Our road trip itinerary -Dec. 26 - Jan. 4

Our first few weeks in New Zealand were spent in Christchurch with family.  On Boxing Day (December 26 for you philistines who don't know what that is) we packed up two cars and headed south along the eastern side of the South Island.


Our overall plan was to spend two nights at each destination, thus giving us at least one full day to explore locally.  In hind sight there was no place we stopped that we wouldn't have like to spend more time.  We encountered a lot of travelers who were spending one night and moving on.  I am not sure what their goal was unless they simply had a checklist to mark off they had "been" there.


While early in the planning process we had talked about camping, we instead opted to get lodging at hostels (or backpackers accommodations as many are called) where we could prepare our own meals whenever we wished and sleep in actual beds. Except for the lodging at the Holiday Park already mentioned, we were very pleased with our experience. 

Red Kettle Hostel, Oamaru

On December 26 we drove to Oamaru and stayed at the Red Kettle Hostel.  It has been around for some years as we met a bookseller in town that had stayed there 23 years ago.


On the morning of the 28th we hit the road after breakfast and headed south again. We had planned to stop to see the Moeraki Boulders 40kms south of Oamaru, but it had started to rain which along with having to forge a stream on the foot trail damped our enthusiasm for actually fetting close enough to say we had been there.


Our next destination was a backpackers, McFarmers on the Otaga Peninsula just next to Dunedin.  We stopped en route at a cheese factory where we sampled cheeses and bought
 a few to enjoy later on.  As it was still raining, we stopped in Dunedin and visited 

McFarmer's Backpackers, Portabello

Otago Museum and Discovery World located on the university campus.  By mid-afternoon the rain had given up trying to annoy us and we headed out the winding coastal road to McFarmer's.  In a gorgeous location, we had the entire cottage to ourselves.  While there we had easy access to the nature attractions on the peninsula, but only touched Dunedin on our way out on Dec. 30.

We continued south to the Catlins, an area of great natural beauty and a long history of Maori settlement and early European whalers, and our next stop in Owaka.  For a tiny settlement of 400 souls it had the biggest hostel yet, the YHA Catlins Coast, situated in an old hospital (Lolly insisted it was a retired insane asylum!).

YHA Catlins Coast, Owaka

We spent New Year's Eve here on the beach with rolling, roaring ocean, gulls trying to be heard above the roar and snow white cliffs extending out into the sea and changing color from white to creamy yellow to red as the sun set behind us.

In the morning we breakfasted and headed inland passing through Queenston on our way to Glenorchy.

Our "digs" in Glenorchy

Queenston was a zoo!  It is perhaps the most popular tourist destination on South Island.  I also get the impression that, except for us,  few of the crowds of people promenading the walks and greens in the town's center were over 30.  I was happy to press on to Glenorchy where we anticipated fewer hungover  (it was New Year's Day!) young people.  Of course, that proved to be only partially true an the Holiday Park we had booked was very crowded and I surmised many were still celebrating the turn of the calendar page.

Kinloch Lodge

We desperately searched for alternative lodging and moved the next morning to Kinloch, where we had, for my tastes, the most delightful bed-down of the trip, Kinloch Lodge.  I could easily spent a week there just sitting and enjoying the scenery and ambiance of the place.  Being, as the owner told Bob and I, in a rain forest, it did rain.  Lots and all night.  But it cleared up again in the morning and we decided to do some hiking on our way out.


We headed north to Lake Tekapo, stopping at one of the Bunging Jumping enterprises on our way.  We only watched!  I am still puzzled by the extreme sports mindset.  People come from all over the world to take in the extraordinary raw beauty of this country, at great expense I might add, and seem to be more heel bent on ignoring it all so they can have these adrenal thrills jumping off a bridge or para-sailing down a cliff of kayaking off a waterfall.  I don't get it.  Also, there is an economic conundrum: our train and ferry ride from Christchurch to Wellington, which took a full day each way and covered very scenic countryside dotted with vineyards and along a marvelous coastline, cost NZ$198.  A jump off  the bridge, lasting only seconds, costs NZ$180.  Go figure.

Backpackers Inn (main building) in Tekapo.

At Tekapo we signed in to Tailor Made Backpackers for an enjoyable evening.  Lolly and I walked down to the beach that evening and looked across the lake at the mountains in the northeast.  As the sun slide down toward the horizon, we turned to witness one of the most spectacular sunsets either of us have ever seen.A long billowing blanket of low lying clouds stretched toward us.  The sun's rays reflected off the bottoms of these clouds yielding an array of creamy yellows, rosy reds and violet-purples against a darkening sky.


In the morning we ate, packed up and went to the hot springs there at the edge of town.  The springs or spa have three pools, each with a different temperature of water.  The warmest was only 99F, so not like, say, Banff Springs which is almost uncomfortably hot, but very nice, nonetheless.  The view from the spa was an added benefit: the lake and mountains shining brightly in the morning light.After soaking for over an hour we dragged our limp bodies out of the water and made for the beach-side park that sprawls along the hind side of the town proper where we constructed a lunch.


Back on the road, we motored our way back to Christchurch and the Bower house in Sumner.


This is an overview of our trip and I plan to tell about each stop in a little more detail, so be patient and come back again.

Back home

We are back home after a wearing trip reversing our route that we took to get to New Zealand.  For some reason it was a much more stressful trip than our outward bound journey.  The first leg of our flight was canceled so we had to change planes in Wellington to get to Auckland and our trans-Pacific flight.  For some reason the plane over the ocean seemed more uncomfortable than on our westbound trip and we slept very little.


We rested for a few days in San Francisco before we boarded a 6 am flight to Chicago.  Had to get up early to make that one!  Then we had a 3-hour wait in ORD to catch out Madison flight.  


Our inbound flight unloaded us at Gate C3 and the screens in O'Hare showed our next flight departing at Gate F16.  If you are familiar with the layout of O'Hare you'd know that is lengthy hike, maybe about half the distance to Midway.  It took us about 20 minutes, schlepping our carry-on bags, in which, to avoid our checked luggage being overweight, we had loaded all the heavy items we were bringing back: books, shoes and, I think, an anvil.  


The seats at gate F16 were all full so we sat across the walkway at Gate F17, where we could keep an eye on the gate.  We got up a couple of times to get an ice cream and, later, a coffee.  I glanced at the board to see if there might be any other United flights to Madison as there was one around 1:30 pm which would have been nice to be on.  


At about 2:40 pm we walked over to F16 and no one was there!  I dashed over the the departures board and was shocked to see the departure gate for our flight was now Gate C5! Dunnerwetter, nei!  We were suddenly faced with the walk from Hell and had only 20 minutes before our plane 's departure.  We had a short wasteful conversation with the United personnel at F16, asked them to contact our departing flight and let them know we were coming and rushed away through the halls of O'Hare toward C5.  We consolidated the baggage so I could pull the wheeled case with my satchel on top and Lolly hurried along a few step behind me her knees suffering every step.


Miraculously we arrived with six minutes to spare, or so I thought.  Everyone was boarded and the agent was shuffling through some papers. Handing him our boarding passes, we told him we were on that flight and had been waiting at F16 for three hours for it and...


"The door's already closed," he said calmly.  "They can't open it again"


"What?" I thought.  "Has it been welded shut?"


"What about our luggage?"


It's on the flight to Madison."


After some heated words and his repeated responses of "closed" and can't open" and us standing there looking at our airplane through the window, he had checked later flights (all full) and we finally ended up with bus tickets to Madison.  He reassured us our luggage would be at MSN and we struck out for the bus depot (while our airplane sat outside the window). 


The bus depot was closer than Gate F16 so that was a small relief for us and the bus was scheduled to leave at 4 pm.  But the bus was not destined for the Madison airport.  It was scheduled to stop in Janesville then some Park 'n' Ride lot in Madison with a final destination of the Memorial Union on the UW campus at 7 pm!
 Now the back story of this adventure is that Laura was on her way from Mineral Point to pick us up at the Madison airport. We had already triggered her trip while were quietly relaxing at gate F16.  We called her and informed her of our fiasco.  She was not quite to Verona so she turned around and went back home as she did not want to sit around in Madison for three hours.


We sat in the bus depot for awhile, but a young Chinese man was loudly blabbing on his cellphone and Lolly found it so irritating she asked that we wait outside for the bus. Although I can usually block outside conversations out, I had to admit it was irritating.  Spanish sounds lyrically romantic; French, somehow sexual; German, instructive.  Even Japanese sounds somehow pleasantly exotic (Sayanora).  But Chinese is utterly ugly, sounding like chickens being strangled.


Our bus finally arrived and it filled quickly, mostly with Chinese.  I thought we were bound for Shanghai, but, no, these Chinese were all bound for the University of Wisconsin.  One of the few things we export to China is education.  A young Indian couple with a small and very quiet baby sat in front of us and the seat directly behind Lolly was filled by -Guess who?- the guy with the cell phone!  The bus driver informed the passengers of our itinerary and asked that people with cell phones be brief in any calls and not to put them on speaker phone.  Then we were off. More or less.  Our Asian travelling companion was very much on!  He choked and strangled chickens and other beasts for 45 minutes -just beyond Beloit.  Several times he paused for a long time and I thought maybe he had choked himself talking so much, but then he would revive and go on again in full force.


The bus trip was an uneventful, overly long ride.  We arrived at the Memorial union just before seven and connected with Laura several minutes later.  Then we had to back track to get to the city's airport.  At the airport our baggage or anyone from united was nowhere to be seen.  By a most fortunate turn of events, a United flight had just arrived and people were milling around the luggage carousel.  The employee behind the screen loading the bags onto the carousel eventually appeared and Lolly was on him like a hawk.  She retrieved our bags from the secured baggage room and we were finally on our way to Mineral Point.


After collapsing in our bed at Laura's house, we arose mid-morning on Sunday to travel to Galena to recover our dog.  Nancy and Lary were  almost reluctant to give him up.  Loki had exercised every dog that came there and had gone to bed each evening at 6:30 sharp.  But he was excited to see us, jumping shoulder high and wiggling with excitement when we came in the door.  When it came time to leave he laid down sadly on a doggie bed, his legs trembling.  When I said, "Let's go!", he dashed out the door and flew down the stairs on his way to the car.


We got back to Laura's in the late afternoon, and decided to rest there another night before making the final leg of our journey.  A bad choice.  The weather deteriorated overnight and we were faced with sub-zero temperatures and blowing snow as we got on the road in the morning.  We cautiously picked our way along the frozen road and decided to call a friend in Madison to see if we could find sanctuary at her place for the balance of the day.  We spent the balance of the day there and the next morning the roads were not treacherous so we drove the remaining 150 miles home with sunshine brightening our day the last half of the trip.


In all it took us seven days to get back home, arriving exhausted.  Our heads were filled with so many things now including the sadness of leaving family in New Zealand and the joy of being back home.  I guess all trips start with the excitement of impending adventure and end with the bittersweetness of  days lost to memory and the pleasure of homecoming.

Summer Sumner Christmas

This was our first experience with Christmas in a warm climate.  Not only warm but actually summer.  It was actually funny to see the decorations in the city with references to sleighs, and snow and Santa Claus all bundled up in his red underwear.  Caroler took over the Cathedral singing, "Let it snow, let it snow" and "Rudolf, the Red Nosed Reindeer" 

All around the Christmas tree...

Getting a hold of a Christmas tree was a bit of a challenge.  We saw some lots with trees for sale in the morning, but when Bob went back afternoon, they were all gone.  He finally found a "Cut your own" and brought home a Douglas fir. It resembled our trees here in that it was green.  What a sad tree it was.  The ends of the branches were soft and drooped over making hanging ornaments a difficult and temporary effort.  The branch would hang over and the ornament would slowly slide down to the end and off onto the floor.  It finally dawned on me that there was nothing wrong with the tree except that it had been cut in the middle of its growing season.  The ends of the branches were in there growth stage as they would be anywhere in  the world in early summer and would not harden up into wood until later in the season at the end of the summer or early autumn.

Our fish shop

Deciding on an appropriate Christmas dinner took us in a new direction.  While there were ample supplies of turkey and hams in the shops, we decided cuisine more appropriate for the South Seas would be in order.  We decided on seafood: oysters and fish.  We found a lovely fish shop recommended by friends and drove down to inspect their catch.


Everyone rose early on Christmas morning and we all opened gifts followed by a lovely breakfast.  It was a fairly 

 

 reasonable day, a little cloudy, but warm, so we spent a lot of our time sitting on the deck.  When dinner time rolled around, Bob fired up the grill and dinner was cooked.  We sat down to grilled oysters on the half shell and fresh ahi tuna steaks accompanied with potatoes and fresh salad and a fine New Zealand wine.

Ahi tuna steaks

Oysters broiled on half shell

Christmas in the summer is OK. 

Avery and Rowan enjoy a scary story about trolls

Mid-summer solstice

Looking east to Taylor's Mistake

 The mid-summer solstice occurred in Christchurch on December 21 and it was for us and many others a very special event.  It was in fact a triple event that we will remember always.  The  longest day (sorry, the shortest day for you northern latitude folks), A full moon and a total eclipse of the moon beginning at 9:15 pm!

The light begin to sparkle in Christchurch

Ships lay at anchor off the coast.

We went up to a park high on the volcanic ridge separating Taylor's Mistake from Sumner and waited for events to unfold. As the sun set in the west, the clouds were illuminated with bands of gold and scarlet over CHCH.  A bank of clouds hung over the eastern sky obscuring the moon as it rose.  A couple of ships at sea were brightly lit and seemed to cast thee only light to the east.  We were gathered along the hillside. 

 Bob had brought his guitar and was playing and singing a few quiet songs as we waited.  There were many small groups assembled here and there talking quieting and waiting for a glimpse of the moon.  A few photographers stood with long lens pointing to the horizon hoping for a break in the low lying clouds.

Slowly the moon regained is post in the night sky.

The sky darkened.  We began to lose hope that the clouds would clear enough to see something, anything as the moon rose hidden by their cloak.  Then suddenly about 9:40 pm the moon cloaked in a rose-colored shroud pushed through the mist and showed itself.  

There was an audible breathe of joy and awe among the many gather on the mountainside and we watched it slowly climb into the heavens.  At first a dusty rose-colored disc shone dully on us, but soon a sliver of silver white light peeked from its edge and slowly grew as the minutes clicked by.

We quietly watch this phenomenon, savoringly the light flowing down on us and finally, when it was about three-quarters clear of the earth's shadow, we walked slowly down the hill in the moon glow and went home to a restful night of sleep.

A night to remember.

All shook up

Early yesterday morning (in NZ anyhow) I had just started talking to Bob on Skype when his video image visibly shook for a few seconds. "Another earthquake", he said nonchalantly. The second already that morning.  More were to follow.


On September 4 last year, just after 4am, Christchurch experienced a 7.1 earthquake.  Most adroit followers of world news knew of that event, which completely disappeared from the newsworthy radar within three days (I mean, J-Lo's romantic involvements are far more interesting than an earthquakes on the other side of the world!).  Since that initial quake there have been over 4400 (!!) aftershocks. If you want to see more about Christchurch earthquakes click here!


In the world of devastating quakes, the CHCH shaker created less excitement than most, not because of its force -which was pretty worthy of attention- but because there was no loss of life and only moderate damage.  Now it is still a BIG deal in CHCH because businesses and homeowners are still dealing with damage and cleanup.  Parts of the City Centre are cordoned off, many homes have been condemned and tourism has suffered. But because of conscientious adherence to building codes for over half a century most damage was minor.  Older brick buildings frequently lose their masonry cornices, tumbling bricks down into the streets, but, fortunately so far, few people have been standing below to watch the flying bricks.


That's not to say that the quakes aren't unnerving.  Every little shake sets people on edge. Yesterday was no exception.  The Christchurch Press ran an article about the level of anxiety in many Canterburians. So did the on-line news service Stuff.


I chatted briefly with an 82-year old resident while I was visiting the Christchurch Art Gallery about the scale and effect of the earthquakes.  She was mostly disturbed by the damage being caused to the old buildings, "that's our history".


She was personally not too anxious, "Heck, I'm 82, why should I be afraid of something falling on me?"

Braces added to the walls of the Museum blend into the motif of the building.

Some of the older buildings are still vulnerable and some may be lost.  The cathedral made it through the September quake fairly well (at least it was open when we arrived) but was fenced off when we returned from our road trip in January. I saw several historic buildings -circa 1880-90- that had huge steel braces holding up the exterior walls.  It seems that some, like the museum were retrofitted sometime earlier. But history is at risk, no doubt about it.

Steel braces on the old theater in Littelton hold the building's brick front wall in place.

The fear of earthquakes and the potential loss of historic sites are two additional factors affecting tourism.  Already the world economy and the weaker US dollar are  taking a toll. But if someone has the money to travel and has been thinking about New Zealand, it is still a grand place to visit.

Return from Wellington

After four days in Wellington we rose early on a Monday morning and began our trip back to Christchurch.  We had time to brew a cup of coffee (a challenge in the hostel as there may be dozens of tea pots but nary a coffee pot or a resemblance of one, but we were prepared, having two lovely French press cups for camper's from Bob) and pick up a lunch we had prepared the night before.  Our plan was to eat breakfast on the ferry -they have a cafeteria and our sack lunch on the train early in the afternoon.


We boarded a shuttle bus (NZ$3) and traveled to the ferry dock, endured the long queues to get our boarding passes and walked the long passage to the gangway.  Again we did not score window seats, but the weather was much more pleasant on our return than the windy voyage we had experienced  a few day earlier.  We claimed two of the reclining seats on Deck 7 with our jackets once the ship was underway and headed for the cafeteria.  


There was the usual array of sandwiches tightly wrapped in cellophane, neat rows of pricey, high calorie desserts and a few muffins to boot, but we had our intentions set on the "hot breakfasts": scrambled eggs, toast, rashers, potatoes. 


The letdown was staggering!  I ordered only the eggs and toast with a little butter.  The bacon looked more like slabs of fried fat.  The scrambled eggs proved to be one of the most disgusting things I ever ate without wagering money.  They had obviously began as scrambled egg, i.e., whipped up, but I think instead of frying them, they boiled them in water.  Whatever, it was a wet gooey mass that was difficult to masticate and swallow,  Water just oozed out of them as you chewed.  To make it worse, the water that had drained out of them on my plate saturated my toasts, changing them into soggy Dr. Scholl's.  


Travelers note: Bring your own food on public conveyances.


We ate our pastrami and cheese sandwiches along with some lovely fruit early that afternoon.  We did buy a couple of beers in the dining car  to wash them down.

Windy City

Having grown up in Chicago, I heard the title given my city often.  I remember one cold winter's evening when I was downtown and the wind was rushing up Washington from the lake -an experience that even made brass monkeys shiver.  It was many years later that I learned that the expression, "Windy City" was actually coined relative to the political wind associated with the lobbying efforts to make Chicago the home of the World Columbia Exposition and only secondarily meteorological in nature.


Based on my life experience, Wellington, the capital of New Zealand, easily captures the world title for Windy City.  Wind gusts up to 90 kph are not uncommon.  The city is situated between two walls of land which extend out into the bay creating a venturi effect as the wind comes in from the sea.  Once it blew me into the street while I was off balance.

Off to Wellington

Thursday we headed to Wellington via train and ferry.  The train ride was very nice: big panoramic windows to view the countryside.  Lots of hills and meadows at first usually inhabited by Sheep and cattle, some quite big dairy herds. 


When we finally touched on the coast just south of Kaikoura we saw the sea again in its full fury.  North of Kaikoura we began to see lots of fur seals on the rocks and boulders along the shore.


We transferred to a ferry at Picton.  The ride across the strait was about 3.5 hours.  Windy, windy, windy, but getting warmer.  We stayed inside the boat for most of the trip.  A pod of dolphins scooted along our side for a while and then dropped back to entertain others, I guess.  



 We took a shuttle to the YHA Wellington City hostel, which is very nice and set up our living quarters there for the four days we will be here.

Lord of the Rings

We are at the Kinloch Lodge on the east shore of Lake Wakatipu.  On the road to our lodge we were sure we were deriving on the same path that Frodo and his friends had to dodge into the brush to hide from the black riders.  For my taste, this was the most beautiful place we stayed and the nicest lodging.

Road to Kinloch

Across the lake

Possum Hunters Rendezvous

On New Year's Day we traveled to Glenorchy by way of Queenstown, a popular destination on Lake Wakatipu. Queenstown was bedlam.  It was as crowded with tourists as Fisherman's Wharf on a busy summers day -mostly under-30's with hangovers from the night before.  The actual population of this town is something like 3000, but on NYD it was more like 20,000!  We ate lunch in the park alongside the beach and then headed on to Glenorchy where we had reservations in a holiday camp.


When we arrived at the holiday camp we were appalled.  It was wall-to-wall with motor homes, camping trailers, tents and people.  By comparison, KOA would be an exclusive resort. The cabins we had reserved were about the size and structure of the utility sheds available at Menard's; ours had two cots, one at each side, and a small fold-down table in between.  A small frame building housed the "kitchen facilities", dining area and a couple of sofas for lounging.  These facilities would have been alright for 20 or so people, but there was a long queue to use either the food prep area or sinks for cleaning up.  


There were two bathhouses.  The one nearest our "cottage" had two sinks, two toilet stalls and two showers.  Needless to say, with over two hundred people using the facilities they were not tidy.  We cooked our supper on one of the grills outside and, as there was a change in the weather, ate in the rain.


Many of the "guests" had traveled from their home bases to be here for New Year's Eve and were still in a celebratory mind, staggering and shouting with beer bottles in hand.  One of our entourage dubbed the entire experience as a possum hunters rendezvous.  Not all of our fellow campers were snockered.  We chatted with some of them around the grills while preparing supper.  Bobby commented on how yummy the kebobs one fellow was fixing looked and he gave us some to try.  Another bushy bearded guy (he looked like a possum hunter!) had recently returned from the States and a trans-America motorcycle trip including a pilgrimage to S.  Another guy in a wheelchair 


We had unfortunately registered for two nights, but had no intention of staying a second if at all possible to find other accommodations.  This seemed like a somewhat tenuous enterprise as everyone in New Zealand was on official holiday for at least four days.  Alison and I went around  Glenorchy examining the lodging to see what was available, affordable and might meet our needs.  Nothing there!  We sat in the beer garden of one of the pubs to review our options over a pint.  The weather had broken and sun was showing off snow covered peaks to the north.  We searched our copy of the Lonely Planet Guide to New Zealand and found a listing for backpackers in Kinloch across the lake and about 25 km by road.