New Zealand

New Zealand is a striking country. The thing that, maybe not first, but definitely second or third strikes you about New Zealand is that there is rather a lot of sheep and not very many people. In fact, we found out (from the back of a packet of comedy wool belly button warmers) that there are 39 million sheep in New Zealand, and only 4million people – that’s 10 sheep per person.

Sarah and Ben came to pick us up in their Nissan Sunny from the airport at Invercargill, a fairly industrial small town on the south coast of the South Island which reminded Sarah of Burnley. As we came into land I noticed sheep grazing next to the runway. We arrived into Gate 2a which seemed to be the only gate at Invercargill airport, but I suppose the ‘2a’ it adds an air of authority lacking in a simple ‘Gate’.

We managed to pack all the gear into the trusty Sunny and set off down to Te Anau in the south west part of the Island. We past only a few vehicles on the two hour drive through green rolling hills and later more forested mountains, one of them was carrying sheep and the others were campervans.

We arrived in a very chilly Te Anau and pitched our tents at the ‘Top Ten Holiday Park’ in a great spot opposite the beautiful lake. After sampling the local pie shop and pub we headed off on a boat ride to the ‘famous’ Te Anau glow worm caves. Glow worms are pretty cool, hanging there in the dark, glowing, making the roof of the cave look like constellations of tiny stars. Its difficult to get into the ambience of a dark cave when you’re one of probably 50 tourists like us…

We got back to our tents and braced ourselves for a night in the cold by wrapping jumpers around our heads. In the morning we noticed another striking thing about New Zealand; as well as sheep, it’s stuffed full of campervans…they were everywhere…the first we knew about it was the schhhhhtchunk! of their slidy doors, sliding away….tchunk! Even the jumpers couldn’t muffle the constant racket and we eventually got up and tried to unzip the tent in as loud a way as we could….

We couldn’t stay grumpy for long because it was such a beautiful morning. This was the view a few metres away from our tent.

We had decided that as we were in New Zealand we should do some tramping and set off to walk the first section of the Kepler Track. We began by ambling around the top of Te Anau lake for a couple of hours to the beginning of the track. The walk wound through native beech forests carpeted with mounds of moss and in places dripping with lichen, was absolutely beautiful and very different to Queensland. We soon realised however that the gentle amble we had adopted was not going to see us up the hill and back down in time for the ferry so as the track turned upwards we kicked up the pace.

The walk continued steeply uphill for almost 2 hours; longer than is humane really. There were a few minor hissy fits, but bananas and mini Babybels saw us through and we finally emerged out of the forest to the sun and views to write home about. After another 30 min walk we got to the Luxmore hut and ate our lunch.

Sarah quite happy to have reached the hut…

We were just finishing off the last brie sandwiches when we realised that if we were going to catch the ferry we needed to get a shifty on. So we packed up and headed back down the hill as the path got steeper it became more and more difficult to not run and we ended up jogging a good part of the track down the hill, the thought of pies dragging us on to the ferry which we amazingly managed to catch saving ourselves another 2 hour walk.

That night we collapsed into our tents and beat the campervans to it by getting up at 5am the next morning to head down to Millford Sound for some kayaking action. It was another beautiful morning and after getting ourselves kitted up in stripy longjohns and vests we hit the fjord in our bright yellow canoes. It was a beautiful still morning, with the water calm and clear and the clouds lingering over the peaks of the mountains in the distance.

Paddling out into the ‘sound’ was breathtaking, the enormous forest covered mountains surrounding us making you feel miniscule. Our guide told us that the effect of the mountains is called the ‘dwarfing effect’ as it makes everything seem smaller. He pointed out a waterfall that looked no more than a kilometre away, it was actually 9km away.

Just when we thought it really couldn’t get better a sea lion started playing around the boats and a couple of penguins hopped out of the water onto some nearby rocks and hobbled around. ( we don’t have any photos of this because the camera choose this moment to adopt a ‘manufacturers fault’…)After a few more hours of happy paddling around we headed back to shore.

In the afternoon we headed out on a cruise boat to see the rest of the sound. We saw a lot more penguins, some that were swimming like dolphins jumping out of the water and some more sea lions chilling on rocks. Sarah and Ben almost got a cold shower when the driver of the boat played chicken with a waterfall.

The next day we headed to Queenstown, the adventure capital of New Zealand. After checking ourselves into a hostel for the night as a treat (our aching muscles were not looking forward to another night in a freezing tent…I was having serious issues walking downhill by this point) we braced ourselves for an afternoon of action adventure. First we headed up the gondola to have a go on ‘the Luge’ – a kind of go-karting track with little carts that you sit on and soar down a concrete track. We managed to pass the bungy jumping area without feeling even remotely tempted to throw ourselves off a cliff and made instead for the ‘The shotover jet’, The jet boat is a boat with a stupidly big engine which boys, who reckon their special, drive around mighty quickly trying to get as close to the walls of the surrounding gorge as possible. It was fun but-really a bit silly-definitely a ‘boy thing’.

The next morning we were back on the road, this time for a five hour drive to Franz Josef, home to a rather large glacier. The five hour drive was stunning, The snow peaked mountains and valleys gradually giving way to coastal plains packed with crazy looking dwarfed forests. There was hardly any sign of human settlement for the entire trip. The only constant were the fields of happy woolly sheep munching away.

Glacier’s are pretty impressive really; Massive hunks of ice squeezing through and carving out a valley. The Franz Josef is fed by an upland ‘lake’ which gets up to 80 metres of snow per year! Walking towards the face of the glacier, bizarrely surrounded by temperate rainforest, it feels like you walking towards a torrent of water frozen in its tracks.

Once we’d all fixed our crampons on, our guide ‘Roar’ made our route up the face of the ice was as easy as possible by cutting steps with his pick axe. (Being a glacier guide is an incredibly manly activity and quite a hit with the ladies apparently).

Manly Ben and Matthew

After an initial tough climb to get up the ‘terminal face’ of the glacier we found ourselves tramping around on a beautiful and incredibly strange landscape of crevasses and huge sculpted ice mounds and squeezing through beautiful blue walls of ice.

As you walk on top of the ice you can hear the groans and creeks as the massive sheets of ice move around. We had one hairy moment when Matthew disappeared, and adoring girlfriend that I am, I didn’t hear his cries for help until ‘Roar’ was pulling him out of the hole his leg had just fallen through. Still he sustained only a minor flesh wound which was more than worth the respect he got for facing death on the ice.

Matthew on the ice after his incident.

It was an amazing experience which was over all too quickly.

That evening was our last with Sarah and Ben and we celebrated by leaving the backpackers and the campervans and splashing out on a posh meal…it was great!

In the morning we left Sarah, Ben and the trusty Nissan Sunny and set off on the ‘atomic shuttle’ bus up to Greymouth on the west coast, to catch the transalpine train over to Christchurch. The journey was stunning, especially the train ride through ‘Arthur’s Pass’ National Park where the snow capped rugged peaks and blue sky provided a beautiful backdrop to the valleys covered in yellow gorse and bright blue lupins…and obviously the occasional sheep.