NEW ZEALAND CAMPING 2013: DAY #2

Saturday April 20, 2013

It was a little chilly when we woke after what turned out to be a good night's sleep despite a couple of downpours that thundered on the van. I have always liked the sound of rain on a tin roof, and although I sleepily wondered how we would go if the storm continued, it was also somewhat comforting. We had turned the heater on when we had parked but had the heat a little high, so I turned it down, or so I thought, although ‘off’ might be more accurate. To add to the natural chill of sleeping in a metal box, I had opened the roof vents, because the heater was gas fired, to avoid both of us waking up dead from CO2 fumes. Rab soon got the heater going again - she was appointed to take charge of that operation and it turned out that the gas asphyxiation would not have been a problem because I had omitted to open the gas bottle when I set the van up - well, you can't remember everything, can you?  So how did the heating work??

Although the van had a toilet and shower, we soon realized that whilst we may have been able to balance on the absurdly small toilet, there was no way we could manage to shower, even if the water flowed, because it didn't when we tried it out. Oh! The water pump! Turn it on! Hey the water flows - at least enough for a top and tail wash. Actually getting into the combined toilet/shower is only achievable for me with very careful and exact movements. Bending my knees to bring my head below the lintel I have to step high over the threshold while slipping in sideways at a very precise angle - like posting a fat letter in a post-box.

Warm and washed we had a good breakfast of yoghurt and cereal, purchased by Rab last evening in Christchurch and after packing away sundry items we went for a stroll up to the office to check on sundry matters such as Internet and mobile phone access. It was quite a climb up to the office but it gave us some lovely views of the town and bay below.

Akaroa below

 

Rab boards the van - big step up

It was still misty, misty with slight drizzle every now and then. So we could not see the view in the glory that it must present on a clear sunny day. After buying some time on Internet and a local SIM card, we headed down town. We had not fully realized that extreme tidiness is a key for a successful vanning holiday. Everything must be in its place. Having an OCD partner would be an asset in the circumstances. Fortunately we are both tidy, so it wasn't too difficult to go that extra inch or so and secure all the loose items that had spread themselves around the van as we cornered and braked. Some of the rattles were more difficult to deal with, the final one being the baking tray in the oven which quietened down finally when we put a spare kitchen towel in the oven, with a mental not to take it out before turning the oven on.

Akaroa is a lovely little village with a French flavour. Pretty little cottages and shops and sitting right on the water. By the depth of the drains along the roadside they must get a fair bit of rain. It wasn't falling too heavily and Rab had a browse around some of the shops and picked up some more groceries for meals to come. There was a small fair on the green and for the first time in living memory Rab declined not to attend on the very sensible grounds that, with a limited number of pairs of shoes, trudging through the long wet grass would not be a good idea. So farewell Akaroa and onwards to Omarama. 

Akaroa from across the bay

The hills and turns of last night were less formidable today in daylight - there is no way out of Akaroa other than the way you went in - but of course there were magnificent views of lush green hills with patches of woods and darker green forests on their flanks. Shorn sheep - why shear them just before winter? - and fat cattle dotted the hillsides. One could not help but think of The Shire and Lord Of The Rings (or LOTR as the local parlance and guide books has it). At the top of one ridge sat an old pub, chimneys smoking, which could have been right out of the book. We could imagine how snug it would be in that lounge. Down in one of the valleys was Little River. Green sward and lovely trees sheltering the cottages, their leaves all turning autumnal colours. Most were light green, gold or orange and they appealed to me even more than the marvellous array of trees we had seen when 'leaf peeping' in New England. Rab disagreed, saying that the reds in the US trees added another dimension. Not for me so much - but that's what red colour-blindness does for you.

The other aspect of the countryside down there on the coastal plain is the presence of enormous hedges that shelter so many of the properties. These are garden hedges on steroids - fifteen or twenty meters high, almost as thick some of them, with a driveway tunnel led through the growth. As we went on our way, more and more hedges appeared. None of them on the scale of the ones on coastal properties, but still substantial. Some appeared to act as boundaries for properties, but others were free standing out in the fields. It was not too clear what their function was, although windbreaks seemed an obvious possibility, but they were all oriented at a variety of angles, were differing lengths and heights and I couldn't imagine any wind that could be diverted by this variety of breaks. It was only after we left Geraldine and headed  for McKenzie country that the hedges disappeared.

It was raining for most of the day, sometimes heavily, sometimes just that annoying splash that doesn’t really justify the use of the windscreen wipers. It was getting steadily colder and clearly the forecast snow was falling down to 1200 meters/3950 feet. On one pass the temperature was down to 4°C/39°F. The van was remarkably easy to drive. Excellent view of course as we sat high above the road with a large  windscreen and side windows. I was a bit concerned about cornering, feeling that there would be some kind of tilt, but there wasn’t, although I was careful to slow down for the corners. Reverse parking was probably the most difficult aspect because of the length of the vehicle and the change in the axis of the turn. No doubt this skill will be developed over time.

We stopped for a bite to eat at the little town of Geraldine, parked next to a green lawn with a small river running alongside. Simple bread and cheese sandwiches and a drink of juice out of the fridge suited us. And then we were on our way – to Fairlie and Omarama, or so we thought. I mentioned yesterday that road signs were in somewhat short supply in New Zealand. There are excellent warnings about corners. The safe speed is shown ahead of the actual corner so you can adjust your speed accordingly – the speed limit in New Zealand on the open road is 100 kph/62 mph. Every now and then, presumably to keep you on your toes and alert, a corner will have no warning but will be tighter than 100 kph. In such cases I fell back on my old habit of judging potential danger. If you can’t see the end of the corner, it may be tighter than you thought.

But although the corners were so well done, there were no distance or destination markers which are so common in most other countries where we have driven. So last night, heading down to Akaroa, initially the signs at major intersections showed that the road we were to take was the road that went to Timaru as well as Akaroa. At some stage, the road split since Timaru was down the  coast, but there was no indication that we were headed for Akaroa – and we had no idea how far we had to go because there were no signs.

So when we left Geraldine after lunch confident that we were on the correct road, it was something of a shock  to come to the main highway at Winchester with a sign to Christchurch to the left and Timaru to the right. There had been no indication that we had gone astray. It wasn’t a bad mistake – only half an hour to correct, but annoying. When we got back to Geraldine we realised we had missed the Fairlie turnoff concentrating on the driving and looking for a place to stop for lunch.

As we headed through what is known as McKenzie Country. This is where the sheep industry started in New Zealand – there are roughly 20 sheep for every person living in the country. The area is named in somewhat typical Antipodean fashion after a sheep thief back in the nineteenth century. The rain held off and the countryside changed dramatically. This area is in the rain shadow of the Southern Alps and is very dry and sere at the best of times, carpeted with tussock grass which does not green up like the rest of the pastures in NZ. New Zealand has been in the grips of a drought, so the countryside was drier than ever. The rivers we crossed were however running strongly, presumably from the rain that had been falling more heavily over the mountains.

Lake Tekapo with a glimpse of snow

We stopped off at Lake Tekapo in the early afternoon. We had spent a night there 21 years ago on our last joint visit to New Zealand. A small chapel on a promontory at the foot of the lake has a beautiful feature. The window behind the altar is not stained glass, but clear glass and on a good day the window frames Aoraki/Mount Cook  and the other magnificent snow clad mountains at the head of the lake. Unfortunately the chapel was closed, there were crowds of people and the mountains were coyly hiding in the clouds. It was 6°C and drizzling – a bit different from the sparkling day we had last time. But the statue recognising the part that Border Collies had played in the success of the development of the sheep industry was still there looking proudly towards the hinterland.

Onwards we went, heading for Omarama whose only claim to fame until recently was that it was at the cross road where the road from the  coast – Oamaru and Timaru – joined the road through to Queenstown. It is now part of the LORT circuit since some of the battle scenes were filmed around there. It wasn’t too difficult to find the campsite among the half dozen buildings in the town and since there were very few  visitors we secured a very nice spot near the ablution block. The power poles were a much more sensible height, I knew how to connect them and I remembered to turn the gas on full. I also filled the water tank, which seemed to take a great deal of filling considering how little water we had used.

Rab got the heater going and we ate Two Minute noodles for the first time in our lives! We had decided that while we would indeed eat meals in our mobile home, neither of us was going to go to a deal of trouble. There was a microwave and a kettle and we felt that using those two we’d get by without any problems. We were quite impressed by our noodle meal and could understand why they formed the staple diet of penurious students.