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Day One I drove to nelson and after getting lost trying to find a hostel that no longer exists I ended up at the YHA. I checked in with just enough money and decided to pay a small visit to the cash point. I had no money. None available. Not even $20. Oh @#!*. This is oh so typical of me to not realise that I was running out of money. I began to think that it didn't really bode well for the rest of my travels. Running out of money after visiting one island is not good. Still I spent the rest of the evening chatting, phoning home and panicing. Day Two This morning I woke up feeling not so stressed after phone calls home to spread the panic that I was far, far away and all alone with no cash. Another girl in my room asked if I had a blue van in the car park. "yes", I said "and isn't it lovely?" "yes", she replied "but it's leaking petrol all over the place." AAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRGGGGH!!!!!!!!!!! NO, NO, NO! I ran out of the building and lo and behold my van was leaking its entire contents all over the car park. I smelt it before I saw it. After pausing to shake my fist at the sky and scream "This isn't funny you know!!" I went back inside and phoned home. Feeling better after spreading panic number two I took the van to a garage and sat around worrying. I've heard the stories of innocent female travellers being ripped off by burly mechanics. I was feeling no better after the guy at the garage had looked at it and said "prob'ly need a new tank." No, no, no, no. That wasn't how the conversation was supposed to go. In the end I told him that it had better not be too expensive because I didn't have much money (haha! i.e. none) and if it cost too much he would get nowt. It was on this day that I concluded that travelling is not relaxing. Anyone who tells you this is lying or has selective memory. To entertain myself I went on a cultural tour of Nelson ( window shopping), cashed in the last of my pounds, went to the cinema ( Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon), went to the cathedral and ended up in the local park. I was enjoying the company of the ducks when I noticed a sign asking not to feed the ducks. All very well but the sign was put up by the group in charge of NZ fishing and hunting. This group want to maintain a duck population purely Don't feed the ducks and they will go out of the city and into hunting areas. Day Three Phoned the garage this morning and was told that all that was wrong was a washer. Hurrah! The charge was minimal ( just as well as the old bank account still isnt delivering the cash). Now I have the van to get up to Abel Tasman to go kayaking. This means an evening of looking at maps, packing and dreaming about rugged kayking men willing to help me with my technique (hur!hur!) and with no stresses about vans and with pleasant thoughts I have an early night for an early morning
Day One I arrived at the kayak centre too early and found out that they hadn't taken the money out the account when I phoned up to book and I had lots of fun explaining to them that I had no money right now but really I would have it after the trip. After the previous nights dreams of manly men I was confronted with a group of two female police detectives and 5 women over 50. Why I chose to kayak when I could have picked any other activity (sky-diving, bungy jumping, white water rafting) I will never know. I get sea sick on large ferries when the water is flat and calm. Getting in a small kayak and being thrown about by the waves was not going to improve my sea legs. I felt very, very ill. It didnt help that the rudder on my kayak wasn't working and I ended up being towed... how humiliating! When I got out of the kayak I almost collapsed on the beach. Hurrah for dry land!! I redeemed myself slightly by helping everyone to put up their tents and ate my rations of cous cous mixed with some nuts and sultanas ( remember...no money) which ended up just making me more hungry and settled down for a quiet night surrounded by the lapping of the sea on the shore ... and possums screaming in the trees.
Back to the screaming possums though. Nocturnal and curious they were coming out of the trees to see what we had to eat. No, I lie. What they were doing was dropping out of the trees and sneaking up on our food supplies while looking nonchalant.They will go to great lengths to get food. One would create a diversion while the other sidled round and tried to get through the tarpaulin ( put over the food for this very reason). They are extremely agile and use both their hands and feet to grip. They are also, despite what people will say, incredibly intelligent. I could hear them scurrying around outside my tent and screaming and hissing at each other. Slightly sleep deprived I started to imagine what they were up to. I found myself visualising one of them standing outside slowly and quietly unzipping the tent so that when I turned on the torch it would be standing there with a grin on its face ready to pounce. I wondered if I had any food in the tent and whether I had an overactive imagination. Day Two I woke to find I was still there and hadn't been dragged away by delinquent possums and it was back in the kayak for me. This resulted in instant nausea but as the water was flat and calm and the sun was shining I had high hopes for the day. Yesterday the water had been rough and we didn't get very far. This meant that we had to make up for lost time. After the previous days paddling my muscles decided they didn't like this and would periodically cramp up on me. I got round this by a) ignoring the pain and pretending it didn't exist and b) paddling quickly to suprise my muscles because they didn't think they were capable of doing that. It was fairly successful. So we all paddled continuously under the glare of the sun, the water glistening and sparkling and just the gentle noise of the paddles splashing. We got up to Tonga Island. This is a small island not far from the coast of the Abel Tasman park and it is home to a colony of seals. You can watch them play in the water and often they will come right up to the kayak to have a look. It would have been lovely watching the pups swimming and frolicking in the water but unfortunately I was too busy vomiting over the side. mmmmm... lovely. I'm saying it was heatstroke because the thought that it might be sea sickness when the water was flat is too humiliating to think about. After being sick a few more times I reached land and collapsed on the land with rapturous joy..hurrah! The down side was that I had another day and a half paddling ahead of me but as the choice was either that or accept defeat and get a water taxi back I carried on ( oh so brave!). I felt suprisingly better and managed another 2 hours of kayaking before we put the tents up and I collapsed inside it. Lovely sleep. Day Three Last day of kayaking. We were all exhausted today but on good form ( as we would soon get a shower) and paddling was so much easier on this last day. Since we were making such good time we relaxed on one of the golden beaches and chatted. Over the last few days I realised hopw much I had learnt about all these women and their lives...especially Annes. She definitley had the gift of the Gab but her stories were amazing. They were all about her life in Ireland before meeting her husband( English and frowned upon) and moving to Australia. Her Grandfathers disapearance ( he was a judge) and susequently being killed. Her marathon days, her marriage of 30 years and the days she used to run a deli in Ireland. Talking to these women ( all mid to late 50's) it was apparent that they had acheived much in their lives, were still acheiving and were likely to continue to do so. They were all convinced that long marriages soon loose their thrill. Jane, the guide, after her two year marriage was soon put staright on her romantic notions by the other ladies. They were all amazing ladies. On a rriving back I paid my bill ( money came through...yes!) and walking down to my van was planning where to go next. Before I got to the van, however, there was the distinct smell of petrol in the air and I discovered that not only did my van still have a leak but that the entire contents of the tank were soaking into the ground underneath. NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! This was getting beyond a joke and so slightly hysterically I wandered back up the track to see if I could get help. Right! Let me describe yesterdays events just briefly ( if I can). I ended up going down to Marahau ( freewheeling) to see if I could persuade the guys at the water taxi to give me some fuel to get back to nelson. They took one look at the petrol gushing out the bottom and said that no way as there wasn't a chance that they were going to be responsible for me going up on a firey ball of death and pain ( or words to that effect). Fair enough. Si I was stuck in Marahau ( population 1 dog and a bunch of tourists) and my van was stuck at the side of the road dribbling the last of its fuel at the border of Abel Tasman which was in the middle of a fire ban due to a drought , the land being parched and the likelyhood that it would go up in flames at any moment. I decided that due to all this I needed a bit of luxury ( or more so than a smelly van or tent) and stayed at a backpackers ( in the squeakiest bed in the world I might add). I spent the evening spreading panic back home( again), watching Mars Attacks and gazing at the stars. The view of the stars was amazing in New Zealand. The Southern Hemisphere is not as polluted as the Northern and there aren't so many lights so the view is clear. I would sit for as long as I could and look at the constellations and the milky way. To think that I was looking at a galaxy was... unbelievable. And to look up at the sky and realise that I didn't know most of the constellations was weird. For moments it really was like being on another planet Finally got myself out of a blind panic about the cost of the repairs and phoned up a local garage who came to pick it up and tow it away to laugh hysterically at it and marvel at my stupidity in buying it. Can't blame them. They were like a strange comedy double act and by now I didn't care if they were going to rip me off as if they charged me too much I was going to leg it and let them sell it for scrap. They had it fixed by the next day and it wasn't the washer but a leak ( like I told the first garage but would they listen to me ...nooooooooooooo) and I was back on my travels. Unfortunately I was back on my travels with a month to go and only $500 in the bank. oops. I concluded that if I sleptt by the side of the road, pushed the van instead of drove it and swam back to the North Island I might be able to survive. (I did take comfort in a story told to me by three girls travelling together. They had bought 3 cars to date and hadn't learnt from their previous mistakes namely that the garages were ripping them off each time and the car would only get so far down the road before they stopped working. They had had to abandon them as scrap as it wasn't worth repairing and they would go and buy another one.) I did the sensible thing that every traveller does when faced with money problems... I ignored it and carried on travelling. Day One It was about a four hour drive from Marahau to Punakaiki and as I arrived the sun was setting over the sea and the sky was clear. Punakaiki itself is a small village on the west coast. A collection of houses all collected along the coast so well hidden by trees and abundant vegetation that you could easily miss it. To the back of these houses is a towering cliff where the sea echoes off of. What attracts people to Punakaiki are the 'pancake' rocks. These are limestone rocks which due to their formation and the erosion of the sea look like stacks of pancakes. Eventually these stacks will be washed away by the sea and nothing will be left behind. As it was late when I got there I booked into another camp site and made some lentil and potato stew (i.e. lentils and potatoes...boiled.) During the night I was woken by the bombardment of rain on the roof of the van and a drop in temperature. As I hadn't seen rain ina long while it was quite refreshing and relaxing ... lovely Day Two Still raining. I walked the 1km up to the rocks and concluded that they brilliant. Some of the rocks have blowholes and the waves burst out of the top. Other waves can be heard thundering inside caverns climbing the sides before subsiding again. The only other amusement in Punakaiki is the two shops. Both have a selection of gifts, crafts, coffee and a few useless grocerys. Some of the local crafts were beautiful... carved and polished jade, hessian dolls, blown glass, beads and wire bags. The rest of the tourist trade was not so vegan friendly...
A warning to those who think the weather in New Zealand is hot. By the evening the rain was hammering down, the air was icy cold and the wind merciless. My van was rocking from the force of the winds and I really believed that it would be tipped over...oh and there was lightning and thunder. Day One
Woke up chilled and damp and drove through torrential rain and gales towards the Franz Josef Glacier. On the way to Franz Josef Glacier is the town of Greymouth. All I can say is that it lived up to its name. The sky was grey, the sea was grey, the river was grey and the buildings were grey ( reminded me very much of my hometown of Aberdeen) and I managed to spend about 10 miutes in it to get grocerys before getting depressed and feeling the desperate need to move on. As I moved inland the greyness gave way to the greeness of lush forests wet with water droplets and glassy rivers and lakes. You can travel just a few miles and the enviroment changes. I'm positive that New Zealand has every single different climate possible in two islands. When I arrived at the Franz Josef Glacier it was raining again (ENOUGH ALREADY!), the cloud was right down and it was so cold I was getting an ice cream headache from standing outside. I was disappointed... I couldn't see the glacier, I couldn't even see a mountain, and I was cold, tired and running low on everything. I wandered up to the village and had a look around the visitors centre where I learnt that the West coast of New Zealand can get up to a total of 5000mm of rain a year!!! Yes that is 5 thousand. No wonder it was raining all the time ,and it was big fat rain not just drizzle. Day Two Sunny with blue skies!! The glacier was amazing! I mean... a glacier! wow! It was crisp and fresh but with bright blue skies and the view took my breath away. It is an unbelievable sight. A huge mountain sized chunk of blue ice moving across the countryside. I had heard many things about Wanaka from other travellers, mostly saying that it is beautiful. Wanaka is near to Queenstown and often gets ignored by tourists. It is stunning. glassy lakes are surrounded by the most fantastic mountains. After the constant downpours that had followed me down the west coast wanaka wwas sunshine. It was while sitting on the banks of the lake that I realised that I wasn't going to see Fijordland or Stewart Island and that I would have to swallow my pride and book an early ticket home. I spent afew days in Wanaka soaking up the sun and the relaxing atmosphere to make up for the rain, cold and stress of the previous weeks van problems ... and also to save on fuel. I looked around the second hand bookshops, drank tea and avoided the conkers that would explode open and shower down on me and my van. I cut straight across the South Island leaving the southern most points of the island untouched (much to my dismay) and headed towards Oamaru, home of little blue and yellow-eyed penguins. Travelling across central Otago I was struck by the stark contrast between there and the West coast. Central Otago was parched. The hills that are usually green were yellow/brown and barren. That the West should get so much more rain than Otago when there is such a short distance between them is astounding... but then, that is New Zealand.
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