Around The World – New Zealand Part 1 can be found here.
It was a choppy crossing on the ferry from the North to South Island but we managed well enough. Being outside is the way to go for this – not just to help reorient yourself to the horizon to fend of seasickness but also for the views.
Land Ahoy!
3.5 hours later we were definitely ready to disembark in Picton, collect our rental car and head to our next accommodation – Straw Lodge Vineyard.
This is where pre-planning really paid off. We walked off the ferry to the nearby Avis rental car location to pick up our small SUV with 4 wheel drive which is essential for some of the rough roads we’ll be doing later on this trip. There was crowd all yelling at the agent and gesturing at the only SUV in the parking lot. All the other cars were sedans, and mostly compacts.
As we waded through the irate customers it became readily apparent that a large number of them had booked a lower class model intending to score a last minute upgrade. My wife had read online months earlier that this was nearly impossible to do in the South Island (also apparently Iceland) where SUVs with off road ability are at a premium and supply is very limited as many people do multi-week road trips.
It turned out the lone SUV was indeed ours and we quickly collected our keys and dashed off although we once again got in on the wrong side of the car.
It was a short drive through incredibly scenic Marlborough and we made it to Straw Lodge just in time for their wine and cheese hour (you may be noticing a theme, and yes that did play a role in our bookings).
It had been a long day so we kicked back to enjoy the sunset and plan our attack on the vineyards of Marlborough.
Over the next two days we visited an incredible number of vineyards, carefully limiting ourselves to only a few sips of the more exceptional wines. Among our absolute favourites was Spy Valley, Dog Point and my wife’s all time favourite sauvignon blanc – Cloudy Bay. The vineyards themselves were top notch and we were enjoyed an unseasonably warm spring for Marlborough – high 20s which probably wasn’t ideal for the grapes but was fantastic for kicking back and relaxing.
It’s a good thing we picked up an extra suitcase in Vietnam because we’re going to need it to carry all our wine home to Canada! We’ve carefully checked what our provincially controlled liquor store does and does not carry (and the price point) to make sure it’s worthwhile. We were surprised to find that it’s not much cheaper to buy the same bottle at the vineyard in New Zealand compared to an LCBO in Ottawa. At most we were looking at $2/bottle savings – so we’ll only be bringing home wines we can’t get at all in Ontario.
Tempting though it was, we couldn’t spend all our time in Marlborough wine tasting so we booked a day trip to Arapaoa Island for some hiking and bird watching.
The first section of the hike was steep but the views were incredible.
Yes, we did start way down on one of those beaches…
The hike ended at a lovely pebble beach and we had about 30 min to relax before the boat collected us. There were even dolphins!
Then back to Straw Lodge for another few nights before we headed further south to Queenstown. We’d originally planned to stay at a few places along the road from Marlborough to Queenstown but we enjoyed Straw Lodge and the region so much we extended our stay an extra few nights. Which meant that instead of breaking the trip up into 4 to 5 hours of daily driving we would instead be doing a single day of around 14 hours.
Thankfully the drive was very scenic and traffic was light.
And since we still needed a few breaks we decided to simultaneously stretch our legs and admire the Franz Josef Glacier.
However we did run into issues in the mountains just before Queenstown. We’d been downloading Google Maps for all our travels for the past few months. This meant that even without internet or even a proper cell signal we could track our blue dot and make sure we stayed on track.
We’d been warned that there was no cell signal many times during our trip and up until this drive our iPhone 4S had still managed to find enough to keep our little blue dot going. Right up until it was pitch black and we had to make a choice between 2 roads where there were no visible signs due to the fog.
We ultimately took the path that looked more paved. Not entirely paved, but with more asphalt than gravel. Still not sure if that was the faster or better route but we finally pulled into Queenstown after a very long day of driving.
The next day we set off to explore Queenstown which bills itself as the Adventure Capital of the World. And boy do they have a lot of crazy things you can do here. Bungee jumping? Check. Whitewater rafting? Check. Jet boats? Check. Paragliding? Check.
We decided to start off slowly by hiking in the mountains above Queenstown. There’s a convenient gondola up the mountain which we took and then we spent the next few hours watching streams of paragliders sail off the mountains from various places. It looked like lots of fun and terrifying. Maybe tomorrow…
The next day was a bit rainy so we decided to take a jet boat ride in Shotover Canyon since we were going to be wet anyway. Then we headed back to our rental condo and scrolled through TV movies until we settled on Yes Man with Jim Carrey which seemed oddly appropriate for Queenstown. Ultimately we decided that if the weather cleared for our last day we’d try paragliding which my wife had almost done in Switzerland about a decade before, but backed out at the last minute.
Our final Queenstown day dawned bright and clear and we decided to get to the gondola in time for the first paragliding time slot of the day (and before we could chicken out). It was exhilarating and absolutely terrifying. Especially because I went second which meant I watched my wife run off a mountain. She later explained she hadn’t really thought through the logistics of paragliding. She had a vague idea you threw the sail up in the air and the wind caught it and off you soared. In reality you and the instructor run as fast as you can off a cliff.
We managed to get some great thermals so the flight was considerably longer than I’d thought it would be – probably close to 20 minutes. Enough time that I slowly relaxed and felt more like I was sitting in a very high swing and less like I should be re-examining my life choices.
We then landed in a football field attached to a school (what do they do during recess?), unclipped ourselves and – on slightly wobbly legs – made our way back into central Queenstown.
From Queenstown we headed down to the southern coast of New Zealand to spend a few nights in Curio Bay.
But first we had to stop at the southern most point of the South Island – Slope Point.
About 20 minutes of driving later we arrived at Curio Bay. Curio Bay is part of the Catlins, much of which is a nature preserve.
Our Curio Bay accommodation was lovely. And fortunately we read the guest book before we headed to bed that night. We started with the most recent entry which said “I am so thankful I read this guest book before trying to sleep” so with that ominous warning and clear Blair Witch vibes we immediately flipped to the beginning of the book to see what we’d gotten ourselves into… poltergeists? Axe-murders for neighbours? Nope, the answer was… blue penguins? Apparently they like to nest under the porch. Not sure penguins required such strong warnings but I guess we’ll find out.
And right around 9pm the plaintive crying, scrabbling, tapping noises started.
Hint: You’ll want to turn your volume up
Hoping to see penguins we turned on our porch light planning to head down to the beach only to find a small colony of penguins on our porch banging on the glass. We turned off the lights and gave them about 30 minutes until the noises stopped at which point we decided it was safe to try to walk the few metres through the sand dunes to the ocean where the adults would be coming ashore to feed the juveniles.
Spoiler – there were penguins everywhere.
And they weren’t waddling the way we expected them to, they were mostly lying on their stomachs “swimming” their way through the dunes. After narrowly avoiding stepping on them we decided to retreat and try seeing penguins the next night at one of the designated viewing spots.
They’re very hard to spot but there are some very rare yellow-eyed penguins in there.
The sea lions were considerably easier to find.
Curio Bay was incredibly cold to swim in but we’d been advised that there was an endangered Hector’s dolphin with calf who loved to come check out swimmers and you couldn’t approach them but if they came to you it was fine as long as you didn’t try to touch or feed them.
So we braved wading into the water (around 15 celsius) and were promptly rewarded with a mama and calf coming right up to splash and swim around us. We only managed a few minutes with them before the cold drove us back to the beach – the dolphins had far more fun playing with a surfer wearing a full wetsuit farther along the bay.
From the Catlins we headed to our final destination, Dunedin.
We decided to break up the drive with a visit to the Cathedral Caves.
And a short hike around Otago.
All too soon we left the gorgeous countryside behind and found ourselves in Dunedin. We felt the city was grey and a bit dreary but that may just have been a reflection of our moods as we contemplated flying home to Canada and resuming our lives.
It’s been a wonderful adventure and definitely something we’ll remember for the rest of our lives.
Thanks for following along with my #ThrowBackThursday series and keep an eye out for our more recent (and upcoming!) adventures.