South Island Trip: Unabridged Version

(Warning: This blog post is extreme in length, and may cause the reader to become drowsy and/or attached to the seating beneath them.)

We recently got back from our 10-day trip to New Zealand’s South Island. Cory and I have been wanting to go, and my parents had some of the South Island sights on their “must-see” list, so their trip was the perfect impetus.

I should start of by saying that I got little input from the others on our trip; Mom and Dad were pretty overwhelmed with planning their trip to NZ all ready, and Cory isn’t big on advance decision making when it comes to travel. I’d heard that during the summer months, it could get quite crowded in the South Island, so it was advised you book accommodations, etc well ahead.

So with that warning ringing in my ears and too many guide books to peruse, I started planning this trip in October; I know that this is very dorky, but I couldn’t help myself. There is a lot to see in the South Island and everyone has their input on what spots you “have to go to”. I was perhaps a little over-ambitious in mapping out our route. But there really are so many places you “have to go to”! Turns out that, on top of two airplane flights, a three-hour ferry ride, and a cross-country train journey, we also drove 2505 kilometers. (For those of you who don’t do metric, that is about 1500 miles.) Most surprising, during our trip, no one tried to strangle me or push me out of the moving car!

We pretty much circumnavigated the South Island, though we did cheat, and cut off the very southern tip. (I’d planned to go there, but got a sense from my traveling companions that it might have to be sacrificed in the name of sanity.) I have decided against giving you a detailed, day-by-day account (though I did keep a “paper blog” so I could do so upon request) and will instead try to narrow it down to the highest of highlights…

Flying south into Wellington, the nation’s capital, at the very tip of North Island, was pretty much like taking a scenic flight – you could watch the orchards pass by, get a great view of giant Lake Taupo, and see into the craters of the Tongariro Mountains. Wellington itself is the coziest larger city we’ve been in since arriving in NZ. There just aren’t that many large cities, with a national population of 4 million. Auckland has a population of about 1 million, making it decidedly un-cozy.

We hit a great museum, Te Papa, which had something for everyone – modern art, historical artifacts, natural history displays, cultural exhibits… Then we took a cable car up to the botanical gardens, and spent the afternoon wandering along, not minding if we didn’t know exactly where we are at. Anytime you can get lost in a garden, you are in a good place. The day was topped off by Cory’s selection of a pizza place that actually satisfied his craving for pizza as it should be.

We enjoyed the city more the next day, visiting a farmer’s market, watching street performers, eating crepes, poking around in shops, and hoping our taxi driver wouldn’t run down the pedestrians. We did make it safely to the ferry terminal, where we boarded the Arahura. We sailed, peering out the salt-sprayed windows with binocs, across Cook Strait. Mom and I toasted the evening’s trip with a glass of wine just before we came into port.

We picked up our rental car the next morning, along with some groceries for lunches on the go. Then we took a small boat through the Queen Charlotte’s Sound, before our short hike. We spotted several wekas, which are little brown birds that sort of resemble a chicken, but are very inquisitive and, apparently, fairly oblivious. One walked right by Mom, on a little footpath, before spotting me. After a picnic lunch, the plan was for another boat to pick us up and return us to the wharf that we’d departed from that morning. Apparently, though, the “water taxi” run by this same company had broken down, and the boat we were on was doing double-duty. We stopped at every bay and cove imaginable. (And, sometime, when you’ve got the atlas out, look at that northeastern coastline of the South Island – there are more than a couple of bays and coves!) It was neat, though… We took people home from work, dropped folks off at their holiday cribs, watched a woman unload boxes of groceries bought in town, and, in general sailed slowly back and forth among the sounds for about three hours.

The next day we had sort of a similar water cruise/hike in the Abel Tasman area. And, before we even got on the boat, we saw a little blue penguin playing in the surf! We spotted a few fur seals, too, lazing on the rocks in the sun. The rest of the day did not disappoint either, with plenty of sandy beaches to explore and rainforest-like bush to wander through.

The next morning, we caught part of a newscast of Obama’s inauguration; people in New Zealand are almost as excited as Americans about our new president! After that good start, we drove into Christchurch to see the International Antarctic Center. Christchurch is the shipping off point for many people working and studying at the South Pole. The Center had some really great displays, including educational displays, a mock camp set-up, a home for injured penguins, a “cold zone” (where they had real snow, cold temps, and wind like Iowa’s)!

After another little drive, we stopped to see the Moeraki Boulders. We have pictures, which do give you some sense of scale, but it’s difficult to do these unusual, spherical rocks, strewn along a beach justice in a description. Some use the term “other-worldly”, which isn’t really right. Maybe you’ll just have to come see them for yourself.

Then that evening, we went to a penguin blind at Nugget Bay. The very rare yellow-eyed penguins often nest here, and we were hoping to see some. We had our binoculars and cameras, and we were able to put them to good use! We saw at least eight penguins come in from the ocean and toddle up to their nests in the rocks or the grassy slope! We were also able to spot 2 seals, one lazing on the shore and the other playing (or hunting) in the surf of the bay.

In the morning, we decided to see if we could keep our luck going and headed to Surat Bay. We took a short walk along the grassy slopes above the beach, on our way to look for sea lions. To our surprise, Mom actually spotted one in the grass that Cory and I had walked right by – within a meter of it, probably! Luckily for us, it was sleeping, and we hadn’t woken it. Rumor has it, sea lions do not like their naps interrupted. Down on the beach, we saw another one, and could see flipper tracks in the sand of many more sea lions that had come into nap.

Our next destination was the Milford Sound area on the southwestern coast. (If you are following on a map, and please tell me you’re not, we’d by now traveled much of the short, northern coast and all of the eastern coast of the South Island. And everyone was still speaking to me…) During our drive across the Canterbury Plains, Mom snapped photos from the car – sheep, sheep, deer farms, sheep, hedges, sheep, hedges, tussock, hedges, and sheep mostly. We stopped that afternoon to do laundry and take a break from the road. We ended up having dinner at an Italian place (another good pizza for Cory) before heading off again.

While the Sounds themselves are the highlight, the drive towards them is almost as impressive. We stopped at one lookout to get a better glimpse of the mountains, and were greeted by a kea, the only alpine parrot. They are nosy and sociable birds, legendary for picking apart windshield wipers as cars wait in line to enter the Homer Tunnel (a narrow, one-lane tunnel – always a really good idea). We also encountered a somewhat less likeable animal, the infamous sandfly. Small and mean, these little buggers could just about drive you mad. I’m sure they have actually driven someone mad at some point, and I came close to joining them. I am still scratching at bites and occasionally have a flashback and begin swatting at myself.

Milford Sound is actually a fiord (yes, they spell it with an “i” not a “j” here), the difference being that sounds are carved by rivers heading towards the ocean, whereas fiords are carved by glaciers and then filled in by ocean waters. (Save that little tidbit of info for trivia night!) After a rain, the walls of the fiords have over 10,000 waterfalls cascading down them. We saw a pretty good selection of them the day we visited and were even spared the rain!

On our walk from the car park, Mom spotted another pretty rare penguin, the Fiordland Crested. Again, Cory and I would have walked right on by. Thank goodness Mom sees these things! We also saw three groups of seals, dusky dolphins, and Australian gannets out in the fiords. Then, we stopped off at Milford’s Underwater Observatory. Because of the unusual layering of tannin-stained freshwater layering over salt water in the Milford Sound, sea creatures that are normally found at a much greater depth are visible only a few meters under the surface. To view these, the Underwater Observatory was built, letting the public venture a few stories underwater to see things like sea cucumbers, eleven-legged starfish, snake starfish, rare black and red coral, tube anemone, a variety of fish, and even squid eggs!

After a full day, we drove northwards to Queenstown, and then, the next day, on toward the Fox Glacier. No where else are there such easily accessible glaciers surrounded by such lush forests. We walked a short half-hour to get within 80 meters of the terminal face of the glacier – as close as you would want to get due to avalanches and rock slides. We heard rocks or ice fall from the glacier as we stood there, taking in the blue, blue ice and the piles of snow.

The Franz Joseph Glacier is just a bit further north. We hiked over a rock-strewn river bed to within 200 meters of its terminal face. This allowed a view back into the steep-sided walls that held the glaciers bulk. The areas for visitors are well-marked, and, as we stood their gawking at it, a group of guides came marching past. They lead groups out on areas of the glacier and, with their red shirts and large pick axes, were going out to scout out the safest routes. We enjoyed the view from where we were.

We then drove on towards Greymouth, where we dropped off the car and caught the train. The TranzAlpine crossed the island from east to west and back each day. On its route over the Southern Alps, it crossed over four viaducts and nineteen tunnels. Standing in the open-air observation car while passing through a tunnel offered a childish thrill (and left me lightly coated with black soot)!

The next morning we breakfasted at Drexel’s in Christchurch, where they had “Iowa Pancakes” on the menu. The original owner used the pancake recipe of his Iowan grandma – a taste of home! Not only were they delicious, but they gave us enough energy to explore the campus of the Arts Center all morning. We caught a taxi in enough time to get us to the airport for our flight back to Tauranga.

Whew!