Fran not happy with the weather situation
Happy to leave the rain of Queenstown, we head towards blue sky over Wanaka and the West coast beyond. Dwarfed by it’s teenage plagued neighbour of Queenstown, Wanaka is rather more low key, but just as much a skiing hub being the nearest place to stay for Cardrona and the Treble Cone ski field. Unfortunately the weather really didn’t pick up and so we decided to ditch the thought of skiing completely and instead treat ourselves to a night out. Difficult to give it justice through written word, Cinema Paradiso (the local cinema in Wanaka) just has to be experienced by any visitor. A wacky Scottish owner, half time intermission for food and drink and even pizza served to your seat – by seat this can be one of the numerous sofas, airline seats or even the seats of an old Moris Minor – hilarious. The smell of old grannies houses probably has something to do with the donated sofas. Awesome food at the Botswana Butchery next door (see the NZ food section soon!) made up for the terrible weather and lack of skiing.
Lake Wanaka
The next week or so was to be spent traveling up the West coast of New Zealand – a sparsely populated area of mountain and sub tropical rainforest. It rains a lot. 7 metres a year in fact, which would explain the fact that it rained for the next three days, except for the intervals of hail, but that kind of suited Franz Joseph – our next stop on the coast.
Franz Jospeh, home to the Frans Joseph glacier and a nice campsite / hostel called Rainforst Retreat where we payed bingo but unfortunately couldn’t stay around for the rock, paper, scissors tournament the following night. The half day hike on the Franz Jospeh glacier was spectacular – the photos really don’t give a good feeling of the size of these icy beasts – which incidentally move an average of one or two metres per day in parts!
Fran Joseph
Sir Nigel Hillary
Fran and Nige in a crevice
As we head north, the coastline became more and more spectacular and began, at long last, to feel more like the coast of California than the coast of a green Antarctica.
Pancake rocks on the West Coast
A great stopoff at “Pancake rocks” (I don’t recall the local Maori name as usual) where you can experience bizarre blow holes where waves bellow up through nooks and crannies in the limestone rock. Definitely one of the best natural sights that we’ve seen, and refreshing that you don’t have to pay for it for a change.
Blowhole
Greymouth, further up the coast, met our demands for a beery night being home to the Monteiths brewery and some subsequently bad karaoke from an American Tanner who was enjoying his 23rd birthday. Tsk, and he was probably one of the older ones.
Not much more to say about Greymouth I’m afraid, other than Neptune’s hostel for free bread, cakes and pies every afternoon. Go there if you can! So bypassing the far Northwest of the country we head inland and up to the Abel Tasman national park via the Buller Gorge (more spectacular scenery and forest) and Murchison where we took a surprisingly interesting look into the gold mining heritage which took over the area almost a century ago – a proper Indiana Jones experience of tunnels, mine carts and gold nuggets.
The Abel Tasman park is one of the smallest, but the most visited national reserves in New Zealand and so it was just as well that we visited in Winter. Blessed with a dryer climate than the west coast, we enjoyed a fantastic day’s hiking amongst ancient coastal forests and secluded beaches (which can camp up to 800 people in summer). You will of course know that Abel Tasman is the Dutch explorer who first sighted New Zealand decades before Captain Cook and so gave way to the rather Dutch name for the country (Zeeland is the name of a province in the Netherlands). There’s some pub trivia for you.
Abel Tasman
One of the many beaches of the Abel Tasman reserve
Lunch on our own beach
The silver fern of New Zealand
As we head back south from the Abel Tasman park, we pass vineyards, orchards and fields – it’s the cash crop agricultural hub of the South Island and you can expect to find apples, cherries, grapes, cabbages, silverbeet, pears, hops and of course the kiwi fruit. Infact, we managed to pick up a bag of 24 kiwi fruit for $2 (80p) – bargain eh?!
The commercial centre of all this fruity activity is Nelson which, it would appear at 11:30pm on a Saturday night, is the home of the New Zealand chav. Still we managed to keep ourselves busy with a hungover visit to the surreal Founder’s Heritage Park – a Truman Show ‘esque complex of fake buildings ranging from an 1930′s dentist to a 1950”s general store. Combined with the opportunity to ride a heritage train and an ancient fire engine, this is, infact, Sunday family and kids hell but the place did an AWESOME home made burger and had it’s own microbrewery to take the edge of the hangover and screaming kids.
Leaving the South island behind us, he head towards Picton via Havelock for a recommended pot of New Zealand green lip mussels and a quick fish in the sea where we both caught a brace of unidentified fish, but I think that they were young snapper.
Views of the Marlborough Sound from the ferry
Quickly bypassing Wellington we head up the West coast of the North island to W(h)anganui – there’s currently a debate over whether the town would replace the “h” in the original Maori name for the town – a debate which has been escalated to national news level. The other w(h)olly exciting business was our quick stop off at the Katie Brown’s glass blowing workshop which, I promise, is far more interesting than it sounds. The end results are amazing and are sold to clients worldwide.
Whanganui river road
Aiming our bright Orange spaceship towards the mainland we jetted ourselves to the Tongariro world heritage national park. An undulating volcanic plateau dominated by three “out of place” volcanic peaks of Ruapehu, Ngauruhoe and Tongariro. (A quick note for Lord of the Rings fans – Ruapehu and Ngauruhoe are Mordor and Mt Doom respectively) Our first view of the National Park was simply breathtaking as we approached from the Southwest on a clear sunny day.
Our first view of the Tongariro National Park
Ruapehu (Mordor) at sunset
Ngauruhoe (Mt Doom) at sunset
Infact it was at that moment, when we could see the ski slopes in the sun from at least 30km away, that we decided that we should SkiNZ and spend a day at the Whakapapa ski field -it was so warm that we could have probably got away with skiing in jeans and t-shirt if it had have been the 80′s 
It was great to get skiing in such amazing surrounds – the three peaks of the national park and then flat land for as far as you could see – the west coast infact, and the Taranaki Volcano over 150km away! A proper day’s skiing/boarding followed by much deserved beer in the sun – a little taste of flashpacking once again…
Nige on the ski field over looking Mt Doom!
Reluctantly leaving the last of the ski-fields behind us, we head up to Lake Taupo and it’s namesake lakeside town. The lake and associated river Tongariro are world renowned for trout fishing and for the tourists that flock to the lake in Summer. I’ve been reliably informed that it’s the size of Singapore and Singapore has more inhabitants than New Zealand. (Does everyone read the Lonely Planet?)
What has to be the highlight of the visit so far though was the Skydive Taupo. (The trout fishing took an obvious second place…:) Being something that I (Nige) have always wanted to do, this was definately the place to do it, and the weather was spot on – no wind and blue skies specked with high white clouds. It was a change to redeem myself after wussing out on all the bungy jumps NZ has to offer. What made it even more memorable is that Fran, with no intention of jumping, managed to be persuaded by the staff at the skydive centre and so 5 minutes before I’m due to go up she resigns with the statement “f#$* it I’ll do it” and a few moments later she finds herself in a jumpsuit – much to my amusement and the satisfaction of the skydivers! To be honest, it was great to share the experience with someone. I think we were reasonably calm up until the door opening at 12,000ft and seeing the others jump out ahead of us. Ten seconds later we’re sitting on the ledge of the plane, and the rest… well… you’ll just have to try for yourself. It certainly put a smile on our face for the rest of the day!
Nige in his jump suit
In the aftermath of a few adrenaline fueled days, we hope to have a good weekend out in Hamilton – home to this weekend’s All Blacks v South Africa TriNations match if we can get hold of some tickets. As I type, the atmosphere outside is building….
