To infinity...and New Zealand!

"Good afternoon this is your captain speaking. Welcome aboard this Rocket ship journey from Christchurch which circles the south island of New Zealand, provided by Spaceship Campervans. This service will be making scheduled stops at Dunedin, Invercargill, Queenstown, Fox Glacier, Franz Joseph and Kaikura before returning to Christchurch. We will be cruising today at an average altitude of 4ft with speeds reaching up to 100km per hour. The outside air temperature is around 20C, and with the exception of a few clouds the weather should be mostly fine.

We may encounter a small amount of turbulence during our flight today and this is most likely to be caused by either rock fall or gravel roads. I therefore encourage you to remain seated with your seatbelt securely fastened for the duration of this journey. A small selection of drinks and snacks will be available throughout the journey, and these will be dependent on the stock levels of the nearest supermarket. Sleeper class is available at the rear of the vehicle, but we would like to remind customers that this is only available while the vehicle is stationary. 

A small range of fragrances will also be available to purchase during the course of our journey, with this weeks special being "haven't had a shower for a while"; the latest fragrance from Dior, of which a tester is available free of charge.
If you require a toilet break, please inform myself and I will try and find a safe place somewhere within the next 200km. So please sit back and enjoy your journey with Spaceship Campers."

So as you may have realised by now we have spent the majority of the last 2 weeks touring the South Island of New Zealand in a campervan, but this wasn't before an eventful start to our time in New Zealand.

With our campervan. You can see me clutching the small gold tin of travel sweets that no journey is complete without :)

Although we were due to explore the South Island of New Zealand first, our flight from Australia would actually take us into Auckland on the North Island and from there we would make our way down south by a series of buses and a ferry. However with our first bus running an hour late, we ended up missing the inter island ferry and this in turn meant that we ended up missing our bus to Christchurch. As we had missed our trip to Christchurch we ended up missing our hotel room that we had booked for the night. So as we weren't in Christchurch that night we ended up missing the first day of our campervan rental. Therefore we had to scrap one day of our planned itinerary in order to get back on track.

* A worthy note to any other travellers making a similar journey to us; although bus times will often make out that there is enough time between the bus and the ferry, you have to board the Interislander ferry 45 minutes before it sails. The buses often run late (despite there being very little traffic) and so it becomes very easy to miss a ferry that you thought would not be a problem to catch.

Once we were on the ferry (which was rescheduled free of charge by the bus company) we got our first real taste of what New Zealand landscape can be really like. The deep blue waters on which we were sailing were flanked on either side by rolling green hills edged with a dramatic rocky face, and a couple of small penguins followed alongside the ship until we made free of the land and got into open waters. Likewise, as we made our way through the Marlborough Sounds into Picton on the south island the scenery was of the quality to take your breath away. 

Taken from the ferry between Wellington and Picton

We stayed that night in Picton as the bus company had also rebooked our bus ticket to Wellington, but that was not until the following day. Unfortunately the bus company accept no liability for accommodation in circumstances such as this, and so we ended up paying for both the hotel room in Christchurch that we could not use as well as the hostel that we hurriedly booked on our arrival in Picton. The town there is a lot smaller than we thought it might be, and I think to an extent it suffers from people driving off the ferry and passing straight through it without stopping.

After our bus journey the following day we found ourselves in Christchurch, where we needed to book another extra hostel room as we were unable to pick up our camper until the morning after (the costs of one late bus soon add up!). I was really surprised to see how much damage remained from the earthquake that the city suffered back in February 2011, with the rebuilding process only just now getting under way  According to our bus driver this period of time has been left deliberately by the government to ensure that any aftershocks or further earthquakes have passed before the rebuilding begins. There is still a large "red zone" in the middle of the city where the worst of the damage has happened, and this area is out of bounds to pedestrians and most traffic. There is a bus however that is still permitted to run through the red zone which you are able to take to see the main damage, but it is a lot more expensive than any other bus in town. Strange that a natural phenomenon that killed many people has effectively become a tourist attraction.

The next morning we stood keys in hand in front of our transport and our home for the next 10 days. Our Spaceship campervan had it's name "SANDO" stickered on the side, although we think this is a rubbish name for a spaceship. It is essentially a Toyota people carrier that has had the interior refitted to have rotating rear seats and a double bed included. Simple, but it does the job. 

Doing a spot of cooking at a camp site

Fighting to make up the lost day in our schedule we made our way down to Dunedin, where we went in search of our new best friend; the library. Often with free wifi and a power source at hand the libraries of New Zealand have become invaluable to us to ensure we can keep "in the loop" with facebook and emails while making sure we have enough power in the evening to watch a film in the van.

The following day was one of our longer journeys as we made our way down and around the coast to Invercargil, dropping down to Bluff (the most southern part of the south island of New Zealand) before beginning our journey up the west coast as far as Monowai.

Our next major stop along the way was at Milford Sound. Milford has a great reputation with tourists, and in a sense that worried us a little. There is little worse than finding a wonderful, tranquil and serene area only to find it is packed with too many loud (and dare I say in some cases ignorant  tourists along with just as many people trying to sell them useless pieces of tat. As such we nearly opted for the notably quieter Doubtful Sound, although time and money would not allow for this. We were however overjoyed with our time at Milford. We booked ourselves on the first cruise of the day through the fijords, and we were pleasantly surprised that it was not as overcrowded and as touristy as we might have thought.

Milford Sound

The boat tour was incredible, and on our way back we were even treated to a dolphin swimming in the bow wave in front of the boat. The scenery was spectacular, and it s easy to see why it is considered one of the most beautiful places in New Zealand. The road journey there wasn't half bad either, although it is currently only open during daylight hours due to a rockfall which is waiting to happen.

A few more days later and we found ourselves at the famous Fox Glacier. The one thing that you notice about the country is how diverse it's landscape is. Beaches, rainforests, open plains, mountains, glaciers, they have the lot. 

We had booked ourselves on a half day trek on the glacier, and we arrived full of excitement about all of the wonderful ice formations that we were going to see. Unfortunately the glacier didn't quite live up to our expectations, and we realised to get to see all of the cool things that are pictured in the booklets and on websites you have to take a helicopter hike at the mere cost of $400 per person. Slightly out of our price range! Don't get me wrong it was still good to get out on the ice and learn more about their intriguing creation and movement, but we just felt it left a little bit to be desired for the price we paid.

Vicky and our guide (Dora) scaling the Fox Glacier

During our journey we were mostly making use of campsites provided by the New Zealand Department of Conservation, some of which are free and some of them require a small fee (usually around $6 per person). From some stories I have heard there have been problems before with campers leaving a lot of mess behind while "freedom camping", and so these sites act as a kind of fair deal for everybody. 

The main event for us in the south island though was still yet to come. We journied coast to coast to make our way from Graymouth to Kaikura where we booked ourselves on a tour to swim with wild dolphins. You may or may not know that New Zealands temperatures are very similar to that of the UK, and so needless to say the water was very cold. Equipped with full wetsuits as well as all of your standard snorkelling gear we made our way out into the Pacific Ocean in a small vessel until we found a pod of a couple of hundred  "dusky" dolphins. We slipped down off of the back of the boat and into the water and instantly the dolphins all came over to see what we were about. There were so many of them swimming around us as close as only an inch or two away, while others were putting on an acrobatic display of dives and flips right in front of our very eyes. 

Me swimming along with one of the dolphins

The way that these tours are operated are really positive. The do not feed or train the dolphins at all to encourage them to interact with the swimmers, and everything is all completely on the dolphins terms. They have in entire ocean to swim away from people if they don't want to be near them, and you get a real feeling of it being a privilege of being let into their world when they stay and play with you. 

The weirdest sensation for me was not being able to see the ocean floor. Normally when I have been snorkelling the water has been less than 10 metres deep, with the focus being on the corals and reef fish that are easily within eyesight. In this case however the ocean floor was some 135 metres down, and all that was apparent was a sense of being at the top of a giant blue chasm with no way to tell left from right or up from down. The dolphins soon distract you from that though!

So now returning our campervan to Christchurch we turn our attention to the journey back up to the north island. Will it run smoother than our journey down? I certainly hope so, but the only way to find out is to check back here for the next instalment.

"This is your captain speaking. We have now arrived at our destination in Christchurch. The local time is still the same as when you set off, and the weather is now raining. On behalf of the whole crew we would like to thank you for choosing Spaceship Campers and we hope to see you again soon."