Last Post from NZ

Wednesday 29 September

We went out for dinner last night with Len and Shelley, it was really good to see them after such a long time.

We left Nelson this morning, heading to Kaikoura.  It was a fairly uneventful drive, stopping in Blenheim for a coffee, and then just north of Kaikoura for a crayfish lunch – very tasty indeed!

The drive along the coastal road was beautiful, the road goes along a very narrow coastal plain, with sea on one side and the snow-capped mountains on the other side, and runs beside the railway line we travelled on when we reached the South Island about 10 days ago.

We are going to the Pier Hotel for dinner tonight, then back to the motel to pack for the flight home, so this will be the last post for this blog.  It’s been a great holiday, and we plan to come back to see some more in the future.

Some random thoughts about NZ:

Speed humps are called judder bars.

A cup of hot chips is called a pottle.

We saw more dairy cows than sheep, I think.

The North Island is a large dairy farm, and the South Island is turning into one.

NZ produces about 1/3 of the world’s milk.

The little channels through the paddocks (fields??) in the North Island aren’t irrigation channels but drainage ditches.

The two islands are totally different – the north is flatter, with undulating hills, while the south is really alpine.  Both are beautiful but in different ways.

The people are really friendly.  We had a young Maori guide at Waitangi who said ‘We’re all ANZACs, aren’t we?’

They really take rugby seriously.  No one mentioned cricket.

New Zealanders are very proud of their country, and its achievements in all fields.

Christchurch and Nelson

Monday 27 September

The last day of our tour arrived!  We travelled from Franz Josef to the west coast, first of all going in for a look at Franz Josef Glacier.  It was a cold wet morning, so not everyone walked all the way.  We also had to get back to Franz Josef to pick up those who had gone for a helicopter ride, brave souls! 

Next stop was Hokitika for a meal break, visit to a greenstone factory, and a whitebait patty at Millie’s Cafe.  The whitebait is a national delicacy, very small fish best eaten in a patty or something similar.  It was good but not wonderful, I thought.

We then continued to Greymouth where we boarded the TranzAlpine train for our return to Christchurch.  This was a great ride through the Alps, and brought us safely back to Christchurch for our farewell dinner.  This was a buffet in a separate room, with entertainment – keyboard player and singer – and brought our tour to an end.  It was sad to say goodbye to our new friends, but we exchanged names and addresses with those we intend to keep in touch with, then went over the road for a farewell drink with  them.

Tuesday 28 September

Tonight we are in Nelson, going out for dinner with Les’s cousin and his partner.  We’re looking forward to seeing them as it’s been a long time since we saw them last.

We had a very interesting drive up through the central highlands from Christchurch to Nelson, past lots of snow-capped mountains, on windy roads that made us think of motorbikes, and arrived here safely, and found the motel.

Franz Jozef Glacier

Sunday 26 September

Not a lot to say today, we travelled from Queenstown to Franz Jozef Glacier, a little place that exists only to provide flights to the glaciers, Franz Jozef and Fox.  We had a look at Fox, but it was a pretty quick one as it was raining and most of us decided not to go to the end of the path, but just far enough to see the glacier without getting too wet.

It rained quite a lot today, and those who had booked a helicopter flight this afternoon have been postponed to tomorrow morning, which may provide better weather, according to the forecast.  We shall see!

It’s really had to believe that our tour is almost over.  Tomorrow night in Christchurch will be our last dinner together, then we all go our separate ways.  Les and I are staying for a couple of extra days and going to Nelson to see his cousin and partner.  We haven’t seen Len for a  long time, and haven’t met his partner at all though we have spoken on the phone.

Nothing exciting is happening tonight, dinner at the hotel and probably an early night.  There was a lot of snoozing on the bus today, most of us had a busy day yesterday and a particularly early start because of daylight saving starting this morning.  About half the group have a cold and the rest of us are trying to avoid it, so fingers crossed!

Queenstown

Friday 24 September

Another travelling day, we left Te Anau after a leisurely 7:15 wake-up and headed off for Queenstown, which is quite a short drive.  We skirted around Queenstown and went to Arrowtown for lunch, after having a look through the museum, which is quite a good one.  It’s an old gold mining area, so quite a lot of history in that line.

We also went out to the very popular bungee jumping operation and saw a couple of people having a jump.  I think it’s about as sensible as jumping out of a perfectly safe plane! 

Our hotel, the Mercure, is on the hillside above Lake Wakatipu in Queenstown, and the view from our room is spectacular.  There’s a pic on the Picasa gallery. 

Our dinner tonight was at Walter Peak Station, further down the lake, which we reached after a 45 minute voyage on the TSS Earnslaw, an old steam-driven boat.  Dinner was very good, an excellent buffet including roast lamb shanks with all the trimmings and many other things to choose from.

The voyage home included a sing-along which we enjoyed too, then home to bed in the room with a view.

Saturday 25 September

We had an early start today for breakfast before our four-wheel drive excursion to Skipper’s Canyon.  This was a great trip, up Skipper’s Canyon to the location of the old settlement of Skipper.  The district was a gold mining place, and was a very rich source of gold.  There is snow on all the hilltops around, and it was very spectacular.  Our driver, Wolfgang, told us a quite a lot about the history of the place, and was very interesting.  We passed the place Peter Jackson used for the Lord of the Rings scene where Arwen carries Frodo across the river to escape the Nazgul.  There were more locations around here, but that was the only one we saw from a reasonably close distance.

After the Skipper’s Canyon drive, we went on to a wine-tasting lunch and afternoon.  The region is famous for its pinot noir wines, and also produces some good white which I enjoyed, while Les was very happy trying the reds.

Dinner in the hotel tonight, a bar meal with a view across the lake.  It was very cold and started to rain again so we decided against going into town.

Daylight saving starts tomorrow, and we have a 6:00 am start, so it will be very early indeed!

Te Anau

I'm using a computer in the hotel lobby today, which seems to be using a linux operating system of some sort and Open Office - what joy!  It doesn't like copy and paste from a Word document, but these things are sent to try us.  At least it has a proper keyboard!

Here's an update from the last couple of days, no new pictures in the gallery today but will try to put some up tomorrow if possible, in Queenstown.

Tuesday 21 September

The morning started with the sight of snow on the hillsides around the city.  We knew it was cold last night but didn’t really expect snow! 

We drove up to Larnach’s Castle, a very grand house in the style of a castle, built by an Australian who ended up here working in the banking business.  It was a very different and grand place, and again our guide told us the story  of the family, which was a bit of a sad tale of wives dying and things not going according to plan.  The house was sold when the Larnach family went broke, and has been restored by another family.  The woodwork in the house is just wonderful, and they have furnished it in the style of the period.  They have managed to recover a couple of original pieces, and it is a great place to visit.

While we were there, a bit more light snow fell, and it has been very cold all day.  Les even bought a pair of gloves and I was very glad to have mine with me too. 

This afternoon was another train ride, this time a journey up the Taieri Gorge to Pukerangi, a distance of 58 km which takes about 2 hours.  It’s a beautiful ride along the gorge, through some tunnels and across a couple of viaducts.   The line was built to transport produce from the Otago Highlands to Dunedin, and took many years and a lot of work to complete.  The line was closed in 1990 and was purchased by the City Council provided that the community raised money to finance to project to allow the excursion trains to continue.  This duly happened and the Taieri Gorge Railway is now NZ’s longest privately owned railway.

Wednesday 22 September

We left Dunedin on our way to Te Anau this morning, it was still very cold and there was snow on all the hillsides around.  By the time we reached Balclutha for morning tea, it had started to snow again and we walked from the shop to the restaurant in the snow.  It snowed for quite a distance on our way to Te Anau, where we arrived in time for lunch.

Our afternoon activity was a cruise on Lake Te Anau to visit the glow worm caves. This was definitely an interesting outing, particularly for someone who doesn’t like caves, specially wet, noisy ones.  However the glow worms put on a good show for us and we made our way out safely.  In fact, it was different to any caves I’ve been in before, it’s a very wet system, there is a tremendous noise from the water rushing through and also several rapids and waterfalls.  We walked a couple of hundred metres from the shelter to the caves, then through then entrance which is quite low, so we were bent right over for a little way, and also had to be aware of some low rocks further on.  We walked another few hundred metres then were seated in a little boat to go into the grotto itself.  The guide propelled the boat by pulling on a chain, which must have been hard work going upstream.  It was an interesting experience, but not one that I’d care to repeat any time soon.

Thursday 23 September

We woke again to a fairly grey day, with our itinerary being a ride to Milford Sound for our cruise.  However the weather was a bit doubtful so we weren’t sure what would happen.  Geoff our tour guide had some mixed reports, and decided that we would set off and see what happened.  The bus has chains for use in an emergency, and Geoff said that we wouldn’t put the chains on to get into Milford Sound, as that’s not a good idea, they’re meant to get out of trouble rather than getting into it.  Anyway, we headed out.

There’s a little place called Arthur’s Knob, where there is a work gang that look after the road, clear the snow and spread grit when required.  We saw the grit truck, it passed us on our way, and we reached Arthur’s Knob with no trouble at all.  We had a walk around to stretch our legs, and saw some kea birds, which are rather large parrots native to this area.  They were very approachable and checked out quite a few shoes.

Geoff made more calls and was told that the road is closed for 48 hours because of the high danger of avalanches.  This was disappointing, as we had all been looking forward to Milford Sound, but it was beyond our control, and we turned back to Te Anau, visiting Lake Manapouri on the way.  We also saw a pair of takahe birds, which were endangered some time ago but are now doing well.

So here we are, back in Te Anau with a free afternoon.  We have checked out the shops (not many of them) and had a bit of a walk around.  Not sure what the rest of the afternoon will bring, it’s very cold outside and is now quite overcast too.

Dunedin

Monday 20 September

Our first stop today was at The Plains for  a ride on a K88 steam locomotive.  This is another privately run vintage train, and was a fun ride followed by another great morning tea.  Lunch was a quick stop  at Oamaru, I can’t say a lot about it because we were only there for about 45-50 minutes.  Lunch was good, in a tea room which seemed to extend for several shopfronts.

When we arrived in Dunedin, which by the way is Gaelic for Edinburgh, we visited Olveston House, one of the grand houses of the city.  It was built by a man who supposedly imported pianos, but must have had a few more irons in the fire because pianos alone could not have paid for the house.  It’s really a great Victorian house, complete with all its furniture and fittings, and our guide told us quite a lot about the family, some of it her own guesswork, but all very interesting.

Before dinner we had a haggis ceremony at the hotel.   This was quite fun, but I preferred the Scottish way of doing it that we saw in Edinburgh. 

Tuesday 21 September

The morning started with the sight of snow on the hillsides around the city.  We knew it was cold last night but didn’t really expect snow!

We drove up to Larnach’s Castle, a very grand house in the style of a castle, built by an Australian who ended up here working in the banking business.  It was a very different and grand place, and again our guide told us the story  of the family, which was a bit of a sad tale of wives dying and things not going according to plan.  The house was sold when the Larnach family went broke, and has been restored by another family.  The woodwork in the house is just wonderful, and they have furnished it in the style of the period.  They have managed to recover a couple of original pieces, and it is a great place to visit.

While we were there, a bit more light snow fell, and it has been very cold all day.  Les even bought a pair of gloves and I was very glad to have mine with me too.

This afternoon was another train ride, this time a journey up the Taieri Gorge to Pukerangi, a distance of 58 km which takes about 2 hours.  It’s a beautiful ride along the gorge, through some tunnels and across a couple of viaducts.   The line was built to transport produce from the Otago Highlands to Dunedin, and took many years and a lot of work to complete.  The line was closed in 1990 and was purchased by the City Council provided that the community raised money to finance to project to allow the excursion trains to continue.  This duly happened and the Taieri Gorge Railway is now NZ’s longest privately owned railway.

Wellington to Christchurch

Saturday 18 September

What a long day!  We were up at 6:00 and on the road to the ferry by 7:25, and arrived at our hotel about 7:00 tonight. 

The ferry crossing took about 3 hours, we arrived on the South Island at Picton about 11:30 after a very smooth crossing, despite the very dire warnings of gales and high winds from Steve, our North Island driver who has now left us – or rather we left him on the North Island and will have a new driver on the South Island.

We came to Christchurch on the train which is running again after having been out of operation for a time due to a landslip about halfway along its track.  We saw the place and there’s a picture in the gallery, taken through the window as the photographers’ car was out of bounds during that part of the journey for safety reasons – they weren’t taking the chance of having rocks fall on the passengers.

I think we all enjoyed the train ride, it made a change from the coach and a lot of people took the opportunity to spend some time in the open photographers’ car.  It was a bit cool and breezy but some great photo opps.

Everyone was ready for an early night, and a bit of a sleep in tomorrow.

Sunday 19 September

The sleep in was great, and we spent the morning on a sightseeing tour of Christchurch, which is a very pretty place, on the coastal plain backed by mountains which are snow-capped at the moment.  There was fresh snow a couple of days ago and we believe we will have snow when we travel further south from here.

We saw some of the earthquake damage in the streets near our hotel this morning and also on our city tour.  It seems to be quite scattered, with damage to one or two houses in an area, a lot of collapsed chimneys, and then nothing for a while.  There are several streets blocked off in the city and a lot of businesses are operating in temporary premises.

We were upgraded to the Millenium hotel because of damage to the Copthorne where we originally to stay.  It’s right on Cathedral Square in the middle of the city, so we’ve taken advantage of that this afternoon.  We rode around the CBD on the tram, which makes several stops on its circuit.  We hopped off at the markets and walked around for a while checking out the various stalls and so on.  We met a few people from the group there and decided to have lunch and be serenaded by the busker who was singing and playing the sax (not at the same time) on the footpath near the coffee shop.  She was very good and we all put a few coins in her case.

A bit of history about Christchurch.  The original settlers arrived in four ships and were all selected by the Church of England which had been given authority in the Canterbury district of NZ.  The Presbyterians were given authority in Otago, which might be further south, will have the find out, and selected the people to go there.  Many of the streets are named after towns and districts in England and Ireland, so we have Worcester, Armagh, the River Avon, Heathcote and so on.

The city is built on very flat land, the people go for Sunday rides instead of Sunday drives.  Geoff told us that many children ride their bikes to school, and going by what we saw today, they start at a very early age.  We saw lots of families out for their ride, and also lots of road bikes on the steep roads on the hills behind the city as well as mountain bikes on the hillsides.  There are quite a lot of tracks for mountain bikers and hikers, the hillsides are quite steep so they work hard at it.

Tonight after dinner a few of us are going over to the Irish pub across the square for a Guinness or something similar.  They have Kilkenny on tap too, not sure about Smithwicks yet, will have to check that.