After going to the Livingstone Christmas Party (Glen’s dad’s side of the family) we flew out a few days later to Nelson at the top of the South Island for a quick trip before Christmas. When we got there the weather was terrible… rainy and miserable. Not cool for the “sunniest place in NZ”. We took a bus to Motueka, about an hour from Nelson, where the Abel Tasman National Park begins. We had been planning on doing the Abel Tasman 3 day kayak trip but the weather was terrible and turning worse by the hour. We decided instead to just do a day tour with a guide, who took us out in a water taxi, dropped us off then allowed us to kayak for 5 or so hours until the water taxi picked us up again and took us back. We went with a company called Kahu Kayaks, and they were really good. They made us lunch and had a lot of snacks and even made us cappuccinos in a tiny sea cave haha. Glen and I were in a double kayak and had two guides, pretty much a private personalized tour since it was just us on the trip. Saw lots of seals and got to go into a bunch of little harbors. It was rainy for most of the time but you couldn’t really notice. Would have been better if the sun was out for us but the day was still lots of fun.
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| Shag Harbour in Abel Tasman Ntnl Park |
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From Motueka, we caught the bus back to Nelson, picked up our rental car and began driving down the West Coast. We drove through Westport, Greymouth, Hokitika and camped out in our car for a couple nights til we got to Franz Josef. We stayed in a hostel called the “Chateau Franz” in a trailer they called the Love Shack (it was the cheapest double room… don’t worry, it was clean haha) and it had red velvet ceiling and everything was decorated in red… it was sweet haha. The weather was still quite dismal, but understandably Franz Josef is the rainiest place in NZ, getting over 9m of rainfall a year. We drove up to the parking lot of the glacier and took a 45-minute walk until we reached within 100m of the glacier. There were quite a few people there, and the rain had stayed away right until we got up close to the glacier then it started to pour. Pretty massive though, there were markers so you could see where the glacier had been many years ago and how much it has retreated today.
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| "Love Shack" hahaha |
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| Franz Josef |
From Franz Josef, we continued on to the next glacier down the road, Fox Glacier. The weather had gotten worse and you couldn’t walk close to the glacier since the river had overflowed. We didn’t stay too long, snapped some pictures then drove further south towards Wanaka. Once we got there, we hung around town for a while (I love Wanaka), made dinner at one of the hostels then headed towards Rob Roy Glacier, about an hours drive on mostly a gravel road. We slept in the parking lot there overnight so that we could get up and go on our hike early so that we could get back to Queenstown and down to Milford Sounds in time for our cruise the next day. We did the Rob Roy Glacier hike, which took about an hour and a half and it was so nice! I thought it was a much prettier glacier than Franz Josef and Fox, but then again when we did this hike it was the first beautiful day we had since we arrived in the South Island. There were lots of waterfalls and a good lookout spot where we joined a bunch of other people who also did the hike. A kea turned up when everyone started eating their lunches hoping for some scraps. There and back, the hike took us about 3 hours, but it was such a good one. It’s so nice being able to go on a hike without worrying about any dangerous animals… After the hike, we booked it past all the sheepies and cows and began our big drive towards Milford Sound (about 7 hours away). We stopped in Te Anau, the last biggish town before Milford Sound. Had such a yummy dinner there at an Italian restaurant… it was sooo good we were sad it was only open for dinner. The drive from Te Anau to Milford sound was around 3 hours so we wanted to get most of that done that night since the next morning at 9:15am we were going on a cruise down there. Parked at a campground on the way to the Sounds to sleep for the night (this saved us quite a bit of money, but it was a bit uncomfortable).
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| Kea waiting for scraps |
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| Rob Roy Glacier |
Went on our Milford Sounds cruise that morning, I got the tickets off a site called BookMe and paid only $30 per ticket, compared to the regular price of $65. It was an hour and a half long and took us down the Sound to where it meets the ocean. It was such a beautiful day, which is rare apparently since they get 200 something days of rain a year, so we were really lucky. Saw a bunch of seals but no dolphins unfortunately… they’re rarely in the Sounds (damn ads). After our cruise that was quite quick compared to the hours of driving it took to get there (but it was so worth it), we drove on back to Queenstown where we stayed for the night at Bumbles Backpackers. We exchanged our rental car the next day for a campervan relocation… it was so sweet! It was giant and was four berth, and had a kitchen, bathroom/shower and big dining area! We got it for cheap since we were relocating it from Queenstown to Christchurch, but were allowed three days to get there so our first stop was Dunedin on the east coast.
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| Milford Sound Cruise |
Got to the college town of Dunedin, and had a pretty hard time navigating around in our giant camper, so we just stopped there to go to the information center and to the library then headed out towards the peninsula where all the little penguins are! We drove out to a spot called Seal Point, and waited until dusk when the penguins emerge from the sea and make their way up the sand dunes to their nesting spots. We got down there and spotted two yellow-eyed penguins right away, climbing up the dunes with their little legs. Spotted another one up on the top of a dune hill and one on the rocks. Lots of seals there too. From here, we drove North of Dunedin and camped next to the ocean in a park, luckily no one noticed.
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| Hot Brekkie while camping... aw yea |
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| Moereki Boulders |
From here, we kept driving north and stopped to look at the Moereki Boulders along the way. They’re weird limestone rocks that are perfectly round and have shiny hard volcanic stuff in the middle… I’ll have to look up what they are again. Got on the road again and drove to Lake Tekapo. The water is soo blue there and we spent most of the day there just to take a break from driving so much. Continued driving since we had to have the campervan back in Christchurch the next day. Camped overnight in a rest area and the next morning drove through all the ski towns in that area and finally arrived in Christchurch.
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| Lake Tekapo |
Had to return our awesome campervan and exchange it for another one… our other one was a Maui (super awesome) and this new one was a Britz (still pretty good). This one was also a relocate so we got it for super cheap. Didn’t stay in Christchurch for too long… just went to the supermarket. Did drive past where all the buildings had been destroyed in the earthquake earlier in the year… it is totally blocked off with fencing and all the buildings are crumbled. Continued driving towards our next destination, Hanmer Springs where we went to the thermal springs for a soak… it costs $18 to get in but it’s really nice. There are about ten pools at different temperatures along with a lazy river and some water slides. It was a really nice night… nice and relaxing. Though we had to hit the road again that night to have enough time to make it to the Interislander ferry that we were catching the next day to get back to the North Island.
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| Kaikoura Penninsula |
We drove throughout the night and camped in Kaikoura, and explored a bit of it the next morning. We did the peninsula walk that took over an hour along the beach and on the cliffs above… it was quite nice, and the weather was good. We lucked out with the weather the whole time except for those first few days in Nelson/Franz Josef. From Kaikoura, we kept driving up and stopped in Blenheim to do some Malborough wine tasting. We went to four wineries: Lawson’s Dry Hills, Wither Hills, Cloudy Bay and Saint Claire. I’m pretty sure we bought wine at all of the wineries except for Cloudy Bay because they export their wine to Canada so we can just get a bottle there. They were all really nice and didn’t charge much of a fee for a tasting, and most of them were free. After our wine tour, we had to keep driving north to Picton so that we could catch our ferry back to the North Island. The ferry took three hours to get over to the other side, so we left at about 6:45pm and didn’t get over til 11:30ish. We had to be back in Auckland the next day before 3pm for a Christmas party so Glen drove throughout the night while I sort of slept in the back, and we ended up parking around 4am at Lake Taupo to sleep. It took us 8 hours from bottom of the North Island to the top, big drive but such a good trip! Were able to do so much in less than two weeks.
Just finished celebrating Christmas at the bach at Grahams Beach with Glen’s mum, brother and sister. Glen’s mum’s cousin Judy and Dave live two doors down so we all had a big Christmas dinner with them and their daughter-in-law and her kids… had a big chicken, lamb and pork with all the fixings and “pudding” (dessert). Very yummy and had lots of leftovers for lunch the next day. Glen and I stayed down a few days longer and now we are heading down to Raglan for New Years with some of his friends!
