Freedom!
It wasn’t that we didn’t enjoy the tour, but I think having spent more than 2 weeks together, I got the feeling that not just us, but the whole group were ready to take a break from each other, the constant moving, and for us specifically, the lack of freedom to go where we want, when we want.
Those who booked through Haka Tours had the accommodation described as “high end hostels” probably expected the living arrangements to be better than it was, while Intrepid has the tour listed in their “basix” category with “shared dormitory” as the accommodation, so I knew what I was getting going into it. Also, there were a lot of problems with bookings on Haka Tours’s end, probably made worse by being around holiday season. I felt lucky that we weren’t able to book in advance, and were then able to book what we wanted without having to go through an intermediary, which provided the flexibility that I’m accustomed to, such as going to Milford Sound by ourselves later in our road trip.
Speaking of which, Hebs and I had already started booking the first couple of days of the post-tour road trip, with a general outline of where we will be going in the next 7 days - since we had to get back to Christchurch (yet again) to catch our departing flights on a certain date.
Jesus Christchurch
For once, we have a day in Christchurch that it isn’t a bank holiday - there were actually people around! We spent the day visiting a pair of overpriced museums - Quake City, and Museum of Toys and Collectibles.
The former is all about the earthquakes in, and around Christchurch - mostly on the 2010 Canterbury, and the 2011 Christchurch earthquakes. It was a similar experience to going to the 9-11 museum in New York City; being very aware of the impact of that situation, and the devastation it caused, but as a person from the outside looking in, I feel a little removed from that aspect, but at the same time, it doesn’t really teach you anything new, because it wasn’t that long ago that the history of it has been forgotten and lost.
The second one was my choice, because I’m a child, though it had a scoff-worthy entrance fee of NZ$15, and had hoped that Hebs would say he wasn’t interested. It was fun to see the toys of the past, and present, especially the Snoopy figures that I had also collected from eating at McDonald’s many moons ago. (I also have a few Snoopy tops, and if I were to get a dog, it’d probably be a beagle) Still though, not sure you should fork out $15 for it, but we were quite used to how expensive New Zealand is at this point.
In the evening, we happened to run into Eva, and Matthew at the hostel and went out for dinner together before we said goodbye to each other once more.
Hebs & Joe Hit the Road
Since this was mainly Hebs’s trip that I was tagging along, I did very little research of any attractions and sights that I wanted to see. My initial plan had been to take a bus down to Dunedin, spend a couple of days there, head back to Auckland to catch my flight to LA, and then somewhere in the Americas. Only until I knew that I’ll be spending an extra week exploring the south island (with a car), that I started searching around Google Maps.
As a Londoner, I don’t have, or need a car, so I always enjoy having the opportunity to drive, as I did in Iceland. We picked our car up from the airport, and since UK also drives on the left-hand side, I was given the first shift (no pun intended). The first day of driving ended up being our longest drive down south to Dunedin.
We made a few stops along the way, including Oamaru, and randomly found the cool Steampunk HQ museum (that we didn’t go into), and it was also the start of our week-long search for penguins after finding out that seeing them was more of an evening thing, striking Oamaru off the list, because it’s too far from Dunedin to drive to and from at night.
Our main stop was at the Moeraki Boulders Beach, which I’m sure if I could be bothered googling why there are boulders on said beach, I would, but I’ll leave that task up to you. What I can do is to provide some photos.
There’s a main area where there’s a line of rocks, but a mum and her child were right in the middle of it playing, and I saw the dad was kneeling down slightly afar taking photos of them. I could also see that a lot of people were kind of loitering and waiting around for them to move away, but it didn’t look like they were leaving fast enough, so I asked the dad “is that your family?”, “yes” he replied, and I told him “there are people who want to take photos, too.”
At the end of the day, we reached Long Beach about 6pm; the sun had moved out of the way behind a hill, and the wind was picking up. If it hadn’t cooled so much already, it would have been a great place to lay down our beach towels to do some sunbathing, but even just walking around with very few other people on the beach was a very a calming experience. You can never do this in Europe, because all the beaches are overcrowded during summer.
A street, a castle, a beach, and a sea lion, but still no penguins
The next morning started in town with a visit to Baldwin Street - the steepest street in the world, presumably with an asterisk of some parameters for it to qualify as such. It doesn’t feel particularly steep, but I’m sure if there was a red light in the middle, and I had to move a car up with a manual transmission, I’d be shitting my pants.
I bet some residents of the street love living along such a unique street, but the others don’t like the attention, and more importantly not want photos of their house taken. Hello, 30 Baldwin Street!
The curse of having travelled far and wide is that I am bored of certain types of tourist attractions, e.g. temples in Asia, castles/churches/cathedrals in Europe, ruins in various continents, or museums displaying spearheads and pottery. However, since I’m no longer travelling just by myself this week, we went to Larnach Castle, which perhaps has its advantage of not really being a castle - it’s just the residence of some rich guy named William Larnach.
I’m not sure if it’s New Zealand in general, or the castle, but it felt like an old person place to visit. Many of the older attendees were taken around by tour guides, while we explored the castle and its garden by ourselves. I felt that amongst them, we were (not literally) running around like kids taking a mix of nice, and random photos. Perhaps, I was not as educated as I should have been at the end of it, but it was definitely more fun for me.
I thought that having a friend around made the experience 10 times more enjoyable than soloing it - instead of spending 90-120 minutes there including coffee breaks, if it had just been me visiting, I probably would have been in and out in half that time thinking not much of the experience.
With the intention to go to a particular beach that I had saved in Maps.me (instead of Google Maps, as mobile data was not guaranteed in the countryside), we instead found ourselves up in the hills that had a very rough path that might have taken us to that beach, so we opted to go to Allans Beach instead. However, before we left the hills, we did take a walk to get a spectacular view of the east coast of New Zealand.
Highcliff
There was a possibility of seeing some sea lions at Allans Beach, but our main priority there was to lay around in the sun a bit doing nothing for a while. When we first arrive, it was practically empty, and laid camp at a side pocket where there was still sun, but away from the main stretch.
I don’t remember how long it was after we had arrived - probably half an hour or so, a huge sea lion started approaching the shore on the beach - and like a sensible person, I kept my distance when I got up to take a couple of photos. It was also at that moment, I noticed more and more people are there - having been lying facedown, and situated around the corner from it all, I had no idea. With the crowd that was gathering, it may have been the reason that the sea lion didn’t stay around for long.
We bummed around for an hour or so more, before leaving to get some late lunch.
The search for penguins continued with failure when we went to yet another area where penguins go home to, this time though, while we could have easily driven back to this place in the evening, the tour was fully booked out until many days after.
South of the south
After two nights housed in a wooden cube at a caravan park, we left pretty early to continue our way further south to eventually make our way to the southernmost point of the south island.
Unfortunately, the weather today was not so nice. Since we had left the north island, it had been blue skies up until that point, so I guess we had a good run.
Our first stop isn’t so far from Dunedin in the form of Tunnel Beach. At first, I thought the rock formation with a tunnel of water running through is the reason for the name, but there’s literally a (man-made) rock tunnel that you can walk down, and onto the beach. Maybe it’s named for both?
I’ve used Hebs in the second picture for scale (I think he’s around 185cm).
Rocky nuggets
It was a bit of a longer drive to the next stop at Nugget Point, named such by the nuggets of rocks scattered around the coast, with a lighthouse overlooking the area - I imagine acting as a warning signal to any ships that might sail through around there.
It was nice to be back to see the open seas again, since leaving Kaikoura, which seemed like a long time ago by then. I always tell people that I’m not a beach person, and despite visiting many of them over the years, it’s more of my love for water that gets me there, the sand is something that I have to tolerate. Water is unencumbered and flows everywhere, and for me it represents freedom - when I’m scuba diving, it’s not just about seeing corals, and the animals, but also the feeling of limitlessness.
Anyway, it seems like I’m padding this section out for no good reason, so here are some photos to get us back on track.
Chasing waterfalls
We made a short pitstop at a lookout point that I had bookmarked, but because of the weather, there wasn’t much to look out for - it was raining, and all we could see was a wall of fog. So instead, we rested a little until the rain subsided and had lunch.
Speaking of being spoilt for travelling so much, simply by going to Iceland, a waterfall has to be pretty special for me to visit, but Hebs isn’t in the same situation. But like Larnach Castle, it helps me to enjoy it more to have someone who’s newer to these experiences as he still has the enthusiasm for it. To be fair though, I’ve always said that nature and animals, unlike places of worship, are evergreen experiences. The earth can be such an amazing place, and we should cherish the beauty it provides.
When we arrived at the waterfall, at least one family was taking photos in every combination of their family - only kids, kids with mum, only one child, one child with mum, etc. Even as I rolled my eyes, they approached me and had the audacity to ask me to take photos of the whole family!
Getting to the bottom of it
This day had been pretty busy so far - we had already been to 3 sights, and it was already about 3pm, which means it had been over 6 hours since we left Dunedin. The benefit of have 2 people is being able to alternate driving, although I get the distinct feeling that Hebs thinks that I’m too cautious of a driver, or just not very good at driving in general. But come on, he has to drive daily for work, and I live in London where my workplace is next to my bed!
Anyway, Curio Bay is our next destination, with yet another attempt to see penguins, but as we knew by then, we’d have to wait until the evening for any chance of seeing them, and given that it’s summer - evening doesn’t start until after 9pm. So, let’s skip the part where we go somewhere and come back again to stand around in the cold before giving up.
There were a couple of things in Curio Bay, including a coastline view that was subpar to what we had seen this morning (but honestly, still pretty damn good), and a forest walk that we did, basically because we were there. You see how unenthusiastic I can be sometimes?
Next stop was Slope Point, where there are “the trees of Slope Point”, and “the southernmost point of the South Island”; kiwis do love a literal name. What makes those trees so special? By being near a windy coast they look like they’ve been suspended in time, permanently in a windswept formation.
Close by is an area dedicated to it being the southernmost point, which I thought would be Bluff, but having had a look at the map again as I’m writing this, I can confirm it. There wasn’t much there but a sign, so we asked someone to take a photo of us with it.
You can see in the photo below the height difference between us - Hebs had his feet firmly flat on the ground with his legs slightly apart, while I was tippy-toeing with my legs together; and still, I’m at least half a head’s height shorter than him!
Closing out the day
Randomly, Hebs google mapped the final stop for the day at Fortrose, or more specifically, and literally - "Cliffs at Fortrose”, ending the day at yet another beautiful, empty beach to take a breather from it all, and reflect on the day we had.
As the sun was getting ready to set, we also set off towards Invercargill to check in and have dinner.
At the hotel in Invercargill, we were upgraded to a suite from the usual twin room that we booked - this essentially meant that we had a separate living room - too bad we were only there for one night, and given that we were in a 3x3 metre cube for two nights before, this was a huge space upgrade.
Bluffing our way to Te Anau
At one stage of planning, we had looked at staying in Bluff and then take a boat to Stewart Island, but two things emerged as we dug deeper - 1. there’s not much happening in Bluff, and 2. going to Stewart Island is expensive. However, we felt like we needed to at least visit Bluff because of its location, so we bookmarked Stirling Point, which has one of those signposts with multiple signs pointing to different cities and the distances to them, a weird giant chain, and a lighthouse. The more interesting sight around the area was the Greenpoint Ship Graveyard, home to a number of abandoned ships scattered around the coast there.
Judging by the number of photos I have for it, it was a pretty light day, and if I remember correctly, it was also raining quite heavily after we checked into the hostel room at Te Anau - the jumping-off point for Milford Sound.
Apart from going to Milford Sound, there wasn’t anything else huge on our to-do list - essentially, as we headed up north, it also meant we were also heading back to Christchurch - this was half-time of the road trip.
Turn up the Milford Sound
We were told that there would be a lot of traffic on the way to Milford Sound, despite Google Maps saying that it’ll take less than 2 hours, so for a 10:30 cruise, we checked out before 7 in the morning to start the journey. Well, in the end, we got there super early, arriving there even before the cafe had opened, so we stayed in the car for a doze.
After the tour group had gone when we were in Queenstown more than a week ago, Eva had told me to dampen my expectations, while everyone else had said it was an experience not to be missed. But if anyone knows me, my general demeanour and attitude towards many things in life is “indifference”, but secretly optimistic, so my expectation for this cruise was in the middle somewhere.
I consider Iceland to be a feast for your eyes, and Milford Sound isn’t too far from offering the same. Of course, given the geography of things, I can visit Iceland many times over, and this was a once-in-a-lifetime thing. One thing that is for certain is that I’m glad we didn’t do it while we were in Queenstown - the whole drive there and back would have vastly taken away from the overall experience.
Oh, speaking of driving, we encountered a very boss-like bird as we were waiting to go through a one-lane tunnel, it just hopped around, and onto the top of our car without any care. I really liked its attitude.
Anyway, here are some photos of said bird, and of course, Milford Sound.
Revisiting the Queen
If you’ve read the second part, you’ll know that Queenstown left a positive impression on me, so since we were on our way back to Christchurch, it was an ideal place for us to stop. But that drive would only be a couple of hours from Te Anau, so we made detour down at Manapouri for a brief walk along Waiau River (pictures 1 & 2 below). Then when we got close to Queenstown, we stopped at Devil’s Staircase Lookout Point for some photos (3 & 4), which was very cool, but its name makes it sound cooler. And finally, only mere kilometres from Queenstown, we spent a couple of beach hours at Jack’s Point Beach (5 & 6) for our final sun tanning opportunity.
Since we were only a couple of days until reaching Christchurch to catch our respective flights, and mark the end to our New Zealand holiday, we decided to splash out a bit in Queenstown.
First, we booked a nice hotel, but when we were still at the beach, I received a message from them telling me that there was something wrong with the system, and we booked a room that wasn’t available. Well, this turned out great for us, because they instead put us up at the Holiday Inn next door at no extra cost, and they had a 11am checkout time (as opposed to 10), and a buffet breakfast. Score!
Second, we wanted to go back to Ivy & Lola’s again for dinner, but they were closed. Instead though, we got a booking at Captains Steak and Seafood Restaurant to finally get Hebs some crayfish. We had a fairly lavish seafood platter to share between us - it had crayfish, mussels, oysters, calamari, prawns, and fish served with sides of garlic bread and salad. Everything was delicious, but the fried bits got a little greasy - I think that especially the calamari being at the bottom, meant that the breading became less crunchy as we ate on. And of course, we had a bottle of white wine.
Finally, we were denied entry to a rooftop bar last time, because we were wearing flip-flops, we were prepared this time round to get some G&Ts.
I know it’s a very touristy town, but Queenstown had been kind to us.
Our greatest hits of Christchurch
This was basically it, we were heading back, only 2 days left before it comes to an end. We stopped overnight at a small town called Geraldine, 3 or so hours away from Christchurch so that we could get back to the airport in time to drop off the car at 10am.
After we checked in at an airport hotel, we went into town for Hebs to do some last minute shopping, but also visit some of the places we had enjoyed, including a cafe, and an ice-creamery for the final time. We also spent some more time wandering around the Botanic Garden before we made our way back to the airport.
Back at the hotel, Hebs presented me with a kiwi plush toy, which was super cute. I decided to call him Obie after Hebs’s last name (not Obi Wan Kenobi), and vowed to take him with me when I’m travelling.
I also had been thinking about what to gift him, and came up with the idea of giving him the pounamu necklace I made. Throughout the trip, we had been talking about future trips to go to together, and visiting each other in our respective countries and cities, but having travelled with tour groups before, I know that most of the time, friendships end up just being interactions over social media. So with this gift, I told him that it was a “loan” - “when I see you next, I will take it back, and the time after that, I’ll give it back to you, and so on”. It was a promise to keep in contact.
Goodbye…for now
Our flights were departing about 30 minutes apart from each other, but mine was a domestic flight to Auckland at 6:30, and Hebs’s, international to Sydney at 7. When Hebs was checking in, the woman at the desk said that she was unable to issue the boarding passes for all his connecting flights, only the first one - he had to take 4 flights to get back home to Italy! A lot of moving around to different desks and talking to different people, and the clock ticking closer and closer to departure time - they finally told him that they weren’t able print out all the boarding passes he needed, and he has to get the rest when he arrived in Sydney, but at least his luggage was able to be checked through to the end without him having to exit any airports.
We hugged, and said our goodbyes.
Der Epilog
Since I won’t be writing up a separate post for visiting Italy for a week in March, I thought here would be an appropriate place to put it. We reunited in early March for a weekend, and he drove me around to see the beautiful mountains near the town he lives in, and then I would spend the weekdays in and around Verona by myself. To prevent me from making a day-by-day recount as to not make this post that much longer, here are some photos with minimal commentary.
Lake Garda
I arrived late to Verona due to a delayed flight, but that meant we were able to catch the sunset when we arrived at Lake Garda, where I had my first (of many) Aperol Spritz.
Pragser Wildsee & Plätzwiese
The lake at Pragser Wildsee was frozen over, so I’ll have to go back again during spring time to see its liquid form. Then we went for a brisk walk in Plätzwiese (I’m opting to use its German, instead of Italian, name) to see some wonderful snow-covered mountains. At the end of the walk was a restaurant where we shared a plate of Kaiserschmarrn, which I called “broken pancakes” - Hebs was both offended and amused by this description.
Church of St John & walking up to Geisleralm
The next day we visited the a church which had a €4 entry fee, but a tour guide that happened to be there told us that the 3 of us (Hebs, his partner, and I) could all squeeze in at the same time through the rotating gate as no one was there to attend the entrance.
Like the day before, but this time was a longer hike, we went up the mountains where there is a restaurant at the top. We had to wait a bit to get a table at Geisleralm, and I accidentally ordered a Hugo (a prosecco based cocktail originating from the region) when I actually said “jugo” (Spanish word for juice, and pronounced hoogo), but it was a nice accident. There was a very brief moment when he was surprised I knew about Hugo, and I was surprised he knew that “jugo” meant juice, but neither of us said anything to each other - and hence the accident that occurred.
I was worried about going down the mountain as it was quite slippery in parts when we were hiking up, but we were able to rent a sleigh to go down - I was not very good at turning and braking as it was a first time experience for me, so I did nearly fall off a cliff at one point.
Brescia
I left for Brescia on Monday morning, and as promised, the pounamu necklace I had given him is now back around my neck until I see him again (except I do see him again later that week, but it wasn’t for certain due to his work schedule).
Brescia is a fairly typical Italian town with plazas, churches, and a castle at the top of hill, but it also has an archaeological museum in a monastery complex. Worth a day and a half there.
Verona & Sirmione
Stayed in Verona for a few days before having to go back home to London, which is quite a nice town with some very good food. On my final full day, I went to Sirmione, which, if you look it up on a map is a strip of land that sticks out into the southern part of Lake Garda. I was going to meet up with Hebs for a last meal in Trento, which would be the middle point between Verona and Klausen, but his work happened to want him to drive down to Verona.
It’s a wrap!
Unintentional Star Wars pun joke there.
So there you have it, 4 or so weeks in New Zealand, with bonus Italy content. New Zealand was a great experience for me, and although I lived in Australia for 19 years, I had never been. Now that I’m 30-hours flight away in the UK, I imagine that was the first and last time for me there, but who knows?
I guess it would be hard not to talk about the holiday without also talking about meeting Hebs. As I said in the first part, the friendship between us came very quickly, and easily - and is now a friendship I cherish very much.