Trip Down South

This is a story about our trip Down South in October 2006, written by John-Paul.

Main goal of this four days trip was visiting friends who live in Dunedin and in Invercargill. On Friday morning (we took that day off from work) we took a taxi to the airport and departed at 09:00. Half a hour later we landed at Christchurch airport. Christchurch is a fast growing city, with an on old-English city centre, situated in at the East coast in the centre of the South Island of New Zealand. We picked up the rental car at "Rent-a-Dent". The car was in perfect working order, as one might expect from a car rental company. It had however a small dent :-) Leisurely we started the drive in Southern direction, around half past ten in the morning.

We were lucky with the weather: sunny and warm. We had the windows of the car turned down. Around eleven thirty we decided it was time for a cup of coffee and we parked the car in Ashburton. We managed to find a table in the sun at an outdoor cafe. Ashburton is a nice town to stroll through. Not very busy and (as many towns) the highway (in this case number 1) passes through it. We enjoyed our "cafe latte" and half an hour later we resumed our way down South. By the way, Ashburton has parking meters, which is pretty unusual in these parts of New Zealand. For that half hour we had to pay the enormous amount of thirty dollar cents...

Around an hour later (13:15) we arrived at Timaru. We parked the car (no meters this time) and walked along the main street. Again a nice town with quite some large shops. The town is situated in a hilly environment. We had something to eat (a sandwich and some fries) and half an hour later we continued our trip.

One and a half our later we arrived at a strange formation of peculiar rocks: the Moeraki Boulders. The sphere-like rocks are located on the beach and on the shoreline in the sea. Some of those have not withstood the eternal battering of the surf and are disintegrated into many pieces. But many boulders still are complete, resisting the ocean. The geological origin of the boulders is crystalline. More details about the Moeraki Boulders can be found here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moeraki_Boulders

After taking lots of photos of the Moeraki Boulders, we continued our ride down South. Only a few kilometres further down the road is the turn off to Shag Point. At the end of the unpaved road is a parking lot. We walked a few hundred meters from the parking lot via a narrow trail to a view point that looks over a Yellow Eyed penguin habitat, down on the rocky beach. Sometimes very many penguins can seen from this view point and often none at all. We were lucky: we saw one penguin coming out of the sea and walking on the beach. So cute!

Around five we continued our drive further down South and leisurely drove to Dunedin. On the way, the road followed the railroad track and at a certain moment we overtook a steam train. Later we learnt why that steam train was going South, too... We arrived in Dunedin at the home a colleague mine, Mark, at 18:15. Time for a catch up, a by Mark's partner Helen prepared nice dinner and a pleasant evening. A good night's rest allowed us to recuperate from the first day of this trip travelling on the South Island.

The next day, Saturday after breakfast, Mark, Bea and I went down town. Dunedin is situated on hills and therefore walking up and down the streets can be exhaustive. We wandered to the historic railway station, which is a real gem and also is supposed to be the most beautiful railway station in NZ and one of the most beautiful railway stations in the world.

There we found out that on that exact day, the station celebrated its 100 years anniversary. This explained the steam train we saw yesterday. It also explained the six other steam trains that were lined up against the platforms, the people walking in 100 year old costumes, the cannon that fired a salute shot, the speeches presented by officials (such as one of the ministers) and the official cutting of the birthday cake!

We very much enjoyed ourselves with all this. When the festivities were all done, we wandered back to the city centre (called The Octagon, because its octagonal shape) and enjoyed a coffee at one of the outdoor cafes. Finally one of the things on our "to do" list was experiencing the views in Dunedin from a nearby vista point located on the top of Signal Hill. Mark offered us to drive up there. Although the weather was not completely clear, the views were impressive.

Then the time had arrived to move on. At half past one in the afternoon we said goodbye to Mark and Helen and drove off, in Southern direction. The drive was nice, be it not as sunny as yesterday. The only stop worth mentioning is a quick one at Balclutha, where we grabbed some sandwiches from the New World supermarket.

At a quarter past five we arrived in Invercargill at the home of friends of ours. We first had met Stephen and Annette during our Solar Eclipse trip to Lybia and Egypt, earlier this year. You can read a story of that trip here: http://beaandjpontour2006.blogspot.com/ Since then, we kept in touch via email and Skype. It was great to see them again and we had a fun time catching up. They had prepared a nice dinner and topped that off with a real Kiwi desert: pavlova. More information on pavlova: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pavlova_(food)

Most of the evening was spend catching up. Both of their kids were present, which every now and then contributed to the liveliness. Apart from chatting, Stephen and I roamed over the globe, using Google Earth on his Apple laptop computers.

The next day was Sunday and was spend exploring Invercargill. The weather was not so good as yesterday, with every now and then a rain shower. But the temperature was fine, especially in the sun in between the showers. The town houses forty thousand people and has been designed with wide streets; enough space available in these flat parts of New Zealand. The streets are laid out in a checkered pattern, which makes it easy to navigate through town. The town has all the services one might expect from a reasonably large provincial town, like stores of most large supermarket chains and typical "country-like" stores that sell heavy machines for the agrarians.

Close to the city centre is a large park, with many trees, foot paths, grass and a large bird cage, with very many multi-coloured birds, of which some of those produce heaps of noise. Bordering the park is the city museum. This museum houses a special animal: the Tuatara. It's a lizard. There are several present, in the museum's terrarium. We enjoyed a good lunch at a small restaurant, nearby.

Near the park and near the centre of the town, a historical water tower is present. It is not active anymore (water pressure these days is provided by pumps), but it constantly is in a stand-by mode and can be activated whenever the need would arise. The tower is open to the public and a visit to the top offers fine views over the town and its surroundings.

Situated half an hour driving South of Invercargill is the small village of Bluff. This is where State Highway 1 ends. Or, as the Bluff people say, "This is where State Highway 1 starts." :-) The end/start point of the highway is often referred to as the Southern most point of the New Zealand mainland (although the real Southern most point is located a bit more to the East) and it is marked with a sign post, listing the various places on earth, like the South Pole, the Equator, the Northern most point of New Zealand (Cape Reinga), and so forth.

After having enjoyed again a good dinner, while Bea and Annette chatted away, Stephen and I performed a "surgical" operation on one of his digital cameras. He wanted to have it adapted for performing star photography. (Stephen is anamateur astronomer, with even his own observatory in the back yard.) Without going into too much detail here, it is sufficient to say that this operation involved very many tiny screws and sweaty hand palms... But we succeeded and during the night that followed this evening, we went out to a dark spot nearby and did some star photography with the adapted camera, which turned out to be a success.

The next day, Monday, was already the final day of our too-short long-weekend. Stephen offered to accompany us to travel for a while with us on the Southern Scenic Route, an alternative road to travel back in the direction of Dunedin, where we had to drop off the rental car and catch our flight back to Wellington. Sadly it was raining a lot this day. Nevertheless we made the most of it and followed the scenic road, which offers coastal views and crosses the hilly pastures of the green Southland.

One of the "main" attractions on this road are the "Niagara Falls". Those can hardly be confused with the real ones, since this South New Zealand one is not more than a couple of very small rapids in a river without a name. Someone wanted to be funny and placed a sign next to those... But real nice falls are the McClean falls, also located on the Southern Scenic Route, a ten minute walk from the parking lot. Despite the still ongoing rain, those falls were worth a visit.

At the McClean falls we said goodbye to Stephen and his son and departed. We continued the route which ended the small town of Balclutha, where we anticipated to have a quick meal. Finding a place to have this late lunch turned out to be a disillusion: because of Labour Day, everything was closed. We continued to the next town, Milton. There we luckily were able to find a restaurant open and enjoyed our late lunch (which could now be called an early dinner): a cup of locally "home made" soup (very tasty) and a bowl of potato wedges.

At half past four, we had to leave Milton in a hurry, in order to be on time for dropping off the car at the rental car agency in Dunedin, which needed to be done before five thirty. At a quarter past five, just in time, we arrived in Dunedin at the Rent-a-Dent agency, with in total 870 km driven on the odometer. Only to find out that they were closed on Labour Day. After a short discussion via the telephone with the franchise owner, I convinced him that in the cause of customer-friendliness he should come to his office to pick us up and bring us to the airport, which is 22 kilometres South of the City Centre. And so it happened. I advised him to have serious talk with his Christchurch associate...

Since we left McLeans Falls, the rain had not stopped anymore. Both flights (to Christchurch and to Wellington) went smoothly, with not too much delay. Upon return in Wellington, Monday evening, we learnt that the North Island had suffered heaps amounts of rain and wind, during the last couple of days, which brought the traffic in the big cities to a standstill. We were lucky to have been away... Wellington was cold, with lots of rain and temperatures around 10. We turned on the electrical heaters in our home and had those running overtime...

This concluded our very pleasant long-weekend Down South, filled with enjoying nature and catching up with good friends.