The Complete South Island Whirlwind Tour and back to the North

Hello again!

Where were we? Queenstown, right...

So, the town of Queenstown, where we ended up after our Wanaka reunion with Mark and Erica looked truly awesome and worth staying in for the whole winter or summer season. The town sits on the shore of a tremendously huge (52 mile-long) lake Wakatipu, is surrounded by the imposing mountain range, The Remarkables, as well as other mountains, and has a wild river perfect for river sports. That sort of landscape offers just about any adventure sport you can imagine, so it's no wonder that the town is full of backpackers, outdoor gear stores and adventure booking offices.

We arrived at dusk and had to quickly find our campsite by the lake, so we checked out the town from the car. We spent a miserably cold night cooking our food outside and mummifying ourselves in our sleeping bags, only to wake up to an even colder morning. We were hoping for a clear, sunny morning with splendid reflections of mountain peaks on the glass-like surface of the lake, with puffs of mist caressing the rocky cliffs and the town peaking into view in the distance...but no. We woke up in the wintertime! Chilly gusts of wind were blowing right through our pathetic sweatshirts, our hands were numb, faces stiff and the mountains around the lake were, yet again, completely lost in clouds. So we headed back to town, warmed up in a McCafe (do they have those in the US?) and took the Gondola cable lift to the top of a mountain that's so close to town that you just walk for 2 blocks out of the city center and you're there! From the restaurant on the top we had the magnificent view of the town at our feet and the impenetrable whiteness all around it. #$%*! Disappointed, we took the Gondola down and got stuck on it for half an hour with our asses freezing off (the wind was so strong, the service had to be interrupted) - but this was our lucky moment: the clouds lifted for a few minutes and revealed the Remarkables in front of us with a fresh dusting of first snow! No wonder it was so cold - it was snowing all around us!

With spanking new fleece jackets from the Warehouse, we drove further down south to the border of the Fiordland National Park, passed the tourist town of Te Anau and set up camp in the dark somewhere between the highway and the enormous Te Anau lake. In the morning, we walked down to a lovely pebbly beach and, hallelujah!, the sun was out and shone right on the deep green Fiordland wilderness in front of us on the opposite shore. We couldn't wait to see the highlight of our trip - the Milford Sound fiord.

The Fiordland National Park covers the entire southwestern corner of the South Island and is one of the most pristine, untouched and rare areas of pure wilderness in the world. Milford Sound is the northernmost fiord of the park's 14 fiords and the only one accessible by a highway (only one other fiord, The Doubtful Sound, is accessible by a road). Naturally, this is why Milford Sound is a huge tourist attraction. We drove for over an hour deep into the tightening glacial valleys and further away from civilization and gas stations and yet, we were passing (or were being passed by) dozens of cars, vans, motorhomes and luxury couches all heading in the same direction. Nevertheless, even in this lively traffic, once you cross the Homer Tunnel, you can't help but feel the remoteness of the place. All of a sudden, you are enclosed on all sides by silent and almost vertical rocky cliffs and the only way out is through a narrow hole blasted into a mountain that is now quickly disappearing behind you. There's only one way now - forward - and you hope very much that Milford Sound will be a town that sells food and a gas...

What can I say? Milford Sound was an amazing experience. We took one of the dozens of boat cruises offered that day (a more snug 70-person capacity boat, not one of those 450-person ferries) - and were off for an up-close and personal look. It was all that we expected and more. The deep, silent waters; the massive cliffs drenched in myriads of waterfalls that plummet for hundreds of meters straight down into the sea; the mighty Mitre Peak that looms at 1690m right above your head; the new captivating views at each new turn; the silent beauty of it all... It's one thing to enjoy the view of a gorge that a lively river took thousands of years to cut into limestone - it's another thing altogether to stare at something that took 4 ice ages(!) to form. Over many millions of years, the glaciers that used to cover the mountains, carved valleys that finally reached the sea, so the sea filled the valleys and went further inland. You just can't stop staring up at the magnificence of it. It's bigger than life.

The boat drove us to the windy mouth of the fiord where we watched mesmerized as hundreds of birds (including one albatross) dove into the waves, then on the way back we spotted a seal chilling out on an outcropping rock and watched a group of bottlenose dolphins swim by. It was awesome - and we had good weather the whole time! We took off from Milford Sound straight after our cruise - we felt there wasn't more that we could do to leave a more memorable impression in our minds than what we had just seen. Also, we had the rest of the island to see.

After our cruise, we drove back into civilization, and camped by lake Monowai, somewhere on the southern edge of the Fiordland Park. We had to drive for 5 km off the main road, so for once we wouldn't hear the traffic noise from our tent... In fact, it was weirdly quiet in that forest, really, really quiet, not a single blade of grass stirring...but also much warmer, thank god.

The following day (by now, we can't keep track of what day it is anymore), we hit the bottom of the island. I was sad to see the Southern Alps disappear behind us - they were our companions for a week now - but they were hidden in clouds once again, so there was no view, anyway. The landscape quickly changed from rugged mountains to endless sheep and cattle pastures - and stayed that way practically for the rest of our trip on the island. We drove south through quiet countryside for hours, passed through the oldest town in the South Island and reached the (almost) southernmost point on the island by late afternoon. There was a lighthouse, impressive waves crashing on outlying rocks and - to our disappointment - no seals to be seen anywhere. On our way back to the car, Ryan was poking around in the bushes when I heard a scream - he almost got attacked by a massive sea lion! The beast obviously wanted to be left alone on his stroll and didn't care much for posing for camera, but that didn't deter us, of course. We snapped a few shots and the sea lion disappeared into the bushes. Well, that was at least something!

That night (this was Sunday, I believe) we camped at Curio Bay at the windy bottom of the island. The campground was just meters away from rocky cliffs falling into the raging sea, but luckily, the camp sites were hidden in a growth of tall grasses that effectively blocked the wind, so we had a comfortable night. After a night in a eerily silent forest, we were falling asleep to the distant thunderous roar of the high tide hitting the cliffs. How different every day could be!

On Monday morning we checked out the cliffs and foamy waves that we heard all night, the gorgeous beaches of the neighboring Porpoise Bay that is a home to the rarest species of dolphins (we didn't see any, it's past their season) and walked over to the petrified forest - another one of those curious attractions that abound in New Zealand. I think I could say that Ryan and I weren't the only people who originally imagined "petrified forest" to be an actual forest of standing ancient trees frozen in time, something like a rose dipped in gold. Luckily, though, we heard the disappointment of other tourists who expected the same, but saw only rocks remotely resembling pieces of logs lying at their feet. So, correcting our expectations accordingly, we could at least enjoy the fact that the rocks resembling fallen logs that we saw in the low tide were trees 160 million years old - they grew in the time of Gondwanaland, before the land of New Zealand even existed! It's not everyday that you get to see a forest from the Jurassic era - pretty cool!

After Curio Bay, we started our long way back up along the eastern shore and, I must say, the tour of the South Island just went downhill from there. We crossed endless, flat pastures dotted with identical towns, occasionally interrupted by some minor attractions, like big boulders on a beach, a cheese factory or a penguin colony area (you can only see penguins after dusk, which doesn't work for us, since we don't like to set up camp after dark). So we pushed on to the city of Dunedin, where we spent a well-deserved night in another YHA hostel (to peel off our thermal underwear, wash up, groom and feel like humans again!) and had a few beers in a local bar. On Tuesday we chose something different for a change - we toured the Cadbury Chocolate Factory. There were no Umpa Lumpas and the chocolate waterfall didn't work, but it was very informative (do you know how they make hollow Easter eggs? Ask us next time we see you!) and we scored loads of freebie chocolates, which we are still eating. Unfortunately, this left no time for us to drive to the nearby Otago Penninsula to see an albatross colony, so we just headed north again.

On Wednesday, after a day with no attractions whatsoever, we reached Christchurch, the largest city in the South Island and, possibly, the second largest in the country after Auckland. On Thursday, after getting lost between Hanmer Springs and Christchurch, we ended up driving for hours through empty lands of national parks (instead of the inhabited ocean route), so we got our last and unexpected look at South Island's mountains before reaching Picton - our last stop before the ferry to the North Island on Friday. It was already after dark, it was cold and we were stressed out because in Blenheim, we thought that the long driving messed up the car's engine (luckily, adding 2 litres of motor oil fixed that), so we treated ourselves to another hostel room to relax.

On Friday, we crossed the Cook Strait, drove half across the island and camped at good old Reids Farm by Taupo, where we had frolicked for 4 days with Mark and Erica at the beginning of our camping trip, back in February. This time, no one was floating down the river, of course - we're in the southern hemisphere's version of October, so the nights and mornings are damn cold. The next morning, we found the campsite enveloped by thick and frigid fog, so we quickly got out of Tuapo, drove in and out of fog all day to stop at the famed Hobbiton, the one and only filmset leftover from the filming of The Lord of the Rings. What a disappointment it was to find out that the only way to see Hobbiton was to take a $50/person tour of the privately-owned premises! $50 a person for an attraction that the owners didn't have to spend a penny to build! $50!!! This was 2 to 3 times the price of attractions that families spent lifetimes and fortunes building up from nothing, like the Buried Village or the Owlcatraz. Unbelievable!! Well, you can take your Hobbiton and shove it. We'll re-watch the movie, thank you very much!

And now we're back in Auckland. The weather here is balmy and sunny and we've been able to leave the thermal undies in the car for the first time since we left the orchard in Motueka. We spent Saturday night out on town with Matt and Nathyn (who was up here from Hawke's Bay for a Slayer concert), and spent Sunday slowly recovering, so we had a nice little reunion at the end of our trip.

We'll be leaving NZ for Australia next Tuesday. We already found a buyer for our sturdy little Silver Bullet, so with that burden off our shoulders, we are heading off to spend the next few days on Coromandel Penninsula with its picturesque beaches and hot springs. After Coromandel we'll spend the last weekend in Auckland and we take off to Aussie. We can't wait!

Hope all of you up north are having a lovely spring and that you're all doing well!
We'll be back one more time before we head to Aussie - I'm sure we'll have a few more stories to tell...