South Island Adventures

Last week I was away from the computer in the South Island with my visitor from England, Dave. If any of this description gives you a mental picture of our travels please scatter this image with sheep for increased accuracy.



We started off in Christchurch where we were entertained by fearless doofi eating maggoty cheese on the telly and picked up our car. Driving down to Lake Takapo we got our first taste of the gobsmacking scenery of the south; beautiful turquoise lakes framed by spring-green trees, hills and distant snowcapped mountains. Takapo itself was gorgeously quiet and had a few skimmable stones, and soon enough we were happy to doze around a few pints and a seafood basket.



The next day's long picturesque drive took us via Oamaru, where heritage (woman in Victorian dress) and Scottishness (man in kilt) were on display and we got our first chance to not see a penguin. We then went to see the boulders at Moeraki which were laughably unimpressive compared to everything else we'd seen and truly undeserving of the throng of tourists who followed us down. Once we arrived at Dunedin it all got reet good again.



Dunedin city centre is just like Edinburgh and is very studenty. The kid serving in Subway is the most depressed boy in the catering industry and he sighs between questions and pouts deeply over your every decision. The peninsular is beautiful, with an albatross colony at the end (you can't see the colony but the albatross do a flyovver for the tourists every now and then) and a couple of duney penguin-spotting beaches which are thankfully great fun to explore even when the penguins do a no-show. Fucking penguins.

We went to visit a very Dutch man who makes damascus steel knives and Dave enjoyed many pies. We toured the Speights brewery where I got a near-fatal attack of the giggles during the 'Southern Man' promotional video. I bought some jelly beans from a cornershop with "Can I have some jelly beans please?" "How many do you want?" "Oh just a little bag" "They're five cents each" "Oh, okay, well can I get um... some...?". Eventually I got a carefully counted bagfull but should have learned my lesson and been better prepared when the next day I ordered fish and chips on the road - "How many chips do you want?". Very precise these South Islanders. And sullen.




As we bid a fond farewell to Dunedin by scaling the steepest street in the world (there is a certificate to prove this) I guessed that we were probably finally immune to being blown away by the scenery but Milford Sound proved me wrong. The snow melting in to pretty waterfalls down the high mountain walls, the spooky tunnel and the grand forested chasms made it the most enjoyable drive of the whole trip and we weren't disappointed when we had to go back through it due to lack of accommodation at the Sound itself. We stayed that night in Te Anau by another beautiful lake.





Queenstown was all about action. We gondolad, we luged, we got wankered on delicious vodka cocktails in a bar made of ice and we flew the 'flybywire' around a valley. Dave bought a PSP. I bought a scarf. All good. On the way out up to Fox Glacier we visited a brilliant puzzleland where the highlight was a room tilted to one side. Our perceptions imbalanced we were both very very freaked out by a child leaning towards us on a wonky step and his mother was clearly amused as we edged away from him and proceeded to fall down the room into the wall, laughing like a right pair of tits.

The weather in Fox Glacier was appalling, worse apparently than it had been all winter, but was made bearable by the promise of the massive hot-tub spa in our room. The glacier itself was damn interesting and much more fun than a sun-loving sofa-surfer like myself could have guessed. Dave seemed to enjoy his birthday despite being really quite old and many cheesy photographs were taken. Here is just one...



And back to Christchurch via the snowyest path around, racing to get the car back in time and listening to Nick Cave rattle on about killing lots and lots of people and counting the word 'motherfucker'. 8 in 'Stagger Lee' if you were wondering. We passed through Sheffield so Dave could grab a pie. In Christchurch we bought Swanndris and got drunk by accident in an Irish bar before nodding off in the least smelly hotel room we could find.