Note To Future Self

In honor of HM the Queen, Elizabeth II’s birthday, we decided to cram all our travelin’ gear into la Familia and take a little trippy-poo.

Of course, technically, the first weekend of June isn’t anywhere near HRH’s day of birth (which is in April). It’s just a holiday called “Queen’s Birthday” which is celebrated in Australia and NZed. It’s not celebrated in the UK, though. Were there a King, it would be called King’s Birthday. In Australia it’s known as “that one weekend where fireworks are legal.”

Where was I? Oh, it’s a nice late-fall holiday weekend. We decided to make a 4-day out of it. It’s typically the beginning of the ski season, though most years it’s too autumnal to get in a good tramp, but too early for decent snow. With this year’s protracted indian summer, the snow on the mountains was strictly decorative.

We had planned a trip to the West coast to check out the glaciers (while they’re still around) but all signs pointed to a whopper of a storm coming through, leading to a wet weekend on the West coast (not unusual) and a generally unpleasant time in the mountain passes (also not unusual). Rather than push our luck, we changed our itinerary to a trip up the East coast to the Northeast corner of South island (had enough cardinal directions?), an area known as the Marlborough sounds.

(hastily excised from Google Maps. No, I’m not smart enough to embed an actual Google map in the blog. We followed that blue squiggle around the country…)

We left Lincoln after work on Friday and made quick time up to Kaikoura, tourist trap par excellence, with a brief stop in Waipara to enjoy a “works burger” (tomatoes, onions, carrots, beets, burger, cheese, fried egg, bacon, lettuce, pineapple, two kinds of secret sauce). [I just felt a little nauseous and a little hungry typing that out. Mmmm... ]

Our stay in Kaikoura was brief and uneventful. There’ll be plenty of weekends to take in the sights.

Saturday we continued our trip up the coast, passing the wine-country metropolis of Blenheim, and had an thoroughly enjoyable tourist lunch in the moderately salty seaside town of Havelock (mussel farming) before getting up close and personal with the Marlborough sounds.

(Blow up of the Northern-most portion of the previous map. Havelock is in the lower left.)

Before I get into the nitty-gritty, I should digress a bit and talk about “road-tripping” in New Zealand. Living in Chch I really had no appreciation for the NZed road system. The drive from Christchurch to Blenheim was on Highway 1, probably the most important stretch of chipseal on the entire South Island, as it connects all of the major population centers (ok, all the major population centers on the East coast, but c’mon … Greymouth?). This road, this vital artery of travel and commerce, is two lanes over 99% of it’s length. It’s 100 kph (NZ only has two speed limits: 50kph when small children or sheep are in the roadway and 100kph otherwise). It climbs steep mountains and drops down gullies. It has one-lane bridges on it. One lane bridges!

Despite all that, all the truck traffic, all the tourists, it never got above “busy.” Nowhere near “congested.” As a metric, passing is the standard way of working out the pecking order on NZ roads (you know, the thing where you pull into the oncoming lane to go around someone … when was the last time you did that in the States?). Traffic is light enough that you can pass on SH1. I get the willies thinking about the typical US state highway compressed down to a two-lane road …

Departing from Havelock in the early afternoon we started the fun part of our journey, traveling a bit to the East then turning North and entering the wilds of the Queen Charlotte sound, camping for the night at Portage before continuing on to our final destination, a lovely “farm park” in Titirangi Bay.** Rather than harp further on the automotive aspects of this leg (really, I don’t care about cars….), I’ll just say the road was twisty. Convoluted. Fractal. Dashing, juking and diving in and out of bays and backwaters. And about a car and a half wide. And gravel for half its length. Happily none of these facts dissuaded the other drivers from their 100kph habit.

[** as a nod to our Wisconsin readers, we have no idea why this particular point would be called Portage. It is a relatively narrow neck, but it connects, uh, ocean to ocean. And the intervening ridge is quite steep. There is a resort there called "La Portage," which may explain everything, or nothing at all.]

Situated at the base of a steep cove, Titirangi Bay is a “farm park.” The exact meaning of that phrase is a bit murky, but there were sheep and cows and campers, all a-jumbled. The sheep and cows were fine hosts, leaving many a welcome package at the camp sites. Titirangi was formerly just a farm, and the current owners strike a good balance between two- and four-footed clientele.

The campsites are just above the beach

Though the weather was a bit nippy, we enjoyed a fine day, hiking through the paddocks and watching the locals come and go on their fishing boats.

While at Titirangi we had our first encounter with one of the iconic Kiwi critters (no, not a kiwi, sadly…), the weka.

Our friend here is a relatively common Western weka. In the great avian ecosystem of NZed the weka has filled the role of the raccoon. Reminding me of nothing more than a really pissed-off chicken-duck, they’re inquisitive (described by many as “cheeky”), and feed on “eggs, rats, small birds, lizards, worms, snails, insects, seeds, and fruit.” They also have a taste for hamburger, as we first spied this one snacking on a cow he brought down in a frantic chase across the savannah… (no, not really, but yes, that is a cow and yes he was partaking)

Later he came up to the campground to beg from the fisherman and root around in the cow pats. Cheeky, indeed. Apparently, their omnivorous proclivities make them unpopular with conservationists, as they take delight in snacking on other endangered wildlife.

On the way out of Titirangi we took time to walk a bit on the Queen Charlotte track, one of New Zealand’s “great walks.” The Queen Charlotte is perhaps the most, ahem, catered of the great tracks. It’s about 70km in length, and goes along the coastline south of our driving route, ending at the town of Anikawa. Besides a number of campgrounds, it also intersects a number of “resorts,” and is well-provisioned by water taxies, who are more than happy to pick up your backpack in the morning and drop it off at the evening destination of your choice, while you walk the track with nothing more than lunch and a water bottle. Would be a gorgeous way to spend three or four days, though.

Here’s a shot we took near Anikawa

Idyllic vacationland, indeed.

Monday night we retreated to Picton, an otherwise sleepy town which serves as the southern terminal for the inter-island ferry. As such, tourist hotels and car rental lots outnumber the houses, but in the off-season, the excitement is limited to the 20 minutes after the ferry unloads.

Finally, on Tuesday we retraced our path, taking a slight detour at Kaikoura to see the inland triangle, a highly-recommended scenic drive (and, boy howdy, let me tell you how twisty that was….), which delivered us to our cozy home on the Canterbury plain just in time for dinner.

One final tidbit. At the sleepy burg of Seddon, we crossed the only combined highway bridge in NZed where the railroad bed is over the roadway. Yes, the roadway is wood and one lane. Sadly, it’s in the process of being replaced by a bridge with two lanes. What’s the world coming to?

Here’s a link to our photo album from the trip.