip through the Sound

More great sights

Gorgeous no matter where you look

One of  many waterfalls

The Mirror Lakes