Gone South
The South Island of NZ is very different from the North. It's quieter, the roads are empty and the towns are much smaller. I suppose the contrasts with Auckland are going to be extreme.
My friend, Chris, and I hired a car for the 2 weeks we had together in the South. After looking around we got the sensible car of choice, the Toyota Corolla, and set off from Christchurch.
Christchurch is the largest city on the South Island but it certainly does not feel it. The centre of town is small and quiet with a teeny tramway that does a circle of the town centre. The town is like the other towns in the South in that it's a compact mixture of classic 19th and early 20th century architecture and the less enlightened 1960s/70s efforts which plague all cities around the world. It gave the town a very English feel as it reminded me of Chichester's town centre but without the chavs. Most of the cities here have little to do for the intrepid explorer so they are best for accommodation and as a springboard into nearby sights. We set off from Christchurch using Corolla Power and headed South.
Mount Cook was our first destination. This is the tallest Peak in NZ and sits in a large National Park. In fact most of the South Island seems to be National Park and UNESCO World Heritage listed. I guess this is why they have not developed most of it as the impact by human settlement is very low.
We did some day walks around the Mt. Cook park and took in the views. On the first day there was low cloud and slight rain but this gave the whole area a very other-worldly feel. Looking up the valleys and down the plains it felt like I was looking at NASA photos from one of Jupiter's moons. Very stirring. The second day was sunnier and we could see the mountains more clearly. Strangely enough they appeared shorter than the day before. I guess that's the effect of low cloud. It almost looked like Mt. Blanc in the French Alps, though there was no development or indeed skiing in this area.
We drove on from here down towards a place called Dunedin. Dunedin is the Celtic name for Edinburgh and the way the town is built you'd be excused for thinking that it was in Scotland, except there are no decaying council estates or motorways. It's built on hills and every street seems to go upwards very steeply. Naturally The Corolla took all this in its stride, coughing and wailing up each one in first.
Dunedin was a flying stop. Chris and I visited the Speight's Brewery there. This is one thing about NZ that I love: they brew proper beer. They do, however, serve it cold. "Shyeah, it's a hot country'" the guide told me when I questioned this. He had spent a while in England and had worked at Kent's Shepherd Neame brewery so he knew about real beer. The tour was very good and he was a great tour guide, mainly because he laughed at my jokes, but the tasting at the end was one of the most extensive and generous offerings I have had on a tour.
We each had small glasses and were told we could pull our own drinks from the taps. After the first couple I decided that I would, in fact, take excessive advantage of their hospitality and upped the pace. Speight's is good stuff though their advertising, "Southern Man" as they call it, is rather cheesy and emotive (lots of slow motion images of sheep, cowboys, All Blacks, and stunning views; I almost cried). We even met a little Scottish lady there who was their by herself. Chris and I chatted with her and we went to the pub next door for a "quiet few". Five pints each later and the conversation was in full flow. The lady attempted to give me a Glasgow Kiss (my luck was not in, that's a head-butt) and Chris and I discovered that she was only 18. Yikes. Feeling humiliated we agreed that she could drink for her country and that she didn't look that young. We left shortly afterwards, feeling old, and parted on good terms.
The day after that, bleary eyed, we set off again South for Invercargill. There's nothing there but we both wanted to visit Stewart Island which is just off the South coast and the furthest point South in NZ.
The island is mainly National Park and there's one small settlement there called Oban. We took the ferry which gave free tea and coffee (praise be, etc.) and we had fun on the roller-coaster of swell in the straight. The town of Oban was mainly closed being low season but we managed to get in a couple of long day walks there which took us into the park. There are very long walks available that take you across the island but it's not really the time of year for it. If I was better prepared I'd like to do one of them.
The park consists mainly of moorland and virgin forest of the type that would have covered most of NZ in years gone by. It was dense with plenty of birdlife in it and one of the few places that you're likely to see a Kiwi Bird in. The end of our walk took us to a long sandy bay which was empty. In Summer it would be marvelous I should imagine but being there in the wind with the big clouds coming in made it look pretty dramatic.
After the walk we repaired to the one and only pub on the island and discovered that they had Sky TV installed! This was too good to be true as that night was the start of the first test in the Ashes. Our first innings bowling was good but naturally McGrath and Lee took us apart easily and Warne destroyed the rest. Bugger. Still I say that restricting the Aussies for less than 200 runs in their first innings including our slightly shoddy fielding was good.
After Stewart Island we traveled up to Fiordland. This is a another National Park which contains a lot of fjords and inland waterways, oddly enough. It does look a bit like Norway but generally the fjords here are wider than the ones I remember from my time there.
We spent a day on Milford Sound. This was mis-named as fjords are carved out of the ground by glaciers and then filled with seawater when the glaciers melt. Sounds are created when the ground in a valley sinks because of an earthquake or is just eroded by the weather so the sea then floods it. So Milford Sound is a fjord, but Milford Fjord is hard to say so the name stuck.
Now this really was the single most impressive chunk of scenery that I have yet seen. The weather was changeable that day to say the least with cloud clinging to the mountain tops around the fjord and winds constantly breaking it up. Sunlight would filter though in places lighting up the mountain sides. There had been very heavy rain that morning and all across the sides of these mountains were waterfalls, some small others big, all running into the fjord. I shot about 100 pictures, most of which are crap, but by even putting a frame around the views they still look impressive. It was a lovely day.
Incidentally Fiordland is the wettest part of NZ with over 7m (that's metres) of rain a year. I think they have about 30 dry days a year, which is why they have so many waterfalls there I guess, they just never get the chance to run dry. Still didn't feel as wet as Alice Springs though.
Out of all the places in NZ that I have seen so far Fiordland was the most striking. Even in very overcast conditions you can still see the mountains looming in the murk giving it all a slightly threatening appearance. I heartily endorse it.
Today we took a very scenic drive from Te Anau, the town we were staying at, to Queenstown. This is one of those places that I find slightly intimidating. It's main attraction is its proximity to the Remarkables ranges for skiing and snowboarding. I find all this slightly threatening as there are so many beautiful people here and they're all far too cool to speak to me. I'm not skiing though I should be able to find plenty of other adventure things to do, like sheep wrestling and luging.
We have been staying in hostels since getting here. I was thinking about hostels and there are really only three type of people who stay in them: people who look like maths teachers, beautiful people, and couples to whom everybody else simply does not exist. Now using this metric I guess that makes me a beautiful person. This is where the system breaks down.
The maths teachers make me laugh. You pass them in the corridor and you make eye contact. A "Hello" is greeted with a surprised look or total blankness. The beautiful people just don't bother making eye contact, unless you yourself are beautiful. The couples are impossible to talk to unless you isolate one of them first. Maybe I'm just to scary looking? Maybe I should wear trousers in the lounge? Chris leaves for HK in a couple of days so I'm going to enter a do-or-die attempt to make conversations when he's gone. I'll have the Toyota for any quick escapes so all should be fine.
My friend, Chris, and I hired a car for the 2 weeks we had together in the South. After looking around we got the sensible car of choice, the Toyota Corolla, and set off from Christchurch.
Christchurch is the largest city on the South Island but it certainly does not feel it. The centre of town is small and quiet with a teeny tramway that does a circle of the town centre. The town is like the other towns in the South in that it's a compact mixture of classic 19th and early 20th century architecture and the less enlightened 1960s/70s efforts which plague all cities around the world. It gave the town a very English feel as it reminded me of Chichester's town centre but without the chavs. Most of the cities here have little to do for the intrepid explorer so they are best for accommodation and as a springboard into nearby sights. We set off from Christchurch using Corolla Power and headed South.
Mount Cook was our first destination. This is the tallest Peak in NZ and sits in a large National Park. In fact most of the South Island seems to be National Park and UNESCO World Heritage listed. I guess this is why they have not developed most of it as the impact by human settlement is very low.
We did some day walks around the Mt. Cook park and took in the views. On the first day there was low cloud and slight rain but this gave the whole area a very other-worldly feel. Looking up the valleys and down the plains it felt like I was looking at NASA photos from one of Jupiter's moons. Very stirring. The second day was sunnier and we could see the mountains more clearly. Strangely enough they appeared shorter than the day before. I guess that's the effect of low cloud. It almost looked like Mt. Blanc in the French Alps, though there was no development or indeed skiing in this area.
We drove on from here down towards a place called Dunedin. Dunedin is the Celtic name for Edinburgh and the way the town is built you'd be excused for thinking that it was in Scotland, except there are no decaying council estates or motorways. It's built on hills and every street seems to go upwards very steeply. Naturally The Corolla took all this in its stride, coughing and wailing up each one in first.
Dunedin was a flying stop. Chris and I visited the Speight's Brewery there. This is one thing about NZ that I love: they brew proper beer. They do, however, serve it cold. "Shyeah, it's a hot country'" the guide told me when I questioned this. He had spent a while in England and had worked at Kent's Shepherd Neame brewery so he knew about real beer. The tour was very good and he was a great tour guide, mainly because he laughed at my jokes, but the tasting at the end was one of the most extensive and generous offerings I have had on a tour.
We each had small glasses and were told we could pull our own drinks from the taps. After the first couple I decided that I would, in fact, take excessive advantage of their hospitality and upped the pace. Speight's is good stuff though their advertising, "Southern Man" as they call it, is rather cheesy and emotive (lots of slow motion images of sheep, cowboys, All Blacks, and stunning views; I almost cried). We even met a little Scottish lady there who was their by herself. Chris and I chatted with her and we went to the pub next door for a "quiet few". Five pints each later and the conversation was in full flow. The lady attempted to give me a Glasgow Kiss (my luck was not in, that's a head-butt) and Chris and I discovered that she was only 18. Yikes. Feeling humiliated we agreed that she could drink for her country and that she didn't look that young. We left shortly afterwards, feeling old, and parted on good terms.
The day after that, bleary eyed, we set off again South for Invercargill. There's nothing there but we both wanted to visit Stewart Island which is just off the South coast and the furthest point South in NZ.
The island is mainly National Park and there's one small settlement there called Oban. We took the ferry which gave free tea and coffee (praise be, etc.) and we had fun on the roller-coaster of swell in the straight. The town of Oban was mainly closed being low season but we managed to get in a couple of long day walks there which took us into the park. There are very long walks available that take you across the island but it's not really the time of year for it. If I was better prepared I'd like to do one of them.
The park consists mainly of moorland and virgin forest of the type that would have covered most of NZ in years gone by. It was dense with plenty of birdlife in it and one of the few places that you're likely to see a Kiwi Bird in. The end of our walk took us to a long sandy bay which was empty. In Summer it would be marvelous I should imagine but being there in the wind with the big clouds coming in made it look pretty dramatic.
After the walk we repaired to the one and only pub on the island and discovered that they had Sky TV installed! This was too good to be true as that night was the start of the first test in the Ashes. Our first innings bowling was good but naturally McGrath and Lee took us apart easily and Warne destroyed the rest. Bugger. Still I say that restricting the Aussies for less than 200 runs in their first innings including our slightly shoddy fielding was good.
After Stewart Island we traveled up to Fiordland. This is a another National Park which contains a lot of fjords and inland waterways, oddly enough. It does look a bit like Norway but generally the fjords here are wider than the ones I remember from my time there.
We spent a day on Milford Sound. This was mis-named as fjords are carved out of the ground by glaciers and then filled with seawater when the glaciers melt. Sounds are created when the ground in a valley sinks because of an earthquake or is just eroded by the weather so the sea then floods it. So Milford Sound is a fjord, but Milford Fjord is hard to say so the name stuck.
Now this really was the single most impressive chunk of scenery that I have yet seen. The weather was changeable that day to say the least with cloud clinging to the mountain tops around the fjord and winds constantly breaking it up. Sunlight would filter though in places lighting up the mountain sides. There had been very heavy rain that morning and all across the sides of these mountains were waterfalls, some small others big, all running into the fjord. I shot about 100 pictures, most of which are crap, but by even putting a frame around the views they still look impressive. It was a lovely day.
Incidentally Fiordland is the wettest part of NZ with over 7m (that's metres) of rain a year. I think they have about 30 dry days a year, which is why they have so many waterfalls there I guess, they just never get the chance to run dry. Still didn't feel as wet as Alice Springs though.
Out of all the places in NZ that I have seen so far Fiordland was the most striking. Even in very overcast conditions you can still see the mountains looming in the murk giving it all a slightly threatening appearance. I heartily endorse it.
Today we took a very scenic drive from Te Anau, the town we were staying at, to Queenstown. This is one of those places that I find slightly intimidating. It's main attraction is its proximity to the Remarkables ranges for skiing and snowboarding. I find all this slightly threatening as there are so many beautiful people here and they're all far too cool to speak to me. I'm not skiing though I should be able to find plenty of other adventure things to do, like sheep wrestling and luging.
We have been staying in hostels since getting here. I was thinking about hostels and there are really only three type of people who stay in them: people who look like maths teachers, beautiful people, and couples to whom everybody else simply does not exist. Now using this metric I guess that makes me a beautiful person. This is where the system breaks down.
The maths teachers make me laugh. You pass them in the corridor and you make eye contact. A "Hello" is greeted with a surprised look or total blankness. The beautiful people just don't bother making eye contact, unless you yourself are beautiful. The couples are impossible to talk to unless you isolate one of them first. Maybe I'm just to scary looking? Maybe I should wear trousers in the lounge? Chris leaves for HK in a couple of days so I'm going to enter a do-or-die attempt to make conversations when he's gone. I'll have the Toyota for any quick escapes so all should be fine.