New Zealand: South Island

Leg One: Christchurch to Nelson (13-16 March 2010)

13 March 2010
Arriving into Christchurch at around 3pm having had only four hours of sleep and after spending over an hour battling our way through customs, we emerged into the semi-sunshine struggling to get excited about New Zealand. This all changed though when we hopped onto the city flyer and were greeted to the country by the world's friendliest bus driver. Informative, helpful and smiley, he actually waited for new passengers to sit down before pulling away. Revolutionary. Back home, in my experience, you're lucky if you even get two feet on the bus before the driver swerves back into the road, slams his foot onto the accelerator with the same zeal you would apply to stamping on a cockroach and catapults you into your fellow passengers.

Arrived at the hostel, dumped our bags and showered before venturing out in search of somewhere cheap to fill our rumbling stomachs. Christchurch is a very attractive city. It has a very European feel to it, from Cathedral Square with its namesake building holding pride of place and the trams passing silently through, to Oxford Terrace, a cobbled street along the riverfront lined with upmarket restaurants, pavement cafes and trendy wine bars. Luckily, we were in time to catch a restaurant doing an early bird special - I ordered creamy pesto pasta and upon its arrival realised immediately why the price was so inviting. After all, you could hardly charge more than $12 for 12 pieces of penne, could you? It is therefore the fault of this restaurant that we spent our first evening in Christchurch sitting on a bench in Cathedral Square eating the biggest raspberry and white chocolate muffins the world has ever seen.

15 March 2010
Knowing that we would return to Christchurch later on with the Kiwi Experience bus, we allowed ourselves a day of "sorting" on our first proper day in New Zealand. However, the next morning, we were boarding the bus eager to see if the country would live up to expectations. She didn't disappoint us - so fresh and untouched. We headed north over the Canterbury Plains, taking in the rolling hills, the pale golden mountains and the dense forest. I can see why people liken it to an unspoiled England.

We arrived in Kaikoura at lunchtime and set out in the sunshine for a look around. The sun soon disappeared but this didn't matter since there really isn't much to see unless you are swimming with dolphins or going whale watching. Since the former didn't appeal and we were out of season for the latter, we just had a walk along the coast and a look around the town (a term I use loosely since it consists of no more than fifteen buildings) which is nestled between the sea and the 2600m high mountains rising steeply out of it. We then headed back to the hostel as the rains closed in and gratefully found the TV room where we spent the remainder of our evening.

16 March 2010
We set out early and headed north out of Kaikoura, with the road hugging the rugged coastline and the mountains sweeping up majestically to our left. We stopped a short distance from town to watch the seals sunning themselves lazily on the rocks and the pups slipping and sliding clumsily over them and splashing playfully in the rock pools.

After that, it was a quick stop in Picton to collect people arriving from the north island and another painful couple of hours on a bus with no air-con before we pulled into Nelson, gateway to the Abel Tasman National Park and officially New Zealand's sunniest city. The sun was not shining on us though it would seem. We had originally planned to spend a couple of nights here to enable us to do a day hike through the national park. However, we arrived to the unpleasant news that we were on a waiting list to leave on the Thursday and that, if we were unable to get on that bus, we might be stuck in Nelson until as late as Sunday. With just four weeks to do both island, we couldn't afford such a setback to our schedule, leaving us with no option but to book ourselves onto the (shorter) waiting list for the bus leaving the next morning and hope for the best. Consequently, we had to abandon our plan to hike through the national park and settle instead for a short meander up to the geographical centre of New Zealand which affords incredible views of the park, the city below and the glittering turqoise bay beyond.

Arriving back at the hostel, we decided to drown our sorrows with their local beer tasting during which we met lots of great people travelling south the next day. As a result, we went to bed feeling all was not lost and with our fingers crossed that we would make it onto that bus...