Every trip has it’s bad patch. This was deinitely ours (so far anyway). Don’t expect glorious pictures and happy faces in this post; instead you’ll get lots of rain and cloud and the harsh realities of living in an RV in the winter…
Day 45 – The Catlins and Curio Bay
As expected, it was raining in the morning. Although I did manage to get out in a break and do some birding around the campsite (which was part of the reason that we picked this one – some native trees for some different birds).
After using their showers to wash the kids (Evie’s hair requires a much longer shower than the little water heater can handle in the RV) we eventually left about midday. Not sure what happened there, possibly we’re all feeling a bit fed up and grumpy this morning and so nothing’s working well. It’s frustrating to be in the Catlin forests where we should be out walking, but there’s a solid rain falling which is making the kids pretty much refuse to leave the van.
We set off down the Southern Scenic route with the clouds down over the hills to about 50m – I have never seen such low cloud! When we climbed up into some hills a little the visibility was under 100m. So much for great views! We were reminded of Wales, with the green slopes filled with sheep, and the rain – not really what we came here for!
We pulled up at the Matai Falls walk car park with the rain still falling. Time to cook some lunch before reassessing. It was a pretty steady rain when we turned up and I remember saying to Chris “it can’t get much worse than this, so let’s eat and then hopefully it’ll have eased enough for us to walk”. Famous last words – whilst we were eating it turned into a downpour!
We had two choices, hide in the van for the next few days feeling miserable and miss the Catlins or just get out and get wet. We chose the latter, we’ll dry out eventually right? The RV windows are already steamed up with all the condensation so what difference will making it even damper make? The kids were very unkeen, so we powered down to both sets of falls and back in under thirty minutes. They were not spectacular, but I was pleased to get to see some of the actual New Zealand foliage which I had imagined would cover all of New Zealand.
Driving on to Papatowai we started to see more natural foliage, including forests of trees covered in lichen. Not something I’ve ever seen before but really hard to catch in a photo in this weather.
Another short drive onwards we arrived at Papatowai, where there is the Lost Gypsy curios place. This sounded great, a small bus thing which contains a load of buttons which do different things. Effectively letting the kids go in a room and telling them to try pressing all the buttons they can find – kid heaven! Unfortunately it had a big sign saying it was closed for the winter. It’s not winter anymore – it’s spring! There went our rainy day activity ☹.
We moved on a bit further to the Cathedral Caves, which were meant to be open in October, but still had the closed for winter signs up ☹.
Thwarted in our plans, we headed to the McLean Falls where I wandered out on my own (Chris had a nap whilst the kids did some drawing). I wussed out and took the umbrella as it was still heavy rain, and looking up into trees for birds in the rain is no fun, plus it would protect the binoculars. Luckily there was no wind so it was straight down – perfect brolly weather. In the end I thoroughly enjoyed my wander. I think the rain actually enhanced it! I was pretty dry under the brolly, and largely warm so I wandered along the trail, taking my time to look up into the trees, enjoy the stream running past, listen to the sound of the rain on the umbrella top and generally enjoy being by myself amongst trees. Maybe that’s why I’ve been so disappointed with New Zealand so far, there are few trees when I expected lots of wilderness areas. New Zealand is a similar size to the UK, but has 4-5m people compared to our 65m, so I thought much of it would be untouched. Instead what we’ve seen has been mostly farmland so I assume a huge proportion of the NZ population are farmers? Despite the rain I was happy to finally find a little patch of this ‘wilderness’, even if it was highly managed with a gravel trail through it and a car park, it was better than nothing and lifted my spirits massively.
Another short drive onwards we arrived at Curio Bay, which I’m sure would be beautiful if it were not raining and mostly lost in cloud. The rain had almost stopped at least so we wandered to the area where the sealions and Hector’s Dolphins might be visible. No joy. Then we wandered over to view the petrified/fossilised forest. On the way through the campsite Chris slipped on some mud and got a thoroughly wet and muddy bum. Not nice in the icy cold wind so Aiden and I continued alone down the coast to look at some fossil wood. 170m years ago rain fell on an ash covered volcanic slope causing rivers of mud and ash. The flood picked up dead trees and logs and they collected here, lying criss-crossed in the mud. This floodwater was rich in silica from the ash which impregnated the fallen trees, turning them into stone in the space of a few months. These trees are from the Jurassic period, when the dinosaurs were roaming. These types of fossils are incredibly rare as wood usually rots before this process can be completed, whereas bones stick around. This particular area is one of the least disturbed examples of petrified Jurassic forest in the world so we’d thought it worth the trip.
As with most fossilised remains, the reality is not super exciting, but the idea of what you are seeing is pretty mind blowing.
Aiden wanted a chance to look for the Yellow-eyed Penguins again so we moved car park to the one looking over the sea so Aiden could look for sealions, penguins and dolphins whilst Chris cooked dinner. We did keep our eyes out for most of the hour or so that we were there, but didn’t see anything.
Then we were on to our campsite for the night. Another free one with no power, but ocean views 😊 and a beach by the side. Even with this, I think we’re all pretty done with the RV right now. It’s damp in here, it’s hard to dry things and any views we would have are lost in all the condensation on the windows (which adds to the feeling of being crammed into a box). We’re all a little fractious right now which is not helping – it’s a vicious circle! Come back sun!
Day 46 – Hiding from the rain in Invercargill
After heavy rain for most the night, the day dawned drier, down to a fine drizzle, but with a much stronger wind which was coming from the South and was COLD! Aiden and I braved a quick walk on the beach, looking for birds and Hector’s dolphins.
The drive proceeded through increasingly flat land, mostly green grass fields with sheep. At least the cloud had lifted to about 100m…
Invercargill was another small town, but much like many, the suburbs consisted of not particularly large bungalows with small gardens, mostly made of wood and often in a state of disrepair. The town centre was mostly a single street, wide with lots of parking and an old, colonial style of building, with old hotels and theatre buildings now housing shops.
Our mission for the day was to spend most of the day out of the van to try to ease some of ppur cabin fever so we stopped at the i-Site visitor centre to ask about the best things to do in Invercargill and to discuss whether Milford Sound would be worth it in the rain. Apparently Milford Sound is a good rainy day activity, as the waterfalls massively multiply and the whole thing looks moody. We had ruled it out up until then, now we had a decision to make…
As it wasn’t raining much I was keen to get the kids outside so we headed to Thomson’s Bush, a small wooded area at the top of town. The trees provided shelter from the bitter wind and the light rain so we wandered around in there for somewhere just over half an hour, spotting a few birds as we went – the trees were filled with their calls.
Getting hungry we called in at Queens Park on our way back into town. After our previous experience we all got excited when we saw BurgerFuel on the way through town so that was our designated lunch stop. There’s a small animal collection here, although we only saw a couple of Ostrich, some gardens and a rather good free aviary.
Many of the birds here are NZ natives, such as the Kea and Kaka, but there are others too. You can walk into one of the aviaries with the birds too. The kids’ favourite was a Campbell Teal, which is a critically endangered flightless duck found only on one island free from the land predators which wiped it out on the mainland. It was meant to be very secretive and hard to spot, but came running over to stand on a rock and shout at us! Then he hopped down and ran back and forth, overbalancing onto its breast a few times. The kids were highly entertained!
Free parking was available on some side streets, so we left the van again and enjoyed our healthy burgers, and the heating – it’s been a while since we were that warm! On the way back we popped into a charity shop to pick up some DVD’s which we could watch in the RV. We miss ‘family film night’ when we all used to snuggle up on the sofa and watch a film together… The man there kept trying to get us to go across the road into the motorcycle shop where they have some old bikes you can look at. We had to get back for the van as the free parking was expiring and aren’t that into bikes, but later realised that this is where Burt Munro and his bike, from ‘The World’s fastest Indian’ came from. The actual Indian, the world’s fastest 1,000cc motorcycle, is in this random hardware shop along with lots of other memorabilia! What a miss, but not mentioned anywhere online and the guy in the shop did not explain it well!
After the i-Site chat we had planned to head to the Transport museum after lunch, mainly because it has a lego room where the kids could sit and play lego, something they’re desperate to do, rather than for the transport exhibits! We’d spent longer on our walk and in the aviary than planned though so it didn’t seem worth the cost. We headed to the soft play instead, where for £10 the kids played for hours (until it closed), and we were able to charge our electronics and make a decision about Milford Sound. We decided to skip it. How can we come to the South of NZ and not do Milford Sound? I hear many cry. Three reasons in the end; 1) we feel like we’ve not really been able to see this part of NZ with the rain and low cloud obscuring everything, so we’ll be back to do it another time, 2) after all the driving for the last 6 weeks I’m not sure we can face the extra 5 hours, and the kids are not enjoying being tossed around the back on the windy roads, and 3) we’re fed up with looking at clouds and are finding them miserable now. It’s a lot of money to look at clouds, even if there are amazing waterfalls, especially if they’re still at 50-100m visibility and you can’t see the height of the sides. Surely that’s part of the point of a fjord??
Instead we decided that we’d still drive to Te Anau to see the lake there and do the caves as they’re offering ‘kids go free’ in the school holidays.
So after the soft play closed, we packed up and headed out to our camp site for the night – a small spot off the road where fishermen can park. We had our little riverside spot all to ourselves 😊. Quiet and sheltered. There are meant to be excellent mountain views here, maybe the cloud will have cleared in the morning…
We cooked a quick dinner and snuggled up with all the duvets and pillows on the back bed area to watch a film. Lovely.
Day 47 – A rather disappointing day at Te Anau
The morning dawned much the same, if possible the cloud had dropped even lower – still no mountain views ☹.
We had a tour around the glowworn caves at Te Anau to get to so we packed up and were on the road before 9 for the 45 minute drive. It should have been a beautiful drive, with the Txxx ranges on the left and heading into the Fjordland National Park. We stopped at one of the lookouts on the way for a laugh. Great views today…
Te Anau was also not looking great, with much of the mountain range obscured. Supposedly we should be able to see a lot more than this!
It was also really cold, about 5 degrees, with an icy wind there. Add some rain into that and you’ve got a pretty horrid day. At least we were going in a covered boat to some caves to hide. Except I think we’re cursed in Southland. When we went to check in they informed us that the cave was flooded due to all the rain and that the tour was off! Nooo! We were offered the tour at 2pm instead or a refund, the rain had stopped so it was possible it would be on if the caves could drain in time so we decided to stick around.
We wandered around Te Anau a little, considered the mini golf (it seemed to be closed as no-one was there), had a short play in the playground until we got cold and found this little mock up of the lake (the largest freshwater lake in New Zealand)…
Then we gave up and took shelter in the Olive Tree Café, where we played cards, utilised the internet and ate delicious food and cakes before getting the call at 1.30 to say the 2pm was also cancelled. Ah well. We finished up in the café and were heading back to the RV to start the drive back down the road we’d come in up when we saw the sign for the escape room. Evie especially thought this sounded great and after checking it out we managed to slip in at 3pm.
The room follows the theme of the tunnel built for the road to Milford Sound. You are finishing the blasting of the tunnel. Our team consisted of three escape room novices and one previously failed escapee (we’ll blame the stag do hangover for that one) so we weren’t feeling confident, and after three days stuffed in a box feeling miserable and getting ratty with each other I was a little worried that we’d all end up bickering! I was wrong, this was a lovely family activity and we all came together as a team well. The first room was carnage as we had no idea what we were doing, but we were pretty great in the second room, except when we got into the third room where we needed to place the dynamite we’d found and Aiden had hidden it all in places in the previous room! Aiden!! In a mad rush we found the dynamite in the various boxes and placed them in time to blast our way out of the tunnel with time to spare. We were very quick apparently 😊.
A very expensive 48 minutes, but the kids had a great time and at least we didn’t go all the way to Te Anau just for a café…
We drove back down the road, past our campsite the previous night wondering if we’d imagined that the cloud had lifted a little… that mountain wasn’t there on the way through was it??
I could see the river flowing along the valley besides us, an excellent example of a river meandering and creating massive bends which double back on itself (if you’re a geography geek like me). It was pretty much at flooding point after all the rain.
Driving along towards Queenstown we were feeling sadder and sadder that we were driving past so many mountains without seeing them. We knew we were driving with them on either side as they were on the map!!
Perhaps the idea to get a lot of the driving done whilst the weather was crap so we could enjoy being outdoors on any nicer days we get (please let there be some!) was not such a good idea?? We made a last minute decision to stop soon and hope for better weather in the morning and pulled up at a site in Kingston, just a little south of Queenstown. It was very expensive but at the end of the lake and flanked by invisible mountains so fingers crossed for the morning. The weather is meant to get better from here on…
Read on to see if the weather improved and we saw mountains agin (coming soon), or head back to our sunny days from Christchurch to Dunedin.
Certainly a lot to read, also to see the beautiful photo’s you have taken to remind you all of your adventures , all very interesting . keep them coming.
Take care Barbara xxxx