The North of the South

In our desperate attempt to squeeze the rest of the south island into our third month here, we took a week to drive first to Mt. Cook and then up the West Coast to the famous Abel Tasman National Park.

On our way to Mt. Cook, we stopped at SteampunkHeadquarters, a gallery in Oamaru. As eloquently put by the young woman who sold us our tickets, the steam punk aesthetic is essentially Victorian science fiction. 

The gallery was full of fanciful and often disturbing creations from scrap metal that reminded me of the Lost Gypsy Gallery but on a grander scale: a large pipe organ played random sounds like gears turning and Close Encounters of the Third Kind tones below a trio of larger than life-sized mechanical babies with gears and doll heads. My favorite was a music, light and mirrors installation labeled as an inter-dimensional time machine.

The yard had lots of even larger items, including huge metal flies on the side of the building, rusty creations from old tractors and train cars that we were invited to climb on (never in the US!).

From there we drove to our Top 10 Holiday Park room at Mt. Cook, the highest peak in the southern hemisphere. These are essentially boxes with beds and electricity. If you think of them as an upscale alternative to tents, then they feel luxurious, and you don’t mind that you have to walk outside to toilets in another building. This one was especially fancy, including two rooms, a sink and an electric kettle.

Since a play-by-play would take too much time to type (and read), suffice it to say that our hikes over the next couple days featured snow-capped mountains, icebergs, glaciers and the lakes they fed, and lots of green.

We also enjoyed the museum about Sir Edmund Hilary in the famous Hermitage hotel at the foot of Mt. Cook. “Sir Ed,” as he was fondly referred to in the printed signs, is most known for having been the first person, with Tenzing Norgay, to summit Everest in 1953, but most didn’t know he was a Kiwi who practiced on Mt. Cook.

From there we drove along the West Coast to Greymouth where we spent the night, and then on to Golden Bay / Mohua in Abel Tasman. On the way, we stopped at New Zealand's longest swing bridge where Fran and Jeremy did the "comet" across, and we also stopped at "Pancake Rocks" to see interesting geologic formations.

For the first time during our trip, we had to deal with rain altering our plans. However, we still went on some of our best hikes, even in the rain.

These included Wainui Falls in Motupipi and Te Waikoropupu Springs (yes, the Maori names often illicit giggles in us silly Americans with all the pupu, kaka, and pipi…). 

These thermal springs are sacred to the Maori and truly breathtaking - crystal clear water bubbling up in ponds with jeweled blue-green bottoms.

We also went to the best small-town movie theater ever to watch Ready Player One- we lounged and snuggled in couches, and there was a planned intermission in the middle so that you could pee (and buy more popcorn).

As it takes two days to drive from the northern tip back down to Dunedin, we stayed in Hanmer Springs on the way back down, spending an evening at the Hanmer Springs Thermal Pools and Spa, where Fran and I lounged in hot sulphur water while Jeremy enjoyed the water slides, all while a light rain misted down.

We are now finally back home after only a week but what feels like at least two. It really does feel like home, and I am already anticipating missing it. Just one more month…