Down the west coast

We had one of our best days so far on our trip, when we woke up in Charlston on the west coast. We started the day by donning some crazy wetsuits, flipper gloves and caving gear and headed down some limestone caves. Then we hopped into some massive inner tubes and serenly floated down an underground river, staring at the glow worms on the roof above (sadly impossible to take photos), then came out into the light and raced down some rapids.
Check out http://www.caverafting.com/ well worth a visit if you're down that way

Nicky was fairly adamant that we visited Cape Foulwind, for the photo op alone, but I'm glad we went there as the violent sea and a storm coming in as the sun went down was spectacular.

Cape Foulwind

A long way from home
After drying off and warming up, we made our way down the rugged coastline to Punakaiki, home to the 'Pancake Rocks'.

The cliffs are made up of layers of sedimentary rock that have weathered at different rates, hence the 'pancake' formations. The cliffs have also been weathered in such a manner that the sea has carved out caves that have fallen in, so the tide rushes in and shoots upwards and outwards in blowholes. It was very impressive, and quite intimidating. Like the earth was an angry beast snarling at you. The 'Sudden Sound' blowhole was our favourite, but we ran out of memory to film it, so have a look on youtube.com

Below is a film of the the 'Chimney' blow hole at Punakaiki, featuring a strangely unimpressed sounding commentary

We managed to avoid the penguins, but wished they'd had similar signage for the over efficient traffic police, who love nothing better that jump out on foreigners in vans. I picked up a 630NZ$ fine for being 49kph over the limit. Now this does sound bad, I admit, but the circumstances didn't deserve the frightenly large fine. Its 100kph limit on the open road in NZ, about 60mph, so I was pottering along a nice wide straight stretch of single carriageway, when all of a sudden the road turned to a temporary surface and a 30kph (practically walking pace) limit was put in force. I didn't want to drop the anchors on the gravel, and the road was wide and straight so i let my speed drop quite slowly. He zapped me at 79kph soon after entering the 30 zone and insisted that seeing as he'd zapped me, he had to issue the ticket. No recognition of the situation at all. More strange was this Barrytown Policeman's suggestion that we shouldnt bother paying the fine, because we were leaving the country soon and wouldn't get caught. Not the best thought out plan, given that we were in a hire car, and they do checks on you when you leave the country to see if you have any outstanding fines to your name...

Next stop were the Franz Joseph and Fox Glaciars, beneath the mighty Mount Tasman and Mount Cook, before an amazing drive down the beautiful lake Wanaka

Franz Joseph

Fox

Parked up alongside Lake Wanaka for the night

The Road Trip begins, up to the North..............

Below is what became our home for the next 3 weeks. Sadly our van was not called Chuck Norris, like one we met, but Dantooine. Some kind of Star Wars reference we think. If we had been given Chuck Norris it would have been wicked, especially given that Ed gets constant "you look like a young Chuck Norris" comments wherever we go.

It was great to be on the open road and free from buses and other people's time constraints. Our food and tiny fridge was in the back under our bed and the cooker pulled out the side door. Bed was pretty comfy too despite being a pain in the bum to make up each night.

In New Zealand, freedom camping, which is camping wherever there is not a NO CAMPING sign, is accepted. We woke up to some pretty awesome views.

The 1st day we headed to Kaikoura, a big whale watching area north of Christchurch. There was a New Zealand fur seal colony right next to Jimmy Armer's beach where we stayed that night. The seals were less than 10m from us, in fact you had to be careful not to get as close as they allowed since they can be pretty viscious. They seemed pretty ok with us being there.

We then drove north through the vineyards of Blenheim and Picton area, no stopping for vino though, for a change.

Next on the list was the windy Queen Charlotte Drive from Picton to Havelock. It passes along the edge of the Marlborough Sounds, the only true Sound (made by river action, not glaciar like a Fjord) in New Zealand. It was just gorgeous in the dusky evening light.



After a night in Nelson, thanks to the Nelson bowling club car park, we spent the next morning at the Farmers' market and exploring the town. It's a lovely quaint little place with lots of cute wooden buildings, wide tree lined streets and an impressive Cathedral up on a hill overlooking town.

Then lunch of special green shell Havelock mussels on the beach


From Nelson we drove towards Abel Tasman but sadly the weather was not on our side so we couldn't do our planned kayaking in the National Park. Instead, we headed up to Farewell Spit, the most northern point on the south island. The drive over Takaka Hill into the valley was really spectacular and we noticed a change in the landscape. It became all highland like and there were loads of crazy granite rocks everwhere. They looked fake, like a stage set.

Loved this sign! There are a range of mountains called Old Man Range.

Oh and yes, just to mention, there are tonnes of sheep here, way more than people. In fact NZ populaton is tiny, only 3 million people. That is less than the population that commute into London each day!

We went for a walk the following day in Farewell Spit and around. On the way we spotted a load of baby seals playing in a river down the hill. We sat and watched them for hours, totally mesmerised. They were either unaware or not bothered by us as they jumped and dived. There was about 15 of them in total.

Then we headed down to Wharariki beach at Cape Farewell. It was deserted, like a secret pirates cove. We felt like kids, as it was just as you imagine a secret beach when you are young.
There were sand dunes and caves and amazing rock arches out to sea. There was so much driftwood and much to my delight, shells. Ed is about ready to kill me with the amount I have collected.

Checkout the bad boy below for a shell. It is a mussel shell, currently winging it's way to the UK in a parcel. Ed found it on Fossil Beach. It has to be THE biggest mussel ever. We were gutted we didn't get to eat it.

And yes, that rainbow was a proper arch, it came out just as we were taking the photo and we managed to catch it. Brilliant or what.

We really wanted to camp at this beautiful spot with the rainbow. Unfortunately both of us got a bit spooked by the above shrine we found. No idea what it was all about but it was a bit weird and we were worried about a bunch of satanists descending on us in the middle of the night. If they exist in NZ that is.....

So we drove in land down to the lakes area and camped on lake Roititi. It snowed and this was what we woke up to next day, not bad eh?