Top of the South

Dorthe putting her back into it, kayaking in Able Tasman National Park.

Right. Now, to finally fill in the gaps, and bring this blog fully up to date, we need to talk a bit about our trip around the top half of the south island. For me, this has been a rather interesting and surprising part of the trip - as a born and bred south islander, I thought I had seen pretty much all there was to see down here. However, it was a really pleasant surprise to find some new and exciting corners I hadn't visited before.

Dinner at Kaiterieri: fresh green-lipped mussels in a white wine sauce cooking over my MSR stove.

After our brief sortie to Wellington for the weekend (to see Jeff and Patty and Ant - see below) we headed back to Blenheim, where we stayed the night we family friends. From there we then headed across the very top of the South Island, passing through the Marlborough Sounds and Nelson, ending up at the beachfront town of Kaiteriteri, in Able Tasman National Park. One particularly rewarding stop that we made along the way was at Havelock, where we brought two dozen live green-lipped mussels (NZ$7 - cheap!) - we cooked them up that night on the beach in a white wine sauce over my camp stove. Hmmmmm.....

Dorthe at Observation Beach, our campsite on the first night in Able Tasman National Park.

The reason for heading to Able Tasman NP was to go sea kayaking. We hired a double touring sea-kayak, filled it up with food and camping gear, and then spent four days paddling in the beautiful clear waters of the national park. Each night, we would camp at a site on of the beach - often it was only accessible by water. The coastline in that area is littered with tidal lagoons which we would dash into at high tide, explore and play around in, and then dash out before the tide receeded too much leaving us stranded (we got caught by the receeding tide badly on one occasion, leaving us to drag the 60kg kayak 250m to the water!)! Further, all of the beaches are composed of a rich golden sand that is especally beautiful in the morning and evening light - bare feet and swimming togs were definitely the order of the day. We saw and paddled with fur seals, and ate mussels that we had picked off the rocks ourselves (yup, more mussels. Hmmmmmm.....). The weather was even accomodating - we got a light drizzle on the third day, but the other three were warm and clear, with even a sea breeze to blow us back home on the last day. You couldn't really ask for much more. They were four throughly enjoyable and relaxing days.

Crossing the dual-use one lane bridge on State Highway 6 over the Taramakau river, near Kumara, on the West Coast. Hang on, isn't that a railway line down the middle of the road?

From Kaiteriteri, we headed even further north to the very north-western corner of the south island - Farewell Spit. I had never been to this area before, and I really enjoyed both it's remoteness and beauty - large limestone cliffs, topped by rolling green pasture and (of course) lots of sheep. The Farewell spit itself is immense, stretching over 30 km out to sea, and separating the Tasman Sea from the Pacific - the cafe at the base of the spit made an idea spot to relax and watch the birds from, and we spent quite a bit of time there getting stuck into their outstanding carrot cake. We were both quite disappointed to leave that area, and have marked it as a "must return" area, but unfortuantely we had deadlines to make. Returning from the spit, we also visited Pupu springs, the source of worlds clearest freshwater, which looked decepively shallow - rocks 4m down looked like they were just under the surface - the water tastes great too!

Woodpecker bay, on the rugged West Coast.

From the northwest, we headed south, down the rugged west coast of the South Island, taking two days to get to Hokitika. Along the way we were treated to spectacular scenery, reminiscent of Big Sur in California, only with lush green hills covered in dense native bush (rather than dry, brown California scrub). People always told me that it reminded them of Big Sur - having been to both now, I can really understand the comparison. From the greenstone (jade) and gold rich town of Hokitika, we turned inland, back towards Christchurch, over Arthur's Pass - the rest of the South Island will have to wait until after my brother's wedding. However, on the way we were able to spend some time hiking amongst the mountains of Arthur's Pass National Park - the foray into the alpine zone was a welcome relief from the native bush where the air was dark with sandflies (a unique NZ species - like mosquitos, only worse) - it seems that they like Dorthe's danish blood a lot more than my boring old kiwi blood - she was brutalised by them all the way down the West Coast, and yet, we haven't even got to the "bad" sandfly areas yet!

Looking into the backcountry from the top of Castle Hill

Finally, we made our way back to Christchurch, passing through the Castle Hill area - a series of natural limestone outcroppings that were featured in Lord of the Rings, and are quite spectacular. We arrived in Christchurch just in time for the cricket match against Australia. I'm not completely sure how much of it Dorthe understood, but I did my best to explain what is a rather complex game at the best of times. Still, she did understand enough to give me shit about how badly we did - Australia won by 107 runs..... Grrrr.......

Dorthe trying to figure out the cricket: New Zealand vs Australia at Lancaster Park, Christchurch. Australia won by, um, 107 runs.

We now have a couple of weeks rest, before a start travelling again. In particular, we are getting ready for my brother's wedding on the 5th March - his stag party was on Saturday night, and was a suitably drunken affair, involving mountain biking, go-karting, and of course, lots of drinking. After the wedding, we then complete our grand tour of NZ with two more weeks in the south of the south island. Then, on the 23rd March, the real fun begins - South America! There'll be a post or two more before then, so keep reading. Until then, here are the links to the photo albums for this section of the trip.

Dolphin Swimming and Wellington
Kayaking and the West Coast