Chocoholics Anonymous

 
November 14th

The weekend meant some down time in Queenstown – our first overnight stop with proper shops, bars and restaurants. I quickly found my favourite haunt, the fabulous Patagonia chocolate café – a chocaholic’s dream on the banks of Lake Wakatipu. I spent several happy hours there, drinking hot chocolate with chilli and hot chocolate with ginger, while making use of their free internet connection, and left with a selection of the yummiest chocolates to share with my room-mates, Julie and Wendy. There are only three Patagonia outlets – all within 10 miles of Queenstown – but I’m thinking of putting in a bid for the UK franchise. Forget Belgian chocolate – this is the dogs!

Wendy and I also discovered a great spot for lunch. We took the smart new gondola up the mountain to and equally smart new restaurant, with an awesome view of the town, lake and mountains – including the Remarkables, so named because remarkably they run exactly north to south – one of only two mountain ranges in the world to do so. We also had a ringside view of yet another bungy jump station, this time plunging down into trees and rocks. No, I can’t understand why anyone would want to do it either.

Queenstown is a great place to spend a few days – the energetic amongst us went paragliding and white water rafting, while the diehards stayed up all night clubbing. I seemed to spend my time eating – despite all the exercise on this trip, I don’t think I’m in any danger of losing weight.

Wet and wild

 
Friday 13th November

We had all been looking forward to a morning kayaking on Milford Sound, but there was a definite sense of foreboding when we woke to the sound of rain, and realised it was Friday 13th. But Paul, our ever optimistic guide, said we should be ready to leave at 7.10 and when we arrived at the beach our kayak guide was kitted up and ready to go, the rain had stopped and a few rays of sun were peeking through the cloud.

It took 45 minutes for us to suit up with more underlayers, outerlayers, topped by a neoprene kayak skirt and life jacket, then waddle down to the kayaks for paddling instruction and a safety briefing. We were in two-man kayaks and, as I’ve never been in one before, I opted to go with the instructor, Ben from Leicester. Although he’d only been in NZ for a year, and Milford Sound for less than a month, Ben was extremely knowledgeable about the area and was an excellent guide. And with his expert tuition my paddling skills quickly rose from zero to pretty good – though I suspect Ben did most of the work.

Milford Sound is technically a fjord – created by a glacier – and is the only one in New Zealand accessible by road. Even so, there were relatively few visitors to disturb the peace and quiet. Apart from our kayaks, we saw around only five or six tour boats on the water during our four hours of paddling. As the sun rose, the weather was perfect, with flat calm water, blue sky and wispy white clouds over the black peaks – which had been dusted with snow overnight. The mountains are so high and steep that all sense of perspective is completely distorted. Waterfalls hundreds of metres high were dwarfed by the height of the peaks above them. The tour boats looked like toys in the bath, and landmarks you guessed were two kilometres away, were actually 10km distant.

The water is crystal clear, but so deep in the middle of the channel – 400m – that it looks black. And although it is sea water, there is so much rainfall (about 18m a year) that the top 2-3m is freshwater. And despite the sheer black granite faces of the mountains rising from the water, somehow plant life clings to them, with a temperate rainforest of beech and other non-deciduous trees covering much of the lower slopes. This provides an ideal nesting site for yellow crested penguins. We spotted one on the rocks, and several fishing in the water. New Zealand fur seals are another common sight. They are nocturnal so the ones we saw were basking on the rocks. Dolphins also visit, but we didn’t see any today.

After four hours on the water, we reluctantly made our way back to shore. Over lunch, we found out that conditions were perfect for a helicopter trip over the black peaks to land on a snowfield at the top. When I discovered that the pilot was ex-airforce and inclined to manoeuvre through narrow rocky gaps and swoop down into the valley, I couldn’t resist. This was an adrenalin rush I could cope with!

Milford Sound was a true highlight of this trip – and the contrast between the mountains of doom that greeted us yesterday, and today’s sparkling peaks will ensure that it remain a dramatic wilderness.

Bike, hike, bike, stroll

 
November 12th
Each evening after supper our team leader, Paul, gives us a run-down of the next day’s itinerary, so we know what to pack in our day bags. Today’s bike, hike, bike, stroll (“no way this one’s a hike guys”) combo meant the day pack was bulging.

With a full day ahead, we were up for a 7.30 breakfast, saddled up and on the road by 8.30am. Our first 18km cycle took was pretty much a straight road, against a slight headwind, alongside Lake Manapouri, past fields of sheep and cows, until we reached a second, equally beautiful lake – Te Anau. A quick coffee stop and we were back in our trusty bus – named Jean – and heading for our hike to Key Summit – part of the famous Routebourn tramping trail. Tramping is the kiwi word for hiking. The trail up to the Key Summit was a well worn path making a slightly easier walk up, starting in a temperate rain forest full of moss covered beech trees and ferns, and finishing in a rock strewn area of alpine plants. Mount Christina – the highest in the area – made a good photo-background for our quick picnic lunch, then it was back down to Jean and onto our next stop.

By now we were in “Gun Country”. No, people weren’t shooting at us. The Guns are a pioneer family renowned for their strength of character. One of them apparently ran 20 miles to raise the alarm when a light plane crashed, the last five after tearing his testicles on a barbed wire fence – ouch!! They still run Hollyford Camp, a sandfly infested collection of sheds, as holiday cabins. These were originally used by the workers who blasted the Homer Tunnel through the black granite mountains to Milford Sound in the 1930s, and don’t look as if they have changed much since. We were told this was one of our accommodation options for the night. Fortunately, after our final bike ride, and short walk up to a waterfall, we clambered back into Jean and drove through the Homer Tunnel to Milford Sound.

As we descended the switchback road to the sea, the weather closed in, and the low clouds spilling down these sheer sided black granite Mountains of Doom, made them a sitter for a Lord of the Rings location. I was bitterly disappointed to find that they weren’t – most of the location filming was done around Queenstown, and then CGI’d in Wellington.

A picture postcard round every corner

 
November 11th

Wednesday – and another long drive, over the Lindis Pass, through Cromwell – famed for fruit growing, and where we stopped to sample its fresh fruit ice-cream – and through the dramatic Kawarau gorge.. The Kawarau suspension bridge is the site of NZ’s first bungy jump, and our tour leader Paul offered us the chance to jump before heading to Queenstown for a lunch stop. I think he was surprised when Sandy, a 40-something mum (and adventurer) from Long Island, took up the challenge. I wasn’t, she seems pretty fearless to me. But when Tony – at 76, the oldest member of our group – found out that pensioners could jump for free, he was right behind her. Tony is pure Brooklyn – with the voice of Jimmy Cagney and the legs of Lance Armstrong.. The man thinks nothing of 100 mile cycles every weekend! I had an adrenalin rush just watching them plunge headfirst towards the river! But if that looked scary, we found out there is a drop 3 times as high and over rocks rather than water in Queenstown. Don’t think I’ll be doing that one either.

Queenstown is the centre of NZ’s activity holidays – a winter base for skiing, and summer for mountain biking. And at any time of the year you can throw yourself off a ledge, out of a plane or over river rapids. It’s also outstandingly beautiful, overlooking Lake Wakatipu and the surrounding mountain range. But our journey continued on – heading towards Fiordland in the south west of the country. Our base for the evening was Lake Manoupouri, our furthest point south on the trip, and yet another awesome view. And as it’s still light at 9.30pm here, we had plenty of time to wander round the “town” – a café, hairdressers and garage – to take a look at the harbour, lake beach, and read about the hydro electric scheme – which is tunnelled to a turbine in the mountain, rather than flooding the valley. Clever stuff.

The landscape of the South Island is quite different to the north – and so is the climate. It’s freezing! I may be gathering “heavy” tags on my luggage, but thank god I brought all those layers! Whereas North Island from the air had the green lushness of Ireland, the mountain region of South Island is dryer and dustier, with more scrub and shrubland. Driving along the roads the colours switch from bright yellow broom, to lavender thyme and wild lupins of every hue. Coupled with the blue skies, snowcapped peaks and glacial blue lakes and rivers, it’s an outstanding combination. And there are few vehicles or people to interrupt the view. The total population of NZ is 4.5 million (far fewer than the 40 million sheep here) and only 1 million live on South Island – a third of those in Christchurch. South Island is the size of England – which should give you some idea of the sense of space you have here.

Into the Alps

 
November 9th & 10th

Monday morning, and a short flight down to Christchurch to meet my fellow travellers for a 2 week activity tour of South Island. The party consists of 3 brits, 1 aussie, 7 americans and our two kiwi guides, ranging in age from mid-20s to mid-70s – and I’m guessing that the two 70-year olds will be the fittest of the lot.

The first day was mainly taken up by the long drive down to the area known as Mackenzie Country, after the country’s greatest anti-hero. Mackenzie was a sheep rustler of epic proportions, eventually controlling a flock of 1,000 stolen sheep with the assistance of a single dog. When he was eventually caught, the dog was put on trial and sentenced to death, while Mackenzie fled to Australia and was never heard of again.

Appropriately, our home for the next two nights, is a remote 60,000 acre sheep farm, formerly used to accommodate sheep shearers. But this little house on the prairie has one of the most spectacular views imaginable – the turquoise blue waters of Lake Pukaki backed by a section of the Southern Alps, including Mount Cook. At 3784m, Mount Cook is Australasia’s highest peak (its Maori name, Aoraki, means “cloud-piercer”). Sir Edmund Hillary trained for his Everest assault on this peak, but it is 10m lower than it was. In 1991 part of the peak collapsed, with 50 million cubic metres of ice, snow and the rock beneath cascading down into the glacier below. This extraordinary avalanche travelled 7km before coming to rest.

The picture-postcard colour of the lake is due to the ground-up glacial rock “flour” that remains in the water and apparently reflects more light. It is yet another awesome NZ sight, and we all rushed to take pictures in the evening light. I was up at 6am the following morning to record the pink-tinged dawn coming up over “cloud-piercer.”

After breakfast we layered up and drove around the lake to Mount Cook national park to take a 8km (5 miles) hike up, and down, one of cloud-piercer’s smaller neighbours. The 3 hour hike to Sealy Tarn took us through shrubby forest peppered with the pretty Mount Cook lily – the world’s largest buttercup – up to the the snow-line, with great views of the blue-veined glacial snow, and the glacial valley. It was steep, tough climb up but coming down the rocky shale was even harder – especially for someone with borderline vertigo. I got to the bottom with a real sense of achievement, and relief that I was down in one piece. We came across a mountain rescue team on a drill practice both on our climb up and back down, lowering a guy in a gurney feet first down the mountain face. Apparently he was the boss – believe me it was a pretty good exercise in trust!

The Cream Trip

 
November 8th

Staying in the Bay of Islands, you can’t miss out on a day on the water. There are over 80 islands and the larger ones used to be farmed. The Cream Trip is named after the daily journey taken by the boat The Dairy Maid to collect full milk churns and deliver supplies and post. When seas were rough, the milk had turned to cream before the boat docked. Thankfully the sea was calm and flat today – so flat that the captain was able to take the boat through the famous hole in the rocks, with just a few feet to spare on either side.

The leisure boat still delivers mail three times a week to the few remaining inhabited islands, and our guide had plenty of tales about the early settlers. But the real attraction of the trip was the chance to see dolphins and other wildlife. There isn’t a resident dolphin pod in the bay, but they are frequent visitors and today we got lucky. We had only been on the water for half an hour or so when we spotted a dorsal fin and one, two, three, four, five, six dolphins came over to take a look at us – swimming round and under the boat, leaping out the water, dancing in twos and threes for our entertainment.

But the entertainment went two ways. 15 hardy souls donned shorty wetsuits and got in the cold water (barely 14degreesC) to swim with them. Our boat captain reckoned the dolphins would only hang around if our swimmers amused them. If nothing else, they amused those of us who stayed on deck! To begin with the swimmers had to clamber into a net hung from the side of the boat and wait there until the captain gave the order to swim. The rest of us acted as dolphin spotters with shouts of “two off the starboard bow”, “three of them, straight ahead”, and when the swimmers finally struck out in the water, “look down” and, the inevitable, “they’re behind you!” When the dolphins got too far away, the swimmers were instructed to get back in the nets until they approached again, and the next round of fun began.

The coast by coach

 
November 7th

If you don’t have your own car, pretty much the only way to get to Cape Reinga at the tip of NZ, is to join a coach party. The 500km round trip starts out along the western coastline and passes many attractive inlets and the dramatic Doubtless Bay, named by Captain Cook who was the first to chart the coastline of North and South Islands. After a hasty coffee stop, to beat the incoming tide, our coach abandoned the tarmac road, and turned onto the beach for the next 60 miles. The erroneously named 90 Mile Beach is a public highway, but can only be negotiated at low tide. Fortunately our coach, a converted Scania truck, had no problems, but the metal carcasses of several cars jutting out of the sands showed that wasn’t always the case. For several years the hard sand base provided a landing strip for small planes carrying post from Australia, and was used to set the first land-speed record back in the 1930s. Our driver seemed intent on setting his own speed record as we zoomed along the waterline.

Behind most of the beach, sand dunes have been planted to prevent erosion, but at the far end the dunes build up to create mountainous slopes, just made to slide down. Climbing up with a boogie board tucked under your arm was hard work, but the ride down was definitely worth it.

From here it was a half hour drive to Cape Reinga, where the Tasman Sea meets the Pacific Ocean and where Maori legend says the spirits of the dead leap off the rocks to join their ancestors. It is certainly an awesome spot. The government are working to re-establish native plants at the Cape so I planted my very own manuka. And even got a GPS location so I can check its progress on google earth!

Much of the Northlands is now given over to agriculture and grazing – we saw the first of NZ’s 30 million sheep – but before the Europeans came, it was known for kauri trees. Related to redwoods, the slow-growing kauri grows tall and straight. The longer they are left, the broader the trunk. The maori hollowed them out for their war canoes – the example at Waitango was around100ft long, and required 80men to handle it. They made perfect masts for European ships, and housebuilding, furniture making, just about anything you need timber for. There are so few left, they are now a protected species. But ancient kauri trees - preserved in the peat marshes for 40,000 years – are still dug up and used for furniture making. So there are some old things in NZ.