Three Boat trips and a Burger

It rained on our first full day in Ohakune (although this was probably better than the volcano going off) so we had a lazy morning doing jigsaws and reading. By the afternoon we started getting cabin fever so while Katie went to the library to work Ed took Charlie to the railway museum. This was more of an elaborate shed with salvaged paraphernalia but crucially as far as Charlie was concerned they had a number of electric trains and he had the run of the place for almost an hour until two more small boys turned up at which point he proudly displayed his prowess as controller and then stood back hands on hips with a supercilious smirk on his little face.

"A train, a train, a train, a train"

We hired mountain bikes towing a trailer behind for Charlie and set off up the quaint sounding 'old coach road'. What we discovered was a nightmarish climb up the side of a mountain over rocks and grass, our unfitness hampering us combined with dragging the dead weight of a large child being pulled along like a lord in his own personal carriage. We made it about a third of the route to a quite spectacular railway viaduct where we lunched before deciding that it was more effort than it was worth to push on to the top and that we had probably sweated enough for one day.

The next day found us in Rotorua visiting a Maori village where people seem to live in imminent danger of being boiled alive in a hot pool or have molten magma rained down upon them at a moment's notice. We watched a performance of traditional Maori dance, songs and a haka, which was excellent and performed with much good humour. It was worth it to see the look on Charlie’s face when they did the haka – absolutely transfixed with his hand clamped over his mouth!

A terrified Charlie barely consented to this touristic shot

The unexpected highlight was camping by the Blue Lake just outside Rotorua. This is a scenic reserve with the campsite the only habitation allowed on the lake. We had borrowed a tent from Lois and Dom and when we arrived at the lake we were stunned by how, er, blue it was. The next day we woke up to burning sunshine and blue skies and Ed and Katie uncharacteristically decided to engage in some fairly vigorous physical activity, both taking it in turns to run the three mile perimeter of the lake followed by a swim to a pontoon in the middle. 

Hardly a better start to the day has ever been had and by the time we’d finished that Charlie had made friends with a boy on the campsite whose parents conveniently owned a boat, so that afternoon they took us all out on the lake. First we were towed round on a big inflatable ‘biscuit’ while the skipper Aaron tried to chuck off the riders and then Ed tried his hand at wake boarding and managed to stand up for a few seconds. 

 

Wipeout

Our fun afternoon came to unexpected end when the boat ran out of petrol and we had to flag down a jet-skier and get towed back to shore. Then we hightailed it back to Auckland for a late dinner and many bottles of wine with Kirsten, before saying goodbye to the North Island and heading for Queenstown the next day.  

Queenstown is in a stunning location, tucked in between mountains and flying in there on a clear day is quite a jaw dropping experience. We went straight out for dinner with Jess and Matt, contacts of an old colleague of Katie’s who were kind enough to show us round town and give us some tips on the most fun things to do. We checked out the weather forecast and it was set clear, so we decided the next day would be the best time to go to Milford Sound and photograph it in all it’s glory. So we headed out on the 5-hour drive the next morning and caught the afternoon boat. It was beautiful. Words do not suffice so here are some pictures.  

Sunny delight

Overhang

Seals - centre bottom, lazy

The Glacial facial

Windy

That night we headed to Manapouri and stayed in a very rustic cabin where Ed had to engage in an extremely bloody mosquito and sand fly extermination programme. We plugged the bottom of the door with towels and hoped for the best. Needless to say it helps knowing that nothing really nasty and bitey lives in NZ – if it had been in Australia Katie may well have been stomping off with her credit card to the nearest luxury hotel (anyone working for PEAS in Uganda c. 2011 will understand).

Our plan was then to head back through Queenstown for two more must-dos – the gondola and luge up the hill and a visit to Fergburger. The latter is a seemingly world-famous burger joint that serves up burgers the size of your head with names such as ‘Cock Cajun, ‘The Dawn Horn’ and ‘Bun Laden’ (a falafel burger). The tiny restaurant is busy all the time and their marketing is pervasive and pretty irritating (think girls in tiny shorts) so we went in with a healthy dose of cynicism. However, it pains us to say that it was epic. The burgers are stupidly enormous and delicious, served rare, and if you attempt to eat the whole thing (as we obviously did) at the end you suffer a sort of meat-induced whitey where you actively consider whether or not you should just go and be sick in the loos. If that isn’t what everyone should be looking for from a dining experience then we don’t know what is.

Shocked and nauseous, we then headed up the gondola and onto the luge, a funny little over priced go-kart down a quite disappointingly short track at the top of a mountain. Then Charlie had a fit because he found some giant toy diggers in the playground and they cost $2 to use and we didn’t have any cash. This was symptomatic of Queenstown – everything costs a lot of money. It’s a beautiful place but it is ultimately it seemed to us a rich person’s playground and most things apparently cost around $200. You could rinse a lot of cash taking the crazy Shotover Jet boat through a canyon, doing a bungee jump and paragliding. We will come back when we’ve finally made a million or two.

After a disappointing overnight stop in Cromwell and a swim in a chilly lake, we headed for the West Coast on SH6. However, instead of heading straight up towards Fox Glacier at Haast Junction, we took a 100km detour on the promise of a good feed of fush and chups (sic) from TheCraypot at Jackson Bay. 

Charlie with some dear little Kiwi salt and pepper shakers. Should have nicked them.

Our meal of gurnard and turbot did not disappoint, but what we did not expect was a) the swarms of sand fly down there that would descend on any piece of flesh like murderous piranhas (they make mosquitos look positively disorganized) and b) that we would swim with dolphins. As we drove out of Jackson Bay, we noticed that a pod of dolphins were playing in the surf on the beach really close to the land. We screeched to a halt and ran out on to the beach to watch them, all the time madly swatting away sand flies. It became obvious that if we didn’t get into the water we would be both missing a massive opportunity and be eaten alive, so in we jumped in our underwear. The dolphins were riding the surf and doing very cool jumps and flips, passing around 2m from us. They clearly knew we were there and it felt as if they were being friendly. It was an experience we won’t forget for a long time and all the better for being so unexpected.

The next few days were spent being awed by the Fox and Franz Josef glaciers, U-shaped valleys, moraine landscapes, mirror lakes, and the mighty Mount Cook always towering in the distance. 

Hands on hip for the glacier in the distance

Family glacier shot

 

Katie holding an ice block we found floating down stream.

We continued to head north and came across possibly the highlight of our entire New Zealand trip: a cafe with 2 kittens. We stayed for an hour playing with them. 

So. Cute.

We passed through cool Hokita, where we saw the remnants of the driftwood sculpture festival on the beach and ate a pretty passable whitebait pizza and Greymouth, which had a great campsite and we watched the sun go down on the beach while enthusiastic scouts lit bonfires around us.

Stoney

The next day a drive over Arthur’s Pass on the way to Christchurch gave us a second opportunity to see some Kea, who we met for the first time during the amazing drive to Milford Sound. These endemic parrots love to hang around rest stops and be photographed by tourists while they tear strips of rubber off their hire car. They are very tame and are really fun to watch, as long as they are sat on some one else’s car. 

Charlie hanging out with Kea

We stopped at Castle Hill on Arthur's Pass, although Katie declared herself too hot and grumpy to go for a walk and so spent an hour swatting away wasps in the car park while Ed and Charlie marvelled at the strange rock formations. 

Chillin'

We headed straight to the Bank Peninsula beyond Christchurch, which is about as inaccessible as Cornwall, and stayed two nights in Akaroa. It’s a lovely place and our campsite had a great view over the bay. We booked a ride on a jet boat but sadly Charlie wasn’t up for it in the end, so Ed went for a blast by himself and managed to spot a penguin. 

 

Got an hour to myself, even if I did have to endure a terrifying jet boat ride.

We saved just one day for Christchurch, which in retrospect was a shame as we really liked it. Clearly it’s still a building site after the 2011 earthquake, but the gaps the quake left have often been temporarily filled with the work of local artists, there’s a surfeit of cool looking cafes and bars, a lovely circular tram ride and an awesome children’s playground. We spent a very happy day there before flying out to Wellington for our last few days in NZ. 

Fun on the tram

Sad post-earthquake cathedral

Wellington is hilly and windy and we arrived just in time for a music festival that we were  neither aware of nor participating directly in but were subject to the sound system nonetheless. Our room in the YHA looked directly out to the harbour… and the main stage, so getting Charlie to sleep was an interesting experience. Wellington was full of young people drifting around in tiny playsuits that show off their thigh tattoos, so as Dalstonites we should have felt right at home. A highlight was the magnificent Gallipoli exhibition at the national museum, Te Papa. This is an exhibition that First World War enthusiast and film director Peter Jackson created to mark the centenary of the First World War and particularly NZ’s involvement. The exhibition is incredibly moving, informative and absorbing and tells the stories of men and women who left their families to fights and die, in many cases, thousands of miles from home.

One of the giant and incredibly life-like models created by Weta for the exhibition

New Zealand was absolutely brilliant and has shot straight to the top of our list of favourite places to be. If it wasn't so darn far from home we'd be buying that section up in Whangerai and building our own personal NZ palace, but sadly our good old family and friends are just a bit too nice to leave behind so we may have to come home after all. But not before we've braved the world's most deadly everything in Australia...