OK so who correctly guessed that we were off to New Zealand? Liz guessed Tasmania, and given the chilly temperature forecast I posted last blog, it could very well have been. But we were on the other side of the Tasman Sea, in the Land of the Long White Cloud (“Aeoteroa” in Maori). Easy to see where the name came from, lots of long white clouds everywhere:
The first photo was taken in Wanaka, near Queenstown, the second one in Mount Cook, and the third one somewhere between Lake Tekapo and Christchurch. The 3rd one is neat, it’s a lenticular cloud formation – when the clouds start stacking like that (we actually watched them stack as we drove around the lake, started with 3 levels and ended up like this), it means a good nor’easter is coming over the mountains and the gliders get all excited – south Canterbury is a major gliding area.
Anyway, we chose to go in January so that it would be the height of summer, but alas, it was still darned cold. Well, “cold” for those of us who are well acclimatised to subtropical temperatures, meaning temperatures as low as 9C in the morning with highs typically in the 18C range. I saw a post from Hamilton this weekend showing how bad the roads are because of the snow and ice:
I really don’t miss the southern Ontario winters!! Fortunately we didn’t have to deal with that kind of weather in NZ, the only snow we saw was when looking up at the mountains and the only ice we saw was in the form of icebergs. But out of the 18 days we were there, we only wore shorts once and were only able to wear short sleeves a few hours of a few days. BRRR!!! But no complaining allowed because in Townsville right now (about an 8 hour drive north of Yeppoon), they’ve had 1 meter of rain (yes, you read that correctly) in a couple days. Massive flooding and still more rain coming. Can’t even imagine.
OK, I have A LOT of photos and videos from this trip so grab a coffee and strap in!
One of the first unusual things we noticed in NZ was this:
Do you see what’s odd about their license plates? Nothing on them but the plate number! There are no provinces/states in NZ. And then check out the price of petrol:
It’s high enough in Oz but it’s a dollar more in NZ.
Another big thing we noticed is the NZ accent! I am embarrassed to admit that I struggled to hear the difference between the NZ and the Aussie accent when we first moved here (much to the annoyance of both Aussies and Kiwis!). After spending 18 days there, I think I’ve got it. Linguists must have a field day with the Aussie and Kiwi vowels. I referred to “fesh and cheps” in the title of the blog. That’s my attempt to describe how the vowel “i” as in “fish” is pronounced – it’s a mix of the “e” in “fetch” and the “oo” in “book.” Forever forward, I will always pronounce fish and chips the NZ way, it’s so fun! And then the “e” in “deck” is pronounced a bit like the “i” in “fish”, so deck sounds like dick. Cue Drew Carey and his big deck 🙂 Even better, watch this Kiwi deck stain ad our friend Kevin showed us a few months ago – prepare to cry laughing!
OK, where to start. We did a train/coach tour of the south island for the first 2 weeks of our trip. Here’s a map showing the routes we took and where we stayed:
We covered 2600km on the trip!! Two things I loved about doing a train/coach tour:
- Being able to see so many amazing sights without having to worry about one of us driving and paying attention to the road, and
- Meeting some awesome new friends, like Lynette and Peter from Brisbane, Sue and Pete from Sydney, Ian and Karen from Cairns, and Jeanne and Art from Florida. Boy did we have some great laughs over the 2 weeks we spent together!
What we didn’t like about the tour – it was EXHAUSTING. We stayed 1-2 nights in each place, so we lived out of our suitcases, no time to unpack anything, and there were long hours spent on the coach (the hours on the train were much nicer). It looks like a tiny island, but with the mountains, rivers, and lakes everywhere, you zigzag and climb your way to get anywhere. Most of the bridges are one-lane and they have a system for who has right of way:
The tunnels are one-lane as well and managed with traffic lights on either end:
This tunnel was on the road from Te Anau to Milford sound. I wish I’d taken notes to try to remember all the cool information we learned on the trip – there was an overwhelming amount of new knowledge to digest and apparently it was too much for my vacation brain to process. I therefore can’t remember when this tunnel was built, but I do remember that they started digging on both sides, using pick axes and wheelbarrows (Hugh astutely commented that one side got the short end of the stick because they had to haul everything out uphill while the other side got to go downhill), and when they met in the middle, they were only off by mere inches! How on earth did they do that?? Must be aliens.
We started the adventure in Christchurch. We arrived a day early (in case of flight cancellations) and we spent a good half day at the International Antarctic Centre, conveniently located right next to our hotel (and our hotel was conveniently located a short WALK from the airport – yes, we walked from the airport to our hotel!). Christchurch is now on our list of must-visit places and within Christchurch, the Antarctic Centre is a must-visit. The entrance fee was $74 NZD and we almost didn’t go, thinking that was pricey for what we thought would be a museum – but oh boy, am I glad we went and I would pay that again no question! We got to ride on a Haggland, going over an obstacle course of hills, valleys, streams, and crevasses, mimicking what it’s like in Antarctica (minus the frigid temperatures):
But for those who haven’t experienced cold and snow before, they have this cool (ha ha) room you go into to experience a base temperature of -8C with a windchill as low as -18C:
They give you puffer jackets to keep you warm and little booties to protect the snow. Very neat!! When we reported on the experience to our Australian friends, we indicated that now they just have to imagine being in that while brushing snow off your car, scraping ice of the windshield, and digging the snow out from behind your wheels – and knowing that you’ll likely have to do it all over again 8 hours later 🙂
They also have a 4D experience where you watch a 3D movie of being on a ship in the Antarctic – the 4D comes from the moving seats as you navigate big waves, and the spray in your face when the waves splach against the boat. They also had huskies and of course Little Blue Penguins (I wanted to take one home with me):
Do you know what you call a group of penguins? A waddle or a raft!
And the exhibits were very interactive and exceptionally well done. We learned so much!
Later in the tour we came back to Christchurch and toured the city. The houses are so beautiful! It’s called the Garden City, and for good reason. Reminds me of England. And it was fascinating learning about the earthquake and the rebuild afterward. Buildings in the downtown are now restricted to being 28m tall – but they are supported by steel and rubber going 33m deep. Exterior glass on the buildings somehow turns to dust when shattered so that people walking below aren’t harmed when windows crash down. It can apparently sustain a magnitude 8.3 quake. It’s really a beautiful city and just amazing what they’ve done to recover from the devastation. Well, except for the Anglican church in the city centre. It still sits covered in protective steel as it’s short $30 million to complete the renovation:
So many comments I could add here but I will exercise remarkable restraint and hold my tongue 🙂
Another favourite part of our south island tour was Aoraki / Mt Cook. Some of the most stunning scenery I’ve ever seen. Reminded me a bit of the Rockies, but different somehow. We stayed at the Hermitage Hotel and were blown away when we walked into our room and this was the view from our window:
To get an idea of the size of the mountains, you can see a white speck near the bottom of this photo and that’s a caravan:
And those are the small mountains in the area. We did a glacier cruise while we were there:
The surface temperature of the water was 3C and a meter deep, it was 0.5C – you did NOT want to fall in! We cruised around all sorts of neat icebergs:
When we approached any iceberg, the guide used an oar to check to see if any of the iceberg was close to the boat underneath us – it’s apparently very consistent that only 10% of any iceberg is above water, so you have to be very careful getting anywhere near them. Cue the theme from The Titanic. And here is the edge of the Tasman Glacier:
While the towering peaks in the background are beautiful, the edge of the glacier is really quite ugly – it looks like the snow banks along the road in southern Ontario a few days after a storm, ice/snow mixed in with piles of dirt! That’s because as the glacier advances, it picks up all the rocks and debris. When touring the glacial lake, you must stay at least 600m back from the edge of the glacier in case a chunk calves off it – or worse, if a section from under the water breaks off and springs to the surface. A few weeks ago that happened and it caused 5m waves (yes, you read that right too). But then there are the cute little icebergs that would go nicely in a gin and tonic:
The colour of the glacial water is hard to describe. It mostly looks something like this:
The colour comes from glacial rock flour. Most of the streams and rivers we saw were variations of the above colours. Some were very grey. Others were bright turquoise (like you see in Banff and Jasper – same phenomenon):
The above photo was taken at Lake Tekapo on our way to Mt Cook. The other coach traveling with us didn’t stop on the way up, but we both stopped on the way back. I’m glad our coach stopped on the way up because the water had changed completely two days later and wasn’t nearly as turquoise.
The Tasman Glacier forms Tasman Lake (where we were cruising around the icebergs) and Tasman Lake then turns into a river that feeds Lake Pukaki. Try saying that and not thinking about Cards Against Humanity. Lake Pukaki is part of a massive hydroelectric project. The series of dams are done over 6 levels and the resulting electricity powers 1/3 of all of NZ – incredible! Although I’m sure it wasn’t incredible for the people who had to leave their villages when the dams were made.
New Zealand could probably be the world’s sole supplier of gravel. There is gravel EVERYWHERE – washed down from the mountains. Most of the streams look like this, more gravel than water (at least this time of year):
You hear a lot about “braided rivers” in NZ and the above photo is an example. Essentially, the streams of water and gravel are braided together. I have dozens of photos of braided rivers from all over the south island.
You may have noticed that there is bright blue sky in most of the photos I’ve posted. We had unusually sunny weather while we were on the south island. At Mt Cook, apparently 2/3 days are grey and you can rarely see the top of the mountains. As I’m reflecting on my favourite parts of the trip, I’m starting to wonder if I’m judging based on where the clear skies were. I was less enthralled with Franz Josef and Milford Sound, but as I think about them now, they were both socked in with clouds when we were there. So maybe take my recommendations with a grain of salt! Or make that a grain of gravel.
While we were at Mt Cook, we had a wonderful opportunity to hear George Hillary speak. George is the grandson of Sir Edmund Hillary:
If you ever have an opportunity to hear George speak, you must do so. Kind and talented human being with lots of great stories! We got to listen to him for an hour and then afterward during dinner, he continued to hang out to chat with any interested guests. We had the great fortune of meeting him and among many questions we asked about mountain climbing, we asked the one I’m sure everyone has wanted to ask but was afraid to do so (except me after a couple glasses of wine :)) – what do you do for toilets? Well, you harness up and hang over the edge! And hopefully any climbers below are paying attention.
Alright, I think I’m going to have to leave the rest of this trip for next week. After being in Australia for almost 2 years and never getting sick, I caught a cold for a few days during the first week of our NZ tour and then caught another one on the flight home this week. Apparently my immune system does much better in a subtropical climate! So I need go rest now and I’ll fill you in on the rest of our trip next week – including a visit with a couple Canadian curlers in Wellington 🙂