The West Coast

The west coast of New Zealand lies between the sea and the Southern Alps. As in the UK, the main weather systems come in from the west – over the Tasman Sea in New Zealand's case - which tends to mean that the coast gets quite a lot of rainfall; much more than on the Canterbury Plain around Christchurch, for example.

I was very lucky – the whole time I was on the west coast, I had glorious blue sky and light winds. This continued as I travelled south towards the Haast Pass where I was planning on crossing the mountains to Queenstown.

I stayed overnight at the DOC campsite at Lake Mahinapua which was very beautiful the next morning as the sun rose behind the hills and reflected off the water.

The Department of Conservation runs many campsites across the country – generally quite basic places without much in the way of facilities. Generally you get toilets (sometimes these are of the composting variety) and some kind of water supply though this usually isn't from a purified mains supply (but is probably quite drinkable anyway). The DOC also overseas the 14 National Parks in New Zealand – providing visitor information and ensuring that the parks are properly maintained.

Lake Mahinapua formed part of an important route to the west coast during the gold rushes from about 1870 onwards until a railway was opened in 1906. During this period, steamers plied the route, and one has been preserved near the campsite:

St Andrews Presbyterian Church in Ross is now in private hands, but services are still held there – albeit by an Anglican church. The building sits nestled among the trees at the top of a small hill overlooking the sea.

We had a said Eucharist with an excellent sermon based on the verse in James about faith without works. The priest gave several good lessons from her own background in South Africa and reminded us not to underestimate the power of prayer as an active part of faith.

I was invited to lunch but had an appointment with a helicopter in Fox Glacier a couple of hours further south so I had to decline.

The main highway down the west coast alternately hugs the coast and then heads off inland across open heath or, as was often the case that morning through lush forest – this is, after all, a rain forest.

The glaciers of Franz Josef and Fox both originate in the Mount Cook area and there are several companies offering helicopter or fixed-wing flights to look at them and usually to land on them. I was hoping that someone else had booked in for my flight as the company will not fly for only one passenger. When I arrived, the news was not good – the guy at the office had called round and there was another company who might have a flight at 3 o'clock (it was a little after 1 at the time).

To fill in the time, I took up another suggestion from Rona at the Westport i-Site and drove along to Lake Matheson which was very pretty and provided a nice bit of exercise after sitting down all day. The lake provides a beautiful reflecting view in theory, but the breeze while I was there spoiled it.

Then it was back to Fox and to good news. Another group had arrived and wanted to take a flight so we were on. After a safety briefing (the emergency exits are the two doors you came in through, and the seat belts fasten like every other aircraft seatbelt in the world) we piled into the minibus for the trip to the heliport. Just as we drove off, the phone rang and it was the pilot. The clouds had come down and the flight was off! So near and yet...

Ah well, on the plus side, it meant I could get a bit further south. This was the one day of my trip where I spent most of it driving. My original idea of setting aside two weeks to see the South Island looked OK on a map and it's certainly possible if all you want to do is drive round the island. I came to New Zealand to see New Zealand, though, and not to drive. The van was comfortable and easily powerful enough to handle the hills along the way, but I tried to limit the number of hours actually spent behind the wheel. This was the exception – the object on Sunday was really to get as far south as possible. Getting an extra hour from the cancelled helicopter flight was handy, in that respect. In the end, I made it to another DOC site, this one at Pleasant Flat.

The road down the west coast, like virtually all the roads on the South Island is a single carriageway road – often they have long straight stretches but some bits are tortuously twisted. When you're looking at the road ahead through the side window, you're on a bendy road! Some of the corners have a maximum advised speed of 15kmh (about 9mph) which can make for a fair amount of extra exercise for the left foot on the clutch!

Another common feature of the roads here is the One Lane Bridge like this one:

This one was quite short, but some are long enough to require a passing place in the middle and a couple were long enough to require two passing places. The best one, though, was the Arahura Bridge where not only do the two road lanes share the bridge but also, well, look at this:

I should confess that this is a picture I found on the internet – when I was crossing the bridge, there was a car right behind me and I didn't want to stop to take a photo.

The Pleasant Flat campsite was very basic – little more than a large area off the road, but it had, amazingly, a proper dump site so I was able to empty out the waste and fill up with fresh water and then washed a load of clothes in the sink that evening. One of the great features of the camper that I have is that the toilet/shower has an outlet from the hot-air heating so it can be used as an efficient drying room. Even clothes that had only been wrung out by hand were dry by the next morning.

Which was when it was time to tackle the Haast Pass (surely a Dutch name?) through to the central part of New Zealand. The road through the pass was a “depression” project in the 1930's but the last section – through the Gates of Haast was not completed until after WW2. The valley is stunningly beautiful:

Sorry – it was misty and hard to get a decent picture. These are the “Fantail Falls” - you can see why. The concrete block to the lower right of the falls is what remains of the foundations of a water wheel used to provide power during the road construction.

Once through the pass, the road crosses into Otago and soon I was driving down the western side of Lake Wanaka:

another stunningly beautiful lake surrounded by snow-capped mountains. And what was round the next corner?

This one is Lake Hawea. Just where I took that photo, I took this one of these signs:

The closer one seems to me to be self-evident. If it's frosty, it's slippy. The further away one (you may need to click on the picture to get the larger version) strikes me as blatant discrimination against cows, though I suppose it does credit them with the ability to read.

My destination for the day was Queenstown – a town that has grown up around the “activity” holiday. At this time of year that mainly means snow sports but it's a year-round place with watery activities in the summer to add to the mountains.

At this point, a little digression to talk about Freedom Camping. This is the idea that you can just camp anywhere you like as long as there isn't a sign saying you can't. With the growth in the numbers of tourists (as well as the number of Kiwis) some towns are taking measures to stop it, and Queenstown is one of them. The problem is, to put it delicately, one of waste management – I'm sure you can work that out.

Not all camper vans are created equal. The cheaper, backpacker end of the range provides a bed and probably a sink and cooker, but little else. My van is fully self-contained and can survive entirely on its own for at least three days. All waste water (either the sink/shower waste or the toilet) is retained on board until it can be properly disposed of at a dump station.

But, short of paying a warden to patrol every parking space in your district checking for the approval certificate on the windscreen, there isn't much that local councils can do to ensure that only the self-contained vans actually park away from proper sites. That said, having paid extra for my van, I was reluctant to pay again to use a camp site in order to get facilities that I already had on board.

I understand the problem. If I were in Queenstown, perhaps I wouldn't want the lake front full of camper vans full of backpackers using the trees as a toilet. But the local camp sites have simply taken advantage of the situation and doubled their prices. I have an inbuilt aversion to being taken advantage of. I don't mind spending money when it needs to be spent or when I'm getting good value, but if it seems that someone is just exploiting a situation because they can, I want to back off.

It's why I didn't do the Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb. The $200 was off-putting, but not a show-stopper, but when they tell you that you can't take your own camera but they'll sell you photos for $15 (€10/£8.60/US$13.50) each (!) you begin to realise that this company is just out to take your money.

Anyway, getting back to Queenstown. It's a busy place, and if you're there for the skiing and you've got your hotel room booked than I imagine it's a fine place to while away the evenings with a bit of apres-ski. I, on the other hand, was staying at yet another DOC site about 10km west of the town at Twelve Mile Delta on the shores of Lake Wakatipu.

Enough – I promise more photos in the next posting.

Pancakes anyone?

Sorry, you can put away the maple syrup, these pancakes are a little tough for chewing.


About 50 km south of Wesport the Paparoa National Park surrounds the tiny coastal village of Punakaiki. Apart from craft shops and the inevitable (and welcome) café, Punakaiki is also home to the pancake rocks – named for their similarity in appearance to a pile of pancakes.

The limestone is layered here with much softer mudstone, which is being eroded by the sea to form the pancakes. It seems that geologists are still not 100% certain about exactly how the rocks ended up in this layered form – the currently “in vogue” theory is a process called stylobedding. Under the extreme pressure inflicted on the shells and skeletons that form the limestone, the grains actually melted into a solution. Within the solution, certain minerals combined to form what is now the mudstone, leaving the rest to form the limestone.

From the path that loops around the rocks, you can get a great idea of just how powerful the sea is as it crashes in and around the inlets and caves.

My visit coincided with low tide, which was a pity as high tide is a much better time to look at the rocks. In particular, high tide with a decent storm running is best of all – there are fissure in the cave roofs that form blow-holes when the sea and wind conditions are just right. However, I was blessed with gloriously sunny weather for more or less my entire stay on the West Coast, so I wasn't really complaining.

Finally, take a look at this picture:

Can you see a man wearing a hat looking out to sea? Or a boy with spiky hair? Or how about a fish sitting on top of a rock? And isn't that a lion waiting to pounce on the fish? These are all there, according to those with the right combination of artistry and imagination. And, possibly, the local wine...

Cave Rafting

WARNING: This posting contains pictures which some people may find disturbing. They sure as heck disturb me...

Rona, the lady who runs the Westport i-Site suggested a couple of things to fill my time there. She mentioned white-water rafting and jet boating which both appealed. Then she raised the idea of rafting in a cave which did more than appeal. The only snag was that the company wouldn't run the tour just for me and no-one else had signed up. The arrangement was made that I would phone them that evening and see if anyone else had shown an interest, so I did and, luckily, they had.

The tour leaves from Charleston which is about 25 km south of Westport on the banks of the Nile River (delusions of grandeur by the naming committee, I think). Firstly, the three of us – David, Claire and I – were kitted out in nice thick wetsuits. The only mitigating factor about wetsuits is that nobody looks good wearing one and nobody finds them comfortable (at least, I don't think they do – I'm open to contradiction, but rubber fetishists needn't apply).

Suitably kitted out, we set off by minibus for the start of the adventure. The first leg of the trek is made by train, of all things. The company has laid a little narrow gauge railway to take folk from the road to the forest. Rather grandly, this is called the Charleston Nile River Rain Forest Train. Actually, with the current state of NZ's passenger rail services, this probably ranks as the third longest service on the South Island...

From the train, we set off into the forest, pausing only to pick up an inner tube each. Here are the three of us on a rather mobile bridge across the river:

It's quite a steep climb up to the cave entrance, but well worth it. On the way, we paused to catch breath while Howie (our guide) explained how the limestone around us had been formed on the sea-bed before being raised up to form the mountains we could see because of tectonic activity below what is now New Zealand.

Here's the three of us again just before heading into the hole you can see behind us:

As you will have guessed from the wetsuits, this is a caving tour that is going to involve water, so I didn't have my camera with me. Luckily the tour operator has considered this and the guide had a waterproof camera with him – all the pictures in this posting were taken by Howie. We were given a little card with a couple of photos each as a souvenir and all the pictures were put on the company's website for us to download later (something the Sydney Harbour Bridge Climb people might consider).

The caves here are relatively young – around 250,000 years old which isn't much for a cave. It's a lot younger than the 600,000 or so years that the cave I visited in Western Australia has been about. Consequently, although there are some beautiful rock formations in the cave, none are all that big. Mind you, size isn't everything... The cave is almost completely natural – there's no electric lighting and no stairways, for example. The only illumination we had was the lights on our helmets – it reminded me of being in the gold mine at Bendigo.

We walked around a kilometre in the cave but it took over an hour. On the way we passed beautiful cave coral formations, cauliflower rocks, straws, stalactites, stalagmites, columns, shawls and many more.

In one cave, we came across some glow-worms. These are amazing little creatures that hang on to the cave roof and create light using a chemical reaction. This attracts insects who get caught in the worms' “fishing-lines” - like a single strand of spider's web, hanging down from the ceiling. There is something a little unearthly about seeing these little green dots all about you in the dark – Howie had us turn our lights off.

And then it was time to take to the water. This was why we'd dragged inner tubes with us round the cave. The lower levels of the cave are flooded with the water level varying depending on rainfall. For the first leg of the journey, we formed up into a little chain while Howie paddled us (backwards) through the dark. And then we saw why.

We'd seen a few glow worms earlier – probably a few hundred, but now there were millions of them, and I mean that quite literally. They're hard to photograph, but there are a couple of pictures on the website which give an idea:


Imagine the starriest sky you've ever seen – a really dark night with no moon and no cloud. Then imagine that the stars are only a few metres above your head, and that they're green. Then you're getting there. They really did look like stars – almost forming constellations. It was like a special effect from Star Trek, except it was real. And it went on, and on. We floated, quietly, in the dark while this amazing spectacle unfolded itself across the rocky ceiling and the walls.

It was, quite simply, the most breathtaking thing I've seen in a very long time. Possibly ever, but “ever” is a long time, and I have a poor memory.

All too soon, it was over, and we popped out into the daylight again. All I wanted to do was go back in.

The last part of the trip is down the river again to where we started. The river doesn't really run to serious rapids, at least, not when it hasn't rained for a few days, but it was still fun. I hesitate to post this, but I can only offer an unexpected face-full of cold water as an excuse for my expression:

After climbing out of the water underneath the bridge we started at, we stowed our tubes and made our way back to the train station to change back into dry clothes. A basket of drinks appeared and it was time to chug back down to the road:

Howie, our guide, commented as we dumped our wetsuits into a bath for him to clean that this was his real job and he did the cave tours for nothing. I think he was only half joking...

Points West

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The drive from east to west coast inevitably involves crossing the Southern Alps. I was taking the Lewis Pass which is one of the easier ones and was completely free of snow. It also meant that I passed close to a couple of thermal springs. These are more common on the North Island, but I've never been to one so decided to stop here, at the Maruia resort:

They have a selection of different ways of experiencing the hot water, but I opted for the basic rock pool and Japanese bathhouse deal.

The rock pools are artificial but quite well done:

The different pools were at different temperatures; none was too hot to be comfortable though. The Japanese bathhouse was really just a large pool where you could swim about a bit in the hot water. Everything smelt strongly of sulphur and I could smell it for the rest of the day.

It was unusual to be lying in a pool of hot water, outdoors and looking up at a snow-capped mountain, but not unpleasant.

But then it was time to press on. My destination was Westport on the north-west coast of the island. This is the thinly disguised setting for a long series of stories I've been reading on the internet. A guy who calls himself Kiwi (real name, David) has created the tales starting from the founding of the town (which he calls Westpoint) right through the present day and into the future. I love the stories and it seemed as good an excuse as any to base myself there for a day or so.

When I presented myself at the i-Site, the lady was very helpful and told me where I could refill the van with water (and dump the used stuff) and even where the “tolerated” place was for free camping – right by the beach!

Westport is an old coal-mining town though there's no mining there now. Coal still occasionally comes through the harbour at Westport but even that is unusual – most goes by rail to Lyttelton on the east coast for shipping.

The town museum is still called Coaltown, but the exhibits are by no means confined to coal mining. In fact there sometimes seemed to be no obvious connection to the town or to mining – as if the owner just came across something and stuck it in the collection.

The nearby township of Denniston grew up around the coal mine of the same name, and died when the mine was closed. Little is left of it, apparently, but a few crumbling buildings. If and when I come back to New Zealand, I think it might be interesting to visit. In its heyday, though, miners worked round the clock producing coal. From the mine, it was sent down to the mainline railway on an inclined track that operated mainly under gravity – two coal cars were linked and the heavy, full one pulled the empty one up as it rolled down. The museum has one of the original coal trucks mounted on a short section of track:

The track is angled to match the steepest point of the Denniston incline, which was actually greater than 45º. There was a video playing in the museum which told some of the miners' stories and some of them included the horrific consequences of accidents on the coal incline.

Just round the coast from Westport is Cape Foulwind. Captain Cook named it that when he ran into some particularly nasty weather. Well, when I was there, it was almost perfectly calm and a beautiful evening as well. Just as at Kaikoura, there is a large colony of New Zealand Fur Seals here. These ones were much greater in number, but also further away from anywhere you could see them from, but I reckon there are at least 20 seals in this picture:

There may be more – they're quite hard to spot amongst the driftwood.

The sun was setting over the Tasman Sea as I was leaving the seal colony:

Whale watching

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187 km north of Christchurch, on the east coast of South Island, lies the little town of Kaikoura. A little offshore from Kaikoura lies the Kaikoura Canyon, where the continental shelf gives way very suddenly to depths of over 1700m.

Also, just offshore is the meeting point of cold southern currents and warm northern ones. Where they meet there is an enormous up-welling of nutrient rich water which attracts many sea animals. The town was named after the local Crayfish (Koura in Maori) but these days, it is whales that are the big draw.

Whales have played a part in the town's life since its founding as a whaling station in 1842. I should say that this was the beginning of the European history – it's Maori history is much older. The god Maui is said to have braced his foot against the Kaikoura Peninsula when he was on a fishing trip and hooked what became the North Island up out of the sea.

The weather on the day I was in Kaikoura wasn't promising. I had parked for the night at a camp site right on the coast:

What I hadn't realised when I parked (it was dark) was that right behind the van was the main road and the main railway line from Christchurch to Picton, where the ferry to North Island leaves. New Zealand is not a busy place, but I was woken a couple of times by trains.

I was sure when I asked in the tourist information office (i-Site in New Zealand parlance) that the whale-watching would be cancelled, but when they checked with the company they said that if I went right then I could join a tour. It seemed like a good opportunity and there would be no wasted time so I took them up on it.

Kaikoura Whale Watching runs a fleet of five purpose-built vessels – ours was the Wawahia, named after the founders of the company.

We set off into the fog while one of the crew explained what we might see and showed us some video clips of previous tours. Looking out into the gloom, it was hard to be optimistic, but we were assured that actually spotting a whale was just one of the ways that the crew could find them.

After a while, we slowed down (the boat was doing around 30 knots) and we were invited to go outside and have a look around. Other than a few birds there wasn't much to see. There was grey sea and grey sky and grey mist in between. This stormy petrel blended in nicely:

We moved on to a new place, guided by the captain's listening to the underwater sounds through a hydrophone. And then, a whale was spotted and we all rushed outside to look. Now, dark grey whales on a light grey sea aren't that photogenic, especially if you don't have a pretty serious camera, but here's what we saw:

This is a sperm whale. They got the name when an early whaling crew cut open the head of one they'd caught. Inside, they found a large amount of a light, creamy substance and made the wrong assumption. Later, a female was found and the extent of their error was revealed, but the name stuck. In fact what they'd found was an oily substance that, when it gets cold hardens into a waxy consistency and helps the whale to sink while it's diving. In order to surface, the whale pumps blood through the spermacitic chamber and liquefies the waxy material which makes it lighter than the surrounding water and thus aids buoyancy.

Well, the process must be effective. Sperms whales can dive to over 3.000 metres (yes, three thousand!) which is over 10,000 feet. They can stay submerged for over 2 hours as well because they store oxygen in their muscle tissues rather than just in their lungs and bloodstream.

The whales we saw were around the same length as the boat we were on – 18 metres, which is pretty big whichever way you look at it. Although the photo isn't that impressive, actually seeing the whale from less than 100 metres distance was quite an experience.

On these two clips you can see the whale on the surface and then diving. Neither is especially high quality (don't expect David Attenborough), but they're only short. You can hear the voice of the tour guide in the background as he explained some of what to look for.




We saw two different whales while we were out (or it may have been the same one twice – to be honest I can't be sure), which, we were told, was about average.

On the way back in, we stopped by to look at Kaikoura's other marine mammal speciality – New Zealand fur seals. There is a colony of the seals on the peninsula and we got reasonably close to them.

Our time was up and we headed back into the harbour to catch the bus back to the whale watch HQ.

I wandered into town and had a lunch crayfish salad – it seemed only polite to try the stuff the town's named after. It tastes, not surprisingly, like prawns. It is, after all, just a larger version of the same thing.

Kaikoura's main street looks like lots of other New Zealand main streets:

That is to say that the shops tend to have verandahs which presumably are principally to protect people from the sun in summer but double nicely as protection from the rain.

Before leaving, I drove back out to the peninsula and did part of the walking trail that leads round to the south bay of the town. Firstly, I'm open to offers as to what this might be:

My best guess is some kind of roadside chapel or shrine, but there was nothing to indicate a purpose that I could see.

From the land, you can get quite close to the seals (they recommend not closer than 10m as they can be dangerous), but at high tide (which it was) the peninsula is mostly flooded. Still, there were seals to be seen:

These guys (and they probably were males, apparently) seemed quite unconcerned at having their photographs taken and slept on regardless.

A little further round the peninsula you can see some of the amazing rock formations that abound along the coast of New Zealand. This is called the Sugarloaf:

The steps on this hill side were created by the Maori as a defensive measure:

The stepped terraces would have been lined with palisaded lanes to further enhance the defences.

Back at the car park, there were still more seals to be seen, but here's one last one – this little guy was rolling around and waving his flippers about as if it were high summer. I'm sure he's smiling:

But then it was time to set off. I was keen to get at least a few kilometres of the journey to the west coast under my belt before nightfall. The road south of Kaikoura is squeezed in between the cliffs and the sea and shares the gap with the railway. It was getting dark by now, but you can see here where the two lanes of the road go through their own tunnels. The railway has its own tunnel just behind the rock wall, to the right of the road tunnels:

I'll be coming back this way on the train if things go according to plan which will make it easier to look at the scenery.

Bienvenue à la Nouvelle Zélande

(with apologies to anyone whose French is better than mine (which is probably most people))

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This road sign is in Akaroa, just south of Christchurch:

New Zealand was, as everyone knows, part of the British Empire. Now it's part of the Commonwealth. Queen Elizabeth is head of state. None of that is news, I don't suppose. What I didn't know was that the country, or at least the South Island, came within a week of being French. What was Queen Victoria's gain was, perhaps, to the eternal loss of New Zealand cuisine...

A certain Captain Langlois was passing Akaroa in 1838 when it occurred to him that it would make a great place for a French colony. Accordingly, on his return to France, he set up a company to raise money for the venture and set off back to the southern hemisphere in March 1840, along with the French naval vessel, L'Aube.

In the meantime, the putative British administration was getting itself established at the northern end of the North Island and was negotiating with the Maori chiefs for sovereignty over the whole country, which was ultimately achieved by the Treaty of Waitangi on June 17, 1840.

Luckily, or unluckily if you're French, the L'Aube put in to visit the British administration to get news. Now, the British weren't stupid and when they realised what the French were up to, they despatched HMS Britomart under the command of one Captain Stanley post haste to plant the Union Jack at Akaroa.

The weather on 9 August 1840 was poor and the French would-be colonists were forced to put in on the north side of the Banks Peninsula to shelter, allowing the Britomart to nip into Akaroa ahead of them. The British flag was raised on 11 August, which must have been something of a disappointment for the passengers on board the French ships when they arrived 4 and 5 days later.

The settlers decided to stay and, to this day, one end of the town has French street names (such as those above), while the other end has English names.

The Britomart earned its place in New Zealand history, and its own monument in Akaroa.

The site of the French landing is also commemorated:

Akaroa has retained many of its historic buildings and character. For example, this theatre was built in 1879 by the same group as the Manchester Unity building in Melbourne. Despite appearances, it is entirely constructed of timber:

I wouldn't mind living here:

Akaroa has an excellent harbour and the entrance was guarded between 1880 and 1980 by this lighthouse, now relocated closer to the town and preserved as a historic monument:

Eventually, it was time to leave this almost impossibly picturesque little town. From across the inlet, at Duvauchelle, I took this picture. Akaroa is just above the centre of the picture on the left hand side.