The Southern Drop

Driving into the southerly cloud near Burke's pass, just on sunset.

Having done the north island, and the top of the south, it was now time to get into rest of the South Island, into the real good stuff. The bottom half of the south island is the real tourist trail of New Zealand, as it has some of the best scenery. I'm pleased to report, however, that it hasn't all been taken over by tour buses, or subdivided and sold off to rich foreigners. At least not yet.

Mum, Owen, Tracey, and Dad, outside the church

First, though, there was the matter of my brother's wedding to attend to. Owen is my younger brother by three years, and on the 5th of March he got married to Tracey, a fine young lass from Christchurch. Owen asked me to be his best man, which was both a surprise and an honour. The wedding, and everything associated with it, went about as smoothly as these things do, it was really quite remarkible really. Dorthe and I were really quite amazed about how relaxed Owen and Tracey were in the months and weeks leading into it - obviously, they were fully on top of it, because it just cruised along under its own power. The wedding was fantastic, and we both enjoyed ourselves a lot - as best man, I also got to embaress my brother one last time, which was also rather enjoyable. Yup, a really enjoyable time.

Dorthe and I spent about two weeks or so in Timaru and Christchurch before the wedding, helping with the preparations, and generally doing farmwork etc etc. But as soon as the wedding was done, we took off to complete our tour of New Zealand. From Christchurch we headed back over Arthur's Pass, and down the west coast to Fox Glacier, a region famed for two glaciers. Our plans to explore and walk on them were unfortunately ruined by a classic west coast torrential downpour, which lead to rising rivers and access to the glaciers being cut off. D'oh!!! Oh well. We waited a bit for the weather to clear, and were rewarded with a couple of nice glimpses of the ice through the cloud, but we decided that it was best to cut our losses, and head further south.

Mark feeling at home on the Routeburn

We worked our way south for the next two days, passing over the beautiful Haast pass, and through the tourist towns of first Wanaka, then Queenstown, and then Te Anau. They're nice places to visit - if you have money, which we don't. Neither of us were too excited about $140 for a bungy jump! Instead, we headed for the Routeburn track, a classic New Zealand walking track that crosses the Southern Alps right in the heart of Fiordland. As well as being specactular, this area is also one of the wettest places on earth - in the six days prior to our arrival, they had had 935mm of rain. For comparison, Christchurch, Copenhagen, and San Francisco all get about 600mm of rain - in a YEAR!!! True to form, the first day of the trip, it was bucketing down - so we went anyway - it's not Fiordland if you don't get wet. I have to say, it took a while to muster up the courage to pack up the gear and step out of the car into torrential rain though, but once we did, it was worth it - the native bush of New Zealand (and especially Fiordland) is incredibly well adapted to rain, and it seemed to be at its most brilliant when it was raining. Even though we didn't break the bushline at all on the first day, the rain made it the most spectacular - every single tree was dripping with wet moss and lichen, every little bank turned into a waterfall, every stream into a roaring torrent, and the major waterfalls... Well, you couldn't even approach them! I absolutely loved it.

The Routeburn track, in its full glory.

The Routeburn is an alpine crossing - the first day you walk along the side of the glacially carved Hollyford valley, right at the bushline. We stayed in Lake McKenzie hut that night, with 40 other sodden trampers all fighting for space around the stove to dry things out! The second day you continue along the side of the valley, and then jump up out of it, over the saddle, and then have a long descent down into the Routeburn valley. This descent was particularly spectactular, but unfortunately, one particular member of our party wasn't enjoying it very much - my left knee. By the time we got to Routeburn flats huts, she was pretty well buggered - it'd locked tight, and was really rather sore to walk on. Not what you want with another three days of tramping left to get back to the car.

Routeburn flats hut was surrounded by wild raspberry bushes, and of course Dorthe got very excited about this, and spent an hour out there raiding them - she got enough to completely fill two dessert bowls, and so for dessert that night we had raspberrys with brown sugar - all the other hikers were very jealous. The next morning we headed off, down to the end of the Routeburn track, from where we then planned to take a shuttle about 20km down the road to the start of the Caples track, which two days later would bring us back to the car. But it was fairly quickly became obvious that my knee was poked, s no way it was going to hold up to another two days of hard tramping. What to do, what to do?

Dorthe admires the view of Routeburn Flats, from just above the Routeburn Falls hut

One of the interesting things about tramping in NZ is that you can walk a short distance (in our case 50km) and be a very long way from your car by road (in our case more than 330km). Being poor broke backpackers, there was only one option - hitchhike. And what a hitch we got - we talked the shuttle man into dropping us at Glenorchy, and about three cars later, we got a ride with a very friendly Dutch couple. We were only expecting to go to Queenstown, but they were going all the way to Te Anau, so we had a very pleasant four hour ride to Te Anau - we arrived there at 6:30pm, with 130km and 90 mins of daylight left. Would we make it? No wurries - four cars later we got picked up by a german couple in a campervan - we were at the car by 7:45pm, and off again, dodgy knee and all. My climbing partner, Matt and I did an analogous hitch about three years ago - it took us six rides, a night squatting in a farmers paddock, and a paid bus ride to get back to the car. Suffice to say, I was very excited about how well it went this time!

Milford Sound, with Mitre peak to the left and The Lion to the right.

That night was spent in Milford Sound, and early the next morning we headed out on a boat for a tour around. Milford Sound is a large glacial fiord, and it really is quite impressive - every time I go there I forget about the sheer scale of things. Very nice. But then it was time to continue back South, with the aim of getting home to Timaru ASAP to get my knee fixed up. We were treated to a spectacular sunset that night at Manapouri, and then worked our way to the very south coast, before turning east through Invercargill, Bluff, into the Catlans, and then up to Dunedin. This area is rather scenic, but the highlight for me was running into the Sheep Dog trials near Blackmount - yes, that's right, competitive sheep herding. They even show it on TV here. I'm not sure what Dorthe through of it, but I quite enjoyed introducing her to this little bit of kiwiana. We spent the night that night in the Catlans at Waipapa point, with the car parked underneath a lighthouse, looking out to sea, with the faint green glow of Aurora australias hovering over Antarctica, 3000km to the south. Very nice.

Dorthe prepares breakfast in Mt Cook national park, with the legendary east face of Mt Sefton in the background.

In Dunedin we paid a flying visit to the Royal Albatross Colony (sorry, bad pun), a quick blat up Baldwin street (the worlds steepest street), and then headed north for the grand finale - Mt Cook. We parked the car about 20km back from the base that night, and were greeted with a spectacular alpenglow on the mountain the next morning. I have a poster at home showing that exact scene, and waking up in the middle of it was a very memorable end to our south island tour - after exploring the area for the rest of that day we reluctantly headed home to Timaru.

Dorthe trys her hand at driving cattle back on the farm.

When we arrived back on the farm, the speedo on the car said 76,599km. When we started, three months ago, it read 66,200km. We have been to the very north of the North Island, and the very south of the South Island. We got rained on, and we got sunburnt. We ate far too much fish and chips, and cultured our mutual addiction to Hokey Pokey ice cream. New Zealand, one could say, is done.

The Southern Drop Photo Album