Heading to the South Island......

Left Lake Taupo early in the am, there wasn’t much ground to cover, and we’d booked an Oddessy wine tour on the recommendation of the wine store guy the night before.

Rolling along the deserted highway, I had just crested a hill and was coasting down the other side when….



Yep. 115 in a 100. $80.00. Welcome to N.Z. Good thing is, no points, and you can pay your fine at any “Westpac” bank branch. Easy. Although the cop himself said there was a 10 kph allowable variance, so I got to pay 80 bucks for traveling 3 miles per hour over their limit. Yeah. Beautiful scenery, photo opportunities everywhere, getting sick of saying,”Wow.” every hillcrest…




Got to Hawkes Bay with plenty of time to spare, we awaited the van’s pickup time by relaxing at the campsite. Most sites have a “slow down” sign this one made me grin…




Gareth was to be our tour guide, he ferried us around, giving trite commentary from a mice with the deadpan emotion of someone who’s done this all a thousand times before.

Still, he showed us a lot of places we’d never have found otherwise, and saved me from making the choice between drinking and driving. Worth the admission price. Mission winery, looking down on the old rugby fields..




Hawks Bay is a bit of a wine producer’s haven, having it’s own little microclimate and a berth in history and soil ingenuity as the place recently raised from the seafloor this century with the Napier Earthquake.

Excellent wines, although a bit limited in scope. Chardonnay is king, followed by an up and coming pinot crowd, while red blends make up the rest of the market. Boring, predictable wines. Not bad, but nothing spectacular. One pleasant surprise is the ice wine, here, but even it’s a sham…they freeze the fermenting tanks to achieve that which nature doesn’t provide. Shallow, yes, but the affordable wines that result are tempting enough to allow such latitude.

Less than $20/bottle for an “ice” wine is tough to scoff at.

The next morning, we decided to run south, and despite all evidence and advice to the contrary, simply drove onto the ferry without any issues.

Bit about the restaurants, you pay before getting served, no tips(there’s not even a place to add on on the bill), and you get a number that you put on your table to tell the kitchen staff where to put the food..





We had to climb up and over a mountain range to get to the ferry…






Guy that took the photo was a biker, resting from his ascent to the top. We chatted a bit, he actually lived in the valley beyond, his backyard was this tangled playground. He rode a ?“Freedom” 650 Suzuki, it was a streetified version of the DR650 motor, much like the rare NX650 was Honda’s version of a road going XR650, long before supermotos became mainstream. This particular versions’ road biased tires were scuffed right to the edges, and the plastic showed evidence of a pavement kiss. I asked about the relative lack of bikes on these roads seemingly built for them, he replied,” Just come back on the weekend…it’ll be thick with them.” Gave me a happy smile. The roads really were built for bikes.

We both saddled up, he quickly disappeared from sight as only a well-ridden bike on familiar roads can. Ride safe.

Driving along, we were both starting to get hungry, when, in the middle of nowhere, we came upon the Tui Brewery, with it’s little bar/restaurant. Just the thing….









One downside, though, is that we’d be doing the latter half of the crossing at night, where the ferry negotiated the tight fiords. We’d been told the scenery was spectacular. We’ll have to catch it in the daylight on the return trip.

The ferry was interesting, upon boarding we were confronted with all the 18 wheelers actually chained to the deck, anticipating a rough crossing. The trucks here have two sets of front wheels, all four turn….




A beautiful sunset….


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I slept through most of it. I assisted an American group with opening a beer bottle, I hated to see a beer potentially go to waste as they were hacking at the cap with keys, but was ashamed/embarrassed by their loud obnoxiousness and ignorance that was painfully apparent to all aboard. America, please shut up a bit when abroad. You might just learn something, and you certainly will diminish the worldwide perception of being arrogant morons.

Close to reaching the dock, I went out to the moonless sky. Alone on the deck due to the lateness of the hour and the malevolent chill, I looked up, seeing the familiar streak of the milky way, but an otherwise alien sky shone back. No North star, no “Big dipper”, the constellations unfamiliar. Oddly, it was then that I realized fully how far from home I was. I feel no particular affinity for the stars, in fact, I have to work in larger cities where the light pollution means it’s rare to see and stars at all, yet this one thing really drove home the fact I was on the other side of the world.

Arrived on the south island about 2200. Decided to drive for a while, as I had rested aboard. Hopped back in after the crossing, found my first anti-tourist message in an obvious splatter of spit dead-center in my drivers’ side rearview mirror. Welcome to the south island.

I spent many hours of my life stuck behind motor homes/campervans, I was determined not to be that guy. Pulling over for the vehicles rapidly appearing in my rearview, I made impressive time despite occasionally being stuck behind slow-moving campervans that did not/would not pull over. Not many venture past the 110kph set as the top speed here, life moves a bit slower. The stability control and tractability of the turbo pull allowed me to keep pace with traffic fairly easily, except in extreme climbs where gravity would win out and I’d have to pull off to allow faster drivers past. It did, however, give me some small satisfaction to see drivers that’d overtaken me on a long uphill slope continue to watch their mirrors in the turns as I remained on their tails for miles in a fat campervan. Yeah, I’m shallow, I know.


Soon, though, the toll of the long day materialized, I tired of attempting to discern the road’s vectors in the inky blackness that is rural N.Z. late at night, and I parked in one of the many roadside rest stop/picnic sites to catch a few precious hours.

Stressing about being in an unknown country in an unknown situation without any support system had me stressing a bit, I finally drifted off to sleep…..only to be awakened by the rumble of a diesel motor…close.

I slowly pulled a shade aside and saw two garbage guys dutifully emptying the cans at each end of the pulloff. Wincing, I sat upright, my back having a tough time of driving and sleeping on unfamiliar seats/sheets. Have you driven through a ford lately?





Drove down to the beautiful peninsula with its little tourist trap town of Kaikoura, spent the day wandering around.



Seals, penguins and whales abound, as the ocean shelf drops off deep just off the coast, the upwelling currents bringing rich feeding grounds. Two plates fight here, one being thrust up to form the impressive craggy mountains while the other is forced deep underground to melt and begin again. Impressively tortured sedimentary rock levels tell the geologic tale…



Huge populations of fur seals here, breeding grounds and rich fisheries…





A big seal here was completely nonplussed at our presence, even from 10 feet away I had difficulty even rousing him enough to open his eyes…




Just offshore three distinct groups of hundreds of birds whirled and circled above what I can only guess as schooling fish balls just offshore….




Took a bit of a walk, watched from afar as a “seal swim” group of wetsuit clad Asian tourists snorkeled among a huge fur seal breeding colony. The cool air and occasional raindrops made jumping into a wetsuit and then plunging into the cold Pacific seem not only warrantless, but ridiculous. We cruised the town, did the tourist thing, and spent the night just south of the township with our rear doors overlooking the cold waves, the warm blast from the small space heater and the inner warmth of the wine making it actually a nice place to spend the evening.










Returned to the small town in the am to get a warm bite/coffee and refuel. Pushed on to Christchurch, realizing the van’s seats actually put me in a horrendous “ C” shape during all the driving time. No wonder my back was protesting. A pillow to provide lumbar support immediately had me feeling better. Now if I could even out the “reverse driver’s tan” I have going on my right forearm. Seems we’re under the ozone hole here, it takes no time to burn exposed skin. Lots of wrinkled overtanned faces here. Some “along the road” shots…








Stopped at a small shop along the way, we’d missed the “Prenzel” distillery on the North Island, but here was a shop with all their Prenzel wares, all set up like a wine tasting. Try the vodka? The lemon liqueur? The butterscotch liqueur topped with the amaretto cream? Sure. Had to stop as I was driving, but the array of flavours and varieties was impressive.

Got to Christchurch, made our way to the park, paid for three days as this is labour day weekend here, and we could use the time to recuperate and explore the city. There’s a Maori group of kids here in the bunkhouse opposite the campervan facilities, probably 30-40 kids, young teens, all practicing the Maori dances/chants/songs/steps in the field. Feels like we’re watching a private show. Also must be a haven for deformed ducks, one I’d named “Nobil” because he was missing the front half of his upper bill, so you could always see his tongue and he had a terrible time catching/keeping any food, then we noticed another duck that was missing the whole left foot, so of course she became known as “Peggy”. Add to that the two groups of adolescent ducklings regularly making rounds, and the place is a sanctuary of sorts.




Enjoying the wine we’d collected during our tasting tour, we relaxed, venturing out occasionally to see the sights and sounds, but the campsite is now a comfortable place to relax and slow the pace of our “vacation”.

Had an update all ready to go, but with one fell swoop and an unintended click of the damn laptop “mouse”, I DELETED THE WHOLE THING. Not only deleted, but Blogger has a feature that autosaves your work occasionally to a drafts folder. Just as the page wiped clean and I finished my first round of cursing, the little “saving” notation started flashing…it was saving the now blank page and wiping the previous save. Arrgh!!! Thank God for wives who can take over…..