Having set foot on the South Island we couldn’t immediately set off as we had arranged with Britz to pick up our missing O-ring from a garage in Picton so we could fix our grey water hose. Finding the garage was easy and in no time we were walking away with the necessary rubber seal. Although not having much to offer in the way of sights, Picton must see a lot of tourist traffic as it is the town you have to pass through when ferrying between islands. We had a brief wander around it’s pleasant harbour before hitting the I-Site for some general information about the South Island. What we actually got from the I-Site was an entire itinerary as the lady seemed to get more excited about planning a trip than we were even though she wouldn’t be coming with us. What started as just a couple of suggestions soon turned into a map with scribbling all over with phrases such as “must see” and “make it happen!” We always planned to head south to Queenstown via the west coast and then back up the east coast to Christchurch, but now we had a dozen things inbetween.
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| Looking down at Picton from the Queen Charlotte Track |
From Picton we intended to head straight to Nelson however our friendly I-Site lady had already suggested a better plan. We were still going to Nelson but were now taking the Queen Charlotte Track allowing the South Island to blow us away with spectacular views within an hour of stepping off the ferry. The track wound its way around the many bays while overlooking the green pine islands just over the water.
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| On the drive to Nelson |
Like Picton there wasn't a lot to do in Nelson so, having been informed that freedom camping was not an option, we just checked into a campsite for the night. All campsites offer a powered and unpowered rate but a long time ago in Australia we decided that not getting power really wasn't worth the couple of dollars saved. So you can assume that if we check into a campsite its always to charge up the van. We hadn’t been able to empty our grey water since Opotiki so the van was in desperate need of relief by now, so in went the O-ring and I attached the hose. Except now the hose didn't attach. The o-ring was the correct diameter but far too thick meaning the hose couldn’t clamp itself to the van, essentially meaning we were now in a worse state. To make matters more irritating a twenty-something local, who clearly lived in the campsite and had little in the way of friends, insisted on trying to talk to me the entire time I was trying to fix the thing I had thought was already fixed. He had a theory that by living in a campsite “you can have a new best friend everyday” but I’m pretty confident it wouldn’t be me that day. Just as I was accepting defeat meaning we would have to once again find a garage he piped up with “You know any jokes?” A pretty flat “no” resulting in his branding us “no fun” and he sulked off into the camp kitchen. At least we had got rid of him. Later on we established a means of draining the grey water using the hose (without the O-ring) and the bucket and decided to just stick with that rather than try and fix it again.
That night we experienced something new in the van: ice. The inside of the van began to freeze where metal faces were exposed, and the thermometer on the dashboard showed -2.5oC. Good thing for our three blankets. When we woke up in the morning it had warmed to a much more tropical 0oC and when we tried to fill up the van with water we found all the camp’s pipes had frozen.
South of Nelson we were able to stop at another Picton I-Site recommendation just beyond the town of Murchison. The Buller Gorge has New Zealand’s longest swing bridge at 144 metres. Having paid about £2.50 each could cross the rather impressive, albeit shaky, bridge and then complete a short walk around the island that resides within the gorge. In its day the small island was buzzing with activity as gold was discovered in the river, and the walk we took guided us passed old mining tools and prospector’s dwellings. We took some time to walk down to the river as the water was perfectly clear and we came across yet more ice as rocks had gathered water in small pools which had completely frozen over during the night. Except for one moment when I got particularly into swinging the bridge against Linz’s preference, we both thoroughly enjoyed the walk and were once again pleased to have stopped in the I-Site in Picton.
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| Crossing Buller Gorge |
In about five years of driving I have never got a chip in the windscreen of my car and neither has Linz, however on our drive from Nelson we picked up our third since picking up the van under two weeks ago. The initial one we got fixed but these other two made us start to question the quality of the Britz’s windscreen, so we debated for a while whether to complain or just get it fixed. The decision was eventually made to get the larger one fixed but try and get away with the smaller one.
Our town of choice for that evening’s accommodation was the coastal town of Westport which drew us into due to its resident seal colony. Just outside town, on the delightfully named Foulwind Penisular, live a colony of fur seals al year round and on the day we got their we found approximately fifty of them. They had made a small cape their home and I could see why as it was very well sheltered from the waves, due to large rocky outcrops, with a lot of food options around it. We could view them from a purpose built walkway approximately 20m above. It first it was a little hard to tell the difference between seals, rocks and drift wood as they are surprisingly well camouflaged, but we hung around long enough to pick out the majority of them.
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| Try and pick out some seals |
For me there was a rather depressing moment here, although it had nothing to do with the seals. There was one of those signposts pointing in all directions specifying the distances between world cities. This is when it really sunk in how close to the end of the journey we where as it told us London was 16,000km in one direction but Christchurch, our finish line, was just 161km in the other. Although we have many more than 161km to travel before reaching the finish it still hit the point home.
Our site for the evening had to be another paid campsite as we had once again been rejected at the I-Site when we asked about freedom camping. We left the next day and continued down the coast towards the township of the Franz-Joseph Glacier, but on the way stopped in Punakaiki to visit the so called blowholes and pancake rocks. The rocks we layers of rock compressed over thousands of years meant to look like stacks of pancakes and the blowholes were gaps in the rocks which waves would explode vertically through. Unfortunately the weather was a bit tame that day meaning the waves got nowhere near emerging and neither of us really saw the resemblance to pancakes as if we had have we definitely would have gone for some real ones soon after.
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| The pancake rocks |
Beyond Punakaiki we came to the township of Franz-Joseph which we had been looking forward to for some time. The township is barely more than a village used soley for the purpose of offering a base for people wishing to explore the Franz-Joseph glacier which is currently making its way through the mountains nearby. When we arrived it had clouded over so we couldn’t see much beyond the street in front of us but managed to reached the tourist information office as we had some questions. As an alternative to Franz-Joseph, just a couple of dozen kilometres further south is the Fox Glacier which offers tourists very similar experiences so we wanted to know which would be best. We decided to go with the cheaper in the end (Fox) and Franz-Joseph glacier walks include entrance to the hot springs for extra money but we had always planned on doing some hot springs later on.
That evening we were offered the next best thing to freedom camping which is the use of a Department of Conservation (DOC) site. These are in many areas of the country and, in this instance, offered a place for vans to sleep overnight for just £3 per person. You don’t get any facilities, except a rather ill-maintained dunny, but at least you know you’re not going to get moved on or fined. The site was just 16km north of Franz-Joseph so we could easily make it to Fox Glacier (about 35km away) without having to leave too early the next morning.
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| The lake we stay by that evening |
We woke up earlier than we needed to seeing as previous attempts at getting up early for things, such as the East Cape Lighthouse and Lady Knox Geyser, hadn’t gone to plan and set off towards the township. The only thing getting in our way this time was a tree which had fallen during the night across our lane on a particularly windy bit of cliff side road. Having bypassed to obstacle we made it to Fox Glacier township with time to spare so hung around in the warmth of the van rather than step outside earlier that absolutely necessary. When we had driven into Franz-Joseph the day before it had been poor visibility, but this time it was so much clearer and suddenly we could see the vast mountains which surrounded the villages. When we had to we headed into the Glacier Guiding building and soon met our group as well as Sebastian our guide. We were fully kitted up for our walk on the glacier including waterproof trousers, leather boots, socks, gloves (actually mittens) and crampons. Crampons being metal spikes which you can attach to the underside of your boot making it easier to walk on the ice. It turned out Linz barley needed any of this as she had seemingly come fully prepared from the waterproof trousers to the gloves. I basically just had a hat.
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| Fox Glacier. Its so much bigger than it looks in this photo |
Having got our gear we were driven ten minutes from the village to a car park where we would walk for around forty0five minutes before reaching the glacier. Fox Glacier is an enormous shelf of ice which still remains from the last ice age and as it moves in time had cut a huge valley out of the mountains. The glacier seemingly can’t make up its mind as although it moves at a rather brisk half a metre a day it regularly changes its mind and moves both up and down the valley. We began by walking up the rocky track towards the ice while Sebastian would point out various features and explain a lot about how the glacier was formed. Soon we arrived at the main event and fitted our crampons before heading onto the glacier. Although from a distance it seems a bit dirty, this is due to the rocks which fall on it so regularly, from up close you can see that it is incredibly clear and an amazing blue below the surface.
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| Stepping onto the glacier for the first time |
The highlight of our glacier walk was the two opportunities we had to climb inside the ice into caves created by melting water. The first, described by Sebastian, as “the re-birth” was a very tight hole down into the ice which came out a few metres further along than where it started. The reason for the name is based on the person in the whole having to be pulled out of this tiny whole by someone outside as there is no way someone could to it on their own. I found myself a little confused as Sebastian went to pull me out as we casually said “Be like a jellyfish!” I had no idea what he meant. Apparently he meant go limp, as if you try to help him you only make it harder. He could have made it clearer as I was kicking my legs everywhere trying to push my way out.
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| Crawling through our first ice cave |
The second cave was big enough to allow both Linz and I to explore it on our own, and here the amazing blue colour of the ice was so clear. From inside the ice all you can see is blue and I would have happily stayed in there all day. Sebastian was excellent as he would always be taking photos of us on our own cameras so we could just jump in the caves without having to worry about doing it ourselves.
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| About three metres under the surface |
The glacier is completely maintained by Fox Glacier Guiding (the company we used) so as we explored the ice several guides who weren’t running tours that day would have to be constantly cutting steps so people could actually walk on the glacier. This didn't seem like a particularly good aspect of the job.
Soon we came across a lake on the glacier itself which the guides had not seen the day before. This demonstrated how quickly a glacier can change but we were very pleased it did as we could fill up a bottle of glacier water and have a drink. Frankly, it tasted so good I will no longer drink any water unless it has been collected by hand from a glacier. Is that being a little too picky? Actually there glacier water came with a slight hint of blackcurrant but that could have been because we didn't rinse the bottle very well. From the lake we walked back to the van having had one of the best experiences of the trip so far. We had always been excited about the prospect of a glacier walk but Fox had exceeded all expectations my miles.
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| At the temporary glacier lake |
The afternoon was spent getting a couple of toasties from the cafe with free wifi before heading to the internet cafe to upload a blog each. Unlike Australia, mobile internet signal is rather poor and in some places just impossible to use so we had to resort to writing blogs on the laptop but not being able to post them until we came across an internet cafe. That night was returned to the DOC site for another cheap sleep.
The next morning was an abysmal day for weather. We had been looking forward to seeing Lake Matheson which is just 6km outside Fox township but fog had set in and we didn't even bother to get out the van when we reached the car park as you wouldn’t have been able to see anything. Instead we powered on hoping to get to Queenstown before their I-Site closed. However, after just an hour and a half driving we realised it was stupid to carry on and called it a day as early as lunch in the tiny town of Haast. The drive from Haast to Queenstown was meant to be one of the most beautiful in the entire country and we weren’t going to have it ruined by fog. So we were going to wait it out and hope, as predicted, the weather would improve by the following day.
We spent the day in a Top 10 holiday park in Haast as it was the only option. Top 10 parks are very nice but also come with a steeper price but we needed the power if we were going to entertain ourselves her all day. The park was actually much nicer than we expected with a plush kitchen and bathrooms made out of a converted plane hangar. I had a decent chat with some Aussies as they were the only other guests at the park and thy enjoyed hearing about how we had travelled their country. It did get a little awkward when they told me they were from the Gold Coast, our worst area of Australia, and asked me what I thought. I managed to avoid outright lying by avoiding the question all together. I felt it was a safer move.
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| Setting off from the holiday park |
The next day confirmed that by putting of the Haast Pass until then was one of the best decisions we have made since the beginning. The fog had lifted and it was a perfect day. The fact that we hadn’t even realised we had parked underneath a huge snowy mountain proves how bad the day before had been. During the drive through amazing forests and mountains we came across the Blue Pools. After a short walk through the forest we came to a bridge of some of the clearest water I have even seen. Despite being called the Blue Pools they were in fact two merging rivers. Even in points of the river which seemed a few metres deep we could see to the bottom as if they were just a few inches deep. Unfortunately the walk to the pools was so cold my camera failed and would no longer turn on. But no worries, five minutes in my boxers sorted it out.
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| Down at the blue pools |
When we emerged from the forest later on the drive we came across Lake Wanaka. This was our first of the famous New Zealand mirror lakes offering perfect reflections of the mountains behind making for a breath-taking view. We found a spot down by the lake to have lunch and once again found ourselves so pleased that having a campervan allows us to do this. However, just as “You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet” by Bachman-Turner Overdrive came on the iPod we left Lake Wanaka and spotted Lake Hawea. This drive just got better and better. We came over a small hill and saw the lake with towering black stone cliffs behind them all of course mirrored in the water’s surface, and genuinely started to wonder if we would ever see a bad view in New Zealand. Excluding those of the Auckland Tower.
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| Our lunch spot on Lake Wanaka |
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| Lake Hawea! |
Soon we were diving through Wanaka town which looked like a lovely little lakeside town but we needed to get to Queenstown so couldn’t stay longer than it took to have a quick drive round. South of Wanaka is the small town of Cardrona where we decided to pull in at a small hotel and have a drink. However, it wasn't just a random drink stop as it had in fact been identified on nerd-built websites that it was the filming location for the Prancing Pony in the first Lord of the Rings film. We were quite excited about this until the barman burst our bubble and told us that it wasn't, but I'm happy to go with the internet nerds and claim that it was.
From Cardrona we climbed and the descended and very winding mountain road where we first came across snow. It wasn't enough to put on our free snow chains as it was mainly offer the road but it was definitely enough to upgrade the level of nerves higher than they had been before. I don’t wish to sound like a broken record here but from the summit New Zealand threw us yet another astonishing view taking in the Remarkables mountain range, the small village of Arrowtown below and Lake Wakatipu in the distance. Having reached the bottom we briefly explored Arrowtown as it was supposedly like taking a step back in time, but all we found we an extortionate campsite so left rather soon after entering. From here it was just a short drive into Queenstown known for being the adventure capital of New Zealand, or even the world. I will just leave it for now as being our favourite place in New Zealand by far...
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| The road down to Queenstown |
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