On The Road Again - South NZ Style

Sorry for the long time delay between postings. Computer access has been very intermittent while on the road and I don't like paying for computer time. It takes me a long time to get posts ready.



On 20 October we packed up all of our stuff and left ChCh, heading south along the east coast of South Island. We took only camping gear with us, leaving the rest in storage with a friend in ChCh. The first niht we camped just north of Dunedin at Ross Creek Scenic Reserve.

















The next night we camped at the gorgeous and isolated Purakaunui Bay. We had the place almost to ourselves. Note our blue tent in the foreground. Rob and Leann - a very inebreated couple from Wanaka invited us over to their campfire for wine/beer and shots of the local speciality. They had Cat Stevens playing on the car stereo.

Chilling our requisite bottle of wine in the cool water was challenging as the tidal surge tended to bury the bottle. Luckily, Doug kept track of it and was able to fish it out.

The following morning, the perfectly clear horizon yielded a spectacular sunrise complete with green flash. Yes, it happens at sunrise too. Be sure to watch carefully anytime you see sunrise or sunset over a clear ocean horizon.

We then walked in to the very peaceful Purakaunui Falls just after breakfast.

Doug got me to climb into a hollow tree alolng the path to the falls.

We got our first glimpse of Stewart Island fon the horizon from the southern tip of South Island. Thus began chapter two in the great kiwi bird quest. You see, the brown kiwi on Stewart have to spend so much time foraging for food that they are active during daylight hours. We had high hopes of spotting the elusive critter.

The hour long ferry ride across Foveaux Strait was calm and uneventful.

Oban is the charming little town on Stewart Island. We spent the first night at Jo and Andy's B&B. They were a cool couple to chat with. We had dinner at the Church Hill Cafe. We had blue cod and titi (mutton bird or sooty shearwater or albatross) both local specialities. The titi can only me harvested on several nearby islets by the local Maoris.

We missed seeing the very rare kakapo parrot by one day but saw and heard flocks of kaka, another parrot while walking though the rainforest in town.

The next afternoon we went to the smallest airport ever. We waited in the shuttle van on the side of the air strip and then boarded an eight passenger plane for our flight across the island. The flight had to be timed so we would arrive for the beach landing at low tide.

Here we are unloading gear

and setting off down the beach in the direction of the Mason Bay Department of Conservation Hut. It was a lonely feeling to see the plane departing and knowing that we were going to walk halfway back across the island.

The hut was back off the beach behind the dunes.

We heard kiwi. We saw kiwi scat. We saw kiwi poke holes (where they dig for invertebrates in the mud). We saw kiwi tracks. But we saw no kiwi birds. The drated critters still did not cooperate.

We slogged 14 pretty muddy kilometers across Stewart Island. Some of it was so swampy that there were board walks.

The water taxi picked us up at Freshwater Landing on the Freshwater River for the rest of the journey back to Golden Bay. A short tramp over the hill got us back to Oban.










The ferry ride back across the strait to Bluff was again calm and uneventful. The sign post at the end of highway 1 shows just how far away most things are from NZ.

From here we headed north toward fiordland.