Aotearoa/New Zealand Visit April 2005 — B. A. Weaver
Introduction
This is a write-up of my visit to Aotearoa/New Zealand in April of 2005. Aotearoa is the Maori name for New Zealand.
15 April 2005
I arrived in Auckland at about 06:00 local time after a 12-hour flight that was uneventful, at least until the end. My large suitcase, one of two I had packed, failed to arrive, even though it was a direct flight. It took a while to get out of baggage claim as a result of having to inform the airline of the loss. Shelley was waiting for me at the baggage claim exit. We quickly got her car loaded up & drove to her house in Matamata to finish some of the packing for the trip & have breakfast. The town of Matamata is better known these days as 'Hobbiton', since the Hobbiton scenes of The Lord of the Rings were filmed there. Once we were ready we stopped briefly in central Matamata for a few errands. We drove to Wellington on SH1. This is mostly a two-lane road, though very well cared-for. This is one of the pleasures of visiting a very small country. Excepting brief stops for petrol, we drove straight through to Wellington. We got there in plenty of time to catch the ferry to the South Island. The ferry carries cars, trucks, railroad cars & lots of people. Basically we were rushing to get to the ferry & the South Island ahead of the school holiday rush, which began the next day. It was already starting to get dark when we boarded the ferry, so there wasn't much to see beyond Wellington harbour. The ferry is quite comfortable, although one can feel the rolling from the swells in the Cook Strait. This was no bother for me, but Shelley was uncomfortable at times. After our arrival in Picton about 2.5 hours later, we drove to the nearby town of Koromiko, where we had booked a room in a Best Western motel.
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16 April 2005
We got up early & on to Blenheim. I called the airline, & they reported that my suitcase was in the country & would be delivered to Blenheim airport. We had a quick breakfast at a bakery & also reserved our camping spot for the night. Then it was off to the wineries around Renwick. We started at Celier Le Brun, known for their sparkling wines. We visited Grove Mill, Framingham & Seresin Estate, all very close to each other. Although the region is famed for Sauvingon Blanc, they also produce some very nice Riesling. Shelley also got me started on learning to drive a manual transmission car (on the left side too!). We practised on a side road near Seresin Estate. Although I found getting into first gear tricky, once moving, shifting was very easy. After that practise session we drove to Havelock, a small town on Charlotte Sound. We had lunch at a well-known restaurant named Mussel Boys. Indeed, their green-lipped mussels were fabulous. I had a batch steamed in Guinness. At this point I discovered I had lost my camera. I realised I had most likely left it at Seresin Estate. We drove back there & retrieved it. We went to one more winery. Over the course of the day we purchased roughly 18 bottles. It was getting to be late afternoon at that point. We stopped at the airport & retrieved my suitcase. We went back to the campground to pitch our tent. We finished that just as it was getting dark. We made a light dinner in the campground kitchen.
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17 April 2005
It was a bright, sunny morning. We took down our tent & had to hang the outer shell off the car so it could dry out a bit. Before we got on the road to Christchurch, we stopped at the Blenheim farmers' market. We picked up a number of nice lunch items, including some very nice homemade mustard. There is not very much along the road from Blenheim to Christchurch except for the town of Kaikoura. We stopped just north of Kaikoura to take pictures of a small pod of seals. Two of the pups were playing on the rocks. We had lunch in a little park on the beach in Kaikoura. The Southern Alps come right down to the ocean at that point, so the views are spectacular. We drove on to Christchurch. We first stopped at our hotel, the Stonehurst. Then we drove up into the hills south of the city. We saw nice views of Christchurch, as well as of Lyttleton harbour. Even here there were numerous sheep. We went down into Lyttleton & stopped at a pub called the Rat & Roach. We played checkers there. Shelley defeated me soundly. It took a little while to find the tunnel back to Christchurch, but we did eventually. We stopped at a grocery for some more items for dinner. We cooked dinner in the Stonehurst kitchen & met another couple from Seattle who were about to head home.
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18 April 2005
I had to get up early to catch the Tranzalpine express train. Fortunately, there is a free shuttle service that picked me up from the front of the Stonehurst & took me & several others to the train station. The station was quite small, since there isn't all that much passenger train travel anymore. There were about a dozen cars on the train, with an open-air observation car in the middle. The observation car had lots of equipment in the middle, so it effectively divided the train in half. We climbed slowly up the Canterbury plains, but within about an hour, we were well within the Southern Alps. I took a great number of pictures of all the mountains. There were many tunnels along the route & a few spectacular bridges. The highest point of the route is in a tiny village called Arthur's Pass. The train stopped there for a few minutes. After Arthur's Pass, the train passes through a long tunnel. On the other side is the even tinier village of Otira. Apparently a couple from Auckland own the whole town. Past the tunnel, the train is now in the West Coast region of the South Island. This region gets a great deal of rain & so there is a dramatic change in the vegetation. It is a true rainforest. Greymouth is the end of the line. Shelley met me at the station. We had lunch on the banks of the Grey river. The bank is actually a levee, so we were well above the level of the town. After lunch, we did a little bit of shopping in town. We went out to the Monteith's Brewery for a tour there. It was a fairly small facility, but very fascinating. The West Coast has an abundance of coal, so the heat to boil the wort is supplied by two coal-fired steam boilers. After the tour we got some samples. I was very fond of the Black beer. Shelley liked the Radler, very similar to a shandy. We then drove up to Punakaiki to see the Pancake rocks. These are very strange rocks consisting of thin layers of limestone. The ocean is slowly eroding them, giving them all sorts of strange shapes. Finally, we drove back down through Greymouth to Hokitika to stay the night in a holiday park there. After we had dinner & were all settled in, we drove to a nearby glowworm grotto. This was a tiny canyon just off the main road. Once our eyes became used to the darkness, we could see dozens of tiny points of light. It was beautiful & a little other-worldly.
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19 April 2005
We got underway reasonably early in the morning. I had written some postcards so I posted them from downtown Hokitika. We stopped to get a picture of me in the sheep-shaped entrance to a wool clothing store. We continued down the coast into ever more-sparsely populated areas until we reached Franz Josef Glacier. This glacier is right in the middle of a rainforest & seems somewhat out of place. It is no less spectacular though. We took a short walk right up to the face of the glacier. It was a little too risky to actually go up to touch the glacier, but we did get within 10 m or so. After walking back to the car, we drove on past Fox Glacier, which we saw but did not stop at. Somewhat further south of Fox Glacier the main road turns inland through Haast Pass. Beyond this point the coast is almost entirely uninhabited. In Haast Pass we saw beautiful rapids & waterfalls. On the other side of the pass we could tell we were in much drier country, central Otago. The road went through Wanaka, but we did not stop there. We took a back road to Queenstown that passed through the town of Cardrona. Cardrona has skiing in the winter, but there is very little else there, except the famous Cardrona Hotel. This charming old place has featured in a number of advertisements in New Zealand. We stopped for a drink there then pressed on to Queenstown. It was quite dark at this point, & this was a mountainous road, but we got to Queenstown safely. After we checked in to our room (it was obviously once a private house that had been taken over by the holiday park) we went out for some dinner. We stopped at the Loaded Hog near the waterfront which was expensive & not very memorable. After dinner we wandered around downtown Queenstown for a bit. We found a Speight's Alehouse & had a drink there, then went back to our room.
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20 April 2005
The weather was lovely this morning in Queenstown. After breakfast & clean-up, I took a ride on the Kawarau jetboat. The Kawarau river drains Lake Wakatipu. The ride was very bumpy on the lake, but improved once we were on the river proper. The performance of a jetboat has to be experienced to be believed. A fully-loaded jetboat can easily achieve 60 km/h in as little as 10 cm of water. The jetboat company has a small underwater observatory at their dock, so after the ride Shelley & I went down there. We saw enormous eels & some large trout as well. Next we took the gondola to the top of a nearby hill. The view of the lake was spectacular. We hiked around for a little bit on top of the hill. We took the gondola back down & had lunch at The Cow, a little pizza restaurant on a back alley in downtown Queenstown. Apparently dairy cows used to be driven through this alley, hence the name. After lunch we booked a ride on the steamship Earnslaw. This is a real, working, coal-powered steamship. It was noisy & a little bit smelly, but great fun. The Earnslaw sails back & forth between Queenstown & a large sheep station on the other side of the lake. After picking up passengers at the sheep station, there was a sing-along on the way back, led by the Chief Engineer who played piano. Back in Queenstown, we went to the -5°C bar. This is built into a giant walk-in freezer. Everything is made of ice, including the glasses. They provide heavy coats, & the stay is limited to about ½ hour. We actually stayed a little longer than that since no one was scheduled to come in right after us. The drinks were mostly vodka with lots of tasty fruit. As we left we smashed our ice glasses in a bin. We went next door briefly to The Boiler Room. They had a nice fire going there, & we quickly warmed up. We went back to our room.
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21 April 2005
At breakfast we discovered we had left some ginger ale in the freezer. This had exploded during the night & made a big mess. After cleaning that up we had breakfast. We packed up & drove to nearby Coronet Peak, a ski area. We could see quite a bit from there, including the Remarkables. We then went to Arrowtown, famous for its autumn foliage. The leaves were just starting to turn. We stopped in the centre of town & bought some very nice fudge. Then we drove to Gibbston Valley winery. They grow pinot noir among other things, a speciality of the region. They also have a large, artificial wine cave which we toured. From there we drove to Cromwell, a town which had been sunk by the Clyde Dam & subsequently rebuilt on higher ground. We drove straight through to Gore, a small agricultural town. We stopped at the visitors centre & historical museum. They had an exhibit on moonshine which was unfortunately closed, but the other exhibits were interesting. We went to the motor camp, then took a driving tour of the town. That night we cooked our dinner & did some laundry.
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22 April 2005
We got up fairly early & continued to drive south into the Catlins. This is the extreme southeast corner of the South Island. Even by New Zealand standards it is remote & almost uninhabited. We first went to Curio Bay where the low tide exposes a petrified forest. We saw several nice petrified trees, but the tide was already starting to come in. We then back-tracked a few kilometres to go to Slope Point, the southernmost point of the South Island (46°40'40"S 169°00'11"E). With the exception of southern Patagonia & certain very small islands, this is about as far south as one can go without being in Antarctica. There was definitely an Antarctic Ocean feel to the place. After Slope Point we drove to nearby Niagra Falls, which sounded interesting on the map, but turned out to have been named that as a joke. We drove along the coast all the way to Dunedin. Once there we toured the Cadbury chocolate factory where most of New Zealand's chocolate is made. The tour included an old storage silo which had been converted into a chocolate waterfall. After the tour we went to Baldwin street, which holds the record as the steepest street in the world. The gradient of 1 in 1.26 (38°!) is impressive, but the street itself is very short, so someone used to San Francisco hills has no trouble at all climbing it. We went to the holiday park then. Here we stayed in a camper van. It was quite comfortable actually. After cooking dinner, we went to a play at the Fortune Theatre, a converted church.
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23 April 2005
After we had our breakfast, Shelley dropped me off at the Speight's Brewery. She went to take care of some shopping & drop off some film for developing. The Speight's tour was very nice. The highlight was the kauri-wood fermentation tanks which are still used occasionally. Speight's is one of two breweries in the world that has such tanks. Shelley picked me up after the tour. We went briefly to the visitors' centre in the very centre of Dunedin. We drove out to the end of the Otago peninsula to a place called Taiaroa Head. There is an old fort here that is now an albatross colony, the only one on mainland anywhere in the world. Shelley had seen the albatross nesting site earlier, so I went up to the observation hut & saw three large albatross chicks. Then we took a tour of the old fort together. It had originally been built to defend Dunedin from the Russians, who were developing a naval base at Vladivostok at the time the fort was built. The highlight of the fort is the Armstrong disappearing gun. When it fires, the recoil pushes the gun underground, so it cannot be seen. We then drove to the nearby yellow-eyed penguin colony. These relatively rare penguins are found only in New Zealand & a few nearby islands. This colony is on private land, & an elaborate system of trenches & blinds permits visitors to get quite close to the penguins. We got to see some of them returning from spending the day at sea. Evening was approaching, so we drove back to Dunedin. We went to a downtown sports bar & watched a rugby game.
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24 April 2005
We woke very early in the morning because of a hailstorm. The hail was very heavy & in places looked like snow. We went to pick up our pictures then drove up into the hills over Dunedin to see the views. The hail was still coming down in places. We started driving north & stopped at one point to play in the 'snow'. From there we drove up the coast to the Moeraki Boulders. These are giant spherical that have been eroded out of a nearby cliff & now are scattered over a beach. From there we went inland again. We stopped briefly to see Maori petroglyphs near Takiroa. We drove past two artificial lakes, Lake Aviemore & Lake Benmore. These are fed by rivers coming out of Lake Pukaki & Lake Tekapo. We stopped at a pub in Omarama & had fish & chips. Lake Pukaki was our next stop. We could not see Mount Cook due to the weather. We then drove on to Lake Tekapo. We considered touring a small observatory there, but it was not due to open for several hours. We did stop to take pictures around the Church of the Good Shepherd. This charming stone chapel is popular for weddings. All of these Lakes are a very light blue colour due to very fine suspended particles of rock. We then drove back to the coast & spent the night in Timaru.
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25 April 2005
We got up very early to go to the Anzac Day ceremony at the Timaru war memorial. A few hundred people of all ages went to the ceremony. After the ceremony we went back to the caravan we had stayed in & finished getting ready to go. We drove inland again to the isolated Erehwon Valley. In this valley is a large hill called Mount Sunday. This was the location for 'Edoras' in The Lord of the Rings. We had a short picnic snack by the side of the road. Mount Sunday is on private land, so we could not climb it. We drove back to Christchurch; I drove some of the way. After we got to the holiday park near the airport, Shelley dropped me off at the International Antarctic Centre. The highlight there was a cold room where they have simulated Antarctic conditions including a storm. They also had an aquarium containing sea life from beneath an ice shelf. That evening we visited the Christchurch hash. The trail was a little difficult to follow, & I got lost for a while. After the trail we had some pizza & watched part of the movie Ice Age.
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26 April 2005
After breakfast our route again went inland. We went first to Hanmer Springs, a popular hot pool area. The weather was not very nice & the area was crowded so we did not stay there. Instead we drove on to Maruia Springs. We had a snack there then soaked in a private pool for about an hour. Maruia Springs is in a pretty, heavily-forested valley. From there we drove on to Buller Gorge. This is considered part of the West Coast, & we were back in rainforest. We went through Hawks Crag, where the road has been blasted out of solid rock. We turned around there & drove back up Buller Gorge to the east. We passed by the Buller Gorge swingbridge, the largest in New Zealand, but did not cross it. We had wanted to try to see some of Tasman Bay around Nelson, but it was already starting to get dark. We drove instead back to Blenheim, & from there straight on to Picton. We found the hostel there, then went for dinner at the Toot 'n' Whistle, a pub near the ferry terminal.
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27 April 2005
We had to get up very early to catch the ferry, which we did with no problem. Shelley dozed on the ferry, & I took a few pictures. Once in Wellington we first got some breakfast at Fidel's. Next we went to the New Zealand Parliament & took the tour. We were able to go right out on to the floor of the Parliament chamber. We also went in to the adjacent Parliamentary library. I peeked in to the Backbencher Pub across the street. After finding a place to park, we took the cable car up to the Botanical Gardens. We took a walk through the garden. We stopped at the Carter Observatory & watched the planetarium show. We took the cable car back down & had a little snack. We then went to old Saint Paul's cathedral, a beautiful old wood building. We drove to Mount Victoria which has a great view of the city. We then went back down into the city to visit Te Papa museum. This was a huge place. We saw natural history exhibits as well as an exhibit on New Zealand in the 1970s. By the time we got out of Te Papa it was getting dark. We drove up the coast to the little town of Paekakariki & stayed in a holiday park there.
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28 April 2005
After breakfast we drove to the nearby beach. We had a good view of Kapiti Island, which is a nature reserve. Unfortunately, it started to rain, so our walk on the beach was cut short. From there we drove straight through to Lake Taupo. We stopped at the Tongariro National Trout Center, which is on the banks of the Tongariro River. We took a self-guided tour which was very interesting. We also got some fish food, so we fed the fish in a few places. It was quite something to see so many trout in one place. We went to the town of Taupo & had a quick lunch. Then I took a ride on the Barbary, an old yacht that was once the property of Errol Flynn. Shelley had been on the boat just a few months before, so she did not join me. There weren't many passengers, just me, a family from Northern Ireland & a couple from Canada. We used the sails most of the way & went out to see a contemporary Maori rock carving that can only be seen from the water. On the way back we had tea & biscuits, & I got to steer most of the way. We picked up some more photographs, then drove back to the other side of Lake Taupo. We stopped for a moment to take in the view of the lake as the Sun was setting, then drove on to Whakapapa Village.
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29 April 2005
We got up very early to do the Tongariro Crossing, one of New Zealand's most famous trails. We decided to not go with the buses. Since the second half of the trail is somewhat boring, we decided to drive to the start, go to the top, then come back down the way we came up. We were heavily laden with warm clothes, & we needed all of them at points in the trail. The trail has four distinct portions. The first few kilometres are relatively flat. Then there is about a 500 m climb up the Devil's Staircase, a steep section of very irregular volcanic rock. Then there is a short, flat section through Mount Tongariro's South Crater. Finally, there is the climb up to the top of Mount Tongariro & Red Crater. The views were spectacular, & at times we could even see Mount Taranaki when the cloud cover was favourable. It was very windy at the top, but we were able to eat our lunch in the lee of a tall cairn without too much difficulty. After we got back down we drove to Tokaanu & soaked for a while in the thermal pools. This felt very good after climbing a mountain! We went back to Whakapapa & got dressed for dinner at the Grand Chateau Hotel. Dinner there was very good. I had a nice venison. It was also very quiet since there were only about five groups of people there. After dinner, we were truly exhausted, so it was off to bed.
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30 April 2005
As we were leaving Whakapapa we stopped at the Visitor Centre which was very interesting. We drove back to Taupo. We went to the Aratiatia rapids on the Waikato River. Three times a day they release water from a dam & the rapids flow with full force. We barely missed one of the releases, but the rapids were still spectacular. We went back upriver a little way to Huka Falls, then briefly went to an overlook of the Craters of the Moon thermal area near Wairakei. From there we drove on to Rotorua. We drove around the city a bit, took care of some errands & visited Ohinemutu, a small Maori village in Rotorua. We then checked into our cabin & rested for a bit. We were very close to Kuirau thermal park, so we walked through that. It features bubbling mud & a fair sized boiling lake. We stopped at a Pig & Whistle for a drink. Shelley dropped me off at the Rotorua office of Tamaki Maori Village. From there I took a bus with the many other tourists to the village proper, a recreation of a traditional Maori village. We had a formal welcome ceremony, then demonstrations of village life, a concert, & dinner. Dinner was very nice & included New Zealand mussels (some of the best in the world!) & kumara, a not-very-sweet variety of sweet potato. After dinner I wandered through the shops & found a very nice Maori patterned shirt for myself. Shelley picked me up from there & we went a few miles down the road to Kerosene Creek, a hot stream. We were the only ones there. We soaked in the stream for a little while then went back to our cabin.
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1 May 2005
After breakfast we cleaned out the car & I repacked my suitcase. I was able to eliminate on of the bags I brought, which was Shelley's bag anyway. Shelley then dropped me off at the Agrodome while she took care of some chores. The Agrodome is a New Zealand livestock show & 19 different varieties of sheep were on display. They also demonstrated the two main varieties of New Zealand sheep dog (both varieties of border collie). Shelley picked me up, & we drove to Tauranga to see Mount Maunganui, which is simply known as the Mount to locals & everyone else in New Zealand. We took a walk on the beach & found some pretty shells. We had lunch on the beach. There were paragliders jumping of the Mount. One of them landed on the beach right in front of us as we were eating. On the way out of Tauranga we stopped at Mills Reef winery. They had some very nice wines & ports, but I already had a full load to take home. We drove across the bottom of the Coromandel peninsula & up the west coast of the Firth of Thames. This was very unpopulated country despite being very close to Auckland. We stopped for ice cream at Kawakawa Bay, then drove the rest of the way in to Auckland airport. I arrived in good time & check-in was no problem. I was slightly annoyed by the departure tax, however. It was very hard to say good-bye, but I knew we'd be together again.
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