Well, I am back! My trip to New Zealand was awesome and to save me repeating myself a lot I will write out a (fairly detailed) account of where we went & what we did while we were there. There are a few things to note while you read:
1) I have uploaded all of my photos from the trip and they can be found here
2) Some of the best photos I took are panoramic ones and they can be found separately here
3) The photos do NOT do this place justice. I cannot emphasize enough how awesome the scenary was during this trip. It was too good for words in places (especially around Mt Cook, Lake Tekapo/Lake Pukaki & the glaciers)
If you click HERE you can see a map of the route we took as well. It is labelled with the places we stayed
A & G = Christchurch where I flew into and out of New Zealand
B = Geraldine
C = Mt Cook / Unwin Lodge
D = Queenstown
E = Franz Josef Township & Glacier
F = Greymouth
NB. I apologise now for how long this is! I know most people wont want to read it all and the pictures will show it, but some (mum/dad/sister/etc) might so I figured I’d write it all out!
Tuesday – 13th Jan
Had to get up at 4am for my cab at 5am (I stupidly booked my flight for 07:45). Had a pretty good journey really, managed to get a whole row of seats to myself on the plane and everything was on time. Met up with Nick in baggage reclaim as his flight was perfectly timed with mine. We hopped on a bus in to town and booked ourselves into the X Base backpackers for a night. After dumping our stuff we just walked around the city a bit and the botanic gardens, chatting & catching up before some pool & pizza in the bar. Mullet Man (a street performer) did some juggling and a rock/paper/scissors tournament which was good fun to watch then we headed to bed.
Wedneday – 14th Jan
Checked out of the hostel & got picked up to collect our hire car. Affectionately named DAJ for the rest of the holiday due to its number plate. We spent the afternoon at Adrenaline Forest – a high wire obstacle course set in the trees of a small pine forest. Was great fun flying down the zip wires & going over the nepalese bridges etc before we grabbed a bite to eat & drove on to a small town called Geraldine which had been recommended to us by a girl at the car rental company. Arrived fairly late (8 ish) but booked into a nice family run hostel (Rawhiti Backpackers) before heading off for some real New Zealand lamb and hitting bed.
Thursday – 15th Jan
I found my phone (thinking I might have lost it right on the first day) which set the day up nicely. We grabbed some snack food for the car from a supermarket in Geraldine & had a nice chat to the hostel owners before heading to Timaru on the eastern coast. Nick had read somewhere that it had “the best beach on the south island” and if that’s so then you should never ever go to the beach on the south island. It was like Calais beach or something – some huge port on one side of it. Nasty. We did manage to find a Harvey Norman though and Nick bought a gadget to let us play our music in the car. We then got to Lake Tekapo and stopped for lunch. The colour of this lake is unbelievable. It’s an awesome turquoise due to the rock sediment washed down by the glaciers up river. It was pretty hot so we decided to go for a bit of a swim – unfortunately the lake itself was BLOODY FREEZING so we didn’t stay in it for long 
We then moved on (after pushing the car out of a gravel pit we got it stuck in) and stopped briefly at Lake Pukaki which was also the same excellent colour and we were a bit higher up so the photos were even more impressive here. Across a large dam and into about a mile of cows being herded along the road – we were pretty sure the bulls were going to have us but we managed to get out alive. Finally we made it to the tiny village at the base of Mt Cook only to find that the single hostel there was full. As was the one a 20 minute drive away. So we ended up staying the night in Unwin Lodge, a hut run by the New Zealand Alpine Club for mountaineers & climbers to stay in between their jaunts up the mountains. The room was incredibly basic and didn’t have any sheets or anythign so I slept under a couple of table cloths but the view from the living room was utterly incredible and it was great talking to the people staying there. They had some good stories of the 22 hour hikes they’d just done up and over the mountains we could see. Very cool.
Friday 16th Jan
In the morning we got up & did a 3 hour mini-trek through the Hooker valley at the base of Mt Cook and got to the terminal face of the Hooker Glacier. This was a fantastic experience. It was incredibly windy but that was quite nice to keep us cool as we walked. There’s quite a few photos from this bit of the trip so take a look at them. There’s not much I can say about it because words don’t do it justice but it was fantastic (apart from the gigantic blisters and sunburn I got!). After some lunch and a brief rest we started the drive down to Queenstown, again stopping at appropriate viewpoints to take in the scenary. However the first 5 or 6 hostels we tried in Queenstown were all closed or full (apparently there was a chess competition going on in town that weekend??) but luckily we found 2 beds in the Black Sheep Backpackers and booked three nights there. That evening we joined an organised pub crawl through 6 different bars in Queenstown and ended up in one tiny bar called Tardis where there was a fantastic DJ and we danced ourselves silly until about 3 am before walking home in the rain. Very tired but great fun.
Saturday 17th Jan
Had our first lie in of the holiday. Weather was overcast but not too bad and there was some sun out by midday. Had a fairly relaxing day just looking around Queenstown itself and had some lunch down by the lake side. Bought myself a bigger memory card for my camera because mine was already almost full! Ended up doing some laundry in the hostel that evening before going for a late dinner at an awesome seafood restaurant in town for blue cod fillet and chips with mushy peas. Weather down in Queenstown was a bit colder so needed the hoody when out.
Sunday 18th Jan
We thought the weather might be clearing up a bit but talking to the people who organise things like river surfing / downhill biking / etc most were rained off so we decided to drive to nearby Arrowtown. We hired some pans & trowels in Arrowtown and panned for gold in the river. Didn’t find anything but I did manage to slip over in a perfect cartoon banana-skin style and land flat on my back. Hurt pretty bad but the worst part was my neck ached for about a week afterwards (and it muddied up the clothes i’d washed the day before!). We then went to a town called Cromwell, which was very spread out & quiet which made it a bit weird, but the cafe we went to was very nice and by a lake and the sun came out. Nick booked us hostels for the next two nights and our glacier tour for Tuesday before we went out for some mexican food – tried about 12 different chili sauces – then went to bed.
Monday 19th Jan
Left Queenstown and drove to Wanaka for lunch (fantastic views on the way – see panoramic pics). Ate at an interesting organic food / veggie type place and then hit a supermarket to stock up on supplies for the glacier trek the next day before continuing our journey to the west coast. Stopped off at Lake Hawea for photos and got eaten alive by mosquitoes in the Mt Aspiring national park whenever we stopped for photos there. The drive itself was great fun though, very winding roads and loads of mountains before we hit the coast. Finally arrived at Chateau Franz in the Franz Josef township. Had a massive plate of ribs for dinner in a local pub before getting an early night of rest for the next day. It was also really cool to note the difference in the scenary between the east & the west – the west coast was a lot more like a rainforest climate with a lot more of the ferns that you might associate with New Zealand.
Tuesday 20th Jan
Up quite early (~7 am) to have a good breakfast and make my packed lunch for the glacier hike. Checked in to the hike tour place at 8 where we were given good boots, socks, gloves, hat, rain jacket and crampons (spikes that attach to your boots for when you’re on the glacier itself). Then we were herded onto a little bus and driven to a car park about 2.2 km from the base of the Franz Josef glacier. Now it’s very hard for me to explain how cool this place was. There were these two great walls of mountain on either side – covered in rain forest – and in the middle was a huge river of ice carrying giant boulders down the mountain. It was incredible. We walked to the base of the glacier and put our crampons on and were split in to groups of 11 – each group given a guide, ours was called Alex. These guides took us right up into the glacier itself, literally using a pick-axe as we went along to carve steps into the ice itself so that we could get over & round & through the giant cracks in the ice. The greatest part of this 8 hour long trek was the caves. From the way the guides were talking, these naturally forming caves aren’t always there so I think we were pretty lucky to have two on our trip. Being inside these perfectly circular caves of pure blue ice was just incredible. There were some pretty hairy bits of the walk too, like squeezing through gaps in the ice that weren’t really big enough for me / performing the “kung-fu” moves necessary to scramble up into / out of the caves etc. The initial steeper part of the hike was pretty difficult for a fatty like me, but it was well worth it for the rest of the experience. We finally got back to the town at about 4:30 that afternoon, absolutely knackered but really happy. We grabbed some food from the pub and then got in the car & drove three hours up the road to Greymouth. The hostel in Greymouth (Global Village Backpackers) was awesome – the cheapest we’d had ($24 a night each, ~£9) and included free sauna, free spa, free canoes, free bikes, free gym and a brilliant kitchen. So we booked two nights there and jumped in the sauna to relax after the hike then went to bed.
Wednesday 21st Jan
Had a small lie in until about 10 am. Pretty sore after the long walk the day before but had some breakfast in the sun (it was much sunnier this bit further up north than at the Glacier or in Queenstown). Then we borrowed two of the free bikes and rode in to Greymouth town itself to have a look around. Had some lunch and booked a tour of the Monteith’s brewery before having a nice afternoon nap The brewery tour was really good & very interesting. We also got to taste all seven of the beers that Monteith’s brew and I bought myself a t-shirt. The tour itself cost $25 but that included a courtesy bus at to a pub for an all-you-can-eat sausage BBQ. Turns out the courtesy bus was a mini-van with broken seats, and the pub was a bit of a dive – but I’m not sure we could really argue considering it had cost us less than £10 for the tour, the bus ride, and all we could eat sausages/bread/salad and a free pint on arrival! We stayed for a while until one of the later tours got to the pub but it didn’t liven up much so we headed back to the hostel and played some cards before bed.
Thursday 22nd Jan
Checked out of the hostel & had some breakfast. We were considering taking the canoes out for a ride before leaving but it was overcast and we decided to get on with the drive back to Christchurch. Stopped at some nice spots on the way in Arthur’s Pass national park, including one spot where we got to hand-feed the Kea (alpine parotts) who are very cheeky little beggars. Had some lunch in Arthur’s Pass itself then carried on towards Christchurch. It was quite incredible the change of scenary from the rainforest of Arthur’s Pass to an almost desert/plains like very hot climate on the other side of the mountains. We finally arrived in Christchurch around midafternoon and booked in to the X Base backpackers again. Nick then took the car back to the rental agents before we went out for dinner. This dinner is worth a special mention because the food was served to you with a large stone that was heated to 400 ‘C and your meat arrived raw, and you got to cook it yourself in front of you. I had wild goat & ostrich and nick had a Venison steak and we polished off a few pints of Monteith’s beer in the restaurant & in the bar afterwards. Got chatting to an elderly couple from England who were sat next to us during dinner and it turned out the guy had worked for Taylor Woodrow in Leighton Buzzard. Then to top things off, as we walked back to the hostel we bumped in to two of the climbers from Unwin Lodge – Small world!! Played some table football and had a few beers then went to bed.
Friday 23rd Jan
Nick checked out of the hostel and we went and sat in the park for an hour or so during breakfast before he was picked up to collect his camper van and drive off to meet Becky (his girlfriend) at midday. I wondered around Christchurch itself for a few hours, looking at the shops and watched some of the street performers that were there for the world buskers festival (one of note was the Space Cowboy, who managed to sit on a 3m unicycle, blindfolded, and juggle two swords & a flaming torch!) Went and sat in the botanic gardens and had some lunch / read my book for a bit* before taking a look inside Christchurch Cathedral & a small exhibition on Ernest Rutherford then caught the performance by “The Motley Two” – a juggling act with two guys that was pretty cool (Mullett man & Ladder man). Had some fush & chups for my dinner then watched some TV in the TV room (cricket & a film), had an hour on the internet. Was quite a new experience for me being alone in a foreign country. There were a lot of people around but very few were initiating conversation. I had a brief chat with one older lady who sat on my bench while I was reading in cathedral square & she was out with her family, and had a bit more of a chat with one of the guys in the TV room about his travels but eventually went to bed at about 1 in the morning.
Saturday 24th Jan
Got up & packed & checked out of the hostel before grabbing some breakfast & waiting for my transfer to the airport. Got to the airport & grabbed some lunch & duty free (bottle of wine for Ben & Tilly for picking me up from the airport, and some gin for me). The flight back was pretty good as well – had a spare seat between me & a woman who taught yoga and had lived in Brisbane all her life. Ended up watching One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest on my MP3 player (quite a good movie) and then got picked up and went to Ben & Tilly’s new apartment for dinner.
*I bought & read A Clockwork Orange on this trip – haven’t seen the movie or anything before and it was a very interesting book! Highly recommend it to anyone who’s not read it. His use of his own language is very interesting.
Having written that I feel like the holiday was spent mostly eating I think we did enjoy going out for dinner in the evenings and we ate very well, but the highlights for me were seeing Mt Cook and walking up the Franz Josef Glacier. Please do take a look at the photos because they help explain how awesome the sights were! Especially the panoramic ones.
Anyway, I think that’s it for now! It’s Australia day tomorrow so I’ll probably be having a BBQ & beers somewhere but then it’s back to work on Tuesday. Andy (a new PhD student that was in my college in Oxford) is arriving at the end of the week sometime so that will be good too.
Hope everyone is good! Get in touch with me
Ham