An adventure in New Zealand's South Island
Our time is somewhat limited in New Zealand, we have just over two weeks to travel through the country and explore some of its sights, many would say that this is not enough. I am inclined to agree with this statement, however with financial constrictions and a desire to see a lot of
South America and all the other wonderful places we've been, we were unable to spend too long in New Zealand's stunning scenery (but hopefully we will be back in the future!).
So we had a week to spend in the South Island where due to flights we started in Christchurch before moving to Kaikoura (I do now realise that a map may be helpful!)
So as you can see Christchurch is quite far north and we miss some epic sites from the rest of the island, but this was the best we were able to do.
Christchurch
Our time in Christchurch was somewhat odd. We stayed in a gentleman's house who was really nice and had been to England several times as he worked with their Antarctic research people. The home was lovely and a real change from
Fiji so was really nice and relaxing (with a heated blanket too!). New Zealand is rather cold, especially in comparison to Fiji. Due to us now being away from the tropics in the southern hemisphere we are in the grips of winter. So although it is warmer than a UK winter, the sudden drop in temperature from Fiji was a real shock to the system.
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| All ready for winter at the Botanic Gardens |
Our first day was spent doing some very touristy things. We initally got on the bus and headed into town where we got off at the botanical gardens and saw some lovely plants (one was even seemingly named after our friend Yvonne). This was a real nice experience and we wandered around the grounds before heading to the Canterbury museum where we learned a little of the history of Canterbury and New Zealand in general. One odd thing in this museum was a reconstruction of a house from very far south where they had decorated the house with Paua shells in a slightly tacky slightly interesting way (take a look
here) I honestly did not know what to make of it, but it was apparently a really famous thing for a while.
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| An Yvonne Plant |
From the museum we headed towards Cathedral Square where we saw the shell of the cathedral that had been decimated in the 2011 earthquake. The earthquake's legacy is evident through the city as there are many empty spaces, one thing we also found particularly odd in Christchurch is how little people there seemed to be. To put this into context Christchurch is the third most populated city, and the last major city we had been in was either
Beijing or
Singapore which seemed to have distinctly more people in it...
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| The 'Cardboard' Cathedral in Christchurch |
We then decided to head towards the 'Cardboard' Cathedral as it is known. This place is the temporary Cathedral designed by Shigeru Ban who is an architect that works on quickly built relief structures, he has done some other interesting structures. It is truly amazing to see a church built out of shipping containers, reinforced cardboard tubes and plastic roofing that functions as a place of worship for so many people.
Upon arriving we found that a secondary school was rehearsing for a concert in the main space but we could poke our heads in the shop and have a look around. A lady came up to inform us about this and upon hearing us call it a Cardboard Cathedral retorted with 'well it's not really cardboard is it? Otherwise it would get soggy when it rained.' I guess she had a point... So we had a look around and then were offered a leaflet with some more information so that we could read some more about the temporary Cathedral. We did however find it amusing that this hilarious lady that had greeted us then asked what our first language was and was very surprised to discover it was English, clearly we have been travelling too long.
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| Olivia at Ilam Gardens |
Our second day was simply spent wandering around some nearby Gardens named after Ilam just down the road from Matlock which made us feel very homely. It is very strange in the South Island that it feels like we've stepped into an alternative version of England. Everything looks and feels somewhat English, but then something throws you off. This is particularly true of random tropical looking trees seen amid the bare winter struck plants.
Kaikoura
From Christchurch we got on a bus that took us along the coast towards Kaikoura, a small coastal town which is named after the many Crayfish that are found there. The bus journey itself took us in drizzling rain through hills, valleys and winding roads causing Olivia to look a little green and vomitous. Finally we arrived in a rather overcast and dark Kaikoura and trudged through the rain to our accommodation, which luckily had a log fire burning that we could dry off by. We ate and then went to bed hoping that the next day would bring better weather. Olivia also learnt here that when our Hostel was called the Lazy Shag they were on about the bird rather than simply being rude.
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| This is a shag |
Thankfully Kaikoura delivered and we were greeted the next morning with seas and mountains so beautiful that you couldn't help but smile a little despite the chill in the cold morning air. I walked up towards the shop only to find that the 2016 earthquake in Kaikoura had caused it to close, but that was ok as it was a nice morning and I walked to the other shop. We ate our hearty porridge breakfast and set off down the beach towards the Kaikoura Peninsula (a little bit of land that sticks out just south of the town.
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| Rocks that look like waves |
The morning was chilly and the seagulls were screaming (and at one point dived towards our heads). But we made our way across the pebbly beaches all the way towards the head where we saw fantastic views all around the place (I'll just stick some photos rather than try and describe it) but it was great and a truly enjoyable walk.
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| Kaikoura Peninsula |
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| Mountains seen from Kaikoura Bay |
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| Spot the seals (their the black dots on the white rock) |
We also saw seals, although to be completely honest we did nearly step on one as we thought it was a rock... but then we'd climbed up the hill and could look down on the seal colony and saw even more which was quite spectacular and I loved the entirety of the walk.
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| A sleepy seal |
Our second day was also good (mostly because we ate some delicious smoky Havarti Cheese and also drank some good New Zealand coffee) but we walked along the beach away from the headland and just hung out and had fun on the beach which was really nice (although cold)
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| Kaikoura Sunrise |
But the highlight of our second day was getting up for the sunrise. I hadn't set an alarm so was simply up just in time. But I got to the beach that faces towards the east just in time to see the first glimpse of the sun causing a deep rich orange glow over the black sands of Kaikoura Bay. The light caused all the clouds to change colour to a soft orange almost like peach coloured cotton candy. It was an amazing time just to solitarily sit and watch the sun rise over the waves which pounded the beach before fizzling back into the sea. Everything just sort of melted away and left you feeling like the only person in the world with nothing else to do but watch the sun wake up.
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| Peach Clouds |
So our time has come to an end on the South Island and tomorrow we will head north to Picton before crossing the Cook Straight to
Wellington. There will be an odd gap as we'll talk about
Rotorua in the North Island before we write a post about
Wellington and
Auckland.
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| Mountains in Sunrise |
What next?
- See our other destinations for our trip
- Watch a Ted talk by Shigeru Ban about paper houses (he's the guy who made the 'Cardboard' Cathedral) here.
- See what we're up to now and see more pictures on Instagram here.
- Say Hi (you can leave a comment below, I've figured out how to sort that)
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