Mount Cook & Dunedin. Damn nature, you scary.

On our last night in Christchurch we decided to leave the city and drove to nearby Sumner for dinner as we’d read good things about it in the book. When we got there it was very small and quiet but we went to a nice place and had pizza (Chris), pasta (Jen) and shared a piece of the most tasty white chocolate and berry cheesecake that a person is ever likely to eat.

When we woke up on our last morning in Christchurch it was grey again. The kitchen was still full of flies (horrid big black ones) so we were definitely ready to leave. We got up nice and early because the map said it would be 4 hours and 40 minutes to Mount Cook National Park - after driving for about an hour and a half we stopped in a place called Ashburton to stock up on food as we knew there would be no supermarkets at Mt. Cook. Chris stayed in the car and played games on his iphone whilst Jen did the shopping - we’ve discovered this is the best plan when supermarket shopping. After paying for the shopping including some tasty looking frozen potato croquettes which were on special offer, Jen returned to the car only to realise we’d left our trusty freezer bag in the fridge on the campsite back at Christchurch. We were a bit gutted about some items - a few beers, bottle of ketchup, tub of garlic butter - but less bothered about an almost empty tub of Philadelphia, some tomato pickle we were really sick of and some tomatoes which were a bit squishy. We agreed it was not worth going back for so bought another freezer bag and went off on our way.

We stopped a while later in a lovely little place called Fairlie to fill up on petrol (no petrol stations in Mt. Cook) and lunch (we like lunch). After setting off from there for the last leg of our journey everything got ridiculously beautiful and we got very excited. We stopped at a Lake Tekapo - we didn’t need to but the water was bright turquoise and we were drawn to it’s beauty!

Our campsite was 25km away from Mt. Cook National Park but close enough that we could see the bugger. It was awesome. We were on the shores of Lake Pukaki and it was all bloody lovely. We can’t really tell you in words so here are some photos.

We pitched our tent on the edge of the site feeling quite smug about our unobscured views of Mt. Cook but not really thinking about shelter from the elements. We had some chicken and salad for tea and enjoyed a sunset over the mountains. Then it got dark. Like really dark. Like countryside dark. So we got in the tent at about 9pm. Started to feel gutted again about leaving the beers in Christchurch.

As we were getting off to sleep we could hear goats in the mountains. And then we heard some barking, followed by howling. Jen was convinced it was wolves and started to enjoy the great outdoors a little less. Chris felt confident(ish) that it was dogs so we eventually fell asleep. Only to wake up in the night for two reasons 1.) it was completely bloody freezing and 2.) we needed a wee. We’ve discovered that something about camping makes us need to wee in the middle of the night ALL THE TIME but when it’s freezing cold the idea of weeing in your sleeping bag for warmth seems much more appealing. After returning from our jaunt to the toilet block in we put on as many layers of thermal clothing as possible and disappeared inside our sleeping bags, faces and all.

When we woke up in the morning the world had started to warm up again and by the time we’d had breakfast it was really sunny and nice. We packed our sandwiches and other picnic bits (Ritz crackers - classic) and drove up to Mt Cook village where we began the Hooker Valley trek. Jen had read that it was 3-4 hours walking there and back  with excellent views of Mt. Cook, and that it was fairly easy. With the benefit of hindsight we can now confirm that they meant fairly easy for people who are used to walking around and not really that easy for people who are used to sitting on their arses. However despite Chris twisting his ankle and Jen having stubby legs we did pretty bloody well and even though it was our hottest day in NZ so far (sod’s law?) we made it all the way to the Hooker lake, which is fed by the Hooker Glacier, so is beautiful but very cold with big chunks of glacial ice floating in it. We sat by the lake and ate our picnic. Corned beef never tasted so good. We also climbed over some rocks to some places you weren’t really supposed to go but we were pretty sure there wouldn’t be an avalanche and there were other stupid people doing it too. The walk back was much harder mainly because we were dead tired and very hot. We were very happy to get back in the car and turn on the air conditioning. The whole thing took us 3hrs 40mins so we felt quite proud of ourselves and our new-found outdoorsy ways.

When we got back to the campsite we felt a bit like our legs didn’t belong to us so we had a drink and Chris had an ice-cream. He tried to have 2 ice-creams but Jen helped him with the second one. Then cooked ourselves a hearty dinner of sausages, potato croquettes (totally worth it) and beans and had another early night. A large coach load of what can only be described as “youths” had arrived on our campsite and they stayed up making a lot of noise till at least midnight which made Jen very cross. Chris managed to deal with his anger by sleeping.

After another night in the freezing cold we packed up our tent ready to head off to Dunedin. As we were packing the tent away we were confronted by this little bugger.

After some wikipedia research we discovered it is a Mountain Stone Weta. Chris wanted to take lots of photos of it but Jen just wanted to run around flapping her arms.

We arrived in Dunedin later that afternoon, just in time for rain and grey clouds. Boo. We speedily put the tent up and headed out for supplies. After a thrilling trip to Pak N Save and a depressing chicken stir fry we decided it was time to hit the town. Dunedin is home to 27,000 students (so the taxi driver said) so we thought it must be “kickin“. Unfortunately for us - it was Tuesday. So we wandered around an almost empty Dunedin and went to a few pubs. After not really drinking properly for a few weeks we can no longer really handle our booze so after 2 pints it was time to head home.

Chris: I can handle my booze fine. You’re the one that turns into a silly-arse after 2 pints.

The following day we had booked a wildlife tour but it didn’t start until 3pm so we had a nice lazy morning and did some jobs like laundry and buying athletes foot cream. We also made some chicken risotto (out of a packet) to take with us on our wildlife tour as it wouldn’t finish until 9:30pm. They picked us up in a minibus at our campsite and while the bus drove us around they gave us binoculars so we could do bird-spotting out of the windows. The tour headed to an albatross breeding ground first of all. They were Royal Albatross’ with 3 metre wingspans and we saw quite a lot of them flying around which was pretty cool. We though that this would be a bit “yeah, yeah albatross, whatever” but we quite enjoyed it. And the visitor centre served milkshakes. So we were pleased.

Then the bus headed on to a remote farm on the Otago Peninsula where we saw fur seals like the ones we had swum with in Kaikoura - the pups were much bigger though. Then our guide took us down to another deserted beach where yellow-eyed penguins were returning from the sea to their nests on land. They are the world’s rarest penguins so it was awesome to see them. We had hoped to see blue penguins too which are very tiny but we only saw one peeping out of his burrow. Also on this beach were male sea-lions which were massive. And a bit growly. We got quite close to them at first as they didn’t really seem interested in us, mainly in biting one another. But later as we headed back across the beach one of the young sea-lions charged at us. Our guide quickly ushered us to one side and just stood there facing up to the sea-lion. Now when we say young, it was already 80 or 90 kg (13 stone) and could break a man’s leg with it’s bite so when it’s leaping towards you growling and snarling it’s kinda terrifying. Afterwards we asked our guide “how did you know it would stop when you just stood there?”, he said “I didn’t know” and we said “wooaaaahhh”.

Mmmm milkshakes.

Two male sea-lions. The one on the left is younger. And the other one's bitch.

Penguins coming home from a hard day's swimming and eating.

 A penguin in the grass on the way to his nest.

Chris took this whilst we were running away.

We really loved this tour and almost didn’t care when we got back to the campsite and it was raining. Almost. Luckily it stopped soon and we fell to sleep fairly quickly after coming crashing down from the adrenaline high of being chased by a sea-lion.

This morning we woke up and it was raining. We had breakfast and it stopped raining so we quickly threw the wet tent into the car and it started raining again. We head out from Dunedin for Te Anau which is where we are now at our favourite campsite so far. The fridge in the camp kitchen has an ice maker for crying out loud! Tomorrow we are booked on a Milford Sound coach and bus tour which includes a complementary lunch which we are particularly excited about. We have purchased some 80% deet insect repellent (it says on the bottle that it may melt plastic and painted surfaces) as we have heard that the sandflies are bastards. We will report back. Hopefully not munched to death.