Category: New Zealand trip (2008-09)

The drive to Christchurch was long, and took us through the middle of the South Island, away from the mountains of the west to the summery east. The wind whipped up an enormous swell on the light, milky-blue waters of Lake Pukaki. The colour comes from the tiny particles of rock (rock flour) suspended in…

Kiwi Experience runs day trips to Milford Sound from Queenstown: five hours on the bus each way, in the middle of which you get a two hour cruise up and down the fjord. One of my friends and I decided this itinerary was a little abrupt given how beautiful Milford Sound was reputed to be.…

Queenstown is a moderately-sized town that (as mentioned in the Lonely Planet guide) feels like a small city. There are far more people walking around the streets at night than you would expect, most of whom I imagine are tourists. We were hammered with information about all the activities you can do in Queenstown, including…

The trip to Wanaka on New Year’s Day was fairly uneventful. We stopped off at Lake Matheson for a bit of photography, but we weren’t given enough time to do the full walk, which (as I learnt later) would have shown us a fairly amazing view. We also stopped over at Thunder Creek Falls. Our…

Fabio made us all scrambled eggs and bacon on toast for breakfast before we left Lake Mahinapua, even though he was apparently still drunk from the night before. And then we were off to the tiny town at the base of Franz Josef Glacier. We stopped for an hour or so at the Bushman’s Centre…

Along the West Coast we were dropped off at Cape Foul Wind and the Pancake Rocks to have a walk and a look around. The former has a nice (short) walking track, but it wasn’t all that spectacular. There were a few seals visible on the rocks, but my camera and/or photography skill were insufficient.…

Westport is not a “happening” town. We were warned by our driver to stay away from two of the town’s main pubs, and probably the others just in case, due to previous incidents involving Kiwi Experience passengers. There wasn’t a whole lot else to see. A small group of us ventured down to the beach,…

The trip to the South Island began in spectacular fashion as the bus driver swerved illegally over to the curb to collect me as I ran out of the Wellington YHA. I hadn’t slept in. Far from it – I’d actually been killing time looking over my photos, and just happened to kill a little…

Wellington is a smaller but more interesting city than Auckland (the Kiwi Experience brochure describes it as the “cultural capital”, as well as being the actual capital of course). I and a large number of my fellow travellers spent Christmas Day and Boxing Day there. The bus skipped one of its normal stops – “River…