South Island Circuit: A Different Kind of Travel

Note: Pictures from this post can be found to the right in albums titled, “New Zealand: Exploring Dunedin” and “New Zealand: Central and Northern South Island.” To be captioned soon!

• Thursday, 6 Jan: Relaxed, did laundry, checked e-mails, posted pictures; went into town with Fiona; bought SIM card; met Matt for a late afternoon snack and drink in town; watched movie.
• Friday, 7 Jan: Borrowed Matt’s truck to drive into Dunedin proper; explored Otago Museum; wandered downtown a bit; drove back to the house to relax and  have lunch; drove to aquarium to bring Matt lunch and see the aquarium, tour and all; got a ride back from a coworker of Matt’s; got picked up by Matt later, drove back to Dunedin to explore a bit.
• Saturday, 8 Jan: Borrowed Matt’s truck again and drove to beach with fur seals; saw four and basked in sun, walked around and explored the area; drove to Albatross center and had lunch, admired the landscape and spotted several Royal Albatross in the air; picked up Matt from work; drove around the peninsula for a bit; prepared for leaving on the road trip the next day.
• Sunday, 9 Jan: drove to Cromwell; wine tasting; lunch at cute cafe near a bridge and a clock in the rocks above; camped in Queenstown Top 10; decided to try canyoning the next morning; explored town, watched buskers, ate ice cream.
• Monday, 10 Jan: Canyoning trip already full; decided to leave town; stopped at a bunji place on a bridge, watched Matt do the jump and submerge his head in the waters far below; stopped at Peregrine for wine tasting and had a picnic lunch; drove to Franz Joseph township; heard a loud clanking in the front of the truck; camped.
• Tuesday, 11 Jan: Took car to mechanic, who found a loose nut causing the problem; decided to skydive the glaciers, but the weather was crap; went out for lunch; grilled out for dinner; drank one of the Peregrine wines (Riesling); camped.
• Wednesday, 12 Jan: Went on a half-day glacier hike on Franz Joseph Glacier; soaked in a hot pools in town; gray, wet and gloomy day; drove north to Westport; visited a pub for dinner and met a nice English couple; stayed in a motel to treat our aching backs.
• Thursday, 13 Jan: Slept in; drove to Nelson; explored Founders Park, a period park; drove to Blenheim, found the Grapevine Hostel and pitched the tent in back; listened to trains and big trucks rumble by all night!
• Friday, 14 Jan: Woken by hostel-tenants having a loud chat near our tent; set out on a wine-tasting tour, visiting several wineries and purchasing several bottles, enjoying lunch at one vineyard.
• Saturday, 15 Jan: Drove south towards Christchurch; bypassed city and went to Methven; set up tent at Abisko campsite; ate out at the “Blue Pub” where we encountered an all-women going away party for a high school grad, as well as an all-male bachelor party full of drink and debauchery.
• Sunday, 16 Jan: Locked the keys in the truck; found gas station that called someone in to unlock & retrieve the key; departed one hour late for a Lord of the Rings tour (the bus got stopped by a rockfall); explored the countryside with the tour, saw spectacular scenery; grilled out for dinner; finished off two of our bottles of wine; watched a movie.
• Monday, 17 Jan: Slept in; awoke to a gray and windy day; drove to Oamaru and did a drive-by tour of the Victorian-style downtown; drove to Moeraki to see the odd and unsettling rock formations; camera quit but I beat it back into life; picnic lunch in the car along the coastline; stopped at a cheese factory; arrived back in Dunedin to find a new puppy in the house!
• Tuesday, 18 Jan: Went into town with Fiona to run errands and get a pedicure; researched shipping costs for wine, decided against it; relaxed back at the house, backed up pictures, did laundry; went into town, rented several movies.
• Wednesday, 19 Jan: Slept in; set up and cleaned tent and fly; folded laundry, started cleaning out packs and preparing to pack up again; took bus into town; got a one-hour massage from a woman recommended by Matt, came out like jell-o; went to the library and caught up on e-mails; bought InterCity Flexipass to get me around New Zealand and booked bus for the next day; caught bus back to the house; packed; had kebabs for dinner, watched a movie.

How a person travels is a highly personal choice. When I planned this trip, I did so with “by myself” as my main purpose. This was for several reasons, and against the advice of many good, concerned friends. My reasons to travel solo included (and still include): flexibility, the ability to change my mind, then change it back, then decide on a third, unrelated option, all without feeling the least bit guilty or concerned about someone else’s desires; independence, the opportunity to see what I would do without the influence of any other person around to either direct me or to let myself be directed by; and lack of anyone who was ready at this very point in time to take a year and spend all their money traveling.

Primarily, though, it was so I could see the world in my own way, whatever that way might turn out to be.

The main thoughtful, concerned and well-meaning reasons not to travel solo: safety, as in, lone female makes a good target; keep loneliness at bay, as traveling alone in foreign places can get lonely, especially over such a long period; and share experiences with someone, whether good or bad.

Primarily, though, the reasons against going solo had to do with safety.

When I arrived in New Zealand, I knew that I would be making an abrupt change to how I traveled: not only was I visiting a friend, but we were going to be road-tripping, meaning we would be together all the time. While I have had a few travel partners in the last three months, none have I traveled with for longer than five or six days in one stretch and even then we were separating now and then to spend days off on our own. My second road trip with Matt lasted nine days.

Luckily, some of the drive, scenery and towns were new to Matt, so we got to explore together. Our first day took us through the beautiful central region of south island, including vineyards and bridges and gorges with gorgeous blue water flowing through them. We settled into a general routine: discuss what we wanted to do on the road trip and during that day specifically; Matt would sporadically educate me on the passing flora and animal life; chat about things past, present and future; listen to music; and attempt to educate me about music, good bands, their singers, and their lyrics. (This last, which has been a friendship-long, if futile, effort of Matt’s, proved as successful as in the past. My brother can probably sympathize with Matt.)

Our second day brought us some surprises. On a good note, Matt decided to bungee jump, and I enjoyed expressing the nerves (making gagging and vomit sounds when we watched others approach the jumping off platform) and excitement (“Oooh, let’s do a before picture! And an after picture! Why aren’t you dancing around in jubilation?!”) that Matt nonchalantly avoided. It was a lovely day out and the water, so far below the bridge from which he jumped, was an amazing blue color. I pointed-and-clicked away, videoing the jump and documenting the one “Wahoo!” that Matt let out just before his head went into the water. Appropriately, we followed up the bungee jump with a visit to a winery and some lunch.

On a negative note, the truck started making some disturbing clanking sounds which I swear I could feel through my feet when I was driving. We zigged and zagged along the west coast, heading north to the Fox and Franz Joseph glaciers, frowning and wondering if the trip might be cut short by a serious or expensive problem. We made it to Franz Joseph township with no problem and staked out a campsite. I determined that I wanted to skydive over the glacier, although maybe not from the newly-available, but only at this location, altitude of 18,000 feet. I decided to book it the next morning, depending on weather.

Our third day was spent waiting for the weather to clear. Sadly, the low, dense and gloomy clouds didn’t clear in the least. We explored the township, relaxed, read books and played in the campsite gameroom. Also, we took the car to a mechanic. Thankfully, it was a minor and fairly inexpensive problem, a loose bolt.

When on the fourth day the weather still didn’t clear, we decided to spend the morning on a half-day glacier hike, followed by a soak in the hot pools in town, and then make our way north. After hitting a few very country places, including a small pub decked out with chainsaws, animal skins and a roadkill menu, not to mention a giant sandfly fixture across the road, we made it to Westport and treated ourselves to dinner out and a motel room with soft beds. A highlight of this day was a road-side stop where we admired the sunbeams piercing through the clouds over a beautiful view of the west coast.

Day five saw us heading to Nelson, where we spent an hour or two exploring Founders Park, a period-representative area that would have been improved by period-representative people, or anyone, to make things more lively. After a beer-tasting and lunch, we headed for the east coast and Blenheim, which would be our entryway into Marlborough country. No, not for the Marlboro man, but for wine! We pitched the tent in the back yard of a hostel, which was really two huge houses with several rooms. We met some of the other hostelers during dinner, mainly European youngsters looking for work to sustain their travels. That day, they had pitted apricots for hours on end.

It will come as no surprise, then, that on the sixth day we drove from vineyard to vineyard, tasting and chatting and admiring the absolutely stunning scenery of the countryside. We enjoyed lunch at one vineyard, a short self-led vineyard walk at another, gathered lavender at yet another. At the end of the day we had toured seven wineries and bought a decent number of bottles between the two of us, along with some lovely lime-chocolate (Matt) and a postcard (me). I slept pretty well that night, despite the nearby train tracks and accompanying tooting trains, rumbling trucks on the road and chattering travelers.

The seventh day of our road trip brought us to Methven. All day, the weather was strange, opening into blue skies periodically but ending with strangely shaped clouds and a gray mist that made everything damp. We got some of the blue skies as we visited Kaikoura, where I had my first whitebait fritter and then promptly broke the strap of my flip flops while exploring a beach known for having fur seals (we didn’t see any). I bought a replacement pair of Teva’s at a shop in town before we headed south, briefly visiting the United States Antarctic Program hanger before reaching Methven in the late afternoon.

We took refuge at the “Blue Pub” in town, across the street from the “Brown Pub.” We had dinner in a room where the only other diners were a group of twenty-something women of all ages, apparently a going away party for one of them heading off to college. At one point, we saw a bus pull up and unload a large party of men, but that was all we saw as the women started crowding the windows and giggling, pointing and generally admiring the view. Matt wasn’t sure whether to laugh or feel put out, until we were told that it was a bachelor party and that the groom-to-be was currently being seran-wrapped to a flagpole. We encountered the very drunk and boisterous group when we visited the bar after dinner. Once they decided to scrum with the pool table, knocking it off it’s legs, we headed back to our campsite.

On the second to last day of our trip, I started off the day with a twist by locking the keys in the truck. Two hours, fifty dollars and a retrieved key later, we joined a Lord of the Rings tour, which took us across some beautiful countryside to the location of where Edoras, Helm’s Deep and the Gandolph’s ride out on a hillock were filmed. You would never know it now, since the sets are gone and all the vegetation was replanted, but it was fun to associate the imposing cliffs, faraway landscapes and jutting hills with the scenery of the films. I also got to pose with a sword, which is always a good time, along with drinking some champagne (after I put the sword down). Later that day, Matt and I availed ourselves of the sauna at the campsite, then grilled some locally made chorizo sausages, tasted two of our wines and watched Harry Potter.

Finally, we headed down the east coast and visited the Moeraki boulders, very spherical natural formations that sit eerily in the waves of a beach. We drove through an old-fashioned, Victorian-style downtown area, picnicked in the car and visited a cheese factory, and then it was home again in Dunedin.

It was by no means a solo trip, and sometimes that was hard for me, but Matt was a fun travel partner and we were able to make choices, discuss options and change our minds a time or two, with no problem. Obviously, I wasn’t lonely and felt perfectly safe the entire time, too. All in all I got to see much of south island and its wondrous scenery and strange treasures, and I got to share all this with Matt as well as spend time with him, chatting about people and events from the past, opportunities and travails of the present, and future possibilities.

Hopefully, I will have the opportunity to keep traveling in different ways, with people or alone, and have the types of experiences in both cases that will continue making this year of travel something I’ll treasure forever and never forget.

--Z