Queenstown, Wanaka & Milford Sound photos

So it seems my photos didn't upload on the last post.
My Facebook friends may have seen some of these before, but here are some of our Queenstown highlights.

Nevis Highwire Bungy

The Luge

The gutt-busting Fergburger

Our neighbour and regular visitor: Kevin the goat.

The view from our room

Seeing in the New Year with friends and dancing like a twat at the Altitude bar

Trampoline/foam pit/snowboard skills warehouse

Some mind-bending action at Puzzling World

The best cinema in the whole world. Alcohol license and intermission with warm cookies.

Wet but awesome day a Milford Sounds

Will upload more soon.

Queenstown & Wanaka

It’s been such a long time since I wrote, but we’ve been here in Queenstown all this time and hey, better late than never. It’s going to be difficult covering the last few months without it becoming boring to read… I’ll give it a go. Skip to the end for Queenstown highlights. 

I’m sat on the porch outside our room. It’s 9 am and the sun is already high in the sky and I’m warm in just shorts and t-shirt. Our room has the most stunning view of the lake and the mountains. After a few months, you would think it would lose its novelty, but it hasn’t. I’ve finally got a day off work today and we’re leaving Queenstown in two weeks. We’re leaving New Zealand in just over a month. There’s been a change of plan and no, it’s not because Mari is pregnant.

After quite a long drive, we arrive in Queenstown from Dunedin, and we both instantly loved the place. We were never 100% sure that the place would live up to the expectations, but it certainly did. The town has a very young, funky dynamic to it. Nice restaurants, bars and clubs dominate the ground level, broken up only by ski, skate and mountain bike shops, heaven. They’ve tried very hard to keep the architecture in keeping with a Swiss alpine ski resort. You can spot parachutes over the huge lake and your eye is always drawn up the mountain to the gondola cable car.

We arrive at Scallywags. It was as I said the last double bed in the town for the Christmas/New Year period. The owner, Evan, starts yelling at us from a balcony high up the hill and we knew that there was going to be at least some truth to the “Maniac owner” reviews we’d seen on tripadvisor. The hostel was empty apart from a German couple that were working for Evan. The view from the hostel was stunning. 10 minutes walk into town, the hostel kept a social, laid-back atmosphere even as the place started filling up over the next few days. We would explore the town night and day, but usually end up back at the hostel playing a card game called macow and drinking heavily until the early hours. We became good friends with a bloke from London (Jon) and two Dutch girls (Lucinda & Marieline).

We loved Queenstown and it was easily our favourite place in New Zealand, but my savings had rapidly evaporated. The exchange rate was worse than I was expecting and things were expensive in this area. We would have to start working soon, no question. Mari and I both had the feeling that we didn’t want to stop moving, even if it was in a place as awesome as Queenstown. Jon would soon be off to Bali and Lucinda off to Laos. In countries like that the remnants of your budget could go so much further. Inspired, Mari and I threw some ideas around: Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Bali, and Kuala Lumper etc etc. Me being the kid I am started to get really excited but there would be some very substantial obstacles in our way. 

Rewind to June 2012 when we booked our flights, the departure date of 31st of October 2012 was fine, but the return date of 30th of October 2013 didn’t exist in the system yet. We were told to pick the latest available date for the return journey and then we could simply change our flights for £100 each. No problem. The latest date available was 31st of March 2013.

Our plan was to bring the AUK – HKG flight forward to early January and get a cheap flight from HKG to Bangkok and explore SE Asia, before returning to HKG and flying back to London. Researching the countries, it seemed we needed a smorgasbord of injections to visit these countries without contracting something nasty. Getting them here was going to be very expensive and spread out over at least 4-6 weeks. Inconvenient, but doable. 

The next hurdle was going to be the flights. Relaying our intentions to Cathay Pacific, they advised us that our desired flights were in peak season. Most of the seats were already sold out, but they could do something similar to what we wanted, but we would be looking at £500-£600 per person to move the dates. That was just slightly more expensive than just buying a whole new ticket. A bit disheartened we concluded that we would stick to our original plan and stay in Queenstown until October 2013. We will do SE Asia another time with more planning and much less luggage.

We needed jobs and some cheaper, long-term accommodation. We managed to get both surprisingly easily.

Mari got the first job she applied for waitressing in a restaurant called Hamills. After trying and failing to get a job mucking about with mountain bikes all day, I got a job at a car rental place valeting cars and driving people around. We both did pretty well I think. They’re not your typical backpacker jobs. At least I managed to avoid going back into kitchens and/or working until 3, 4 am.

After looking at some rather grotty and expensive share houses, we moved into a place called the lake house. It’s specifically for people like us. We have our own private bedroom and bathroom, but it’s cheap and there’s only a two week commitments and no bills to worry about. 

Now that we got ourselves sorted, we phone the airline again to move our flights to October and guess what. £500 per person to move the flights to October. This really got us reviewing our plans. Was it worth it? We’ve seen pretty much everything we wanted to in New Zealand. And yes, I desperately want to live among the mountains and do a snowboard season (I even bought my own board in Dunedin), but we’re not going back to Bournemouth when we’re done. We’re moving to Norway. The place we’re moving to has two or three ski fields within a 20 minute drive.

Leaving in March would not only save us a grand, but it would also mean that we would avoid two cold, snowy winters back to back which was a by-product of our original plan. Earning Norwegian currency, we could afford that trip to SE Asia quicker and not have to have a short onslaught period of injections.

Whilst it sounds a little defeatist, we’re happy with our plans to cut our New Zealand trip down from 12 months to 6. It’s really not that big a place you know.

So that brings us up to date. We’re leaving Queenstown in two weeks and If I can get the van sold for a good price and in good time, we’ll spend  week in Sydney and perhaps spend a little more time in Auckland, Taupo and the do the things we missed in the Cormandel peninsular last year.  We’ll fly straight to London at the end of March. We’ll spend a short period of time with my family up North before getting on another plane to Norway. The sooner we can start earning Norwegian currency, the better.

New Zealand lessons learnt so far

90% of camping is looking for stuff.
"Camping is FUN" keep telling yourself that every few minutes and you'll have a great time.
Kiwis will invite you to dinner, invite you to stay with them and screech to a halt if they think you need help, but they won't let you out of a junction or tolerate you doing anything less than 10km over ther speed limit. Ever.
Avoid the roads during Chinese new year.
E becomes I.
I becomes U.
Trollies are trundles.
Flip flops are jandles.
Internet is treated like a precious commodity and charged like diamonds carried across the world on the back of unicorns.
We've seen just as many cows as sheep.
Supermarket self checkouts don't work properly here either.
Maori words starting WH are pronounced FF. E.g Whakapaka sounds like fuck-a-pappa.
Kiwis don't like flight of the conchords, but love Murray. He's in at least half of the tv adverts.
Sandflies are the most sadistic flying insect in the whole country, but its a criminal offense to swash one as its biting you.

Oamaru & Dunedin

We stop for lunch in Timaru, but there’s nothing too exciting there, so we head on to Oamaru where the ‘little blue eyes penguin sanctuary’ is.

We haven’t booked anywhere to stay, but the first place we come to stop at has vacancy. It’s a small guest house managed and owned by a very interesting character; Agra. She brings us in the her living room where her music is blaring and he dog ‘Laika’ is holding her tennis ball wanting us to play with her. Agra’s a middle-aged mum figure with her hair wildly stuffed on top of her head. We have a very surreal conversation with her about everything and nothing at once. She told her that we could remember her name by thinking Aga-vation, or Vi-agra. Interesting. There isn’t much in Oamaru other than the penguin sanctuary which we visit later in the evening. You sit quietly and watch all the little blue penguins coming home from a day’s fishing. They’re very cute, but noisy little things. No pictures were allowed, so I borrowed this from the internet.

We took a drive around Oamaru looking for anything else to do, but the only thing open was the video store. There was some impressive architecture though.

We got back to the hostel to find that Agra had let herself into our room to turn the lights on and fire up the electric blanket. She heard us coming in and she came out to greet us in her dressing gown to see if we wanted tea, coffee or hot chocolate. I’m sure if I asked her to tuck us in for the night she would have happily obliged. The next day we read some reviews about the place we had just stayed and there were virtually no comments about the hostel itself, it was all about the ‘hostel mum’. We got it.

The following morning we go to the farmer’s market. The big weekly event of the town.

On to Dunedin.

We booked something like five nights in the Dunedin hostel to tie us over until our reservation in Queenstown.

The new hostel was nice. We had a tv in our room which felt a little alien to begin with, we hadn’t watched any TV for about two months.

Dunedin was quite a nice city with loads of funky bars and restaurants  but we didn’t find much else to do other than pound the high streets and shopping malls for a few days. We went to the cinema to watch the hobbit, but we didn’t achieve a whole lot, other than our day trip out to the peninsular which was fantastic.

Christchurch & Akaroa

CHch

Three nights at Foley Towers, Christchurch. I was expecting to see some scars from the previous earthquakes, but nothing could have prepared us for what was actually waiting for us. The entire CBD was gone! Levelled off. Demolition balls were swinging and huge diggers were clawing at the shattered remains of the office blocks and high-end apartments. Quirky streets lined with art deco buildings were fenced off with warning signs to KEEP OUT! Maps were displayed everywhere to highlight the areas of the city which were off limits to the public. Memorials and tributes to those that lost their lives where concentrated in one area. It felt like a post-apocalyptic city in ruin. I didn’t take any pictures. Partly because it was spitting rain, but mostly because it felt wrong somehow.

We visited the re:Start mall. An effort to bring consumers back to the city by offering an array of familiar shops and popular franchises in temporary dwellings. Shipping containers. An unusual, but highly innovative solution.

We spent most of our time in the suburbs of the city which seemed to be largely unaffected.

I was very impressed with how the locals obviously treasured their city. They were determined to put everything back exactly the way it was, or better, despite the fact that any second the earth could tremble and undo all their efforts leaving them to start all over again. The people of Christchurch are here to stay and good on them. Next stop: Akaroa. A place recommended to us by an odd, but friendly resident at the hideous hostel in Wellington.

Akaroa

First impressions were very good indeed. This is the view approaching the town.

The town itself consists of one street of independent shops and businesses. How refreshing it was to be in a town with no sign of a Subway, McDonalds, Warehouse and or Countdown anywhere. The only road sweeps around the bright blue water of the bay. At the end of that road, half way up a mountain we reach a farm which will be home for the next couple of days. The staff were super friendly and we check in to our room which is in it’s own tikki-style building overlooking the mountains and the bay.  Mari and I stay up until the early hours to watch the Geminid meteor shower.

Today we’ve been swimming with hector dolphins. I can honestly say it’s been one of my all-time greatest experiences. We went with Geoff, (the owner of the farm), another hostel worker and an Austrian couple. That was it. Just the six of us. It was such a relaxing and intimate experience where we felt really free.  We passed several other boats with tourists squeezed into every inch of the side railings and we knew we had it good. Not to mention they paid considerably more for their excursion.

The dolphins were gorgeous creatures and they were just as friendly, playful and curious as I was lead to believe they were. Geoff seemed to be the sort of man that has spent most of his life out on the water and he had the upmost respect and admiration for them. He explained how intuitive they are and that they will choose to huddle round certain people and for reasons only know to themselves, completely dismiss and avoid others should they determine that person is in a bad mood or of questionable character. He explained that they love children and as such, we should be childlike in our actions. We should sing to them. Oddly enough, when I started singing the Muppet theme tune through my snorkel, I had 4 or 5 of them swarming around me. As advised, I swam in short circles so they could follow. They rolled over on their sides so they could look up at me and figure out what the hell I was all about. It was amazing. We probably saw hundreds all in all.

Taking the boat around the coastline, we also got to see some little blue penguins and some fur seals sunbathing on the rocks.

Such an amazing day.

Foolishly we left our Christmas and New Year accommodation reservations until the last minute. After several phone calls, we booked what seems to be the last bed in Queenstown for that period. We will arrive there on the 21^st of December and stay until early January. If we like it as much as we think we will, then we will look for work as the savings won’t last forever.

Next stop Omaru & Dunedin. 

The Top Half

We leave Picton and take the scenic road around the fjords again. Arriving in Nelson the rain is thundering down. Aware that camping will probably be the best option where we’re going, we stop briefly to pick up more supplies. Hot-footing it all the way round the top of the South island, our plan is to do the majority of the driving during the bad weather and come back at a more leisurely pace.

Eventually arriving in Collingwood, the view of the farewell spit is consumed by low-lying clouds. Visibility is poor, so we backtrack to Takaka (via some naturals springs) to camp for the night and come up with a plan for the next few days.

We get a loud wakeup call at around midnight as a huge thunderstorm passes over head. A 1940s style air-raid siren follows. Presumably to call in the volunteer fire-fighters for reasons I can only imagine. After the storm passed, we were treated to a clear, star-lit sky.

We later found out that this storm had gathered pace as it travelled North and turned into a tornado as it hit Auckland.

The following morning, the weather in our area had improved dramatically and we headed back to the farewell spit in the hope of seeing some seals. The tide was all the way out and there were no seals in the areas we were allowed. We did, however, see a large flock of black swans, so not all was lost.

We spent the rest of the day hiking around the Abel Tasman national park which was absolutely stunning.

Only an hour’s drive to Nelson, so we decide to head there for the night and give the city another chance. We only planned on one night, but our VW beetle themed hostel (The Bug Inn) was lovely and the manager pointed out what Nelson had to offer, so we extended our booking to two days. We spent the following day being pleasantly surprised with the city. So relieved we decided to give it another go, it made it to the short-list of places we could see ourselves staying for a while. We explored the shops and cafes and strolled around the farmers market which was rife with organic, local produce and knickknacks. Christmas is everywhere, but I’m warm today, even in shorts and a t-shirt. A summer Christmas is very weird.

Next day is Nelson to Westport. To be completely honest, it was a rather forgettable drive to a rather forgettable town. When we arrived at the hostel, there was a sign on reception saying “back in 15 minutes”. We waited for an hour for someone to show up to no avail. We had plans for the following day to go and see some seals in a local colony, so we decided to go and do it that afternoon instead.  

Next we were to head to Greymouth via Punakaki (pancake rocks).

Greymouth was another small town, devoid of any discernible personality, so we continued our journey up and through the mountains towards Christchurch via Arthurs pass. The drive through the mountains was breath taking.

Accommodation in the mountains was very expensive, so we headed on to Christchurch.