Travel blog: Kia Ora to New Zealand's South Island
Snoozing NZ seal near Kaikoura (photo: Anna Kainberger)
Monday, 31, Mar 2008 10:40
Anna Kainberger is taking a year-out from her career to travel in south-east Asia and Australasia, along with Fiji and the USA. This month she is reporting from New Zealand. Here is her fourteenth blog entry:
I arrived in New Zealand after a rather short flight from Sydney (three hours) and my hopes after a very rainy week in Sydney were indeed high. I was not to be disappointed.
I had nearly six weeks to explore the South and North Islands and I was very much looking forward to meeting some Kiwis, getting close to penguins, seals and other sea creatures, going "tramping" (Kiwi for hiking) as well as soaking in the beauty of this diverse landscape.
I wanted to see both islands and my flight itinerary took me to Christchurch, departing six weeks later from Auckland.
As I had been travelling for over four months now and, being a backpacker, with money always an issue, I had to decide what was the best way for me to get around New Zealand.
Initially my plan was to rent a car or van and travel by myself, or maybe with one other backpacker, but I quickly gave up that idea as I simply had not met anyone I really wanted to travel with for the whole time.
So I moved on to investigating the various bus companies that tour around New Zealand.
The three main coach tour companies for younger travellers are the Magic Bus, Kiwi Experience, and Stray Buses.
In the end I went with the Magic Bus, not because I felt that it was the best suited for me, but because they had a two-for-one offer, which meant that I only had to find another backpacker to agree to buy a ticket package and then we could share the cost.
It was as simple as that - half price for a ticket that covered both islands - you do the math.
The other options would have been travelling on the public coach Intercity connections or even the "Naked Bus", which operates a similar system to Ryan Air and Easy Jet, if you book early you find seats for as little as NZ$1 (£0.40).
Although six weeks might sound a lot, it really is not much time to start organising every single detail yourself and so I boarded the Magic Bus one very early morning in the lovely, English-style city of Christchurch, only two days after I arrived.
The good thing about all of these coach companies is that you get picked up from your accommodation and they run on a hop-on-hop-off system.
As long as you tell your driver when you want to be picked up again from your last drop off point, they will book you back on the bus and it's all sorted.
If you don't tell the driver you can just call the Magic bus office number and book yourself back on for the next leg of the journey.
The other good thing about Magic is that they provide a lot of cultural insight into Kiwi and Maori history.
I saw the most important tourist hotspots in New Zealand, had plenty of coffee, food and toilet breaks and met a lot of young, as well as older, like-minded people.
My route for the South was going to be as follows: Start in Christchurch and travel north via Kaikoura to Picton, before going west to Nelson.
From there it was hop, skip and a week to Greymouth, the Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers as well as the Haast region to reach the west coast. With a stop in Lake Wanaka, it was then not far to the adventure capital of Queenstown.
From there I would cross back over to the east coast, landing in the Scottish-Kiwi town of Dunedin and coming back up to Christchurch to complete the loop before heading onto the North Island.
That was the original itinerary - on the bus you can buy all sorts of extensions into Milford Sound or Abel Tasman, to name two of the most famous National Parks in New Zealand, and with different tickets and routes on offer it was up to me where I wanted to go or stop and hang about for longer.
New Zealand is a country that makes things very simple for backpackers. Backpacker accommodation is available in every city. You can also camp or rent a campervan as there are plenty of camping grounds and secure van parking places available.
Hostel beds can be pre-booked through the Magic bus or you can book yourself, depending on how far you plan ahead.
A hostel bed in New Zealand costs between NZ$18-26 (£7-10) and in the six weeks I spent staying in hostels all over the north and south of New Zealand, I only came across one hostel that was not up to scratch.
Hats off to the Kiwis - they like backpackers and I felt welcome and well looked after in the over 26 hostels I stayed in.
With my itinerary sort of sorted and my ticket purchased, I could not wait to get started.
Kaikoura was originally established as a whalers' station but with whaling banned in New Zealand since the 1960s it is now more famous for whale watching, swimming with dolphins and the regional seafood speciality - crayfish.
Kaikoura in Maori simply means "meal of crayfish". A rugged coastline greeted us and the view of the Pacific Ocean was simply breathtaking.
We stopped at a seal colony five kilometres from the town centre and for me, coming from landlocked Austria, getting close to a seal was quite something.
Mind you - never get between a seal and the ocean or between a mother and its pup or the story could have an unhappy ending.
One of the risks of getting too close is that the seal might decide to spew half-digested seafood and fish at you. So keep at least five metres away unless you want to have to look for a water hose to clean yourself up.
We were going to stop for the night in Kaikoura and as I was not overly keen on swimming with dolphins or looking for giant sperm whales, I decided it was best to use one of the free bicycles available from the hostel and just explore the area by myself.
I cycled through town (it is not very big) and went back to the seal colony where our bus driver had pointed out a little food stall by the side of the road as the best and cheapest place to try some of the famous crayfish.
I was greeted by a pair of young cooks who recommended crayfish fritters in a sandwich as well as seafood chowder. I watched in amazement as my food was freshly prepared and served within minutes.
My crayfish fritters only cost NZ$7 (£2.80) and they were delicious. You could also opt for a whole or a half crayfish but sadly my budget was tight to say the least. If I ever go back to lovely Kaikoura this option will be revisited!
From the seal colony you can go for a mini-hike to the top of the hill and spot penguins and yet more seals lazing around - soaking up the sun and minding their own business.
Seals are night-time creatures and spend most of their days sleeping, or feeding their pups if they have them, before going off hunting during the night.
As I had an early start I went back to my hostel and enjoyed a drink with my fellow Magic Bus travellers before heading to bed and getting ready to move on the next day.
Our next overnight stop was to be Nelson - a city famous for its artistic touch and also closely located to the Abel Tasman national park, which I planned to explore.
Anna Kainberger