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Where's Dave O?
The South Island is known as 'the mainland' to the South Islanders, to whom the North Island equates to Auckland - and they don't like Auckland very much! There's less than a million people in the whole island and vast tracts of it wild and uninhabited.
My arrival point was Christchurch, which has the moniker of 'the most English of cities' but I found that, like an English city it wasn't at its best in the wind and driving rain so after two days of waiting for it to change I decided to go to the West coast where I was assured that the sun would be shining. I took the spectacular Tranz Alpine train journey which, after crossing the Canterbury Plains rose into the Southern Alps and then we crossed wide gorges on old trestle bridges, passed through huge sheep stations started by the first British settlers and rode by the shallow rivers where local sheep farmer Bill Hamilton developed and tested his jet boat, the world's first. Then we reached the snowline, surrounded by jagged white mountain peaks before entering the 3rd largest rail tunnel in the world and emerged on the other side of the Alps into glorious sunshine. After reaching the west coast and the Tasman Sea I headed south to Franz Josef glacier, the name of the world's fastest moving glacier (it's being known to advance 7m in one day - wouldn't want to be standing in its way!) as well as the town. I spent a day climbing around the beautiful glacier, exploring its crevasses and strange ice formations. Again and again in the South Island you can see how huge features such as valleys and lakes and even Milford Sound itself were created by the glaciers of old and it was certainly humbling to walk on one of the remaining few.
The perfectly situated town of Wanaka was my next stop and I went snowboarding in the nearby mountains, unfortunately fracturing a bone in my wrist in the process which has restricted my outdoor activities womewhat since. So I have become a bit more of a sightseer but at least I can still 'tramp'! I wandered through activity capital Queenstown without doing any activities, then took the spectacular journey to Milford Sound, carved out of rock by a glacier, afterwards filling when sea levels rose. There we were lucky enough to boat by a school of playful dolphins. Having time I went to the southermost city Invercargill whose welcome sign positively declares it the furthest NZ city from Auckland! A legacy of the early religious settlers who weren't too fond of the sup, not the place to try and find a pint after 10pm on a weekday. Feeling thirsty I moved on to the Scottish settled city of Dunedin and visited the Speights brewery, learning what makes a Real Ale 'real' - answers on an email please! Stopping off along the coast on the way back to Christchurch I saw the funny little blue penguins waddling out of the sea at dusk to hurry back home after a hard day's fishing.
With my NZ tour coming to an end it still hasn't stopped raining in Christchurch...
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