Hein and Wil website: South Island

Hein and Wil website

Our trip to New Zealand and the Cook Islands 2006

South Island of New Zealand

From Picton we made our way via Havelock towards Nelson and on to Kaiteriteri just outside the Abel Tasman National Park.
Kaiteriteri is situated in a delightful bay with a genuine golden sand beach derived from the local granite.

However, it poured when we arrived. The poor "whaka"- (canoes with outriggers) paddlers had to put up with the sometimes torrential rains during their races.

Despite the lousy weather we wanted to see how it looked in the sunshine so we stayed till the sun came out.

The beach has indeed beautiful golden sandgrains.

After we had our fill of this beach we motored on via the lovely Motueka valley: with lots of hops- and fruit (kiwi and other) cultivation.
This led us into the Buller Gorge via Murchison where we found a delightful little poem by Bruce Cockburn on the wall of a local coffeeshop at the occasion of his visit there.

The Buller Gorge has many reminders of big earthquakes hitting this area: a reminder of the awesome forces generated by the grinding of the Pacific Plate against the Australian Plate, throwing up the New Zealand Alps.
At the mouth of the Buller River is Westport. Just S of there lies the Cape Foulwind Walkway: a footpath winding along the cliffs to a colony of NZ fur seals where at this time of the year many pups were present.
But at the start of our walk a "weka" visited us to see what we were doing.

The "pancakes" are Oligocene limestone layers separated from one another by a stylolite (for more info email Hein).
Furthermore there is a lot of karst and blowhole phenomena.

By clicking on any of the photos a new window will open up with an enlargement.

Last updated January 31, 2007

Further south we stayed a few nights in Hokitika ("Hoki"): an artists centre with a few good bakery/cafe's.
Wil enjoyed that very much.

As we got farther south the weather did stay relatively attractive, and we had the good luck of seeing Franz Josef Glacier in dry weather. But by pressing our luck to stay a 2nd day here, the heavens opened and we did not see much beyond the green edges of the road.

Eventually we crossed the Alps to the east side through the Gates of Haast (with obvious signs of tectonic activity) and dropped down to Queenstown on Lake Wakatipu.
Here we stayed a few days to explore the area a bit: on foot (Ben Lomond Trail) and by car to the end of the lake (Glenorchy: an orgy of Lupins).
Then after a last lattee and a NZ sausage roll on the road again.

Everybody (including our daughter Lienke) impressed on us to visit Milford Sound, especially if and when it rained (which is most of the time): so we did!
And basically all we saw was RAIN. The boatride was cut short because of 70 knot winds which emptied the kitchen on the floor.

A neat little old goldtown is Arrowtown on the Arrow River where Chinese goldpanners in the 1860's tried to make here a living.

After that wet outing we drove to the most southern point and camped in a site among men- high Flax bushes called Curio Bay: with a beautiful deserted beach and a Jurassic fossil forest on the foreshore AND a colony of Yellow-Eyed Pinguins.

After all this excitement we carried on slowly but surely moving northward along the east coast of the South island.
Via the Moeraki boulders we reached Oamaru: architecturally-exotic: it claims to be the best preserved Victorian town with a lot of old limestone buildings out of that period.
And we were in luck, the Santa Claus parade was on for which we extended our visit one day.
But the most exciting and most memorable was the visit to the Blue Penguin Colony where just before nightfall rafts of up to 40 birds at a time came ashore to feed their chicks. Since it was almost dark, no photos of this event, just memories.

From Oamaru we made a side trip inland, up the Waitaki Valley.
In Duntroon we found a small but really nice geological museum with beautiful fossil forefathers of the whales found in this area.
Omarama saw us buying a few more Merino woollen sweaters, and admiring fantastic lupin fields on our way to Mt.Cook/Aoraki Nat. Park.
Once more we were thwarted by bad weather so we carried on to Lake Tekapo, where the Church of the Good Shepherd still looks out over the lake and the mountains beyond amidst some of the most fantastic lupins.

With a few days to spare before our flight from Christchurch to Rarotonga we visited the collapsed caldera of the Banks Peninsula , east of Christchurch.
Akaroa, a nice little village on the bay that flooded the caldera after the collapse, was our last stay for a few days in New Zealand.
Akaroa was once almost French. The British beat the French by only a few days. Originally the place was homesteaded by French settlers. One still finds the French influence.