Adventure in New Zealand - week one…
…from Auckland to Wanaka.
The cover image is Auckland, taken from the bay walk we did on Monday. My travel notes on the blog are mostly for myself (as usual). We toured New Zealand togther twenty-seven years ago and remembered very little of the details (pre-digital travel with photos in a box somewhere)! This time I thought I’d keep a bit of a record. The posts’ll be pretty bare bones to begin with (because I keep on putting off publishing them at all), but I’ll add in more details if anything useful/funny occurs to me over time.
Auckland
We arrived in Auckland at M Social, Viaduct Harbour, Auckland on Sunday night and stayed two nights. On Monday we went for a long walk in the sun around the bay from the harbour to Okahu Bay Wharf. On the way back we stopped in at Lilliputt Mini Golf where D beat me on some really nice mini golf holes with strategically placed rocks and barrels. I didn’t do too badly and we had a great time.
Auckland - Christchurch - Kaikōura
The flight to Christchurch was on Tuesday, but we picked up our hire car and headed straight out to Kaikōura from the airport. The weather wasn’t great, so the drive was pretty, but we didn’t stop to take photos. We stayed at Sudima Hotel once we got into Kaikōura and went out for an early dinner at Strawberry Tree. The pub was good and the playlist on Tuesday night was right on the money for our age range (and that of the bar staff, who were having a great time)!
Kaikōura - Nelson
On the way up the coast we stopped at Ohau Point Lookout. It was another sunny-ish day (getting sunnier the closer we got to Nelson.
If you look really closely you’ll see some seals… which I didn’t know where there until I read more about the lookout and the seal colony there on the sign!
We were heading to Nelson to stay with friends, so we made a stop for lunch in Blenhiem, where was visited Soif Wine Shop and bought some excellent local reds as gifts (well, also in the hope that we’d get to drink them during the visit).
As we arrived at our friends’ house I realised I was definitely coming down with a cold, but there wasn’t anything much I could do about that… A cooked a great evening meal. Yes, we did drink the wine!
Nelson
We had a full day in Nelson with M and A, so they took us into the Abel Tasman National Park to walk a small section (only quite short, in part because I was feeling a bit ropey by this point).
We stopped at a few other places to take a look, but I wasn’t really taking much in as the day wore on. A made us a great picnic lunch which we ate on the beach (in the sun, although it was still pretty cold). Although we were booked for dinner out, I was pretty unwell, so we stayed in instead. A cooked again. It was awesome. I went to bed at around 8.30 with cold medication to help me sleep (which worked).
Nelson - Westport - Greymouth
We took the coastal route from Nelson to Greymouth via Westport. Stopped at Westport when we saw West Coast Pies because it was early lunch time. Although Greymouth isn’t that picturesque we stayed at a great apartment right on the forest edge. Dinner was classic Monteith’s.
Greymouth - Franz Josef
We had good weather for the drive to Franz Josef and stopped at Pancake Rocks and Blowholes in the Paparoa National Park. I don’t have any pictures from there (although I took some which didn’t come out well because of my positioning against the sun). I do have one from another view point on the way.
This part of the trip was where Weka watch started, because there’s one of these curious and quietly confident birds in every car park. They seem desperate to get into the car with you!
We went straight up to see the glacier when we got to Franz Josef, although the weather had closed in a bit. There was a photographer at one of the view points and he said to wait a bit for the cloud to lift. It did. We saw the glacier, although the view was much better from the other view point (after a steep climb up hill).
We stayed at Bella Vista Motel. Once we were settled in we visited the West Coast Wildlife Centre to finally see some Kiwis (which we’ve never seen before, and completely didn’t try to see on our last tour). No photos from there, because on a self-guided tour cameras are banned. The cost is high, although you do get 48-hour access (to make sure you see the birds). We were lucky, since we didn’t have 48 hours, and got to see both resident kiwis with no other visitors in the display.
Dinner was asian from Snake Bite Brewery which was a little strange, but probably quite tasty. I was beginning to lose my appetite at this point (with the anxiety of imminent skiing working its way into my brain at this point).
Franz Josef - Wanaka
For some reason I thought we should have breakfast before we left Franz Josef. I don’t know why. I wasn’t hungry. Anyway, we just drove off without any and that was a good idea as it turned out. I saw a sign for the West Coast Treetop Walk on the road. We headed off into the forest and found they had a great café as well as a fantastic raised walk so you could see the forest in all its glory, from top to bottom. I didn’t take any photos! Too scared of dropping my phone. Breakfast was truly awesome. The walk was amazing. I saw so much lichen, tree ferns and podocarps at all stages of development. No ziplines for us, and noone else was game either in the cold weather it seemed. Weka watch continued today.
Here’s a random view from the drive to Wanaka (at a bush campsite).
We stayed at Te Wanaka Lodge in a tiny room, but the breakfasts were good (and, eventually, I was able to eat them).
Skiing anxiety peaked on arrival, as you can imagine. Making any decisions over what to eat for dinner was almost impossible. Mistakes were made.
The first week of New Zealand was good. It was great to visit Nelson, because we didn’t make it on our first tour of the south island all those years ago. We ran out of time on that trip (with only two weeks in the south and one in the north). That was a mistake. There’s so much to do around Nelson, and there seems to be a little ecosystem of great weather there.
