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.