Northbound

Our travels around the South Island are winding to an end. Fall has really arrived now, bringing grey, rainy days. Luckily we had sunny weather through almost our entire trip, right up to Kikoura, our last 'destination'. The locals and our friends tell us that we've had an incredible run with the sun - this has been their best summer-fall ever, because of the drought.
We've been making our way slowly up the east coast, staying on beautiful beaches that remind us of Oregon - mostly because of the weather! The hikes we've been going on have been shorter and we come back soaked by the rain, but there are still awesome views to see, we just can't see as far as on the clear days but the clouds and mist make them quite dramatic.

By highway, its only about 20 minutes from Blenheim to Picton. Because we have the luxury of time, we were able to spend two days taking the scenic coastal route. Half of the road is metal (gravel), half sealed (paved) and winds up and down the hills dropping into numerous little coves and fishing villages looking out into the Queen Charlotte Sound, part of the Marlborough Sounds. We stopped at a DOC (dept. of conservation; very basic) campsite and spent the night, checking out the hike to the viewpoint and beach walk to the rock arch. Today we drove the remainder of the route, stopping at scenic outlooks - looking out at what we admired on our way to the island 7 weeks ago from the ferry.
It's bittersweet leaving the South Island, a place that is hard to describe with words alone but we are looking forward to seeing our friends the Whites and the Duffy's, and we still have our Tahiti adventure ahead.

Kaikoura

We are enjoying this town so much we decided to stay for our third night! Kaikoura sits on a peninsula with the snowcapped Seaward Kaikoura Range rising, as if from the ocean, behind it. When we arrived it was cloudy and raining but we woke up to a gorgeous sunny day yesterday so we went for a hike along the coast and cliffs of the Kaikoura peninsula. We climbed up hills from which we could see whales spouting in the distance and seals on the rocks below us.
On the way back along the coast to town we stopped at a little BBQ seafood vendor and tried paua (abalone) fritters and whitebait fritters for our first time, and some great seafood chowder. Afterwards, the boys, including Nigel as usual, played tag at the coolest park in NZ so far!
Today we skyped our families, got haircuts and then went to a very small, non commercial sheep shearing show, to watch the sheep get haircuts too! It's amazing how much wool comes off these animals!
The best part of the day was watching the baby seals play in the waterfall at Ohau up the coast from here! Hundreds of baby seals too young to go out into the ocean, clamber up this fresh water stream about 300 meters, over rocks and logs to reach the pool at the bottom of the falls. In the waterfall pool there must be at least 30 baby seals. They play, swim, jump, twirl, twist, fight, all the time skillfully avoiding collisions. They are so fun and happy it just makes you smile.

Friends

We spent part of last weekend with some more friends from 20 years ago, except we hadn't kept in touch, like with Wayne and Sue, so we had no idea what to expect. Well, Darryl married Di, who I met as his girlfriend back in '94, and they built a house in the country north of Christchurch on 20 acres, for them and their 4 children, including 8 year old twins! They have a dog, a cat, a bunch of chickens and lease the rest of the land to a couple hundred sheep!
The boys had a grand time hanging out and playing with kids their own age and I enjoyed catching up with old friends over a few too many glasses of wine (and port)!

Castle Hill

Apparently this amazing place appears in the Narnia movies, I guess we'll have to watch them again and see! We could have spent days here exploring and climbing on the weird, smooth rocks! To me, they looked like a herd of elephants had been turned to stone and then the wind had smoothed and hollowed them out! To Liam, they seemed more like ruins of medieval castles. Whatever they looked like, they were a climbing paradise and made for some great photo ops!

Cave Stream

We've been in caves in the woods, coastal caves, lava tubes and now the 'Cave Stream', where a stream carved through limestone and decided to flow underground. Initially the stream was pretty deep and we weren't sure we should continue since it would be chest deep on Rory and it was bone numbing cold! Liam found that you could climb along the sides a ways and skip the deep bit, after which it was knee deep most of the way with occasional waist deep sections. The limestone was beautifully sculpted by years of water rushing through and carving this tunnel. It was smooth to hold onto and seemed to glow in our headlights, not slimy or muddy. Liam led the way upstream, climbing gradually and at times up small, rushing waterfalls. After about 45 minutes and at least a kilometer, when our legs were numb from the freezing water, we saw the light at the end of the tunnel and climbed up the metal rungs to emerge back into daylight!

Arthur's Pass

Saying good-bye after a lovely visit with Wayne and Sue, we headed west to the mountains. It was a sunny, clear day so we did not stop until we arrived in Arthur's Pass where we took a 2 hour hike up Scott's Track for some great views of Devils Punchbowl Falls and Bridal Veil Falls. We hiked up about 1000 feet (only a couple thousand more to the summit!) up a trail that was probably a dry streambed, pulling ourselves up by roots and clambering over boulders - the boys loved it! Once back down, Rory and I still had some energy left so we 'ran' up the 330-or-so steps, to the bottom of the Devils Punchbowl Falls for a closer view!

Christchurch

We rolled into Christchurch under cloudy skies, perfect for visiting a museum, which we did. We then walked up the street to what was 'Cathedral Square' before the earthquake of Feb.22, 2011, and is now just a lot of rubble in the 'red zone'. The city, two years after not one but two, devastating earthquakes (the first in September, 2010) is definitely not what I remember from 20 years ago!
We drove to a campsite in the suburb of South Brighton and were amazed at the condition of the roads which seemed to undulate as we drove- until we the saw signs 'Earthquake Damage' among the detour signs. Later at our friends house we looked through photo books of the effects of each earthquake and had a much better understanding of why the roads, two years later, were still so bad! We also saw partially collapsed buildings hanging over the edge of cliffs, where it is still too dangerous for them to be demolished.
Our campervan needed fixing - the heater broke down just when temperatures in the night are getting close to freezing! So it was perfect timing being in Christchurch, the biggest city on the South Island, to get this repaired.
We visited my friends Wayne and Sue, who I hadn't seen in 20 years and spent three days in Christchurch with them. Their hospitality was greatly appreciated and we enjoyed our evenings with them, catching up over dinner and a few glasses of New Zealand wine!
Willowbanks Park was one of Rory's favourite outings since he loves animals. This is like a small zoo but often you are walking in among the animals and can feed some of them- like the giant eels! We were also able to see a couple of kiwis which he loved!
On our one sunny day there, we hiked along the coast from a beautiful little bay called Taylor's Mistake, up to a point called Godley Heads that had remains of bunkers and batteries from WW2. The next day we took a drive out to the Banks Peninsula and the old French settlement of Akaroa, but the best part of that day was the Pavlova Sue (and Rory) made us for desert!

Driving in New Zealand

Being English I am somewhat accustomed to driving on the "wrong side" of the road. 'Stay left' is the motto here. Add a 7 meter diesel rig, narrow roads, mountain passes and no straight roads other than beaches and it adds up to some good fun. All roads are signed at 100km/62mph in NZ. It seems the speed you go on any winding road can be up to 100km even if you can only go 30km/hr. Then there are the signs. They don't pull any punches here,straight to the point and blunt. "Drink, drive, die in a ditch". "Drink Drive"but the drive is spelled DrIvE as in DIE. The 100km speed limit often says 100km max: "this is not a target". Then there are the highways. Sometimes we are on a road that is called a "highway" that has curves that slow down to 35 km. We all agreed the best, fastest and straightest road was the beach we drove on for 70 km without turning at all. Incredibly, distances here are different. If I am going 180 miles highway driving in the States would be 3 hrs max. Here it clearly is a different distance. Expect 4 hrs if you're lucky. Overall by the time I get the hang of it I will be sailing in Tahiti at 6 knots with new French rules...
Nigel

Lake Tekapo

From Mt.Cook National Park we headed to Lake Tekapo, another lake made extraordinarily blue by glacial silt. We hiked up to the top of Mt.John with its observatories on the summit, but by evening it was raining and it ended up not being a good night for astronomy. This was unfortunate since the area is known for its clear skies. We headed for Christchurch the next morning stopping at The Church of the Good Shepherd on the way.

Mt.Cook

We left the coast and headed inland, arriving two days later at Mt.Cook also known as Aoraki. The drive follows the entire length of Lake Pukaki, which, because of the glacial silt, looks robins egg blue! The color of the lake and the magnificence of Mt.Cook looming behind it was stunning! We managed to arrive on a clear, blue skied day and went for a beautiful hike up the Hooker Valley to the glacial lake of the same name, below Mt.Cook. Crossing two swing bridges, passing lakes and rivers the color of a frothy latte, we arrived at a sight I had never seen before: icebergs floating on a lake! We saw even more of these the next day when we hiked to the top of the moraine at the end of the Tasman glacier and looked into Lake Tasman. This lake had dozens of icebergs that looked tiny until you saw some kayakers among them which gave some perspective of their size!

Spires, caves, marbles and fish

After another couple nights freedom camping on gorgeous beaches south and then north of Dunedin, we made a few stops on the coast before heading inland. Dunedin looks like a beautiful city and we drove to its center, the 'Octagon', skyped home at an Internet cafe and moved on, glimpsing the spires of gothic cathedrals on our way.
We had to wait for low tide to hike down to the Cathedral Caves, but they were worth the wait. These coastal caves are among the longest in the world and despite having to walk through knee deep water, in the rain, (Rory swam at one point!), we found four or five impressive and fascinating caves to explore, one with a penguin deep inside!
The Moeraki Boulders are nicknamed 'devils marbles' and are giant, spherical concretions formed millions of years ago and now lying on the beach. They were formed around pieces of shell or stone, encased in lime and like a grain of sand in a pearl, turned into these giant 'marbles' sometimes over 13 feet around. We climbed on them to help burn off the huge seafood lunch we treated ourselves to at the famous 'Fleurs' restaurant! We felt we couldn't miss it after hearing so much about it from friends and we were not disappointed. The fish was fresh, straight off the fishing boats; blue cod, sole, gurnard and Moki (Rory's favourite). The owner Fleur, being present, seemed to make all the difference. It wasn't a fancy place, more like a rustic fishing house on the water, but it was definitely the most expensive lunch we have ever had!