Mom and Dad Come to New Zealand

Hey Folks! Hope all is well in everyone’s lives these days. I’ve got a couple weeks behind on this whole blogging thing so it will take a while to catch up. We will upload a bunch of blogs again when we have free or fast internet. The internet over here tends to cost quite a bit.

We have had an action packed last couple of weeks. I met up with my parents on Feb. 13 in Christchurch where we picked up the rental campervan. It was great to see them. After signing all the papers for the rental camper and picking up a bunch of groceries, we were off for a 10 day whirl wind trip of the South Island. We headed west through Arthur’s Pass which is a very scenic and cool drive. I tried my best to fill them in with as much info I knew about the area, plants, birds, etc. and they filled me in with all the Manitoba gossip. We made a few stops at some scenic lookouts and what have you.

At the lookout in the pass, a kea decided to land on our camper. The kea is a cool mountain parrot native to NZ. We made it to Greymouth on the west coast that evening before setting up camp for the night.

The next morning we headed to Shantytown after having some breakfast. It is an old gold mining town that has been restored to look the same as it did during the mining days. All the buildings are full of antique displays. While there we took a short steam engine ride up to an old sawmill on the bush. There were a few weka (one of NZ’s flightless birds) running around up there. We were then shown how to pan for gold in the gravel and were given a chance to do it ourselves. Mom thought she got the most gold but I of course thought I beat her by a flake or two. We spent a few hours there before heading south to Hokitika.

At the I-site in Hokitika, we booked a heli-hike on the Fox Glacier for the next day. Things were quite booked up because it was Chinese New Year so we didn’t have much choice. We also went and visited the National Kiwi House so Mom and Dad could see a live kiwi. There were also tuataras and giant female eels, the oldest of which (called Grandma) was thought to be 130 years old! Those eels are quite creepy-looking things. Mom got to feed them some meat as well. We then headed to the Jade Factory where Dad bought Mom a little Valentine’s gift.

We headed south towards the glaciers through the dense rainforest of the West Coast. It reminded Mom and Dad a bit of Costa Rica with such dense forest. We stayed in Franz Joseph that night at a very nice rainforest holiday park nestled right amongst all the fern trees.

In the morning we headed to a lookout of the Franz Joseph glacier which was a short but steep hike. It was quite a nice view with all the Rata trees flowering up on the mountains. We then headed to Fox Glacier where we had a heli-hike booked that afternoon but unfortunately it was cancelled because of low cloud. We booked again for the next morning hoping the weather would co-operate and then went on a couple hour hike to check out some native bush and to view the glacier.

Franz Joseph Glacier

Fox Glacier

The next morning we were in luck as it was clear enough for take off. The helicopter ride was really cool with the 14 km glacier looking so small and Mount Tasman and Mount Cook towering above it. We hiked around the ice for a couple of hours. The ice was a bright blue colored in the crevices and within the ice caves which was really neat. All in all it was a great adventure.

 Mom and Dad

 Our Guide Scott Working Away

 Ice Cave

 Dad head First in a Hole....Not

After completing the heli-hike, we headed south towards Wanaka. It was quite the beautiful drive. We made stop offs at a few scenic lookouts including a couple of waterfalls and the Haast blue pools. The vegetation really changed from being a rainforest to being arid with a few scrubs and grasses. It is one of the things I find really cool about New Zealand. A couple hours drive and it’s like you are in a completely different place.

 Blue Pools

The next morning, we kept heading south. We made a brief stop in Queenstown, where we booked an overnight boat cruise in Doubtful Sound. Doubtful Sound is one of 14 fjords (made by glaciers) located in Fjordland National Park. It has been voted the 2nd most beautiful place in New Zealand just behind Milford Sound which is also in Fjordland. That night we stayed at Possum Lodge in Manapouri which had many similarities to the Red Green Show with a lot of character. It was sweet.

We got onto a boat to take us across Lake Manapouri. The views were spectacular with the mountains coming right up out of the lake.

At the far end of the lake there was a hydro-electric plant that was very different to the dams I’m used to seeing back home. It had unseen pipes leading hundreds of meters under ground with generators at the bottom. The power company also made it possible to get to Doubtful Sound by building the most expensive road in New Zealand between Lake Manapouri and Doubtful Sound. We jumped on a bus to take the journey across the pass. We were lucky that it was clear and we got a view from the top into the sound. It rains 200 days of the year here, so clear days aren’t that easy to come by.

Doubtful Sound

We hoped off our bus and climbed aboard our home for the night.

There were only 8 other people on the boat for the trip which made it nice and personable. We were the league of nations with a Dutch couple, a British couple, a German couple, and an Aussie couple. Words can’t describe how cool it is to see mountains rising straight up out of the sea. Not 20 mins into our journey, we came across a pod of Bottlenosed dolphins. How neat is that! We continued out towards the Tasman Sea and stopped at a large colony of seals on the way. There was also some Blue penguins in the water along with one Fjordland Crested penguin. That’s pretty neat!

We headed out of Doubtful Sound and north along the coast. We hadn’t been traveling very long when eagle-eyes Whipper aka Dad saw a whale breeching and crashing down into the sea. We got right next to the Southern Right whale before it plunged into the deep never to be seen again. It was very neat. We continued along and entered into Thompson Sound, where we got the fishing rods out to try our luck. We needed fish to eat and fish to bait the cray pots with. We were only fishing 20 feet offshore, but the water was still at least 100 feet deep or more. Immediately upon putting your line down, the fish would start biting. As we soon learned, it was smaller fish and they were hard to hook. We caught many small red fish that could be used in the cray pots. Then the English guy on the boat caught something that made his rod bend a bit more. You could tell he hadn’t fished much before by the way he was handling things and making such a commotion and it definitely made for some entertainment. He finally got it to the edge of the boat, but he was having trouble so I helped him get it into the boat. It was a nice sized Blue Cod which are very tasty. We kept on fishing and caught many baitfish along with the odd tarakihi that are also good eating. While I was away apparently Dad hooked onto something quite big but he got entwined with the Englishman and the line broke. Just another fishing story to tell.

Once we were done fishing, we moved over into a bay in Thompson Sound where we stayed the night. We had an amazing supper of fresh crayfish caught the night before (New Zealand’s lobster), fish, roasted lamb, and a variety of salads. We spent the night talking with our fellow travelers over a few drinks. The Dutch man was a sports psychologist for the Dutch Olympic Team for the last few games and had a lot of good stories to tell.

The next morning we were awaked by the generator starting up at around 6:30. At that time Dad and I got up to help lift up the cray pots that we had put in the water the night before. The first one had 7 and the second had 3 plus a large moray eel that was used for the next night’s bait. We spent the morning cruising back to the start of the fjord.

 Eel in Cray Pot

Once back in cell phone reception Roberta called and said she was back in Queenstown, so we headed straight back there to pick her up.

P.S. Type in Neature Walk into U-Tube to see about how neat nature is. It's good stuff!