AUTHOR: LOIS OLIVE GRAY
PHOTOS: KAY ELLENGILMOUR, MD
PHOTO ALBUM: kaygilmour.smugmug.com
NEWZEALAND
This is an extension of our trip to the Kimberly in Western Australia followed by a brief but exciting visit to the beautiful city of Brisbane on the east coast.
NEWZEALAND–ANTIPODEANARCADIA
This is an extension of our trip to the Kimberly in Western Australia followed by a brief but exciting visit to the beautiful city of Brisbane on the east coast.
A downside to leaving Brisbane - before we felt we really had explored it - was that we had to be at the airport for the flight to Auckland so darned early. We had to leave the Punthill Hotel at 3:45 a.m. However, there was compensation. We arrived in New Plymouth to be met by a smiling Irene at only 11:30 a.m. Therefore, we had much of our first day to spend with our friends from the Black Sea trip.
NEWPLYMOUTH
New Plymouth is a lovely small city in the Southwest corner of the North Island anchored by the beautiful symmetry of Mt. Taranaki (also known as Mt. Egmont). The town was founded as a trading post with the Maoris in 1828 and was opened to English colonists in 1841. It has a population of 53,000 in the city but the district surrounding it creates an area population over 75,000.
Mt. Taranaki is an active but quiescent volcano with what is considered by many to be the most perfectly shaped volcanic cone in the world. The volcano last demonstrated activity in the late 1800s but that action was not an eruption as such but a cone collapse.
Mt. Taranaki is one of only a few volcanoes to experience more than one cone collapse and it has a history of five such collapses. This apparently makes the mountain more subject to mudslides and pyroclastic lava flows than other volcanoes.
We were very pleased when we learned that another of New Plymouth’s “claims to fame” is the presence of the TSB (a bank founded soon after the establishment of the town) which is now the only non-government owned independent bank in New Zealand. We visited New Plymouth to reconnect with our newfound friends from a Zegrahm trip and learned that the gentleman is the past CEO of this bank and greatly responsible for its remaining independent and fending off foreign purchase.
While with these wonderful hosts and friends, we experienced some lovely hikes in local parks and gardens.
Pukeiti Park
Tupare Gardens
Tupare Gardens
Ratapihipihi Park
We enjoyed delicious home-cooked meals prepared by the man of the house and enjoyed the comforts of their beautiful home with its spectacular views of Mt. Taranaki on the backside and the Tasman Sea on the front. Hard to imagine that such views could ever be bettered.
Mt. Taranaki
We greatly enjoyed a personalized private tour of the TSB Museum of old banking technology.
After enjoying their hospitality immensely, we bade an farewell to them and flew back to Auckland to catch a flight to Queenstown. Though our weather in New Plymouth had been a bit cloudy with even some raindrops, we had no premonitions of the weather that would welcome us to the South Island!
QUEENSTOWN
Queenstown granted us one beautiful day with serenely blue skies and cool temperatures. We used that weather to ride the gondola up to Bob’s Peak to see the Remarkables Range at the best advantage and perfect they were with snow topping the angular peaks and Lake Wakatipu mirroring their splendor on its calm surface.
We took a fine hike up behind the tourist area and then watched the brave (crazy) tourists who joined “experts” to paraglide through the scenery or to bungy jump off a platform that hung out over the gondola cables (or so it appeared).
We walked all over town and enjoyed the many changes we saw in the city since our last visit there. The Glebe Hotel recommended to us by other travelling friends proved to be a convenient jumping off place for foot-touring the area. Later that day we signed up for a jet boat ride in the morning and then a 4 x 4 exploration of a mountain area in the afternoon. However, the weather gods had another idea altogether.
Next morning greeted us with heavy rains and strong winds as well as much colder temperatures. Still believing the jet boat ride was on, we caught the bus that took us 40 km north along the Wakatipu Lake to Glenorchy. Increasingly large waves on the usually calm lake should have given us a clue that there might be a hitch in our plans.
By the time we reached Glenorchy, the rains were monsoon-heavy and the gales were fierce. The tour operators suggested that we might want to postpone the ride to the next day, but we could not do that since we were planning to leave for Te Anau then. They permitted us to cancel the whole trip and refunded our money.
After all the tides and their effects that we had observed in The Kimberley in Australia, we were surprised to learn that the Lake Wakatipu is one of only three lakes in the world to experience regular tides. These tides are nothing like those on the Aussie West Coast; they are only 20 centimeters high but they occur regularly at 20 minute intervals. It appears that the moon and the Earth’s own motions are responsible for these events.
DRIVETOTEANAU
We had arranged to rent a car in Queenstown for the drive to Te Anau and when we picked up the car, the weather appeared to be improving for us. Therefore, we started out still optimistic that some more hiking would be in our future. No foreshadowing here: our days in Te Anau were much worse than in either New Plymouth or Queenstown.
The ride out to Te Anau however was lovely even though it became clear that the weather was not going to be very pleasant because of spitting rains and intermittent showers. However, the road was straight and the New Zealand scenery unspooled before us. We remembered why we love this country so much even if the weather is not perfect.
The intensely green pastures enclosed by the craggy and now snow-topped mountains were filled with frolicking lambs, stolid cows, and unexpected red deer (farmed for food here). Tiny villages beckoned to us to stop along the lake and have breakfast and hot chocolate. As we continued our drive, the landscape changed from the lush pasturelands to the more stark terrain of the red tussock grasses.
These areas are now protected because the plants are so special and they are indeed very striking. The tussocks stand about two feet high with slender spikes of leaves glowing red-orange even under broken skies with little sunshine by now.
By the time we reached Te Anau, the weather had completely closed in and we had to peer through the rain-spattered windshield to see that Te Anau had grown both in size and tourist orientation since our last visit. There are many hotels and motels, two supermarkets, many restaurants, and even a bookstore. Our friend-recommended Radford Lakeside Motel was quite comfortable and situated along a street of many such establishments.
The weather was bitterly cold to us Floridians and the rains just kept slashing & pouring. Luckily, our motel was cozy and warm but we had not planned on spending so many days inside. The car was comfortable so we decided to just get out in the car, hoping for better weather a bit far afield from Te Anau. However, that hope did not work out either. Though there was sunshine at 8 a.m. on our first morning, by 8:45, the rains had set in and the temps had dropped dramatically.
Nothing daunted, we started out for Milford Sound still hoping for a hike on this end of the Routeburn walk. We saw the start of the Milford Track along the way and that brought back some vivid memories of our experience during that 3-day hut-to-hut walk.
However, we had started in sunshiny weather and today it was just water, water, and more water everywhere coming from the leaden skies.
The drive to Milford is 150 km. We covered that distance quite quickly considering the increasingly heavy rainfall. We were amazed when we reached the Homer Tunnel and knew that we were nearly there. The big parking lot filled with keas that was there when we visited last, no longer exists. We saw only one lone kea in the roadway, wet and miserable looking.
On our way back through the tunnel while we awaited our turn to enter, we saw him still waiting and begging even though all the signs clearly asked us “Do Not Feed the Keas”. He was cheeky enough to hop on the mirror on my side of the car and peer in quite impertinently at me. However, we obeyed the signs and tried to ignore the alpine parrot right in my face.
Snow, Sleet, and Hail
Roadwork is proceeding everywhere even in the rain and inside the tunnel as well. We saw the old Miter Lodge where Milford Track hike had ended. However, there is now another newer one in place.
We walked a new trail that the local Maoris have created to highlight the native flora and to permit wonderful views of the cascading waterfalls all around this end of the Milford Sound.
On the way back to the Radford, we were pelted with more rain, sleet, snow, and even hail. The temperature had fallen even further.
A little anxiety turned to relief as we drove into our parking place at the motel. It felt good inside with the warmth created by the little heater in the room. In addition to the comforts of the room, we had a welcome visit from “Precious” the motel cat. She is very friendly, black and white with longish fur.
She readily jumps in your lap and purrs to make guests feel welcome. As it happened, she visited us all the time during our stay. She would ask to go out when she felt it was time to continue her rounds of other guest rooms.
THESOUTHSHORE
The only place we found any relief from cold and rain was on the southern coast along the Southern Ocean. There we had mixed clouds and watery sunshine and higher temperatures too surprise. We drove to Blue Cliff Beach below the dying little town of Tautopere. House after house is for sale and many of the commercial properties are as well. We never understood what had hit the tow so badly, but it is clear that some industry or several had left the area with large numbers of unemployed people. As if nature wanted to compensate us for the gloom, she place a huge rainbow in the sky which lasted a full hour and 45 minutes as we continued to drive back homewards. We have never seen one that lasted that long.
BACKTOQUEENSTOWN
Our last day, when we had to drive back to Queenstown for our flight to Auckland, dawned much clearer than any other day since our one good one in Queenstown. Therefore, the drive there was beautiful.
The mountain ranges displayed much more snow than when we had driven through before. The snow line even crossed over the bush line (tree line in our speak) and sat on the mountain flanks. Again, quite beautiful sights in New Zealand.
Though we were disappointed in our weather and its quietus on our hiking plans, we are never sorry to visit this magnificent country with such spectacular scenery and friendly people.
