Speed, Flying and Wild Life.....South Island Continued

After our hike up to the glazier the next day was a rest day, and yup, Wanaka has a winery, Rippon Winery, so we heard and heeded the call!  An excellent Rose and Pinots caught our attention, plus an amazing view overlooking the lake the only down side was the price point but of course we still supported the local economy and bought a bottle. 

We went from Wanaka to Arrowtown.  While only an hour drive, the last few minutes includes more than its share of switchbacks! Arrowtown has a short walking tour which focuses on the Chinese role in the gold mining era, it was interesting to see how they lived.  Then onto our lodge, Poplar Lodge another BBH.  We were walking/shopping in Arrowtown when we ran into Spruce again, not surprising this time as they knew were we would be.  Both of us bought some ‘green stone’, we had been looking at them for a while but had not found the right thing.  Both of us found what we were looking for in the same store.

We had arranged to meet up with our friends on Enchantment (Michelle and Vern) in Queenstown so since Arrowtown is only 20 minutes away and only a few switchbacks, off we headed but it was cloudy and bitterly cold, so we went from coffee shop, to pub, to an ice cream shoppe! What a way to spend a day with some friends.  Then back over the hill to our lodge. 

The next day we met another of our cruiser friends Minnie B (Phil and Norma) as well as Enchantment for a trip up the Gondola in Queenstown.  

Queenstown from the Gondola

 The views are truly amazing, and there is a ‘luge’ track! Let the race begin… We had to do a mandatory “learn to luge first run”, and then we all had lunch and some laughs.  Then off to the fast track.  Cheryl and Michelle were the speed demons and ganged up on Karen on the last run, they let Karen go first, and then Cheryl kept trying to overtake, even bumping Karen, which allowed Michelle to zoom past, with Cheryl not far behind. A great run and a great way to end our luging!  We had moved into Queenstown, so just walked back to our place, The Flaming Kiwi. 

A Bird, A Plane ...nope just Cheryl and her Pilot

The next day Enchantment met us at our BBH and we went hang gliding.  At least the girls did, Vern was our photographer.  The hang gliding experience was excellent.  We all got the chance to ‘fly’ the gliders, which was amazing, and the views were awesome.  We all bought the pictures and video, easy marks!

Can I steer this thing? What do mean turn left???

The next day we headed to Milford Sound part of the Fiordlands.   (The Fiordlands are a large area in the south west of the South Island were the terrain was dug out by glaciers.)  We had the audio package for the road to Milford Sound to listening to; we had Mike as our guide okay it was the guy on the recording.  It certainly made the trip go by fast plus it was educational and fun.  You start in flat country, with the mountains in the background, pretty.  Then you go over the pass and you are into the valley of the sounds were the views were amazing.  We made only 2 stops on the way, Mirror Lakes a 5 minute walk and the Chasm a 20 minute walk. 

Chasm..the power of water

We were expecting to meet up with Minnie B if we were early enough; we just got there in time and found that Spruce was there too, excellent!  We checked into the Milford Lodge, this will be our first dorm experience.  But for the first night we know our roommates, Georgie and Jake, Brits that we had met at two earlier BBHs.  They helped us adapt.

Can you say ‘SANDFLIES’?  When they say there are sandflies in the Sounds they are not kidding.  The lodge has a large kitchen, but no barbeque due to the Sandflies!  The lodge even provides repellant, which we all apply liberally and often.  After a great breakfast, which was part of our package at the lodge, we grabbed the bus to the dock.  The boat ride (part of our package) through the sound was beautiful.  The captain brought the bow of the boat up close enough that we were getting wet from the spray of 2 waterfalls and we even saw a penguin and a number of sea lions.  They dropped us off at the Discovery Centre, (part of the package) which is an underwater viewing platform; you are some 10 metres underwater.  We saw Black Coral, which is white, several types of triple fins we had not seen before and a different type of trigger fish.  As ‘we’ are the ones in the cage you do not know what you will see.  Normally the water is brown from the tanins from the trees and has a large layer of fresh water on the surface.  But it had not rained in several days and the fresh water layer was thin and clean and the visibility was great.  As we waited for the return boat we had our box lunch which was also included.  We walked back to the lodge to enjoy a glass of wine and then prepare dinner and hide from the sandflies.

Milford Sound by boat

Key Summit with Lake Marian in the Valley

The next day was again perfect weather.  We started back and stopped at an area called “The Divide”, where the Routeburn walk starts.  We hiked to the Key Summit, a place that allows you to see several ranges and Lake Marian.  Beautiful!  Very glad we stayed the 2 nights in the sound, as this allowed us to be on the trail early in the day away from the crowds.  On our way down the summit we passed a bus load of hikers coming up, name tags and all.

We had booked the Barnyard Lodge, just outside of Te Anua which is about 2 hours from the Sound.  What a view we had from the lodge and our cabin.  And an on suite bathroom! Yup you guessed we have being staying in places where we share a bathroom. The next morning we walked the beginning of the Kepler trail, just out to Shallow Bay Hut.  A very nice walk, mostly flat in beech forest.  We were fascinated by the number of different types of mushrooms we passed.  Unfortunately, we don’t know if any of them were edible.  Plus we saw Canadian Geese. We went into town to the visitor centre, and they suggested that we watch the film in town, a helicopter trip over Fiordland, which included Milford Sound.  The film was amazing, especially as the helicopter went over the waterfalls!

We had a text from our other cruiser friends Dancing Walrus (Ken and Joni).  They had sent it when we were in the Sound, were there is no phone coverage so after getting back into cell range we made a date to meet up in town for a drink or two and to catch up.

Te Anua to the Catlins, via Manapouri.  We had a text from Spruce on route and they suggested that we go into the museum in Invercargill, so we did it after all it was just another left turn.  So we got to see a live Tuatara (a lizard) and the fastest Indian, (a motorcycle) which was an 1929 motorcycle that this New Zealand guy made famous by racing it at the Salt Flats in the States (or Sir Anthony Hopkins did when he stared in the movie:  The fastest Indian.) and still holds the fastest land record.  On route we had the best fish and chips yet, not greasy and made with Blue Cod, the local specialty.  Our final destination was Curio Bay and the Lazy Dolphin in the Catlins, our BBH lodge.   O’ yeah forgot to mention our highlight along our drive, as we were heading along the highway we saw a sign for Niagara Falls, being good tourist and Canadians we stop for a look, okay let’s see:  if you were an ant this waterfalls may look as massive as Niagara Falls, yup the guy who named it had a great sense of humor.

As we were being shown around our lodge just outside the kitchen window we could see the Hector dolphins jumping in the waves. Hector Dolphins before we even left the lodge, but not good enough for us so off we went to the lookout at the end of the bay for another angle, way cool.  Our little hike then lead us to the petrified forest, where ash buried the forest, preserving it.  It also happens to be where the yellow eyed penguins have a nesting area.  And as it happen a parent was coming in to feed it’s babies!  What a sight.  As we made our way back we saw 2 babies sleeping and another parent coming ashore.  After dinner we walked back and saw the same 2 babies waiting to be fed and another parent coming ashore to feed another hidden baby.  What a lucky day.

Go South young women......

Off to the South Island.  We took the Interisland ferry to Picton; the gateway to the south island.  They say you do not just take the ferry, but cruise the passage.  It was truly a lovely passage and our first viewing of the Queen Charlotte Sound, beautiful. 

The Gate way to the South Island from the Snout Hike

 We had booked The Villa, another BBH place.  We walked down to the ‘ I’ Site (yup the place where you get the skinny on the area)   and to the Interislander booking site.  We wanted to change our return date and to make sure that we received our BBH discount, not an issue on either point.  Karen asked a lady in a car rental site for a recommendation for lunch, we did look at it, but…not so much.  So we went into the Flying Haggis, then Karen asked the waitress did she know who Robert Burns was, and this was the eve of his birthday!  And did they have Haggis! We got a blank stare and settled for a sandwich and chips with sour cream and bacon, several food groups hit there!  To wear off our nutritious lunch, the next day we walked the Snout trail.  OK, we got lost at the start of the walk and going the wrong way, we ended up talking to dog owners(actually it was a cute little puppy), both were cops and they pointed us in the right direction!  Beautiful views!  And back to the hostel with sore feet once again!

The next town, Blenheim is the centre of the wine region for Marlborough, where 75% of New Zealand’s wines are grown/made, not to mention the home of NZ’s Sauvignon blanc’s.  We started our ‘tour’ with a trip to the local market.  There we purchased fresh picked potatoes, fruit and venison!  We had a lovely BBH accommodation, The Grapevine, on a river.  A lovely setting for a barbeque!

The wineries:  our mission was to find a wine to go with our venison!  We started at Nautilus, of course.  The wines were not spectacular, but the lady behind the tasting counter gave us a list of other wineries to try.  So off to Herzog’s for some awesome reds.  Many of their wines needed to be put down for a few years and we are looking more for immediate gratification!  So we bought a Zweigelt, to go with the venison.  We need some lunch, so we headed  to Cloudy Bay.  Now Cloudy Bay makes some awesome wines, lovely to taste, but at $75 a bottle, a little beyond our range.

Back at The Grapevine we compared notes with some others who had gone to several of the wineries.  So next day we started on a new list:  Wither Hills, after all, this was the name of our room, then Fromm, then Brancott, NZ’s largest winery.  At Brancott you start by watching a video on the history and the making of their wines, it finishes with voice over as the screen is pulled up and the vineyard comes into view in front of you…….Heaven.  Their wines were also well worth the tasting.  We had lunch there, which was great, matched with wines, sitting overlooking the vineyard.  Our last vineyard that day was Gibbons.  This is a winery done by a husband and wife.  He does it for love, and mostly Pinot Gris, as it is his favourite grape.  A gruff man, making some great wines.

We had a lovely drive the next day to Greymouth.  We stopped at White Creek swing bridge, paid the toll to walk across and do the short walk on the other side.  Aside from it being a gold mining centre, it was also where the tectonic plates decided to make a move and the ground level around the fault adjusted moved in one day by 5 meters! Luckily not the day we were there.  Back across the bridge and back on our way through the Buller Gorge and along the side of Victoria Forest Park.  Beautiful scenery all the way.  

Swinging over White Creek

 

Greymouth Beach

We stayed at Global Village in Greymouth (another BBH).  It was an amazing place, beautiful rooms, kitchen, TV room, and sitting room, all on a river.  It was decorated with pieces from around the world, but mostly from Bali.  We took the car to the Tasman seas, watched some fur seals playing in the surf, and then walked the beach looking for green stone or Jade.  Both of us picked up a few pieces and enjoyed the walk on the water’s edge.

As we didn’t come into Greymouth via highway 6 we missed the Pancakes rocks and Blowholes.  So we drove there the next day, truly a sight not to be missed.

 


PANCAKES ANYONE???

The topography was dramatic and we saw our first Weta, it is a bird.  We lunched at a restaurant back in town then back to Global Village to enjoy the hostel and a glass of wine.  Cheryl made up mincemeat tarts and Karen used some of the left over puff pastry as a bed for a seafood medley, very nice!

We took Highway 6 along the water until Hokitika.  There we stopped to see what greenstones they had for sale, to see if any stones spoke to us.  Basically it seems that everyone does the same traditional cuts, not too many original pieces.  So we carried on, having enjoyed the stop.  We stopped for 2 nights at the Fox glacier, and stayed at the Ivory Towers, not sure about the name.  We drove down to the start of the walk to Matheson lake.  This is one of those iconic pictures of NZ, but you need no wind and clear skies to get Mount Cook reflected in the water, but this was not the day for that, but a lovely walk none the less.  We booked a half day tour on the Glacier for the next day.  We ended up in a group of only 5, one lady did not speak English.  Which turned out to not be a problem as we ended up with a couple from her country on the Glacier with us, what are the chances?

Haast Pass

The next day we drove to Wanaka.    The road from Fox glacier to Wanaka takes you through the Haast Pass, which has some amazing views.  Our first view of Lake Hawea was a call to lunch, as you really can’t have a better view for lunch. 

Lunch break at Lake Hawea

We then carried on to Wanaka, to Wanaka Bakpaka.  The view from this place is amazing! 


Mt Aspire

We did some provisioning and made a stop at the I-site.  A lovely meal of barbequed Salmon, with an amazing wine and an amazing view.  Next day we started fairly early for the hike to Rob Roy Glacier.  It was a lovely walk with so many beautiful sights along the way.  At the top the view was truly spectacular.  A gentleman was taking pictures of some Kea sitting in front of him and flying around.  The wife was showing Cheryl the pictures and she asked Cheryl where she was from.  Cheryl answered Canada, but she lived on a boat, Interlude.  The lady looked at me and asked Cheryl if we were “The Interlude”.  It turns out that Cheryl was talking to Sue from Spruce, a boat we had not really met.  We took their parking spot in Isabella, Galapagos and spoke on the SSB radio, but never met!  I guess not so surprising really as Andy (of Spruce) said, most of the Pacific Fleet is in NZ!

 

 


Kea in the wild

Spruce (Sue and Andy) meets Interlude

 

Boat stuff shopping and touring

Now the boat shopping begins.  We headed back to our friend's place in South Auckland.  As Jacqueline went off to work each day and we headed into Auckland to exercise our credit cards at the marina stores.  We bought exciting things like thruhull fittings (the mushroom, the seacocks and tailpipes!) and snubbers, real exciting stuff eh! We meet up with Somerset to share stories and some wine and compare our list of boat projects

Friday was a day off.  We did exciting things like laundry and catch up on emails.  Then Jacqueline came home and off we went, first stop a local pub and then off to an amazing dinner at a place in a olive grove about 20 minutes from Jacqueline's house and nope we can't remember the name. But really it was amazing

Saturday saw us back in Auckland, picking up some of the parts that had been ordered and were delivered to the chandlery, always good to buy Kiwi made.  Then Jacqueline took us on a tour of Auckland.  We thought we had seen most of it, but she took us to places (shops and areas) we had not been to, not to mention some neat trendy eatiers.  Back home in time to cook dinner.  Dinner was accompanied with a single malt scotch, which Bruce had left behind, so really Bruce is to blame if we had a little too much and spent the next day relaxing in our PJs!

Monday we were back to touring.  First stop was New Plymouth, a BBH accommodation called Seaspray House. We stayed up late, okay for Cheryl it was late and went to see their festival of lights, a FREE light display in a beautiful park.  Pretty and very well attended.  Then Tuesday we walked the water front, what a surprise.  Then we went on a Maori walk up one of the river beds, lovely.  Stopped for a late lunch overlooking the Tasman Sea, yup water again.  Really we needed to rest our tried and sore feet after almost a 20 kilometers walk. Then another late night we walked to the observatory to look at the stars and we got to see Jupiter along with its moons, way cool. The observatory was $5 and very informal but still very informative

The next day we headed to Mount Egmont for a short hike. Remember we said we had tired feet.  So did the Victoria Loop, with a detour to a look-out, very pretty and yup there was snow at the top.

Mount Egmont

 


New Plymouth waterfront

Then lunch in Stratford!  No not the real one with William, nor the one in Ontario.  We found a pub for lunch.  Back to the hostel for dinner, to pack and get ready for our trip to Whanganui.

On the way to Whanganui we stopped back in Stratford to watch/listen to the Glockenspiel, it played at 10am. Cute but it was hard to hear as it was located right next  to the highway. Next stop DAWSON falls of course we had to go there, this was located on the southside of Mount Egmont.  

Dawson at Dawson

We had lunch in Hawera at a place recommended by Lonely Planet called Indian Zaika, we would suggest that you give this place a miss!

Whanganui was a lovely town.  Once we checked into our hostel, Tamara Backpackers Lodge, we walked the town, including going to two look outs, which was an adventure as it was so windy that it was hard to stand against the wind.  The next day we went to the Art gallery and to the Museum, both which were free and real treats!  The art gallery is closing for a time as the building no longer meets building code, something to do with earthquakes! So the staff were allowed to pick what art was to be displayed and they did a great job.  The museum was laid back and relaxed and just the right amount of stuff.  We found a sushi place in town for lunch then back to the ranch for a glass of wine and dinner you guessed it overlooking the Whanganui River.  The next day we took a jet boat up the river to the "Bridge to Nowhere".  (way back a bridge was built up the river with a promise to build a road to join 2 towns, you guessed it never happen so now it is a tourist spot, and yes there is a bridge called "the bridge that goes somewhere").

Really a Bridge that goes no where

Had a picnic lunch on the bridge and then we opted to take the jet boat part of the way back and then hopped in to a canoe for the rest of the way.  The canoe trip was awesome, we were the only ones on the water and we even went through several sets of rapids and didn’t tip over. As it was getting late and we had already paddled 16km the jet boat came and picked us up and taken the rest of the way back.  The staff of the jet boat could not believe that we did not flip, apparently 80% did! 

One of the many waterfalls on the river

Hey Karen no splashing

We had dinner out with John, a gentleman who lives in Pahia and make videos and  films on things to do in New Zealand plus anything to do with the water,  great company and lots of insights on New Zealand

Off to Plimmerton, a town some 20 km from Wellington, to a hostel called Moana Lodge, which has beautiful views of the bay and the Tasman Sea, yup water again.  Sunday, with the weekend traffic we ventured into Wellington, a 20 minute drive.  We parked in front of the library, right in downtown, and took the cable car up the hill to the gardens and walked around.  Wellington is so hilly they have public and private cable cars all over the place.  We walked the gardens until we were almost back to the bottom, but on the wrong side of the hill, so we walked back up and took the cable car back down and made our way back to the hostel.  Monday was a holiday so we drove back into Wellington in the rain.  We made our way to Weta Caves,  where films like The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit and Avatar were made.  We saw their free video and then Cheryl ran to the ticket booth to get tickets to tour their Workshop!  It was an amazing tour showing how many special effects were done, seeing fake amour and fake skin! 

Karen's new friend

Precious
 

 


















Then back to the centre of the city to a restaurant recommended by Jacqueline, called The Big Bad Wolf.  They specialize in sausage, but I don’t know what was better, the
sausage plate or the duck French onion soup!  Then off to Te Papa.  Te Papa is the FREE national museum  and is so large that it cannot be seen in a day.  On this day we went through the Moari and Volcano exhibits.
The next day we went ‘over the hill’, to Martinbough, a small winery area on the south east side of the north island.  We tried some lovely wines and had an awesome platter at a winery called Poppies.  But the highlight was probably the toilettes in town!  You can only stay in them for 10 minutes and the bathroom tells you this and they play music, all very interesting! Wineries and toilettes what a day. As we got back to our hostel we found out we missed the earthquake, we figured we must have been driving on the gravel road and didn't feel it

For our last day in Wellington we drove in and parked at the Westpac park $9 per day. This put us at the start of the walking tour.  We did most of the walking tour, interrupted by a tour of the parliament buildings.  But only the outside as a commonwealth meeting was taking place.  The guide was very informative and actually talked about most of the sights we were interested in.  We visited two of the old churches, then lunch at the Crab Shack, another place recommended by Jacqueline.  It was awesome.  We had a scoop and a scoop, that is a scoop of various clams in a sauce and a scoop of claims and mussels in a different sauce, needless to say, washed down with a local wine.  Then back to Te Papa to go through parts we had not seen the day before.  We had done Wellington proud.