From North Island East Coast to South Island West Coast
Travel Location: Oceania,New-Zealand,South-Island,Lake-Tekapo
Hey Dudes – Just a quickie we are covering so much ground there is hardly time to stop and treat myself to a bit of internet blogging I usually just get time to surf for a bit of local information and off we go again!
So we headed off from Rotorua over a week ago and we headed round to the East Cape of New Zealand on the Pacific Coast Highway – it was certainly the longest route to Wellington (bottom of North Island) but it was one of the most scenic. We stopped part way and stayed at an amazing backpackers in a secluded cove it was lovely to hear the ocean outside – it was a lovely ramshackley place it felt like staying in someone’s house! This coast is the region that gets the first sunrise everyday.
The scenery all the way was lush, unusual and familiar, amazing turquoise seas, high cliff faces, forested mountains, I’m seeing more cattle than sheep I’m sure!
We then pushed through to Napier and had a stopover there, all the buildings are art deco in design – unfortunatley I didn’t get any pix as it was absolutley lashing it down so we didn’t hang around long – it took us nearly all day to get to that point of the coast so we crashed for the night and headed down to Wellington in preparation for our ferry to the South Island.
So got to South Island last Friday and headed down the coast to Nelson – we stayed near the beach and phew what a scorcher it was – it was absolutley gorgeous weather, and a massive beach for a long walk and a bit of beachcombing. The view out from the sea was an immense mountain range that stretched as far as the eye could see, some peaks were snowcapped!
Next day we headed to Abel Tasman National Park and got a cabin for a couple of nights near Kaiteriteri beach – it was even hotter – at 7pm at night it was like the midday sun and I feared I would burn – but don’t get too jealous because the next day we had a boat trip booked to view the coast of the national park – it would then drop us off at one bay and meet us at another bay further down the coast 5 hours later – so we had our first ‘tramp in the bush’ as kiwis say! it was overcast and rained on and off all day! but it was a gorgeous walk through rainforest and across deserted beaches.
Next stop Punakaiki on the wild west coast – it is wild and such a rough sea, driftwood beaches, limestone cliff faces and loads of subtropical rainforest. We took a walk to the famous Pancake Rocks and had another great beachwalk – it was getting dim and drizzly and we awoke the next morning to total rain and mist and cloudcover. Waterproofs & hiking boots are now out the bottom of the rucksack!
We headed across the Buller Gorge and walked the longest swingbridge in New Zealand which was slightly stomach churning but not for Indrek!
We were heading further down the coast past Greymouth to the Glacier country with high hopes of seeing Mount Cook which is the equivalent of about 3 Mount Snowdons on top of each other! And also to visit the Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers – we are staying in Fox Glacier village and managed to get quite near the face of the glacier, it was quite amazing – there were chunks falling off as we watched – it sounded like the rumble of a jet engine, quite awesome.
When we were on our way to Fox Glacier a report on the news said that there had been a landslide – they were still scraping it away when we got there.
We cut short our trip to the Glaciers as the weather was so sh*t we couldn’t see any decent peaks not even Mount Cook so we decided to cross the island via an alpine pass and go to Mount Cook itself, the weather has promised to clear up in a day or so so fingers crossed we will get a decent view of the mighty giant. At the moment we are staying at Lake Tekapo – a very beautiful turquoise lake framed by forest and mountains.
So New Zealand is just amazing, it is so alive and vibrant there is every aspect of nature to be be found here in total abundance, we are loving it.
Will add some more pix.
Ciao for now!
