Taupo ; Lake Rotopoumanu walk ; Tongariro National Park ; Raglan ; Waitangi Treaty Grounds ; Cape Reinga lighthouse ; Trounson Kauri Park : kiwi-hunting

(posted from Dargaville Library, Dargaville, NZ)
(This post covers 24 - 28 March, 2013)

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Thursday, 28 March -

With the moon nearly full now, I had no problem walking around a bit in the open areas near our campsite. The night was balmy, though mostly overcast. The moon still lit up everything, particularly the breaking waves, very nicely.
As I returned to the van I heard an eerie two-note sound. I suspected it was the morepork, New Zealand’s only owl. I dug out the iPad and started up the NZ Fauna app to double-check. It has recordings of the sounds each animal makes (if it does indeed make a sound!). The morepork is similar to our barred owl and makes a two-note song which supposedly sounds just like the bird saying “more pork”. The Maori call it the ruru, using similar logic. They say It sounds just like it’s saying ‘ru ru’!
We slept in a bit this morning, arising around 0830. After pack-up we drove back to the Cape Reinga lighthouse to see the area in morning light. The distant sand dunes were now lit from the other side.
We drove south to a side road to the Great Dunes and took a few photos. We were only there for the dunes but it’s also possible to drive the stream bed passing by the dunes to the northern end of Ninety Mile Beach. The beach isn’t actually 90 miles long but it is a very respectable 60 or so miles. Our campervan contract specifically prohibits us from driving on this beach and guidebooks recommend taking the bus! That too is a ‘thing’ here. A bus company runs day-tours from Awanui up the highway, then return via Ninety-Mile Beach. We met a couple from Scotland at the Treaty Grounds who had done it and said it was surprisingly good and gave us the inside dope---- take the bus from Awanui, not from Paihia like they did. They paid $150 each for the trip from Paihia but it’s $50 each from Awanui.
We weren’t interested in a drive on the beach and had other things we wanted to do.
We continued south to Rarawa Beach turnoff. After a 4K dirt road to the DOC campground there, we parked at the day-use lot and walked the short distance to the beach. This one is known for its white silica sands.
After lunch we continued south to Kaitaia and then down through out-in-the-country-country on narrow little roads and no services. At Kohukohu we boarded the ferry for a 20-minute crossing of the Waihou River.
The countryside changed from sheep and cattle stations to the Waipoua Forest and its massive kauri trees. We were rushing to get to our campground for the night at Trounson Kauri Park so we bypassed some good things along the way... including the Tahane Mahuta giant kauri.
Our intention was to see if we could join the night kiwi walk at Trounsen. However, upon arrival we found the tours with the guide don’t start until next week. That wasn’t mentioned in the guide!
After supper we walked the kauri trail for an hour, then took a break to wait for darkness.
At about 2130 we started our walk back into the deep, dark woods. We had a full moon and could see pretty well around camp but the woods canopy was too heavy. We had a flashlight with a piece of red cellophane over it so we wouldn’t frighten the kiwis.
We walked for ten minutes to the another trail entrance where we had seen a grassy area and pavilion and opened up the iPad to refresh ourselves on what its call sounds like. As we prepared to leave, we saw a light coming this way (always a creepy thing at night in the woods). It turned out to be the local kiwi expert and 20 of his customers. He had a large red light and was sweeping it back and forth, even out on the grassy area of the opening. The expert bid us a cheery “G’day” as he passed but the 20 people were eerily silent as they passed by, probably because that was their instruction--- no talking while kiwi-hunting!
We continued around the path, now very glad we had done the entire loop before dark. We could recognize locations we had seen before and judge where we were in the loop.
Our single light made the search all the more difficult as we’d each want the light to go one way or the other. We took turns with the light to remedy that.
We’d walk for perhaps five minutes, then stop for five, listening intently. Since the kiwi’s call is a mating call and it’s not exactly mating season now, we figured the best bet was to listen for the rustling sounds of a kiwi searching for worms and bugs in the dry leaves covering the forest floor.
We spent about an hour and a half making the loop and didn’t see or hear a kiwi. We did hear several moreporks (owls) and several night-birds we can’t yet identify. I tried to capture their calls on the video camera so I can try to identify them later.
As we came back around to the branch trail to our campground, we heard a tremendous noise just a few meters off the trail. It thrashed around in the bush, apparently trying to escape us, but we never saw the animal or any movement--- we just heard the thrashing about. We believe it was a possum... which is a very bad thing in a kiwi sanctuary. I tried shining my big, unfiltered light there to see it but the woods is too thick-- all leaves and shadows.
We returned to the van by 2300 and went happily to bed, unsuccessful as kiwi-hunters but having had a marvelous time in the kauri night-forest.

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Wednesday, 27 March -

After breakfast we took our showers in the nice new shower-rooms at our expensive campground. We then drove to the Waitangi Treaty Grounds nearby for our touring site today.
The Treaty grounds is a big deal in New Zealand. It’s where a major treaty between the Maoris and English was signed in 1840. Also, this area is one of the first settlement areas for the English and was important for whaling.
When you read the treaty, you see the English made the case that this area has become settled by many English and the Queen’s agent tells the Maori that they purpose of the government is to preserve peace for both the English and among the Maori.
We toured the marae and the Treaty House. The former is intricately carved and the latter had case after case of interesting displays about the people involved and their lives.
The Treaty Grounds is wonderfully situated on the Bay of Islands and everywhere there’s a postcard view of blue water, islands, sailboats, parasails, kayaks, etc.
After lunch in the parking lot, we drove north to Kerikeri and visited the Stone Store. It’s New Zealand’s oldest stone building and is today still a store. However, it stocks many interesting period items such as hand-wrought nails, jute sacks, period toys such as tops, pennywhistles, draughts, etc,, garden tools, several nice folding knives, iron-work, period locks, etc. It also has its share of New Zealand kitsch but it was more interesting than most tourist stores.
We then drove north to Mangonui and a fish-and-chips shop we read about. We had an early supper of flounder-and-chips and a carafe of wine. I couldn’t believe the clerk when she told be the flounder-and-chips would be $6 given that we’ve paid twice that elsewhere but it was indeed true.
We continued across the island and turned north on Far North Highway. I think I had expected beaches on both sides of us but it was still mostly cattle country. We could sometimes see water off to the east but mostly it was winding through grassy fenced farms for miles and miles.
We eventually reached Cape Reinga Lighthouse, the almost-northernmost point in New Zealand. There’s a headland which can’t be reached by car a bit further east but talk of covering New Zealand from end to end normally cites Cape Reinga as the northernmost point and Bluff as the southernmost point.
We walked down to the lighthouse about an hour before sunset and took photos of the mixing of the Pacific Ocean and Tasman Sea. The Tasman is trending one direction, the Pacific another so where they meet has standing waves and looks ominous, even on a sunny summer afternoon like today.
We didn’t wait for sunset because we weren’t sure of our campground and didn’t want to arrive after dark. We drove a few klicks down a nearby dirt road to Tapotupotu Bay and a DOC camp. This one is basically open grassy areas along the beach for $6 per person a night. Good one!
Since we had already eaten at the fish-and-chips shop and we only had about a half-hour before dark, I took a folding chair and walked out to a beach overlook with two hard-ciders and watched the night come on. Ahhhh.....

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Tuesday, 26 March -

After pack-up at our suburban ‘campsite’ we set the GPS for a K-mart near the Auckland airport. I had seen a wheeled duffle-bag at the Riccarton K-mart the day we arrived and thought it would be perfect as a way to maximize the carrying capacity of our checked bags (in order to avoid the extra-bag charge we had to pay on the inbound flight). However, the theory was abruptly brought to a halt when I found the K-mart here doesn’t stock the bag. The manager knew the bag I was speaking of and said they hadn’t carried it in about a year. Oddly, she couldn’t tell me whether any other K-marts might have it nor could she look it up online without a bar code (!!!!). She helpfully gave me directions to a competitor’s store but they didn’t have the right bag either.
We decided we’d better check our local camping options for our last day here so we drove to a campervan overnighting facility right at the airport. This was an odd little place in that it was a parking lot with a credit-card machine out front to work the gate. For $40 you can get past the gate and inside they have power points and toilets with pay showers but no tables--- just up-against-the-next-guy parking spots. I was put off by this place and moved on.
We drove on another ten minutes to a regional park where we could camp in a field for $24 but at least it doesn’t look like an airport parking lot. This one, oddly, requires you to push a button on an intercom to talk to someone at Auckland government council to book a site. That’s fine but the phone puts you on hold listening to a recording until someone picks up. Then after you start talking to the person the phone goes dead. We called back and learned that’s how the phone works--- it times out after a few minutes! We made our arrangements and paid our bill with the second person and just as she started to read off the gate code to get in the gate, the phone went dead again. When I called back AGAIN, another person answered and they had to juggle phones to get me to the right person for the gate code!
After we made our reservation we had lunch and then had a packing session on our picnic table. Our secret weapon is a zip-out compartment in the one bag which enlarges it quite a bit yet only takes it to the maximum size. We hadn’t used it on our other flight. Also, one of the backpacks has metal stiffeners which can be removed, allowing it to be squished down to a minimal size. With these two tricks and a decision to leave behind most of our touring books, we should be able to just make it and avoid the extra-bag charge.... not to mention the extra expense of the rolling duffle we thought we’d need ($39). In any case, this little exercise was well worth it. We know where we’re going to stay the last night and we have plenty of time allotted for our packing and prepping for the flight and are reasonably sure we aren’t going to have a last-minute panic as we pack on the day of our flight.
We then started north. I set the GPS for Whangerai to get us through the city and up Highway 1. When we reached there around 1600 we set it for our goal for the day at Waitangi.
Our luck with cheap campsites ran out around Waitangi. There’s nothing reasonable along the way or within an easy drive so we ended up staying at a commercial site for $30 for the night. We have nice clean $2 showers and a few other little amenities and this is a high-rent area. Thanks to the number of freebies we’ve gotten before tonight, though, the $30 isn’t a big deal.
We spoke at some length with the owner who toured the US on a Harley a few years ago and then had a supper of lamb sausage and salad washed down with Isaac’s Cider.
After dark we both got busy on the laptops and in reading our guidebooks.

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Monday, 25 March -

As I looked out from time to time overnight I saw the sky was overcast. The moon is nearly full now so its light behind the clouds still brightened things but we didn’t see a star. This morning the clouds covered the top of the Mount Doom volcano but not long after breakfast they cleared as did the cloud cover in general.
We had expected a cold night and in fact had been warned our night would be cold up on our mountainside camp. But the thermometer showed it was a comfortable 52.... good sleeping weather.
After pack-up we drove down to the Whakapapa Visitor’s Center and learned about the nearby volcanoes.
We then walked on down to the fancy Chateau and walked through the massive common area with it’s 16-ft ceilings and massive chandeliers. As we looked out the feature window at the volcano’s cone, I noticed something scampering across the lawn. It was a stoat! We know it as the ermine but this little guy is public enemy number one in New Zealand. Near the walking trail we took yesterday, there are 1100 stoat and possum traps, each baited with either one or two eggs. The stoats and possums prey on birds and the flightless birds like the kiwi are particularly vulnerable. Both stoats and possums are non-native species introduced from Australia. The stoats were brought over to stop the rabbits from over-running the country and the possum was brought in to establish a fur industry.
There’s a huge controversy over a poison known as ‘1080’. Its purpose is to reduce the stoat and possum population and in many areas it’s distributed by large bucket-style spreaders suspended under helicopters. In the South Island we saw many, many signs protesting the use of 1080 and many of the trails we walked had signs warning of the presence of 1080 pellets in the area.
After Whakapapa we drove through the odd-looking country around the volcanos to the crossroads of National Park and joined Highway 4 running northwest. We spent the rest of the morning and half the afternoon driving through to Raglan, a west-coast surfing town which had a cameo in the well-known surfing movie ‘The Endless Summer’. It’s a small town at the edge of dairy country but is well-known to surfers for it’s beautiful beach on the Tasman Sea.
We drove through Raglan to the beach and took a few photos of the surfers and the waves, then checked out a nearby campground. We could stay cheap enough but we weren’t really into the surfing scene so we moved on.
We spent the next several hours driving up Highway 22, a winding and narrow country road through sheep and dairy country. We set the GPS for a free campsite at Pukehoe and found it with some difficulty. The site is a suburban sports park with tennis courts and field-hockey paddocks but we have a nice section of the parking lot all to ourselves.

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Sunday, 24 March -

We woke to a foggy morning but it was only a ground fog in our little river valley. After pack-up we drove only two or three minutes to emerge from the valley to a viewpoint overlooking the township (town) of Taupo and the north end of the lake on a sunny-bright morning.
We then drove into Taupo and found a Countown grocery. We’ve been partial to New World grocery stores but thought we should try it. It’s similar in nature but carries slightly different lines.
We then hit the nearby town park for our dump station chores and re-filling the water tank. For the most part water has been very good. We’ve only encountered a few places where the water isn’t potable. The number of public toilets and dump stations has been a welcome change from home. Nearly every little town has public toilets and most have a nearby dump station for campers passing through. Often the dump stations are located at a town park or, surprisingly, a refuse recycling station. The great, great majority have been free, even when hosted by a petrol station. We did run into a few which required a $2 payment but we just moved on. And at Fox Glacier we paid a $5 fee at a private campground because we had a full grey-water tank. We’ve subsequently learned the grey-water tank isn’t vented properly and was fooling us into thinking the tank was drained when it wasn’t and we’d end up with a full tank even though we hadn’t used much water in the sink.
We then went into town to a coffee shop with free wi-fi. I uploaded the blog and Labashi did some research on the web and we both retrieved our email.
We then drove around through Taupo just looking around before heading down the east side of the lake.
At Three Mile Bay we found a nice spot for lunch near the boat ramp. I noticed racing boats nearby and walked over to check them out while Labashi made lunch. It turned out this was a racing event for the New Zealand Water Skiing Association. The boats not only race, they pull a water skier at the same time!
While watching a race event I heard a familiar sound overhead and sure enough it was a parachute. We were close to the airport and sky-divers were jumping. Also, a floatplane flew over and circled at the Taupo end of the lake before making a water landing.
After lunch we drove on down the lake and on to our walk for today at Lake Rotopoumanu. This is a two-hour walk around a very pretty lake hidden away in the mountains. The path is through giant rimu and beech trees and is wide enough for two to walk abreast. Every 20 minutes or so, you come to a short trail to a small beach and it makes a nice break to just take a few minutes and listen to the silence. We saw only one robin, one fantail, and a dozen or so ducks (mallards, I think) but the trees were magnificent.
We then drove south on 47 and took photos of the volcanos. One is newly active since November 2012 and was actively steaming away today. Another, Mount Ngauruhoe, is a perfect cone and is spectacular. It starred as Mount Doom in the movie ‘Lord of the Rings’.
We continued on to Whakapapa Village and on up the ski-village road to our ‘campsite’ at Scoria Flat. We missed it at first because it’s just an extra-wide place in the road. We didn’t recognize what it was at first but we had chatted with a local before heading up and he mentioned the Scoria Flat area is the chaining pulloff in the winter for cars going up to the ski village. In any case, we had it all to ourselves and had both a sunset to our west and the moon rising over Mount Doom to our east. We are parked among a moonscape of lava with very odd white, spongy growth and a few colorful flowers.
As sunset progressed we were treated to a light show to our west, then the sky clouded over. Yet off to the east we can see Mount Doom with a wreath of cloud lit by the nearly-full moon. What a special place! Labashi says this camping spot is second only to our spot under Mount Cook.

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Napier ; Te Urewera National Park ; Gisborne ; East Cape ; Rotorua

(posted from The Coffee Club, Taupo, NZ)
(This post covers 20 - 23 March, 2013)

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Saturday, 23 March -

We woke to a sunny but chilly morning at Lake Okareka this morning. By ‘chilly’, I mean mid-Fifties. At that kind of temperature New Zealanders are still wearing shorts, tee-shirts, and jandals.
After pack-up this morning we drove into Rotorua to the Starbucks I found on ‘Wi-fi Finder’ (an app on the iPad) for the free wi-fi. We had coffee and a scone while collecting our email and checking the telephone machine at home.
We then took the advice of our ‘New Zealand Frenzy’ tour book and drove to the town park for a look at the thermal features, i.e., boiling water, bubbling mud-pots, and sulfurous steam. We walked the park and took photos for an hour and then walked through the Saturday Market at the edge of the park.
After lunch in the park, we moved on to the Redwood Forest on the south edge of town. The story goes that this forest was replanted with California redwoods after the native trees were all cut down because the redwoods grow faster. But when they attained a cutting height they were too magnificent to take and the forest became a park and a memorial grove. In any case, it is indeed a magnificent sight today.
We walked the yellow-blazed trail which took us to an overlook of the commercial thermal park below. The geyser rewarded our efforts by erupting and we had a great view over the city and well beyond Lake Rotorua. The walk to the overlook took us 50 minutes and the downhill walk back 40. Along the way we saw the strangest thing. As we approached we thought it must be a dead possum but then we realized it had a rabbit-look but, wait, no, it had a kangaroo look. Was it a wallaby? We took a photo and will have to look into that.
By then it was 1500 and time for one more thing before figuring out where we were staying tonight. We could stay at Lake Okareka again but there was nothing else in Rotorua we wanted to see. We don’t have any interest in the commercial thermal parks or Maori shows for tourists.
We drove south to the mud pools at Waiotapu. These are bubbling, gurgling, splatting, sputtering, and steaming mud pools and it’s funny to watch them.
We then drove to the nearby Waikite Valley thermal pool, hoping to buy a soak. This particular site was built and is run by the local community. It depends on a super-hot geyser and its water is cooled by running down over terraces built for this purpose. The main pools look like swimming pools but the water is about 40 degrees Celsius. But the draw for us was the private rooms. These are rooms with the back open to the fields and sky and an open roof, providing a private view out. The pool is six feet in diameter with seating and with a steady stream of hot water coming in. The room also has a shower and undressing/dressing area as you enter. For $18 a person you get the private room for 40 minutes. In practice, the girl who took us to the room gave us about 50 minutes. After the time expires, you’re welcome to use the public pools until closing at 2100.
We stripped down and didn’t bother with swimsuits in our own little nirvana. Our session started at 1700 and the sun was now lower in the sky and shadows starting to get longer. The sky overhead was deep blue and in the distance we could see sheep grazing on a hillside. Just outside our room on the viewing side were flax plants, giving us a sense of being hidden from view though I’m sure any sheep with binoculars could get an eyeful.
Our soak was perfectly timed. The water was hot enough that we were starting to overheat as the time ran our and a shower felt great.
After our soak we loaded back into the van and set the GPS for a freebie campsite about 40 minutes away near Taupo. This one is Reid Farm and it’s a bit of an odd one in that it’s close to a destination popular with tourists yet it’s free. It’s along the river and there aren’t many level places there but we managed to snag one out by ourselves. This is one of the more crowded camps we’ve been in but then again, it’s a Saturday night.
After supper we went to the laptops but didn’t last long. It’s only 2030 and I’m ready to call it a night. I notice it’s getting dark earlier now. Until recently it seemed twilight would start at 2030 and the sky would still be light at 2100. But tonight darkness came on around 2000 and the sky is fully dark at 2030.

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Friday, 22 March -

This morning as Labashi did her thing I took a short walk and took photos of a line of rain showers out over Tokomaru Bay and made a short video clip of this beautiful bay.
After pack-up we headed north. When we first saw this road around the East Cape on the map, we thought it mostly ran close to the sea but instead it mostly ran inland among the hills and was very, very twisty. Every half-hour or so, however, we’d drop down to a small village along the sea and each of them lay in a pretty little bay with steep, heavily overgrown hills around it.
The faces we see in these villages are almost exclusively Maori. When we stopped for a morning coffee at Ruatoria, the ladies in the shop are speaking Maori among themselves, but the King’s English to us outsiders.
At lunch time we stopped in another little village, Te Aroroa and at the store the teenagers were speaking Maori among themselves and my clerk spoke Maori with the customer ahead of me.
Outside Te Aroroa, we visited a Maruka ‘factory’. The sell Maruka honey, which is a medicinal honey, as well as two floral honeys. We sampled them all and then went with the 18%-active Maruka (a small jar for $33!). The Maruka honey is graded by an independent testing lab which certifies UMF percentage and prices escalate very quickly as the percentage goes up. A 20-per-cent jar the same size (250 grams) was $52.
At Tikitiki we toured St. Mary’s church, which our guide book says is similar inside to a marae. It looks much like a regular Catholic church but the walls are covered in woven panels and all the wood trim (and pew ends) are deeply and intricately carved.
As we traveled today we saw at least a dozen marae. The one at Tokomaru Bay had a work project going on and easily 30 people were wielding tools and working away as we passed by.
Each marae is painted a flat yellow and the woodwork is carved and is painted a shade darker than the barn-red we know, also flat in sheen. Where figures are carved deeply into the wood, the eyes of the figures are the multi-colored paua shell.
Today we also saw a few alternative-lifestyle (hippie) Pakeha folks around. I saw one younger guy I suspect is a fugitive from something. He was riding a dirt bike and wearing big shades. But the thing that made me think he’s a fugitive is he was also wearing a large scarf double-wrapped and up over his head and exposing only his sunglasses and a bit of his nose. It was 70-degrees out and he was on a hard road so cold and dust weren’t the issue. Then again, maybe he’s just eccentric or has some disfigurement.
The afternoon had more beach stretches and we soon started seeing an island offshore. We noticed a cloud over it and saw it was light in color. We realized it was the famous White Island, New Zealand’s most volcanically-active place. And we saw that the cloud goes to the ground level--- it’s being generated by the volcano. I wouldn’t mind seeing it closer but a helicopter trip out there is $455 a person and a boat ride is $255 a person. We’re not THAT into thermal features. We did take pictures from several road-side stops, though.
By late afternoon all the curves, shifting, accelerating and decelerating were getting to us. We took a short break at Opotiki and then turned inland, bound for a campground near Rotorua.
We drove through until 1730, pausing only to gas up.
Our camp for the night is the parking lot of a small park at Lake Okareka, just east of Rotorua.
After supper we took a walk along the lake and looked at racing canoes then walked back the road for 20 minutes and back before turning to our laptops.

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Thursday, 21 March -

We never heard bit of sound all night at our Mokau Falls campsite. On the South Island we occasionally heard locusts (or New Zealand’s version of them) but we’ve not heard the night sounds of a kiwi or a morepork.
This morning dawned dreary but the sky lightened quite a bit by the time we had finished breakfast and packed up for travel. As we began driving we were seeing sunlight on the light-colored rocks of the mountain.
We drove 10K back to the visitor center to ask about visiting a marae we saw on the map. This particular one was associated with the Maori Wars of the 1860s and 1870s and with a famous Maori figure called Te Kooti (pronounced “te caughty”). I can’t do his story justice so will leave that to your Google skills. But knowing we’re so close to a great Maori warrior’s unassailable wilderness hideout is exciting.
However, we learned we can’t just go to a marae. It’s a place not only of community gathering but also of religious significance and there are rituals and protocols which must be followed even to visit in the company of a member. In the end, our chat with the ranger led us to buy a book on those rituals and protocols.
We did have a funny moment with the ranger. He and three others in the office there were all of Maori descent and obviously so. As we first began to describe to the ranger that we wanted to visit the marae if possible, we mis-pronounced the word and said, in effect, “we wanted to see a Maori”. Our host chuckled and said, “Well, there are four of us right here!”. When I changed the pronunciation to “more-EYE” rather than “MORE-ay”, he told us (gently) that we would not be permitted to do that without going through the rituals and protocols and suggested we book a marae-visit trip with a local couple.
We decided we’d better learn more (thus the book purchase) and we’d not attempt to see the 1870 marae of Te Kooti fame.
We drove back along the lake and down the 50K to Wairoa before turning north on Highway 2 for Gisborne. We spent the next several hours driving north and reached Gisborne around 1300. We spent two hours at the very good museum there, learning more about the arrival of Captain Cook in the late 1700s.
Captain Cook was sent on a scientific and exploration mission. The Royal Society of Astronomy requested he view and record measurements of the transit of Venus over the Sun. Using measurements gathered at several widely-dispersed geographic sites, the Society hoped to determine how far the Earth is from the Sun.
He also, of course, was exploring for conquest of new lands and to find the great southern lands which theoretically had to be there to balance the Earth.
Cook first went ashore in New Zealand at what is now Gisborne in October, 1769 and named the bay Poverty Bay. He put boats ashore, a pinnace and a smaller craft, but ended up on the wrong side of the river mouth from where Maoris came out. He left the pinnace with a few men and crossed, only to have Maoris attempt to capture the lightly-guarded pinnace. The first casualty of the Pakeha meeting the Maori happened that day when, after a warning shot failed to turn the Maori, one of them was shot dead.
Captain Cook went on to explore the coast of New Zealand for six months, producing amazingly-detailed maps.
The museum also did a good job of following the history of the area and providing a succint, logical timeline of the development of “Gizzy” up to today.
After the museum we went to an overlook above the city and then to a marae identified as one we could photograph (from the street) at the base of the hill.
By then it was getting on to 1600 and we needed to figure out where we’d stay for the night. We read about freedom camping in this district having an odd policy. You can ‘freedom camp’ but only if you have a permit. The permit costs $10 for two days of ‘free’ camping or $25 for ten days. The guide said we could get the permit online but we had no way to print so we went to the local i-Site for help. Fortunately, they had the forms there and handled the entire transaction. I only bought a two-night pass since we are likely to be out of the district by then.
We then enjoyed a sunset drive up the east coast from Gisborne to Tokomaru Bay. A guide book mentioned the Te Puka Tavern there has good burgers so that became our goal.
We reached Tokomaru Bay in the last half hour of sunset and the light was incredible. We saw our first double-rainbow on the hill before the bay.
We had burgers-and-chips (fries) and drinks in the friendly little pub. As we ate, a young guy came over and, seeing our maps, asked if we were planning a trip. He introduced himself as Tim and said he was a tour-bus driver with a small group. He then went on to give us his recommendations of places to visit all over the North Island. When we said we lived near Amish country, Tim regaled us with tales of his shock at seeing ‘Amish Mafia’ on TV and he wanted to know if it was real.
After supper we found our campsite for the night at a freedom camping site just around the bay. We have a perfect grassy site next to the beach all to ourselves on this balmy evening.

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Wednesday, 20 March -

This morning we had our luxurious showers at our campground before packing up. On my walk last night I had seen a sign for free wi-fi at the i-Site so we drove there this morning for email and a blog post. Lucky for me, there was an espresso-shack across the street. While getting my “mocka-chino” (we say ‘moka’, New Zealanders say ‘mocka’ for the word ‘mocha’) I chatted with the espresso-guy. His very excellent mochaccino was made with DeGreas (I think... it sounded like ‘de-grace’) coffee. As we chatted I mentioned Labashi likes to learn about the Maoris and he pointed to the building behind his espresso shack and said the lady there does Maori weaving and probably wouldn’t mind having visitors.
That’s how we met Anna who looks, dresses, and talks like a late-middle-aged hippie. She has completed a four-year degree in traditional weaving and is starting her masters program. She had various bundles of flax and other weaving materials handy and as we’d ask questions, she’d show us how she splits the flax into fibers for rope or string or prepares a 3/8” to 1/2”-wide piece for basket weaving. She showed us a dozen baskets, each different and a traditional cloak, this one used for a graduation ceremony as well as several decorated dresses.
After Woodville, we drove for several hours through very hilly country to Napier. The city of 55,000 lies on the sea and has palm-lined streets. The suburbs remind me of Marco Island, Florida with the white or light-pastel-colored houses and very neat neighborhoods. Napier is known for its art-deco architecture but we didn’t see a lot of that on our drive-through today. We did see the beautiful Marine Parade drive, though. The a grassy park leads to a wide beach on the green ocean on one side of the street and the other side has homes and then within a block or two the shops and restaurants. The beach goes on for miles and curves around the bay beautifully.
We were following the Pacific Coast Highway toward the East Cape and Gisborne. But I didn’t want to ignore the Urewera National Park though it’s a bit of a detour. At Wairoa we turned inland for 60K of narrow, winding road (much of it gravel) to reach the park and Lake Waikaremoana. This is another rain-forest area and the largest stand of virgin timber on the North Island.
We had been driving all day on dry roads but as we approached the rain-forest we saw the road was wet and then we were driving in a steady rain for a while. We checked two prospective camping areas but they didn’t feel right. One was too soon, in that we were just starting to see the lake and the other was a commercial site which didn’t seem to understand the idea of a level campsite. We drove on to Mokau Falls campground and found a very nice level grassy area all to ourselves. We even have a private beach just down the path a bit.
After supper I took a walk to exercise the Fitbit and look around. The little private beach is about 50 meters across and 20 deep and has a remote, wild feeling to it, as if I’m the first person ever to see it. There’s nothing but wilderness in sight all around.
The rain had let up while we ate but across the lake I could see the low-hanging virga and an active rain shower in the distance but a tiny patch of blue sky above. The forest all around is very thick and lush. At the back of our campsite I found a trail leading off into the jungliest place you can imagine. Only about 20 yards in I found a hand-written sign on a piece of cardboard with the word ‘Camp’ and directional arrows on it. Why it’s there, I have no idea. Not far after was a stream crossing and I was ill-equipped for that so I turned back.
We spent the rest of the evening reading guide books.

**************** END OF POST ************

Wellington ; Te Papa Museum ; Martinborough and Poppy’s ; Drive to Ngawi

(posted from Woodville Library, Woodville, NZ)
(This post covers 18 - 19 March, 2013)

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Tuesday, 19 March -

It rained quite a bit last night but we slept well. I’d wake up and hear the rain but then fall right back asleep.
After pack-up this morning we took a look at the maps and decided we’d trend eastward today. The town of Featherston was close and then we’d see what Martinborough’s vineyards looked like.
Featherston is a very small town but I did stop at the “RD1” store. From the look of it and the name “RD1” (as in Rural Delivery route 1), I thought it would be a farm store and that was indeed the case. It was similar in feel to a ‘Tractor Supply’ store back home. And I wanted to see real examples of the iconic ‘gum boots’ worn by New Zealand farmers and fishermen (similar to our Muck-brand rubber boots).
I thought we’d just do an out-and-back drive to Martinborough to see the land but the town is very charming and once we stopped at the i-Site we were hooked. There’s a balloon festival starting Thursday and they had two upscale cafes nearby. We ate at Cafe Medici and I had the best breakfast ever there.
The breakfast menu had the normal fare of eggs and streaky-bacon, etc, but also had Chilli Corn Fritters with guacamole and tomato. It was fantastic! It was a stack of corn fritters made with a bit of chili powder but the four fritters were stacked and layered between with tomato, a bit of fancy lettuce (roka?), and a perfectly-spiced guacamole and a bit of cream cheese. Now is that a breakfast or what !?! It was fabulous.
After, we walked across the street to a wine-tasting outlet and chatted with the guy behind the counter, Alex. It turns out Alex hiked the Appalachian Trail in its entirety in 2002 and was familiar with our home area. When we asked about visiting a winery on this rainy day he suggested we go to “Poppy’s”, not far away.
At Poppy’s we met Poppy and her husband Shane. Both had worked for one of the top wineries in Queenstown and in the area here as professional vintners and had broken away to start their own label. Poppy has the gift of gab and is quite the charmer. We had four wines, only three of which I can remember-- savignon blanc, pinot gris, and pinot noir.
The wine tastings work on a $5-per-tasting of four wines. If you buy, you need not pay the tasting fee but these are more expensive upscale wines. In our case we ended up buying a $40 bottle of Poppy’s Pinot Gris to compare to our favorite, Five Flax wine which we buy at New World for $10-12 per bottle on sale, regularly $19. We want to see if what we learned from Poppy about ‘palate-weight’ and ‘manky’ grapes makes any sense in a head-to-head taste-off.
Poppy and Shane told us about one of their favorite drives in the area to Cape Palliser so we tried it even though it’s a drive to the shore on a rainy day. We drove a half-hour south to Lake Ferry, then another 45 minutes to Ngawi, a small fishing village. The first part was through farm country then it suddenly opens up on a miles-long beach, today lashed by southerly winds and crashing waves.
We were very happy to see this countryside. In the farming area, you see golden hills to the east and looming, dark mountains to the west. At the beach, it’s all sky and sea and the road is often a cliff-side one with warnings about falling rocks... and dodging rocks which had just recently fallen on the road! In one place the warning says “Active Slump. Drive carefully and don’t stop” and another says “Slow down now. Road ahead is slippery” (because of mud from the slump washing onto the road).
But the beach is gorgeous. The water is green and the beach black sand and there are jagged rocks sticking up here and there.
After our short visit to Ngawi, we re-traced our steps back to the farms and sheep stations and set the GPS for Carterton. There we took care of provisioning and service chores, then drove on for another hour and a half or so to Woodville, our goal for tonight.
At Woodville we have a grassy campsite behind the town recreation hall. For $10 a night we get our campsite and a key to the showers and toilet. There’s no one here to monitor the site, just a sign on the building telling us to go to the local Caltex gas station to pay and to get the key. I love it!
After supper I took a short walk into town but the sidewalks are all rolled up for the night.

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Monday, 18 March -

Last night ‘The Straitsman’ ferry landed at the Bluebridge Terminal in Wellington at 2230. Our crossing had been remarkably smooth the entire way. We had spent the time in the coffee shop which had the only receptacles available to power our laptops and it had a good wi-fi signal. The wi-fi was a bit slow given that it’s based on the cell-phone signal from the ship to shore and it went out a few times but it’s kind of amazing that a ferry boat has wi-fi at all.
The unloading process was just a matter of waiting for the signal to drive Budley off the boat. As we drove through the docks area I pulled off to the side and let all the other vehicle pass to have time to make up my mind at the street. We were looking for a car parking lot called something like ‘CARe Park’ and because we had time to look about Labashi spotted a small sign for it which we otherwise would have missed.
This was to be our spot for the night. We had been told by the ferry ticket agent that we’d pay $18 to park in this open parking lot but that was much better than the nearby ‘motorhome park’ which charges $50 to park in a very similar open parking lot just a half-block away.
As it turned out the lot charged only $8 for the 12-hour stay and we were the only vehicle in that lot when I bought my ticket from the machine at 2300.
We had a glass of wine and settled in for what we thought might be a noisy night here next to the marine terminal. A steady rain started not long after.
Around 0630 we were awakened by car doors slamming. The parking lot served a nearby office building and workers were arriving for work. We snoozed another hour, then had breakfast and read our guide books.
We then drove a few blocks to the Te Papa Museum. This is a famous one in New Zealand and I’d say it’s comparable to Smithsonian museums. It’s a national-level museum about New Zealand, starting with the land and it’s plants and animals on the first level, the impact of man on the second level, the social interactions of man on the next level, a large Maori history section and an operating marae (community center) for all New Zealanders and guests, an art museum, and a special collections level.
We were in the first level for about a half hour and I thought this was going to be a walk-through for us since we were familiar with most of what was there. But it just kept going and going and getting better and better.
For us the Maori history was a highlight. From the full-size waka or war canoe which had seen action in several battles to the sea-going double-canoes with woven-flax-reed sails to the coconut star-viewer navigation device to stories of gods, we loved it all.
At lunch time we went down to the cafe and ordered a ‘hangi basket’, which is a plaited-reed basket filled with steamed meats and vegetables with aromatic spices. We had chicken, lamb, pork, wild boar, kumara, potatoes, carrots, and, I believe, cabbage-tree-heart. We’re not sure of the spices but detected rosemary among them.
In the traditional hangi, a fire is built in a pit and allowed to burn down to coals. Then the various meats and vegetables are layered between leaves and the whole covered with a tarp or more leaves and allowed to steam. After hours of steaming, the food is uncovered and served to a large group. Ours was just a single portion but the two of us could barely finish it. And this was one of the bargains of New Zealand in that it was only $15 in a country where that barely buys a decent cheeseburger!
We continued touring until 1530 and declared ourselves museumed-out... even though we hadn’t seen it all. We took a break in Budley, then walked to the nearby shopping district at Cuba Mall. That turned out to be a disappointment. We enjoyed seeing the interesting people but the shops were very worn and had nothing interesting. We walked through Courtney Place, the strip of bars and restaurants, with much the same reaction. Perhaps it was because it was raining and people were just scurrying along and the nicer restaurants weren’t open yet.
We weren’t going to stay in the city another night so joined the throng exiting the city at 1700. We drove for an hour to reach a small regional park. As we drove by the ferry terminal we could see a half-dozen or so campervans turning the same direction as us and there’s not a lot of camping to pick from that close to the city so we thought it might be crowded. Fortunately, those other campers mustn’t have the NZ Camping app because we were the only campervan there... and it was a beautiful spot along the Hutt River for only $10.
As we had supper the ranger came by to greet us (and take our trash!) and we talked about some walking possibilities if the rain let up.
Labashi and I then shared a bottle of Five Flax pinot gris and relaxed from our tough day at the museum.

****************** END OF POST *****************

Blenheim ; Picton ; Kaiteriteri ; Nelson ; Eel feeding at Takaka ; Abel Tasman National Park ; back to Picton for the ferry

(Posted from “The Straitsman” ferry, nearing Wellington, NZ)

(This post covers 15 - 17 March, 2013)

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Sunday, 17 March -

For the first time in our trip we heard rain on the roof overnight. At first it seemed sporadic but as dawn came the intensity picked up. We had thought we might try another walk this morning but it was not to be... the rain was just too relentless.
After a leisurely breakfast we packed up and headed back out the long, winding road to civilization. The road didn’t seem nearly so bad, mostly because we had only one oncoming vehicle and that one in a wide spot.
At Takaka we paused only for gas and to set the GPS. I noticed that it’s 112K as the crow flies to Picton but when I tell the GPS to figure out the routing, it’s 212K.... because of the torturous turns in the route. We drove for an hour through the first hilly section (Tanaka Hill) but with traffic lighter than yesterday and very few trucks, it was easy enough.
We had lunch at a roadside park after Motueka and another hour or so put us at Nelson. I thought of looking for a museum or other rainy-day thing to do in Nelson but as we talked we decided we’d better head for Picton and figure out our ferry arrangements rather than tarry here.
The only pause we had was for an afternoon coffee break at Pelorus Bridge, where we had camped two nights ago. We had had a very nice walk through the old-growth forest here but today the walk would be a dreary one for anyone giving it a try. We had a chicken-and-camembert pie on the cafe’s little roofed patio and moved on.
In another hour and a half we made Picton, where we immediately checked on available sailings. We were in luck--- it was 1600 and we could take the 1900 crossing.
After buying our ticket we drove into Picton and walked around the town centre for an hour and picked up a few items from the grocery store.
We then returned to the ferry terminal and started reading up on the North Island and looking for a camp for the night.
At 1730 we got in line and boarded at 1830 for our 1900 departure in a very straightforward process. Our ferry, the “Straitsman”, has cafeteria-style food service and wi-fi service in the coffee shop.
As I write and post this, I’ve just finished a SPOT report and see we’re approaching the North Island.

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Saturday, 16 March -

After pack-up we continued into Nelson for re-provisioning. We only needed a few items so it didn’t take long. We then toured the town centre area to get a sense of the town but then had to move on.
Outside of Nelson we saw many vineyards and orchards and then those gave way to a forest industry. We see many completely denuded hillsides, many so impossibly steep it doesn’t seem possible they were logged. We also see rows of replanting and in one very odd case trees in perfect rows on a 60-degree-plus mountainside.
The land here is much greener than further south but that’s from the evergreen trees. Once you get away from the forested areas, the grasses and weeds are just as brown from lack of rain as the rest of the country.
After a brief stop for the i-Site and lunch in Moetuka, we drove to nearby Kaiteriteri for our first glance of golden beach. We were surprised to find a large parking lot and many cars until we learned Kaiteriteri is the southern departure point for water taxis taking people up along the coast for the Abel Tasman National Park’s beach walk. It’s also a departure point for kayakers. Also, right there is a magnificent mile-long beach curving gracefully around.
After Kaiteriteri we retreated to the main road toward Takaka and the other side of Abel Tasman park, i.e., the northern entrance.
As we neared Takaka, we took a detour to the Anatoki River and a nature park which has eels. This is one of New Zealand’s time-honored tourist draws. The eels live wild in the Anatoki River but in 1914 a local girl began feeding them. She learned she could attract them by snapping her finger against the water’s surface and that they preferred to eat ‘mince’ (finely ground beef) and blancmange, a type of pudding.
Today, the small farm is a petting zoo with this side attraction of feeding eels. We toured the zoo, feeding the emu, llama, goats, pigs, red deer, chickens, sheep, cows, donkey, and horse. Then we were given a small cup of bright-red mince and a 18” stick. We walked along the river to the designated point and indeed saw a few eels along the bank. We’d put a small ball of mince on the stick and put it at the water’s surface just in front of the eel. After we fed one of the larger ones (about four feet long) a few times, the others started crowding in for their share. We were there alone and had plenty of time to take photos of the eels.
We then made our way back to Takaka and on to Abel Tasman National Park’s Totararanui campground at the north end of the park. The last part of the trip is via 10 kilometers of very narrow and twisty gravel road. I found the best thing to do was slow down to ten miles per hour and keep a close lookout for oncoming traffic around each turn. In many places the road edge had been washed out by a big storm earlier this year so only one vehicle could go through at a time. But at such a slow speed, it wasn’t a problem, just a bit nerve-wracking. Not a good time to think about failing brakes or a jammed accelerator pedal!
At the campground we found a nice spot off to ourselves and while Labashi made supper I took a quick look around. After supper we walked three miles of gold-colored beach, all perfectly flat and the edges washed by blue water.


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Friday, 15 March -

We were so close to the beach overnight that the surf was making quite a racket but I didn’t hear a thing.
Another fine day today, sunny and 80 degrees, a few gusts of wind here and there as we drive through the hills but otherwise very light breezes.
Our first stop today was Blenheim. We bee-lined to the i-Site for info and then took care of regular chores at the dump station before finding the library for a wi-fi connection.
For once wi-fi was free and we spent more than two and a half hours using it to catch up the blog, check the answering machine at home and send photos to friends and family.
At 1400 we headed north to Picton, where we’ll catch the Cook Strait ferry next week. We were quoted a cost of 255NZD for the van and us to make the three and a half hour crossing. We also wanted to see exactly where the loading process takes place and I’m very glad we did. The Inter-Islander ferry has its offices and the terminal for walk-ons in a completely different area than the line for vehicles. We happened to come in on the vehicle-loading side and couldn’t find the terminal. In looking for it we nearly got trapped in the vehicle-loading lane without a ticket. I’m sure we would have figured it out if that had happened the morning of our sailing but we don’t need the extra hassle when time is a factor.
The other thing we learned from the ticket agents was where we can stay in the van both on the Picton end (the night before sailing) and the Wellington end (on the North Island). There’s a lot on the Wellington end which costs 18NZD a day for parking but we will be within easy walking distance of downtown and it’s close to the ferry terminal.
After our Picton visit we turned west toward Nelson. We had information about a nice campground about an hour that direction so made that our goal for today.
The road from Picton west is, depending on your mood and tolerance for winding roads, either delightful or horrible..... and perhaps a bit of both. The views are certainly the former and it’s not steep, just filled with an incredible number of turns. The speed limit is 50 kph or 30 miles per hour but that can seldom be achieved. I could mostly do about 20 with a remarkable number of ten-mile-per hour blind turns. In many turns, the road is just barely wide enough for two vehicles to pass but if the other vehicle is a bus or larger RV, it’s very, very close.
The good news, of course, is that it’s so obviously hazardous that everyone seems to drive sensibly, slowing down almost to a stop on the blind turns and, where the road permits, swinging a bit wide to allow the other guy the maximum room to swing a big vehicle through.
After an hour we came to Pelorus Bridge campground, a DOC site. This one is a bit fancier in that it has showers and a cafe but it’s also $12 per person per night. It has good reviews, though, and we see this part of the country doesn’t have the free campgrounds we found elsewhere.
When we checked in at the cafe/campground office Labashi noticed a wild-pork/kumara/apple pie among the offerings in the food display case. Kumara is sweet-potato so that combination seemed like it might be okay. It was served warm and was really good. The pork was fork-tender and made up most of the pie. It had a full crust but only a light topping of kumara paste with small slices of sweet apple. Good stuff!
After we found our camping spot along the river we walked the Tawa path and then back to the first waterfall. The waterfall was like none we’ve ever seen. The cliff is covered with moss and ferns. The water trickles down the moss and falls in hundreds of tiny little streams. Nice!
We returned to the van from our trail walk and then walked along the rocky river bed a bit. Labashi has this desire to see a wild eel so she put out a bit of raw meat to entice one close enough to see. Unfortunately, the sandflies found us and made it impossible to stay out to watch the bait.
We returned to the van and our laptops.


************** END OF POST ***************

Curio Bay and Porpoise Bay ; Waikawa ; Nugget Point Lighthouse ; Dunedin and Portobello ; Mount Cook ; Lake Tekapo ; Timaru and TeAna ; Amberley Beach ; Kaikoura walk

(Posted from Blenheim Library, Blenheim, NZ)

(This post covers 10 - 15 March, 2013)

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Thursday, 15 March -

We had a very quiet night at Amerberley Beach and woke around 0800, about a half hour later than has been our practice lately. After pack-up we drove along the beach road past the golf course but at the river we mouth had to turn back because the road beyond was suitable only for high-clearance four-wheel drive vehicles.
We drove north through many wineries and a few olive orchards for an hour and stopped for coffee at the Mainline Cafe, an upscale little shop with a pristine ’59 Chevy in the parking lot. The woman who served me was the car’s owner and I told her my grand-dad had had one very like it, only gray in color instead of the robin-egg blue of hers. I could tell she enjoyed talking about cars and we chatted while she made my mochaccino.
The wineries then gave way to sheep and cow country, very hilly and a pleasant mix of field and forest. The road became a very winding one, almost violently so in that the turns were sharp and close together. We could see on the GPS that we had a range of hills between us and the ocean and knew we’d have to cross the hills to see water. The road became steeper and the turns ever tighter and for the first time we noticed more trucks than we had seen before. I suppose it makes sense to see a lot of trucks this close to Christchurch and on a major route to the north. ‘Major’ in this case refers to its importance, not the width of the road!
The torturous hilly turns eventually put us out to our first glimpse of the beach and an excellent one it is. We stopped at the first picnic pulloff and had lunch overlooking the blue, blue water on this sunshine-perfect day.
After lunch we drove up past Goose Bay and finally to South Bay, just south of Kaikoura, the whale-watching capital of the country. We parked at the South Bay recreation site to take a walk, perhaps to see dolphins, seals, or even a whale off in the distance. We had such a perfect day that we just kept going. We first climbed the steep bluff trail to a viewpoint and just kept going to the next and the next until we had walked to the lighthouse. At that point we could return or descend the bluff and walk into Kaikoura and then cross back to South Bay via another set of trails. On the map it looked like a toss-up and I thought we’d stop in town for refreshment and a break before tackling the steep trails back over the ridge.
As it turned out the distance to town was quite a bit more than we thought. And the shops where we might get a drink or something to eat were at the far end of town and quite a long walk. We took the Dempsey Track up over the hill but it turned out to be the worst of the three options. We later learned we should have taken Tom’s Track to save the better part of a mile.
As it turned out we walked eight miles and 64 stairs and that was plenty for today.
Back at the van it was 1630 and we needed to figure out where we were staying tonight. The Camping NZ app to the rescue again. We found a freebie only a half-hour north at Meatworks Beach, a surfing hotspot. The parking lot was filled with young surfers but beach-side campsites stretched off in both directions. We found an idyllic spot all to ourselves within sight of the surfers. At dusk a couple of young kids in a regular van parked nearby for the night, perhaps for a little security-in-numbers in this remote-feeling place.


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Wednesday, 14 March -

After pack-up this morning we drove back in through the main street of Timaru to the other side and a McDonalds there. Labashi wanted hot cakes and she wanted them NOW. We’ve been living on breakfasts of Uncle Toby’s Cheerios or Pam’s Muesli, both very nice but we needed a change. At the McDonalds I had the iPad out checking mail and an older lady tapped me on the shoulder and asked (in a good-natured way)how I got along before those existed. It turned out she and her husband are from Calgary (the one in Alberta). We had a pleasant little exchange about the high cost of food in New Zealand.
We then went provisioning at the Pak’N’Pay across the street. These are warehouse-style grocery stores and are owned by the same company as the New World supermarkets we generally visit.
We then went to the TeAna museum, our purpose for staying the night here. It’s a Maori Rock Art museum.
I was a bit put off by the 20NZD per-person entrance fee for what looked like a smaller museum and we had nothing in guide books to tell us its quality.... because it’s too new.
But we took a chance and were greeted by our guide, ‘Wes’, a native Maori young man in his mid-Twenties, I’d say. Wes was an absolute delight. He at first hung back and waited for questions but as Labashi revealed her natural enthusiasm and the knowledge she had gained by trip preparation and by reading several Maori novels, Wes responded positively and we had the best tour ever. The tour is supposed to last 90 minutes but we were there over three hours.
Wes normally has duties documenting almost four hundred Maori rock painting sites. He photographs them and documents the changing conditions of the stone and of the drawings at least once per year. He would normally be on the road today but two of the normal staff people had become unavailable today.
Wes told us of his family relationships which, in his case, are wider than normal because an ancestor had taken multiple wives in multiple ‘marae’, or jurisdictions. He told us stories of warriors, how the face is tatooed in three different areas-- above the brow is the individual’s space but below the brow is split into tatoo patterns representing his mother and father. In one case, a warrior didn’t like his father so only had the mother’s side done (Wes says this is shown in the movie ‘Once Were Warriors’).
We learned about the plants and animals important to the South Island Maori. The flax plant, for instance, can be used to tend a cut. Trace the thumb down the inside of the leaf to the middle and it will pick up a sticky substance to apply to the wound. Let it dry and it will form the bandage, just like super-glue.
And we learned the South Island Maori had split off from the North Island tribes and tended to interact more with the white culture and today tend to have lighter skin and more European facial features. The settlements on the South Island start well down the island to put distance from the north and to find good, defensible locations for their ‘pa’ or fortification. Around the fortification may be moats. Trails in the area may lead to quicksand or other man-traps.
As I say, our conversation went on for several hours and I can’t do it justice here. Suffice it to say it was far and away our best New Zealand experience to date.
Sometime after 1500 we finished up at the TeAna center and had a late lunch in the van. We then drove north for a few hours, passing by Christchurch and continuing up Highway 1. The New Zealand Camping app on the iPad gave us a position for a small municipal campground along the ocean about an hour north of Christchurch at Amberley Beach.
The first thing we did there was open and sample a Monteith’s Alcoholic Ginger Beer. I’ve been drinking several non-alcoholic ginger beers a day--- Bundesburg brand-- but this was my first taste of an alcohol-containing one. It reminded me of my mom’s home-made root beer after it had seasoned a while. I’ll have to look for it back home since I prefer it to a regular beer taste.
After supper we walked along the Pacific and then back through the little village to our quiet little camp as it grew dark. We spent perhaps and hour on the laptops before going to bed.

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Tuesday, 13 March -


This morning we awoke to the sound of helicopters overhead at our campsite below Mount Cook. I could see a bit of light around the curtains so I thought the helicopters must be taking their first glacier-viewing runs of the day shortly after daybreak. But when I pulled back the curtain I saw a solid blanket of fog down to 400 AGL. The chopper guys must be operating on instruments, a tricky proposition in this area, I’d think. They may have been further down the valley than I thought and were flying extremely close to the ground as we saw them doing in Milford Sound on a similar day.
Instead of having breakfast we drove over to the nearby village to the Hermitage Hotel, thinking we’d get a nice breakfast. When we learned a basic continental breakfast would cost us 20NZD each and a hot breakfast 30NZD each, we suddenly weren’t hungry. We had come in to the hotel from the back parking lot which required us to walk through the hotel and descend several sets of stairs. As we retraced our intricate path back through the hotel (after leaving the restaurant) we saw a table and set of chairs in a glassed-in corner with a view toward the mountain. We retrieved bread and several cheeses from the van and had our own impromptu little breakfast there in the fancy hotel in our own elegant corner.
We had been thinking we’d walk the Hooker Track but our guide book said the point of it is the views so it’s not worthwhile if the mountain’s socked in. So we instead drove to the Blue Lakes parking area and hiked up to the Tasman Glacier Overlook. This walk was short enough in length but my Fitbit recorded 40 stories gained as we climbed up stone steps to our viewpoint.
As we climbed we met two Belgian guys coming down. We had been with them at Curio Bay awaiting the penguins a few days ago. As we chatted on said there wasn’t much to see at the top here, just a gray lake and a glacier face off in the distance.
So we weren’t expecting much when we crested the top only to be presented with a wonderful view of blue-ice icebergs floating in the glacier lake and lit by the sun. When we arrived the fog was causing the mountaintop to play hide-and-seek but within 20 minutes it cleared and gave us a magnificent view and a mirror image of the mountain on the lake. And down below us we saw teeny-tiny little yellow boats zooming into the picture. They were the glacier-tour boats, each overflowing with six or eight passengers and getting up close to the icebergs. From our vantage point they looked like Matchbox-size toys. And off in the distance, probably a half-mile, we could see the glacier face and the white snow of the glacier-top extending up its valley.
After the glacier-view walk we returned to the campground at the Hooker Track but the fog had closed in again and we decided we knew what we would see. We had just been, after all, up the next valley east from it. We decided our time would be better spent to move on.
We thus drove back down the 50K Mount Cook Highway and then turned east toward Lake Tekapo. When Lake Tekapo came into view, we saw a sign telling us to turn left in so-many meters to enter the village. I turned too early, as it turned out, but this road took us to a hot-springs, tubing, and ice-skating rink (the latter in winter) and cafe. We were already well past lunch time so tried the cafe and were surprised to find they had an excellent “BLAT” (bacon, lettuce, avocado, and tomato) sandwich on a pumpkin-seed bagel. I could eat those for lunch every day, I think.
We continued on to Timaru, where Labashi wanted to go to a Maori Rock Art museum. We arrived too late for today so will have to visit tomorrow. But the i-Site person showed us we could freedom-camp only a few blocks away at a park along the marine terminal and within easy walking distance of nice restaurants on the bluff overlooking Caroline Bay.
We found our spot and walked into town for a look-about and then chose a Monteith’s Cafe and Bar restaurant. Monteith’s is a well-known New Zealand brewery and has these restaurants in most cities.
We split a blue-cod fish and chips meal and I had a tomato soup, both among the best we’ve ever had. I tried the Golden Lager and Labashi had a Dusky Sound pinot gris. Hungry yet?
We then returned to the van but decided to walk down to the beach. As we walked, I noticed ten or so campervans parked closely together in another parking lot. We walked over and learned we had parked in the wrong place. The sign here clearly said this lot was the only one to be used for overnight parking. But it was also right across from the marine terminal where a container ship was being unloaded. And the noise was both loud and varying.
We walked back to the van, checking carefully for any No Camping signs without finding any. They might leave us alone but then again, we might get an on-the-spot $200 fine. I checked the iPad app, hoping against hope there might be something else within easy driving distance. The app showed another free campsite only a few miles away. I set the GPS to the new location and in ten minutes we were in a much quieter spot right on the bay and with no other campers around. Whew!
We spent an hour or so on the laptops, then called it a day.

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Monday, 12 March -

After breakfast this morning I took a short walk around the soccer pitch and met a gent walking his dogs. He was Ben, originally from Cornwall (England) but living here in Portobello for about a year. He said he had seen a lot of the US geographically but not much of it really. He had had several short-term jobs moving racing sailboats by truck. Thus he had crossed the US from LA to Tampa via I-10 but had done it in one 52-hour drive switching off with his buddy. After a few days in Tampa they took another boat north to Rochester, NY. But Ben had also done some interesting campervanning around Europe and told us about a campervan crossroads-of-the-world near Istanbul. He said he had seen more and more varied campervans, busses, adventure-trucks, photographer vans, and film-production vehicles than he had seen before or has since.
We then drove east on the Otago Peninsula to the Royal Albatross Center. The Center is well-regarded and their tours very popular but at $50 per person that seems like a lot. Our friend Ben said he thought it not worth the price, particularly when you can often see albatrosses flying above the center.
We arrived some 20 minutes before the Center opened so had a chance to walk down to the overlook and take photos of the view and of seals and of a perfectly-positioned white spoonbill and several shags. And as we walked back to the Center we saw three or four royal albatrosses, their perfect white bodies accentuated by black wingtips flying right over the Center.
We went into the Center and paid the $10 to tour the static displays of the albatrosses and cormorants as well as a model of the nearby Disappearing Gun, a World War II six-inch cannon. The actual six-inch cannon is nearby, is fully operational and retracts below ground for protection from the elements.
We had lunch in the van in the parking lot, then battened down the hatches to travel. After reaching the halfway point of our entire trip, we’re starting to feel the pressure of time. We had thought we’d have so much time we’d be bored and perhaps revisiting some things we had learned more about after our visit. Or perhaps some things we’d missed because of weather, tides, or closures.
As it turns out, though, we’ve only done half the South Island. We’re told we’ve done the best of the country already but the point was to see ALL the country we could.
In any case, today we embarked on the four-and-a-half hour trip back to the interior to see Mount Cook.
As we drove north on Highway 1, though, we came upon the Morecki Boulders, a New Zealand icon. These are large balls of stone, about five feet in diameter. They are concretions of stony material just lying on the beach, some half-buried by sand, others almost fully exposed. They are decidedly odd.
Several hours later we came to an overhanging bluff with Maori rock paintings. These particular ones are well signed and well guarded by heavy metal fencing but they aren’t very clear examples. Labashi was also disappointed to see that they are thought to have dated only from the 1800s.
We had started out the morning in sunshine but the clouds thickened as we turned inland and we soon encountered light rain, on and off. But as we came within 75K of Mount Cook, the clouds began to part and at about 40K out we had clear blue sky.
Off in the distance we could see the snows of Mount Cook lit very strongly by the sun. I’d pull off for Labashi to take a photo but we’d then start driving again and have to pull off yet again as the mountain kept growing in size and impact.
We finally reached the campground at Whitehorse Hill at 1830 and had such beautiful evening light we went for a walk to take more photos.
Our campground is a DOC site which is really just a series of parking lots with some grass around the outer edges for the tenters and a modern building of flush toilets and a common room (glassed in) with picnic tables and sinks for meals. But three-quarters of the way around us are high mountain peaks, most snow-capped and a valley stretches out as far as the eye can see before us. The ‘parking lots’ are crowded with campervans, motorhomes, and lots of tenters living out of their vans or cars. We each pay $10 for the privilege of being here but all in all, it’s a bargain.
We spent the rest of the evening on the laptops.


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Sunday, 11 March -


After pack-up this morning we followed the Southern Scenic Route east and north through very photogenic and hilly sheep country with views of the ocean always nearby. We took a half-hour walk on an estuary trail and boardwalk. At the water-overlook of the Fraser River the tide was out and we saw thousands of snails in the mud of the estuary, each with its own small territory. We saw a few tiny little crabs among them, but only a dozen or so. They’d only move as we’d walk nearby (above them on the boardwalk) so there may have been as many crabs as snails for all we know.
We then drove on to Nugget Point Lighthouse. Our guide book called it an obligatory stop for photographers but otherwise boring. Wrong!
The trail first gave us a look down a cliffside at fur seals below and royal spoonbills on nests in the jagged rocks as well as an intriguing sea-cave opening.
We walked along a cliffside trail toward the lighthouse ahead. But once we rounded the lighthouse, a magnificent vista of massive rocks jutting up out of the ocean out ahead of us. Below we could see fur seals playing in the pools and high up on the rocks were thousands of birds which slowly lifted off in a massive airborne formation and landed a kilometer or so away on the water, still in a close group.
We spent a lot of time there at the lighthouse, then had lunch in the parking lot. After, we drove a few hundred meters to Roaring Bay where there was a hide for watching penguins. We were far too early for penguins, of course, but were alone in this beautiful bay for a while.
We then followed the coast until the road turned inland to follow a river’s course and back to Highway 1 and, eventually, Dunedin.
At 1530 we entered Dundedin and found we could still make the Art Museum for an hour. We found the museum and parking fairly easily and by 1600 were inside viewing art. As is typical for us, the modern art leaves us cold but we saw a very nice show on French printmaking in the late 1800s.
After the museum we walked through the sidewalk cafes on our way back to the van. We looked for anything else open on a Sunday but it was getting too late.
I then set the GPS for a campsite out on the Otago Peninsula near the town of Portobello. The GPS took us the shortest way, I suppose, but it was a cliff-hanger. The Highcliff Road was barely wide enough for two small vehicles to pass and is without a doubt the twistiest road I’ve ever driven. But the views were fantastic.
We made it to our freebie campsite, a small park and soccer pitch just outside Portobello, by 1800. Labashi made us an excellent meal of sausage and mashed potatoes while we enjoyed a bottle of Banrock Station’s Muscato wine.
We then turned to our laptops for a bit but faded quickly once the sky darkened around 2100.

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Saturday, 10 March -

This morning we left the Lignite Pit campground and waved a fond farewell to Maria as we left.
We drove east to Fortrose, paused for gas, then drove on to Curio Bay area. We checked out the view from the campground at Porpoise Bay and only a few hundred meters from Curio Bay. We took a long look at the campground and enjoyed the views of the ocean and of Porpoise Bay as I sipped my coffee and talked about what to do next.
The two main places to see yellow-eyed penguins are here at Curio Bay and at Nugget Point on the other side of the peninsula. Since the penguins don’t come back to their nests until evening, we were far too early for Curio Bay and in fact Nugget Point was only a few hours away. However, the guide book suggested Curio Bay was the better spot so we decided to see what else was in the area to occupy our time.
We drove the short distance to Curio Bay to get the lay of the land. We did find a penguin lying out on a rock but it was fairly far away and wasn’t moving so we weren’t even sure it was alive. We went on to Waikawa to the i-Site for more info. While there we learned there’s a freedom-camping site nearby and a nice cafe with wi-fi just a few kilometers on. We checked out the camping area which turned out to be a large field but also had a walking trail, or, as they say here, a walking ‘track’.
We went to the cafe and liked it immediately. They had a good wi-fi setup and good food in an arts-cafe setting.... quite unexpected for this far out from a town of any size.
We bought an hour of internet time but neither of us was quite ready to use it. Labashi was working with one of her ‘photo stories’ and I was two days behind on blog posts.
We spent a pleasant afternoon in the cafe and had coffee and a feijoa smoothie (feijoa is a fruit also known as the pineapple-guava) as we worked.
By mid-afternoon we were ready to move on. We returned to the Porpoise Bay campground, thinking we’d secure a spot there and walk over to the penquin-watch this evening but the wind had picked up quite a bit. We chose instead to return to Waikawa and walk the trail into the coastal rainforest. And what a good decision that turned out to be.
As soon as we entered the thickly-tangled forest we had no more problems with the gusting winds. And we weren’t the only ones enjoying it. There were many birds there too, singing away and seeming to follow us. Fantails, which are a wren-sized bird which sometimes fans out its tail as it sits on a branch above, were on Labashi’s must-see list and they were indeed delightful. They moved all the time, flitting about from branch to branch so close we’d put our hands out, hoping they’d take a perch. They seemed very curious and their chirps reminded me of chickadees.
The forest walk turned back and forth through the dense foliage but also broke out a few times to Waikawa Bay and views across the water. When the trail ended at a large field, we turned back and enjoyed it the other direction. We soon met a very nice older couple from the North Island who had emigrated from the Netherlands many years ago. They told us the fantails like to come to anyone walking through the forest, perhaps because we stir up bugs! Also, never allow a fantail into your house-- a fantail in the house is very bad luck according to the Maori.
After our walk we drove to the Curio Bay parking area at about 1630. We walked the penguin beach with a close eye out and did indeed see one penguin and Labashi shot a short video clip of it drinking.
After 1700 we walked back to the van for a quick supper and then Labashi talked to the ranger who had just come on duty. She advised only one had come ashore yesterday around 1830 and then a few more ‘around dusk’. Since dusk was still a long time off we took a nearby forest walk, this one in another type of coastal rainforest. Where the rainforest earlier today was very dense, this one was sparse. In areas of more sunlight, the forest floor was covered in ferns but in darker areas is was covered in what looked like dead twigs and gave us an eerie feeling.
We returned to the watch site around 1930 and sat down to wait with camera poised. We were joined by perhaps two dozen people but we were spread out so it didn’t seem crowded. We all waited, and waited, and waited. The sun set and twilight wore on. Finally, just as the sky went too dark for photography, we saw a penguin come in, hop up and bounce across the rocks, then turn back to the water and re-enter. In a few minutes we could just barely make out two more penguins come in and waddle slowly toward the nesting sites. It was by then too dark for photos but seeing the penguins come in was very, very cool.
By then we were tired and cold. We returned to the freedom-camping site and had a glass of Canterbury Cream (a Bailey’s-type irish cream) and went to bed.


************* END OF POST ************

Glenorchy and Lake Wapatipu ; Gibbston Valley and Cromwell ; Te Anau ; Milford Sound

(posted from Postmaster Cafe, Riverton, NZ)
(This post covers 4 - 6 March, 2013)

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Wednesday, 6 March -

Last night we had problems with mosquitos. We slept well for a couple of hours but one buzzed by my ear and I got up to check. I whacked seven of them arrayed around the ceiling. This isn’t good. We thought we had identified why we were getting some mosquitos but obviously not--- we shouldn’t have this many inside just from opening and closing the doors and windows through the day.
We both went on a mosquito-seeking mission and I’d say we knocked off two dozen or so. We tried sleeping again but it didn’t work. We were up several more times from 0300-0600, each time frustrated with the situation we obviously weren’t controlling.
We arose groggily around 0730 and got on with the day. We drove further north toward Milford Sound and knew right away we were in for a cloudy and wet day. We did get a few photos of a rainbow before we lost the sun entirely around 1000.
The Te Anau valley just keeps getting better and better the further north you go. The turns in the road get tighter and tighter and start rising toward the pass. The mountains around us were impossibly high.... more than 70 degrees up to the tops.
We eventually came to the Homer Tunnel which was the scariest tunnel we’ve ever been through. Our headlights barely lit the road in front of us and the overhead lights were so weak they may as well not have been there at all. The walls were very rough-hewn rock and the road only partially paved with trenches running alongside. The speed limit is 30 Kph or about 18 miles per hour and even that seems too fast. Oh, yeah.... and the tunnel road runs fairly steeply downhill (if you’re headed for the Sound). It’s safe enough, just spooky compared to other tunnels.
When we came out of the long, long tunnel, the road went into a series of 15-mile-per hour descending hairpin turns and very short lengths of straightaway. We were descending a very narrow valley, all in a fog and with waterfalls all around us (on the walls of the valley). The waterfalls were coming down multiple cascades of hundreds of feet on the high walls. I’ve never seen anything like it.
Once we reached Milford Sound we were surprised to see how small it is for the number of bus-fulls of people coming through. It turns out there’s an easy answer... all the buses bypass the ‘town’ and go to a the terminal for the tourist boats. And the ‘town’ in this case consists of a cafe and bar (The Blue Duck), a few hotel rooms, a backpacker’s lodge, and kayaking and helicopter-tour businesses. There is a gas station but it’s an unattended credit-card-only setup which doesn’t tell you the cost of a liter of fuel. Interesting choices all but once you see the small amount of available space, you see there was little choice. There’s only a small amount of room for parking cars and campervans so the bus-them-in solution is much more efficient and the boats are large enough to serve all their customer’s needs.
The big attraction, however, is the view. And today it was shrouded in fog from about 400 feet above ground level. And it was raining. But then again, this IS a rainforest! Milford Sound gets over seven meters of rain a year (New York city gets a little over a meter of rain a year).
We had a leisurely lunch at the Blue Duck, hoping the fog would lift in the early afternoon. But it was not to be. The fog had only gotten thicker so we decided to head back the 120K to Te Anau.
Our trip back to the tunnel was a rainy one but once through the tunnel we started seeing signs of clearing and by the time we reached Te Anau we had full sun.
In Te Anau we took a break to take a shower at the town park. This is a modern, very nice facility along the lake and it has a wonderful 8-minute, $5 shower which we shared.
We also gassed up and I took a close look at the van to try to determine why we are getting so many mosquitos when we camp in the remote areas. I had bought some dum-dum (a type of putty) and used it to block up the passageways the hoses use to get down to the under-carriage grey-water and fresh-water tanks. But when I closed the right-side slider door I saw a big problem.... the vents! The vents were merely pressed steel louvers with no screen backing. These are a direct path into the van. No wonder we had mosquitos! There are four vents, each 4 x 6 inches letting them in! I’ll have to do something about that.
It was getting late so we drove south to the nearest free campground at Lake Monowai in the Fiordlands National Park, arriving at 1830.
I took a few pictures of the lake and spent a few minutes on blog notes after supper before we called it a night at dark, which is at 2100 here.

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Tuesday, 5 March -


Today the main thing on the agenda was to get Labashi’s foot looked after. She had aggravated a callus between two of her outer toes. Her appointment wasn’t until late morning so we first drove in to Queenstown for coffee and a short walk to while away an hour.
The appointment with the podiatrist couldn’t have gone better. He shaved away the dead skin built up around the callus and explained the underlying cause (a bone spur) and the red dot at the center of the callus (blood between the dermis and epidermis). He applied a dressing and we were on our way with instant relief for Labashi.
After the treatment we had lunch in Budley and then headed south along Lake Wakatipu toward Te Anau.
We drove through dry, sheep-herding country for a bit over two hours to reach Te Anau, the gateway to the Fiordlands.
After a quick visit to the visitor center to get our bearings, we drove south for 10K to Rainbow Reach car-park, an end-point for the Kepler Track. Based on a recommendation from our ‘New Zealand Frenzy’ guidebook we walked for two hours on the Shallow Bay spur. The guidebook is correct--- superb walking here.
By then we were well after supper time so hopped in Budley and headed north to a DOC campsite at Henry Creek. We arrived after 1800 and settled in for supper, then a bit of work on the laptops.

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Monday, 4 March -

This morning we drove back the gorgeous Glenorchy-Queenstown Road along Lake Wakatipu. We tarried in Queenstown only long enough for me to run in to Joe’s Garage for a mid-morning mochaccino-for-takeaway.
We then drove north out of QTown to Frankton and turned east along hiqhway 8. This route took us along the ultra-blue Kawarau River and through the Valley of Wineries which is the Gibbston Valley and on through the Kawarau Gorge to Cromwell.
At Cromwell, we went through our regular provisioning and servicing process, then stopped at the Mitre10 (a Home Depot-like DIY store) hoping against hope of finding a small battery-operated fan. Somehow the gods of mercantilism were with us and we not only found a perfect little fan, it also was in the discount bin. When we saw the normally-$20 fan was only $5, it was an easy decision to give it a try.
We need a small fan occasionally because good ol’ Budley has lots of opening windows but only two of them are screened. If we happen to stop for a night in one of the buggier areas (like the West Coast), a fan will keep enough air moving through until the van cools down enough to be comfortable with just the airflow through the two windows.
We then went looking for the local library and a wi-fi connection. The town of Cromwell is very interesting in that it chose to build much of its downtown around a central walking mall. The storefronts, local government offices, and library all face in to the brick-paved town square and inter-connected walkways, while parking lies outside around the perimeter of the four-or-five block area. Larger businesses, like the Mitre10, gas stations, and the trades shops are individual buildings arrayed around the outside more like a traditional town.
The only problem this presented for us, is we couldn’t find the library! The signs identifying it as a library all face into the walking mall. We eventually saw what looked like a drive-up book-drop and that led us to the library.
After an hour on the ‘net, we drove south along Lake Dunstan to the town of Alexander, just for the drive. We figure we won’t be coming back this way so thought we take a quick drive-through of the area. These towns are now well into the rural lifestyle but their history was a gold-mining one. We saw more tailings piles here, largely because it’s more of a desert and the tailings piles don’t get covered up by ferns and mosses like they do on the west coast.
After a good look around we headed back through the Gibbston Valley toward Lake Hayes and our favorite freebie campground there. On a whim we stopped at one of the wineries with a ‘cheesery’ and sampled five or six very nice cheeses. We ended up buying a three-year-old cheddar and a creamy blue-veined cheese as well as a small baguette.
Back at Lake Hayes we broke out a bottle of wine--- a ‘shiraz rose’--- and had a nice little baguette, cheeses, and olives supper.
After supper I walked the cliffside track along Lake Hayes for two miles out and returned, all at a fast-walk pace in a blustery wind that had come up this evening.

**************** END OF POST ****************

Arrowtown ; Queenstown ; Glenorchy and the other side of Mount Aspire National Park

(posted from the Cromwell Library, Cromwell, NZ)

(This post covers 1 - 3 March, 2013)


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Sunday, 3 March -

This morning we drove into Queenstown. We wended through the streets which had been so crowded yesterday and very few people were around on this Sunday morning.
We walked for a half hour in the formal garden, enjoying the incredible rose gardens and trees from all over the country (all labeled!)
We then went downtown and walked through The Mall shops and had coffees at Joe’s Garage, where the staff wears tee-shirts with a Red-Cross-like symbol (but brown in color) and the phrase “Coffee Rescue” in an official-looking logo. This was one place that was really jumping this morning.
The crowd was starting to build as the morning wore on so we headed out. Based on a guidebook recommendation we drove part way up the road to The Remarkables ski slope for a high-level view over the lake, the river, town, and the airport. Planes were flying just above us and then descending to the runway down below.
We then drove back through town and out the other side toward Glenorchy. This is a 35k drive along the ultra-blue lake to a small town of only two hundred residents but views of mountains all around.
After a capuccino at the very laid-back Glenorchy Cafe, we drove out toward Paradise, not knowing what might be there. But we could tell from the views of the mountains around it that it would be good!
After 20K the hard road ended and we saw a sign for Mount Aspiring National Park. We were on the other side of the mountain, another river valley over, from the long, dusty road to Mount Aspire and our campsite at Raspberry Creek.
This too was a long dusty road, this road through Paradise and on to Dart River Track and Chinaman’s Bluff, the end of the road.
We walked from the road-end up the track to Chinaman’s Flat and across it to where the track re-entered the woods along the bluff. With our return, that gave us an hour’s walk.
We retreated back the gravel road to Glenorchy, then selected a freedom-camping site along the hard-road back toward Queenstown. After supper a German couple pulled in beside us to share the small site. As I write this from Budley’s front passenger seat, I have a waterfall dead ahead and up about 15 degrees, a glacier to the left and about 35 degrees up, and the incredi-blue Lake Wakatipu behind us. Wow.

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Saturday, 2 March -

This morning we woke at dawn and got underway without breakfast so we could call back to the US in the early afternoon. We drove into town and parked next to the internet cafe we had used yesterday so we could use up the rest of the hour of internet time I had bought yesterday. The ‘hour’ is a total hour of usage time, not an hour of contiguous time, so we can split it up as we wish within a 24-hour period.
We spoke with Mom and Dad via Skype and were surprised how clear the video was. We had a bit of a problem with a few delays in the audio but overall it was fine.... so much better than a phone call.
We then drove south out of Wanaka to Arrowtown. We had read Arrowtown is a little more laid back and is a weekending destination and Queenstown more a party-town. We parked at the edge of town along the Arrow River and Labashi checked out the shops while I walked through the Chinese Settlement area. This is where chinese men who had come to search for gold lived during the gold rush of the mid-1800’s. They built very small, rustic lean-to-like houses along the river (where their diggings were) and formed a small community. Two of them had stores which became popular with the white families. One store is still mostly intact and I was happy to find the door unlocked. It’s just a few rooms with stone walls and stone floor but the interior wooden walls were papered with copies of the local newspaper from as far back as 1853. The latest I saw was printed in 1895.
I called Labashi after an hour and met her at Budley (our campervan) for lunch. We then walked to the town museum which turned out to be very interesting and complete. It of course had displays about the gold-rush days but also did an excellent job of showing the late-1800’s use of hydro-electric power. The water was diverted from far up in the mountains to a precipitous drop where a pipe guided water down into a turbine to turn the generator.
After several hours at the museum we needed a break and walked to the nearby restaurant-row for a glass of wine.
We took a final turn through the street of shops and then headed out of town, toward Queenstown.
The visitor center had told us of a little-known freedom-camping site. This one was at Lake Hayes and on the way to Queenstown so we stopped there briefly to be sure it would be okay for tonight, then went on.
In Queenstown we looked up Off-Road Adventures, which in addition to running four-wheel drive and quadbike tours also rents a few motorcycles. I talked to the guy about renting a Suzuki V-Strom 1000 adventure touring bike but I was put off by the limited daily miles (120) and the fact that the bikes were very dirty, i.e., the fronts were covered with bug-remains from previous rentals. For $200 a day, they should at least be cleaned up. The other issue is what Labashi would do while I zipped around on a motorcycle (since she didn’t want to go along). In the end I decided I’d be better off to spend the money on a rental back home.
We took a brief walk downtown and enjoyed one of the art galleries but then decided to go on to the campground.
After supper I walked from the head of the lake to the far end and back as the sun set, a walk of two and a half hours while Labashi worked on her laptop.

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Friday, 1 March -

Last evening the wind coming down off the high mountains had been rocking the van quite a bit. We thought we might have to move in order to sleep later on but as darkness came on the wind dropped to a light air, as we had seen before around the high peaks. The day’s sun had warmed our little home quite nicely and we were comfortable without covers until well after midnight.
This morning the sun illuminated the Mount Aspire ‘Bonar’ glacier and made a glorious sight. I jumped out with the camera and took a few still shots, then started a video clip only to have the camera shut off. The battery was dead. I put in the alternate battery, trying to remember if I had charged it and soon found I hadn’t. Beautiful scene, two dead batteries!
This is one of the challenges of van travel. We have to keep our two laptops, the iPad, and two cell phones charged as well as the biggest draw of them all-- our fridge. We also have two GPSs to power while driving and a pair of camera batteries to keep up. We don’t go to the expensive campgrounds with power outlets unless there’s no alternative so it’s all done with the van’s charging system. This time I brought along the 12 - 120 volt power inverter from Mocha Joe and that gives me more options.
During our Africa trip I bought a three-headed socket splitter and each morning I determine what combination of devices will get charged today and in what order.
This morning we drove back the corrugated road and the hard road back to Wanaka. We first went to the Caltex station / laudromat for a shower. As we hoped, the showers here were merely a larger bathroom with a shower and a coin box rather than men and women’s locker rooms fronted by a service desk like the community swimming pools. That meant we could share a shower and only pay half the cost we’d otherwise have to pay. And we could have fun doing it! The shower was 5 minutes long for $5. We’ve shared three-minute ones so this one was luxuriously long and, thankfully, had full hot/cold controls. Nice!
After the shower we took care of the regular dump station and trash duties, then went to the library for wi-fi. This one is one of the few town libraries which didn’t have wi-fi so we walked downtown to an internet cafe and paid $6 for an hour of internet time.
One of the things we were working on with our internet time was attempting to find a podiatrist for Labashi. It turns out there’s one in Wanaka so we drove to the office to see if it might be possible to get an appointment. The doctor was out today, though, and we’d not be able to get an appointment until Wednesday. But the very nice receptionist volunteered to look for another in Queenstown or Invercargill and not only found one but called for us and made an appointment for next Tuesday in Queenstown.
After, we drove to Iron Mountain for a short walk with a view over Wanaka. We walked for a half hour and that put us high enough up the hill for a good view but we didn’t risk making Labashi’s foot any worse by going further.
We moved to a parking spot in the shade at the end of Lake Wanaka and within easy walking distance (a block, maybe) into town. We walked the streets checking out the stores and restaurant menus. Once we saw Red Star Gourmet Burgers, we suddenly developed a hunger for a bleu-cheese gourmet burger and loved it. Yes, it was a $14 burger but we split it and it was very, very good.
Walking back to the car suddenly seemed like a strain but we broke it up with a quick stop at the gelato shop.
We watched guys playing cricket in the park along the way back to the van and then headed for our camp for the night at Diamond Pond, a freebie about 10 minutes out of town in the Freedom Camping Zone.
The towns here often have a restricted zone within the town limits where freedom camping is not permitted. But once outside the town limits, we often see signs telling us the restricted zone has ended. That does not give us permission to camp on private land but now any public lands which want to prohibit freedom camping must post a sign.
Many post a sign showing a campervan with the words ‘Freedom Camping Permitted for Self-Contained Campervans’ sometimes followed by overnight hours (like ‘7 pm to 9 am’).
For some reason the burger and gelato in Wanaka gave me an energy boost so I spent the sunset-time walking up the switch-backed hill to see Diamond Pond and took photos as I circled it and then returned in about an hour’s walk.
We spent the rest of the evening on the laptops.

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