new zealand: the south island
as our ferry crawled sluggishly along the final stretch of water to picton, we peered out at other ferries and larger cruises - one with the vaguely familiar-sounding name of ‘london’ painted on her aft bow - and beyond, into the low, thick clouds that concealed the allegedly beautiful scenery. it was back there somewhere, but alas, we wouldn’t be seeing much of it for the next couple of days.
the initial drive was nice enough, and we were given the general impression of the would-be spectacular views when the clouds lifted for long enough for us to catch a glimpse of the odd sound. at that night’s campsite, the constant drizzle and futile effort to fit tent-pegs into a compacted gravel surface made for dampened spirits and bent tent-pegs.
the next day, the rain at least had subsided - even if the cloud-cover hadn’t - and we embarked upon a modest section of the queen charlotte track, which would take us to a lookout point reportedly providing panoramic views of the vicinity. we walked for an hour or so, but found the weather increasingly oppressive and the views decreasingly impressive, such was the visibility, and after more than an hour of sliding around on a slope in an effort to find a glimpse of some beautiful grey clouds through the thick foliage, we turned back.
as though to acknowledge and agree with our decision, little intermittent drops of rain started falling gently and refreshingly upon our faces. then - as though to mock and humiliate us pointedly for neglecting to bring any of our waterproof garments on this walk - much larger, less intermittent globules of rain began to pelt us on all sides, and didn’t relent for the entirety of our slippery, squelchy return to the car. we drove on in search for sunnier climes.
we stopped in havelock to havealook around (which took all of 15 seconds) and decided to have a spot of lunch to reward ourselves for eventually coaxing out the sun after a very dreary past couple of days. sal finally had the chance to savour some green-lipped mussels, which had been her quarry since as far back as the coromandel two weeks before, and i finally sated my caffeine fix, which had been my quarry for about half an hour.
it was in nelson, a little further along our route, that we realised that autumn was arriving. we wandered around the golden-leaved streets of the pretty town and paid a brief visit to the lord of the rings-esque church before heading on to abel tasman national park, where we were hoping to do a bit of kayaking the next morning.
with the wind and rain behind us and the sun above, we carried on to motueka, which would be our starting-point for the morrow´s kayaking. as captain of our two-man vessel, my duty was to push the kayak out to sea after each impromptu secluded-beach stop, chasing after her once seaborne, and then scrambling into my seat at the back with as much dignity as is possible to maintain during such a task. i was also in control of our rudder, which was actually more challenging than it sounds.
as lackey, sally was in charge of charting our course across the seas in terms of nautical mileage, announcing stringray-sightings (of which there were two) and making sure we didn’t leave our apple cores on the beach.
we made good our offing and set forth on a course that would take us to a number of isolated beaches up the mainland coast, before crossing a choppy strait that separated the golden bays from a small rocky island that was supposed to be home to hundreds of seals but which in fact had none. nonetheless, there was a beautiful sandy beach tucked away from view of the mainland coast, and here we enjoyed half our supply of cheese sandwiches, with boatswain sally making sure we didn’t discard our applecores wantonly.
we took to the waters like some well-oiled machine - but with fleshy people in place of metal cogs and wheels, you understand. we ran a tight ship, but although we ultimately managed to avoid the dreaded capsizing, we weren’t without our problems. aside from the foot-pedals that dictate direction, the rudder could be further controlled by two cords that deploy and retract it, as the case may be. i would occasionally forget to deploy the rudder after returning to the water, having previously retracted it upon arrival on-shore so as to avoid having it drag in the sand and hindering our docking time. with the rudder out of the water, we could only go in unadventurous straight lines. this meant that we could be plowing uncontrollably towards razor-sharp rocks, and the rudder would be wagging at the back redundantly like the tail of a happy puppy.
the weather in this part of the south island was a very comfortable 25 degrees in the day, but suddenly plummeted to something decidedly lower in the evenings. by this point, the increasingly colder nights had taken their toll and placed it in the back of my throat in the form of a rather unpalatable yellowy-green goo. we thusly came to the inevitable conclusion that we would have to buy more bedding.
from the abel tasman national park our destination was the fox glacier, via a night’s stopover just outside murchison. our campsite of choice this time was free, and handily situated by the side of the main interstate highway. i like the idea of driving for a few hours, pulling over at the side of the road, setting up camp, and then driving a few hours more the next day. it puts emphasis on the driving, promotes it to being an outing in itself, rather than a mere mode of transportation. it soon became clear tha in the north island, one undertakes the long journey to reach the destination, whereas in the south island, one makes up a destination because it’s the sights along the way that are the bits most worth seeing.
the next morning’s drive along the west coast was spectacular. we elected to take route 6, which is a longer but more scenic drive. we followed it inland for a bit, before finding ourselves thrust up against the sea along its course. we were pinned up against the crashing waves of the tasman sea for a good few miles, before spiraling up along some dramatic cliff faces, and then plunging back down towards the coast, along a road which appeared to be the only human spoil in an otherwise magnificently untouched forest.
we stopped at the warehouse in greymouth to buy a duvet set with two pillows. we couldn’t be bothering with the luxury of duvet or pillow covers if we only needed them for a couple more weeks, which meant that from this point on we were sleeping in what appeared to be a fluffy white cloud.
we chose to scale fox glacier over franz joseph, as the former has about one tenth the number of visitors of the latter, and it’s also a trifle larger. we spent the day slipping and crunching around on that huge chunk of inexorable, slow-moving ice, peering into insidious-looking crevasses, gawking at gleaming blue caverns and sliding around ice-tunnels, until we had to make our own inexorable return to fox glacier town’s cbd (a pub, a village shop and a bp station).
it was during this time that i began to realise that the further south one goes in this country, the better it gets. until, i suppose, one goes beyond the country’s boundaries and passes the south pole before suddenly heading north again, where it presumably gets worse in some way. is that not an odd notion, to head south for so long, on a steady course, only to find that eventually one is heading north again? the same can’t be said for east and west.
we stayed at a stunningly-located campsite on the edge of lake wanaka. the wind was entirely unforgiving, and didn’t relent in the slightest for the duration of our time there. this meant that all of the usual noises one hears quite clearly whilst camping are either muffled or drowned out completely, which made for some interesting episodes in which we spent a good deal of time in stunned silence in pitch black, trying to decide whether it was an animal or a human that was scraping against our tent. we weren’t sure which we would have preferred.
my favourite town in new zealand (aside from christchurch, of course), is the tiny settlement of arrowtown. the place has something of a provincial, parochial charm to it, and in autumn it shines, with fiery orange, red and yellow-leaved trees lining the one street that makes up arrowtown’s minute core. it’s the perfect antithesis to queenstown, only a few kilometers beyond, and the most extreme thing one can do here is have a good pie - which sally and i did with aplomb.
we came to queenstown, the extreme sports capital of the world, and embarked on a leisurely 90-minute boat tour of lake wakitipu. i felt that going against the grain in this manner was my own way of being ‘extreme’. additionally, my interpretation of extremism bought me 90 minutes for my $25, rather than 9 seconds for $250, which was the going rate elsewhere.
we garnered some interesting facts during the boat trip, the most interesting of which being that lake wakatipu boasts new zealand’s purist water - so pure, in fact, that electricity cannot be conducted through it. i also found it interesting to note that most of the foliage in the queenstown area (and probably a lot of new zealand) was introduced by european settlers, and that prior to settlement, the remarkables (queenstown’s neighbouring mountain range) and other hills were left more or less bereft of any flora after the scourge of the most recent ice age 14,000 years ago. all of the beautiful forests on the hills, then, are a manmade thing, and one has only to look up to the remarkables to see how the landscape would look in its natural state.
the receptionist at our campsite of choice in queenstown gave us a strange look when we told her that we intended to camp rather than use one of the cabins. it was a mere 2 degrees that night, which explained the receptionist’s earlier strange look - but our trusty cumulus duvet burrow kept us warm, like some sort of hibernating angel-rodents.
on our way out of queenstown we had to wait in probably the only traffic jam i’ve ever experienced in new zealand. a friendly lady in a high-visibility jacket came around the queuing cars, handing out sweets, and explaining that they were detonating explosives on the cliffs that loom over the roads, in an attempt to induce a few controlled landslides, rather than have them happen naturally later at the risk of motorists’ lives. she explained conversationally that she was disappointed to have been posted on this side of the cliff this time, because usually she gets to see the explosions happen herself.
we visited milford sound as a daytrip from te anau. we had been trying to decide for the past couple of days - such was the level of disagreement between testimonials - whether it would be better to visit on a fine day or on a rainy day. it of course transpired that we had no choice in the matter, and the weather was particularly soggy. it transpired also that this resulted in an excellent experience.
the drive up to milford was almost better than the boat trip on the sound itself. the amount of rainfall both from previous days and on the day-proper meant that the looming cliffs through which we passed were absolutely drenched in cascading white spume. i have never seen so many waterfalls - not even in iguazu. the blackness of the rocks from which the water fell, coupled with the brilliantness of the falling water and the grey sky above made for a beautifully monochromatic scene, not dissimilar to that which sally and i had enjoyed on the fjords of norway two years ago.
we reached the small port at milford and spent a few moments investigating which boat was smallest and which would have the least number of passengers. we settled for a small red and white number, with no more than 10 other passengers aboard - and, most importantly, it had free tea and coffee.
the boat trip was on a par with that of norway in terms of dramatics, but where norway was so tranquil and still that it seemed as though we were traversing a giant mirror, milford was particularly rough and choppy, as though that same giant mirror had been smashed to pieces and put in a tumble-drier. there was so much spray and cloud that we didn’t get to see mitre peak - the jewel of milford sound - but it didn’t matter. we were able to experience the raw power of water as it fell about us, swept under our feet and sprayed and spouted in our faces. i was drenched to the sort of stage where you’re so soaked that you don’t really care anymore.
dunedin is a city steeped in history and steep gradients. we visited the steepest road in the world, which is at a gradient of 19 degrees. i was disappointed by this figure upon reading, but it really is much steeper than it looks both written down and from viewing at the bottom of the street. we gasped our way to the top, took some pictures, and i then decided that it would have been rude not to drive up and down it in the car. it was actually a less pleasant experience than i had expected, for the fear of the imminent failure of the brakes did rather plague the moment.
we perused the city´s art gallery at our leisure, and visited the excellent ‘your face here’ exhibition at the otago museum. the latter imparts all sorts of interesting facts about human and animal faces, making it slightly more accessible to non-face-interested people by allowing patrons to take photographs of themselves on the computer system and see their faces transformed in all manner of ways relevant to the various topics of the exhibition.
we drove out to the otago peninsula - a mini version of christchurch’s banks peninsula, in my head at least - and visited larnach castle, which claims to be the only castle in new zealand. lovely though the building may have been, it really was more a lovely house than a castle, in my book. we had a stroll around the well-kept grounds and petted the friendly chocolate-coloured dog with the less friendly owner, and left with a rekindled urge to visit warwick and york.
our penultimate stop in new zealand was mount cook. the drive there was among the more dramatic of our south island drives, and we arrived at the foot of the alps to set up our camp just in time for the sentinel mountains to glow a slightly more friendly pinkish colour.
the next day we embarked on the short hike to the foot of new zealand’s highest peak, and for perhaps the first time on a walk in this country, we weren’t alone. we’d managed to synchronize our walk perfectly with that of a school trip of something around 60 children. we managed to get ahead of the pack with a bit of effort, but as we stopped at the end of the trail to admire the snowy peak and the amazing chunks of blue ice that stood defiantly in the large body of water at the foot of mount cook, the school trip caught us up.
it only irked me slightly that we wouldn’t be able to enjoy the magnificent mountain in peace. i appreciate that it’s not my mountain, after all, and that a school trip has to happen some time or another. what really bothered me was that the entire group of school children immediately began throwing stones at the beautiful ice remains in an attempt to chip off edges here and there and, presumably, to reduce the ice to the same comparatively unremarkable body of water that encompassed it.
i found something troubling about the fact that these kids had chosen to destroy rather than to admire. it surprised me how concerned i was about this, actually, and i found myself growing more and more compelled to say something to the band of seemingly unaware teachers with every stone that was hurled. i couldn’t even decide if it was my responsibility to say something to the teachers or not. i’m of course aware that i’m not responsible for the school children, but what about natural beauty? is that not something in which all of us should take a bit of pride, and with it a bit of responsibility to protect it?
i decided not to say anything, which turned out to be the right decision when one of the teachers stood up and shouted to the children that they were forbidden from throwing stones and that anyone caught doing so again would be in trouble. but this peturbed me even more, as i wondered whether the teacher had reprimanded her students for the good of their own safety, or for that of something that in my opinion is worth cherishing. the fact that this country appears to pride itself on its green ethics and caring attitude towards its unspoilt nature made this matter all the more pertinent in my mind.
mount cook to christchurch was our last essential long drive, and as we joined the unwaveringly straight, flat roads, it became clear that we were entering canterbury. it’s quite amusing to look at a road map of new zealand, navigating the roads wiggling and winding here and there, and then to get to the page covering canterbury to see how uniformly grid-like the road system is.
for the past 6 weeks we’ve been travelling around new zealand - myself in the driver’s seat, with sally by my side reading the directions. it’s been a small part of a larger trip through central and south america - one in which we’ve both been gradually uncovering new things and places that for us were previously in the dark.
this all changed in an instant as soon as we reached the rakaia gorge in canterbury. we turned a corner, rolled down a hill, and then the landscape opened up in front of us, and the rakaia river, brilliantly blue as ever, came into view. and in that instant, i suddenly knew my surroundings, and from that point it completely changed my perspective of our trip. i was no longer in this distantly familiar new zealand which hasn’t quite been what i remembered. i was back in the new zealand that i´d known so intimately before, and it suddenly felt warm and homely again as i took a few moments to recollect the time i’d spent in these places before - a sunny afternoon’s drive here, a photograph taken there. i enjoyed trying to make my way back to addington without the aid of a map (which, i add, i was successful in doing).
how often does one get the opportunity to experience something such as this? to spend a year in a far away land, totally isolated from what i’d previously known, wondering in the interim if this part of my life unconfirmed by other friends or family from home had actually ever taken place, suddenly returning to find that it’s all here to explore once again - it’s been very strange indeed.
it was strange driving around the outer fringes of christchurch´s city centre at night. the city centre is like a ghost town - lighting is extremely limited, and the streets are deserted. addington is still going strong, though, only metres away, and i enjoyed strolling down the high street, stopping in at old haunts such as the miller pub - which has become a lot more popular since the earthquake, as the city centre has for now moved out into the suburbs (it’ll be interesting to see how that plays out when the city centre is reopened) - and the chinese fish and chip shop. the miserable lady is still working there, and their menu and pricing remains unchanged - but their unintentionally quirky collection of 80s copies of celebrity magazines was alas absent. i used to enjoy reading about tom cruise and nicole kidman’s budding courtship. my old house on poulson street is still standing too, and i took a bit of time to notice the new paint job and to wonder whether the insides have changed.
we were very lucky once again to have a friend put us up in town. this time it was davey, a fellow englishman who i knew previously as the conductor of addington brass. he had been away for most of the time that we were there, but his dog maxa was there to keep us company (or vice versa). it was funny having her follow me around at every turn, her tail wagging unsurely as she looked up at me, wondering if the (vegetarian) sausage sandwiches i was making would result in a subsequent meal for her (they wouldn’t).
from christchurch, sally and i did two final daytrips: one to arthur’s pass, and one to akaroa. arthur’s pass was as stunning as ever, the constantly-changing scenery being the main attraction of that route to the west coast. we didn’t see any kea, alas, but it was a fine daytrip nonetheless.
the drive along the summit road outside akaroa was excellent. it was another fine day, but the hills of the banks peninsula were capped with thick, extremely fast-moving cloud that would continually spill over the hill tops and over the road along which we were driving. this made for quite a memorable, national geographic-style drive which, to my recollection, took place in slow-motion.
we spent our last afternoon in new zealand doing what is and probably will always be my favourite drive in the world, and which was my favourite pastime when i lived here before - the drive along the crest of the port hills. the views are unbeatable up there, with christchurch and the silhouetted southern alps one on side and the inexhaustible pacific on the other. it feels like driving on top of the world.
and so it was that our fairly comprehensive visit of new zealand ended. it’s been a complete change of pace from the slow and exhausting business of backpacking and, though enjoyable, this respite has left me eager to be taking to the road once again with a progressively heavier bag slung on my back.
this visit was of course different to my time here before, 7 years ago - but i hadn’t realised quite how different it would be. indeed, i had given it little thought, such was my rapture with the preceding adventures. this time i’ve seen as much of the country as possible in the time available to me, as opposed to staying in one place, and this in turn has meant that, aside from the few social reunions (which were at the forefront of this visit’s highlights), this has been quite a lonely 6 weeks. it’s been lonely both in comparison to my last stay in new zealand and when compared to the rest of this trip as a whole. i feel that it’s the people that make a place what it is, and that, since the vast majority of the people who made new zealand what it was for me before weren’t there this time around, i have felt strangely detached from the country i knew so well before.
let me not overlook that this visit has also had the great disadvantage of having to follow on from somewhere that to me is much more exotic and novel - in the form of latin america - and at a time when i feel as though i’ve seen so many amazing sights in succession that i simply can’t be awe-struck any longer. as sally pointed out, we know that what we’re looking at is objectively spectacular in one way or another, but the feeling of awe is dulled, distant, removed. we’ve pondered together as to whether doing this trip in reverse order or whether simply not seeing quite so many incredible things in a row would remedy this issue, but as to the result of such a proposal, i can only speculate. i have been plotting to get my 2nd of march back, though, so repeating this trip or one similar to it in retrograde would appear to cater for both of these demands.
the initial drive was nice enough, and we were given the general impression of the would-be spectacular views when the clouds lifted for long enough for us to catch a glimpse of the odd sound. at that night’s campsite, the constant drizzle and futile effort to fit tent-pegs into a compacted gravel surface made for dampened spirits and bent tent-pegs.
the next day, the rain at least had subsided - even if the cloud-cover hadn’t - and we embarked upon a modest section of the queen charlotte track, which would take us to a lookout point reportedly providing panoramic views of the vicinity. we walked for an hour or so, but found the weather increasingly oppressive and the views decreasingly impressive, such was the visibility, and after more than an hour of sliding around on a slope in an effort to find a glimpse of some beautiful grey clouds through the thick foliage, we turned back.
as though to acknowledge and agree with our decision, little intermittent drops of rain started falling gently and refreshingly upon our faces. then - as though to mock and humiliate us pointedly for neglecting to bring any of our waterproof garments on this walk - much larger, less intermittent globules of rain began to pelt us on all sides, and didn’t relent for the entirety of our slippery, squelchy return to the car. we drove on in search for sunnier climes.
we stopped in havelock to havealook around (which took all of 15 seconds) and decided to have a spot of lunch to reward ourselves for eventually coaxing out the sun after a very dreary past couple of days. sal finally had the chance to savour some green-lipped mussels, which had been her quarry since as far back as the coromandel two weeks before, and i finally sated my caffeine fix, which had been my quarry for about half an hour.
it was in nelson, a little further along our route, that we realised that autumn was arriving. we wandered around the golden-leaved streets of the pretty town and paid a brief visit to the lord of the rings-esque church before heading on to abel tasman national park, where we were hoping to do a bit of kayaking the next morning.
with the wind and rain behind us and the sun above, we carried on to motueka, which would be our starting-point for the morrow´s kayaking. as captain of our two-man vessel, my duty was to push the kayak out to sea after each impromptu secluded-beach stop, chasing after her once seaborne, and then scrambling into my seat at the back with as much dignity as is possible to maintain during such a task. i was also in control of our rudder, which was actually more challenging than it sounds.
as lackey, sally was in charge of charting our course across the seas in terms of nautical mileage, announcing stringray-sightings (of which there were two) and making sure we didn’t leave our apple cores on the beach.
we made good our offing and set forth on a course that would take us to a number of isolated beaches up the mainland coast, before crossing a choppy strait that separated the golden bays from a small rocky island that was supposed to be home to hundreds of seals but which in fact had none. nonetheless, there was a beautiful sandy beach tucked away from view of the mainland coast, and here we enjoyed half our supply of cheese sandwiches, with boatswain sally making sure we didn’t discard our applecores wantonly.
we took to the waters like some well-oiled machine - but with fleshy people in place of metal cogs and wheels, you understand. we ran a tight ship, but although we ultimately managed to avoid the dreaded capsizing, we weren’t without our problems. aside from the foot-pedals that dictate direction, the rudder could be further controlled by two cords that deploy and retract it, as the case may be. i would occasionally forget to deploy the rudder after returning to the water, having previously retracted it upon arrival on-shore so as to avoid having it drag in the sand and hindering our docking time. with the rudder out of the water, we could only go in unadventurous straight lines. this meant that we could be plowing uncontrollably towards razor-sharp rocks, and the rudder would be wagging at the back redundantly like the tail of a happy puppy.
the weather in this part of the south island was a very comfortable 25 degrees in the day, but suddenly plummeted to something decidedly lower in the evenings. by this point, the increasingly colder nights had taken their toll and placed it in the back of my throat in the form of a rather unpalatable yellowy-green goo. we thusly came to the inevitable conclusion that we would have to buy more bedding.
from the abel tasman national park our destination was the fox glacier, via a night’s stopover just outside murchison. our campsite of choice this time was free, and handily situated by the side of the main interstate highway. i like the idea of driving for a few hours, pulling over at the side of the road, setting up camp, and then driving a few hours more the next day. it puts emphasis on the driving, promotes it to being an outing in itself, rather than a mere mode of transportation. it soon became clear tha in the north island, one undertakes the long journey to reach the destination, whereas in the south island, one makes up a destination because it’s the sights along the way that are the bits most worth seeing.
the next morning’s drive along the west coast was spectacular. we elected to take route 6, which is a longer but more scenic drive. we followed it inland for a bit, before finding ourselves thrust up against the sea along its course. we were pinned up against the crashing waves of the tasman sea for a good few miles, before spiraling up along some dramatic cliff faces, and then plunging back down towards the coast, along a road which appeared to be the only human spoil in an otherwise magnificently untouched forest.
we stopped at the warehouse in greymouth to buy a duvet set with two pillows. we couldn’t be bothering with the luxury of duvet or pillow covers if we only needed them for a couple more weeks, which meant that from this point on we were sleeping in what appeared to be a fluffy white cloud.
we chose to scale fox glacier over franz joseph, as the former has about one tenth the number of visitors of the latter, and it’s also a trifle larger. we spent the day slipping and crunching around on that huge chunk of inexorable, slow-moving ice, peering into insidious-looking crevasses, gawking at gleaming blue caverns and sliding around ice-tunnels, until we had to make our own inexorable return to fox glacier town’s cbd (a pub, a village shop and a bp station).
it was during this time that i began to realise that the further south one goes in this country, the better it gets. until, i suppose, one goes beyond the country’s boundaries and passes the south pole before suddenly heading north again, where it presumably gets worse in some way. is that not an odd notion, to head south for so long, on a steady course, only to find that eventually one is heading north again? the same can’t be said for east and west.
we stayed at a stunningly-located campsite on the edge of lake wanaka. the wind was entirely unforgiving, and didn’t relent in the slightest for the duration of our time there. this meant that all of the usual noises one hears quite clearly whilst camping are either muffled or drowned out completely, which made for some interesting episodes in which we spent a good deal of time in stunned silence in pitch black, trying to decide whether it was an animal or a human that was scraping against our tent. we weren’t sure which we would have preferred.
my favourite town in new zealand (aside from christchurch, of course), is the tiny settlement of arrowtown. the place has something of a provincial, parochial charm to it, and in autumn it shines, with fiery orange, red and yellow-leaved trees lining the one street that makes up arrowtown’s minute core. it’s the perfect antithesis to queenstown, only a few kilometers beyond, and the most extreme thing one can do here is have a good pie - which sally and i did with aplomb.
we came to queenstown, the extreme sports capital of the world, and embarked on a leisurely 90-minute boat tour of lake wakitipu. i felt that going against the grain in this manner was my own way of being ‘extreme’. additionally, my interpretation of extremism bought me 90 minutes for my $25, rather than 9 seconds for $250, which was the going rate elsewhere.
we garnered some interesting facts during the boat trip, the most interesting of which being that lake wakatipu boasts new zealand’s purist water - so pure, in fact, that electricity cannot be conducted through it. i also found it interesting to note that most of the foliage in the queenstown area (and probably a lot of new zealand) was introduced by european settlers, and that prior to settlement, the remarkables (queenstown’s neighbouring mountain range) and other hills were left more or less bereft of any flora after the scourge of the most recent ice age 14,000 years ago. all of the beautiful forests on the hills, then, are a manmade thing, and one has only to look up to the remarkables to see how the landscape would look in its natural state.
the receptionist at our campsite of choice in queenstown gave us a strange look when we told her that we intended to camp rather than use one of the cabins. it was a mere 2 degrees that night, which explained the receptionist’s earlier strange look - but our trusty cumulus duvet burrow kept us warm, like some sort of hibernating angel-rodents.
on our way out of queenstown we had to wait in probably the only traffic jam i’ve ever experienced in new zealand. a friendly lady in a high-visibility jacket came around the queuing cars, handing out sweets, and explaining that they were detonating explosives on the cliffs that loom over the roads, in an attempt to induce a few controlled landslides, rather than have them happen naturally later at the risk of motorists’ lives. she explained conversationally that she was disappointed to have been posted on this side of the cliff this time, because usually she gets to see the explosions happen herself.
we visited milford sound as a daytrip from te anau. we had been trying to decide for the past couple of days - such was the level of disagreement between testimonials - whether it would be better to visit on a fine day or on a rainy day. it of course transpired that we had no choice in the matter, and the weather was particularly soggy. it transpired also that this resulted in an excellent experience.
the drive up to milford was almost better than the boat trip on the sound itself. the amount of rainfall both from previous days and on the day-proper meant that the looming cliffs through which we passed were absolutely drenched in cascading white spume. i have never seen so many waterfalls - not even in iguazu. the blackness of the rocks from which the water fell, coupled with the brilliantness of the falling water and the grey sky above made for a beautifully monochromatic scene, not dissimilar to that which sally and i had enjoyed on the fjords of norway two years ago.
we reached the small port at milford and spent a few moments investigating which boat was smallest and which would have the least number of passengers. we settled for a small red and white number, with no more than 10 other passengers aboard - and, most importantly, it had free tea and coffee.
the boat trip was on a par with that of norway in terms of dramatics, but where norway was so tranquil and still that it seemed as though we were traversing a giant mirror, milford was particularly rough and choppy, as though that same giant mirror had been smashed to pieces and put in a tumble-drier. there was so much spray and cloud that we didn’t get to see mitre peak - the jewel of milford sound - but it didn’t matter. we were able to experience the raw power of water as it fell about us, swept under our feet and sprayed and spouted in our faces. i was drenched to the sort of stage where you’re so soaked that you don’t really care anymore.
dunedin is a city steeped in history and steep gradients. we visited the steepest road in the world, which is at a gradient of 19 degrees. i was disappointed by this figure upon reading, but it really is much steeper than it looks both written down and from viewing at the bottom of the street. we gasped our way to the top, took some pictures, and i then decided that it would have been rude not to drive up and down it in the car. it was actually a less pleasant experience than i had expected, for the fear of the imminent failure of the brakes did rather plague the moment.
we perused the city´s art gallery at our leisure, and visited the excellent ‘your face here’ exhibition at the otago museum. the latter imparts all sorts of interesting facts about human and animal faces, making it slightly more accessible to non-face-interested people by allowing patrons to take photographs of themselves on the computer system and see their faces transformed in all manner of ways relevant to the various topics of the exhibition.
we drove out to the otago peninsula - a mini version of christchurch’s banks peninsula, in my head at least - and visited larnach castle, which claims to be the only castle in new zealand. lovely though the building may have been, it really was more a lovely house than a castle, in my book. we had a stroll around the well-kept grounds and petted the friendly chocolate-coloured dog with the less friendly owner, and left with a rekindled urge to visit warwick and york.
our penultimate stop in new zealand was mount cook. the drive there was among the more dramatic of our south island drives, and we arrived at the foot of the alps to set up our camp just in time for the sentinel mountains to glow a slightly more friendly pinkish colour.
the next day we embarked on the short hike to the foot of new zealand’s highest peak, and for perhaps the first time on a walk in this country, we weren’t alone. we’d managed to synchronize our walk perfectly with that of a school trip of something around 60 children. we managed to get ahead of the pack with a bit of effort, but as we stopped at the end of the trail to admire the snowy peak and the amazing chunks of blue ice that stood defiantly in the large body of water at the foot of mount cook, the school trip caught us up.
it only irked me slightly that we wouldn’t be able to enjoy the magnificent mountain in peace. i appreciate that it’s not my mountain, after all, and that a school trip has to happen some time or another. what really bothered me was that the entire group of school children immediately began throwing stones at the beautiful ice remains in an attempt to chip off edges here and there and, presumably, to reduce the ice to the same comparatively unremarkable body of water that encompassed it.
i found something troubling about the fact that these kids had chosen to destroy rather than to admire. it surprised me how concerned i was about this, actually, and i found myself growing more and more compelled to say something to the band of seemingly unaware teachers with every stone that was hurled. i couldn’t even decide if it was my responsibility to say something to the teachers or not. i’m of course aware that i’m not responsible for the school children, but what about natural beauty? is that not something in which all of us should take a bit of pride, and with it a bit of responsibility to protect it?
i decided not to say anything, which turned out to be the right decision when one of the teachers stood up and shouted to the children that they were forbidden from throwing stones and that anyone caught doing so again would be in trouble. but this peturbed me even more, as i wondered whether the teacher had reprimanded her students for the good of their own safety, or for that of something that in my opinion is worth cherishing. the fact that this country appears to pride itself on its green ethics and caring attitude towards its unspoilt nature made this matter all the more pertinent in my mind.
mount cook to christchurch was our last essential long drive, and as we joined the unwaveringly straight, flat roads, it became clear that we were entering canterbury. it’s quite amusing to look at a road map of new zealand, navigating the roads wiggling and winding here and there, and then to get to the page covering canterbury to see how uniformly grid-like the road system is.
for the past 6 weeks we’ve been travelling around new zealand - myself in the driver’s seat, with sally by my side reading the directions. it’s been a small part of a larger trip through central and south america - one in which we’ve both been gradually uncovering new things and places that for us were previously in the dark.
this all changed in an instant as soon as we reached the rakaia gorge in canterbury. we turned a corner, rolled down a hill, and then the landscape opened up in front of us, and the rakaia river, brilliantly blue as ever, came into view. and in that instant, i suddenly knew my surroundings, and from that point it completely changed my perspective of our trip. i was no longer in this distantly familiar new zealand which hasn’t quite been what i remembered. i was back in the new zealand that i´d known so intimately before, and it suddenly felt warm and homely again as i took a few moments to recollect the time i’d spent in these places before - a sunny afternoon’s drive here, a photograph taken there. i enjoyed trying to make my way back to addington without the aid of a map (which, i add, i was successful in doing).
how often does one get the opportunity to experience something such as this? to spend a year in a far away land, totally isolated from what i’d previously known, wondering in the interim if this part of my life unconfirmed by other friends or family from home had actually ever taken place, suddenly returning to find that it’s all here to explore once again - it’s been very strange indeed.
it was strange driving around the outer fringes of christchurch´s city centre at night. the city centre is like a ghost town - lighting is extremely limited, and the streets are deserted. addington is still going strong, though, only metres away, and i enjoyed strolling down the high street, stopping in at old haunts such as the miller pub - which has become a lot more popular since the earthquake, as the city centre has for now moved out into the suburbs (it’ll be interesting to see how that plays out when the city centre is reopened) - and the chinese fish and chip shop. the miserable lady is still working there, and their menu and pricing remains unchanged - but their unintentionally quirky collection of 80s copies of celebrity magazines was alas absent. i used to enjoy reading about tom cruise and nicole kidman’s budding courtship. my old house on poulson street is still standing too, and i took a bit of time to notice the new paint job and to wonder whether the insides have changed.
we were very lucky once again to have a friend put us up in town. this time it was davey, a fellow englishman who i knew previously as the conductor of addington brass. he had been away for most of the time that we were there, but his dog maxa was there to keep us company (or vice versa). it was funny having her follow me around at every turn, her tail wagging unsurely as she looked up at me, wondering if the (vegetarian) sausage sandwiches i was making would result in a subsequent meal for her (they wouldn’t).
from christchurch, sally and i did two final daytrips: one to arthur’s pass, and one to akaroa. arthur’s pass was as stunning as ever, the constantly-changing scenery being the main attraction of that route to the west coast. we didn’t see any kea, alas, but it was a fine daytrip nonetheless.
the drive along the summit road outside akaroa was excellent. it was another fine day, but the hills of the banks peninsula were capped with thick, extremely fast-moving cloud that would continually spill over the hill tops and over the road along which we were driving. this made for quite a memorable, national geographic-style drive which, to my recollection, took place in slow-motion.
we spent our last afternoon in new zealand doing what is and probably will always be my favourite drive in the world, and which was my favourite pastime when i lived here before - the drive along the crest of the port hills. the views are unbeatable up there, with christchurch and the silhouetted southern alps one on side and the inexhaustible pacific on the other. it feels like driving on top of the world.
and so it was that our fairly comprehensive visit of new zealand ended. it’s been a complete change of pace from the slow and exhausting business of backpacking and, though enjoyable, this respite has left me eager to be taking to the road once again with a progressively heavier bag slung on my back.
this visit was of course different to my time here before, 7 years ago - but i hadn’t realised quite how different it would be. indeed, i had given it little thought, such was my rapture with the preceding adventures. this time i’ve seen as much of the country as possible in the time available to me, as opposed to staying in one place, and this in turn has meant that, aside from the few social reunions (which were at the forefront of this visit’s highlights), this has been quite a lonely 6 weeks. it’s been lonely both in comparison to my last stay in new zealand and when compared to the rest of this trip as a whole. i feel that it’s the people that make a place what it is, and that, since the vast majority of the people who made new zealand what it was for me before weren’t there this time around, i have felt strangely detached from the country i knew so well before.
let me not overlook that this visit has also had the great disadvantage of having to follow on from somewhere that to me is much more exotic and novel - in the form of latin america - and at a time when i feel as though i’ve seen so many amazing sights in succession that i simply can’t be awe-struck any longer. as sally pointed out, we know that what we’re looking at is objectively spectacular in one way or another, but the feeling of awe is dulled, distant, removed. we’ve pondered together as to whether doing this trip in reverse order or whether simply not seeing quite so many incredible things in a row would remedy this issue, but as to the result of such a proposal, i can only speculate. i have been plotting to get my 2nd of march back, though, so repeating this trip or one similar to it in retrograde would appear to cater for both of these demands.