Hanmer Springs

-->

We left Murchison in the midst of a torrential downpour, and just ahead of a 130 kph wind. We turned south and headed over the mountains for Hanmer Springs. Hanmer Springs is a resort town reminiscent of a mini-Sun Valley and kind of McCall-ish, with a bunch of useless crap like mountain biking and golf. I tried to cheat on this part by searching the net for descriptive information about the place that I could cut and paste. Unfortunately, there is little on the internet that isn’t buck-generation motivated, and I couldn’t find anything that didn’t include the usual vapid adjectives like “beautiful”, “charming”, “nestled”, “spectacular”, “picturesque”…you get the idea.

Actually, Hanmer Springs is a small town in the Canterbury region of the South Island. The town is built around a popular hot spring which was discovered in the late 19th century by some guy herding sheep, and saw the steam.

Now it’s a tourist destination, and you pay to sit in its rejuvenating waters while you listen to screaming kids. The town only has a little over 700 full time residents, but being only 90 minutes from Christchurch, with a daily shuttle bus, you do the week-end math. 

The 130 kph winds had been and gone ahead of us that day, and tore the roof off of one of the buildings. At this time of the season, these tourist pits are starving for business, and there is a lot of competition in the lodging biz. We got really great accommodations on the cheap; especially considering the exchange rate (.55 USD).

Views from our room:

Always good advice:

While there, we also discovered that we make an outstanding Pinot Noir:

Visit us at our web site: http://www.lawsonsdryhills.co.nz

Another goofy fence:

It was really nice to get over to some dry country. Even though this area didn’t get hit with the rains, it still screwed all the rivers because guess where they come from. The north facing slopes of the hills are heavily timbered, but just a 20 minute drive up and over the hills just north of town, and it looks like Wyoming. By accident we found the Molesworth Sheep Station. It’s the biggest farm (they call ranches farms here) in the country at 161,000 hectares (418,600 acres). It looked like heaven. We drove for miles. We thought we had actually found a place here where there was freedom in nature. It wasn’t until we were on the way back that we saw the standard 4 ft by 6 ft DOC (Department of Conservation) sign outlining the fact that everything is prohibited on this “public” land. Nothing takes the edge off your buzz like a DOC sign.

Um...what?


Kiwi reforestation

New Zealand has a weird way of replanting blocks after logging. They must lay out strings and plant tress like every ten feet apart in a grid pattern. When you drive down the highway and see blocks like this that have been there for several years, it just looks unnatural.

What it reminds me of is hair plugs. Or maybe more like your little sister's doll. Remember when you were a kid and your sister had these dolls (before Power Rangers, Rob) that had the articulating arms and legs, and the eyes closed when you laid them down? And it had the head that swiveled and you could pull off just to make her cry? It reminds me of that hair.

Murchison

-->

Before leaving Nelson two different guides put together lists of suggested rivers to try on our way through. Both had the Mangles River on their list. The Mangles River crosses the highway a couple miles before Murchison where we were planning to turn south for the trip over the hills. When we got there, it didn’t look like it had rained much. We decided to drive up the river to have a look at the water before we decided whether or not to stay the night.

In New Zealand the rivers themselves come in two ownership classes. The socialist class of river is called the “Queen’s Chain”. This means that the river is owned by the crown, and once you gain access to it, you may travel up and down the river with no regard to the private land that adjoins it. However, if you have to cross private land to get to the river, you have to have permission of the land owner. The other class is “Riparian Rights” which means that the land owner also owns the river that runs through his land. The land owners will rarely refuse access across their land unless they don’t like you, or they have livestock issues where you want to fish.

We found a likely looking stretch of river and found a farm house near by. The dogs announced our arrival, so by the time we got to the end of the drive, the farmer was already standing on his porch (in his stocking feet). He stepped off the porch. I started asking him about getting permission to fish his water. He started telling me about how his family originally came from Russia, and he had been on that farm since 1944. He told me how his father had fished it, and how many people would approach him a season to fish there. He hadn’t seen many yet this year, and with the economic situation in the world, he didn’t expect to. It started to rain.

He asked me about how our trip was going, where we had been and where we were going. I told him about some of the places we had been on the North Island, and how nervous we had gotten about going too far into the bush. I made a joke about how because no one knows where we are at any time here, if anything happened to us, no one would start looking until we didn’t show up at the airport back in Seattle. He told me how his brother had gone back to Kamchatka to visit family and was never seen or heard from again.

We spent about an hour talking in the rain and the merciless sand flies; he in his stocking feet. Cynthia was sitting in the car in the driveway. I guess I was being interviewed. Then he said “Let’s go say hi to your missus”. At the end of it all, he told me that I was welcome to fish anywhere on his land, (and he owned about 15k of river) and if I ever came through again, I would be welcome. I thought that he was going to invite us for dinner, but in the end, he didn’t. “I’ll see you tomorrow” he said.

For the majority of our trip, we have not had much opportunity to interface with anyone outside the tourism industry. Most of these people were polite at least; but then they have to be, don’t they? Without exception, outside the city the genuine people have been friendly and generous. We then headed into Murchison to find a shack for the night.

About an hour after we checked into our nightly hovel it began to rain…and rain, and rain. It poured all night long, and the wind blew something fierce. I feared the worst for the river. The next day the rain let up, but the rivers were swollen and dark. We drove the 20 some odd miles back up the river, and I left a note in the farmer’s mailbox thanking him for his generosity, and hoped to see him on our way back up.

Our shack for the night:

Nelson

-->

During our major strategy and trip planning sessions, which usually take place just before I turn the ignition key, we decided that our route on the South Island should be down the west coast first, then across the mountains to the east.

There are huge areas of this country that are simply inaccessible. There are no roads at all. The southwest of New Zealand is called Fiordlands. It is part of what’s known as a “World Heritage Site". These are areas set aside by the UN, with the host country’s consent, that can never be developed but must remain as they have always been.

Remember way back at the beginning when we told you about our wonderful flight over? How since we were stranded by United we got to spend the night in LA? As we said, we met several kiwis who told us to stop in when we passed through. Neil and Sue McCliskie own a large apple orchard just west of Nelson. Since we were heading west, we wanted to stop by and say “Hi”, and maybe have a bit of lunch. On our flight, Neil had also mentioned that they had friends who own a 50,000 acre sheep station in the high plains of Canterbury near Lake Heron, and it has prime fly fishing waters on it. ESPN rates this area as “One of the ten places fly fishermen need to go before they die”, and he would put us in touch with these friends. That was another reason for the stop.

The funny thing about Kiwis though (those outside of the tourist trade) is that “a bit of lunch” turned into a chauffeured tour of the region, afternoon wine tastings at several different wineries, dinner and a room for the night.

One of the things that we hadn’t foreseen when planning our trip was the problem of having all of our belongings in the car. This meant that we can’t just park along some river and fish, or park at a trailhead to hike. Neil and Sue also offered to store our things and use their home as a base of operations for seeing the local area. Unfortunately, the weather forecast for the next several days turned to crap. By crap I mean 300mm of rain in 24 hours, and 130 kph winds.

They also put me on the phone with one of their friends who had been a professional fishing guide, so I could pick his brain about local rivers. This total stranger spent about 45 minutes on the phone with me, and then called back later that afternoon with detailed directions and fishing instructions for several rivers along our route west. Unfortunately, the weather was going to put a damper on those plans.

We headed out of the area westward (with two $50 bottles of unbelievable wine thrust into our hands by our hosts, www.neudorf.co.nz) with the intention of turning south before the coast and heading over the hills to the east (dry) side of the island and do the wet coast (not a typo) on the way back. But as we headed out, we got out of the rain in about 45 minutes, and the rivers looked good. They had darkened just slightly, but that was a good thing, because they had been too clear before. We started to re-think our plan.

November 20, Picton to Nelson

-->

We left Picton Thursday morning and headed south to Blenheim which is the winery capital of the Marlborough region. This region specializes in those other wines; the ones that aren’t red. We liked one winery so much we decided to buy it. Might as well get one with our name already on it. It reminds me of the kiwi who really wanted a personalized license plate. He couldn’t afford the cost, so instead he changed his name to CGH-422.

Remember what I mentioned before about all the New Zealand World Capitals?

We stopped at the Mussel Pot restaurant. I learned that all this time I’ve been eating mussels incorrectly. According to the sign in the restaurant, the proper way to eat mussels is:

1. Remove the first mussel from the shell with your fingers.

2. Use the mussel shell as tweezers to extract the mussels from the other shells as you eat them. No forks were allowed.

What is it with these fences?

…and these mailboxes?

Cynthia’s preferred navigation goggles. I’m not kidding; this is how she rides around in the car. Good thing we don’t know anybody here.

Picton

-->

Picton is the southern terminus of the Inter-island ferry. It’s a beautiful little port this time of year before the GUPs show up en masse. You can still go out on a charter if you wish, but you don’t have to fight for a spot on the rail like dogs over a bone. The marina illustrates how New Zealand rates as one of the top nations as measured by boats per capita (don’t know if all the American boats here count).

The place we selected to stay was about 3k from town, and right next to the marina. We stayed two nights while reconnoitering and planning our next move. It was really good to leave the North Island behind.

This bird is called a Pukeko. They are common around the islands. This one greeted us when we arrived. He was a very curious fellow, and if you stood or sat still, he would come pretty close, and check you out. He would never get close enough to touch. Cynthia decided to do a test where she put several food items out (e.g. raisin, pumpkin seed, cashew, etc.). The bird crept up, grabbed the cashew and ran at top speed (they're hilarious to watch run) into the distance and we never saw him again.


Duck Invasion Part 2:

I don't know what it is with these parks, but they all seem to have ducks around. It's probably because dogs aren't allowed most places (we drove by one sheep farmer's place and there were about a dozen dog hides hanging on the fence).


Cynthia's duck barricade:


I finally had to chase them off with my fishing rod.

Maori art (?)


The Harbour: