Playing monopoly on the South Island

After a short and thankfully uneventful flight from Auckland we arrived in Christchurch ready to start the next section of our trip, the South Island. Having spent the last three weeks being sensible and trying to book our accommodation we had fallen into our natural way of doing things, arriving somewhere and seeing where you can get in for that night. Anyway, it was only 11.30am when we arrived, so still very early. We called a few places, but there were no spaces, so we called the Jailhouse, there were spaces available, so we went directly to jail, did not pass 'Go' and did not collect 200 pounds, although by this stage of our trip our budget could have done with it.

If you see this man, do not approach him, he is extremely dangerous

The Jailhouse is not actually a jail anymore, it's a backpackers hostel and a very good one as well. We had a fairly small cell with bunk beds, but the shared bathrooms and kitchen were clean and it was very friendly. Unfortunately they only had a room available for one night, so we had to make a quick decision on our plans for the next couple of weeks, so that we would have somewhere to go.

A key factor in our decision-making was when we would be able to see some rugby. I felt that if I was going to spend five weeks in a country that loves rugby as much as we do in Wales then I had to get to a match. Luckily Christchurch is the home of the Canterbury Crusaders, one of the most successful Super 14 clubs of all time, and they had a match against the Bulls in a week and a half's time, decision made! We decided to head straight down to Queenstown the following day, so that we could do a circuit of South Island and be back in Christchurch for the match.

We had to be up early the next morning to catch the Atomic Shuttle down to Queenstown. We were picked up outside jail at 6.50am by a very friendly lady who said that she would drive the bus out of Christchurch then swap with another driver who would carry on to Queenstown.

Our new driver was a bloke called Jim, who was, to be frank, a right grumpy git. He was only the second unpleasant person we had met in a country where the people are so unbelievably friendly and helpful, and where you don't have to explain to everyone where Wales is! On the journey we passed Lake Tekapo, a beautiful lake with stunning blue water. It's this colour due to the sediment that was left in the lake by a glacier moving down the valley which gouged out the lake's basin. However it happened, it looks amazing.

Lake Tekapo

We continued to drive through some stunning scenery and it was pretty comfortable until we got to the last section of the trip, about an hour from Queenstown. Something happened to Grumpy Jim and he turned into Colin Macrae, he seemed to think he was doing the rally of New Zealand.

Queenstown is the adventure sports capital of New Zealand, some would say of the world, and when you go there you are supposed to do something exciting, but to be honest Sarah and I just wanted to relax. We thought it might be fun to go whitewater rafting, but unfortunately they have had so little rain there this summer that the Shotover river, which is the exciting one, didn't have enough water in it to go rafting. Our other option was to go rafting on the Kawarau river, but apparently this is about as exciting as going whitewater rafting on a canal, so we gave it a miss.

Gareth makes himself at home

We did however decide to take the gondola ride to the top of the hill above Queenstown, so we could admire the view and take a few photos. It's quite a good gondola ride, it seems very steep, but apparently it's only at an angle of 35 degrees, it certainly felt a lot steeper when you looked down!

The Remarkables. Remarkable.

We discovered that Queenstown's Irish bar, Pog Mahoney's, was showing re-runs of all the Six Nations matches and that they were doing pints of Guinness for $4.50 during the games (that's cheap for here), so we decided that we should watch the Italy vs Wales match there. It was actually pretty quiet in there, four Welshmen, a Welshwoman (that's Sarah, in case you were wondering) a few assorted Irish, Scots and English and two guys sitting in front of us who never declared their support, so we guessed they were probably Italian. Every now and then an American or Japanese tourist would come in through the door, hear the shouting and barracking, then run back out again looking scared. It wasn't a happy result, but it made for an enjoyable afternoon.

That's BATHROOM for everyone else

We were up early again on Monday morning for the bus ride to Franz Josef. We had a much friendlier driver this time, who took us up over the Crown Pass, the highest road in New Zealand. It was slow going, but the views were magnificent over Lake Wakatipa and Queenstown.

Our driver did a bit of a commentary as we went along, most of it was informative, but some of it was just amusing. For example:

'Up there on top of that mountain there is what we call Indian Snow, do you know why? It's because there's apache here, apache there......'

This one was clearly his favourite, during a commentary on the trees of the area:

'In New Zealand we have four types of Beech; the Mountain Beech, the Silver Beech, the Red Beech and the much rarer, Son of a Beech.'

It was a long journey, but eventually we arrived in Franz Josef, where it was raining. We had been very lucky with the weather in New Zealand so far, but it seemed to be turning against us. We checked into our hostel just in time to avoid the heavy rain that then continued all afternoon and all night.

We'd booked ourselves onto a three-quarter day hike up on the Franz Josef Glacier the following day, so we were up early again to get kitted out and head up there. Thankfully the rain had eased a little, so we didn't get too wet on our walk up to the start of the glacier. There was a huge cave at the bottom of the glacier with a river running out of it, every so often bit of the cave would collapse into the river. When I say 'bit' I really mean a massive chunk of ice, which would make an almighty noise, like thunder. It was very impressive. The huge amount of rainfall the previous afternoon had actually caused the cave to get much bigger and our guide explained that it would eventually collapse in on itself. There are bright yellow signs all around telling you how dangerous it is there, that you should only go onto the glacier with an experienced guide and that you should not go past certain points. Three weeks ago two men had decided to ignore the warning signs and walked right up inside the cave, which is a really stupid thing to do. Unfortunately for them, part of the cave collapsed and they were very badly hurt, apparently one guy's leg came clean off at the knee, nasty!

It should be self explanatory

We put our crampons onto our boots and started up the glacier. Each morning a group of workers from the guiding company come out and cut a staircase out of the glacier with pickaxes, then they put a rope handrail into the sides with ice screws, to hold on to where it's steep. Its a little bit weird walking on a glacier - usually I would avoid ice wherever possible, but here you just stamp your foot down hard with each step and hope that the crampon grips. Sarah has got a bit of a history on ice having broken her arm after falling over trying to thaw her car's windows some years back, and I think walking on the glacier probably rated as highly on her 'Top 3 things you would rather not do' in the same way as having a Burmese Python draped around my neck did for me.

That is a full grown man up there!

In most places using the crampons was fine, but there were a few parts that were a little scary. The steps would be almost non-existent at times and I did wonder how you would be able to stop yourself if you fell on a slope. Would you just slide all the way back down to the bottom of the glacier?! By far the most worrying parts of the glacier were the merlons. These are holes in the glacier where rain and melt water find their way down through a weak point in the ice. The merlons grow slowly over time and get deeper and deeper. As our guide put it, 'If you fall down there, that's it, we'll see you come out of the front of the glacier in six or seven years'!

Don't look down

As you travel further up the glacier you start to see blue ice. It's blue because the ice is under such high pressure that when it refracts light, certain colours in the spectrum stand out much more than others, particularly blue. It was quite cool to look at.

'There was an Englishman, a Welshman and .......'

We managed to survive the rest of the hike without falling down any merlons and without losing our lunch to any of the cheeky Keas, birds that are obviously well-used to the hikers and the lunches they bring with them. We were back to our hostel by about 3pm and promptly fell asleep!

The next day we woke to find that it had snowed in the mountains around us overnight, so much for the traveller's endless summer! We were booked on the Atomic Shuttle again, to Greymouth, but it wasn't leaving until 3pm, so we had a bit of time to waste. Not that easy when it's raining torrentially. After spending some time in a red bus that had been converted into an internet cafe, we had a cup of tea, then decided to go for a walk, seeing as the rain had stopped at last!

We headed up a little track near our hostel, which was signposted for Matutu tunnels. The sign said that it was a one hour and forty minute return journey and we only had an hour and a half before we had to get the bus, so we thought we'd just have a wander. It was definitely a good idea, because after walking for about ten minutes, we saw what looked like a deer standing on the track ahead watching us.

'Does my bum look big in this?

It stood there for a little while, then wandered around in front of us, it obviously didn't think we were a threat. Sarah managed to get a few good photos and we realised that it wasn't actually a deer, it was a chamois. Yes, that is the same thing that people use to wipe the water off their car, they actually live wild in the mountains in New Zealand. Many years ago an Austrian named Haast explored New Zealand, naming the Franz Josef Glacier after the Emperor of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. As a reward for his work he was made 'von Haast' and awarded five Chamois, which he released in the foothills of Mt Cook and they have since thrived in the area. Sarah used to occassionally buy a chamois leather for her grandfather as a birthday or Christmas gift, but after seeing that they are so cute in the flesh (or fur), sorry Grampa, but I don't think that's going to happen again!

We arrived in Greymouth at about six o'clock and checked into the Global Village Hostel. This hostel comes highly recommended in the backpackers guides to New Zealand and for very good reason. Our room was really nice, with little tribal trinkets and things on the walls, a very comfy bed and it was lovely and warm. They had an excellent kitchen and there were free bikes and kayaks for the guests' use. Not that we bothered to use them of course.

Spot the deliberate mistake

We dropped our stuff off in the room and went for a walk along the floodwall down to the harbour entrance to have a look at the breakwater. It was pretty wild there, the hostel owner had told us that Greymouth is the most dangerous harbour in New Zealand and I can see why. The harbour entrance is where the fast flowing Grey River runs into the Tasman sea and when there is any kind of storm swell it must be pretty hairy trying to get in and out of the harbour entrance. There was quite a big swell running and some very big waves were crashing into the side of the breakwater, sensibly, all the fishing boats were safely moored in the harbour! I had read that the coast around Greymouth is unusual for surfers because you usually have to wait for the swell to drop to be able to go surfing!

The aptly named Grey River

Sadly, this is about as exciting as Greymouth gets and the following day we had a great deal of difficulty entertaining ourselves until we were due to go on our brewery tour in the evening. Greymouth is the home of Monteith's Brewery and they do a tour that is open to the public, which includes a tasting session at the end. Needless to say, Sarah was very keen on the second part of that sentence so we had booked ourselves onto it.

Shandy drinker

The tour was very good and the guide clearly knew her stuff. Monteith's is a small, batch brewery - they make about two million litres of beers every year. This might sound like a lot, but one of my customers in my last job made 64,000 litres every hour at full production. There are only ten staff there, so everybody does a bit of everything. The tasting was obviously the best bit, everybody was given a half pint glass and then given a quarter of a pint of each of their seven beers to try. Some of them were quite nice, particularly the Original Ale, the Pilsner and the Dark beer, but they had made one really strange beer. It was supposed to be similar to a German shandy, but rather than adding lemonade they had added a lemon and lime flavouring. It was probably the worst thing I've tried in a long time!

The reason why 90% of tourists are in Greymouth is because it is at one end of the TranzAlpine Railway, known for being one of the ten great railway journeys in the world. As we needed to get back to Christchurch, which is at the other end, we'd booked ourselves onto it too. It didn't get off to a great start, scheduled departure time was 1.45 pm, but at 1.46pm there was no sign of it. Sarah has dragged me onto enough different forms of public transport for me to be able to tell you that this is unusual outside of the UK. Thankfully a few minutes later it appeared and we prepared to board. Unfortunately when Greymouth station was built, nobody thought to check the length of the TranzAlpine train. Our seats were in carriage M, but carriage M was about twenty five yards beyond the end of the platform, so we all had to walk along the edge of the track and then climb up to the carriage (literally). The train itself is pretty good, there was plenty of leg room and an open viewing deck.

Arthur's Pass

We saw some great scenery (the train passes through the Southern Alps. Arthur's Pass and the Canterbury Plains) and got a few good photos, but to be honest it wasn't as amazing as I had expected it to be. Maybe I have particularly high expectations, but we saw views that were just as good when we were in Queenstown.

It was a very long train

On arrival in Christchurch we reported back to jail for another stretch, this time three nights, hopefully with a day release to go and watch some rugby!

Porridge

Saturday was very warm in Christchurch and a marked contrast to the West Coast, where it had rained nearly all the time. We wasted a bit of time walking around the city and I managed to get a much needed haircut in the smallest hairdressers that I have ever seen. My hair had been starting to get a bit out of control, and I had the beginnings of a mullet at the back, so it was nice to look a bit tidier again. I was particularly pleased that the weather was so good, because when we booked the rugby tickets we opted for the cheapest tickets we could (obviously) which were in an uncovered area. I really didn't want it to rain.

When we got to the Jade stadium to see the Canterbury Crusaders vs the Bulls, they were making a real show of it. There were cheerleaders, a giant sword in the middle of the pitch, a mock-up of a castle in the corner of the stadium and a team of men dressed as crusaders on horseback circling the pitch before the kick-off. All the razzmatazz couldn't take away from the fact that it was a pretty poor match - the Bulls seemed to be there in body, but not in spirit and never looked like threatening the Crusaders. There were lots of people there, but not much atmosphere, most people seemed more interested in the Mexican wave. Give me Stradey Park any day!

Wave your hands in the air like you just don't care!

Sunday dawned warm and sunny, but it didn't stay that way for very long, it soon changed to thunder and heavy rain. The thunder was deafening, it was just like being back in Sri Lanka! After about an hour it cleared, so we headed into town to see if we could find somewhere showing the rugby from the day before. We found 'The Holy Grail Bar', a sports bar near Cathedral Square and watched Wales beat England! Unfortunately the miserable git of a barman wouldn't put the match on the main screen because it wasn't live. They had the rugby league on instead so there was no sound for the Wales match, which made it lack a bit of atmosphere (I think he was English and just a little bitter that they had lost!). I still managed to enjoy it though!

That evening Sarah and I went to the cinema to see Hot Fuzz - it was hilarious. It was also completely stupid, but that didn't stop us enjoying it. It was quite a late showing, which meant that we didn't get much sleep that night, because we had to be up early and ready for the bus to Kaikoura at 6.50am!

The drive to Kaikoura was apparently like the second leg of the New Zealand rally, but I couldn't confirm that because I was asleep. Sarah wasn't too impressed though. We arrived safely in Kaikoura, a sleepy little town that seems to exist only so that people can do one of three things:

1) Swim with dolphins
2) Swim with seals
3) Go whale watching

Obviously we couldn't avoid all of these things, so we had signed up to go swimming with dolphins.

The reason that Kaikoura is such a great place to do all these things is because of the Kaikoura Canyon - a trench that drops 1200 metres deep. Cold and warm waters meet here and mix, causing the upwelling of deep-ocean nutrients that support marine life. Sarah had read this ranged from plankton and krill, to dolphins and whales. Sarah was thinking that somewhere in between there would be sharks too...

There were three start times for our trip, 5.30am, 9.30am and 2.30pm - so we'd obviously gone for the ridiculously early one. The girl who sold it to Sarah said that the advantage was that the early trip was at sunrise, which is beautiful on a clear day. Sadly, we can't show you any pictures of the sunrise because we were watching a safety video inside at the time!

We all hopped on the boat and before we knew it they had spotted a pod of dolphins - fantastic - they sounded the horn and everyone dived in. Nevermind the dolphins, could somebody help me with my breathing?! It was freezing and although a few dolphins came our way they didn't stick around long, so it was back in the boat to chase them down again.

'Nefoedd I'm cold!'

The second time was much better. There was a pod of around a hundred dolphins and they kept swimming past us and all around us, jumping out of the water right next to us - it was great. This lasted about ten minutes before they got bored and left us again, so we did another bit of chasing before a final swim with another pod of about a hundred. It was unbelievable - they were everywhere. Sarah started swimming around in circles (I think she had lost one flipper) and they seemed to really like this. One dolphin in particular was looking right into her eyes (look into her eyes, not around her eyes, but into her eyes.....3,2,1, you're back in the boat) and following her round and round.

Sarah: I can't tell you how amazing this was!

Big white finger-fish on the right of the picture

Much better when you move your finger

Lots more dolphin pics and videos above the water:

We celebrated that evening with a few drinks in the pub, then the following day took a walk over to the seal colony (a very long walk). You are supposed to be able to see hundreds but we saw ... one!

Billy no mates

After Kaikoura it was back to Christchurch and one last night in the Jailhouse before flying to Auckland and onto Samoa at some stupid hour of the morning. Bring on the sunshine...