South Island, New Zealand
The land of the long grey cloud,
After leaving Perth, we had to take two flights to arrive at our first stop, Christchurch, New Zealand. We left our Airbnb at 6am and arrived at midnight local time, which was 6 hours ahead. After getting some sleep we decided to catch a bus and head into the city.
Our first port of call was meeting up with cousin Margret and her husband, Robert. We met them in the newly renovated Margret Mahy Playground in the center of the city. After inventing a new game of dinosaur tag and having a couple of rides on the tandem ziplines we said our good byes and headed off to explore the rest of the city.
After the devastating earthquakes in 2010, a lot of Christchurch has only recently been rebuilt or is still in the building phase. They have taken a lot of care in the rebuild to try retain old character interspersed with new and modern architecture making the city quite beautiful.
We took a walk around the city center and made a stop at the library for a quick round of Lego building.
The following day we picked up our rental car and started to make our way west across the Sothern Alps towards the wild West Coast. The drive was spectacular, with high mountain passes, waterfalls and plenty of sheep farms. We dropped out the other side of the mountains into the little town of Hokitika and made our way to our new Airbnb for the the next few days.
When we had originally planned to visit New Zealand we had planned to spend a couple of months here, but as time started growing short with the rest of our escapades we eventually settled on just over three weeks, which meant that unfortunately we had to do some serious pruning to our itinerary. As a result we decided to plant ourselves in Hoki and use it as a base from which we could explore some of the nearby West Coast sights.
We started with a trip to Lake Kaniere and Dorothy Falls, where we got to see the temperate rainforest for the first time. One of the amazing things about the west coast is how close the mountains are to the sea, you can stand on the beach and look back on a clear day and see the mountains with snow on the peaks.
One of the reasons we had settled on Hoki was the Hokitika Gorge which was billed as this stunning turquoise blue river flowing through this lush valley gorge. What the travel videos failed to mention is that the beautiful blue colour comes from the glacier melt that is the source of this river and the colour is thus very dependant on the amount of rainfall and the speed at which the glacier is melting at the time. For a large part of the year especially when it is raining, which is a lot of the time, it fluctuates between different degrees of grey and brown. It was still a pretty walk though and the high suspension bridges over the gorge added a little bit of adrenalin to the adventure.
A highlight of the stay was the day we headed down to the Franz Josef glacier, which was about 2.5 hours south of us. The glacier is very accessible, by glacier standards, with a short walk up from the car park to the viewing platform. It is not possible to get right up the face anymore unless you go by Helicopter. This is one of the fastest shrinking glaciers in the world and less than 100 years ago the car park we were parked in would have been under a couple hundred tons of ice. These days the glacier is a small white patch in the distance, in another fifty years it will probably be out of sight completely. We also found some incredible micro wildlife, including some tiny snails, pictured below.
After our short glacier hike we headed back to the town of Franz Josef to go and find a wood powered hot tub hidden in the rainforest. The water comes off the glacier and the tubs are all privately secluded in their own section of forest. We took a good long hot soak before climbing back into the car for the long drive home.
On one of our grocery shopping outings Juliet managed to convince us to buy purple hair dye. Mom then had to play hair dresser and attempt to first put in highlights and then a few day later do a second round and dye Juliet’s hair completely purple. We also made friends with one of the ladies at the pharmacy who gave us the low down on where we had to go next, her suggestion was Pancake Rocks near Punakaiki. It was a great suggestion.
The next day we made our way north, driving around 1.5 hours up the West Coast. The scenery on the way up was quite breathtaking with the mountains coming right up to the edge of the ocean with twisting roads and precipitous drops, plunging down into the wild sea below. Pancake Rocks is a unique geological formation with layered limestone formation created through a processes known as stylobedding. This gives the rocks the appearance of multiple thin layers similar to a stack of Sunday morning pancakes.
The limestone is also great for the formation of blow holes, and the wild sea was obliging in providing enough water movement for us to see some spurts of water shooting up into the air.
While in the area we also took a beautiful short walk to some coastal limestone caves, another suggestion from our new friend at the pharmacy. We walked through some more old growth rainforest with giant trees and Nikua Palms, many hundreds of years old. We arrived at the sea to find the waves pounding the shore which was what formed these overhanging sea caves. There were apparently some blue penguin nesting sites around but it was the wrong time of day to spot them.
Our days were starting to run short and we had only just enough time to squeeze in a quick trip to the local Kiwi sanctuary before the Halloween party began. The sanctuary, in the middle of town, had a number of native species, including reptiles, fish and the fresh water eels. As well as the infamous Kiwi’s which are highly endangered and very much nocturnal, so much in fact that you are prohibited from taking photos in their darkened enclosure incase the light causes them excessive stress. We did see one, we promise.
The longfin eels turned out to be the unexpected highlight of the trip, these incredible creatures can live hundreds of years, they breed in deep sea trenches off the coast of Tonga, then as tiny hatchlings swim thousands of miles South on the currents to make it to New Zealand, where they proceed to change their entire physiology and adapt to fresh water before making their way up the rivers and creeks into the hinterland of the country. They can survive long periods out of the water, partly breathing through their skins and climbing over rocks from one creek to another. Once they mature they make their way back to the sea to do the whole process in reverse and breed. Some of the females decide that is too much work and they just stay put, these are the ones that live the longest. The kids got to feed the eels ox heart, they have a preference for lean meat, and to stroke them which is a very weird feeling.
Finally it was party time and we put on our painstakingly hand crafted costumes and headed off to the venue, an old mining town that has been made into a tourist attraction. The $2 dollar entry fee didn’t exactly break the bank, especially when adults went free and kids got a free meal, drink and sweets with admission. We visited a horrifying hospital, took a blacked out spooky steam train ride and danced at the darkened disco.
With the sugar high over we drove off into the sunset, literally, ready for a good nights sleep and the start of our epic journey north. First to Picton which is where the South Island ferry terminal is located. Then the next day to catch said ferry across the Cook Strait on route for Wellington and rest of the the North Island. More on this in our next post, until then thank you for reading.
Lots of love,
The Grow Travel Family.