New Zealand: South Island- Picton to Curio Bay

All You Have To Decide Is What To Do With The Time That Is Given To You. Wise words Gandalf, wise words.

South Island, Vol 1.

The arrival into the South Island felt like the welcome party we were due. The glorious sunshine that greeted us in Wellington continued for the rest of the crossing. As we entered the harbour, we spotted 3 or 4 vans parked up overlooking the blues below. Once we disembarked, we found the easiest route to get a look for ourselves. What lay infront of us was the start to what everyone (and literally everyone that we’d mentioned our trip to) told us: the South Island is amazing.

Marlborough Wine Region

The easy route from the ferry terminal in Picton to our planned camp in Nelson was inconveniently blocked with roadworks. Instead, we were forced to take a much longer journey (about 3 times the distance).

If the North Island is The Shire, then the South Island is the rest of Middle Earth, if the dominion of men also owned their own wine cellars. Instead of soft green hills, we were greeted with almighty, jagged mountain ranges, lined as far as the eye could see with miles of vineyards. Our new route took us through the highly regarded Marlborough wine region, and was our backdrop for half of the drive.

Carving its way through the green scenery was the deep turquoise blue water of the Wairau River. The river beds weren't the sludgy brown mud that we're used to at home, instead they were filled with rounded grey boulders and pebbles. As we turned off towards the north coast again, the roads themselves became steep, with super tight bends that are just soo much fun to wind round when you're 5m long and 3m tall!

We ended up arriving into Nelson in darkness, which we really didn't love doing. The list options for free camping was short. After being completely bamboozled by the incognito entrance to one site, and completing 3 laps of the same road to finally discover all 3 spots (so generous!) had already been filled, we resorted to making camp in quite probably the least glamorous spot we'll ever sleep at: the car park of a New World shop. Classy.

From the northerly tip of the island in Nelson, we headed west to Greymouth. After a quick visit to the beach, we took a brief detour towards Abel Tasman National Park, stopping at Moteuka to visit a ship wreck. The wreck itself was fairly "modern" as far as they go, but held a reasonable significance as being the first vessel to fire shots in WW2 for the Kiwis division of the Royal Navy. Originally my plan was to take us much further into Abel Tasman, to visit Te Waikoropupu Springs, the largest cold water springs in the Southern Hemisphere but not only was time against us, but the road leading to it looked nothing short of horrific (in our van anyway).

Back along the main route to Greymouth, we stopped off at Buller Gorge swing bridge. The Buller River was once the scene of rich gold mining activity in the 1800s; gold is still found to this day (sadly we did not stumble on any fortune during our visit). Unfortunately, with a fault line running through the area, a huge 7.8 earthquake hit the area in the early 1900s, pushing the earth skywards over 4 metres on one side of the riverbank. The gorge is now home to NZ’s longest swing bridge, which as you walk over the river, gives good views over the bank that once didn’t exist.

As we wondered around the heritage park to the gold panning site, we also stumbled upon a tree that bore a number of dates, each signifying the height of a flood that has hit. They seemingly grew in height each time: the flood that hit in 2021 was pretty darn colossal!

Making a slight interjection, here is a cute photo of a Weka chick, because... well they were cute. Kjel spotted an adult on the side of the road on the way to Nelson but it was dark and he thought it could have been a Kiwi and I was mad at myself for not spotting it; alas it was a Weka, a flightless duck-like bird, and somewhere along the road we spotted a mama and her two chicks!

Punakaiki

Once we reached the coastline, we stopped off to marvel at the Punakaiki pancake rocks: stacks of pancake-like thin layers of compressed sediment that once lied at the bottom of the seabed, before NZ’s active seismic activity raised them up for us all to see.

Greymouth

Our camp in Greymouth was a great little spot overlooking the beach. I hoped that as the weather had started to improve that we might see our first real sunset, especially being on the west coast. Unfortunately the clouds had other ideas! Greymouth itself was not our most invigorating stop: other than a brief visit to a brewery, we found ourselves lacking in reasons to stay for too long.

When I (we...mostly me haha) was planning this venture way back on King Island, I came up with this amazing idea to navigate the South Island like a big figure of 8. This way, we could maximise our viewing potential and avoid too much driving repetition. For the most part, it was pretty successful. It did mean that in order to criss-cross our way from west to east, we had two route options. The shorter road along Arthur's Pass, and the longer route of Lewis Pass. I was adamant that we were making the right choice by taking the longer route to Christchurch first. Also, I wasn't driving that day (we drove on alternate days to make it fair) so what was an extra 45 mins? Well, with the shoddy weather conditions on the day, we probably should have just taken the shorter road... Sorry Kjel! Maybe on a nicer day, we'd have been able to make more of the journey.

Aoraki National Park

This visit to Christchurch was merely a layover for our visit to Aoraki. Our journey to Aoraki was easily my favourite of all the drives we did. The forecast was nye-on perfect, clear skies and warm temperatures. Leaving Christchurch, we began to see glimpses of the snowy topped mountains in the distance and as we made our way inland, the views just got better and better. As we made our way down towards Lake Tekapo, the colour of the lake just took our breath away. It was picture perfect. The deep turquoise surrounded by the Southern Alps. After days of grey and washout, the sunshine was bringing out the best of NZ. We didn’t linger for long, as our prize was still an hour away.

Aoraki, NZ’s tallest mountain and on most days, hidden under a cloudy cloak. But not this day. This day, the cloak was more of a scarf, allowing us to set our eyes upon its summit as we drove closer. Arriving at the Hooker Valley Track carpark was the most tourist-filled spot we’d encountered on our travels and given that we were about a week and a half in to our trip, was pretty good going. While the track boasts some pretty impressive views of the mountain range and the ice-berg filled Hooker Lake, we decided to trade the track for the chance to camp with uninterrupted views over Lake Pukaki and Aoraki, which by late afternoon was completely clear of cloud. We couldn’t have timed it any better; the view out of our “bedroom” window was the best we’ve ever had and by nightfall, was gifted a spectacular sunset to see off the day. *Chef kiss*

Moeraki

Leaving our pretty little camp spot was sad, but as the morning mists obscured our views of the mountains, we made our way to the coast to the town of Dunedin. Not long after we rejoined the main road along the coast line, we found ourselves stopping in the little town of Moeraki, to marvel over their not so little boulders that littered of small section of the beach like giant sized marbles. Somehow, the earth managed to form almost perfectly spherical balls of rock that over time have been worn away by the waves!

Dunedin

Eventually we arrived in Dunedin. Dunedin is home to a funky Steam Punk museum, a penguin observatory and a beach that is accessible by a mysterious tunnel but we didn’t end up doing any of that (also, forgot about the beach tunnel as it was one of about a million saved posts on Insta that I’d forgotten I’d saved, love that). Instead, we found ourselves at Baldwin Street. A quiet residential street. It also happens to be Guinness World Records-formally recognised as the world’s steepest street. And holy cow, it deserved the title. It was a painful climb from the bottom to the top, where on little placards fixed near a well timed water fountain, we discovered that some crazy (I mean highly talented with a weakened sense of peril) people had managed to scale the 34% gradient on roller blades and a pogo stick.

Catlin's Forest Park/Southland

Our last destination of this volume of our South Island adventure was from Dunedin to Curio Bay, our most southerly escapade. Along with probably 50% of my list of “We definitely need to go here” (and then precede to not really do much research because why? It looks so pretty), was visiting the Catlins Forest Park. The further we drove down the coastline, the greater the pit in my stomach that our journey would inevitably lead us onto our favourite kinds of roads. The roads on Google maps were looking fairly ominous, I crossed my fingers that I hadn’t just lead us to an Insta Catfish (those *Amazing* looking places that end up requiring a degree in hill climbing, mountain scaling and/or rally driving to get to them) . I was pleasantly surprised. The route was fortunately a tourist drive and a wave of relief washed over me.

Our first stop along the route was Nugget Point Lighthouse (‘cause I love a lighthouse). Apparently it was named by one Captain Cook, who decided the rocks below looked like chunks of gold. Personally couldn’t see it myself, instead, one rock that stuck out looked more like a giant breaching whale.

By early afternoon, we’d made it to Curio Bay. The bay is home to an old ancient petrified forest and by old, I mean 180 million years old. The wood is so well preserved it is super easy to find the remains of logs and stumps woven into the rocks. The paths that lead to the bay signpost penguin nesting areas and after a little read found that little blue penguins make the area home, as well as yellow-eyed penguins, the world’s rarest. They were known to return to nests at sunset/dusk so we were unlikely to see any during the day. We decided to head over the other side of the bay to a slightly less breezy area where Hector’s dolphins, another rare species, are known to play. A quick walk down to the beach and in the distance we could spot tiny black fin-like shapes popping up out of the water. As we waited a little longer, they moved closer and we could definitely make out the rounded fins unique to Hector’s dolphins, which was pretty awesome!

Upon our return to the site facilities, for some reason we had decided to wander back to the petrified forest- could not tell you why, but whatever the reason was, we were glad to have done so as a couple were crouched, poking their heads unusually into a patch of the greenery at the entrance of the nesting area. They quietly pointed into the undergrowth, revealing a yellow-eyed penguin with two fluffy grey penguin babies. Magic.

Originally our day was supposed to continue on to Bluff before making camp, but having gotten super excited about seeing the nesting penguin, we decided to take a punt and stay for sunset to see if we could spot any more returning after a good day’s fishing. Surely enough, even though it wasn’t even dark, after whittling time away chatting to another travelling couple, we spotted a YE adult clambering its way over the rocks- although it was headed into the water instead of back onto land which was a little odd. After an awkward waddle towards the water, in it splashed. Adult YEs can grow to almost half a metre tall! But the photos are a little 'Where's Wally?' so I hope you have your magnifying glasses!

We have seen penguins before, watching many returning to shore in King Island, and watching them nest in Melbourne, so sort of expected to see a few that evening. Sunset was a little way away so rather than stand like lemons waiting for it to get dark, we made dinner, wrapped up and then stood like lemons for the rest of the evening. Sadly, our keen birdwatching efforts were fruitless come nighttime but as we’d managed to see four in one day, we were still pretty chuffed with our wildlife experience.

As the camping grounds where we were were a little out of our budget and further afield than we wanted to be in in order to reach our next destination, Kjel took one for the team and drove a couple of hours into the night to a free spot outside of Invercargill. By the time we rocked up, it was after 1am and we were well and truly ready for some shut eye!