South Island...back to B.C.

    The ferry looked just like a British Columbia ferry; the terminal looked like Tsawwassen terminal. As we sailed away, Jeanie took a photo of us from up on the hill where she walks her dogs. 

    A B.C. native wouldn’t be homesick if he came to the south island; the scenery is identical, and even the towns have the same names: Richmond, Nelson, Hope, and many others. Only the vegetation is a little different; the grape vines are the same, but we're in a beech forest region now, and there are still tree ferns and century plants (agave) - which are misnamed, because they only live from 10 to 30 years. They blossom once, and die. 

    As we boarded the ferry, we overheard a young lady backpacker carrying an enormous bag full of dirty laundry asking the gentleman at the information center where the Laundromat was. He laughed heartily. “I supposed he told you there were free showers on Fridays on the ferry crossing, too?  Those backpacker bus drivers…I think they get bored and dream up clever lies to tell the young ladies. Sometimes they ask where to change their money into south island currency, or where to get their passports stamped when they disembark at Picton.” The young lady howled, crest-fallen with horror at how well she'd been had. 

    Ah, well…Deb and I enjoyed the sun deck – the sun was actually shining today – and then sat in the bar during the open part of the crossing, ten feet from a four piece blues band who’d set up there and were playing their way across, selling CD’s, on their way to a blues festival. We watched a pod of bottle-nosed dolphins porpoising alongside, but the ferry was too fast for them and we got far ahead of them before I could position my camera. 

    The journey from Wellington to Picton took three hours. Between the two shortest points would take about an hour by boat, but a lot of swimmers have made the crossing, and the fastest made it in only 4 hours and 37 minutes…which is hard to believe if the dolphins couldn’t keep up to us. 

     Our ferry crossing photos are here.

    After enjoying the scenery of Picton, we negotiated hairpin turns to Nelson, then spent the night in Murchison at the home of Lian and Dave, two young Scots from Glasgow and south-west Scotland, not too far from Lesmahagow. They've been here for six months, and after a few other odd jobs, Lian has landed a job as a teacher. They love it in New Zealand, and might stay permanently. Dave was in Outdoor Ed, and is finding it a little more difficult to get equivalent employment here, but since this is the kayaking centre of the universe in New Zealand, he hopes things will fall into place for him eventually. 

    Murchison is the only flat valley in a ring of mountain ranges and a confluence of four major rivers, which is why it is so renowned for kayaking and white water rafting. It also appears to suffer from a bit of the "gouge the young backpackers" syndrome, but maybe I'm just being cynical; it is slightly remote, I suppose. 

    It sits on a major fault line, too. In 1929 it was the epicentre for the biggest earthquake in New Zealand, 7.8 on the Richter scale - felt up and down the length of the country. 17 people died, and houses on the fault were lifted up 14 feet. 

Typical tourists 

Gazing at gorgeous gorges 

Saturated with scenery 

    Leaving Murchison, we travelled to Westport through the Buller Gorge, the road clinging to granite verticals much of the way, including one spectacular granite overhang which the road engineers seem to believe remains safe. 

    Our travels today were mostly in rain, sometimes very heavy, but we were able to walk out and see the fur seal colony during a fortuitous gap in the weather. At the limestone Pancake Rocks and blowholes of Punakaiki we got hit by another downpour, but I did my best to get good photos anyway. 

    At the seal colony we saw several of the flightless New Zealand hen called the Weka, which they say is a bit "cheeky", but we found them fairly timid. 

    We saw fields of New Zealand "flax", which is what Maoris have used for centuries to make cloth, sails, rope, baskets, and many other things - but it actually looks rather like a sisal plant, not at all like European flax. And we saw many Nikau, the only indigenous New Zealand palm tree, which was used by the Maori for building their "whare" (houses) and for thatching them. 

    We've travelled across many single lane bridges in New Zealand, but on the way to Hokitika we travelled across one very long one that is also used by the train! They tell you who has the right of way if you arrive at the bridge at the same time; but if it is a train, guess who has the right of way? It's kind of freaky being half-way across that single lane bridge, straddling the tracks...what would you do if the train began coming across? Drive very fast in reverse, I suppose. 

    In my photo album you'll see a similar single lane situation going around Hawk's Crag - a long stretch that goes around a corner, around which you can't see whether there is a car at the other end, or worse, a large truck, getting ready to enter the single lane section of a couple of hundred metres. 

    On Saturday we arrived at Ann's house in Hokitika in time for "tea". Ann's pretty interesting: a widow, she leases out her farmland and has a seaside cottage in town that she rents out.  We stayed with her in her farmhouse.  She has worked in the tourist information in town, so she knows a lot about Hokitika. 

    Although she rents out her cottage by the day, she hosts couchsurfers for free as well, just for the fun and interaction she gets from it, and as a kind of "pay it forward" to the days when she travels herself and stays with hosts. On Sunday she showed us around town, we toured the museum and learned more about pounami, a.k.a. greenstone, a.k.a. jade. That was a major export from the one Maori tribe who controlled the south island, because the fine grained rock sharpens to a very sharp, hard point, making beautiful and useful adzes and weapons. 

    We learned about "whitebait", which is a major seasonal food treat caught in about 22 rivers down the west coast. We learned about the gold rush that happened here beginning in 1865. Then she took us to the "Jade Factory" and she told us confidentially that because the Maori have exclusive rights to collect jade in New Zealand, what the tourists are all buying here is actually shipped here from British Columbia, carved here, and polished in China! (However, when she read what I'd written here, she hastened to remind me that although we'd only visited the "Jade Factory" outlet with her, there is also a lot of locally sourced and Maori-carved jade items made from genuine New Zealand pounami which you can purchase here.) 

    After a drive out to the Hokitika Gorge to see the gorgeous green water (coloured by pulverized limestone suspension) Deb and I cooked her and a guest a dinner of Lamb Madras and Pork Chorizo sausages, with potato, broccoli and snow peas, Deb's special tomato salad, and fruit salad and ice cream. I wish we could stay longer - she's got fence painting and other chores to be done (she has just moved back to her farm from a few years working in Australia) but we are expected in Cromwell tomorrow evening. 

    Here are the photos of this portion of the trip.

Next destination: Cromwell