Last few days on South Island

After a very wet and windy Sunday in Dunedin - spent in the wonderful Otago Settlers Museum (a free and extremely well-constructed museum tracing the early settlers, mostly Scots, who built the city) followed by a leisurely late lunch - we returned to the city centre the following morning to find it transformed by bright sunshine.

As Scottish as...

...with a touch of Irish green for St Patrick's day

Someone else obviously got a bit soggy on Sunday!

We headed north with a bit of the main State Highway 1, which broadly hugs the east coast, and a then a slight detour inland for something more twisty and interesting:

The safety rails on this single-track bridge were pretty rotten and falling apart

We camped at a tiny DOC site (only 6 places, technically, but 9 cars and campers somehow squeezed in) just north of Kaikora on Tuesday night and packed up a wet tent this morning after a night of persistent drizzle.

We're now in Blenheim - centre of Marlborough wine country - in a very tidy camp on the river side, enjoying bright warm sunshine again; the tent steamed briefly when we opened it up. We have just 2 more days on South Island before we catch the ferry on Friday and we are so pleased with our trip. Can't believe that we've had 6 weeks here but it's great that we've camped on all but 3 days and we've seen some wonderful places, ticking off most of the 'must-see' spots without feeling that we've been on the 'standard' camper van route.

When we get back to North Island (and we're very happy that the forecast for the ferry crossing looks good) we'll spend a couple of days in Wellington, where we hope to meet up with Peter & Heidi from Stormvogel, just returned from an amazing trip across a substantial part of Australia. We'll meet up with friends in Auckland at the end of the month and then we'll be back to Maunie to get her ready for voyaging again. A busy few weeks lie ahead.

Down South, and more close encounters with penguins

The area known as the Catlins at the very south-western tip of South Island is a place that many New Zealanders haven't visited. Whilst it's remote and beautiful, with a rugged coast and some wonderfully green forests, the weather has a bit of a reputation. If the wind switches to a southerly, an icy blast brings sleet up from the Antarctic. We were lucky to have a couple of good days down there, though the nights were cold, so enjoyed walking the coastline.

A few hundred yards from our campsite, we discovered the workshop and gallery of an amazing artist / inventor called Blair Somerville who takes scrap metal, seashells, light bulbs and driftwood and turns it into hugely amusing sculptures and moving machines.

The amazing 'junk organ'

A hand-cranked whale

With Cyclone Lusi threatening to head south down the east coast (after battering the coast up where Maunie is moored), we left the Catlins to head to the city of Dunedin, but not before a stop off at the impressive Nugget Point lighthouse and nature reserve, way down at 46 degrees, 27 minutes south.

The Nuggets

Old and new lighthouse technology - the LED beacon at the front has replaced the original fresnel lens and 1000W light bulb in the gallery behind

The weather for Saturday night through to Monday morning promised gales and lashings of rain so we decided that we'd forego the delights of the tent for a couple of nights.  We found a brilliant budget room in a farm cottage out on the Otago Peninsula - the farm is also the home of the Penguin Centre, a conservation operation dedicated to the protection of the rare Yellow Eyed Penguin which nest on the beaches here. Neadless to say Dianne was absolutely delighted to go on a tour - there are hides and tunnels which allow people to view these shy animals in the wild without disturbing them - and also to visit the 'hospital' where underweight chicks or injured adults are nursed to full fitness before being returned to the wild. 

Adults in moult, an annual painful episode in Penguin life

Flax, an eight year old male

Dianne gets amazingly close to Flax as we wanders past her

This penguin is turning left

The weather looks better tomorrow so we'll head north. 

Amazing geology and stunning scenery

Everyone we met who'd been to the west coast of South Island told us how beautiful it was so it was fantastic to be able to see it for ourselves in almost perfect weather conditions.

Up at the north end of the coast, just near the little town of Kamarea, is an old logging road that leads up into the forest. Whilst the removal of huge native hardwoods form the 1940's until 1986 is now regarded as a huge ecological mistake, the road has allowed people to access some incredible geological wonders, the Oparara Arches. 

A narrow seam of limestone, sandwiched between granite, has been eroded into some huge arches - the biggest 60m high and 220m long.

Further south on the coast road we stopped at Punakaiki to see the famous 'Pancake Rocks' - again limestone but these have a curious layered formation:

Further south we followed the Haast River inland and camped at the aptly-named Pleasant Flat, with an imposing view of Mount Hooker above us:

Bridge-bending by wide-angle lens

After a pit-stop back in a brilliant commercial campsite in Wanaka (an opportunity to do laundry and to catch up on admin and blog) we'll be heading south whilst the weather holds for the next 3 or 4 days. We'll visit the Catlins National Park and then the city of Dunedin before heading north to catch the ferry on the 21st.

NZ Creatures Great and Small

We're getting to know the New Zealand wildlife on our travels; some species all too well, it must be said. There seems to be a fairly concerted battle going on against imported animals which have now become recognised as pests: rabbits and possums, once farmed for meat and pelts are causing havoc as they breed almost out of control whilst ferrets and stoats, once carried aboard ships to control the on-board rat populations, are killing indigenous birds. Alongside walking tracks the sight of rodent traps is a common one and we see a lot of possums on the roads, resting.

All these foreign pests are a huge threat to Kiwis, penguins and Wekas. We think we've heard the call of the Kiwi at night but these nocturnal birds are notoriously shy. Shy is not a description ever levelled at the similarly-sized Weka however; these flightless birds appear at lots of our camp sites, cadging food. At the last site we were delighted to have a pair of Weka with three very fluffy chicks in tow - the adults turned over the undergrowth with their sharp beaks and the chick would then dash in to snap up any grubs or worms they unearthed.

The highlight of our bird-spotting so far hasn't been in the wild at all. During our brief stop in Christchurch we visited the excellent Antarctic Centre where there is a colony of twenty little Blue Penguins - all rescued from the wild with injuries that mean they can't be returned to the wild. They are cared for by the wonderful keeper, Dianne Lim, and we were lucky to get a 'back-stage' tour with her before feeding time. The average Blue Penguin will live for about 6 years in the wild but at the centre they enjoy a very happy life and live for up to 22 years!

Penguin love

"This is my ball"

Two Diannes with 14 year old Oblex after a routine vet check. Dianne handles the birds as little as possible - they bite!

Another bird we didn't know before we came here is the Kea. A mountain parrot unique to South Island, there are only around 5000 remaining (they were hunted almost to extinction as they were said to kill young lambs until they became a protected species). Up in the mountains at Arthur's Pass we met a couple of these very clever birds; in spite of lots of notices asking people not to feed the Keas, it's obvious that they do. As we stopped in a car park two Keas sidled towards us wanting food.

When we refused to give him food, this Kea tried to destroy the spare wheel cover in revenge!

Of course, domesticated farm animals are to be found pretty much anywhere where there's a level field.

DAiry farming has become big business here, with China demanding ever increasing volumes of  milk powder to meet the increasingly westernised diet. Huge irrigation systems have been installed and there's some concern about the excess use of nitrates to keep the ground fertile

Sheep are no longer the mainstay of NZ but we met a few Merino flocks on the move

"Move along there now". The police lend a hand

At the smaller end of the size range, there are plenty of spiders, beetles, wasps, bees and flies around but, unlike  Australia, there are no nasty spiders or snakes to threaten us. The main predators are the sand flies, little black buggers that give a painful bite which remains itchy as hell and, when we first arrived, would cause an uncomfortable swelling. There really is no excuse for them; they are New Zealand's answer to the Scottish midge. Various sprays and potions are available but we haven't found a perfect antidote as yet. Dianne's using something rather optimistically called 'Goodbye Sandfly', Graham's trying an alternative that claims great things and we also have an aerosol of 30% Deet spray which we don't like using, having seen it remove the print from a plastic bag in seconds! Apparently the west coasters mix their own potent solution, a 50:50 mix of baby oil and Dettol, which presumably deters other people as well.

Driving North till the road runs out

Internet access (and even mobile phone signals) a bit patchy in this neck of the woods so a quick update with photos to follow sometime soon.

We've driven as far as it's possible to drive up the west coast of South Island - north of Westport, past the mining townships of Granity and Hector and on past the village of Karamea to a spectacularly beautiful DOC campsite on the beach at the start of the Heaphy hiking track. Unfortunately this site was home to millions of biting sand flies who made life a bit trying so we just stayed one night.

The forecast is for sun and light winds for the next few days (unusual conditions for this part of the country -the Oparara Basin where we walked yesterday gets 6,000mm of rain a year!) so we'll head slowly south and are aiming to get to Dunedin on the south east coast at the weekend.

Loving the countryside, hating the sand flies and meeting some lovely people en route.

"Once in a hundred years storm" batters Christchurch

Poor Christchurch - still trying to recover from the destruction of the massive earthquake 3 years ago, yesterday it was battered by a massive storm that has left many suburbs flooded and thousands of people without power. http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/your-weather/9790499/One-in-100-year-flood-swamps-Christchurch

We were there! We'd found a sheltered (we thought!) commercial campsite on the coastal side of the city for Tuesday night and rigged the tent, cooked supper and then checked the weather forecast on the web. What had been forecast the day before as 'strong winds' had, to our dismay, suddenly become "up to 140 kph gusts at the start of Wednesday" and we had a fairly sleepless night as we were pelted by huge rain squalls and sudden wind gusts - being on top of a car suddenly felt quite an exposed place to be! We got up at 6.00am and packed away the tent as quickly as we could  as the weather suddenly deteriorated even further; after a quick breakfast we drove west, over the dramatic Arthur's Pass, across to the west coast where the sun was shining and the wind light. What a contrast and, having since read the news updates, we're very relieved that we escaped the chaos when we did.

Over here in Greytown, it's calm and sunny.

Mind the wallaby poo!

After a couple of weeks of sunshine and blue skies, the weather has suddenly gone a bit 'orrible here. We drove north from Queenstown to Glenorchy (on the Dart River - an interesting Scottish / Devon lineage) - a beautiful road along the banks of Lake Wakatipu. When we flew over it a few days before, the lake was calm and a startling turquoise colour but now it had dark clouds over the hills and rain squalls rushing down it.

North of Glenorchy is a tiny settlement at Kinloch and another attractive DOC campsite beside the river at the start of the Routeburn Track, one of the designated 'Great Walks' of New Zealand. We set up the tent and, after a quick raid into the bush for firewood, lit a camp fire just before the heavens opened. We huddled under the awning, delighted to have some shelter from the rain, but the swirling winds banished any thoughts of a complicated camp supper and instead we heated up a very good organic risotto ready-meal before heading for an early bed.

The night was very cold, very wet and very windy and the noise of the river beside us grew ever louder as its level rose. We were happy to stay dry but packed up the following morning in persistent cold drizzle and headed back south. The hills along the lake had changed colour overnight - snow is relatively unheard-of at this time of year (it was officially the first day of autumn) but that's what it was:

We decided to return to the campsite at Arrowtown and, for the first night in 4 weeks, we thought that a spot of indoor  sleeping might be a good idea as the rain continued to fall. We arrived to find the camp full of smart motorhomes and caravans, populated by a very different clientele. It transpired that the NZ Golf Open was taking place just down the road so many of the players and golf supporters were in town and we very were lucky to get a little 2-bed cabin (with heating!!). Neither of us know anything about golf but we picked up the information that the first day of the Open had been a bit of a shocker, with a short blizzard driving players and fans off the course.

As an aside, we love the story told by comedienne and 'News Quiz' chair Sandy Toksvig;  she decided to give the late Alan Corren, the brilliant writer and broadcaster, the gift of golf lessons for his 60th birthday, thinking it would be good to get him away from his desk where he chain-smoked as he worked. As he returned from the first lesson, she asked how it had gone.  "Terrible game, absolutely terrible" he responded, "and as for those bunkers.... It's no wonder Hitler died in one!"

Washed, dried and warm the following morning (both us and our laundry), we contemplated our next move. We had originally planned to head further south but the forecast for the next week looks very bad. A low pressure system to the east of South Island and a high pressure to the west are combining to pull cold, wet and windy conditions from the Antartic so the south looks distintly uninviting at the moment. Instead we decided to head north east, back towards Christchurch where the sun might still be shining. En route we drove through Naseby and crossed the hills via Danseys Pass, another gold-rush track built by determined men through almost impossible terrain.

We ended up at Mount Nimrod, at a very off-the-beaten track DOC campsite about 20km west of the coastal town of Timaru. It's another awesome spot and the circular hike, encompassing two peaks and a waterfall, was a great start to the following morning.

The view across the Canterbury Plains - our camp in the tiny grass strip in the woodland and the centre of the photo

The place was so good that we decided on a second night and were now the only occupants of the camp. Apart from the wallabies, that is - other campers, locals to the area, had the previous evening pointed out droppings all around our car and identified them as wallaby poo. We half expected marsupial company around the camp fire but were sadly disappointed.

This morning we drove on to Christchurch and spent the afternoon in the excellent Antarctic Centre where Dianne got to meet some Blue Penguins, much to her delight. The cold southerly wind is now delivering sudden downpours of rain and hail so we're hoping that we'll have better conditions tomorrow for a visit to the city sights.