I do not know why anyone would trust my powers of travel itinerary planning and implementation. Back in 2000 when my friend Justin and I were touring around China, we discovered very late that the day we were going to stay in Hangzhou did not exist. Somehow we had miscounted days and we literally pulled into the station, waited several hours (in which I had a memorable stomach upset...) and then got on the train again and left. In 2012, when we arrived in Queenstown I found that I booked November instead of December and had to rebook at the front desk.
The theme recurred on our summer trip this year twice when somehow I booked our Dunedin accommodation for November instead of December AND when we arrived in Ashburton I discovered that we had not arranged for the following evening of accommodation (I thought we had accounted for every night). Fortunately, the Dunedin hotel was understanding and moved the booking even though it had effectively passed; and in the second case, in the border-closed summer that it has been, there was still a lot of free rooms in other towns, and we chose Oamaru for an evening.
Oamaru rates a mention not just for its spontaneous appearance in our schedule. We had planned to go straight from Ashburton to Twizel but early in our planning Oamaru was an option instead of Twizel. Now we would be doing both. Oamaru was one of a twin pair of dots on a map to me for most of my life, Timaru and Oamaru. They are like our Paraguay, no, no, Uruguay!
Timaru is a stop on the way to Oamaru and was much more substantial than my imagination. It had a huge bay and port. But we barely stayed there more than an hour. Oamaru was the gem, though. The appeal of it was its proximity to Moeraki boulders, penguins and Whitestone Cheese. What I didn't know before hand was the Whitestone wasn't just a name: The Oamaru area was regarded as "whitestone" country, because of the abundance of limestone. And the Victorian quarter shows it, with almost every building in a stunning white. The limestone was laid down through an era when the land was submerged and an age of microorganisms that died and calcified. (Higher up the valley in Duntroon there is a fossil museum for the area where they will say how fossils have been found as they were cutting out the bricks for the buildings.)
We ambitiously wanted to see the boulders and penguins before dinner. The penguins, yellow eyed penguins, were not up to it when we were there but at least got to walk around the boulders. According to Gavin Menzies, in his book 1434 which speculated that Chinese explorers may have got as far south as New Zealand, the Moeraki boulders may have been anchors for their boats. They are certainly curious stones but apparently there are natural processes that may have formed them.
Whitestone Cheese tour was a lark. We were led around by Jim, a raconteur of old. He could roll out his favourite lines, roll in the stories of those on tour and generally have a rollicking time of it. At the end was the key part: cheese tasting. There were two options, with or without wine matching and beforehand I chose with, only to find that I was the only one! (Not surprising since it was before noon, but clearly all other men in the group had their wives or others do their bookings because they were quite surprised that that could be done, and were envious.)
Then it was up the valley to Omarama and then Twizel on a beautiful highway with plenty of rocks and a series of lakes. Twizel has another one of those evocative names, like Methven and Haast. Twizel was apparently a designed town in the Scandinavian mould, with schools and facilities in the centre and ring roads around it. The town was small but was more of a launchpad for Aoraki Mt Cook National Park. We could have stayed in Mt Cook Village but I was worried about the chances of bad weather and thought a more central base gave us more options.
The trip to the trails in the park was stunning with Lake Pukaki on the right, snowy mountains peering from the end of the valley in front and massive hills on the left. At the end of the valley road, you have two choices: The village side or the Tasman side. The Tasman side of it had tracks going to the Tasman Glacier viewing points and also the lake and river flowing from it. I probably had the wrong expectation of the Glacier track; Tasman Glacier terminal point was far away and it was just the lake to see, really. But another track took us to the Blue Lakes, which had turned green because of the amount of rainfall. On the village side, there were more significant tracks and we went on a route up to "Kea Point". It was a pleasant walk although regrettably shorter than I would have wanted.
Then it was the long drive to Queenstown. I had been there so many times but this was the first time with a rental car. The joy of driving between towns inland in this area made it all the worthwhile. Lindis Pass and surrounds were epically beautiful and then the Kawerau River Gorge again was breathtaking. It made a long drive simple. There were a lot of places I had wished for more time to investigate, such as Bendigo.
We eventually pulled into the Ramada on 31 December, recalling eight years previously being in Queenstown on New Years Eve. We shot over to Arrowtown to celebrate, but just prior checked out the sites, including the restored Chinese Mining Settlement. The story, and this was a much repeated story in Otago mining towns, was of Chinese workers in the late 1800s invited over (men only allowed) to mine the spent patches to sustain the economy, but excluded from much integration into the Pakeha world. The courage for the original British settlers was huge; imagine it for a Chinese person in that era to come to these distant isles. Some of them had already done mining in California and Australia but many were direct from the farm. I could imagine them as my in-laws from the village coming to this frosty foreign place. We walked around reading plaques and going into the restored "homes". Christy cried at one point reading the story of a boat taking the remains of the Chinese who perished in New Zealand sinking in the Hokianga Harbour. In Chinese tradition it was important to be buried in your home and to think a whole boatload of souls were permanently interred still on the wrong side of the world was a bit too much.
After dinner, it was New Year. Christy had hardly ever stayed up for New Years before but after fading earlier in the day picked up after 11pm and we went down to Queenstown Central where it was crowded and pumping with sound. It was a time for Covid-thoughts. People had lost any vigilance and there was no hope of social distancing, and we, as with others, were not wearing masks. It was a potential story: outbreak in Queenstown, but fortunately it didn't come to pass. What did was some of the best fireworks I had seen.
I celebrated New Year Day by running my longest run since 14 November, seemingly without any issues to speak of. I followed it up two days later with an even longer run. It is a good omen for 2021!
While in Queenstown we visited Glenorchy briefly and then went forward onto our next destination, Dunedin. Again though the trip was quite "a trip". The scenery road from Alexandra toward Dunedin was rock-strewn, probably used in Lord of the Rings. The flooding of previous days was also clear in the murky rivers. Along the way we stopped at Lawrence where gold was first discovered in Otago. There was a Chinese settlement and the site of it was well done with the stories of the miners, well recorded. There was a house that had been retained too:
Once in Dunedin, and aafter a quick scout around, we were off to the tip of Otago Peninsula to see Royal Albatrosses and Little Blue Penguins. (Along the way we also passed Otakou, the misheard, misapplied name that became Otago.) The one key story of a lot of New Zealand's wildlife is that what we have is a blessing that sometimes we don't deserve. This point used to have plenty of birdlife but human occupation pushed it the edge. It was only modern conservation ideas and the protection of the iwi that allowed animal life to bounce back. The birdlife is dense: I have never been so scared of a seagull horde; there was a whole community of cormorants; I spotted my first Royal Spoonbills ever; but of course we were there for the extraordinary albatrosses.
Then there were the less breathtaking but exceptionally cute penguins. The real spectacle for me was to witness them grouping offshore into "rafts" and then storming the beach en masse before their eager waddle up to their homes. It is a brilliant function of nature that you can imagine that independent penguins returning from their feeding in different places all gather, swimming about, and then once critical mass is reached, they flock ashore. Some of them have long walks home - one curious one was in advance of us as we went back to our car, climbing a flight of stairs before getting to his high hill burrow.
The next day was a wet day but we still got to Dunedin Botanic Gardens for the Kaka and plants; and to Baldwin Street that I had always wanted to run up. After some time in the museums and then to St Clair Beach, it was almost time to go to the airport but I snuck in a stop along the way to Tunnel Beach. This now not-so-secret beach one of the city founders had cut a tunnel to an isolated beach with high cliffs. The beach, stunningly set. It had a waterfall, steep cliffs, a seal lolling in the centre and a ton of other people.
And then it was the airport in the middle of nowhere and back. This trip only happened as a result of the pandemic, so I guess we can be thankful for it.
