Two Americans emigrate to New Zealand from Colorado,
USA.
We talk about
our life in Nelson, New Zealand.
March 2009 | Blog home | May 2009
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10 April: Come along on our South Island excursion - first stop, Timaru, Oamaru and toward DunedinIt’s been awhile but we’re back! Since we’ve been gone so long, we’ll start you out with a long blog and lots of photos!! Plus a map of our travels: red indicates the southward route, green the northward route.
We started our South Island holiday in Christchurch not by choice, but because we went to see the Kings of Leon in concert. They did a great job, a real rock concert that was loud and boisterous and full of great rhythms from their songs that play very well live, especially with incredible vocals from lead singer Caleb Followill.
We didn’t take photos of anything on the way to Christchurch or in Christchurch as I’m pretty much completely over having to do that drive and that city. I can’t stand the drive from Nelson to Christchurch, to be perfectly honest. On the way back I insisted we go the coastal route!!
For some perspective, Nelson isn’t close to any major city. Christchurch is the closest by virtue of ease alone in that you drive there in 5 hours. Ease has a variety of measurements depending on who you are! Wellington is the closest in proximity but of course it is on the North Island across the water, so it’s a 30 minute plane ride and $180 bucks or a 4 hour ferry plus 3 hour round-trip drive to Picton where the ferry docks and $200 round-trip with a car I think. So no matter which way we want to go for concerts and bigger shopping, it’s a trip. We often go to Wellington as we just simply prefer it to Canterbury.
We’ve not been south of Christchurch and when I told people we were doing this route they often sniggered, noting how flat and boring and awful the Canterbury region is. Well, it is. But it was great to see it for the first time, and great to drive on straight roads!! New Zealand is full of wavy and curvy roads all over the place, it’s nice to have a road you don’t have to think too much to drive and you can get from A to B more quickly!
One of the trip highlights came in flat, straight-as-a-ruler-roaded Canterbury when we stopped at the Ashford Craft Shop in Ashburton.
I should stop here to say we had two goals on this trip. Well, three, but two top-tier goals and one lesser goal. The lesser goal was to see parts of New Zealand we hadn’t seen before. Fine. But the most important two goals, THE PURPOSE OF OUR BEING was first – only because Don would benefit too – to gather central Otago pinot noir wines and, second, to find as much knitting wool as humanly possible in this most sheep-favoured part of the country. You can see our priorities are spot on, no?
Ashburton is the home of Ashford wools, and it was heavenly to enter a proper yarn shop once again! But as this topic is not of wide interest, I will leave it by saying it was a great hour for Angela.
We proceeded south into Timaru under cloudy but dry skies. Timaru is a pretty town with a picturesque outlook right on the water. By the time we arrived in Timaru, population 27,000, we had started driving on rolling hills again, thankfully out of the flat nothingness and back into real kiwiness. Timaru’s park centre along the water seems very well done. If you place the two photos above in your mind as one, you can see the grand 
staircase moves down onto the large park area and maze/garden toward the right. The town itself is on the top of the hill to the right of the photos above.
The hills started getting even larger as we went into Oamaru, picture left and below, another great town of about 13,000 people. 
Their city centre was very nice too, and outside of it was a great historic area with buildings from the 1800s that are now populated with local businesses. Although it was a bit difficult to access and very, very quiet, this area seems to have great potential for tourism.
Oamaru is known for its penguin colony and we went out there to see if we could watch some of them, but unfortunately they were only coming ashore after dark and we’d have to pay for a tour to see them, so we opted out. In the Abel Tasman you can go and see them for free, so pphhhhtttttt.
On the way to Dunedin, where we lodged for the next two nights, we had dinner at a spot courtesy of my friend Annie’s recommendation.
Fleur’s Place in Moeraki is a seafood restaurant, an adorable spot, a well-done mixture of seaside home and updated interior (unfortunately the skies finally opened up after threatening all day and so the pics 
won’t do it justice - and we couldn't take too many of them). 
From the looks of it, and from what we were told, they literally go into the water that day from the pier just outside the restaurant (could be a slight exaggeration, but you never know!), catch your fish, and create the menu for lunch and dinner.
It was superb indeed.
I know a lot of seaside restaurants do this, but Fleur’s is known for natural and high quality ingredients and its chef as well.
That was evident in Don’s main course of a whole blue cod with vegetables and my main of seafood chowder featuring green mussels both in and out of shell, cockles in shell, blue cod, and various other fishies from the sea.
It was YUMMY. In fact, I should use my new skills from my creative writing course and opt out of yummy and opt into DIVINE. Highly recommended.
Next, we'll take you to Dunedin where we the skies cleared and the rest of our trip started with good weather - and warmer than we expected!
We arrived in Dunedin in the rain but were welcomed by the warm home of our friend Wayne's mum who had us as guests for our two nights in Dunedin.
Here she is with her poochie Cobber, to the right. She couldn't wait to cook for us and take care of us, she was extremely generous and welcoming! Cobber was glad to have guests too.
She was a bit surprised to learn I was a vegetarian, even though I'm not as strict a vegetarian as her son Wayne, and I put her into a bit of a tizzy about cooking us dinner - she'd bought a roast. But she was really cool about it and made a yummy fish dinner our second night, boy it was nice to have home cooking!
We woke up the next morning to sunny skies and beautiful views as we headed out for our first full day in Dunedin.
In the photo it looks kinda like Nelson but in reality it was a lot hillier and larger, with highways!! That was exciting, real roads with multiple lanes and car passing. Very cool.
Our day was chock full of things to do. We first drove out onto the Otago Peninsula to see the views and birds and penguins and ... New Zealand's only castle, Larnach Castle. Hmmm, if I was writing this properly I'd have written 'castle.' 
Larnach Castle is really, technically, an elaborate home. It is a great heritage building full of historical significance, but a castle it is not. The original owner really really wanted to have a castle and so made it look like one, but it's not all that big and what you see is really all it is. It has been greatly restored since its current owners purchased it a few decades back in great disrepair.
Cool history of the original family and all the great gossip over the years, but I would have to say it isn't really worth the $25 price of admission, as even the grounds aren't vast and special, they are well done but pretty small. It's not really Europe in Dunedin, it's just wishful thinking.
After we went for a drive the rest of the way out to the peninsula and saw some great views and the albatross adventure something or other, which is a tour that you can take to see birds that you could see just flying around. It's the Royal Albatross Colony and apparently it's the only breeding colony in the world.
We got to the end of the peninsula and the parking lot was packed with tourist buses and cars. I'm not a fan of being charged to see nature, so we turned around and headed back toward the city for our next destination - lunch!
Back in the city we drove past the University of Otago and saw many of the places we've seen on the news where the students riot and do their drunken crazy street parties.
We did some shopping which was nice, it's always good to be in a bigger town.
We visited the Dunedin Art Museum which had a nice collection right in the middle of the city.
We drove around, up and down the hills of Dunedin - it was much hillier than I'd expected - and took in lots of the older buildings. Don was taken with the railroad station, it's a great building and they still use it today.
We compared Dunedin's Chinese Garden to Nelson's because there was a bru ha ha about the two cities having these gardens (to honour their respective sister cities) and how Dunedin spent so much less - well we can see why, it's across the street from a strip mall! And they charge - Nelson's is free and just as pretty.
All in all we both really liked Dunedin - it would be a great place to live if not so far south and so cold so much of the year. Definitely worth a visit!
On Nelson Anniversary Day (2 Feb), while Angela was up shopping in Wellington with her friend, I decided it would be a great opportunity to finally hike Mt Arthur. I originally planned to hike it with John when he was here but somehow we ended up downtown having a beer.
Anyway, I’ve had this hike on my ‘to-do’ list for some time. Mt Arthur isn’t the highest peak in the area, just one of the most accessible. By accessible I don’t mean you can drive most of the way up, it still is about 8kms up and 900 meters of elevation gain (about 5 miles in and 3000 feet). I asked a couple of my cycling mates to join me for a day off the bike. Anton and Wayne were both keen. Anton loaded up the family (Jackie, Connagh, Taylor, and Riley) and Wayne, with girlfriend Gisela, hitched a ride with me.
I took it as an ominous sign when Gisela mentioned that the last several times she’s attempted to climb Mt Arthur, the weather hasn’t turned out to be too favorable. I debated dropping her off on the side of the road but figured, nah, this day will break that trend. 
We arrived at the carpark after tackling the steep and narrow gravel road on the way up. I had no issues with the SUV but figured it may be a bit of a challenge for Anton in his family wagon. Turns out they were about 30 minutes late partially because of the trouble getting up the road. Wayne spent the time waiting feeding his Weka.
It was about 11:30 by the time we were all ready to set off and the clouds were still present, I figured they would have by late morning but there were no real signs of them subsiding. Great, I was thinking at the time, these damn clouds better have moved on by the time we hit the top. Somewhat defeats the purpose of a 6 hour hike - get to the top and see nothing.
The first 4 kms up to Mt Arthur hut were through native forest. It was a good trail, not very steep, and quiet with the exception of the birds…and us.
We stopped at the hut for a snack then proceeded above the tree line for what turned out to be a very long 4km to the top.
This photo is just from just above Mt. Arthur hut. Obviously we were still surrounded by the clouds but they thinned enough from time to time for me to take a photo. For some reason I was thinking gorillas in the mist here.
Wayne and Gisela took the lead as I spent time messing with my camera and taking various photos. Anton and family eventually slowed a bit as the trail got steeper so I continued past. The fog limited visibility to about a hundred yards and created a sense of being completely alone when away from the other groups.
From time to time the clouds would clear in one direction and I could get a photo of the valley below. This gives an idea of the terrain above the hut.
I eventually caught up with Wayne and Gisela and we continued to the top. The trail just continued on and on and on and I wasn’t sure if we’d ever get there - a many false summits did we pass. Eventually over the last bit and we were greeted with a break in the clouds and the knowledge that we had finally made it. Anton texted that he and the family were going to turn around – they made it to about a km from the summit but with the kids quickly tiring, they didn’t want to overdo it.
Here I am on top. This cloud bank was simply amazing, the mountain top beyond just stopped the clouds from continuing to move on. Good for as as it allowe a small window for us to see out west. Just to the right of this photo are more heavy clouds and, in fact, once we walked the 50 yards to the official summit we were engulfed in clouds again.
After a couple good photos on top, some food, we turned back and headed down…much quicker than up. Turns out that the clouds were a blessing – I couldn’t imagine how hot it would be under full sun. I probably would have gone through a bottle of sunscreen. Probably best to leave very early on a clear day. All in all it's a hike I will do again.
Pretty much since we moved here we started using our own bags whenever we shopped at the grocery store. It wasn't an original idea of ours of course - you're bombarded with it whenever you enter a store in New Zealand. And, of course, what a good idea! You can purchase $1 green canvas bags, with slots for wine bottles I might add, and reuse them until they fray and tear. I've also bought two heavy duty yet lovely shopping bags from my favourite online accessories shop, Floozy. (Hi Kate!)
In fact, a group of high school girls here in Nelson, the Green Teens, have made worldwide news about their efforts to stop people from using plastic bags. Well, hopefully that work is going to really start paying off, since one of the country's two major grocers will start charging 5 cents for every plastic bag starting in August.
The other main chain hasn't yet decided what it will do, but the 'Walmart' like chain The Warehouse started charging 10c per bag starting this week.
Some North Island shoppers at particular stores have been paying for plastic bags for some time now, but it hasn't been done in the South Island at all. If the competing chain of groceries gets on board, then it really will become nationwide.
The Warehouse did a survey of 600 customers in four trial stores - at Alexandra, Rotorua, Hawera and Pukekohe - and it revealed that 85 per cent of consumers would not use plastic bags if they had to pay for them.
The grocery chain instituting the 5c fee has reduced the use of plastic bags by 19% since July 2007 both because workers ask shoppers if they need a plastic bag and because their supermarkets sell re-usable shopping bags. Apparently this 19% reduction amounted to a saving of 50 million bags - nearly 20% of their annual bag usage.
A spokesperson for the chain said that in Ireland, a charge has reduced plastic bag use by 90%. A trial in Australia found there was an 80 percent reduction in plastic bag consumption when shoppers faced a charge and customers turned to using reusable bags.
We're really glad to live in a country that takes on these environmental challenges as if they really existed - hopefully now that America has a real president who cares about these things, he can start leading the world again in making these kinds of real changes. I know there are lots of people already willing and able to follow.
This is the first of a one part series on our adventure in the Catlins. The Catlins are located on the eastern part of the southern most part of the the South Island. The area isn't as widely known as more famous tourist destinations and certainly doesn't get as many visitors but is still, like most of the South Island, very scenic. The main attractions of the area are the wildlife, the walks, and the fantastic scenery. We ended up only spending a day there focusing on the eastern most part. I figure we'll hit the western part when we eventually make it down to Invercargill.
We drove down from Dunedin and ended up staying in a tidy hotel in Owaka. The owner wasn't the most pleasant but the place was spacious and clean. Plus, even though the owner was a bit grumpy, she handed me three pamphlets on the Catlins and insisted I need to read all of them. I asked her for a recommendation of where to go and she flatly refused stating that what she like I might not like. Ok, fair enough, that ended my interaction with her beyond getting the room key.
First we went out to Nugget Point - a good location for penguin viewing (when DOC hasn't closed the site for some sort of construction project...of course owner of a motel we looked at offered an "excursion" to the site after hours when all the workers had left to see the penguins). Saw and heard plenty of seals just laying around on the rocks below.
We then headed towards Jack's Blowhole (if interested, read more about it here) and Angela took the opportunity to hunt down some more wool. As you all know by know she's obsessed and has more recently turned to getting the wool, "directly from the source." I won't tell you how this encounter ended...
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close ... |
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closer ... |
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uh oh! |
Enough of this ewe's blowhole, now on to Jack's. Jack's blowhole is a 55 meter deep blowhole, 200 meters from the sea. Anyway, this piece of land just collapsed at some point and next thing you know it is a reserve. We were there at low tide so it wasn't the best time for viewing but pretty cool none the less. |
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This is a view as we walked toward the blowhole. |
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Angela was very rebellious, as you know she doesn't like to be told what to do and, of course, her middle name is 'Danger.' |
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Here it is, guess the picture doesn't do it justice. One of those things, I think you have to be there. |
Next on to Purakaunui Falls.
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Walkway towards the falls through native bush. |
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The famous cascading Purakaunui Falls. I read that a picture of these falls have adorned a NZ postage stamp. |
Then down the road to the beach at Papatowai for a stroll. This was as far west we went in the Catlins. Keep your eyes out for some of my better pictures that will be posted shortly on the front page of the site (Cool Photos section).
