New Zealand

Somehow the hours and days of flying and stop overs passed relatively smoothly on our flights to New Zealand. Perhaps it was Alkesh's newly-acquired sleeping ability (thanks to 'anywhere-dozing' on countless South American buses!), or my inflatable pillow or of course the numerous in-flight movie options from San Francisco to Auckland... whatever said and done, we arrived in Auckland feeling better than expected.

Having said this, we did wander around for a few hours in somewhat of a daze as our brains slowly took in the 'Western world' familiarity... we understood the language, could navigate the city instantly and felt immediately at ease. This was a welcome change and a good respite inbetween the cultural differences of South America and South East Asia still to come. Cost of goods shocked us back to reality quite quickly though... $4 for a coffee?! Get outta here - howz about I give you 4 pesos for it!



We arrived in to Auckland and really only spent enough time there to figure our our plans for our time in New Zealand, organise transport and then head for the South Island - this being the focus of our short 10-day stay in NZ. Apparently the more beautiful and certainly the more touristy, South Island promised beautiful landscapes, mountains and lakes a plenty.



We had just enough time in Auckland to check out a couple of the sights. We took a short boat ride across the Bay to visit Rangitoto Island. It is one of several active volcanoes in the Auckland region - in fact, Rangitoto is the 'newest' volcano, having appeared just 600 years ago. After a short 1 hour walk (nothing for us Peru trekkers!) to the crater summit, we enjoyed looking back on to the Auckland harbour and the various islands further into the Bay. That afternoon, we visited the Auckland Museum to look at the vast collection of Maori culture artefacts. Auckland is NZ's biggest city with a population of c. 1.2 million - a far cry from the crowded metropolises of Buenos Aires and Rio.





A short flight later, and we were in Christchurch - the biggest city in the South Island, with just over 300,000 people! An interesting (though of course much-cited) fact for you all: New Zealand is home to 4 million people but more than 40 million sheep... wow!



It was here in Christchurch that we picked up our vehicle - the 'Spaceship' - a campervan that was to be our transport, home and entertainment suite (! - I use that term liberally) for the next 7 days as we toured round the South Island. Inside the bright orange Toyota people carrier, our Spaceship rental came with all that we needed: double bed, kitchen with crockery and cutlery, fridge, bedding, storage and even a DVD player! Very quickly, we became conversant in putting our stuff away with minimum fuss, effortlessly converting the Spaceship interior from bedroom to lounge to dining room!





Summary of our 7-day roadtrip
Day 1 - Christchurch to Geraldine - 195 km
Day 2 - Geraldine to Queenstown to Lumsden - 646k km (cumulative)
Day 3 - Lumsden to Te Anau to Milford Sound and Boat Cruise - 930 km
Day 4 - Te Anau to Queenstown to Wanaka - 1240 km
Day 5 - Half day hike to Rob Roy Glacier, Wanaka to Haast - 1480 km
Day 6 - Haast to Fox Glacier to Franz Josef Glacier to Hokitika - 1765 km
Day 7 - Hokitika to Christchurch via Arthur's Pass, following the Trans-Apline train tracks - 2014 km





It's hard to explain the beauty of such untouched countryside - and because we weren't in high-season, even at tourist 'hot-spots', there were rarely more than a handful of cars parked up. Driving was a joy - the views from the windscreen and side mirrors were spectacular. We got to experience different landscapes along our journey: alpine countryside, rainforests, mountain peaks, lush green rolling hills, agricultural plains... the list goes on. Here are some of our highlights:



Milford Sound
Technically, a 'sound' is a water-filled valley caused by river erosion. As it turns out, Milford is actually a fjord - a water-filled valley caused by glacial erosion. Whatsmore, the New Zealanders spelled it incorrectly: fiord! Semantics aside, we were treated to towering rocky cliffs rising out of the dark water depths. The cliff faces were so steep (practically vertical in some cases), that top soil was minimal and plants and bushes hung on for dear life. Occasionally after heavy rains, the water-sodden trees and top soil would give way, causing a tree avalanche - you could see great strips of bare rock where the vegetation had been stripped away by just such an avalanche.



Due to heavy rainfall in this area (an annual average of 7m), the fjords are covered in several rain-dependent waterfalls - some falling from heights 3x as high as the Niagara Falls... Alkesh got up close and personal to one such waterfall - a good soaking!



We also could see the 'steps' carved out up the sides of the valleys - these palisades marked each ice age and the Milford Sounds are the result of glacial action over 5 ice ages, the most recent of which finished 15-20,000 years ago. This also resulted in hanging valleys. The area is rich in minerals - copper, iron, gold, garnet etc. - but unfortunately none of these can be mined as the area is a world heritage site.



Rob Roy Valley Track
From base camp at Wanaka, we drove about 30km to the trail head of our 4 hour hike. Along the way we saw lots of sheep, cows (causing us to navigate through 1 herd that blocked the road ahead!) and deer. The track took us through beech and then alpine forest, before we cleared the tree line and saw the massive Rob Roy glacier.







Fox + Franz Josef Glaciers
Just in case, we hadn't already had our complete fill of glaciers over the past 18 months (!), we thought it best to visit the Fox and Franz Joseph twin glaciers on the west coast of South Island. All jokes aside, both of these glaciers used to extend all the way to the Tasman Sea and have since retreated many kilometres but they left behind their path carved through the rocks.
[P.S. We are thinking of re-naming this blog to be called Alkesh and Navita's Glacier Hunt!]





Queenstown
By the end of this 18 month extravaganza, we will have seen many places that we'd love to call home one day, if we ever had the opportunity some time in the future. Certainly Vancouver was one such place for us; other people may include Buenos Aires on the list... but we both fell in love with our first glimpse of Queenstown.



Nestled in the corner of Lake Wakatipu, surrounded by beautiful mountains, Queenstown is a sleepy-looking town but with an extreme edge to it - home to all the adventure junkie sports you could imagine, such as bungy jumping, ski-diving and paragliding. Now we aren't adventure junkies by any means, but we were very tempted by tandem para-gliding but we simply couldn't afford it on this trip... perhaps we'll do it on the South Downs one day! We spent a few hours walking round the city, soaking up the glorious views and autumn sunshine. Giving the cheese, tomato and gherkin sandwiches a miss that day, we treated ourselves to the famous Fergburgers - gigantic and delicious!





So in summary, although we had so little time in New Zealand, we managed to cover quite a distance and take in some beautiful scenery along the way. Campervanning is definitely part of the traveller experience and we were surprised at just how many campervans, caravans and motor homes we saw on the roads - the country is clearly well set up for this kind of travel. At times, we were the only car on the long road stretched out ahead of us for what seemed hours.



It was a lot of travelling but thankfully we shared it out between us and took it at a leisurely pace, stopping for lunch and breaks at the numerous view points along the route. It is very satisfying to be 100% (well almost!) self-sufficient, spending nights at isolated lake shores, surrounded by snowy mountains or rainforests. We enjoyed cooking our basic meals - but boy, did they taste good... our highlight was a Mexican veggie chilli beans and rice dish, cooked all in 1 pot of course!



Accommodation each night varied in quality and experience - but always delivered good fun, if only because we watched more than our fair share of B-list films on the DVD player and often supplemented this with some wine and TimTams (ANZ's answer to Penguins). By chance (and perhaps, somewhat unknowingly!), we spent our first night 'freedom-camping' - this is the term given to parking up pretty much anywhere and spending the night for free... not illegal, but nor is it encouraged. Other nights' accommodation included the basic Dept. of Conservation sites which were cheap but only offered toilets and perhaps the odd sheltered picnic bench - however, they often were the best locations, right on the lake or with great views of the surrounding mountain ranges. Some nights we treated ourselves to more expensive holiday parks - these offered all the facilities, most importantly hot showers (I mean, there's only so far face wipes can go)!

THIS VIDEO IS FOR SIANA:





In hindsight, we can laugh about one night in particular... we were freedom-camping by the Haast River in the heart of the rainforest (night of day 5) and after cooking pasta and watching a rubbish film about Malcolm X, we settled in for an early night's sleep. At about 4am, Alkesh was woken up by the buzzing sound of a mosquito near his ear. A quick flail of the arms and ducking under the covers, we went back to sleep. Not but an hour later, Alkesh woke up again to realise the air hole he was breathing from, under the safety of the duvet, had been infiltrated by another mosquito - it bit him on his big fleshy bottom lip... as if it needed to be made any bigger! We switched on the lights and were horrified to see at least 30 mosquitoes in the Spaceship, some drunkenly flying around having filled their bellies with our blood... disgusting! We squatted away as many as we could possibly find, then quickly got in the front seats and drove away from the campsite, windows down, trying to blast out all the horrible mosquitoes. 45 minutes later, we pulled up at a lake to survey the damage: most of the mossies had gone, but Alkesh's face looked like the Elephant Man with several big red swellings and I had my fair share too! Not a pleasant experience and now we're resisting the urge to scratch the hell out of our bites. That'll teach us never to freedom camp near a rainforest ever again!!



We're here in Christchurch for our last day, before flying to Sydney, Australia tomorrow. Alkesh enjoyed a fine lamb shank dish last night and we're spending today doing the usual 'end of country' tasks - updating our blog, re-packing our bags and planning what we'll do in the next country. New Zealand has been a short but great trip - we could easily have spent many more weeks here... perhaps another time in the future.