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.


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