Right, so… the South Island of New Zealand is a truly awesome place. I’ll do my best to give you a little insight into it.

On our first night, we stayed in Blenheim, a rather well to do kind of place (as you might expect if you’re from the UK, where this is the name of one of the royal residences).

Our motel was very close to the immaculately cultivated little park, and soon after we arrived, I had to venture out, as we heard the last post being played with a beautiful tone, apparently in the park. I’m not quite sure how they managed this but it was actually a recording rather than a live player. Apparently the musician himself does come and play it live every so often, but most days it’s just a recording. I’m not sure why it’s played every day there, but it was kind of lovely to hear it.

The next day, we set off across the island to the west coast. To begin with, we passed through the famous Marlborough wine producing area, with vineyards lining the route. The rows upon rows of planted vines often have rose bushes planted at the end to attract unwanted insects and also to look lovely. And there are windmills scattered throughout the vineyards, which work to keep the air circulating and stop the frost from damaging them in cold weather.

The road climbed gradually, until we began to see snowy topped mountains. We had reached alpine country. We stopped off at a village called St Arnaud on the banks of Lake Rotoiti. In the local café, as with cafés throughout New Zealand, they served a diverse and immaculately formed variety of coffees (often, as in this case with a little jaffa on the side – an orange chocolate covered in red candy), along with some delicious, freshly baked scones and muffins. I really don’t know how such remote places manage to always have a warm scone or muffin on offer that tastes like they just brought it out of the oven, whatever time of day you arrive!

In the café, there was a poster of the lake, surrounded by mountains. I started to wonder aloud whether I might swim in it. My aunt and uncle looked bemused and a bit surprised at the idea, but an older guy with what looked like a permanent grin plastered on his face and a healthy glow to his skin who was another café customer told us he went swimming in the lake every morning. Encouraged by his example, I decided on the spot to do it.

When we got down to the lake side, the toilets and changing facilities were second to none, and sparklingly clean. (I don’t think many people had used them for a while, though, to be fair! Spring is not the warmest time of year anywhere in New Zealand, but particularly not in alpine country!)

The view from the still crystal clear waters of the lake was awesome, and my dip was most refreshing, I must say. When faced with this view, how could I not plunge into it?

From Lake Rotoiti, we continued on towards the West coast. I finally started to look at my “Maps Me” app, which several seasoned travellers had recommended to me. It maps your location using GPS, so you can use it without being online or within the reach of WiFi. At one point, I saw the Buller Creek “swing bridge” ahead of us on the same road. So I asked Ken and Les whether we might go over it, naïvely thinking it was some bridge the road went over or something. Les said, “Do you want to go over it?” To which I replied “OK, why not?” How innocent I was.

The Buller Gorge swing bridge is one of many such bridges in the South Island that you walk over (you really wouldn’t want to drive over one!). It happens to be the longest one in New Zealand, too. Strung precariously over a steep gorge with a raging torrent roaring beneath it. They get you to pay your $10 to go over it before you can really see it. And with good reason! (To be fair they did explain the gist, and gave what, on reflection, was some pretty scary advice; “If you feel scared just walk faster and don’t look down”, which I ignored, thinking to myself, “C’mon, how bad can it be?”) Suffice it to say that it’s called a swing bridge because it swings. And you are walking on a rigid metal mesh that you can see through all the time. If you pay a bit more, you can walk over it and zip wire back. Not on your nelly. One thing at a time. So over we went.

I am not kidding. I had to make up a song in order to get myself across. And only about halfway across did it occur to me that, having made it across, I would have to repeat the experience in order to get back. Not the sharpest knife in the drawer, me! The thought also occurred to me that someone should be paying me to go over this, not the other way round! The song went something like this: “Somewhere…somewhere inside is a Maori warrior” (repeat, add infinitum). Well, it got me across. And back. Just about!

On the far side of the bridge there’s a short bushwalk you can do, which was quite effective at calming my nerves to face the bridge back. The markers on this tree show you how deep the river has been in recent years. It’s difficult to get your head around just how much rainfall the South Island has, and how quickly rivers become deep raging torrents, but here’s a starter for ten, with my uncle providing a bit of scale. Bear in mind that he’s standing on a riverbank about maybe 15 feet above where the water level was at the time:

Having traversed the bridge safely back to the car, we continued our journey. We were driving along increasingly narrow and winding roads on the side of hills with steep valleys and gorges dropping away on one side or another, with lush greenery pretty much everywhere.

The further we went on these remote roads, meeting very little traffic, the more I began to wonder what Westport would be like. My friends moved there from Christchurch less than a year ago, and we were going to stay with them for a couple of days. I found it hard to believe that anyone could live somewhere so remote, that required so many miles of windy road to get to them.

Then we arrived in Westport, which was really a surprisingly normal sort of town, considering how remote it is. Because of its location, it does have a surprising number of shops selling stuff that I’d normally expect only in a bigger city. As we arrived in the late afternoon, the sun was up, so we went for a walk to a local beach with my friends and their children.

On the way to the beach, we walked past numerous people fishing for whitebait. The white planks of wood are put under the water close to shore so that people can see these tiny translucent fish as hey swim past, and then scoop them up into their nets.

Having arrived at the beach, the children all braved the chilly sea in their wetsuits, while my friend Jacqui miraculously produced a tub of ice cream and cones for us to enjoy in the sun. Lovely!

A map of our route through the North Island… (including slightly different route on the way back up). We’ve now arrived back in Auckland. So I’m about to fill you in on the whole of the South Island too! Here’s the North Island though:

Our ferry trip across from the North to the South Island took us, after quite a while on the open sea, along the Marlborough Sound.

There are really no words for this quiet, stupendous journey. My uncle, who served in the British Navy in his time, tells me that sailors who train here can sail pretty much anywhere. The ferry slows so as not to disturb the wildlife too much, and sails apparently straight at the land, which turns out to be the narrowest gap between craggy islets and grassy shorelines. It was an almost eerily beautiful sail. Quite a few people were standing out on deck near me, all of us were speechless. The landscape seemed to invite quiet wonder.

Aha! We have a reliable interweb connection again so I am poised with all my draft posts to catch up with myself! It will take a few days still but here’s the last post from the North Island of New Zealand to be going on with…

We stayed just outside Wellington on the West coast at a place called Paraparaumu or Paraparaparam or Pram depending on how local/familiar/lazy about place names you want to be.

As evening fell, we went for a walk along the beach. Think darkish sand, loooong beach, people walking dogs, Kapiti Island looming a bit with the evening sun behind it, the headland marking the start of the chunk of land that has Wellington on the other side of it in the distance. No matter how long we walked towards the headland it didn’t seem to get any closer.

Some oyster catchers on Pram beach (look at their little legs go!):

The next day we walked to the train station and caught a train (about an hour) into Wellington. After about 15 mins on the train, we finally caught up with that headland. It’s deceptively far away, which is something that happens quite a bit in NZ, where views are often uninterrupted by housing or industrial buildings for miles, so the other end of a view can seem a lot closer than it often turns out to be.

We went up the Wellington cable car (more like a funicular railway), and after admiring awesome views of the harbour, walked down into the city through the colourful Botanical Gardens.

After lunch we wandered along the seafront, obligatory ice creams in hand. You take your life in your hands strolling leisurely along Wellington waterfront, as umpteen people scoot, cycle or skateboard past at great speed nearly taking you out!

We saw some people dragon boating too:

The superlative ice creams seemed to warrant some proper attention, so we sat down on a bench for a while, slurping away and people watching.

People watching can lead to shameless stereotyping. Which I’m about to indulge in. So I saw middle aged classy ladies hot footing along in designer outfits clutching little designer paper bags containing their latest purchases, young people scooting past at 60mph or cycling lazily in circles with mates, all on hired scooters or bikes. Occasionally some bright spark would scoot past faster than the speed of light and then suddenly skid to a halt and leave the hired scooter in front of us. You look away, look back, and one parked scooter has suddenly become two.

Every year, Wellington hosts the “World of Wearable Art” (WOW for short), which could explain the number of people wearing very creative clothing, piercing and makeup combinations sitting on the low curbs chatting away. But I also had the impression that’s probably quite an all year round phenomenon for Wellington, too.

Then there were business people marching past purposefully, scarves tucked in against the wind, couples out for a stroll, children racing along (one little girl in a fairy dress and leg warmers on a scooter was particularly cute).

We met up with my cousin and his partner for post work drinks at Flamingo Joe’s, where we were served by a vertically challenged Portuguese waiter (he described himself as a hobbit) with a great sense of humour and commendably honest advice regarding cocktails.

From there, we drove around the very scenic Wellington coastline, stopping for photo opportunities of impressive wind surfers (Wellington is known for being very windy, so ideal for windsurfers I presume) and quiet little beaches, round to a trendy restaurant by the surfers’ beach next to the airport.

Wellington airport is a phenomenon in itself. The planes appear to fly into the middle of the city. They land on what seems to be an unfeasibly short runway between what seems to be an unfeasibly narrow gap between the hills, before taking off from the other end of the runway. I’m still confused about exactly l how this works!

To round off a lovely day, we drove up Mount Victoria and enjoyed looking at the 360 degree nighttime panorama of the city with all its coastline.

The next day, after I’d had a chance for some strokey time with King Fred (I’ve been missing our cat, big time!), we went to the wildlife and bird sanctuary in Kapiti called Nga Manu. It was raining, but we saw the kiwi feeding in the dark of the night time shed. Kiwis are an incredibly rare, endangered species of flightless bird, very difficult to spot in the wild. It was quite amazing that we got to see this one even in such controlled conditions.

Other birds we saw included the wood pigeon (a much more splendid bird than wood pigeons in the UK), a couple of Keas (very good at prising windows from their rubber seals with their beaks apparently!), lots of mallard ducks, pukekos (think mini road runners with windmill feet), tuis, tiny silver eyes, the ubiquitous sparrows (known here as café birds because they often fly into cafés), among others. We also saw various kinds of ancient lizards and some eels at feeding time. Euw!

The rain seemed so much a part of the landscape here I didn’t mind braving it for a quick hot foot round the bush walk with Tash. Our only problem was whether to bother with the brolly or not, as when it was up it blocked our view of the tree canopy and any birds flying by. But nothing stopped us hearing the magical call of the tuis and all the other beautiful birdsong around.

The next day, after a hearty breakfast altogether on the seafront at Pram, my aunt and uncle and I set off for the ferry to the South Island…

A confession; I am actually now in the South of the South Island. I’ve been so taken up with being here and visiting people I’ve been neglecting the blog! So here are some pictures of our journey down towards Wellington to speed things up…

Truck drivers are more often female in New Zealand than in the UK. Here’s one lady stopping off for a quick bite in the cab of a fabulously shiny truck. I have a couple of long distance lorry driver friends (male and female) who have talked about enjoying the passing countryside on their travels. Well, I must say, this would be a pretty awesome place to see some spectacular countryside……and quite a number of new housing developments too (they seem to be springing up almost everywhere. I hope this won’t ruin the sparsely inhabited wilderness that is New Zealand)…

En route we stopped at the Tangiwai Memorial Site, which commemorates the lives of the 151 people who died and the brave actions of the train driver, guard, fireman and three passing car drivers, who contributed to the saving of the other 134 passengers on board a train that shot off the end of a broken bridge on Christmas Eve 1953. The bridge was destroyed by a massive lahar (volcanic mudflow) when Mount Ruapehu erupted. There was no way of getting a message to the driver quickly enough to enable him to stop the train in time to avoid the disaster. But one of the drivers managed to catch his attention, which meant that just under half the passengers were saved (the driver and crew died).

I couldn’t help noticing that only one of the lost carriages was first class, and all those that were saved were first class (along with the postal carriage). Maybe that’s why they put the first class carriages at the back of trains?

I also couldn’t help noticing that they built the new bridge right by the site of the old one! And one of the noticeboards made the point that we still don’t really understand lahars enough to be able to predict when they are going to happen. And this bridge is still in a vulnerable spot if / when it happens again. I guess we understand more though, and we can send signals more quickly. And the bridge maybe stronger too. (Though I’m not sure there are bridge building materials that could hope to withstand the kind of forces involved.) In the meantime, the trainline is still used regularly, and indeed if you look carefully below, you should be able to spot a train making its way across the bridge as I watched.

I nearly forgot! Lake Taupo, which I skipped over earlier, is ENORMOUS. On a warm sunny day apparently it’s blue as blue and so inviting I’m sure I’d have jumped in for a swim. When we passed, it was pretty nippy though, and the lake was foreboding, dark and rough. Along with the volcanic black sand I found it very impressive though.

Soon we arrived in the alpine village of Ohakune for the night. Ohakune doesn’t have a lot to mark it out, but it is famous for being a carrot growing region thanks to some enterprising early Chinese settlers, who I think may have diversified when the goldfields ran dry. (I am discovering that New Zealand was another place where people came to seek their fortune panning for gold in the mid 1800s, along with California.)

On our way out the next morning, we saw the big carrot I’d seen on the map (looking about a quarter of the size of the town according to the map – not entirely over exaggerated!)… and to my delight, various carrot related playground features. It’s always good to not take yourself too seriously, I find. (That’s my excuse, anyway!) In the background you may be able to spot the snowy mountaintops.

We spent a quiet moment by this spectacular lake. During which time, the cloud began to clear and one enterprising soul decided to brave the water to the amusement of his mates! It was so deliciously clear, I would’ve had a dip myself if I’d brought my cossie. I do love a cold water swim. Ah well, next time.

Then we drove via the “green” and “blue” lakes to the Buried Village:

Green lake looking blue 👇🏼Blue lake looking… white? 👇🏼

Here’s the blue lake looking bluer from the other side:

The Buried Village is a village that ended up buried under several feet of mud after a volcano erupted at the far side of the first lake I posted a picture of in this post. The huge eruption happened in 1886, and buried most other villages in the vicinity under 15 metres of volcanic mud. The village that has been excavated came off better because it was sheltered to some extent by the local hills. But some people did die, too, as bits of buildings fell on them. Some of the very simple Maori whake dwellings survived, however, turning out to be some of the safest refuges for people to shelter in.

As well as all the historical excavation there was a beautiful bushwalk alongside a spectacular waterfall by the Buried Village.

I finally managed to get a photo and a video of a tui. It’s not very good, but it’s something! (These beautiful birds are sometimes known as the “parson bird” apparently, because the little white pom pom flourish at their throats looks a bit like a dog collar!) Their song is magical.

(Turn your volume up to hear the mellow low pitched part of the tui’s song 👆🏼, which has an incredible range of pitches and tones to it. At some point I hope to capture more!)

On our second evening in Rotorua, we went to the Mitai Maori village for a Maori cultural experience evening. I still can’t work out how they managed to show us so much in the few hours we were there. A coach picked us and a lot of other people up from our motels/campsites in the early evening and took us to the Maori village. I’m guessing about 200 of us (including at least another ten busloads of people) gathered in a big hall to be welcomed by a guy who MC’d the proceedings with great Maori kiwi humour and style.

One of the most warmly welcoming things about this evening was the way the guy MC’ing it welcomed people among us from around 15 different countries in our own languages. And he didn’t just say “Welcome”. He had a little conversation with people in their own language (including mentioning the word for “chocolate cake” which he’d gone to the trouble of learning in every language, so it became a comedy moment at the end of each welcome).

So often I think we’re so keen to say what we want to say that we don’t even stop to realise that the people we’re speaking to speak a different language and so might not understand. I’ve noticed that this happens a lot even within groups who all speak the same tongue, but who are from different age groups or cultural groups and so understand the words differently.

How wonderful to take the trouble of asking your guests where they’re from and of welcoming them in their own language before you try to teach them anything about your own language or culture. We English are infamous for not learning other languages. I feel quite ashamed of that. But also of times when I’ve been so keen to speak that I’ve failed to really listen.

Anyway, I tried to write more about this extraordinary evening, but I think the pics probably speak more powerfully for themselves…

This was our hangi (pronounced “hungi”) feast being cooked. Sweet potatoes are traditional Maori food (the types of meat here are more what they have assimilated from other cultures). The food is suspended over fire-heated stones for hours to cook it:

This is the waka (Maori boat pronounced “woka”) used in the film The Piano to transport the grand piano. Maoris arrived in New Zealand on these boats originally from Tahiti. Maoris trace their family ancestry back to which waka they were on when they arrived:

Maori warriors rowing a waka and chanting as they go:

Maori welcome and concert:

This music was for times of healing:

The evening was altogether very musical!

After the hangi feast, we had a beautiful night time bushwalk by Rainbow Springs. On the walk, our Maori guide explained that the water on our tables at the feast had been taken directly from these spring waters. I couldn’t capture the glow worms on the banks but they were there. A magical end to an extraordinary evening.