NZ South Island 3 - The Catlins and the Sounds

Lake Manapouri

After Dunedin I drove to The Catlins, a national park on the southern tip of mainland NZ. Not exactly the most southern part of NZ as Stewart Island and some outlying NZ-owned rocks lie further towards the pole, and although remote it's not exactly what I'd call the wild frontier - Fiordland in the south west definitely takes that title. I drove through swathes of forest and farmland and around rugged coastline to get to Curio Bay, a cute, windswept hamlet with only a few backpacker places and a caravan park for accommodation. It was dusk and the local shop-cum-caravan-park-reception had a few packets of instant noodles, which were to be my only dinner option. The bay is the site of a petrified forest: some time in the Jurassic period, heavy rain fell on nearby volcanoes and the resulting ash-filled water swept through the forest, impregnating the trees with silica and turning them to stone in a matter of weeks. The wood didn't rot as it happened so quickly and therefore became preserved in situ. As if this wasn't a rare enough phenomenon, this tiny bay is also one of the few places in the world to see Yellow-Eyed Penguins, who nest in the bank and return from hunting just before sunset, like clockwork.

Yellow-eyed penguins

Petrified forest, Curio Bay

The following day I went deeper into the Catlins and walked some forest treks through to stunning waterfalls. I drove through Invercargill, the largest population centre in Southland (only 50,000 people!) to Manapouri, which I used as a base for a trip to Doubtful Sound. I stayed in a cabin with a log fire, and a gas bottle for cooking. No electricity. This was hardly the flashpacking that I'd been doing so far. I had to forage in the woods, yes.. forage for logs to burn as the temperature dropped. I resorted to speed-reading my copy of Newsweek in order to burn it for warmth. But wow, what a view! Bacon sandwiches and Otago wine on the terrace watching the sunset. That night I woke up to hear mice rustling around my bag and found that in the absence of food they'd eaten a blackcurrant flavoured rehydration powder sachet, which ironically would be quite dehydrating on its own. Serves them right.

Manapouri at dusk

Looking down to the start of Doubtful Sound

A Sound is technically where a river erodes the rock, carving a channel that is filled by the sea, whereas a fjord is similar but as a result of glacial action. The Sounds in South Island are basically all fjords with the exception of the Marlborough Sounds in the north. So Doubtful Sound is a bit of a misnomer, unless Capt Cook was making it known he was unsure of the specific erosion process when he named it. I took a daytrip, which involved sailing over Lake Manapouri, driving over the Wilmot Pass then an afternoon cruising on the Sound. Before the Wilmot Pass was built in 1959, only the most intrepid explored this region. The road was laid to facilitate construction of West Arm hydroelectric power station, one of NZ's most impressive engineering achievements.



The power station was conceived well over 100 years ago, which is staggering enough in itself, but it was deemed too costly to build at that time. When it was finally built in 1965, the Wilmot Pass cost £1 per cm at today's exchange rate - easily the most expensive road in NZ. Most of the energy from West Arm goes to an aluminium smelting plant - without this, it could power most of South Island.

Doubtful Sound

Usually Fiordland gets between 5m and 9m of rain annually and is raining on 2 out of every 3 days, but I was lucky enough to get a whole week of perfect weather. I regret not doing an overnight trip as the place was staggeringly beautiful. All you can hear is distant bird calls and the soft slap of waves against the shore. The place is true wilderness: this side of Lake Manapouri has a permanent population of 1 - a lonely warden in the most remote part of New Zealand.


I spent that night back in relative civilisation in Te Anau, in preparation for a trip to Milford Sound further up the west coast. Milford Sound is bit more touristy, mainly because it's more accessible but it was still a fantastic sight. The road to Milford was jaw-droppingly scenic and virtually deserted, with lonely creeks and a splendid mountain pass before dropping down to sea level at the start of the Sound. Both Sounds had waterfalls in abundance and I expect these would be even more impressive after a few days of heavy rainfall. The photos of the Sounds really don't do justice. It's so difficult to get a sense of scale from these pictures.

Milford Sound

155m Stirling Falls, Milford Sound

NZ South Island 2 - Methven to Dunedin

Mount Cook

 I left sleepy Methven early morning to make the long drive to Mt Cook. The first half of the journey was through the Canterbury plains - a near-flat expanse of land stretching from the east coast through to the edge of the Southern Alps around 50km inland. These mountains rise up very quickly from the plains, which apparently gives some skiers vertigo, as you can see the sea from the slopes beyond the flatness of the plains - you really get the feeling of being thousands of metres above sea-level.


I passed by the Two Thumb mountain range and had lunch at Lake Tekapo in the shadow of Mt John. The lake gets its colour from sediment, or rock-flour, in the water, rather than from ,say, cobalt compounds. When the rocky bottom of the glacier moved across the land and carved out the lake basin it ground out fine particles which were suspended in the glacial melt. Light refracts off the particles and gives it a milky turquoise appearance.

Lake Tekapo

The road to Mt Cook Village is stunning, with postcard views at each turn. The Mt Cook National Park is home to 22 of the 25 highest mountains in NZ, with Mt Cook itself being the highest at 3775m  (and also having the accolade of highest mountain in Australasia). Around a third of the park has a permanent blanket of snow and glacial ice which is a stunning sight, given its proximity to the coast. Mount Cook Village is a bit of a misnomer, being essentially a coffee shop and a boutique hotel serving the ski community, and was almost deserted save for a few ambitious skiers.


I took a side-trip down a nearby gravel track (which the Sunny didn't enjoy) to the Tasman Glacier. The road was like driving on the surface of the moon and the place looked more like a quarry than what I expected from NZ's largest glacier. However, the surface moraine is only a few metres deep and beneath it lies between 200-600m of glacial ice. Like most temperate glaciers it has been losing around 0.5% of its volume each year which has helped deposit the surface moraine and has swelled "Lake Tasman" significantly. I've put this in inverted commas because 20 years ago this "lake" didn't exist. NZ's glaciers have been retreating for the past 14,000 years or so - the top of the Tasman glacier was around 700m higher than where I took these photos back then.

Lake Tasman from the glacier

By now it was getting late so I headed back down the Mt Cook road to a small village called Twizel. The place was built to provide accommodation for the workers constructing a nearby hydroelectric power station and, location aside, is not the prettiest of places. The village was due to be abandoned in 1984 once the project was complete but the residents tenaciously held on. It's basically prefab housing around a central square, which has a strange mix of run down convenience stores and a couple of swanky cafes for the skiers who can't quite afford to stay at Mt Cook Village. I got chatting to a bunch of local lads who worked on nearby farms, who took me on a tour of "the pub" and "the bar", the latter being a pub that stayed open longer. "The pub" had a Working Men's Club feel - the lads had to convince the landlord that I wasn't any trouble before he'd serve me. The bar was a little more easy going and I was warned (advised) of the few girls that were easy (to put this in context there were only five girls in the bar). Both places were truly dead for a Friday night but I get the impression that the clientele don't change with the days of the week in Twizel.


Next up was Oamaru, a short drive back to the coast. It was pretty much the only place with any sort of life between Twizel and Dunedin, and consequently my best chance of finding a bar showing the England vs Scotland game so I popped in for a night. Oamaru has a collection of Victorian warehouses and pubs by the waterfront, but instead of going down the chintzy pensioner tourism route, it's somehow become the self-acclaimed steampunk capital of New Zealand.

Steampunk HQ, Oamaru

When I arrived in Dunedin the whole town was awash with the green of Ireland rugby fans. I had a ticket to the Ireland vs Italy game and had somehow managed to get some accommodation within walking distance of the stadium at short notice. Dunedin is a student city and has a reputation of being a raucous party place. Mix this with thousands of Irish fans and the place was heaving. The city has a tradition of holding an informal nude rugby game (I suppose it can't be anything other than informal) on matchdays for the games held here. 14 naked guys and 1 naked girl take on a fully-clothed team of, in this case, Irish and Italian fans (which to me sounds more like a gangbang than a sport). Fortunately I arrived too late to see it.

Dunedin train station

NZ South Island - Picton to Methven

I took the Interislander ferry across to the South Island. It was a blissful 3 hours of sailing on the Marlborough Sounds and through the Cook Strait over to Picton. That's the famous Capt James Cook, if you were wondering. He passed through the Strait as he circumnavigated North Island. On his third voyage around these parts, he sent 10 of his crew to collect scurvy grass from Arapawa Island in the strait but they were ambushed, killed and eaten by local Maori. Thankfully the locals have since lost their appetite for cannibalism after introduction to Christianity (though some missionaries took one for the team).

Marlborough Sounds

If you're expecting a city like Wellington on the other side of the Strait then be disappointed. The ferry terminal at Picton is the only real attraction if you exclude the bizarre Dutch bakery. There are more rental car agencies than any other business, ideal for people who needed to pick up a car directly from the ferry. Once I got my Nissan Sunny (again... but this time brown/gold and manual transmission) I headed straight for Renwick in the centre of the Marlborough wine region. Wasting no time I hired a bicycle and made a bee-line to the nearby vineyards for free tastings. There are tens of wineries within cycling distance producing everything from the standard Sauvignon Blanc and Pinot Noir (by the end I was tired of hearing "this is not your typical Malborugh Sav") to the more unusual Montepulciano, Syrah and fake Champagne. Being an almost exclusive red wine drinker I took this as an education and the tasting staff were happy to oblige. Later in the afternoon my bike started wobbling and wouldn't go in a straight line. Obviously a mechanical fault.


The next day, nursing a delicate head, I drove the short distance down the east coast to Kaikoura. I thought the North Island scenery was spectacular but it was nothing in comparison to the South. You don't have to expend any effort to get to the most beautiful places. Merely travelling down the main highway you see snow-capped mountains rising almost directly from the sea, and deserted black-sand beaches.

East coast beach, near Kaikoura

Kaikoura was a whaling station from the mid-1800s but before that the Maori had built stepped defences (pa) on the peninsula. Along the peninsula you see geology at its rawest. Over time and lots of seismic activity, the seabed was bent, buckled and lifted to form the peninsula, and in the last 125,000 years or so has been cut by wave action to its present state, with layers of sea-floor shunted into unnatural angles.

Seafloor uplifts, Kaikoura peninsula

Kaikoura peninsula - can easily see the two major seafloor levels here

I drove south to Akaroa on the Banks Peninsula and on to Christchurch. I'd originally planned on staying in the city for a night, people were telling me that the city was slowly rebuilding after the recent earthquakes but once I got there and saw the damage I decided against it. The city was  heavily damaged in the Sept '10 earthquake and is still reeling from aftershocks, the most deadly was back in February this year where 181 people lost their lives. National radio stations are all still broadcasting messages of support and there are plenty of fundraisers for the reconstruction. Many roads in the city centre are closed while dangerous buildings are being torn down, and city streets have become a maze, making navigation very tricky. I stopped in a mall for a coffee and only half the shops were open, the rest pending refurbishment. While I had a morbid fascination with the place I decided to head inland to the little town of Methven, which would be dead were it not for its proximity to the slopes of Mt Cook. As the ski season was coming to an end, the town was a little quiet. I asked around if there was any free wifi in town and was told that the only cafe that did it fell down in the earthquake. I tried in the pub:


"Do you have wifi?"


"Not heard of that, ay. We've only got what you see on tap".