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A few close shaves with sheep, a few frayed nerves, a whole lot of tim tams and 1887km we have arrived safe and sound at the airport awaiting our flight to Sydney. New Zealand has been full of ups and downs, freezing at points and a bit dull (if you can believe the cheek of me saying it!?) but overall it has been great. AND Louise let me write this one!
Our first (and favourite) stop was Lake Tekapo, which literally made Page gasp as we crossed the bridge into town to see the cobalt blue lake and the snow gapped mountains. We stayed 3 nights here and decided to camp on a department of conservation campsite which I am assured by Louise, closely resembled the set of 'The Hills Have Eyes'. With the exception of one murderous looking man, who I assume lives alone on the lake with a fully named collection of decapitated dolls, we were the only "guests". For some reason, maybe the fight we had with the sheep or the sheer time it took to get down the dirt track to the "campsite", we decided to stay. We survived the night to find ice on the inside of our camper van, yup......the INSIDE of out campervan. Page was not impressed, so to not tempt our would be murderer anymore and appease Pages dislike of the cold, we moved to a powered camp site in town where we could plug in and use our heater (which we did for the remainder of our journey). We completed one of our many New Zealand hikes in Tekapo, to the summit of Mt St John. With views of the surrounding mountain and lake it was well worth the walk to the top, Page didn't even complain that much!
From Tekapo we went down to Wanaka, where we met up with my friend Buck which was a lot different to Tekapo.....not in its scenery, which was almost exactly the same only with a less vibrant lake, but in the fact that our main activity here was drinking coffee and beer while boring Page with old uni stories. I had a great time and we almost convinced Buck to take us skiing, which I'm convinced I can do exceedingly well regardless of the fact I have never been close to a pair of ski's - my skills will have to wait for another more thought out trip I imagine. When we decided to leave the caffeine and alcohol soaked Wanaka we had a bit of a nightmare, we drove off with our power cable still plugged in.....we only noticed when someone started flashing his lights and honking his horn at us. This begun a sequence of events which took us through the whole spectrum of emotions and eventually lead us to an angel called Brendon who re-wired our plug for us free of charge, this was great news as I'm sure the rental company would have loaded on the costs for a repair but most importantly allowed us to continue to use the heater at night!!
When we eventually said goodbye to Brendon we drove the 5 hours to a town called Te Anau, which we read was the walking capital of New Zealand and after our exploits in Yosemite and Tekapo we were looking forward to it. It turns out however that the walking capital of New Zealand is a big dull dud, with very little happening in the day and even less to do in the evening......we were very pleased to leave and only stayed for one night. The journey to our next stop was not that far, nevertheless the undulating and winding roads of New Zealand meant we were on the road for 3 hours on the way to Milford Sound. We did stop once to walk the key Summit trail, which Page was not enamoured with but she did it and the views at the top were great and I think she was secretly proud that she kept going. After this we arrived in Milford Sound hoping to find somewhere to have a drink and chill out a bit but it's a strange place which only has a harbour for tourist cruises and one shop which tries to be a coffee shop, bar and information point. Regardless of this we enjoyed Milford Sound and went on the tourist cruise which turned out to be a lot of fun and showed us much more of the region than we would have normally seen.
After the scenic and calm Milford Sound we moved onto Queenstown, which is a whole different kettle of fish. We stayed 2 nights and spent one of them in an Ice Bar, literally a bar in a freezer where everything apart from the bottles of vodka are made of ice. I had a great time but Page thought it was far too cold (even through the layers they give you) so we had to leave after a while to a more adequately heated bar. We had a blast and both think if we had to live somewhere in New Zealand, irrespective of the scenery elsewhere, we'd move to Queenstown.
Nursing slight hangovers and not 100% sure where we were going to, we headed north towards the west Coast. 9 hours later after blasting through Haast, Fox Glacier, Franz Joseph and Greymouth we decided to stop in Westport......not for any reason other than driving for more than 10 hours would have been ridiculous. The motor park we stayed in was pretty much a hippie commune, with buses that looked like they hadn't moved since the drivers last acid trip....we did make friends with a local cat however which pleased Page immensely!
The next few days were a blur of driving and dull lifeless towns such as Pohara (Page loved it even though it was raining, but we went to Rawiti Caves which were great), Nelson and Picton.....we finally arrived in Blenhein, which rescued the north for us both. We stayed in a great holiday park owned by an old couple called Paul and Pat who gave us some bikes and a map to tour the local wineries. We spent the next 14km and 5 hours leisurely riding from cellar door to cellar door being given various amounts of free wine, I was assured that they smelt like plum, pears and children playing happily in the fields but all I could smell was red wine, white wine and VICTORY!
Stay tuned, off to Sydney!
- comments
Ben Hi tom louise (page) I've been following all your blogs, it's great to see your have such a good time. Miss you though. Dad xx
Karen You can't say you haven't done NZ! Great blog Tom - loved the bits about the scenery, Page, the angel Brendon and the cat. Glad you moved on from the lonely dirt road camp site (be safe...be wise) and got to plug your heater and keep warm. Can't wait to hear about Aus! Love you both Kxx
deb glithero Ha Ha,very funny blog,thank god/channel/armani/??? for Onesie's, l think it saved both your lives! waiting with bated breath for the next installment. love to you both and thankyou Brendan for looking after my little ones xx
Sam So enjoying reading about your adventures. Take care. Sam xx