Kia Ora!
Its been a while! I haven't forgotten you, I've been travelling around the 'deep south' where normal facilities such as the Internet are pretty sparse! In addition to lack of Internet and phone signal, it is bloody cold in the south so I'm glad to have now made my way a bit further north back to civilisation and warmth....well I say warmth, I mean you can get away with just a t-shirt, jumper and coat, rather than the scarf and gloves too! So I'm a little jealous to be reading on face book how you are all having lovely sunny bbq's for Easter weekend! My Easter weekend has been a bit uneventful due to a run in with one of New Zealands finest, the Sand Fly. He won and has left me with one very gammy infected foot. Despite persevering for the last week, I've had to give in and on the advice of the pharmacist (who was very helpful, as you would expect from a Kiwi, and basically gave me a GP consultation for free) and stay in my hostel for a couple of days to rest my foot. Ideally I need to take some antibiotics and it would clear up pretty quickly, but I'm not allowed to take them due to lack of Iron I have at the moment. Grr, very frustrating seeing I am in the beautiful town of Kiakoura where there is so much I wanted to do! Luckily my hostel is right on the beach so I was able to hobble out there for a few hours this afternoon and enjoy watching the crashing of the waves, but that is as much excitement as I have seen on this fine Easter Sunday.
So, I'll stop harping on about that, and tell you what I have been doing pre-mobility issues! So on leaving Queenstown, I headed south to Milford Sound. This was only about 80km from QT, as the crow flies, but due to the mountains regions and lakes we had to drive over 300km to get there. So there was a lot of time spent on the bus on this day, but the views out of the window on the way were pretty special so this was ok. On arrival at Milford Sound, we jumped onto a boat to be able to views the sounds from the water, this is really the only way you can see them. If you have seen any pictures of Milford Sound, you'll know it is a stunning area, and you have also seen about as much of it as I have. I'll just have to believe that what is on the postcards is what was hiding behind the cloud on my trip there. I'm sure it really is, I just wasn't to see it. So I haven't posted any pictures of Milford Sound on facebook for you, as pictures of some grey clouds, really won't impress you at all! We were lucky enough to have a pod of dolphins play along side the boat most of the way though, and they put on quite a show with their acrobatics. Apparently this doesn't happen very often, so we should be grateful for that.
After leaving the cloudy sounds, we headed to our accommodation for the night in the national park area, which is described by the Lonely Planet guide as 'ultra rustic', and I can confirm that! It was essentially a series of sheds, each sleeping 6 people. The 'cabin' I was in was very close to the river, so I was hoping that we didn't get too much rain in the night. Thankfully there was a fire in each cabin to keep us warm, but we had to keep topping it up every hour. Larissia took charge of this in my cabin, and I was a bit worried we may suffer from smoke inhalation when she pretty much dumped all the wood on it in one go before we went to sleep to try and keep us warm in the night. I didn't make too much of a fuss though, she is German and they generally win, so there is no pointing discussing it! She is the funniest German I have ever met and went on to become one of my main travel buddies for the deep south. She is the only person I have met who dislikes her own nation so much, and was moaning about Germans more than anyone else. It was so funny. It is worth saying at this point that there are Germans everywhere here. On the bus through the deep south, it was 80% Germans and I was the only British person. Anyway, back to the sheds, with no electricity, we were all tucked up in bed by 9.30pm, which is probably a good thing seeing we had to leave at 5.30am the next day to make it to Bluff to catch the ferry to Stewart Island.
I have never suffered from any kind of travel/motion sickness......until the crossing to Stewart Island. Stewart Island is the furthest point south on my trip and is probably about as far away from the UK as you can get. After Stewart Island the next stop is Antarctica. As the 1 hour boat ride crossed the choppy seas I have never felt so ill in my life, I wasn't the only one, the sick bags were made good use of that day. I kept looking at my watch thinking, "it must be over soon" and thinking, "I am gong to have to live on Stewart Island, I can't get on this boat again". Stewart Island is NZ's 3rd largest island, and 98% of it is national park, there are only 300 people that live there. I would have made it 301 if I hadn't successfully persuaded myself to get back on the boat again the following morning. Anyway, Stewart Island is famous for its bird life where you can find many species that are extinct on the main land. I have to say, I didn't overly enjoy Stewart Island, I felt so ill when I got there, I was tired from getting up so early, and it was grey and rainy. I did venture for one walk for a couple of hours and did a bit of ornithology, but that was about it. Apparently if you are going to see a kiwi (bird) in NZ, this is the place to see it. Although according to 'Seagull' the driver for the deep south, you have more chance of seeing the Queen giving a blow job, than you have of seeing a kiwi. I didn't see a kiwi on Stewart island, and thankfully, I didn't see the Queen either.
So I made it back from Stewart Island (thankfully the seas were a lot calmer the next day) and the next stop was Dunedin. The deep south is all about the wildlife (there aren't many people) so we took the scenic route along the coast to make some stops to spot sea lions, dolphins, albatross etc. We didn't see any. Not a great day given it was supposed to be all about the wildlife. So we left the wildlife hiding and made it to Dunedin, civilisation again. I decided to hop off the bus here and spend a few days here, its a good thing I did as one day in Dunedin was taken up with a hangover. We may not have had a wild (life) day on the way to Dunedin, but we did have a wild Saturday night in Dunedin. I didn't expect much from this student city, but it was actually a really good place. On arrival we headed straight to Speights for the brewery tour, this was pretty boring to be honest, although our guide was the great grandson of the founder of Speights so that was a nice touch, but the best bit was the sampling at the end. Although I'm sure that's ll people ever go on brewery tours for. After the tour, we had an awesome night out /early morning in Dunedin. A couple of the people I was out with were staying on the bus and leaving Dunedin on the Sunday morning, we got back just in time for them to jump on the bus at 7.30am and after waving them off, I went straight to my bunk for a snooze. In the afternoon, hangover in tow, those of us that stayed in Dunedin, headed to the worlds steepest street and climbed up there. It was pretty steep, but to me the pictures of San Fransisco look steeper, so I not sure of the authenticity of this fact!
Having been let down by the lack of wildlife spotting's on the way to Dunedin, I went on a tour to the Dunedin Peninsula, which thankfully provided an abundance of wildlife spotting, seals, sea lions, penguins, albatross the lot. This was a great tour, as included access into a protected area of coastline owned by a farmer, where only a few people are allowed to go a day. We were stepping into the natural environment of all these animals which was great. The tour guides were so good and gave us so much information about all the species, I just wish I could remember it all! We stayed out on the tour right until dusk where we sat in a little shed on the beach and watched the penguins come home from their day at sea, trying to avoid the sea lions lazing on the sand as they waddled across the beach. This was a real treat. I was a bit scared at times though, as we walked along the beach were all the sea lions are and they are so big, and they don't have lion in their name for no reason, they can be aggressive! Apparently they can also 'run' at 20km/h!
Dunedin is also home of the Cadbury factory for New Zealand, so of course I had to go on the factory tour. Oh my Buddha, they give you sooooo much chocolate as you go around, and of course, I took every piece offered. If you attempted to answer a question the tour guide asked, you even got a chocolate as a reward. There was no shutting me up! I did suffer from a chocolate hangover later in the day. Oh man, that was a good day though, even if the tour guide was dressed like an umper lumper and sounded like an American squirrel on helium. I'd like to say the experience put me off chocolate, for life. It hasn't. I got over the chocolate hangover pretty quickly and got back on it the next day.
After Dunedin, we headed to Mt Cook. There are some pictures of facebook. This was absolutely stunning, not a cloud in the sky this time! Here I took a boat trip out on a glacial lake and had a tour of all the icebergs floating in the lake that had broken off the glacier, I even tasted one! This again, was a really good tour (it included a speed boat which gave it extra points!) and again a really good guide who gave loads of information. This guide was from Ipswich, and I don't like it when we get English/American/Canadian guides, I prefer to have someone local, but this guide made up for it with his knowledge and enthusiasm, top marks awarded. If you get a good guide for a trip, it really does make the experience, I know from being a trainer that repeating the same thing day in day out can be boring, but the ones that make it sound like it is the first time they have said it are great.
After Mt Cook, we spent a night in Rangitata. I'm not going to say much about this place, as it was pretty much a 'nothing' stop. And I resent having to pay $26 to stay in a 10 person dorm with triple bunks (yes triple) when I can pay the same price for a 4 person dorm somewhere else. They might try and call this one 'rustic', I call it taking the pi$$. I'm nearly 30, I don't need to be climbing to the top of triple bunk bed!!! To the American girl who screamed in excitment at the triple bunks and how it was just like a slumber party, "no it is not 'cute'"
On leaving Rangitata, we by-passed Christchurch and headed straight to Kiakoura. This is a beautiful seaside town again, which again, is all about the wildlife. Before the foot got the better of me, I was able to fit in a whale watching trip, where I saw 3 sperm whales. Apparently most countries in the world have sperm whales, but Kiakoura is special because it is one of the few places in the world to have such deep water so close to shore, which means you can get to a whale feeding environment very quickly. The water is up to 2km deep in some places - needless to say, you can't go swimming here! On this 2 hour trip I also saw dolphins and albatross. It really is great so see so much wildlife in such an unspoilt part of the world.
Other than the whale watching, Kiakooura hasn't been a a great place as I've had to say goodbye to my two 'deep south' travel buddies, Larissa and Syibelle who I have had so much fun with , and have had to spend two days doing nothing in the hostel. It is very nice hostel, but with no TV and being located 1k from the town centre, it is not the best place to be with a gammy foot.
Tomorrow I head back to Picton and leave the South Island and jump on the ferry back to the North Island, so that is the South Island done. It has been awesome, I have looooooovvvveeed every minute of it. I cannot explain how amazing it has been.
Right, I think I might hobble over the convenience store over the road and treat myself to an Easter egg.
Happy Easter everyone, enjoy the days off and sunshine.
All my love
Katrina x x x x x x
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