Alex & Lizzy's (Travel) Blog

Famous for whales, dolphins and Albatros, Kaikoura must have been a tiny village no-one had ever heard of before they realised that close to the shore, there’s a deep ocean ridge which brings all the ocean’s big stuff within easy reach. After debating for several hours, we chose to swim with dolphins rather than to go whale watching. The dolphins are of course wild and the boats aren’t allowed to do anything to attract them so after a sickening few hours (oh yes it was rough- but fortunately we’d both taken the Kaikoura Cracker beforehand so no buckets were required by us) we spotted around a hundred. We jumped into the water and were straight into singing mode to attract them- Don’t think I’ve ever sung anything so badly but the dolphins seemed to like it and would appear a few feet in front of us out of the murky water, circle us and then swim off. It was a bit surreal because the water visibility was so bad that it was a bit freaky seeing nothing and then suddenly being within touching distance of a few big dolphins- still pretty cool though. Wonder what else we were close to that we couldn’t see!!

So, whale watching is on the list of things to do in the future… although we’re reliably told that Orcas (killer whales) circle the bay where we’ll be living, so maybe we won’t even have to pay to see them!

The Marlborough sounds have such a convoluted coastline (think fingers of coastline pointing out to sea) that it took us a pretty much a day to drive half way up one of them. We collected another hitchhiker en-route who’d gotten so disorientated by the sounds (because until you can see the end of them, both directions look the same) that after one day walking,  woke up and walked back in the direction he’d come from for 4 hours by mistake- oops. Having said it’s disorientating, he didn’t seem to be the sharpest tool in the shed as he was carrying an 80kg rucksack with him including a four person tent…

Anyway, the next day we spent cycling round the vineyards in Renwick and after that, we weren’t too sharp either (no comments about Lizzy never having been sharp please!). We’d managed 12 vineyards in 5 hours- tasting about 60 wines (Don’t worry parents- they really were only little tastes!) . A small vineyard called Gibson Bridge was our favourite- everything we tasted was amazing and no, it wasn’t the last one we went to!

We spent the night at Robin Hood Bay – it didn’t remind us of Nottingham in any way other than the name.

We spent two days and nights in this northern coastal area, mainly walking parts of the coastal route and taking in the views- which of course where stunning (starting to sound like a broken record I know but it’s true). Unfortunately, due to the camera having an impromptu swimming lesson, we had very few photos from our first day’s walk as we left it to recover (it didn’t seem to like swimming much as it gave us all sorts of funny pictures after it’s little dunk). Fortunately, it decided to forgive us and the next day it was back to normal working order, and we were able to avoid getting camera number 3! (yep- we have got through 1 waterproof one and 1 normal one already). Abel Tasman is probably the place we’d most likely go back to for a summer hol. as there’s just so much to see here and it’s all beautiful!

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On our way up the West Coast, we briefly popped in to see Pancake Rocks. The rocks are near Punakaiki, a town that reminds tourists that  ”there’s more to see and do here than [see the rocks]” and pleads with them, somewhat desperately, to “stay a while”. We ignored their begging and stayed about an hour to just see the main sight. Apparently, scientists do not know how the mysterious stone layers of Pancake Rocks were formed, but that’s not really the reason people come here, fascinating as they are. Tourists flock here to see the blowholes. At their best, the blowholes fling sea water 20m into the air. We tried to capture some in photos and video and got a little wet in the process – we hope you appreciate the sacrifices we make to bring you these clips…

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My birthday started with breakfast in bed and some pressies, including a parcel from the UK which had a very convoluted journey to the camper van and which involved numerous secret phone calls to DHL, my recruiter (Annie), Annie’s cousin, Annie’s cousin’s secretary, Alex, and of course Julie who it was from. Needless to say, I felt very very spoilt I felt even more spoilt when I returned to the van to find it filled with balloons and a cake with candles. I think Alex nearly passed out trying to blow the 10 balloons up in the five minutes I’d been gone! All of that meant that I wasn’t too disappointed when our heli-hike planned for later that day was cancelled because of the rubbish weather. Instead we decided to move on further up the coast to Hokitika. We went on a short walk to a gorge there and for a treat we spent the night at a campsite with a spa and, after a run across the car park (the showers weren’t hot in the spa block) had our first hot shower in several days due to Queenie Simon not having one (we’re not admitting to how long it had been!).

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From Queenstown we headed north to Fox & Franz Joseph Glacier, stopping only a few times to admire the views, pick up a hitch-hiker and to fill up with fuel & water. We spent our first night at Lake Matheson. It was here we discovered that our little camper ‘Queenie Simon’ leaks on one side when it rains heavily. Fortunately, a plastic bag and repositioning seemed to keep us and the inside pretty dry. Our poor Canadian neighbours in their ‘jucy van’ with its rear boot access cooker, were not so fortunate. Feeling pleased (and a little bit smug) we invited them to eat with us in our now rain-proofed van. Either the thought of eating what we cooked horrified them, or they didn’t trust our rain-proofing efforts as instead they opted for re-plumbing their cooker to work from inside their cramped little van. We stuck our heads out a few times to check they hadn’t gassed themselves and when they joined us later for drinks they seemed fairly coherent (at least initially) so I guess they avoided gas poisoning.

The views on the walk round the lake the next morning where as stunning as ever and we managed to also fit in a walk to Fox Glacier and plan for the next day- my birthday when we hoped to do a heli-hike to Franz Joseph Glacier.

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There are so many things to do here to get your heart pumping that it was hard for us to decide what we should do. We ruled out things either of us had done before (paragliding, parachute jumping), things that involved jumping off or out of things at great height for my benefit (bungee jumping), things that meant being cold (for Lizzy’s benefit) for a long time (river surfing) and were left with 2 options – hang-gliding or canyoning. In the end we opted for canyoning as the cheaper option and booked onto a morning of that. What, you may ask, is canyoning? Well it’s scrambling up and down canyons in wet suits, jumping across and into water of varying depth. We both really enjoyed it, but actually found it rather tame and not that action-packed (by nature of there being a group of 10 of us and only 1 person could do each thing at once). For once Lizzy was the chicken as she refused to do the highest jump (8m down into not much water- which she claims she avoided because the previous jump she’d pretty much landed on her face & didn’t want to be face slapped again) which I did several times.  (Normally I’m the chicken when it comes to heights – I had to climb down from the top of a 60m-high building last because I couldn’t jump off it with a rope attached to my back, even though 12 others had done so quite safely). Unfortunately no photo evidence of this activity though – you’re not allowed to take your own camera and they charge rather a lot for the photos they take. A good morning of entertainment and something we’d like to do again, but perhaps in a smaller group.

Queenstown is in a lovely setting on the shores of a massive lake – I imagine it is beautiful year-round. Whilst we were here, I had to secretly collect a package and hide it from Lizzy… but all will be revealed about that in a later entry.

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