The Travelling Life of Silvan Colani
December 2006 - Honeymoon to New Zealand and Bora Bora
Where to go for the perfect honeymoon? It’s a hard question to answer, even for the seasoned traveler. Somewhere romantic and special, but not tacky and boring; adventurous and off the beaten track, but not too rough and risky; exotic but not expensive… well, forget it – it doesn’t exist. But we settled on Bora Bora in Tahiti, a place I’d only knew from a few photographs – an idyllic lagoon with a mystical mountain, all in the middle of nowhere in the blue ocean. Exotic, yes!. Expensive, oh, yes!
The best way to get to French Polynesia is via New Zealand, so I figured a week in Kiwiland would be a good “warm up” for the real honeymoon. I’ve been to NZ a number of times, mostly for climbing, but Mei has never been. Given that Bora Bora would cost us an arm and a leg we decided to go ‘cheap and cheerful’ in NZ by renting a car and staying at motels and B&Bs. Cheerful, yes. Cheap, no! Since I’ve been there last, NZ seems to have become a lot more expensive. It’s hard to have a meal under NZD 50 per head and a decent room under $100 is almost entirely a thing of the past. But the views are free – and they’re still spectacular. As are the roads – absolutely the best driving in the world!
Which is why I spent many months finding the perfect ride – a Mazda MX5 convertible, 6-speed manual. And which is why I was not amused when I was greeted upon arrival in Christchurch with the words “Oh, did they tell you about the MX5?” Tell me what? That the guy who rented it before me just wrecked it on the way back to the depot!!! And whether I would mind to take an ugly Nissan instead. A Nissan!! And an automatic on top of it!! Nooooooooo!
We scoured the car lot for a half decent alternative… VW Beetle (automatic), Holden something (automatic), a lonely BMW (automatic). The only manual car in the entire lot was a Subaru Legacy. A Subaru!!! I was not a happy man, but it had to make do!
We spent our first night in Christchurch, which was a cool 15 degrees despite the southern hemisphere summer. We had an excellent meal at Sticky Fingers, one of the popular places along the ‘strip’ on Oxford Terrace.
After a good night’s sleep at Stonehurst we hopped into the Legacy and headed south, destination Wanaka. We had lunch at Lake Tekapo, which has the loveliest church I’ve seen anywhere – with big windows overlooking the lake and mountains behind. If you want to get married in a church, this is the one to do it in. But pick a warm day.
The scenery gets better and better as you drive further into the mountains. Great lakes, empty roads, lots of sheep! What else do you need on a honeymoon!? Wanaka is my favorite place in all of NZ: a beautiful small town on the edge of the lake, not as commercial and touristy as Queenstown but not as sleepy as many other towns in the South. And plenty of happy climbing memories, which we refreshed with a visit to the Adventure Consultants office, which was a beehive of activity on Monday morning. I ran into many familiar faces including Luiz Benitez, our expedition leader to Ama Dablam. Luiz is a great guy and accomplished mountaineer, a charismatic cosmopolitan who seems as much at home in a bustling city as on Antarctica or the South Col of Mt. Everest.
In Wanaka we stayed at the Matterhorn South where a double room still costs NZD 85 – the only place that does not seem to have gone up in price! It’s got a lovely lounge upstairs where we drank beer and wrote our thank you cards for the wedding and watched the sun slowly set behind the Southern Alps. My other favorite spot in Wanaka is the local cinema, Cinema Paradiso. It’s a small place in an old shack with old sofas instead of ‘proper’ cinema chairs as well as an open-top VW Beetle. We sat in the Beetle and watched a Clint Eastwood war movie – not very romantic for a honeymoon, so we left at half time. It was more for the cinema experience than the movie – in fact I already left there at half time before, watching one of those never-ending Lord of the Rings movies…
Next morning we were off to Queenstown, adventure capital of the South. If you have the money, there’s nothing you can’t jump off, roll down, swing across, jet boat over, hang-glide through or otherwise lift off from. We decided on the relatively harmless, but hugely fun and exciting Shotover Jet boat ride. These boats don’t run with conventional propellers but instead use ingeniously Kiwi-engineered water jets that suck 800 liters of water per second, which allows the boat to maneuver in as little as 5-10 cm of water! Combine that with your average nut case Kiwi bloke as driver and you have the most hair raising, wall shaving, wave jumping, canyon spinning thrill ride of your life. And at $99 per head it’s probably the cheapest thrill in town; aside from the gondola ride ($20) to enjoy the view over Queenstown, Lake Wakatipu and the Remarkables mountain range in the back. While scenic beyond doubt, Queenstown itself is way too touristy for my taste with bus loads of Japanese and – shock and horror – more than the occasional white sock-clad mainland Chinese tourist. Ni hao!
We opted for a more quiet lunch at Gibbston Vineyard (makes and excellent Pinot Gris); just down from the famous Kawaru Bridge – site of the world’s first commercial bungee jumping operations. (I’ve jumped off that bridge on my first visit to NZ over 10 years ago.) We spent another night in Wanaka after a dinner of takeaway fish and chips on the lakefront (cheap and cheerful, remember…)
Monday was going to be a big drive – some 600 kms – up the West Coast. I covered the first three hours of driving past the beautiful Lake Hawea and Lake Wanaka; over the Haast Pass and past Mt. Brewster (2516m) to our lunch stop at Fox Glacier, where the glacier almost meets the ocean. Unfortunately the weather was cloudy and dreary for most parts and therefore the possibility of a scenic flight over the Alps was ruled out. Mei took the wheel for the onward journey past Franz Joseph (“watch that corner!”), up to Hokitika (“not so fast!”), past Greymouth (“careful, traffic!!”) to the pancake rocks at Punakaiki (“arrgh, can’t look!”) and all the way to Westport (“thank god we’re alive!”). No, in all fairness, my wife is an excellent driver (in a car, not on a bike – but more on that later).
Westport is a boring industrial-town-turned-suburban-sleepy-hole and there isn’t much to see apart from the seal colony at Cape Foulwind (they small bad!!). But the landscape out at the cape – beyond the Holcim cement plant – is lovely and the Bayside Café, an old surfer’s hangout turned into a chic restaurant is a fantastic place for dinner.
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