Part One: Blenheim to Christchurch

I spent three weeks in Blenheim, which is the longest I’ve spent in any location for the past three months.  I was happy to be done working 12 hour shifts in the wine bottling factory, so I decided to make Friday night a celebration/farewell to my friends and the Marlborough wine country.

Unfortunately, almost all of my friends had to work on Saturday, so the hostel was pretty low key.  I had a few beers and played my last games of ping-pong and pool, and at about 9:00, everyone started to wander into the TV room or off to bed.  I ended up chatting with two guys from Paris, a few Germans, and a group of friends from the Czech Republic.  They were all in the same jovial mindset I was in, so we shared bottles of wine and practiced our Czech and at about midnight, a few of us decided to go out on the town in Blenheim again.

Jean-Marie and Arnold, the Parisians, and Chrstopher a tall blonde German, and I decided to go back to Paddy Barry’s Irish Pub for a few pints.  It was pretty dead, so we moved on to The Loft, the saddest dance club I’ve ever been in, but decided to make the best of it there and tore up the dance floor by ourselves.  At 3:00AM, the club closed and we stumbled back to the hostel, Arlnold spinning the whole way home and Christopher walking hunched over like Frankenstein’s monster…when we got home, we polished off the last of the wine and I collapsed into my bed after another long, fun day.

The next morning, I packed up and said my goodbyes and around noon, I hit the road towards Christchurch, where I would be meeting some friends at the airport.  The road out of Blenheim was a pleasant winding road through the wine country, over rocky rivers and past acre after acre of rolling vineyards.  After about an hour, the road curved sharply to reveal the South Island’s east coast and a grand view to the Pacific.

For the next hour, the road hugged the coastline and the further south I went, the closer the mountains seemed to get.  Eventually, I was squished between empty sandy beaches and looming granite cliffs, and I realized that this was perhaps the most scenic road I’ve been on yet in New Zealand.  The road wound impossibly tight, with precipitous cliffs rising around every bend, and I was close enough to the ocean that the crashing surf sprayed on my windshield.  I also encountered a new road sign: “Seal Crossing”…I was so close the the rocky habitat of the New Zealand Fur Seal that they occasionally wandered up onto the road.  I blasted my music and drove sped around the bends pretending I was in a spy movie.

Oh, and this wasn’t a scenic detour or back road…I was traveling on the main north-south thoroughfare through New Zealand, the same highway that I’ve been on since I left Cape Reinga at the top of the North Island.  I love this country.

Eventually, I reached the town of Kaikoura, a pleasant, touristy establishment in a sheltered cove that caters almost exclusively to the whale-watching and dolphin-swimming industry.  The cover of my guide book is from Kaikoura, with a large whale fluke in front of snow-capped mountains that rise out of the sea.  Unfortunately, when I was there it was too cloudy to see the peaks so I had to just imagine that they were impressive.

I drove to the end of the peninsula, where there is a seal colony, and considered going for a stroll along the beach, but by that point, the previous night’s festivities started to pay their toll on my well-being and I decided to take a nap.

After my refreshing snooze, I got back on the road to Christchurch.  I soon reached the northern part of the Otago region, the largest farming area on the South Island, and saw the same rolling, sheep covered hills I’d seen on the North Island.  Otago was a bit different though…bigger, vaster, and much less populated.  I had the feeling I was the only one on the entire island as I drove down the highway.

I got to Christchurch around 6:00PM and had a few hours before I had to get to the airport, so I parked my car and strolled through the city.  At first, I was very turned off by the South Island’s largest city and the third largest in NZ.  It felt like a medium sized town, and it was empty.  But as I got out of the business district and more into the historical center, my feelings started to change.  This is by far the most British feeling town I’ve ever been in.  More so than London.  And even though I’ve never been to any other towns in the UK, this was exactly what I’d imagine they’d be like. Britishy.

There was a central square with an old cathedral, and a few nice looking museums, but the highlight is the huge botanical garden, complete with a lazy, swan-filled river lined with willow trees and park benches.  Unfortunately, as I got closer to the gardens, it appeared that everyone was leaving and when I got to the gate, I was told it was closed for the day.  No worries.  I wandered through the narrow cobblestone streets and down pedestrian shopping streets, crossing back and forth across the path of the city’s authentic trolley, which still operates throughout downtown.  I only had an hour or so in the city, but I got a positive vibe, and I’d like to come back and spend more time there.

Also, I happened to run into Roberto, my Argentinian roommate from the hostel in Blenheim, who was in Christchurch for the Pearl Jam concert (I know, I know I should have gone too… but tickets were a bit beyond my meager price range).  We laughed at the fact that in the third-largest city in New Zealand, we could bump into someone we know on the street.  That’s just kind of the way this country is.

Around 8:00PM, I headed out to the airport and met Todd and Troy Dubenezic, two of my former coworkers from DC who were taking a two week vacation to Australia and New Zealand.  Todd and Troy are brothers who went to school together, work together, and live together.  They are not twins, but they are might as well be. 

That being said, they are complete opposites.  Todd, who was my former boss, is a lenky, earthly guy with long hair and a glowing smile.  He teaches yoga professionally in his free time.  Troy is clean cut, with a shaved head and expensive cologne.  He is the only one at the company who voluntarily wore a suit every day to work.  He is an avid photographer and has a pilot’s license.  I worked with Troy as a DVD author and video compressionist, and he is the most thorough person I’ve ever met.  They are both vegan and they listen almost exclusively to trance music.

I worked very closely with Todd and Troy for two years, and I got to know both of them well.  We shared interests in snowboarding and backpacking, and the three of us had planned to hike the Milford Track together way back in July, before I had even purchased my plane ticket to New Zealand. 

When I picked them up at the airport, they both looked exactly the same, and it was obvious that they had gotten some sun while traveling Aussie.  They jumped in the car and we immediately began to plan the next few days.  After living on the road and having mostly fleeting relationships with other travelers, I was happy to be in the company of old friends.

That night we drove through the dark to the foothills of Mt. Hutt, a popular ski resort that was completely empty because it was out of season.  We stayed briefly in a nice hostel called the Redwood Lodge.

Part Two: Mount Cook and Queenstown

In the morning I chatted with the owner, an elderly Kiwi who reiterated my observations about the do-it-yourself nature of New Zealanders when she told me that she owns and maintains her own website.  I would have liked to stay and chat, but we had much to see, and we hit the road early.

That day we drove from Mt. Hutt through the rolling farmlands of Otago and into the alpine foothills of Mount Cook, the highest point in New Zealand.   We passed fields of wildflowers and long, glacial lakes that glowed a brilliant turquoise color.  These were the Southern Alps I came here to see…they were gnarly, rugged and snow-capped and the scenery looked more like Switzerland or Alaska then anywhere in NZ I’ve yet seen.

We arrived in Mt. Cook village and ate lunch at the Old Mountaineer’s Cafe and Bar, a cool little place that I hoped would be filled with bearded mountainmen, returning from weeks away in harsh alpine conditions to share beer and stories and head lice.  But alas, it was instead filled with a few groups of Japanese tourists and three hungry Americans.

After lunch, we went on a short hike through the Hooker Valley and saw the peak of Mount Cook, a few glaciers, and a roaring river.  It was very scenic, and I wanted to stay and camp, but we had to get going so I added the area to the top of my list of “Places in NZ to Return To Before Leaving the Country”.

After Mt. Cook village, we headed to Queenstown, the tourism capital of the South Island and the adventure capital of the world.  If you ever have any interest in sky diving, bungy jumping, jet boat riding, white-water rafting, mountain biking, canyoning, base jumping, or any other sort of activity where you succumb to the mercy of gravity for the sake of adrenaline, Queenstown is the place to be.

The town is a quintessential resort village, similar to Aspen or Chamonix…touristy but tasteful.  Robert Redford would like it here.  It sits at the south end of pretty Lake Wakatipu, with the huge snowcapped Remarkables rising from its shores, and loads of villas and condos peaking through the trees. 

It was nearly sunset when we arrived, and as Troy is a photographer, we were on a quest to find a good place to take some photos of the dropping sun.  We drove north of the city along the lake and pulled over at a small beach, where the sky slowly began to give us an array of nearly every color in the rainbow.  We stayed there for over an hour, and got some great photographs.  At 9:30PM, it still wasn’t completely dark, but we were famished, so we returned to the town and checked into our hotel.

We wandered through town a bit, although it was pretty dead on a Sunday night this early in the season.  We ended up eating at Fergburgers, a modern burger joint that serves massive patties (vegan ones too!) from 9AM -5AM every day.  I liked the place…and they were even playing trance music when we walked in, so the Dubie brothers liked it too.

Part Three: Te Anau and Milford Sound

The next day, we jumped in the car and took care of a few last minute trekking preparations before hitting the road from Queenstown to Te Anau and on to Milford Sound.  The drive was spectacular.  As we left Queenstown, we meandered through vast Middle Earth scenery that reminded me of pictures I’ve seen of Montana and Wyoming until we reached Te Anau, the town at the base of Lake Te Anau, the second largest lake in NZ and the start of our Milford Track the next day.

However, our plan was to continue on to the town of Milford Sound, the end of the Milford Track, to drop off the car so it would be waiting for us upon the completion of the trek.  The road to Milford was even more scenic.  It started out along the lake, but quickly cut over to the next valley, a wide glacial, U-shaped valley highlighted by a slow river with loads of wildflowers along its banks.  Then we hit the green beech forest, and began to climb until eventually breaking out of the treeline to spectacular alpine views.  Near the end, the road dissects a huge mountain via the Homer Tunnel, the steepest road tunnel I’ve ever driven through.  After making it down the intense grade, we were rewarded with spectacular views of the narrow Cleddau Canyon which took us to the even more spectacular Milford Sound.

We checked into the Milford Sound Lodge, a cool backpacker resort in the small village of Milford Sound and went immediately to the waterfront to capture the sunset.  Milford Sound is one of many glacial fjords in Fiordland National Park, but as it is the only one accessible by car, it is the most touristed.  And looking out over the water, I could see why.  In the distance, huge glacier-covered peaks rise thousands of feet out of the water, up nearly-vertical walls that are covered with green shrubs and waterfalls.  The highlight is Mitre Peak, 1692 meters high, with a distinctive canine-tooth profile that is extremely picturesque. 

Staring out over the water, watching the setting sun cast brilliant oranges and pinks on the snowy peaks, I realized that this was the New Zealand I wanted to come to.  This is the Promised Land I hoped to find.  I won’t be leaving this area any time soon.