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last updated September 25th 2007

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Sunday: The north side of your town faces east, and the east is facing south.

January 17th. A Sunday, warm and dry but overcast - the first decent sign of cloud for a couple of weeks. Otago was in the middle of a drought, one that eventually (in late February) led to scrub fires around Roxburgh and water being trucked in to Palmerston. Trusting the theory that a prolonged trip around the island would guarantee us rain, at least on the infamous West Coast, the packed gear included as much wet as dry weather gear. So here we were, Alice and I, cooped up in a car as we travelled 3000 km staying in places where we have to move out by 10am. The whole trip was likely to take about two weeks in toto. It looked auspicious, and we laid down some contingency plans: (A) just up to Christchurch and back; (B) just up to Wellington and back. Thankfully neither of these was needed.

Down North Road, the right onto the long curve of the Motorway. Alice was looking pensive but with a certain anticipatory gleam in her eye. I was looking forward to seeing places I hadn't seen in years, places I hadn't seen before, and friends I care about that I hadn't seen for a while. I was also looking forward to two weeks during which the psych department was in another mystical country called Dunedin, dreamt in a dream and with no basis in reality (people who have visited here will realise that this is a fairly accurate description).

Fast forward to Oamaru - the Beatles blasting forth from the car stereo. Calm and overcast - perfect driving weather for what would, I was sure, be the most boring part of the journey. Not so sunny as to scorch the skin before the journey's really begun, not interminable drizzle. A stop for the traditional touristy photos by Oamaru's penguin statue and, a few miles north, at the 45th parallel, and off northward for a late lunch somewhere in Timaru.

I've always liked Timaru, unfashionable though it may be to do so. It always reminds me of a slightly dowdy British seaside town - sort of the Folkestone of the South Pacific. A narrow winding main street with a faded façade of shops, with the bay just a mile further along the road. But something had happened. Since I last travelled through Timaru, someone had moved all the roads. The great Timaru by-pass had gone through to astound the locals and confuse the visitors. The landmarks by which I have always judged my journey through the city were bypassed or appeared too soon or too late. The Hydro Hotel led to a dead-end; the aviary seemed to be two miles too far down the road; and the giant elephant seems long gone. One fish and chips meal later, and we were on our way across the desolate wastes that are the Canterbury plains.

And, as you might expect from traditionally the driest part of State Highway One, in the middle of a drought, it drizzled and misted at us. The music of the Who's "Substitute" was coming from the stereo speakers as we reached Christchurch, fittingly, as the slow curve of the highway always makes perceived 'north' point towards the east coast as you head into town, as the Port Hills, to the 'east', slide by to the south. Christchurch was grey but dry, but the welcome from our Cantabrian friends was warm. The evening was passed in enjoyable conversation.

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Monday dawned clear and bright, and after saying our goodbyes, we headed off to be tourists around Christchurch. Alice didn't want to overstretch with a long journey still to go (after all, we could go to Christchurch any old time, really... why risk aborting the journey early for a bit of sightseeing in Christchurch?), so we didn't go to the Arts Centre or the Antarctic Centre... instead, we just did a little shopping (hunting out books in Smith's), and Alice suggested we climb the Cathedral spire to have a look over the city. Which we did - and it was me who was feeling tired and a little queasy... that spire staircase is not one for a claustrophobiac!

After returning to terra firma, it was a quick trip to Scorpio Books before a trip to Lyttelton, stopping briefly on the way at Jade Stadium, which, despite the name, was the same colour and as un-gemlike as it had been when it was called Lancaster Park.  On through the tunnel to Lyttelton. Tunnels have never affected my claustrophobia really, which is perhaps surprising, and Alice, who had never been through a major road tunnel, greatly enjoyed it, and from then on kept an eye out for other tunnels to travel through on the journey. What Freud would have said, I do not know.

Lyttelton was as Lyttelton always is, a picturesque model port on the edge of a stunning volcanic harbour. From here we travelled over the Port Hills back into Christchurch via the top road before turning north across the Waimakariri and into what was, for Alice, virgin territory. The miles slid by to Waipara, and from there, inland across the hills to Hanmer Springs. It seemed a good idea for every second day of the journey to be a little shorter, especially since day three would be a long one. Hanmer Springs seemed a perfect end to the day. The evening was spent soaking in 35 degree heat at the thermal springs. It gives some indication about the travelling weather, though, if I say that this is cooler than the air temperature had been during much of the day. And it was to be one of the colder days of the journey...

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Tuesday involved travelling along the backroads, over the hills from Waiau via Hawkswood to Kaikoura. A surprisingly easy route, despite the dire warnings I had heard about it. The music was Nirvana, the temperature was in the high 30s. Creeks in the area were presumably named during hard winters - Siberia Creek looked very un-Siberian, and distinctly un-Creek like. The word wadi entered my vocabulary.

During the course of the journey, Alice and I had discussed how we were getting across Cook Strait. I'm a little nervy about small aircraft and love being on ships. Alice was keen to travel in an aeroplane for the first time. Arrival in Kaikoura afforded a simple, if expensive solution. On the way into town, we passed the Kaikoura aerodrome, from which whale-watching flights leave several times a day. We had some time to kill - I had estimated our travel time based on travelling back to State Highway One via Waipara, so we were in Kaikoura an hour or so ahead of my rough-and-ready schedule. So...

It's touristy, sure, but it's a great experience. In the air for probably about 40 minutes (it seemed like no time and forever at the same time), we saw about five sperm whales, plus one of the much rarer southern right whales, slowly edging back from the brink of extinction. Whales gather here, as their main food sources, such as squid, are funnelled towards the Kaikoura shoreline by the narrowing of a deep ocean trench just offshore. The whole time we were in the air was accompanied by a series of 'ooh's, 'aah's, and 'whoa!'s from the half a dozen or so people on the plane, audible even above the loud thrum of the motor.

Back on the ground, and along the glorious Kaikoura coastline toward the Sounds. The sea air and shadow of the seaward Kaikoura mountains provided welcome relief from the heat of the day, the scenery was gorgeous, the music was Eno, and there were several road tunnels. Tea was in Blenheim, and Picton was the end of the day's travel. Here, Alice and I lay on the floor of the motel unit by the sliding glass door, looking up at the clear night sky with its infinity of stars. A perfect end to a great day.

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...thankfully did not live up to its reputation. A pleasant, warm morning was spent relaxing on the Picton foreshore under the nikau palms. Then it was a case of garaging Dominique (a comment about the car's number plate starting with the letters S and M led to her nickname "Mistress Dominique") before getting onto the Aratika and heading over the water. The Marlborough Sounds slipped by and I pondered on this being a wonderful place to live. The South Island as a whole always staggers me with its beauty and the Picton area in particular is spectacular and isolated while still being within easy reach of a major city.

The major city in question was proving elusive, however. Although the first half of the ferry crossing had been sunny enough for Alice to get reasonably well sunburnt, a mist descended across the strait, and there was no breeze to move it, so it was not for some time that Alice caught her first glimpse of the North Island. The mist stayed until we were closing in on Sinclair Head, almost at the mouth of Wellington Harbour. Confusion over another ferry's docking led to us being half hour late, by which time our host was beginning to give up hope of us ever arriving. We headed up the gorge with him to their place in Newlands, where we were to spend the next few days.

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I will gloss over much of the Wellington part of the journey. Suffice to say - to quote a friend - veni, vidi, visa: we came, we saw, we did a little shopping. For me, that meant a bundle of CDs, a book that my mum had been looking for, and a flag for my collection (sadly though not a Bermudan one, which I had been hoping to get). For Alice, some books and clothes. We spent considerable amounts of time riding the rail-units (yet more tunnels), went to an 'open microphone' night at Treetops, where I was inveigled to perform a few songs (the highlight of that night was another visiting Dunedinite, Genevieve MacLean, from the band Mink, who was astounding, amazing, and several other science fiction magazines), and played quite a bit of music.

A visit to friends ended with us going to the National Museum, Te Papa Tongarewa. I am still undecided about Te Papa. The first time I went there, I loved it. A second visit, and it was so-so. This was my third visit, and unless something spectacular happens there, I don't really care if I never go there again. The marae is beautiful, and there are some fine exhibits, but its just too much full-on 'experience' and too little like a museum. Alice put it well when she said it was like being inside a TV while someone is channel surfing.

A visit to the zoo the following day was much more enjoyable. It was a more leisurely pace, no compulsion to 'try this now!!!', and it was open air. The most enjoyable parts for me were the tiny tree-living primates that now have some freedom around the parts of the park, and the escapologist otters. One minor quibble is that according to the signs on on enclosure the native pigeon is "very rare in the South Island and only found on the West Coast". In fact, they're moderately common even in the centre of Dunedin, and it's impossible to go on a bush track within the city without seeing dozens of them...

But Dunedin, or the memory of it, was on a different island, an island that - by Sunday - it was time to return to. Another glassy crossing of the strait and we were back in Picton. Accommodation proved difficult, as there was a big event taking place at nearby Blenheim and everywhere from Kaikoura north was booked solid. Everywhere except one motel in Picton, which thankfully had had one couple fail to show up.

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Another brilliantly fine day. The West Coast beckoned. Alice had never been across to 'the coast' and for me it was the first trip there for ten years. And I had never been across the top of the South Island. So this day was planned to be a leisurely journey across what I knew to be very winding but scenic roads. We started by heading in the wrong direction - a quick detour along the edge of Queen Charlotte Sound to the lookout at Karaka Point before heading back to Picton and then along the twisting Queen Charlotte Drive to Havelock.

This was a part of the country I knew of mainly through my cousin Anne (who had worked here for a couple of years). Bush-clad slopes reach down precipitously to sparkling turquoise water. If I hadn't decided this was a beautiful island before, this area would have convinced me. And there was even more beauty still to come on the West Coast.

If I was to describe the differences in vegetation in the native bush around the island, two things would instantly spring to mind. The northern South Island is covered in nikau palms and punga (tree ferns). As you travel further south, the nikau slowly disappear, and towards the far south the punga are also start to thin, replaced by native beech forest. In Dunedin, I only know of one nikau palm outside the botanical gardens, and that has been deliberately cultivated. Around the top of the south they are everywhere.The other thing that springs to mind is the colour. The West Coast is unbelievably green, especially seen from the viewpoint of someone coming from the South's drought. Whereas Canterbury's grasslands were yellow, Marlborough's were brown and North Otago's were bleached white, from around Havelock the colour started to return, and by the West Coast itself the land was verdant.

At Pelorus Bridge (pictured), Alice and I almost decided that we'd found paradise, so why bother continuing. It was around 38 degrees, and there were families swimming in the river under the bridge. It looked very enticing indeed. We continued on our way, and soon rolled into Nelson. A new city, a new adventure, and a rare opportunity to catch up with friends who we were to stay with.

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Nelson is the nearest southern New Zealand has to a riviera city. It is ostensibly designed to cater for the sun, though without the obvious tourism traps that the likes of Queenstown are now full of. A very white city, nestled into a broad bay, the haze of distance turning the distant hills towards Takaka into blue shimmers. We intended to spend one night there before travelling on to the West Coast. But, what with one thing and another, and some serious bribery from our hosts (in the form of a slap-up restaurant meal), it ended up as two nights, much of Tuesday being spent venturing into the northwestern corner of the island.

Highlights of the time in Nelson? Other than the chance to spend time with friends, there was swimming in the warm waters of Tasman Bay (where the water is so shallow that waves are virtually unknown), some great ice cream at Penguinos, Nelson's traditional European Gelateria (I would highly recommend their tiramisu - coffee & wine flavoured - and their stracciatella  -vanilla and dark chocolate - flavours. Wonderful!), and an interesting discussion at a boutique distillery.

I should explain - it is not normally my habit to visit boutique distilleries. However, driving along the streets of Nelson, I happened to spot, flying from the roof of said distillery, a Bermudan flag! Having been unable to find one at one of New Zealand's leading flag-making firms, I was, to say the least, a little surprised. So, I went in and asked whether they would be willing to sell it to me. Sadly, the answer was no, but I had a talk with the distiller, who was originally from Bermuda. He was a little surprised that anyone had even recognised the flag. It turns out that he did distantly know my godfather (the entire population of Bermuda is only about 60,000, so this isn't that surprising). He said he'd settled in Nelson because it was a lot like Bermuda, which I'd have to agree with. I didn't get the flag, but I did find out the name of the Christchurch firm who had supplied it.

The other highlight was the excursion on Tuesday, which ended at the Riwaka Gorge. Here, the river bubbles straight out of limestone rocks, and it is as though the river has just come out of a stone cliff face. At the Riwaka Resurgence, the water is as clear as crystal and as cold as ice. The air temperature was close to 40 degrees and, foolishly risking being bitten by sandflies, the feel of the water on naked feet and legs was wonderful. Yes, I was bitten, about five times - amazingly this made up for the complete absence of sandflies on the entire West Coast (which is notorious for them). On the way to and from Riwaka, we passed the disappearing lagoon at Moutere - the estuary of the river runs alongside the road, and appears as a broad expanse of water at high tide. Once the tide has dropped a little way, it becomes mudflats. On the way back to Nelson, Alice and I exchanged looks of "wasn't there a lake there...?"

Wednesday saw us heading out for the coast. We travelled through "Enid Blyton Country". Not that it really bore much relation to a children's book land, but the place names! We passed through Hope, Brightwater, Spring Grove and Foxhill, and it was no surprise when a road sign pointed to Pretty Bridge Valley. From here it was across the Hope Saddle and down towards the Buller Gorge. Any indication that we were in the fabled twilight zone that is the West Coast were not dispelled as we pulled, sweltering, into Murchison. We were both in need of food and drink, and I wanted to check the way to a little-known picturesque spot indicated in a guide book - the Maruia Falls. The local dairy/cafe - truly an Out-of-Time cafe - proved to be a good munchie spot, but while we were there we noticed something a little curious about the background music being played. The songs were, in order: "I don't know what to do with myself" (Dusty Springfield), then "Heartbreaker" (Dionne Warwick), then "I don't know what to do with myself" (Dusty Springfield), then "Heartbreaker" (Dionne Warwick), then "I don't know what to do with myself" (Dusty Springfield), then "Heartbreaker" (Dionne Warwick), then... having eaten, we left before finding out what the next track would have been. I think I can guess...

Down the road a mile or so, then left and along about 15km of winding road to the falls, hidden about 200 metres from the road. The river, which looks like it ranges from about forty metres wide when full to the ten or so wide it was this day,  falls some fifteen metres down water-carved sandstone. This was a secluded beauty spot that was definitely worth the detour to see. From here, it was back to the main road and on down the steep and equally scenic Buller Gorge.

It was late afternoon when we got into Westport, where we were to spend the night. Westport is just a little off the main West Coast tourism run, so it was a quiet spot by comparison with some of the other towns in the region. Westport had, the previous week, had something of a gala day, with the visit of the first-ever cruise ship to the town, but by the time we got there it was back to its sleepy country backwater feel. It was an echo of a fabled and long forgotten New Zealand, with that sort of open friendliness only found in nostalgic movies of childhoods spent in the 1950s. The locals we met were all to ready for a bit of a yarn, and we found out quite a bit about the town from the owner of the local fish'n'chip shop, where we stopped for our tea.

I decided that, since it was Alice's first time away from the east of the main divide, she should see the sun set over the sea for the first time. So, back into the car for a short journey to Cape Foulwind, which thankfully didn't live up to its name. The sunset was as spectacular as a sunset often is, the big red glow fading into the silvery sea. On the way back to the car in the gathering dusk, Alice suddenly whispered "rabbit!" as she noticed a brown shape on the path moving ahead of us. "Funny looking rabbit", I said, as I watched it waddle away. Our first weka - a rabbit-sized flightless bird only found in New Zealand. For a brief nasty moment, Alice thought that she had dropped her camera case, and that the weka may have run off with it ("it could put it's head in it and think it's night time! It may be only a camera case to us, but to a weka it's a portable night!"), but all was well when we discovered the case back at the car.

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Answer - Granity! I had never been farther up the West Coast than Denniston (on a school geography trip in nineteen-mumbledy-grumph), so decided to detour a little further up the coast. I had originally suggested going all the way to Karamea, but Alice quickly vetoed that, and we decided that Granity would be a reasonable compromise. Granity is the real West Coast. A pub, a handful of houses, some closed coal mines, a museum, and rolling green bush right down from the 1200 metre hills to the coast. In Granity, the mountains really do come out of the sky (and they stand there).

Oh, and there are water buffalo. On the journey round the south, Alice and I had spotted a couple of unusual types of farm livestock: alpacas near Picton, and emu somewhere near Hope. But the site of a herd of water buffalo grazing beside State Highway 67 did give me pause for thought (accompanied by a bit of a swerve...).

The weather continued as was unexpected for the wet and windy West Coast - scorching sunshine and 38 degrees - and by the time we stopped to do the tourist thing at Punakaiki, we both needed a break. On south to Greymouth, for a bit of a shopping and snack break. My patented 'chatting up North Americans' line ("You're Canadian, aren't you?" - Americans don't mind this at all, and Canadians are delighted that you've spotted the difference) worked well on the woman behind the counter, but I don't think Alice would have been impressed if I'd continued...

Next, yet another detour, to try to track down an old high school friend in the backblocks of Blackball (try saying THAT three times!). Ironically, we arrived during the three days of her monthly visit 'over the hill' to Christchurch. Still, it gave us an opportunity to see a West Coast that I never knew still existed. Blackball looks like a town that never recovered from the great depression and has been limping on ever since. A couple of craft shops, a pub (of course), and a couple of 'boutique' shops (a Cheese company was one I recall) are the only signs of employment - if farming and hunting doesn't keep the rest of them busy, unemployment must run at close to 50%. I stopped off at the pub to ask for my friend's place. "Anyone here know RB?" "Yeh, she lives down that way - second on the left. You can't miss it. Big black bike and big black dog outside." Well, she obviously hadn't changed much. And neither had Blackball - on the way out of the pub I sneaked a peep through the door to the main lounge. Pro-miners' rights banners from the 1930s and - yes! - a portrait of Uncle Mickey Savage, wartime prime minister and hero of the working classes, still hung proudly from the walls.

After a fruitless search for my friend and popping a quick note into her mailbox, it was back to the main road for the 40km drive to the next port of call and night's rest-stop, Hokitika.

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Hokitika is a strange town. It is obviously the centre of the slowly increasing but already burgeoning West Coast tourism trade. What was, perhaps, a little surprising was the mix of the new tourism money with the old, staid heart of the pre-depression gold and coal wealth. Westport had already provided us evidence with the opulence of its art deco town hall. Hokitika provided a few more grand buildings, including the old library and a convent which looked like its designer had started out building a lighthouse then suddenly realised it should be more like a church. This we quickly dubbed "The holy lighthouse of God". Hidden away only about fifty metres behind the shop frontages, the sea rolled gently into a sandy beach.

The mixture of old and new was not so much a harsh clash as a gently surreal mix. This was fitting, coming as it did only a day after I had heard news of Otira. The former railway settlement at Otira in the Arthur's Pass had been for sale - lock, stock, and gradually rotting barrel. I had lightheartedly though when I heard about it that if I had been a multi-millionaire, I would have bought it and turned it into an oddly surreal folly of peculiar buildings, á là Portmeirion in Wales (the location for that great 60s TV series "The Prisoner"). Truth was only a little stranger than idle flight of fancy. An arts collective had taken over Otira and turned it into one controversial installation, and it seemed to be a major topic of conversation in Greymouth while we were there.

On to points south and peaks misty. Across wide braided rivers that fought their way down from steep green mountains, ah you know the story. I've just about used up the adjectives by now. Then plunging through canyons of trees and bush right down to the highway. This was the Ianthe State Forest, or as Alice originally misread the sign: "Ian, the state forest". This led to a running joke for the next couple of days involving Ian, the state forest, who was never invited to parties. It wasn't helped by the fact that about half the creeks between Haast and Makarora seem to have names like "Fred River" and "Oscar Creek". The mountains in this area, however, have names like "Mount Disappointment", "Mount Dismal", and "Mount Not-Particularly-Encouraging".

We rolled stately into the massive megalopolis that is Haast, population 120. I have a friend who works there for the Department of Conservation, but of course, there was no sign of him. So we settled down to a relaxing evening of much-needed showers (the temperature had cooled to about 36 degrees this day) and discussions about who would be the first to be bitten by a sandfly. The evening was punctuated by the sounds of strange bird calls in the impenetrable bush and the distant, invisible but numerous, helicopters of the D.o.C. It almost sounded like we had stumbled into a remake of "Apocalypse Now".

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Haast hasn't much in the way of shops. It has a shop - a small supermarket - and we stopped there briefly before heading out of town. While there, I asked where the D.o.C. offices were (about a mile north of town, as it happens) and noticed a pile of coins and a couple of banknotes under the glass top of the counter. One of the notes had writing in cyrillic and some eastern script. "They get left here by tourists," said the shopkeeper. "Sometimes accidentally in the change they give, although recently some have offered a coin to add to the collection if they come from somewhere interesting. That banknote is a bit of a puzzle though. No-one here reads Russian, but the guy at the pub thinks it's from Ukraine." Ah! I thought -so this is what a University education is useful for! "I did a bit of Russian at varsity," ya skazal, "And those words at the top say Respoblika Uzbekiston - that's Uzbekistan. It's one of the former soviet countries, near Afghanistan" (said I, bluffing successfully with the geography).

One mile north, and I wander into the DoC office. My friend behind the counter does a good stunned mullet impersonation.

On to points south and peaks, ah, blah blah blah. The only difference was that by now the road had left the Tasman Sea's edge, and was rolling along the Haast Valley, up and around the sharp crags and past sudden unexpected waterfalls on the way to Makarora. We stopped for a brief walk through the (by now distinctly nikau-less) bush to a waterfall, somewhere beneath the slopes of a Mountain called something like Mount Really Quite Appalling, before continuing on. A few miles later, we were out of the trees, and into a broad river plain. The scenery was so obviously Otago-not-Westland, the change in landscape sudden enough to catch us both by complete surprise. We stopped at Makarora for a bite to eat and there, after crossing from the "wild and wet West Coast" into the parched lands of Central Otago, the rain started to fall. In fact, it poured down. The upper reaches of Lake Wanaka were shrouded in mist, looking sombre, mysterious, and very, very Scottish. Thankfully, by the time we had reached Hawea township, the rain had slowed to a drizzle, and by Cromwell - that night's stopping point - the rain had ceased. There was still quite a bit of time left to be tourists, and so it was decided that we would head back to Wanaka to get lost in the maze at Puzzle World. We accomplished this quite nicely - getting lost, that is, but managed to get to all four towers and have a look around the puzzle house with its distorted rooms and optical illusions.

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The weather was by now determined to be perverse - Central Otago continued damp and misty, meaning a brief trip to Queenstown resulted in no clear crisp view of the Remarkables. Queenstown is still a pleasant town, but undeniably spoilt by tourism of the most greedy sort. I would have welcomed even the more whimsical tourist trappings of Hokitika. Bizarre sight number 327 of the journey was a new vineyard being marked out beside the road. A paddock filled with row upon row of fluorescent green plastic markers, like a surrealists' graveyard. Alice and I stopped briefly to watch a few Japanese tourists screaming at being pushed off the old Kawarau bridge by A.J. Hackett's bungy-jump cronies. Neither of us was particularly keen to join in and Alice, wearing a long dress, was hardly dressed for bungying anyway.

Back to Cromwell and a last goodbye to State Highway 6. We had followed it almost its entire length, joining it just 45km from its Blenheim start (at Havelock) and travelling down to the 1018km milepost (kilometrepost?) at Frankton. From there it is just 189km to its end in Invercargill. For us, though, it was onto State Highway 8, and on past the two hydro lakes, Dunstan and Roxburgh. We stopped briefly to look at both dams.

Soon we were in territory both of us knew only too well - past Clarksville Junction and into Milton. Here I had spent much of my adolescence, and here too Alice had occasionally come for holidays, to stay with cousins just outside town. Despite this, we never met until many years later in Dunedin. We went hunting old landmarks. It was quite a shock for me to discover that she had stayed on the farm adjoining that where the girl I lusted after throughout my years at High School lived. Small world syndrome strikes again.

It was early evening when we got back into Dunedin. Alice was exhausted, but enjoyed the trip, and I was feeling the same way. Dunedin was the shock of reality, but I was feeling refreshed. With the exception of the last couple of days, the weather had been unbeatable - if anything too good - and the scenery was out of this world. Dominique performed brilliantly, averaging close to 50 miles per gallon (erm, 7.3 litres per radian every second fortnight, with a global fallout of 12 kg/m, or something). All in all, an excellent trip, although perhaps the next one we undertake should be a little shorter. Alice is already talking about a possible Milford Sound/Stewart Island trip sometime...

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