From the moment you board the plane en route to New Zealand, you can’t
miss the fact that you’re about to enter Hobbit country. Even the Air New Zealand safety message
is a Lord of the Rings spoof. With one in ten New Zealanders now working in the tourism industry, I guess Peter Jackson has done
for tourism in New Zealand what membership of the EU did for corporate
investment in Ireland. Following the December release of the latest Hobbit movie, skyscanner.com
saw a 102% increase in worldwide searches for flights to New Zealand - a statistic
which echoes the tourism surges seen around the release of previous movies.
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| “What movie did you say this prop
was used in again? |
I myself am not a Lord of the Rings fan. In fact I’ve only seen three
quarters of the first movie before I fell asleep. This is something I kept to
myself during my visit to New Zealand as the locals are understandably very
proud of their Middle Earth heritage; to admit to not being a fantasy fiction
fan seems tantamount to criticising the very core of their culture. But even a ‘bah-Hobbit-humbug’
like me was interested in the various LOTR trivia we encountered along the way.
And besides, regardless of whether
you’re here to see New Zealand or to see Middle Earth, the one thing I’d
imagine all tourists agree on is the country’s incredible beauty. I think Ray
Winstone summed it up perfectly when he said
“It’s my idea of what heaven would be. It’s a stunning place”.
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| Our self-drive route within NZ South Island |
Our self-driving tour of New Zealand's South Island took us along most of
the west coast. We started in Queenstown and went along past Fox Glacier, up to
Abel Tasman, and on to wine county, before catching the ferry to the North
Island (which will be the subject of my next blog entry). All of the guidebooks
talk about how spectacular and diverse the landscape is, but you really need to
see it for yourself to truly take it in. Certainly, I found it unbelievable
that such contrasting landscapes could be situated so close to each other, on
the same small island – but I’m going to let my amateur photos do the talking
on this one.
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| Clockwise from top left: Split Apple Rock in Abel Tasman National Park; Brancott Estate vines in Marlborough; Fox Glacier (that's our guide wielding his axe); & Pembroke Peak in Milford Sound glacial fjord (view taken from our boat at night). All are amateur photos taken by me & none do justice to the stunning views. But one thing's for sure: New Zealand truly is a land of diverse, contrasting and breathtaking landscapes. |
Unfortunately, our
itinerary only allowed us three weeks in New Zealand, just 12 days of which
were spent in the beautiful South Island. A seasoned traveller would say that
I’ve really only scratched the surface. But I have been here long enough to
have fallen in love with the country, or the South Island anyway (next stop
North Island). Anyways, highlights of our short but wonderful trip below ...
First stop Queenstown:
Elijah Wood once said of New Zealand South Island that -
“it’s
one of those places in the world that is largely unspoiled by the modern world
in terms of population, buildings, things like that.”
Our first stop in New Zealand was the stunningly scenic town of
Queenstown. What makes Queenstown so beautiful is its situation on the shores of
Lake Wakatipu, with its aquamarine glacial water, and the breath-taking
backdrop of the ‘Remarkables’ mountain range. Even if you’ve never been to New
Zealand, you’ll probably be familiar with the outline of the Remarkables
mountain range from from Corrs Light adverts and bottle labels. According to a
couple of tour guides, the ‘Remarkables’ is such a beautiful mountain range
that the good people at Corrs decided to use that image instead of the Rockies (though
they claim it is the Rockies).
Despite its beauty however, and contrary to Elijah’s comments,
Queenstown's reputation as the world centre for adrenaline sports is fast
turning it into New Zealand's answer to Temple Bar. Many of the over-subscribed
attractions, including the perma-packed bars, barely give the scenery a look-in. It’s sad how many people, on hearing that Al & I were travelling to
Queenstown, recommended a burger joint as the primary attraction. Incidentally,
we did go to ‘Fergburger’ and had to queue for about twenty minutes before ordering
our fairly run-of-the-mill, though slightly larger than usual, burger. To be
fair to the gap years, I couldn’t help but feel that they are being somewhat
taken advantage of by word-of-mouth marketing & hype “you’ve gotta go to Fergburger” / “I’ll have no respect for you if you don’t do a bungy jump”
(actual quotes). Given the cost of the ‘must do’ activities, it’s likely they
don’t have much cash left for some of the more scenic and interesting tours.
Take for instance the day trip to Glenorchy which encompassed a 1.5-hour
jet boat trip up the Dart river, combined with a walk in a native forest.
The guidebooks reckon the drive to Glenorchy offers some of the most
spectacular views near Queenstown and they weren’t wrong. We were delighted we
chose that particular tour over some of the ‘make a quick buck’
shorter jet boat trips available in the city centre.
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| Left: Okay, so we succumbed to some of the tourist trap over-priced attractions but with only one and a half days in Queenstown, the segway enabled us to cover ground quickly! Right: As we were there in Summer, the Remarkables were without their Corrs light-eque snow cap - here's a Winter photo I found online :-) |
Magical midnight star-gazing in Milford Sound (ahem, fjord!):
In the interest of blaccuracy (blogging accuracy), I should note that Milford
sound is actually a fjord, and not a sound at all. A fjord is a glacial formed
(sea flooded) valley; a sound is a river formed (sea flooded) valley. Semantics aside,
it is one of the most beautiful places I’ve ever been. At the risk of bleating
(blogging cheating), I’m going to let my guide book describe it to you as I
can’t better the description:
“Described by Rudyard Kipling
as the 'eighth wonder of the world', Milford Sound was carved by glaciers
during the ice ages. Milford Sound is breathtaking in any weather. The fiord's
cliffs rise vertically from the dark waters, mountain peaks scrape the sky and
waterfalls cascade downwards, some as high as 1000 metres.”
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| Judging scale is difficult but note the tiny rainbow at the bottom... |
We spent the most magical 24 hours doing an overnight cruise of Milford
Sound. The fourth photo of my New Zealand South Island photo montage (above) depicts
the view from our boat that night. Our guides provided an excellent overview of
the flora, fauna and formation of the sound (ahem, fjord); we kayaked in the
glacial waters, enabling us to get up close to some of the incredible features
and I even went for a swim in the 14 degree water (intentional, I promise!).
The mountain range framing Milford Sound is so vast and dramatic, that
it can be difficult to judge scale.
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| Now compare the scale of that same rainbow to the kayakers beneath |
Apparently one of the waterfalls we saw is about
three times higher than Niagra Falls, although a visual anchor is really needed
to appreciate this. I’ve attached two amateur photos which I took during our
trip: the first photo is of the waterfall itself. If you look very closely, you
can see a tiny rainbow at the bottom of the waterfall; the second
photo is of the rainbow – if you look very closely you can see tiny kayakers
underneath the rainbow. These visual clues might help illustrate just how vast
this waterfall is. It was truly a privilege to have the opportunity to see such
incredible scenery up close.
Gold panning
in Otago region & Arrowtown:
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| Getting tutored in the art of gold panning |
Back in the 1860’s, if you
wanted to make a quick buck, and weren’t afraid of a bit of hard work, you’d
have been well advised to move to the central Otago region of New Zealand. Why? Coz
there was gold in them thar hills, that’s why!
Al and I were a tad late for the gold rush, but we optimistically headed off to the site of
one of New Zealand’s longest working mines to find our fortune anyway. After a quick
tuition advising on technique, we started panning. And that’s where I struck gold. Gold, I tells ya! It might have
been a tiny flake, but it was gold nonetheless.
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| Ya gots to look carefully but that there's gold I tells ya! |
Now back in the 1860’s, gold
panning was really only used to detect the presence of gold in nearby rocks
and mines. A fortune seeker might have found a flake of gold just like mine, and
that would have indicated that it was worthwhile setting up camp in the area. But he’d have used more sophisticated methods such as sluicing and dredging to extract the more significant nuggets of gold. Very
often, these gold miners would have spent months, or even years, braving hot,
dry summers and cold, harsh winters as they persevered in the search for their
fortune.
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| Al getting to grips with some mean gold mining machines |
As we only have two
months in
which to travel the world, we didn’t really have the time to set up camp
in the
gold fields following my discovery. So instead, we went off to visit
Arrowtown:
a wonderfully preserved gold-mining town. It was in a beautiful colonial
building on the main street that we met Justin Eden, the owner of a
local
jewellery store selling actual gold nuggets. As an avid fan of gold, I
was
intrigued to see actual gold nuggets, which Justin himself had mined.
It's incredible to think that, after hundreds of millions of years in
the making, he was the first human to touch this gold. I
quizzed him about how he found his treasure and the origins of his
jewellery store. Little did I realise how interesting his story would
be.
Around the time Al & I were busy being born, Justin Eden was
learning how to
mine for gold. The lure of this shiny metallic substance led him to move to the Shotover river where he lived full-time for three years. Amazingly, it was through their shared interest of gold mining that Justin met his wife Kaye. Although they arrived at the Shotover river a full century late
for the
gold rush, there was much less competition in the 1970’s than during the 1860's and their search proved fruitful enough to fund a jewellery store and secure them a place in Arrowtown history, with a section in the local gold museum devoted to their story. The couple opened their Arrowtown jewellery store in 1989 and to this day, Justin occasionally heads off to mine for the nuggets which he then sells in his store. An inspiring story of modern day gold mining success.
Exploring the elves' factory on Fox Glacier:
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| A pretty useful diagram on formation of glaciers |
Having been on an overnight cruise in a glacial formed valley (Milford
Sound), it was a phenomenal experience to be able to hike on an actual glacier,
which is still carving out the valley below today.
It felt very surreal that one minute we were standing around in a green
field with the sun beating down on us, yet less than 10 minutes later, we were
walking on a remote part of New Zealand’s most famous glacier. Our helicopter
picked us up from the tour company's base, which is just above sea level, and
within a couple of minutes we were already flying over the pinnacles of Fox Glacier's lower icefall.
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| My first ever helicopter trip was short but stunning |
Our short copter flight
circled the entire glacier, giving us amazing views below, before landing -
whereupon we hopped out and were handed some crampons to put on. It just seemed
so impossible that we could go from sea level on a hot summer’s day to the
middle of a 13km long glacier so quickly. Seven years ago, I did a six-day trek
in the Himalayas. We started in the foothills of the Himalayas and the scenery
changed gradually as we continued our slow ascent. After six long days of
trekking we finally reached our goal of the base of a small glacier at an altitude of 4,800m. Perhaps I should have just
opted for the heli-hike option then too (kidding!). But the accessibility of
Fox Glacier really is one of it’s most interesting features. Although it has
peaks of over 3,000m at its head, the base of Fox Glacier (the longest of New Zealand’s
west coast glaciers) is just 250m above sea level, making it (unlike my
Himalayan glacier) probably the most accessible glacier in the world.
Anyways, having landed on
the glacier and geared up, we spent the next 2.5 hours exploring the terrain
with the aid of our trusty guides. Walking on a glacier, you feel as if you
could be walking on a different planet. We walked under ice arches, through ice
tunnels and past igloos where elves reside, carving out Foxes glacier mints
(okay, the last bit was just my imagination running away with me, but the rest
is true!). The guides were absolutely fantastic and really put me at ease. It
was obvious that they knew every crevice of that glacier, and they thoroughly
vetted all ice formations before letting us walk over, under or through. One of
our guides actually grew up in a Nepalese-Himalayan mountain village and has
been giving guided tours of both Fox glacier in New Zealand and the Himalayas
for over twenty years. If I had to choose a highlight of my time in New
Zealand, this would be it.
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| Left: Exploring elves igloo where Foxes Glacier Mints are made; Right: Domestic AAA battery on Fox Glacier |
Exploring Abel Tasman by foot, kayak & the flying bike from ET:
Abel Tasman was the Dutch explorer credited with discovering Tasmania,
Fiji & New Zealand. When I say ‘discovering’, I mean ‘discovering on behalf
of the Europeans’. The Polynesians beat him to New Zealand by some 400 years.
Anyways, the point is that Mr Abel Tasman is a pretty big deal round these
parts, as evidenced by the naming convention of Tasmania, the Tasman Sea and (the
area of New Zealand this portion of my blog focuses on) Abel Tasman National Park in New Zealand’s South Island.
Abel Tasman (the place this time, not the now sadly deceased Dutch
explorer) is a scenic coastal national park with wonderfully preserved beaches,
forests and islands. The Department of Conservation have put stringent measures
in place to protect the wildlife and birdlife of the
national park. You see birds in particular are also kind of a big deal round New Zealand way.
Prior to the arrival of the first Polynesian settlers some time in the 13th
century, New Zealand was a natural birdlife sanctuary. With no pesky predatory
mammals (humans or otherwise) at all living on this island since its ice age
departure from the mainland, New Zealand was veritably teeming with birds –
sitting pretty and away from harms way. Sadly, however, humans introduced other
mammals to the island thus eliminating a whole heap of birds. According to an article I found online: “New Zealand's greatest biological
loss is 42 percent of its' terrestrial birds since human settlement 700 years
ago.”
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| Our tandem kayaking technique was quite a sight to behold |
Having learnt from their
ancestors’ mistakes, the current generation of Kiwis (the people, not the
flightless native bird) are keen to protect the remaining bird species. They
have even established a couple of bird sanctuary islands, from which they have re-eliminated
all predatory mammals. We were lucky enough to do a guided kayaking tour in
Abel Tasman National Park and kayaked up to one such bird sanctuary located on Adele
Island. The shrill sound of countless bird varieties singing away provided us
with some insight into how New Zealand must have sounded back in its avian heyday.
We were also pretty chuffed with our kayaking ability - dubbed the ‘divorce
boat’ by the locals, the tandem kayak proved no challenge for team Scon-Al. The
secret to our tandem kayak success was putting Al in charge of steering and me
in charge of pace-setting!
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| Stand-up paddle boarding proved a more tricky form of transport |
Having explored Abel Tasman National Park by foot, kayak and stand-up
paddle board, I decided to try something completely new in order to both
conquer a personal fear of heights and get a birds eye view of the national park: a micro-light
flight. If you’ve never heard of a micro-light before, it’s kind of like a
cross between a moped and a hang-glider with a small propeller attached at the
back. You can see a photo of the actual micro-light aircraft I went up in below. I guess it’s pretty much the smallest aircraft a person could
possibly go up in.
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| Me and my trusty pilot in the micro-light |
After signing my life away
with the scariest looking exemption waiver I’ve ever seen, the pilot (clad in
flip flops) and I hopped in, waited our turn for the runway and started
pedalling.
Taking off felt much like that scene in ET where Elliot pedals his bike and it
quickly rises into the sky – it was astonishing how rapidly we took off and
rose upward. Video footage from my
own take-off is here. Once airborne, the flight was smooth and the scenes of Abel Tasman National Park below were awe-inspiring. I could see our kayaking and hiking paths from the previous day,
and, although we were fairly high up, I could even see the tiny ant sized
shadow of stingrays swimming beneath the calm waters below. It was all so
beautiful that for a short time, I forgot that I was in a flying moped. At
least until it was time to land. As you
can see from my video footage, the pilot lined up the runway nicely and
then decided to land on the grass next to it. Intentional, he assured me – I’m
not so sure!
Wine tasting
and relaxing in Blenheim:
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| A rather good water reflection shot. Oh, and vines, lots of vines ;-) |
Looking back over this blog entry, I can’t believe that we were only in
New Zealand South Island for twelve days. It’s no surprise that by the end of
our few days we were pretty tired from all the moving around, so our trip to
Blenheim ‘wine-county’ was superbly timed. We spent our penultimate day in
South Island on a wine tour of the region and our final day lazing by the pool,
sipping yet more wine. Heaven!
If you’ve made it through this blog entry of epic proportions you’re
either a family member, an extremely good friend or future me reminiscing about the good old days! You’ll be glad to know that
the next blog entry covers New Zealand North Island where we only spent 8 days –
so it can’t possibly be as long as this! Thanks for reading!
Sarah x
