Akaroa ; Arthur’s Pass ; Hokitika

(posted from Hokitika Library)
(This post covers 19 - 22 February, 2013)

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Friday, 22 February -

This morning we woke as the sun rose over the mountains at 0730. After breakfast we drove around Lake Kaniere about 4 km to Dorothy Creek Falls. These were billed as pleasant little falls but were actually quite incredible. The falls come down 100 feet of multiple levels into a picture-perfect pool among white granite boulders. The walls alongside the cascade are covered in ferns.
We took photos and a few short video clips and then headed back the 4K gravel road to the campground to plan our next adventure.
We decided to forego making a dash for Gillespie Beach over two hours south and instead look around more locally.
We elected to take a gravel-road drive into the next valley, the valley of the Arahura River. After about 5K of tunnel-driving (i.e., driving through foliage so thick on each side that it makes a partial tunnel over us) and a short descent, we came out to a long valley, all taken up by one farm. We paused to take photos of a few unfamiliar birds and then, following the directions in our guide book, crossed the Arahura River bridge and opened a farm gate to proceed up along the river on a two-track path. We parked when the two-track abruptly ended at a wash-out.
We then walked up and down a steep hill, descending to cross the river-plain, now a grass field for browsing cows. As we started the next ascent we met a group of about 20 high-school-age kids and their advisor, all giving us a cheery “hi-ya” or “G’day”.
They all had large backpacks and apparently were on a multi-day backpacking trip.
We continued on several steep climbs and descents for a total of 45 minutes to reach the bridge. The last section was very steep but had metal poles with a chain at the top to assist us.
The suspension bridge was rated for only one person at a time and it’s floor was merely wire and metal straps about 15 inches apart.
Labashi tried the bridge first as I filmed. It took about two minutes for her to cross. When I joined her, she said she had had her heart in her mouth as she crossed, mostly because she could see the water rushing by 50 feet below.
We had a cookie break on the far side of the bridge and then re-crossed and returned to the van in another 45 minutes. The Fitbit said we had done 45 stairs.
We then drove back out of the valley and returned to Lake Kaniere for lunch along the lake.
We headed back toward Hokitika and decided we’d better take advantage of the nearby dump station to top-off our water tank.
We then drove into town and did a bit of shopping for jade at Traditional Jade. Afterwards we drove along the beach and then hit the local grocery (New World) for supplies for the next few days and a bottle of wine for tonight.
We drove south out of Hokitika for a short distance (only about 10K) to our camp for the night at Lake Mahinapua, another DOC campsite.
After supper we walked the Bellbird Walk, a ten-minute walk but through very pretty fern-dominated growth.
Labashi is enamored of the flowers and birds and indeed they are interesting. We went to some trouble today to get a photo of one particular bird only to have one walk into camp tonight and walk right past our feet. The one in the wild was very shy but this second one has apparently been fed by previous campers.
As we entered the campground I noticed a guy putting together a Pakboat. This is an inflatable canoe. It’s actually a framework covered by a high-tech skin of fabric but then inflatable tubes run between the frame and skin to stiffen the canoe shape. The resulting craft is only 14 kilos in weight (this one a single-paddler model).
The canoe guy is an Austrian who is traveling by car and taking short backpacking trips around New Zealand.
About a half-hour before dark I walked an overgrown bush trail which I thought led to the swimming beach. I would have been leery of just barging on through the growth overhanging the trail in the US because of snakes and briars or other nasties. But since there are no snakes and we’ve yet to see briars it was an easy decision to go on. I walked in about ten minutes with daylight fading but came to a very steep descent and thought it a bit too risky, especially for this late in the day, and returned the way I came in. A few minutes later I found the actual trail to the swimming beach.
The weather here has been wonderful. We’ve had lower-80’s, sunshiny days and high-50’s to mid-sixties nights.... perfect weather for travel in a campervan. Daylight starts weakly at 0600 but get-up-time is about 0730. The evenings are long and mostly gentle, though sometimes windy. On the windy evenings we’ve generally been able to sit out on the leeward side of the van.
Sunset is a slow process and it seems like darkness is finally coming on around 2030 but the sky is still pretty light at 2100. But by then our bodies tell us it’s bed-time.
We made up the bed and got undressed and into bed to start reading when we realized we hadn’t heard the canoe-guy come back yet. We looked out to his tent and saw that indeed was the case. He had gone fishing about two hours before dark and had asked us if we wanted a trout if he had any luck fishing.
The moon was nearly full and I remembered he had a headlamp but, still it was almost 2130. We decided it would be a little adventure if all was well and it needed to be done.
We walked down to the beach in the moonlight and found him along the shore, just starting back. We then stayed along the beach listening to the night-birds before returning to our little home.

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Thursday, 21 February -

We slept well at Klondyke campsite even though we had a fairly strong wind occasionally buffeting the van in the night. Labashi said the guys in the next camp site sat up talking but I never heard them. But once again we had a beautiful morning and the wind quieted down nicely.
After pack-up we drove up to Arthur’s Pass Store and tried the internet connection again. This time we were able to get some mail out and I was able to talk to our bank via Skype.
I’m having a hard time adjusting to the fact that any business in the US has to be taken care of by 1100 local since that’s 1700 (the day before) in the US. I don’t even think about it until around 1100 and by then it’s too late.
After the store, we headed north and then west with the GPS set for the gold-mining town of Hokitika. Along the way we stopped at a scenic overlook called ‘Death’s Corner’ (nice!) and found a half-dozen keas milling about. Two of them promptly flew onto the van roof and attacked the roof vents. I grabbed a jacket and scared them off but stayed near the van while Labashi took photos.
Our next stop was in the little town of Kumara. As we drove through we saw a series of panels illustrating the town’s history. Kumara was also a gold-mining town.
As we read the panels, an older local fellow walked up to us. He pointed at the old hotel across the street and said “Would you believe there used to be 10 of those in this little town?”. As he proceeded to tell us he could so clearly see his mother pulling him (at age 16) from the hotel, we understood a ‘hotel’ was a bar with perhaps a few rooms, but the purpose of the hotel was drinking, not accomodations.
We continued on the west coast, finally emerging with a clear view of waves breaking on the beach. It took us a few minutes to realize we’re looking at the Tasman Sea!
We continued down the coast highway to our first need--- a dump station! We needed to dump the porta-potty and to refill our water tank. The dump station was similar to those in the US but didn’t have a clean-water refill. We thought we’d better call Andrew to see whether we could trust the water here. He said the water supply would indeed be safe but the hose might be contaminated from people using it to spray inside their tanks or drain hose. But all we had to do was disconnect the hose and use the one from the van.... that’s just how it works in New Zealand at most dump stations.
We then drove into Hokitika and first hit the i-Site for local maps. We took a tour around town and stopped at the liquor store for a bottle of irish cream. A small bottle of Bailey’s is $30 so we decided to try Canterbury Cream for $13! Since everything else was north of $35 that will have to do. We were surprised to see Amurula Cream, which we had enjoyed in Botswana. But it was $45 for a small bottle.
We then drove out of town to Hokitika Gorge, about 30 klicks out. There we found a beautiful gorge with incredibly-blue water. The blue color comes from light reflections of the rock dust or ‘flour’ in the glacier water coming down from the Southern Alps.
We spent only about an hour at the Gorge, walking their well-tended footpath to the end and back.
We had intended to go to a campground south of town but our New Zealand Frenzy book showed one on a nearby lake. We did have to duck into town for a gas fillup (gas is $8.00 a gallon here) and then we drove back out to Lake Kaniere. Tonight our campground was a Department of Conservation (DOC) ‘standard’ campground, which goes for $6 per person. It has nice open camp sites and a very clean amenities building with flush toilets (but it does not have showers).
After supper we played with the computers for a while and then took a walk along Lake Kaniere.


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Wednesday, 20 February -

We woke at Lake Pearson and after pack-up headed further into the mountains, toward Arthur’s Pass. We again had a sunny, pleasant day with temperatures heading into the high Seventies or low Eighties.
Our first stop was the “i-site” or visitor center, at Arthur’s Pass. We watched the video about the discovery of the pass by Arthur Dobson and the discovery of gold on the west side of the country at Hokitika. The merchants of Christchurch wanted gold and they wanted the business gold brought with it so the race was on to build a road through the mountains. After years of construction, the road was finished but it was still too far and the miners preferred to deal with west-coast cities Nelson and Dunedin. And then the gold ran out.
The mid-1800’s saw stagecoach services use the road and before long that led to the railroad and a true, dependable, and relatively cheap east-west connection crossing the Southern Alps.
After the visitor’s center tour we went on to Arthur’s Pass Store where we thought we’d use their wi-fi connection to send out email and upload my blog. The service was fairly cheap for New Zealand, $3 for an hour, but it kept failing. While we tried to get things done, the router had to be rebooted four times. They eventually offered to refund our money because of the hassle so we took them up on it. I did manage to get a blog update posted and retrieve email, though.
We then drove to the nearby trailhead for Devil’s Punchbowl track. This was a short, but strenuous hike up to the base of an incredible 130-meter waterfall. My Fitbit credited me with 50 sets of stairs, though. And a stair-credit is only given going up the stairs. The hike took us about an hour.
Back at the parking lot we had lunch and then returned to the store to buy a knit cap for me for sleeping in colder weather. We’ve been looking at them but the popular possum-merino ones run about $45. This one is more like $15 and will do just fine.
We then decided we’d like another walk. We drove north to a ski-hill parking lot and walked the Dobson Nature Track and about half of the Lake Misery connecting trail.
That was another walk with some uphill to it and my Fitbit ended up with 79 stairs for the day and 13,600 steps / 6 and a half miles. And all of it in perfect sunshine and a light breeze.
It was 1700 by then so we headed back south toward a free campground called ‘Klondyke’. We stopped in Arthur’s Pass to check about a sign for showers. There were showers, all right and cheap enough at $2 for six minutes. But when we went around back to the showers and found the door locked because a woman was having her shower, we asked how it was. “Cold!”, she said, “Very cold”. And right there was enough information for us to make a decision.
We drove on to Klondyke and were surprised to see how empty the campground was. We snagged a primo spot atop a dyke of some sort along the dry riverbed and settled in.
After supper we took a short walk back into the woods and we took photos of keas, i.e., mountain parrots.

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Tuesday, 19 February -

We woke to wonderful sun illuminating Akaroa Bay to our right and the Pacific Ocean to our left. The reserve is just east of the road down to Okaine’s Bay, one of the Banks Peninsula’s Eastern Bays.
After pack-up we continued around Tourist Drive until we could see we were nearly around to the end of Akaroa Bay. We descended to the SH75 road to Christchurch and took it to Barrys Bay Cheese, a cheesemaker and purveyor of fine cheeses and wines. We tasted several cheeses and bought a small bag of Maasdam pieces at half the price of a solid block of it. And the good news is this cheese is so tasty that small pieces are exactly what you want.
We had set the GPS for the other side of the South Island today. We’ve been having fine weather and it’s expected to last for a few days. We’ve learned it’s best to visit the west coast when the east side is having especially good weather. The east is in the rain shadow and is dry while the west side of the mountains are reportedly quite rainy.
On our way west we had to retrace our steps back past our old camp at Waihora Park. Once again in familiar territory, we went to the New World grocery store we had visited a few days ago for a few essentials. We don’t have much room in the fridge or for food storage so we only buy for a few days.
We then drove across the Canterbury Plain toward the western mountains. We stopped for a break at a rest stop and thought we might walk a bit but decided we’d better find our camping place for the night. We continued on to Lake Pearson where we happened upon the last lake-side site.
We had barely parked when two van loads of kids came in and parked nearby. They were from a local school and were going swimming. Apparently they were used to using our campsite as their beach. It was all good fun to have them around for an hour or so.
This campsite was a Department of Conservation ‘basic level’ site in that its only facility was a porta-john. The lake-side sites were very nicely situation and the others were basically in a field of weeds. We were one of about a dozen campervans and there were three or four tent campers.
And though it was a ‘basic’ site, the views of the mountains on each side and of the lake were first class.


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