South Island – Christchurch to Fox Glacier

Mmmm it’s so nice to be warm… I’m sat in our new campervan (number 4) in a campsite with power so we can have the heater on and it is toasty warm :-) Weird to think that it’s midsummer back in the UK and it’s still light at 9pm instead of 5pm and not frosty in the mornings. But I wouldn’t change it for the world as the landscape here in the South Island is just perfect with snowcapped mountains.

We left the North Island on Saturday and Chris has summed up the remainder of our North Island adventures on his blog www.rootfest.com. We flew to Christchurch, on the Eastern edge of the middle of the South Island and arrived Saturday evening to some chilly chilly rain. We’d cooked every night in our van on the North Island so our few days in Christchurch in a hostel made for a nice excuse to sample some restaurants and cafes in the city. We spent Sunday night at a Ye Olde English Pub, which are usually best avoided but we were just in the mood for a cosy pub atmosphere and tasty pub grub… and they had a quiz on so I was happy :-) And we didn’t even do too badly seeing as we were a team of two and not Kiwis!

We spent our couple of days in Christchurch just exploring the city, and visiting every outdoor clothing store in search of new thermals for Chris (any excuse to visit outdoors shops….). The city is quite different to those in the North with quite an English feel to it and some nice old buildings. We spent some time exploring the Arts Centre which is housed in the old Canterbury University buildings and the museum which had a great exhibit on all Antarctica related history, animals and exploration.

We picked our new van up on Tuesday morning and we’ve used another company again and have a different shaped van. We’re definitely up to speed with all the various types of van available in Australasia and think we’ve finally chosen a van that suits our needs down to the ground. Although a potato peeler would be nice…

We headed straight west from Christchurch across the Canterbury Plains and up into the Southern Alps. It was a spectacular journey and we had an amazing sunny day:

We attempted to find a free place to camp but somehow missed the turning so ended up in a caravan site in a summer lakeside resort – we were the only ones there and it was FREEZING. Luckily, we had power so we had the heater on in the evening, but it took some struggle to get out of bed in the morning when there was ice on the inside of the windows brrrrrrrrrrr

We continued west until we hit the Tasman Sea coast at Greymouth. Not a fat lot to see there so we continued driving along the coast. We stopped at a gorgeous lake for lunch and Chris took some pretty nice pics:

down to Franz Joseph Glacier – a small town harbouring the tourists who come to look at, walk on, climb up and fly over the glacier. We got there a bit late in the day to do the walk up close, so we just hiked up a small path to a lookout. Bit cloudy but still pretty awesome. We would have like to have done a climb or flight, but it’s all pretty expensive so we’ll have to save that one for when we have incomes again :-)

We spent last night in a cheapo Department of Conservation campsite beside a beautiful lake – no showers and no power (so no heater) which meant we spent the night huddled under the quilts watching DVDs :-) Was even harder to get up this morning…

We’re heading South until the road runs out at Haast and then inland to Wanaka and Queenstown and maybe some skiing :-D

Driving, driving, driving…

We’re now on day 11 of our North Island Campervan Adventure, and have driven over 1900km of mostly wiggly windy roads (which are the main highways, just not bearing any resemblance to the M6 thank god). We’ve wiggled our way down to Wellington and are now heading back North to Auckland for Saturday when we have to say goodbye to Bertha (the van).

I think I last left off in Roturua where we soaked ourselves to prunes in the hot springs. We headed South a hundred km or so to Taupo – along the ‘Thermal Highway’ so there was lots of steamy streams and a big fat geothermal powerstation. We spent an afternoon hiding from the rain in Taupo (involving coffee, internet, bakery visiting and soup eating in our van), and then decided to get a bit wet and do a short walk to a natural hot springs bathing spot – a hot stream spilling out into the river. Was quite surreal getting into my bikini in the cold and drizzle, but once I was sat on the slightly slimy bottom of the stream in the toasty water, it was worth it :-) 

We spent the night in a free campsite next to the river, and then on our way out of town thought we’d have a quick look at the Taupo Bungy. A quick look at the bungy ended up with Chris having a go (surprise surprise) and you can watch the video here www.rootfest.com/jump.mp4  - crazy fool jumping 47m headfirst towards a river.

That was enough excitement for one day, so we spent the rest of the day driving across the country to Napier, on the East Coast. Napier sits smack bang in the middle of Hawkes Bay wine country, so it seemed obligatory to partake in the wine drinking. So we chose to go on a tour as then we could both sample the goodies and not worry about driving. Our friendly guide, Ian, gave us a fab tour and obviously knew his stuff about all the local wines. We ended up trying about 6 wines at 3 wineries, and they were not small portions. After also visiting a beer and cider company, I was quite sozzled! Was a great afternoon and I even learned stuff too :-)

From Napier, we headed south hugging the coast down towards Wellington, and overnighted in a Department of Conservation campsite (a field) on the edge of Tararua National Park. Again, the sky was leaking so we only did a small walk around the river but it was a nice stretch of legs after driving all morning. We had the field to ourselves all night and were constantly serenaded by the rain hammering on the roof of the van – vans are great but they do tend to get hot when it’s hot, cold when it’s cold and sound like the rain is in your ears in a downpour. We had our first glimpse of NZ snow on the journey from Tararua to Wellington along with a whole lot of farmland.

We spent a couple of days in Wellington, and met up with a friend from Sydney who has just moved over so she showed us all the sights in an afternoon. There’s not much camping to be had in Welly, so we had to stay about 15km outside and then drive back into town in the morning. We spent a great morning exploring Te Papa museum and Weta Cave – the company who made the models/costumes etc for Lord of the Rings and Narnia.

Some pics of Welly:

We drove a couple of hours North of Wellington for our campsite for the night, at Foxton Beach and arrived for a spectacular sunset:

We continued driving North the next day and drove through some quite pretty countryside on the way to Tongariro National Park:

We were aiming towards Ohakune, but got there quite early so decided to carry on North to Whakapapa ski resort – right on the slopes of Mt Ruapehu (an active volcano that last had a major eruption in 1996). The summit was clouded over as we drove up – typical:

But as we got closer, the clouds drifted away (or we drove past them) and revealed the snow capped crater and summit:

We drove all the way up to the ski lifts which were being assembled (guys lifting chairs onto the chairlift cable) ready for the start of the season in 2 weeks time. So we couldn’t ski, but we’re planning on doing some on the South Island in a couple of weeks.

We stayed in Whakapapa village overnight (so so so cold) and awoke to rain that turned into sleet just as we were doing our morning chores of emptying the van of ‘waste’. Lovely. First proper snowfall we’ve seen for 18 months though… We were going to do a walk, but seeing as everywhere was covered by cloud, we decided to head on down the mountain and get some more km under our belts.

We headed West towards the sticky-out bit on the North Island – Taraknaki region. The State Highway that heads that way, is known as the ‘Forgotten World Highway’ and is 155km of farmland, jungle lined gorges, amazing windy roads up to grass covered ridges, and no shops or petrol. Luckily I read the petrol part in the Lonely Planet or we may have come unstuck somewhere in the middle of nowhere. The scenery was amazing and the photos don’t quite do it justice:

The Forgotten World Highway ends in Stratford – the gateway to the Taranaki region, named for Mt Taranaki, a 2500m volcano dominating the surrounding flat countryside. We drove up as close as you can get to the summit and still couldn’t see it… maybe tomorrow…

Tomorrow… the sun is shining and the misty mountain appeared!

Adventures in Kiwi-land

We’ve been in New Zealand almost a week now and are on the road circling the North Island for two weeks. We had a couple of days in Auckland and did all the usual touristy stuff – visited Devenport, Rangitoto and did a lot of wandering the city. Chris has written all about it on his blog (www.rootfest.com) so I won’t double up but here are some of my photos of Auckland:

Rangitoto from Devenport:

Auckland city from Devenport:

Rangitoto wharf:

We’d booked a campervan to pick up at Auckland airport on Saturday morning, but after a bit of to-ing and fro-ing with e-mails and phone calls, it turned out that our booking hadn’t made it through the system and the branch didn’t actually have any vehicles available for us to take. Unfortunately, we didn’t find this out until we’d got ourselves to the airport and the lovely campervan company (who will remain nameless but it rhymes with Lucy) left us stranded at Auckland domestic terminal with no wheels and no accommodation booked, and a potential $30 shuttle ride back to the city. Needless to say we were not too amused by this. Chris saved the day by calling another company who luckily had a van for us and also have a free shuttle from the airport – yippee! We had to wait a couple of hours but the staff were thoughtful enough to lend us a car (swanky 4x4 in fact) to pop to the supermarket to stock up on groceries for the trip. We also got an upgraded van and so have ended up in a swanky Britz van complete with shower and toilet! We’re moving up the campervan ladder – from our Wicked ‘shitbox’ van in WA with mismatched crockery and shonky engine, to our Hippie van in Queensland with no space to swing a cat, to our swanky Britz van which we can stand up in and shower in and has 2 gas rings!! It’s so nice to be able to cook 2 things at once :-) And because we’re in low season, Swanky van is costing us less than shitbox van – crazy. So our crappy start to the day ended up being pretty darn good thanks to the very helpful Britz/Backpacker people :-)

So, we eventually hit the road around 2pm on Saturday and drove South and East to the Coromandel Peninsula. We passed through some pretty spectacular countryside and snaked along a pretty narrow coastal road until we reached Coromandel town and set up camp for the night. The views we woke up to were pretty nice:

We had a cheeky bimble around the town in the morning but being 10am on a Sunday, not a fat lot was going on. So we jumped back in the van and drove across the peninsula up and down some very steep hills – complete with picturesque viewpoint looking back on Coromandel:

 

We next hit Hot Water Beach – which does exactly what it says on the tin. For 2 hours either side of low tide, you can dig a hole in the sand and create your own thermal pool in the sand. Unfortunately we didn’t have a spade or our swimming things so we just watched everyone else:

From there it was a short drive around the corner to Hahei and a walk to Cathedral Cove – a beautiful beach with limestone caves and stacks – easy to imagine it packed with tourists in the summer as the sea was amazingly blue, and there were still quite a few people around on Sunday and one girl even went in the sea (I was wearing a scarf it was that chilly…)

As our van is pretty much self-sufficient, we’re trying not to stay in too many paid-for campsites and so we diverted off our planned route south to a small town called Paeroa (famous for Lemon and Paeroa drink) where our camping book said we could camp for free – yay! We drove alongside a river through a beautiful gorge to reach the town but unfortunately it was a bit dark to take pics. We arrived at the designated camping spot – basically a few parking spaces just off the main road, but it did have power sockets, water and toilets – which is pretty much all we ever use in the proper campsites anyway.

We headed directly South from Paeroa through flat farmland with mountains on each side in the distance. We passed through Matamata, where Hobbiton was set in Lord of the Rings – we decided to pass on the tour as they charge $50 for the privilege of looking at some mounds of grass. We drove on to Rotarua which stinks. I’m sure it’s pleasant enough town, but who could live somewhere that smells of rotten eggs?! Having a steaming bubbling pool of mud in your garden would be pretty cool though.

 

We made the most of the thermal activity, and stayed in a campsite right next door to Waikite thermal pools which gave us unlimited access to the set of pool heated by a natural boiling hot water spring. It was so nice to lounge around in hot water seeing as we haven’t had a proper bath since leaving home (note: we have had lots and lots of showers – we’re not that stinky).

TTFN Australia… Hello New Zealand

Oh my gosh it is cold in New Zealand. Well, winter has definitely set in and coming from the tropics it is quite a shock to the system. Yesterday I was lying by the lagoon in Cairns in my bikini smothered in suncream and today I wore a scarf out and was still cold. Small small world. But I shall get to New Zealand in a bit, but first need to finish off our Queensland journey…

Last post I left us just outside Townsville where we spent the night listening to turkeys and wallabies rustle around in the undergrowth. From there we spent the morning in Townsville catching up with internet admin and booking flights etc etc yawn yawn before catching the passenger ferry over to Magnetic Island. The island is only 8km from the mainland but about 50 years behind! It has a small permanent population residing in 4 or 5 beachside towns and the rest of the island is inhabited with eucalyptus forest and wild creatures.

We stayed in the YHA on the island which comes with it’s own mini wildlife park with a baby wallaby, koalas, cockatoos and crocodiles. We spent the afternoon exploring around the hostel and of course had some beach time at Horseshoe Bay.

There’s not much going on around Horseshoe Bay of an evening so luckily the hostel has it’s own bar and it was trivia night! We came a reasonable 4th being that there was only 2 of us, and now we know all the countries in the world beginning with L.

As part of the mini wildlife park, the hostel hosts a champagne bushtucker brunch with the koalas each day and we couldn’t turn that one down. We toasted bread over a fire, ate raw honeycomb and a few other random bush foods whilst the keepers brought round a baby crocodile (Barbie) and a snake for us to touch. After brekkie we had our meeting with Barney the Koala and got to stroke his soft fuzzy fur and learn all about koalas from his keeper.

Barney is an old codger and is a bit fed up of the tourists gawping at him now:

Magnetic Island is one of the best places to spot wild koalas – still quite tricky to spot as they don’t really move all that much and just appear as a motionless grey blob in a tree. But we did see a couple on our mammoth (in the heat) walk from the hostel up to old ruined WWII forts. We could have just got the bus but the distances on the map didn’t look too far… It was a sweltering few hours tramping in the bush wearing flip flops (shoes in van on mainland oops) with not enough water. Gatorade and a cheeky dip in the sea were well needed when we reached Alma Bay.

We headed back on the ferry that afternoon after a very pleasant twenty four hours on the island. We made it a couple more hours up the coast before dark, laundry and showers called us into a campsite just off the highway. We were the main attraction that night as we were at least 40 years under the average age of the other campsite residents… we were greeted with ‘Hello young people!’ in the morning by a lovely 75 yr old man on his winter caravan trip with his wife :-)

We set off early to make it to the Atherton Tablelands that aftrenoon and stopped for lunch at Mission Beach – a beautiful long sandy beach popular with the backpackers wanting to chuck themselves out of planes…

We drove a convoluted wiggly route through the Tablelands – evidence of old volcanic activity which has resulted in a high plateau covered in farmland and sprinkled with waterfalls and lakes. The place is beatiful but I was driving so haven’t got any pics I’m afriad. We stopped the night at Lake Tinaroo – cue the mossies appearing in droves at dusk. We drove the scenic route out of the Tablelands heading through some almost proper outback for 50km or so – there were even termite mounds. We stopped for a break at Mossman Gorge which is a nice swimming spot but the water was a bit too chilly for us – some crazy British backpackers were lolling around quite happily though! We continued North across the Daintree River cable ferry to Cape Tribulation. This is one of the few places in the world where rainforest meets beach and is spectacular but the light was a bit tricky to get decent shots.

 

We spent an afternoon and a morning exploring the Cape – visiting a mangrove boardwalk and an ice-cream company and watching out for stray carrowaries – odd emu like colourful birds only found in Northern Queensland and Papua New Guinea. We didn’t see one. Saw a crocodile though on the banks of the river and also saw the biggest non-tarantula spiders ever – it was bigger than the photo shows! ugh

From Cape Trib we headed south (as the sealed road runs out) back down to Port Douglas to spend an afternoon louging on the beach and pootling around the toursity shops. It’s a lovely little seaside town and we had a few glasses of wine whilst listening to some local bands play – big night out for us as we usually watch tv on the laptop in the van!

We continued south to the Cairns area and spent our last van night in a very out of the way NP campsite near Kuranda, about 30km from Cairns. We’d driven another 2700km of Aus sie roads which takes us up to over 8000km in total for our 3 roadtrips. That is a lot of driving done and sweets eaten!

Here’s a map of our Queensland trip:

We spent our last day sorting our van out and swimming in the lagoon (until it rained darn it) and then had an early last Australian night as we had to be up at 4am to catch our NZ flight :-(

So we’ve now said goodbye to Australia for a wee while but we will be back sometime soon… Now for the Kiwi adventures to begin…