After Rotorua we took the looooooong well longish road south to Wellington at the bottom of North Island. It was pouring with rain all day and so we couldn’t see the mountain ranges either side of the road which are meant to be stunning. But we eventually arrived to some clearer weather but it was blowing a gale.
We stayed at a lovely hostel right on the waterfront and paid a couple of dollars more for a sea view room which was worth every penny as you’ll see from the picture! We took a train into Windy Welly the following day which was a bit odd as it’s the first commute I’ve done for quite some time (sorry – not intended as a dig at you hard workers out there). We took a funicular railway up to the top of the hill to take in the views over the bay and managed not to get blown off and we had an amazing French meal in a funky little area which had tonnes of character.
The next day we got the ferry across the Cook Strait which was pretty rough for about an hour but neither of us succumbed to any sea sickness but our car was covered in salt when we got off! The last hour of the crossing is actually down an inlet or ‘Sound’ which is incredibly calm water and narrow channels inland with steep walls of green and deep blue water. We didn’t see any dolphins or whales but it is not unknown for people to spot them from the ferry.
We decided to stay put in Nelson for a few nights to plan the rest of our time in NZ a little bit more. It’s a pretty big place by NZ standards but you can see why people want to live there as it is beautiful and tends to get much better weather than further south down the coast. One night we went down to a huge beach and watched the sun set behind the snow capped mountains the other side of the bay. You all know how much I love taking photos of sunsets, I think I took around 80 pics in an hour. We met a really interesting guy in his 70s who’d emigrated from the states. He was a preacher in an earlier life and he was very interested in all the countries we’d visited and in imparting endless nuggets of information about his map of human character. Bless him, it went into incredible detail – we have yet to try it out on each other for fear of ruining our friendship forever!
From Nelson we drove a little while up the coast to stay in Motueka, a place near the Abel Tasman national park which is a protected piece of coastline. We went on a full day sea kayaking trip on a stunning day, I don’t think we saw a single cloud all day. Visited hidden coves with crystal clear water where the local Maoris used to hide their women and children when the ‘friendly’ Europeans visited many moons ago. We paddled out to sea and went to a little island which is a fur seal breeding ground. The pups are now about 5 or 6 months old and the only way to describe them is as fat puppies that have not been trained and can swim, leap into the air and jump onto the kayaks at will. Oh and did I mention that they like to chew…anything including your clothing or fingers. We loved every minute of our encounter and as we were leaving a particularly tenacious little dude hopped on and we just could not get him off our boat without a large amount of pushing – trust me we tried absolutely everything else we could. We got picked up by a water taxi at the end of the day and found out that some dolphins had been sighted….you guessed it, Kimbo decided it was worth jumping off the boat into freezing water with no wetsuit (the only one other than the guide to try it). These were common dolphins, however the name does not reflect that they are actually sighted far less frequently than the bottlenosed variety we swum with in North Island. Anyway I did not get hypothermia despite the captain’s concerns and went back to the hostel feeling very blessed and slightly smug.
After a couple of nights we went up the coast a bit farther to a more remote township called Takaka. I think the population is around 200 people but it was an interesting place. We went to the local market on the Saturday morning and saw the local manic lady dancing to her ghetto blaster and some Maori kids singing to get a bit of cash. I had a white bait fritter made by a darling old lady, mmmm. Whilst we were there we went up to see Farewell Spit a strange bit of sand that stretches 35 km around a bay and Wharariki beach. That beach was my favourite place in NZ so far and definitely nicest cold beach I have been to with sand dunes and craggy bits of rock and a seal colony but very scary seas.
That night we decided to go to the local inn which is known for good food and ales. It was fairly empty when we arrived (6 of us in the car!!) but within a couple of hours it was full to the bursting (literally, there were around 50 people sitting outside) with the strangest mix of people I have ever seen. Most were aging hippies (wonderful people) but there were young hobbit types in elf style hats and striped leggings, farm workers with mullets and drunken dancing ladies. We soon realised that it was a tribute to Bob Dylan as it was his 70th birthday that day. So each act proceeded to perform 3 songs of his. Some were good and others just weren’t. We stayed until about 10pm but one of the girls at the hostel stayed until 2am and they were still going even though it was on a Monday night.
After our week in the sun the rain set in and once again we were in the car driving down to the west coast on the way to see some glaciers. We stopped off for the night at a tiny place called Punakaiki where little old mother nature has created a natural theme park for the waves out of the layers of rock known as the Pancake Rocks. There are a few weird and wonderful blowholes and as it had been raining all day there was a weird mist hanging down around everywhere as well.
Anyway we finally made it to Franz Josef which is a very odd little place made up of one shop, a tourist tat shop and a couple of tour guide operations and then a few boring motels and backpacker hostels. Our room stunk of mould though we couldn’t see any anywhere and were glad to leave really. However it was all worth it when we went on an all day trip to walk up Fox Glacier. It was beautiful up on the ice and amazing to stand inside caves that have been formed when water runs through the ice. I will definitely make the effort to see another glacier – Austria here I come (well maybe next year)
