Week 13 – South Island Magic. Baaaa means NO!

We decided to start our NZ travels on the South Island and skipped straight down from Auckland to Christchurch by plane. This week sees us reach the half way point of our travels, and what a great place to be at this point in time. There is no room for any lethargy on NZ’s south island. This place is awesome!!! OK, I know I shouldn’t be giving it such a big rap, being Aussie and all, but I can’t help but think the have got it just right here.

Christchurch is a beautiful little city and while there is not that much to do, it is so picturesque that you could imagine living here, and not needing to do anything. Despite a few minor glitches with “Big Bertha” the Campervan (leaky gas bottle and faulty 12v charger), we soon got things sorted out and headed off for Mt Cook.

Mt Cook is (for some insane reason) not really high on the agenda for most travellers. We stayed in a nice camp ground and woke up to the most amazing views of snow capped mountains and alpine lakes. The kids had a trampoline each, so they were in heaven, and Tina and I were able to plan a trip out onto the world’s newest lake (complete with icebergs). Tasman lake is formed from the melt of the Tasman glacier terminal (face). Ice chunks break off under the water surface from the glacier wall and then pop up in the lake as icebergs. The largest on the lake was more than twice the size of the one that brought down the Titanic. We got right up close to the icebergs; the only shame was we were up at the glacier wall end when one of the icebergs turned and split in half. This meant though that we got to taste the inner, very pure, ice that was created before the world even knew what pollution was. While the rest of us were completely frozen through at the end of this memorable experience, Jamie’s only complaint was that the boat didn’t go faster.

Next stop Queenstown – adventure capital of the world. On top of the drop dead scenary, Queenstown offers the largest array of adrenaline generating activities you could ever wish for. My personal pick would have been the Shotover Swing. 109mtr freefall like a bungy and then 200m swing out of the bottom of the arc across a river. Thankfully, the insane price asked for this pleasure was enough to get me out of testing my manhood. Instead I opted for the Shotover Jetboat. I thought this was pretty “out there” until they said that kids from 3 could go on it too, and they could ride for free at that. Given Jamie’s whingeing yesterday there was really no choice but to take the kids with me for the canyon wall scraping, 360 degree spinning half hour jaunt. Despite this being great fun for all of us and possibly the most adventurous boat ride in the world, I get the feeling that Jamie probably would have preferred it went even faster.  

Continuing further south, we travelled on to Milford Sound. I reckon this is false advertising, but I promised Tina not to make any MILF jokes. The scenery is grandiose and even the dolphins came out to play during our cruise on the Fiord (they point out many times here that the first explorers erroneously named it a sound).

The next stop on the agenda was Wanaka, and Tina and I seriously discussed staying here for the rest of our travels and to hell with the rest of the world. Wanaka lies on a beautiful lake and services Cardrona and Treble Peak ski fields (the season is just about to start here). The people here are all really nice and in a town about the size of Lobberich, they have 7 playgrounds. Unfortunately though, our time here is limited and we need to push on. After over-nighting in Haast, we travelled up into the westcoast glacier country with plans to visit both Fox and Franz Josef glaciers. Unfortunately, the path up to Fox was closed and the Helihike to FJ was cancelled due to inclement weather. At the time of writing, I am crossing my fingers that the helicopter rescheduled for 10:15am tomorrow will indeed fly. Promise I’ll make a quick update to the blog this time though and you won’t have to wait 2 months to find out if I finally get my chopper ride. Oh, as an aside… Is it bad to keep getting your son to say “get in da choppa”, just because he has a cute little german accent???