Congratulations to New Zealand and your All Blacks to the Rugby World cup gold. You finaly reclaimed the gold position and it seems that the Kiwis got there pride back. We missed the big game since we stayed in one of these gorgeous camp spots in the middle of nowhere at a river, in a valley all surrounded by the mountains – guess I’ve described similar spots before but you can never get enough of heaven. Lina was the most nervous one about the game and she pooed all over her supporting All Black’s body right before the game started.
Travelling down the windling west coast of the south island you really don’t need a navigator – there is only one road and you only have the choice of going north or south. If you are lucky to come by an odd town it’s typical setup is a main street with one store a few houses and if you’re really lucky they have a gas station as well. There is only living some 30000 along the west coast so you can imaging it’s not crowded. They seem to be happy about one lane bridges since they are the only ones around and there are heaps of bridges. If the bridge tends to get too long you just build a meeting platform or a few along the way. This is not really necessary though since we never met any cars going over a one lane bridge. The roads are actually quite deserted and you probably meet more sheep on the road then cars as you can see in the picture. When the road turned inland from the west coast due to the fiords we actually had the choice on a few different roads heading in different directions – leaving the untouched paradise and some kind of civilization picked up again.
Leaving Queenstown and the adrenaline behind we were in the need for some more of this peace and quite and we just found the right spot. After some free camping we came to Milford Sound. If I’ve described beautiful nature before this is even better. Our camper van struggled to climb the mountains and the brakes smelt bad going down to the coast again. When we arrived we had a really bad storm with strong wind and hard rain so the view wasn’t too good. Walking throug the camp sight through covered path ways hindering the rain to get you bad you understand that they are used to bad weather and you get the feel of beeing at a polar station. They get some 7 m of rain here a year and it felt like we got 1 m of that during our stay. The second day Hanna had her go in a kajak in Milford Sound with ok weather and the next it was Emil’s turn who was lucky to catch a sunny day with blue sky which seems to be scarce here. The Sound or more correctly the fiord since it was carved out by a glacier was just stunning. You feel the awe and quite small when paddling away on the fiord some 300 m deep with mountains going straight up to some 3000 m. The trees tried to cling onto the bare rock and often failed, creating many tree avalaches during the heavy rain falls. All mountains where also stripped with the masses of water falls from the last rain. We were also lucky to see some wild life such as the Yellow Eyed Penguin and Fur seals.
We then turned south again and the mountains disappeard replaced by undulating grass hills spotted by white armies of sheep, a landscape similar to the north island. Hitting the south coast we were welcomed by the beautiful see again pounding against the cliff faces. We were also greeted by the strong southern wind rocking us to sleep in our camper van when we stayed just on the cliffs by the rough see on the very southern tip of the south island. You can almost feel that this icy wind derives from the south pole. Hanna was lucky when it was here turn for penguin spotting and saw the last one tumbling out of the see searching its way to its nest up the beach. We then followed the coast eastward to Nugget Point where we spotted heaps of see lions in a very nice cliffy scenery. This was the warmest day so far and we felt the urge of actually leaving the fleece behind – haven’t done that too much lately. Looking at the turquise sea you also feel the urge for a dip which we weren’t brave enough to do. But we at least dipped our feet which was cold enough.
In Dunedin we got our sweet tooth sweetened by going to the Cadburry World. We were litterally stuffed with chocolates of a wide variety. This was the first time Emma has been allowed to eat as much as she wanted till she got fed up with it. They also had a chocolate fountain with one ton of chocolate. Fed to the brink with chocolate and seeing these grotesque amounts of chocolate you don’t really get that hungry anymore, you just want to have some water.
Kiwi spotting 