the right stuff....

In a beautiful expression of democracy, this week the New Zealand parliament has legalised same sex marriage and spontaneously burst into song.  This has deservedly gone viral, so you will no doubt have seen that clip.  Good.

For some reason, whilst watching this, I was reminded of our trip there in 2010.

When we arrived, we were warmly welcomed by a customs officer of Scottish descent and had our passports stamped before heading out into a drizzly Christchurch.  I must admit that I was slightly bemused to see that New Zealand's passport stamp contained the slogan "New Zealand: the right choice".  It just seemed a bit weird to use that particular medium for advertising how great your country is when, by definition, the only people who will ever see it have already taken the time and the trouble to travel to the ends of the earth to visit you anyway.

It turns out that this wasn't so much an advertising slogan as a statement of fact.  New Zealand: the right choice.

Mind you, I should have realised this years ago.  In Wellington, we went to a pub to have a little early evening drinkie-poos.  Over the time we'd been travelling in NZ, I'd discovered that they do pretty good beer, and Monteith's in particular was excellent.  This pub was a Monteith's pub and was advertising that they had just started selling their Autumn ale.  What more reason do you need to stop?  We ordered a drink and then pushed our way through the after-work rush to try to find a table.  By the time we finally sat down, we were ready for another drink.  Just as I was contemplating the throng, a waitress came to our table and took our orders.  I ordered an Autumn ale.  In due course, four pints arrived.  Four pints?  Why yes, said the waitress, we're running a promotion at the moment where the first round of Autumn ale is on us, so I brought you both a pint. C. doesn't really drink beer, so this was excellent news.  But four pints?  Buy one get one free, apparently.  So how much do I owe you?  Nothing.  Four pints, no charge?  Yup.

Best pub ever.

New Zealand: the right choice.

people are the same wherever we go....

As an historian, I must say that I do find it a little amusing the way that there are so many things signposted both in New Zealand & in Australia as "historic".. when actually what they mean is that the item in question might be about 100 years old. I shouldn't be so snobby about these things, of course... not everyone is lucky enough to have so many ancient monuments and so much monumental architecture on their doorsteps as us Europeans, but it's hard not to see it (more than a touch patronisingly) as a little sweet - bless these colonials with their "history" and their search for a place in the world.

But of course, the human history of both of these countries goes back beyond the arrival of the Europeans a couple of centuries ago. What's really interesting around this part of the world is the way that the Maori culture seems to be part and parcel of NZ life in a way that aboriginal Australian culture is not. I'm ill qualified to comment on this with any authority, of course, and these are only my observations....

In New Zealand, their Maori heritage seems to be something that is honoured and preserved. The Maori language is prominent: this may be the result of a recent campaign to prevent it disappearing altogether by making a concerted effort to get kids to learn it and to speak it, but the result is that lots of things are presented with their Maori names displayed first: Mount Cook is called Aoraki / Mount Cook these days, and I can ultimately see the Cook bit being dropped entirely over time and in the national museum, Te Papa, all plaques are in two languages, with the Maori displayed before the English. Every museum we visited also had extensive displays of the polynesian history of the island, and in places like Rotorua, cultural displays are as big an attraction to tourists as the skydiving and bungee jumping. A huge proportion of tourists will leave New Zealand wearing a bone carving or a piece of greenstone as a souvenir of their stay, both the products of Maori culture. Most obviously of all, of course, is the haka performed by the All Blacks before every rugby test. Can there be a more prominent display of New Zealand's cultural heritage and how big a part it is of the nation's pysche?

I'd assumed that the Maori had been in New Zealand for years, but actually they only arrived something like 400 years before the Europeans. Of course, the European arrival changed things dramatically, but the massive environmental changes usually associated with the European arrival actually started with the Maoris and are really not all our fault. Sure, the pace of change accelerated massively after Captain Cook's arrival, but the Maori had already begun to radically change the environment before the tall ships sailed into view: the massive wingless Moa were hunted to extinction before we turned up, for example and the rat was introduced to the islands by the polynesians as a meat source....

By way of contrast to this relatively recent history of human intervention on the environment in New Zealand, the Autralian Aboriginal culture dates back omething like 40,000 years....it's the earliest human culture. And yet, as we travelled around, we barely saw a single aboriginal face in Southern Australia and they were most easily found in North Queensland in the local branch of MacDonalds every evening or drinking from brown paper bags on a park bench. With something like 400 distinct languages rather than just the one, I suppose it's much harder to include the indigenous language on bilingual signposts, but the difference with New Zealand is really marked, with the Australian Aborigines seemingly much less involved in the "Modern" society than the Maori in New Zealand. A couple we met in Tasmania told us how they had worked as volunteers with the aboriginal people of Queensland, but that no matter how hard they tried, they just couldn't help people who didn't want to be helped. They told us about how they found a group in the house they had been given trying to cool themselves down with sprinklers inside their living room, in spite of the fact they were surrounded by TVs and air conditioning units. Another story we heard was of the aborigine who won a pile of money on the lottery and spent it all on a top of the range Toyota Land Cruiser that was up in bricks and rotting within a month. The problems clearly run deep with two cultures that just don't seem to be capable of integration.

A Kiwi kayaker we met in the Whitsundays told us that the difference in New Zealand was because -- unlike the Australian aborigines -- the Maori were never actually subdued by the Europeans and Maori rights were ultimately enshrined in the Treaty of Waitangi in 1840, recognising claims to the land and their rights as British citizens in their own right. It's a treaty that is still referred to today. There is no Australian equivalent....

Of course, this is a complicated issue, and I certainly won't pretend that I have all the answers. I know that everything isn't rosy in New Zealand, and neither is everything all doom and gloom in Australia. To say otherwise would be a gross over-simplification.... but it has certainly been interesting to observe the differences between these two beautiful countries as we've travelled around them both over the last couple of months.

Ka mate, ka mate! ka ora! ka ora!

So, North Island.

When planning our trip, we deliberately decided to spend the majority of the 30 days we were spending in New Zealand on South Island. This necessarily meant that our trip around the North Island was always going to be something of a whistle-stop tour. Hell, you can’t do it all in one trip anyway, so we’ll just have to come back, right?

The ferry journey to the North Island actually takes you not one degree further North on the map, taking you across the Cook Straights to Wellington, or Wellywood, if you are one of those people who believe that Peter Jackson and the Lord of the Rings films make this town a serious rival to Hollywood... they’re talking of putting up a sign and everything, although as one of the other suggestions is to put up those giant statues guarding the river in the LOTR films, perhaps this is simply the lesser of several evils....

This is New Zealand’s capital city, and it’s a nice town. Compared with some of the towns we’ve been in on South Island – Christchurch, Dunedin and the like – Wellington feels like a veritable metropolis. Mind you, we’re there over Easter Weekend, and the big city impression is somewhat diluted by the fact that it proves next to impossible to buy a drink in the centre of town on Good Friday without buying a “substantial” meal.... licensing laws that we had in England something like twenty years ago. It would be quaint if I wasn’t gagging for a pint. Still, on the other side of the scale is that fact that it is in a pub here that I order one pint of Monteith’s newly released Autumn Ale, and the barmaid brings me two.... both free as “the first round is on us”. Now that’s only to be applauded, no?

The highlight of our time in Wellington is undoubtedly a trip to the shop where I can make my own button badges (“the humans are dead...”). Oh no, that’s not it. It’s Te Papa, the national museum of New Zealand and an absolute marvel. We visited the Otago museum in Dunedin, but this is something else. I don’t feel the need to visit the special exhibition on Pompeii, but we do spend a happy day on Easter Sunday browsing through their extensive exhibits on New Zealand’s flora and fauna, on the geological forces that formed the country (including an earthquake house where you can experience an earth tremor), on Maori history and culture, and on how the land has changed since the arrival of the first people on the islands. It is interactive, beautifully done and very, very interesting. We have a slightly unusual introduction to the museum by following an improvisational comedy duo as they take us on an hour long tour and avail us of several interesting facts..... did you know for example that the red deer first arrived in New Zealand in the feathers of the native wood pigeon, but that over time the pigeon has got smaller and the deer has got bigger? Me neither, but why’s that any more ridiculous than a flightless bird with whiskers that lays an egg six times larger than it should be?

From Wellington, we head north to Okahune. This is pretty clearly a skiing resort, but the reason we’re here is to have a look at the chain of three active volcanoes in the Tongariro national park. This landscape was Mordor in the LOTR films, and the perfect cone of Mt. Ngauruhoe was used by Peter Jackson as Mount Doom. It’s a pretty impressively bleak landscape, but unfortunately we’re not sticking around, and after a short walk to goggle at snow-capped Mt. Ruapehu, we head off to Lake Taupo to admire New Zealand’s largest lake (nice, but not nicer than some of the lakes in Fjordland). We were planning on spending the night here, but content ourselves with a look at the Huka falls at the head of the Waikato river and at the thermal landscape of the Craters of the Moon. The Huka falls are actually far more impressive than I had expected – it’s where the Waikato river flows out of Lake Taupo and is forced through a narrow channel of harder, volcanic rock... resulting in quite an impressive surge of white water. The Craters of the Moon are our first glimpse of the geo-thermal landscape that is the defining characteristic of the area: it’s a walk around a field where steam pours out of cracks in the earth and where mud pools bubble furiously. It’s something of a preview of our next stop: Rotorua.

Rotorua is, of course, famous for its hot springs (as well as being the birthplace of the current Northampton and England hooker, Dylan Hartley).... what I didn’t know is that this area is sacred to the Maori and that 35% of the population of the town is Maori. We have a wallow in some hot pools, and marvel at the general stench of rotten eggs that hangs over the town, but by far the best and most interesting thing we do in town is to visit Te Puia, home of the Maori arts and crafts institute. They have a couple of great geysers here, and the usual steaming cracks in the earth, but they also have some really interesting cultural exhibits and performances. Unfortunately, the photos of my haka face haven’t come out very well, so you won’t be able to marvel at my performance with the locals, but you’ll just have to take my word for it that I was indeed most frightening to behold.... We also see some Kiwi in a special enclosure.  If the souvenir shops are anything to go by, it looks as though NZ is preparing for the extinction of their most famous bird by lining up the Pukekko as a likely successor..... well, let's hope it doesn't come to that.  They are ridiculous creatures, but they are also remarkable and actually quite cute, and it's a real thrill to finally see some, even if only in a shelter as part of a breeding program.

We head north towards Auckland, surviving a minor bingle when some bogan rams into the back of our van as we slowed down in traffic. The bank holiday traffic is awful, but as more than 25% of the whole country’s population lives in the city, perhaps that was predictable. We stop for the night outside the city and then pass through early next day on our way up to Whangarei. We’re not here to sightsee though, we’re here to dive..... just up from Whangarei is Tutukaka and the Poor Knights Islands, rated by Cousteau as the best sub-tropical diving in the world. Well, I don’t know about that, but I do know that we spend a day in this beautiful marine reserve, marvelling at the caves and arches of the islands and taking a couple of dives to explore the kelp forests some 15m below the surface. Not for the first time, and I hope not for the last, I’m really glad that we took the decision to learn how to dive. There’s something magical about floating through the underwater world and gazing at the marine life as it swims around you. Brilliant day. There are hundreds of dive sites around the Poor Knights, and we only see two of them. I’m sure you could spend a month just diving around here..... another reason to come back, I think.

By now, I’m really conscious that we’re racing around against the clock. The day after diving, we do a 600km round trip from Whangarei up to Cape Reinga and then back again, skirting our way around the Bay of Islands and missing out the Coromandel Region entirely... all worth at least a few days in their own right. Still, I was keen to see the meeting of the oceans that takes place at New Zealand’s northern tip. Sounds like a theoretical concept, right? But at Cape Reinga you absolutely can see the point where the Tasman Sea meets the Pacific Ocean, and it’s really very impressive indeed. The signpost here also reminds me quite how far from home we are. It’s a lovely spot and it seems to be set up as sensitively as possible to respect an area sacred to the Maori, but it’s swarming with bus loads of tourists and we decide to head back down the country almost as quickly as we arrived.

All that really remains is to return our van to Auckland and head off to San Francisco and then home, but as we’re now slightly ahead of schedule, we take a quick detour out to Whangarei Heads. We’re not here to sightsee, beautiful though it is (oil refinery aside!).... we’re here to buy chilli sauce. On our first night in the camper van, our next door neighbours --- heading off to Australia the next day – gave us some Streaker Chilli sauce as well as a few other bits and pieces. This sauce turned out to be absolutely magnificent: full of fire and smokey flavours. Although we looked, we couldn’t find it anywhere. As it happens, the address on the bottle was in Whangarei Heads, and as it was only a 60km detour, we drove out there and pulled up outside a house over the bay where we met the guy who makes the sauce and his two kids. He was thrilled and surprised that we’d made this little pilgrimage, but not half as thrilled as we were to be picking up some more of his sauce and the news that we could give him a ring and he would ship us more as we needed it to the UK. Brent – you’re a legend and your sauces are the business.

Auckland then. Well, I’d not heard a single good thing about this city since I’d been in New Zealand. Do you know what? I really like it. Some 30% of the population of the country lives here, and it really feels like proper, honest-to-goodness city. In comparison, even Wellington feels distinctly small town. There a shops, bars, restaurants, a nice un-showy harbour.... and the sun even comes out for us. I’m sure there are loads of really cool things to see around here, but to be honest, after the best part of a month, we’re just happy to have a proper bed and to potter about the shops.  This has been our third camper of the trip, and by now we're getting quite good at making ourselves comfortable with a dooner and all sorts.  Sure, a van this small isn't ideal when it's pouring with rain, but it's a hell of a lot easier to stay warm than it is to stay cool and we've had quite a cosy little nest in there and I was almost sad to be handing it back.  Almost.

As befits a country that is absolutely rugby mad, before we leave, we do manage to take in a Super XIV game between the Auckland Blues and the Cape Stormers at Eden Park.  The Blues lose, but Eden Park is going to be a venue for games at the 2011 Rugby World Cup, including the final itself.  As you might, expect, the ground is currently being extensively renovated, but it's still pretty cool to experience NZ's obsession at first hand.  After several World Cup disappointments since the first tournament here in 1987, the kiwis now have a distinct absence of humour about their rugby and approach it with deadly seriousness.  If they don't win next year, then I don't know how they'll react.... they're still talking about the referee of their 1/4 final defeat against the French in 2007.

In one of the best put-downs ever, a New Zealand Prime Minister once remarked that when a Kiwi emigrates from NZ to Australia, it raises the average IQ of both countries. Well, I don’t know about that, but I really, really liked New Zealand. Australia was great, but NZ is somehow on a much more human scale and has a much softer landscape. I’ve not been here long enough to do it anything like justice or to even do more than scratch the surface, but as I’ve started adding the word “eh” to the end of my sentences, it’s probably time to move on, eh?

Sweet as, bro.

So long and thanks for all the fish (and merino) Aotearoa. California here we come.

the coast is always changing....

Even if it was famous for absolutely nothing else, Kaikoura is certainly a beautiful place to look at: it’s a small and very pretty peninsula, surrounded on one side by the ocean and on the other side by snow-capped mountains. It’s a reasonably small town, but it seems relatively unspoiled, even in the face of a huge quantity of tourist traffic... this town of some 3,500 permanent inhabitants gets something like 3m visitors a year.

Why do all these people come? It’s a pretty town, but it’s not that pretty.... The answer lies in the ocean: Kaikoura has some extensive deep-water canyons unusually close to shore. Less than a kilometre from the beach, the seabed suddenly drops from being a mere 90m deep to being over 1000m deep. This deep water means that there is an up-wash of nutrients that attracts and supports an incredible diversity of marine life very close to the shore, from plankton all the way up to big sharks and whales. Whales might not be as common now in the shores off New Zealand as they were before the Europeans arrived and started systematically exterminating them, but there is still a large number of different varieties to be found passing through these waters. Usually their movements are seasonal, with the animals disappearing to warmer, tropical waters in the winter to breed. What makes Kaikoura such a tourist hot-spot is the presence all year round of a number of bachelor Sperm Whale. These magnificent creatures are the largest carnivores on the planet, and the young males apparently like to hang out in these waters until they are old enough to be accepted by a female for breeding in the tropical waters off Queensland.... by which time they may be more than twenty years old.

The waters around Kaikoura are good to these whales: although they ocean gets pretty chilly, they are well insulated from the cold, and the deep-water canyons provide them with easy access to giant squid and other food that they like to snack on. As a result, these young males will tend to find a spot and will spend their time alternately diving to feed and sitting on the surface for 10 minutes to recover before diving again. This makes them perfect for the whale-spotting industry in Kaikoura, and pretty much the first thing we did on arriving was to book ourselves onto a whale watching tour. The company that runs these trips reckons that they see whales on 98% of all their outings and are so confident that they offer an 80% refund in the event that you don’t see at least one whale...and judging by how carefully they looked, using a helicopter, previous sightings and an underwater listening device to see what the whale was up to 1km below the boat, I’m not surprised they’re so successful. We’re pretty lucky: not only is the sea really calm when we go out, but we get to see two Sperm whale. Well, we get to see the same whale twice. He’s called Kaitaiki, which apparently means “Guardian” in Maori, and we watch him surface from a feed, sit on the surface for 10 minutes breathing heavily out of his blowhole, and then we get to watch him sink gracefully back beneath the waves.

It’s awesome.

Sure, from a boat you don’t exactly get to see the whole whale, but you see enough of his 18m or so to feel pretty humbled by his sheer size. Perhaps you’re a believer in intelligent design – I seriously hope not – but this whale is a marvel of evolution. He has lungs and needs to breathe air just like you or me, but he can dive to depths of over 3000m for 45 minutes at a time, and is thus able to withstand incredible pressures as well as having an unbelievable control over his own buoyancy. We reckon we’re pretty clever, but we still have very little idea about how this works and have pretty much no idea what the waxy substance in the skull that gives the Sperm whale his name actually does.

Apparently, at other times of the year, you can see pods of Orca, humpbacked whale, Southern Right whale and even Blue Whale in these waters, but I’m just thrilled by the sight on one bachelor male Sperm whale. A great day (we also saw lots of albatross and seal cruising through the open water, but the day was always going to be about the whale, wasn’t it?)

There are other marine mammals here too.... just driving into the town we see some dolphin somersaulting above the water, and we’re keen to get a closer look at them, and so book onto a trip that will take us out to see them. Apparently they sometimes have to travel up to an hour on the ocean to find the dusky dolphin, but in the event, we end up travelling a mere 5 minutes into the bay and we’re in the middle of a pod of at least 400 of these beautiful creatures.

I’ve heard it said by New Age-y types that swimming with dolphins can cleanse your aura and replenish your chi... well, I don’t know about that, but I do know that a couple of hours spent in a thick wetsuit, looking like a total wally and singing through my snorkel was fantastic (apparently to attract the dolphins to you, you have to make things interesting for them, and as they live in a world of sound, you are encouraged to sing to them... Amarillo, a bit of Metallica and Lady Gaga in the style of the Swedish chef seemed to work for me). We were warned that these were wild animals, and that sometimes they just won’t be interested in the swimmers, but when we were there they were all over us. Sure, we had to get in and out of the boat a few times to make sure we stayed with the pod as it moved through the bay, but I basically spent all that time swimming with the dolphins. They’re certainly not scared of you, and they come really, really close to have a look. I actually swam around in a circle with one as we eyeballed each other for a few magical seconds, and frequently you would look down to find a dolphin swimming alongside you and another two or three below you. At one point, I looked up to see one of the dolphins jumping over me – I actually thought he might land on me, but of course his spatial awareness and agility are an awful lot better than mine, and he missed me comfortably. I’m not sure what I was expecting from the swim, and I think we were very lucky with the experience we got, but it was still magical.

I really, really liked Kaikoura. As well as spending this quality time with whales and dolphins, we also went on a walk of the peninsula, got up close and personal with some fur seal and found another decent pub that was holding a reasonable quiz..... It didn’t rain once, either.

The weather shifted as we were leaving, but we were now heading up towards the north end of South Island, which apparently receives the most sunshine of anywhere in New Zealand. Well, the weather was nice enough when we were there, but what it’s most famous for is its grapes: this is the Marlborough Region and home of the most famous Sauvignon Blanc wines in the world. Looking at all the young vines that have clearly been planted in the last couple of years, you could almost imagine that the farmers around here have found a crop with a higher return than sheep or cattle.... The centre of all this, and the home of Cloudy Bay and the like, is Blenheim. We were only passing through really, but when we saw that we’d be driving past the Saint Clair vineyard – a wine we drink at home – then it really would have been rude not to stop and have a quick taster.....

don't tell me.... I've got blue on me?

From Blenheim we continued on round to Montueka, the gateway to the Abel Tasman national park. Here we partially made up for missing out on kayaking in Milford Sound by spending two days kayaking around the coast. It was hard work, especially when trying to paddle round a headland into the teeth of the wind on a distinctly choppy ocean, but it was beautiful.

We had one slightly exciting moment when we capsized the kayak whilst trying to land on a beach in the surf, but with no harm done except to our dignity, we enjoyed some stunning views of the coast and of the inland track, and got really, really close to a seal pup nursery.

Apparently the pups are only about a week away from the stage where they will jump on your kayak to have a closer look at you, but I was happy that they swam right up to check us out. They’re beautiful creatures. Honestly, why would anyone want to club one of those when you can watch them and wear merino instead? We also spent the night on a floating backpackers in the park, and not only did I get my first proper bed in weeks, but I also got to share a room with three girls..... It’s all good, right?

From there, we headed over to Picton to catch the ferry to Wellington and to say goodbye to South Island. Even the ferry ride here is beautiful, as you track through the Marlborough Sound before crossing the Cook Strait to North Island, and several times the boat was flanked by dolphin. South Island has been a bit wet and a touch chilly on occasion, but there’s no denying that it’s beautiful......

If North Island is anything like this, then we’re in for a treat.  It's meant to be warmer and dryer, for one thing....

misty mountain hop....

We’ve now been in New Zealand for something like 13 days, so I’m not even going to attempt a detailed narrative of what we’ve done so far.... although given that I seem to be incapable of brevity here, I’m sure that I’ll still manage to cobble together a few thousand words of our highlights so far.

After a month in Australia and specifically a couple of weeks spent in Queensland, probably the first thing to note about NZ, as we came out through the clouds on the approach to Christchurch airport, was the climate. It wasn’t so much that I was sorry to escape the heat and humidity of an Australian summer, it’s just that stepping out into a cold, pissing wet day on South Island wasn’t something that made my heart sing. I knew the weather would be cooler here, but given than I’m English, it’s funny how quickly you forget how much constant drizzle wears you down, and it’s funny too how little rain it takes to remind you. Still it is easier to stay warm in a campervan than it is to try to stay cool, so before we picked up the van that we were going to spend most of the next month in, we made sure we picked up a few essential items: a duvet, a down-filled undersheet, some more warm merino layers (soon to be supplemented with some merino-possum products. Possums are definitely cute, but they are a pest in NZ and also make exceedingly soft and warm hats and gloves....)

Christchurch itself grew on me. Initially it seemed like a small provincial outpost with a pissy climate, but a closer inspection revealed lots of fantastic little coffee shops and pubs that brewed their own beer.... it wasn’t all just souvenir shops selling All Black t-shirts and bone fishing hook pendants. Perhaps it helped that we were staying in another nice hotel, this time a brand new novotel in Cathedral Square. Well, we had some airmile vouchers to spend, and as we were about to spend the next month sleeping in an unpowered camper, a couple of nights in the lap of relative luxury didn’t feel like a bad idea at all (although I’m sure the valet parker gave us a funny look when we handed over the keys to our new van....)

We didn’t really have much of a plan for the trip other than to cruise around both of New Zealand’s main islands. Our big decision was whether we headed north out of Christchurch towards Kaikoura and worked our way anti-clockwise around South Island, or if we headed south towards the Banks Peninsular and headed clockwise. In the event, we took the latter option and cruised out of Christchurche on Highway 1 towards Akoroa.

This is rapidly going to get boring when I say this about everywhere we visited, but Akoroa is stunning. It’s the main town on the Banks Peninsular, a really magnificent piece of volcanic landscaping, with lots of beautiful coastline, craggy peaks and pretty lakes and inlets. This is apparently New Zealand’s “French Village”, having been settled by some French whalers who hadn’t fully understood the terms of the treaty that meant that this was a British colony.... and when reminded of that fact, they merely shrugged in a Gallic way and elected to stay. It’s got some French street names, some tricolores and a handful of French restaurants, but it’s a pretty enough town. We could probably have spent a few days here, swimming with dolphins, kayaking with seals and so on, but we have lots we want to see and feel need to get moving. We go on a lovely walk above the coast, stay at a very well-appointed campsite and ship out early the next morning to head towards Mount Cook.

New Zealand is on a completely different scale to Australia, but we’re still spending large amounts of time in the car. It’s not just that the distances between stops are all that far apart, it’s just that the geography of New Zealand, and especially of South Island, means that you often have to travel quite a long way around mountains and lakes and things to get to your destination. Still, unlike some of the driving we did in Australia, where the landscape barely seems to change and the roads are long and arrow straight, at least the scenery here is pretty stunning. As we head towards Mount Cook, the Southern Alps quickly start to dominate. These were the Misty Mountains in the Lord of the Rings films, and it’s not hard to see why. We are blessed with an absolutely perfect day when we stop at the astonishingly blue waters of Lake Tekapo and gaze out at the tall peaks from the top of Mount John (they want to turn the skies above the observatories here into a UNESCO world heritage site, and it’s really not hard to see why – light pollution out here is minimal and the stars are staggering).

As we head up towards Aoraki itself, the weather takes a sudden turn for the worse, and the great mountain is soon veiled with cloud and we are battered by howling winds and sleeting rain. Well, New Zealand isn’t called the land of the long white cloud for nothing, I suppose. We were hoping to do some walking and to get some viewpoints of New Zealand’s highest peak, but in the end we have to content ourselves with a walk up to Lake Tasman to marvel at the icebergs that float here having broken off a whacking great big glacier at the end of the lake.

The weather is now so foul that we bin our plans to stay in a Department of Conservation campsite on the side of Mount Cook (which is very basic), and scarper inland towards some nicer weather. I’ll be honest at this point and say that some of the landscape is not what I was expecting. The Waitaki valley we drive through on the way back to the east coast is covered by bare brown hills and irrigated pasture. Once the big mountains are behind us, it’s really not all that much to look at. We stop in Oamaru for the night, and the initial impression is of a small town that services the farmers and has seen better days. Almost for want of anything else to do, we hop on a small tourbus of the town and I’m forced to change my opinion of the place. Yes, it’s seen better days, but the town is clearly trying to move with the times, and our clearly very proud bus driver takes us on a trip around some of the old town buildings and then out to watch the Yellow Eyed Penguins returning home for the night and on to a sanctuary to watch the little Blue Penguins returning home. The weather is still pretty foul, but it’s magical, particularly watching the little Blues come home, forming a raft of many birds until they are close to the shore, at which point they make a break for land and it’s each penguin for themselves.

From Oamaru, it’s down through Rohan (it's hard not to get the Middle Earth names confused with the actual names, although I don't need to go on a tour and dress up as an orc, thanks....) to Dunedin, and another town that gives an initially downbeat impression, but gets better and better upon acquaintance. The indie scene is thriving here, and each pub seems to have a venue. Not only that, but they really know how to make a good coffee here (there are lots of shops that sell nothing else, not even food....) and once again I stumble across a pub that sells beer brewed in a tiny local brewery (Emersons – very tasty, and with a barman who is not afraid to give out generous samples of the same....).

We book onto a wildlife tour out on the Otago Peninsular, and it’s magical. We go to an albatross sanctuary and watch at close hand Royal Albatross with a wingspan of 3m soaring through the air and returning to the nest to feed their chicks. We walk out to a fur seal colony and spend time looking at the seal pups in their nursery rock pools and to watch the adults basking. We walk along a beach and look – from a distance of about 3m – at some 400kg adult male sealions jousting with each other. There are only about 140 sealions on mainland NZ, so to stand so close to five or six of them is awesome and a little bit scary (these guys can run at 20km/h and would easily be able to haul me down). It gets even better later on when we stumble across a female sealion hiding from the males. Of NZ’s 140 sealions, only about 20 of them are female, so it’s a real privilege. We then head further down the beach and spend some time looking at some more Yellow Eyed Penguins at close quarters. These are the second largest type of penguin, and they are also the rarest, so it’s impossible not to feel lucky to get so close. It’s a magical day (even if I have to ignore the moaning of a family of English tourists and some grumpy and ungrateful old ladies who don’t seem to understand that the reason the tour finishes so late is because penguins only come to shore AT NIGHT....)

From Dunedin, we drive across the island to Te Anau, the gateway to fjordland. Our plan here is to go on an overnight cruise on Doubtful Sound (so called because Captain Cook was doubtful that if he sailed his ship in that he would be able to sail it out again) and to kayak on Milford Sound. The first part of the plan works beautifully, and we spend a fantastic 22 hours on Doubtful. Captain Cook may not have liked the look of the place, but I certainly do: it’s not as well known as Milford, and it’s a little bit out of the way (you can drive up to Milford, but to get to Doubtful you have to get to Manapouri, transfer for 1 hour across the lake there and then take another hour’s bus ride on the other side down to the Sound itself. It’s awesome. It’s three times the size of Milford and has something like 10 times as much volume. As any geographer worth their salt could tell you, it’s not a Sound, it was formed by glaciation and is a fjord. The water here is over 400m deep in places, and sheer rock walls rise up towards the sky with rainforest somehow clinging onto the sides. Given than up to 16m of rain falls here every year, and Doubtful averages something like 200 rain days in every 365, it’s perhaps not all that surprising when it’s raining as we board the boat. Far from being upsetting though, this means that waterfalls are cascading from the rock walls everywhere you look. It’s stunningly beautiful. We cruise up the sound, go right out onto the Tasman sea and look at the fur seal colony there, and then cruise back to one of the quieter arms where we tie up and then kayak, swim and generally chill out on the calm waters. It’s a wonderful spot.

I was very much looking forward to kayaking on Milford, but it wasn’t to be: our little campervan was rocked by an enormous electrical storm on the Sunday night, and our early pickup to Milford was thwarted not far along the road by hundreds of meters of treefalls. We’re forced to turn back, and although we try again the next day, it turns out that the road to Milford has been washed out and won’t be open for several days. Reluctantly, we have to move on. Next time, eh?

We plan on hitting the glaciers next, but to reach them, we have to head back across the mountains to the East and then head back across the Haast Pass. Needless to say, it stops raining as we cross the mountains towards Queenstown and then starts raining again as soon as we head back over to the west side. The problem is that wet air crosses the Tasman Sea, and when it hits the mountains on the west side of South Island New Zealand, it just dumps all that moisture. It’s hard to be too cross when it is this very climate that created all this magnificent scenery, but it can’t half be a touch depressing when you’re trapped in an unpowered campervan and you need to pee. A long driving day takes us through to Franz Josef glacier. The weather is so pissy that we contemplate just heading straight out of town, but the rain stops and we spend a very happy couple of hours walking up to the face of the glacier. It’s hard not to be impressed by a wall of ice that is still carving its way through the valley, and you can hear the ice creaking as it moves, as well as watch the torrent of water pouring out underneath in a stream that carries ice and boulders down towards the sea.

Just as we leave, the rain starts up again, and it doesn’t stop until we have driven right up the West Coast and popped back across the mountains at the Lewis Pass and dropped down into Hamner Springs. Our spirits are soon revived by a plunge in the hot springs, a pub quiz we help some randoms to win and by the presence of several cats who all seem to want a quick tickle. It’s a nice town, but we’re on our way to Kaikoura on the east coast........ and the further east we travel, the more the sun seems to shine for us. Here’s hoping it sticks around for the next couple of days as we go whale watching and swim with the dolphins, eh?

New Zealand is lovely. I’m very glad to see the sun – after a month of feeling as though I’d packed too much, I now feel like I’ve been wearing every single item of clothing that I own (thank goodness for merino wool and down jackets) - but even if the sun hadn’t come out at all, how could you not be in awe of the landscapes here and the wildlife it contains?

So there you go. 2,500 words of brevity with a couple of weeks in New Zealand still to go!

I've not chosen a favourite beer yet either. Speights and Macs I could take or leave, but Monteiths, Emersons and Twisted Ankle have all been pretty good. Plenty more to try, anyway.

pride.....

There's an awful lot to admire about New Zealanders.

If you've ever watched "Flight of the Conchords", then you'll already be fully aware of the self-deprecating kiwi sense of humour - especially with regard to their brasher neighbours across the Tasman.  In the main, and certainly in contrast to the average Australian, your average New Zealander seems to be fairly self-effacing.... their country is, after all, quite like Australia except smaller and colder.  As an international state, New Zealand has a relatively tiny population and has no great delusions about its place in the world.

The one massive exception to this rule is rugby union: in New Zealand, rugby is everything and the sense of pride in the massive success of the All Blacks is all pervasive.  The passion for rugby is everywhere: you can be driving through the remotest part of countryside on the South Island, and in the backyard of a tiny farm, you will see a single set of homemade rugby posts where the farmer's kids will practice their kicking and imagine that they are playing in a decisive test match for their beloved All Blacks.  There is nowhere else in the world as passionate about rugby as New Zealand, and it's a pleasure to behold.

.... but on the other hand, their love of rugby shows New Zealanders up at their most insular.  Earlier this week, the Otago Highlanders were playing the Natal Sharks in the Super XIV tournament.  I happened to be in Dunedin, home of the Highlanders, and was amused to see that the local paper printed the matchday programme in full, sponsors notes and all, such was their excitement about the game.  I was interested to know about the Natal side, especially as fat, no-good, sometime England international Andy Goode appeared to be turning out for them.  Could I find a single word written about the visiting team?  No.  I learned that the Highlanders fly-half (or first 5/8, as they try to tell you it should be called here) would not have either of his parents at the game because one was away on business in the North Island and the other had a prior family engagement, but I could not find out a damn thing about the visiting team.  Elsewhere in the paper, there was an article commenting on former All Black captain, Tana Umaga's, return to the game in NZ at the age of 37.  Umaga has returned to a nothing-much team in NZ and the journlist was wondering why he was bothering.  In 2006, the journalist remarked, Umaga had the respect of the whole rugby playing world.  Why didn't he retire then?  Well, leaving aside the issue of how well Umaga may or may not be playing now, what's that?  That in 2006 Umaga had the respect of the whole rugby playing world?  Directly after he was involved in the illegal (and intentional) spear-tackling of British and Irish Lions captain Brian O'Driscoll in the opening seconds of the first test in 2005?  A tackle that led to a long-term injury for O'Driscoll and the widespread opprobrium of the rugby playing world outside New Zealand?  Respect of the rugby playing world?  Only if you think that world starts and ends in New Zealand... Oh, hang on, that's exactly what he means.

This insularity becomes clear further on in the article, when the journalist talks about how rugby is now such a physical sport that a player is a veteran at 25 and over the hill at 30.  An All Black like Aaron Mauger, he says, recognised this physical toll and decided to take a couple of years out of the game by playing in Europe.  What?  An All Black goes to play professional rugby in Europe and that's considered time off?  If it doesn't happen in NZ then it doesn't happen?  Get over yourselves!  I saw a t-shirt here saying that "There are no tears on the rugby pitch (unless you're Australian)".  Um.... but aren't All Blacks seen crying on the rugby field far more often than the double-world cup winning Wallabies?

As the countdown clock in Cathedral Square in Christchurch shows, New Zealand is very much looking forward to the Rugby World Cup they will be hosting in 2011.  Given that the world's most successful rugby team hasn't won the tournament since they hosted the very first one, back in the amateur days of 1987, they seem to be hanging an awful lot of their self-esteem upon winning the next one.  They're still harping on about their old world cup defeats too, whining about the refereeing in the game against the French in 2007 and moaning that the Nelson Mandela film, "Invictus", that centres on the 1995 World Cup, makes no mention to the alleged poisoning of the All Black team before the final against South Africa.

It's this kind of attitude that makes me hope that they choke in the next world cup too.....

Compare and contrast this attitude that Kiwis seem to have to their rugby team with the one they have with their cricket team: ranked 6th in the world, the Black Caps are currently being spanked by the Australians in the first test in Wellington, but the players seem both humble and relaxed..... they give a remarkable amount of their time to a local TV cricket show and seem like a genuinely nice bunch of guys.  I'm sure that the rugby players are all very nice and humble too, but the key difference, of course, is that no one expects anything much from the cricket team, and they can exhibit far more typical kiwi traits of humiity and humour than their rugby playing counterparts.

I reckon the French have a good chance in 2011, for what that's worth.  One thing's for sure: I reckon the kiwis will have put too much pressure upon themselves to win, and that will be a key reason why they will fall short.... prompting an intense four year period of national mourning, I'm sure.

I'm off kayaking in Milford Sound tomorrow.  Expect some photos soon...............

southern man....

Apologies for the lack of updates, but we're now safely in New Zealand and adjusting to the rather sudden change in climate from tropical Queensland. All those clothes that I have spent the last month lugging around Australia wondering why I bothered to pack them.....it looks as though I'm going to spend the next month wearing them. 

All of them.

At once.

Anyway.  We might be the only people travelling around New Zealand in an unpowered campervan, but - as I'm sure you've heard - it is an absolutely stunning country.  We've spent the last few days travelling down from Christchurch and taking in sights like the Banks Peninsular, Lake Tekapo, Aoraki/Mount Cook (well, the weather put paid to us seeing much of that), Oamaru, Otago and Dunedin.  Later on today we're heading on across to Te Anau and will be checking out Doubtful Sound tomorrow and kayaking Milford Sound on Monday.

I'll stick some photos up when I get a decent connection, but rest assured that we're having a fantastic time and seeing lots of cool stuff.  We spent yesterday on the Otago Peninsular gazing at Royal Albatross soaring on their 3m wingspan, marvelling at a colony of Fur Seals with their pups, standing on a beach about 2m away from group of 400kg male Hooker Sealions and watching some very rare Yellow Eyed Penguins coming home for the night.  I've had worse days.

Photos in due course.