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ilford Sound to Picton

 

January 10 - March 27, 2010







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After we disembarked from our boat trip to the Sound, we looked around for the hoped-for gas station that would allow us to add air to our leaky tyre. Alas, we didn't find it. Our tyre looked a little low and we worried that either it would go flat overnight or en route back to Te Anau. Our roadside insurance would not pay to bring the AA man all the way from Te Anau!

The next morning, we checked the tyre and it didn't look much worse than the previous night, so we packed the van, said goodbye to our backpacker lodge and headed out for the climb up to the tunnel. Our Serena was not a very good climber. It did get us there, but couldn't do it at great speed, so we had lots of time to admire the view as we climbed those switchbacks up to the tunnel. We breathed a sigh of relief once we were through the tunnel and just crossed our fingers that the tyre would hold out until Te Anau. And it did. So we pressed on toward Queenstown.

Mossburn

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We didn't really want to drive all the way to Queenstown so had our eyes peeled for a place to stay. Just outside of Mossburn, we caught sight of a B&B sign and decided to give it a try. We rarely took places that were called B&B because they were usually way beyond our price range, but thought that in the country we might just be lucky. The elderly man who answered the door of the house confirmed our fears telling us his wife usually charged NZ$90. Undoubtedly a very reasonable price but more than we wanted to pay. His wife, Barbara, came to the door and hesitated a long time before accepting our offer of $65. She was probably wondering if it was worth her while to have to change the beds and clean up the room for such a low price. We told her we'd use our own towels if that would help? Yes, it would. She said yes and brought us in and gave us a cup of tea in the breakfast room. She explained that she was about to start stoning apricots that they had picked up on a trip to Cromwell. We offered to help and so her apricots were stoned in about a third of the time she would have taken alone. We hoped it made up for the discounted price. We certainly enjoyed passing the time of day with her and learning a little bit about her life as a young nurse.

Queenstown

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We left Mossburn early in the morning, after sampling some of the previous year's stewed apricots on our morning cereal and stopping yet again in town to add air to our leaky tyre. Then it was on to the tip of Lake Wakatipu and then a lovely drive with lots of stops to admire the views along the east side of the lake to get to Queenstown. Since the lake is such a big part of the attraction of Queenstown, we were delighted that our chosen Backpacker had not only a room with a lake view for us, but also a patio with the selfsame view where we ate our evening meal sharing the view and a bottle of wine with a couple from Texas.

The next day, we took a walk up the hill behind the backpacker's to the gondola station. It was a steep and not very scenic climb, but at the top we got our reward with spectacular views of the lake and Queenstown below us. Wish we could be here in ski season. It must be a bit like skiing at Tahoe with the lake views and all.

Having arrived on a Saturday, we had to wait until Monday to drive over to Beaurepaires and give them an earful for a badly done repair. Happily, we didn't need to insist as they instantly said they would redo the repair for us at no cost to us. Great! This time, Gerry carefully inspected the work they had done, and happily from then on we had no more problems with the tyre. We had tried to extend our stay in Queenstown but they were fully booked and so instead we drove out of town towards Cromwell and Albert Town, stepping stones to Wanaka.

Cromwell and Albert Town

As usual, we had called ahead and booked into a place from our BBH catalog. But when we got there, it was so unlike any of the other backpacker places we had stayed in we thought at first we'd come to the wrong place. Later we learned that the so-called backpacker's was a former camp for construction workers, brought in to build the Cromwell Dam. No wonder it seemed institutional. It was! Even if not terribly warm and cuddly, the room was clean and comfortable and it allowed us to spend the next morning visiting the old town of Cromwell that had been rescued from the rising waters of the dam lake and rebuilt on higher ground. And since there was no reason to stay on in Cromwell, we headed in search of a campsite for our next night.

The campsite we found was on the outskirts of Albert Town, on a large site overlooking the Clutha river. When we got there in time for lunch, the place was mostly deserted. There were one or two caravans parked, but their owners were nowhere to be seen. We picked a spot close to the cliff that overlooked the river and after eating settled down with our folding chairs to read and enjoy the river views. Once again we were unlucky with our neighbors. Whereas everyone else picked a spot as far from others as possible, we looked up from our reading to see that someone had pitched a tent not six feet from ours! There wasn't much we could do, but we did make it clear to them that we weren't very happy. The next morning, we packed up the tent and the car and then went for a lovely walk along the high ground that marked the river valley. We didn't ever get anywhere, just turned around when we thought we'd had enough.

Wanaka

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After moving around a bit, we were looking forward to settling down for a few days in Wanaka. We had heard lots of superlatives about Wanaka and were looking forward to seeing it for ourselves. The backpacker's we had chosen, as always sight unseen, was very well cared for and had a nice garden with picnic tables that had a view of the town and the lake. It also had a rather authoritarian streak to it. This is the place that had "friendly helpers" sitting around looking like guests when they were in fact staff. But it did have a very nice garden with a view of the lake.

In Wanaka, we had the time and took it to get the bikes out and re-assembled. Then we took two lovely rides, one along each shore of the lake. The one along the east shore was very challenging with lots of hills, but the reward was that we got lots of lovely views. We came across a house for sale overlooking the lake on a high bluff and got to talk to the owner. The multi-million dollar price tag wasn't too much of a surprise given the view. Our ride along the western shore was more of a surprise, because the trail we followed ended up along the banks of the Clutha which flows out of the lake and across the Clutha, of course, is the Albert Town campsite where we had stayed just a few days earlier. The Clutha goes on through a couple of more lakes and ends up flowing into the ocean south of Dunedin not far from the small town of Balclutha, where we also camped one night in a park by the river.

Haast and the Glaciers

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After a lovely drive from Wanaka, up to and along the western shore of Lake Hawea and then on to the northern end of Lake Wanaka's eastern shore, we headed up the divide and crossed over Haast pass to the western side of the island once more and to the tiny community of Haast. It is hardly more than a gas station and a roadside motel. We were happy to be there, however, if only so that we could dry out our tent, our mattress, and all of our bedding after a disastrous night camping in Mt Aspiring National Forest. The campsite was lovely, but the pleasant weather of the daytime deteriorated into a severe storm and our summer tent just could not cope. Had we known what was coming we might have started the night in the van, as it was we only ended the night there, having disturbed the entire campsite as we de-camped!!

Our goal the next day was the village of Fox Glacier where we planned to celebrate Gerry's 68th birthday (can you believe it?!). We were blessed with gorgeous weather and found ourselves staying rather unusually for us in a holiday park. Luckily they had rooms as well as tent and RV spaces. We took a double on arrival, settled in and then went over to the common area to make supper. Unfortunately, it wasn't as well equipped as most of the backpacker hostels we stay in, but we managed to have a decent meal and even got to watch some news on the big flat screen TV that was up on the wall.

After supper we went for a drive as we had been told that you could see Mt Cook and Mt Tasman if you drove west of town, a ways. We did and sure enough, just a couple of kilometers from the holiday park, we got our first glimpses of the peaks in our rear-view mirror. Having stopped for a photo, we drove on to Lake Matheson, which we had read was a great place to view the peaks. There we found the Lake Matheson cafe and Gerry decided this was the place to celebrate his birthday the next day.

So, the next morning we got up and drove straight down there to eat breakfast with the lake and the mountains at our feet. We were very lucky with weather. The west coast is renowned for its rain and otherwise unpredictable weather, but we had sunshine the entire time we were at Fox and Franz-Josef glaciers. After a slap-up breakfast, we headed for the glacier and did the short hike to the glacier. Gerry was physically in no shape to do a hike on the glacier itself and I chickened out too, as I had a cold and was afraid that I wouldn't be able to keep up with all of the younger folks for a four-hour hike. An hour would be OK even two, but four hours? I wasn't sure. That night we went back to the Lake Matheson Cafe for a late lunch/early dinner.

And then it was on to our second glacier, Franz-Josef. The speedy travellers among us might have done both in one day, but we slowpokes, moseyed on over there and settled into another backpackers for two nights that to our pleasure was equipped with a nice gas BBQ, where we cooked up steaks and sausages for one of our meals there. On our full day in FJ we did the usual glacier walk, but this time didn't get the lovely views from a distance that we had enjoyed at Fox Glacier. We had decent binoculars with us, so with them we had managed to follow a couple of tours around on top of the glacier. Not so here. The following morning we left FJ behind and in cloudy weather made our way north along the coastal highway towards Greymouth.

Hokitika and Greymouth

Never was a city better named than Greymouth. At least for the time we were there it was certainly grey. The rain started just before we arrived in the small town of Hokitika, which is famous for its Jade souvenirs. Jan wanted to do some shopping there and so we took a two-hour break from driving to look around. Except for the pouring rain, it looked like lots of small towns in the American west. The rain eased for a short while to let us go for a walk, but by the time we got back in the van it was raining heavily and continued to do so to and through our arrival in Greymouth at Global Village Backpackers.

Global Village is without doubt the best backpacker place we stayed in in New Zealand. We had a lovely spacious room with a king-size bed, two bunk beds, and a very nice private patio. We wished we could stay a month, and not only to sit out the bad weather, but to be able to take advantage of the free kayaks, the outdoor BBQ, and the collection of DVD's. Not to mention the cozy living room with its wood-burning stove. The first night we were there, it was cold enough to warrant lighting it and oh boy did that make the room feel toasty. In the end we extended our stay from two to four nights and took advantage of the neighborhood swimming pool a couple of times, the first time we'd been swimming in a long, long time.

But finally, we had to move on. Our friend Virginia was waiting for us in Wellington. We left Greymouth on a glorious sunny day and headed north and then east along the ?? valley road. It was reputed by Lonely Planet to be the prettiest road in New Zealand and we certainly enjoyed it. We found a great place to camp that night in a high mountain valley that had once held a thriving mining village but of which there was almost nothing left. We only knew aboutit because the people who had set up the campsite had also installed some information boards with old photos of the village as it once was. Looking at the campsite it was hard to believe the village ever existed. Looking at the photos it was hard to believe this busy-looking place could have died so completely.

Abel Tasman and Golden Bay

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The morning after our camping expedition, we drove over the pass and down to xxx where we wanted to stay in order to visit the Abel Tasman National Park. We had heard such great things about the park, and although we knew we wouldn't be able to do the multi-day hikes that everyone raved about, we thought we would at least take a day hike and get a flavor of the place. Sadly a double room at our preferred backpacker was only avaliable for one night, but the host was friendly and we extended our stay for two more mights by pitching our tent in his field along with a couple of other tenters. It worked out well. We got to use all of the regular facilities, including the small swimming pool, so we were quite happy. In the two days that we were there, we spent the first biking to the beach from which all of the boat/hike tours start and end. It was a tough ride up and over hills and for a moment it seemed as though Gerry wasn't going to have the lungs to take it, but in the end we got there and back and felt quite proud.

The next day we had booked a tour that gave us a boat ride to a point on the Abel Tasman trail and a time to catch the boat back from another point on the trail 7 kms closer to our starting point. The small bays that make up the ATNP are just so scenic they are amazing. The trail hugs the coast line and winds up and down through scrub forest with freqent great views of the ocean. Unfortunately, after our exertions the day before on the bike, Gerry's leg started complaining almost the instant he started walking. Instead of quitting right there, he perservered and suffered mightily as a result. In the end, he had to even give Jan his backpack, because the extra weight was making walking even more painful than it already was. We made it to the end of the hike with plenty of time to spare, enough indeed for Jan to get into her swimsuit and head into the lovely turquoise waters of the bay, which although very, very shallow, for a long, long way did eventually get deep enough for her to swim.

The last place on our itinierary in this part of the South Island, was to drive up and over a 2,000 meter pass on a very steep and windy road just to drive down yet another steep and windy road to get to Golden Bay. There is much that is beautiful about New Zealand, and Golden Bay ranks up there with the best of them. There isn't that much to see and do, but it is the most lovely place in the world to see and do very little. The bay is very underdevleoped with no large towns and just a few farms and a handful of backpackers. It is quite isolated because the only way in and out of the bay is to drive over the pass to Abel Tasman, a three-hour drive in good conditions. But the views you get on that drive are stupendous, and the away-from-it-all feel you get while in the Golden Bay area is priceless.

After a measly one night, we had to reverse direction and drive back over to the pass to get on our way to Nelson and the famed Queen Charlotte Sounds. While sitting in Sumner, Jan had spent many hours poring over real-estate ads and knew that their were hundreds of lovely homes dotting the hillsides above the Queen Charlotte and many other sounds that feed into the Cook Strait. If you want a home with an ocean or at least a water view, this is the place to come. Of course there's very little industry to speak of, so you'll have to be independently wealthy, or blessed with a good pension and willing to live half a world away from family and friends.

We had heard from a couple of people that Nelson was the best place to live on the South Island. In retrospect, we guess that they mean it is the driest place to live, as it gets more hours of sunshine than most everywhere else. It is also the center of a very large wine-growing district, the products of which we had been sampling for some four months now. We spent most of our one day in Nelson, driving around the sounds in each direction, getting great views of deep blue water, dotted with white-sailed yachts, and backed with green-clad hills. Did we mention the fact that we thought NZ pretty?

Our last stop on the South Island was the small town of Picton, where we stopped only to catch the ferry that would take us across the Cook Straits to Wellington. We had booked our ticket by phone and it was just by luck that when we drove to the wharf to pick it up, the clerk noticed our van parked outside. We had paid for a much bigger van and so we were happy to be told that we would get a refund for it on our credit card. The next morning we drove on board the ferry, parked the car, and climbed up the stairs to find places on a sheltered deck for the ride to Wellington.




December 15, 2007; October 28, 2008