Invercargill, Milford Sound, Wanaka, Dunedin, Queenstown, Mt Cook….

Invercargill is one of the depressing, old industrial towns on the south of New Zealand. During the bus journey south our new driver played us a film called “The Fastest Indian”. The man at the centre of the film, Burt Munro lived in Invercargill and is famous for his daring land speed attempts. Burt spent a lot of time modifying an old 1920 Indian motorcycle and set a number of records in NZ. He reached 68 and was diagnosed with heart disease and decided to mortgage his house and travel to the salt flats in America to attempt a record.

In 1967, at the age of 68 and riding a motorcycle which was 47 years old he set a new speed record for a motorcycle under 1000cc – achieving over 190mph. Incredibly his record still stands today!

The majority of our group headed through Invercargill to the main overnight stop of Stewart Island. The weather was terrible and at $220 dollars for the ferry we didn’t think it would be worth it just for an afternoon. Instead we stayed in Invercargill and splashed out on a nice dinner at one of the Speight’s Ale Houses near our hostel.

One of the highlights of a trip to NZ is Milford Sound. Milford was actually incorrectly named as a sound when it is really a fiord and was carved out by a glacier in the last ice-age but the name stuck. The main (and only) thing to do here is to take a cruise of the fiord which is just what we did.

The drive to Milford is as much part of the attraction, winding down the huge valley and through a 1.2km long tunnel.

Our cruise took us the length of the fiord, to the sea and back for an hour and a half. It had been raining heavily the days before we arrived and many waterfalls had appeared, carrying the run-off from the mountains.

Our group was very lucky to have had such great weather as the days before (and after) were not so nice. Our stop for the evening was the historic “Gunns Camp”. The camp is set 15km from the main road and is surrounded by mountains and countryside in every direction. The nights accommodation was small timber sheds with two rooms and a communal room in the middle with three people in each room. Although the beds were questionable in their ability to hold an adult without breaking, the large wood-burner made for a cosy nights sleep!

The drive back to Queenstown was again one of the most scenic we have seen. At Gunns Camp the weather had been poor but this soon improved into another day of blue skies.

On our way back to Queenstown we stopped in Te Anau for a couple of short walks alongside the huge lake.

The drive into Queenstown itself was incredible and we wound our way around the base of the mountains, with the huge lake to our left, arriving back into Queenstown early evening.

Our hostel for the night had some nice free bikes and we spent a couple of hours riding through the park, around the lake and the centre of Queenstown before heading out to meet some of friends for drinks.

Matt had been experiencing some toothache for the last few days and had booked into a dentist for our return to Queenstown. We also had car hire booked for the next four days so we could spend some time exploring by ourselves.

We headed for the dentist with Matt expecting a hefty bill for a filling or similar and were pleasantly surprised. Matt often gets blocked sinuses and the dentist explained that as there were no signs of any decay or cavities it was most likely that the sinus canal running along the top of the jawline had become blocked. This canal also has some of the tooth’s nerves running though it and the pressure causes a feeling like dull toothache. The dentist was very nice and Matt talked to him for a while about his boat which he and his family had spent the last year cruising the world on!

A light $65 later and we were on our way to the car hire depot. Matt celebrated his first uneventful trip to the dentist with a large Starbucks including sugary syrup!

Hertz was the rental centre and we bagged a nice top-spec Mazda for the next few days. Our first days driving would take us back over the Crown Range towards Wanaka and Makarora. Although we had already driven this road with the bus we wanted to drive it for ourselves and spend some more time exploring here. On our first trip over we had stopped for photos at some of the larger look-outs but the best spots we couldn’t stop at as the bus was too large.

The Crown Range is the highest sealed road in New Zealand and often the weather closes the route to cars but we were rewarded with great weather.

At the bottom of the range is the Cardrona Hotel, famous for its many appearances in beer adverts. In the days-gone-by the landlord would serve you one pint if you were about to drive the range and two if you had just driven down!

We drove back to Makarora before turning around and spending the night in Wanaka.

We set off the next morning for the city of Dunedin on the opposite side of the country. The drive took us past the rafting river and the “Roaring Meg” white water, and through the town of cromwell in the pictures below.

When we stopped at the bench overlooking Cromwell a rustling caught our attention. A baby rabbit popped out and was intent on staying close to Emma. Emma struggled to leave without taking the rabbit with her!

Dunedin is a city with Scottish heritage and is well known for the Speight’s Brewery, Cadbury’s Factory and the steepest street in the world.

We checked into our accommodation and headed out to the Speight’s Brewery Tour. The Brewery was interesting and still fully working after many years. The equipment all looks old but is still used to make the good beers they produce.

The best part of the tour was the last thirty minutes. During the last section you can pour your own drinks (in unlimited amounts) at the Brewery’s bar!

The following day in Dunedin we went on a tour of the Cadbury’s factory. This was the second factory established by Cadbury’s and is still running at more capacity than ever. We watched many of the processes from start to finish which was interesting and even got some shots of liquid chocolate! They had already begun making Easter eggs for next year and incredibly the people of NZ eat on average 10 eggs each over a ten week period around Easter, with the factory producing 45 million eggs for NZ!!

Matt was eager to drive up Baldwin Street “the steepest street in the world” so after the tour we drove across town to the street. Looking up the street from the bottom of the street doesn’t look steep so we parked up and walked the hill first. At 1:2.86 its much stepper than it looked and we sat at the top for a while to admire just how steep it really is. A Kiwi guy who must have been mid-sixties had just finished a run up the street and we got chatting to him. It turns out he knows a lot about the street as he runs up and down 30 times a day! He holds a world record for having run up the street 180,000 times over the past fifteen years. He also told us stories about the various tourists whom have come unstuck on the hill (quite literally). One horrific story he told us was that of a young couple who when drunk decided it would be a good idea to ride down the hill in a large wheelie bin. They hit a parked car and trailer at the bottom and the girl was killed, the guy seriously injured. They hit the car so hard that they pushed in 28 metres and police calculated that they would have been going close to 100km when they hit it – that gives you an idea how steep it is!

After talking to the guy for some time and getting him to take a picture of us we ventured down and drove back up which was fun and not as bad as we thought it would have been!

We spent the evening in Dunedin before heading back to Queenstown the next day. The drive between the two was another impressive drive through green hills, blue lakes and white-topped mountains.

The Dutch guy, English Girl and two Irish Guys were all still in Queenstown when we got back and we had arranged a night out starting at the Ice Bar. We managed to get tickets for $1 which was a bonus and it was a fun experience dressing up in winter coats and gloves/boots and drinking everything out of ice glasses, from an ice bar at -5 degrees! As you are only allowed a 45 minute session we were soon in the cowboy bar, a completely different experience with cowboy hats for all, seats which are saddles and a bucking bronco!

We were up early to make the drive to Mount Cook. The drive was again spectacular and clear blue skies greeted us on our arrival. The picture below shows the view from our room.

Most of the group had opted for an afternoon tour on the glacier lake. The lake is one of only three in the world in which you can see ice-bergs up-close. The water here was two degrees and although it looked nice when our driver told us to see if we could keep our hand in the water for ten seconds any ideas of swimming soon departed!

The tour of the lake and its ice-bergs was interesting and the blue skies finished of the views. You can see on one of the images below an iceberg which has freshly risen and is still blue – it actually appeared whilst we were on the bus to the lake.