My Trip to the South Island - Part 1

My mid-semester break trip to the South Island was incredible. I traveled with 3 of my friends from Germany - Max, Sebastian, and Christof (who is Max's friends from Germany, who came to visit). The four of us rented a campervan in Christchurch, and headed north. The route we took (for the most part) is the blue line on the map below.

(click to see a larger version of the map)

We left on Sep. 6th in the afternoon, and returned early in the morning on Sep. 25th.
I have a lot to write about the different places we visited, so I am going to break it down on a day by day basis.

Day 1 -
We had good luck leaving from Auckland to Christchurch at the airport. We arrived about 2 hours before our flight was supposed to leave (it had been delayed), and as we went to check in they told us they had space on a place leaving in 15 minutes, so we were able to jump onto that plane and head out early. We arrived in Christchurch at around 9:30. We found a backpacker to stay at for the night, and then headed out to the town to find some food. Now my first impression of Christchurch just from seeing it that night is that it was a beautiful city, and a really cool place to go. I will write about Christchurch later though, because we spent the last portion of journey back in Christchurch.

Day 2 -

We woke up early, and took a taxi back towards the airport to the location of the place where we had to pick up our campervan. After a little paperwork we were able to pick it up. This was the first time I ever really traveled in a campervan, and the first time I rented one, and this one was really nice. It had all the basics (a shower, a toilet, kitchen, fridge), but also a microwave, and a heater. The only problem with it, was that it was a manual, and since I've only learned to drive automatics, I wasn't going to be able to drive it. My German friends had asked me if I wanted to try and learn and practice in a parking lot, but I didn't really want too. First of all, it was a huge vehicle (and so learning on a such a big vehicle would be tricky) and second the driving in New Zealand is much different then the states. At any rate, everyone was ok with me not driving, and just having them drive the whole time.

The first location we took our campervan to was to a suburb of Christchurch called Sumner, and then to a beach called "Taylor's Mistake". At the time it was only Me, Max and Christof, as Sebastian was going to be arriving in Christchurch on a plane later that day. At "Taylor's Mistake" we took a long walk which went up a hill next to the ocean. At the top of the hill was the location of several gun turrets which New Zealand had built back when everyone was afraid of Communist Russia. It's pretty funny that they were so worried about getting invaded by Russia, but it's better to be safe then to be sorry I suppose. We had a good laugh about fearing a Russian invasion the rest of the trip (it was like an inside joke).

After our hike, we went back to the airport and picked up Sebastian, and then went to a supermarket to pick up some food. What was interesting about this particular shopping area is that it was the first shopping place I'd been to in New Zealand that at all resembled what a mall is like in the states. Most of the stores in New Zealand seem to be just one shop and that's it. This place was just like going to The Great Northern Mall in Oswego, or the Southside Mall in Oneonta (and it was nice to see something like that again). Also it just so happened that the foodstore was open 24 hours, which was handy when we wanted breakfast the next morning. Afterwards we enjoyed our dinner in the campervan at the parking lot, which was pretty funny. What made it even funnier is, that in order to save power, we bought candles so that we didn't have to turn the lights inside the van. So not only were we eating in our campervan in the parking lot, but we were also eating by candle-light as people were walking by. We also did a short birthday celebration (and I learned how to say happy birthday in German, but I've already forgotten how) for Christof. We actually parked and slept in that parking lot overnight, which was also a very funny place to wake up the next day.

Day 3 -
We headed North to a location called Hamner Springs. Hamner Springs is a small town, most famous for it's thermally heated water. We checked out the area where they had the hot water, but it's was basically just some pools which were heated by thermal power. We explored the town a little, and a bit of the area outside of the town, and then at night we headed to a pub in town to watch the All Blacks vs. Italy. It was the All Black's second game of the Rugby World Cup. Italy was no match for them. I think the end score was 76 to 14. It was still a lot of fun to watch though, and we also celebrated Christof's birthday again, and gave him a gift from all of us (an All Black's t-shirt).

Day 4 -
Yet again we headed further north, this time to a town called Kaikoura. It's a place well known for it's wildlife. There are tons of boating companies that take you out whale watching. In addition to whale watching, they have dolphins and other marine life. Not only did they have the boat trips to see whales, but they actually offered airplane rides that would take you out to see the marine life. I'd never seen anything like that before, and I thought it was kind of interesting. The whale watching was a bit out of price range, so we opted to go on a hike around the peninsula instead. At the very start of our walk we were quite surprised to run into a colony of seals. We were able to get within 10 feet of the seals, and they didn't seem to care. As we continued on the hike, we came across many more seal colonies. It was a very fun day, and a total surprise to run into the seals. We enjoyed a seafood dinner at a restaurant in town, and parked at a very nice spot by the ocean to stay for the night.

Day 5-
We traveled on up north again, and made a short stop in the town of Blenheim. Blenheim wasn't particularly interesting, but we had to pick up some more food, and make a short stop at an internet cafe to book the huts for our trip at the Abel Tasman Costal Track. We did make a short stop at the clock tower my travel guide had recommended to check in town though... and so it was definitely worth it to make the stop. After our stop there, we traveled up to the town of Picton. It was getting kind of late so we found a very very nice place to stay overnight. It overlooked the Marlborough Sounds.

Day 6 -
We explored Picton a little bit. It was a very nice town, and up until this point in my journey it was actually my favorite town. It's the location where the ferries from the North Island city of Wellington bring their passengers, and where people heading to Wellington depart.. In the morning while having breakfast we actually saw one of the ferries heading towards Wellington in the sounds. After breakfast we drove a ways towards the start of the Queen Charlottle Track. The Queen Charlotte Track is a long (up to 5 day) hike that goes up and down the mountains that surround the Marlborough Sounds. We did a short part of it that lead up to the top of a mountain which had an incredible view of all the sounds. It was one of my favorite parts of the entire trip.

After the hike we drove to our next destination which was the town of Nelson. In Nelson we stayed at a campervan park for the night to recharge our batteries and make use of the microwave.

Day 7 -
We spent some time thinking about what to bring with us to eat on the Abel Tasman Costal Track, then went shopping for it. We also explored the town, and visited a very nice church. It was one of the first church's I had visited in New Zealand, and it was a very nice one. After leaving Nelson, we took a short stop at a beach on an island called "Rabbit Island", which was pretty nice, and then we drove more to the start of the Abel Tasman at a place called Marahau.

Day 8 -
We started the Abel Tasman Coastal Track on this day. The weather up until this point had been excellent, with most of the days not even having one cloud in the sky. The weather wasn't too bad, however it just wasn't as sunny as the other days. The first days hike was very nice despite it not being the most sunny. The track follows the coast, and has many little side tracks to various beautiful beaches. The hike to the hut was 11 kilometers (7 miles), and it took us about 4 hours to walk. The first hut was the "Anchorage Hut". The hut was very nice. It was pretty much just a big room, with mattresses for people to sleep on, but for only $10 a night it was a good deal. there were about 11 other people at the hut from different places. Sebastian and Christof took a dip in the ocean. As I had predicted, they were in the water for maybe 2 minutes before they were too cold and ran out, but they seemed to have a good time none the less. We joined a kiwi couple who had started a fire, and cooked our dinner (instant noodles and spaghetti in a can) in the fire. We had a pretty clever way to cook the spaghetti. We had some wire, and we poked holes in the can at the top, and then put the wire through. Then we could stick the cans in the fire, and use a stick to pick the can up from under the wire and take it out of the fire without getting burnt. We would use this same method to cook most of our meals the rest of the trip. The kiwis told us some very interesting stuff about there travels around New Zealand.

Day 9 -
The hike to the next hut was shorter, but the beaches and the ocean was just as beautiful. The distance was 9 kilometers (5 miles). The hut was the "Bark Bay hut". When we arrived at the hut at first we were the only ones there. We were later joined by a two German girls who had some very interesting stories to share about their travels in New Zealand. Before the girls showed up, we took a trip to the beach, and all ran into the ocean. The water was so cold, but it was very refreshing. We started another fire, and the girls joined us for our dinner. This night's dinner was some delicious baked beans in a can, and instant noodles.

Day 10 -
This days hike was another 11 kilometer (7 miles). Of all the days on the Abel Tasman this was my favorite. The other days we were mostly on mountains that overlooked the coast. It was nice because we actually hiked on many beaches. but The hut we arrived at was called Awaroa. A French couple were also at the hut. We had another fire, and like the other two nights we enjoyed some delicious canned food, and instant noodles. We also put some bread on sticks and made toast in the fire, and then had tuna on toast, which was very delicious.

Day 11 -
This would be the last leg of our trip to Abel Tasman, and we did not have far to hike. We did have to wake up at 6 in the morning to leave the hut though. Parts of the Abel Tasman Coastal Track actually require you to cross areas that are filled with water during high tide, and can only be crossed during low tide. So we could only continue our hike at 6 that morning. Once again there was plenty of beautiful beaches and amazing landscapes. The hike ended with an amazing Aqua Taxi boat ride which took us back to Marahau where we had left our campervan parked. That boat ride was really fun, and it gave us a good chance to see all the locations we had hiked by during the hike from a new perspective.

An overview of the Abel Tasman -
I hadn't done any soring of hiking since my boy scout days, probably around 5 to 6 years ago. So it was great to be able to do some hiking again. It really brought back tons of memories of all the stuff I did with the boy scouts.

The Abel Tasman is one of New Zealand's "great walks". It has a what you bring in is what you must also carry out policy, meaning that you have to bring your garbage with you. I was actually surprised at how clean, and how little pollution there was on the hike. I figured most people would be to lazy and inconsiderate to actually follow the rules and bring their waste out. I was very impressed. The Abel Tasman was one of my favorite parts of my trip to the South Island.

Also I find it funny that New Zealand actually named one of it's national parks after the explorer Abel Tasman. He did explore areas around New Zealand, but he wasn't the first to land on it, and as a matter of fact, I don't think he did ever actually land on it. He sent some of his ship's crew to land on the island, and they were killed by the Maori. I suppose that's close enough though.

And I'm going to end with day 11 for now, and I will write about the remaining days of the trip on a post to come. There's plenty more to read about, so stay tuned.

As a side note, I went to the Auckland Seafood Festival this weekend (...as I am working on a story about it for my journalism class) and it was quite a lot of fun.

Now here are some pictures from the first part of my trip.

At Taylor's Mistake

At one of the gun's on top of the hill at Taylor's Mistake

On the way to Hamner Springs

Breakfast at Hamner Springs

Rinsing our dishes off

With the Seal's at Kaikoura

A seal sleeping

The clock-tower at Blenheim (amazing isn't it?, my travel guide said it was, haha)

Marlborough Sounds

The ferry bringing passengers towards Wellington in the North Island

Where we camped at the Marlborough Sounds

At the shore
Picton is in the distance

A starfish I found


Marlborough Sounds from the top of the mountain

Resting on top of the mountain

A picture I took while on the way to Nelson

The church at Nelson
Food we brought with us on the Abel Tasman

Heading to the Abel Tasman

At the start of the Abel Tasman
A cave by the beach

At the Anchorage Hut on the first day
Our dinner with the Kiwis

Breakfast at the first hut

Look at the moss on those rocks

At the Bark Bay hut

Relaxing after a long day's hike

Dinner with the German girls


One of the beaches along the way
A bridge we had to cross

At the Awaroa hut


Terrific landscapes
Max enjoying his dinner
Crossing the river (...that water was cold)

Seems like every place we went was amazing

Another beach along the way

Our Taxi Arrives
Enjoying the ride

Back at Marahau


A video I took

hope everyone is doing well,

cheers,
Shawn

explosions in the sky

Mt. Ruapehu, the mountain I went skiing at erupted.

Here's a news post about it

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20980852/

haha, it's kind of cool to say that I skied on a volcano that later erupted.

I'm still working on getting the pictures and stories about my travels to the South Island up.

I have no class tomorrow, so it'll give me plenty of time to work on it.

Cheers,
Shawn

Coromandel

I just got back from an incredible trip to the South Island, and although I have plenty to write about that trip, first I have to write about the trip I took to Coromandel the weekend before I left for the South Island.


We left for Coromandel Peninsula on a Friday night. My friend Clemens had bought a van, and so he offered to let me ride with him, which was really great because it meant we didn't have to pay for renting a car. There were actually 3 van loads of people that came on the trip. The vans were all used vans, and all were bought for wicked cheap prices from different backpacker car-markets. This would come back to haunt us later on the trip.

So we headed down the main road towards hamiltion, and it was around 8pm, and as we drove all of the sudden Clemens gas pedal got stuck down, and it wouldn't come back up... I didn't realize what was going on though because Clemens was talking in German. In the end he turned the engine off and then moved the car to the side of the road. We invesigated the gas pedal, and found that what had hapened was that it had gotten stuck behind two screws.... so from then he was just extra careful not to push down two hard on the pedal. It was still pretty scary though.

Anyhow, so we arrived at a backpackers later that night. When we arrived we took a short walk to the beach, and took some pictures of the beach at night.

The next morning we woke up, and headed out to a place called Cathedral Cove, which is a very nice beach. There is a big stone formation that has a huge hole in it so you can walk through it, and it makes an arch leading to another side of the beach. I had heard a lot about this beach from many of my kiwi friends, and they told me I really had to check it out. I'm glad I did because it was quite impressive.

After our journey to Cathedral Cove, we returned to the backpackers and drove about 20 minutes to a location called Hot Water Beach. It's a beach where you can dig a hole, and then thermally heated water comes out of the ground. You can only dig the hole during low tide, so we had to time our trip there to correspond with the low tide. They had shovels to rent there for $5, so a few of us rented shovels and made our way to the beach to dig our hole.

As we walked there was already some holes that people had dug, and so we stepped in them to test out how hot they were. I was so amazed because many of them were way to hot to sit in. I saw a few of them that actually had boiling water in them. So we thought instead of digging a hole in the super hot part, that we would dig ours below a super hot pool, and then dig a channel to let the water come down from the pool above and heat our slightly less hot pool.

Since there was so many of us we had to dig a pretty big hole so we could all fit. Our plan worked extremely well, and we all enjoyed the sun, sounds and sights of the ocean and the hot water. We sat there for a few hours, and watched as the ocean started to get closer and closer to our hole as high tide began. It took a while but the ocean finally destroyed our hot water pool. By that point we were all prunes anyways, and had had a very enjoyable afternoon.

On the way back to Auckland we had wanted to make a stop in the town of Coromandel for some sea food (which we had heard is really good there.... as it is in most places of New Zealand). We drove on for a while, and then we ran into car problems again. It was my friend Arjen's (from Holland) van this time. It took us a little time to realize he wasn't behind us as we drove, so we drove back to his car. Luckily he had parked on a really good spot out of the way at an intersection. It turns out his transmission on the van had broke, so we had to call a tow truck to come tow his truck to Coromandel, and we had to cram 8 additionally people into the two workings vans. It actually turned out ok although it was very cramped in the vans, and we still got our seafood in Coromandel.

I enjoyed some very delicious mussels, and also some very scenic views as we drove north to Auckland on a coastal highway.

Here are some pictures.

Cathedral Cove

Cathedral Cove

The beach

The beach at Cathedral Cove
Beach at Cathedral Cove

At the Beach

Looking good.

Excellent

Group picture

Fire on the beach

The beach at night

Islands

Hot Water Beach -- digging our hole

Chilling in the hot water

Still enjoying the hot water

Relaxing on a rock

Loving the view

I have so much to write about my trip to the South Island, and so many pictures to post too.... so I will be working on getting those up in the next few days.

Cheers,
Shawn