Gryphon II - Akaroa to the West Coast

Akaroa to the West Coast

Gryphon II

Chris and Lorraine Marchant

Sun 13 Mar 2011 23:15

We said goodbye to my sister Mary after an enjoyable week of travelling together. Having decided to divert to the Banks Peninsula and were glad we did. Only 50 miles from the city of Christchurch we found ourselves in the dramatic scenery left behind by 3 volcanoes that created the landscape 10 million years ago.

We stayed in a most beautiful backpackers' house which could easily have been a bistro hotel. The wooden building was surrounded by a veranda that looked out onto a beautiful garden with views across the sea. When we complimented the owners on their home and we were invited to house sit for the month of June whilst they were away. Sadly we have to leave the country prior to that or the NZ tax man will catch up with us for boat import duty.

The town of Akaroa is small but very attractive with a strong French influence still present in many of the street names. The large inlet is surrounded by the remains of 3 major volcanoes, well rounded and made green by 1000s of years of inacivity.

The protected waters enclosed by them offer safe haven to Hectors Dolphins, a threatened species of small dolphin with an unusually rounded dorsal fin. We decided to hire a canoe to try and find them . Apparently they enjoy the company of kayaks more than the noisy tripper boats that go out to find them.

We paddled miles out to sea until we started to feel large swells and then decided to make a dignified retreat after a pleasant stop for lunch on a quiet beach. Just as we approached the pier as we were returning the kayak a solitary dolphin broke the surface a few yards from our boat, but with no interest in us!

We could have spent much longer here. The scenery is stunning but New Zealand is a big place and we decided we needed to move on if we were to get a real taste of the diversity it offers. We were not to be disappointed. Our next stop was at Lake Tekapo near to Mount Cook . We had expected tortuous roads through mountains but although we did climb high we eventually came to an enormous area of flat land that is the remains of lake beds that formed behind natural dams during the last ice age.

Of course, the ice age is not over here so we did a detour so as to get close to Mt Cook, the highest mountain in New Zealand and to see a small moraine dammed lake. On its placid surface were icebergs gently melting in the warm sun.

We travelled on from Mt Cook and down to Arrowtown, an old gold mining town that has managed to preserve a lot of its old buildings and not become too touristy in the process. The town gets its name from the fact that a large arrow was drawn to show where the gold was to be found! The town grew in the usual gold rush fashion and soon became a bustling settlement looking for all the world like something out of a cowboy film (with cars).

Many Chinese workers came and set up their own shanty town on the edge of the white settlement. Today some of their simple buildings remain and give a good idea of how these people barely scraped a living long after most of the gold had been won.

We went for a walk up the valley and were rewarded by some stunning scenery on a day of almost perfect weather.

Arrowtown was one of our favourite places on our whistle stop tour of South Island and we wished we could have stayed longer. However after 2 days we were off again and driving over the Haast Pass to the we(s)t coast. The rain started as we approached the divide and was soon teeming down. As we had plenty of time we diverted to see a small fishing village, recommended in Lonely Planet, with a caravan that supposedly sells the best fish and chips for many a mile. The village was deserted, rainy and dull, with a good selection of biting insects. The fish and chips were good but the service was as miserable as the weather, although the waitress perked up a bit when we told her we were from a town where the fishing industry was even more in decline than in their remote settlement. I think on another day with better weather we would have been happier to be here, but even the hostel owner in Haast seemed to delight in being as miserable as the weather.

The next day the rain continued but as we approached the glacier village of Foxs Glacier the weather perked up and we were able to walk up close to the ice and admire the drama of the landscape.

The diggers that can be seen in the photo were repairing the footpath after it had been washed away in the heavy rain. One of the most remarkable things about these glaciers is that they descend to only a few 100 metres above sea level and are therefore surrounded by tropical rain forest.

We stayed 2 nights at Franz Josef Glacier and on our way down from having seen the glacier close up, bumped into our Swedish friends who had arrived in New Zealand only a few days before. More of them in a later blog.