D'aan S'aaf - Blogabond

After hopping on the surprisingly long ferry (4 hours people!!) we met our new Stray driver hilariously named Trouble (it wasn't hilarious, it's a rubbish story) and set off for our adventures on the South Island!! Woo! Here are the highs and lows!

Abel Tasman National Park
This was a beautiful spot and the best way to explore it was by sail boat (kayaking in the sea somehow just didn't appeal!) and we headed out with our crocodile dundee skipper on a catamaran. Even though it was a beautifully sunny day, we were little prepared for the gail force winds coming off the ocean once the boat had gained some knots!! By the end Coops was forced to wrap up in one of the giant waterproof blankets that were on board in case of emergency!! Nonetheless it was beautiful with turqouise blue sea and some much missed wildlife (seals, one blue penguin and lots of birds!) When we hit land for our lunch break we took the opportunity to get some sunbathing in, which after half hours kip resulted in some dodgy short tan lines (wow the sun is strong here!!) We stayed in a fun hostel/camp site where a group of our new found friends huddled on the floor amongst backpacks, foodbags and hiking boots to watch some of the much anticipated new episodes of inbetweeners (we will be forever grateful to you Kriss!!)

Barrytown
So whilst this place has a very cool name (obvo!) we can assure you it doesn't live up to much!!! Those of you who have been to New Zealand and are thinking "hmm...I don't know where that is?!" you can be forgiven. Most New Zealanders haven't even heard of it! The Stray itinerary claimed this stop off was a fun evening in an old miner's pub filled with fancy dress and getting to know your fellow travellers. In fact, we rocked up to a dodgy old man's pub where they led us to some portacabins classed as bedrooms and showed us to a mangey array of various items of other people's clothes! (Even charity shops would shudder!) However, we did manage to throw together some pretty awesome outfits and were deemed the party queens when we got all 30 people off their seats and joining in with our drinking games! Coops even won a free burger for her efforts!

Fun dressing up times

The next day lead to a hungover fuelled diversion to McDonalds in Greymouth, after blackmailing Trouble as he had overslept and someone had to go knock on his door while we all stood outside the bus like lost children!!!

Franz Josef Glacier
We opted for a full day's hike on the glacier.

Yaayyy....I'm so freaking cold!!!

It was amazing to see, but sadly this was not our favourite experience in NZ due to the rain that soaked our so-called waterproof attire right through, so that by the time we stopped for a lunch break, we were pretty much numb and turning into blocks of ice ourselves!! We did climb down through some caves that had been carved by streams through the ice, but this just felt like rubbing yourself up against a big ice cube! Brrrrrrrr!!!! We were provided with some laughs though, when a divvy girl in our group was not listening to the instructions of the guide and stepped right into a knee deep puddle of ice cold water...it was hilarious!! By this point, we had bonded with lots of people on our bus, so had another fun night here for one of the guys' birthdays. Please note at this point, said divvy girl managed to serve an actual birthday cake upside down with the candles pushed through the paper wrapper!!!!!

Wanaka
All that needs to be said.... Puzzling World = AMAZING!

The hilarity of puzzling world

But sadly no, we didn't get to explore the town!

Queenstown
It definitely lived up to expectations; really fun town in a pretty spot on the banks of the lake (I'm sure all you clever people can remember which one?!?) where we had a really fun night out drinking from tea pots in Worlds Bar! (Fear not, we haven't turned t-total, they were filled with yummy cocktails!!!) This is also the place to sample the delights of NZ famous FERG burger and we definitely gave it a fair test by comparing it to the other local burger joint Devil burger (thanks to Laura's free voucher!) We are undecided as to the official winner, but it was goooooooooooood!

We definitely opted for the tamer activity (as Queenstown is known as the adrenalin capital of NZ) of horse riding. Bets convinced Coops that getting up onto a horse for the first time would be fun and this was definitely proved right, as we spent the afternoon riding through the valley, surrounded by beautiful lupins and looking up at snow capped mountains. We also had to get our horses to wade across rivers and Coops' horse did seem to be the naughtiest one and kept stopping to eat!

Bets, ever the professional

We had such a fun day and it was really cool to see lots of Lord of the Rings film locations and lots of other films too (including the bridge that Wolverine runs over, woop!)

Milford Sound
This place is talked about a lot by visitors to New Zealand, with dramatic cliff faces dropping down into the sea and waterfalls flowing down them. On the day we visited, there had been heavy rain, so the falls were huge and really spectacular - the boat even put it's nose under a couple of them soaking some unsuspecting American women! However, also due to the rain it was very misty and it was difficult to appreciate the whole impact of it all. We decided that this is definitely on our to do list for when we come back on a sunny day!!

Wind and rain battered and abused!

This rainy day was topped off by having to stay in a weird camp alongside a river, where the water was heated by fire and the electricity was turned off at 10 o clock. It was ruddy cold!!!! We can safely say that this was a definite low point and we were very eager to leave in the morning!!!

Stewart Island (South of the South Island)
This place is well known for its wildlife, however we saw very little and resigned ourselves to the fact that we weren't going to see a kiwi. So instead, we had a super fun time here by hiring a car with Lucy and Mara (our new homies) so that we could explore this tiny island.

Checking out "Rat" (Stewart island)

The highlights included eating an entire 2 litre tub of Hokey Pokey ice cream (nyum nyum nyum nyum nyum!!!) and teaching Mara how to drive a manual car for the first time on the other side of the road (she's canadian!) with some very near misses causing a lot of squeals and giggles! Good times!

Stewart Island

Dunedin
We were sad to leave our homies as we decided to hop off the bus and stay longer here. But we had fun exploring this scottish influenced city (did you know Dunedin means Edinburgh in gallic?!?) in particular the World's steepest suburban street (no we did not walk up it!) the octagon shaped city centre and the botanic gardens with an adorable brass band of oldies and exciting aviary! Most importantly though, this was where we went to Cadbury's World!!! We put on our sexy hair nets and got eating some free samples of chocolate!! (We won't lie, there was some mild rage when there was turkish delight and marshmallow chocolates included in this. AND, when 2 small children were given WHOLE easter eggs to take home and we weren't!!! Outrageous!!!!)

Nyum nyum nyum

Sexy dinner ladies

From here, we also went to visit the Otago peninsula. We stopped off at Larnach castle to have a quick peek at the beautiful grounds and gardens.

Larnach castle

Then we went to the albatross centre (where Coops spotted Albatross, while Bets nearly got stuck in the toilets!) and saw hundreds of Cormorants (aka Shags!!) nesting in the cliffs.

We took a trip out on an "8-wheel Argo truck" to a penguin hideout and a big seal colony, where there was not only fur seals but also unusually an elephant seal!!

Scary, raged elephant seal

Mount Cook
We stayed at the base of Mount Cook where our room overlooked spectacular views of the mountain. From here, we did a big walk (totally unprepared with little water or sun cream supplies) to a glacial lake with hactual icebergs floating in it. It was definitely worth it though!

Mount Cook walk

Mount Cook

Christchurch
We didn't have much time here, but we were determined to like this place after hearing everyone claim it was dull! And we did like it, especially the cambridge style punting along the river. Luckily, the aftershocks have now stopped from the earthquake in September, but there was still lots of damaged buildings and repair work being carried out. We had a really fun night out here, hitting the cool strip of bars in Lordship Lane (woop woop to our dulwich homies!) and ended up cutting some shapes on the light up dance floor in 'boogie nights!'

Kaikoura
As we arrived into this seaside town, we kept spotting dolphins and seals just off the coast, so we knew we were in for a good one! People come to kaikoura to see the huge array of sealife that is abundant in this area. We went out on a whale watching trip and luckily got to spot a sperm whale (well...you basically get to see some puffs of steam coming out of its back!!) and literally hundreds of dusky dolphins!!! It was so amazing to see them jumping out of the water and doing somersaults as far as the eye could see and some swimming right up and under the boat. The squeals on board as we all watched was pretty amusing too!

So close you can almost touch it!

This is also where we watched LoTR and spent half the time going "i'm sure we've been there?!?!?"

So, this just about sums up the South Island and we have tried to fill you in as much as we can but there were so many mini-stops along the way to see incredible scenery, we just can't get it all in (and to be honest, we would never remember the names anyway!) As many people say, the South island is really visually spectacular with potential photo stops around every corner of the very windy roads! Everyone should go to New Zealand!!!!!!

Big fat hugs and christmas kisses
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

written by

coopsandbets on December 20, 2010 from Melbourne, Australia

from the travel blog: We are off to find the wizard!

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I love it! I was especially sympathetic to the rage incident at the Cadbury's factory due to the fact that Faye and I had the exact same rage when we visited said factory. All the boys laughed at us when we were shocked and appalled that the children got more chocolates than us. ADULTS ARE BIGGER PEOPLE, WE NEED MORE CHOCOLATE! The people that worked there just thought we were joking. CHUMPS!

written by

Lejjy on December 27, 2010

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