South Island Road trip

As I rage against the dying of the light, or at least the dying of the warmth. I reminiscence about my classic summer road trip in the South Island. Chris and I started in Christchurch and with the cheapest hire camper. When I say cheap I mean a hand-me-down van that it was too shameful for the company to have any branding. It came complete with dents, a missing Toyota badge and dodgy paint job. Exactly what I wanted! No time was wasted as we headed to Lake Tekapo for a poke around then set up camp in Wanaka.

From Wanaka we bypassed Queenstown for Milford Sound. The drive was long but beautiful. I did this drive once before in the winter and this turned out to be quite a different experience. The snow we saw was like a light sprinkle of icing sugar compared to the thick blanket of fondant that covered the valleys. One thing that hasn’t changed is the presence of of Kaka (native parrots). Kaka are well known for eating the rubber off cars. They hungrily crept towards the van when we stopped to take photos. I don’t have any photos of the cheeky creatures because I was busy threatening them with a snowball. The cruise around Milford Sound was really pristine. The seals waved lazily at us as we drifted past. We set up camp not too far from Milford Sound that night and got massacred by sandflies.

The trip to Queenstown was delayed by a flat tire on the fore-mentioned van. I was impressed by how many people stopped to check that everything was ok. But we get there in the end and were greeted with an endless flock of tourists. I can’t judge too much as we did the tourist thing too and took a lunge up the hill and went for lunge rides. Needless to say, the view up top was marvelous.

The last full day was spent limping back up North in the poor compromised van. We spent the night in Timaru and went to the beach in the evening to try spot some Little Blue Penguins. The adults fish during the day and come back in the evening to feed their young. We spotted some penguin chicks but didn’t see any adults.

The plane ride home went smoothly. Although New Zealand is relatively isolated, especially compared major European cities, a new adventure is still only a short ride away.