South Island – November 2022 – Part 1 

 

 

I’m finally getting around to writing up our 2022 South Island Holiday. We love the South Island, especially the Mackenzie Country and Otago. It is so beautiful and there is such wonderful cycling to be done, but it is a long way to get there by car. 

Again, our preferred time to travel south was the couple of weeks straddling November and December – pretty much like our last year’s trip. November 2021 was at the tail-end of the Covid closure of NZ to foreign tourists, and the Auckland Region was in lockdown, so there were very few tourists about, which was fabulous. This time, however, the tourists were back, so we avoided over-touristed places like Tekapo and Queenstown.  

John particularly wanted to spend a few days at Lake Ohau Lodge – to do some cycling, to just ‘hang out’ and take lots of photos of the landscape, and to enjoy the Lodge’s delicious meals. And we also wanted to spend several days in Arrowtown, another one of our favourite places. 

This will end up to be quite a long story, so I will write it up in five parts:

Part 1: Wellington to Christchurch

Part 2: Christchurch to Arrowtown

Part 3: Arrowtown to Lake Ohau

Part 4: Two days at Lake Ohau

Part 5: Ohau to Oxford, and home

Part 1 – Wellington to Christchurch

 

Thursday 24 November – Wellington to Kaikoura

Our plans to catch the early morning sailing of the Bluebridge on Friday were thwarted by an email a few days earlier about the cancellation of all early sailings for the week, because of a lack of crew. We had planned to drive to Christchurch on the same day. The alternative arrangement – Interislander at 1pm on Thursday – meant that we would arrive in Picton in the late afternoon, too late to be able to carry on to Christchurch, so we booked to stay in Kaikoura overnight. 

After boarding, we stayed on deck for a while. Once we got moving, the wind was very strong. It was quite amusing to see people bracing themselves into the wind, or standing by the rail trying to take a photo while trying to keep the phone or camera steady.

The wind was very strong!

We had a little misadventure when John put down his parka on the seat next to me and then moved away to take a photo, just in time to see his parka take off in the wind. It flew away down to the car deck, luckily not out to sea. He stressed about it for quite a while, as his sunglasses were in the pocket of the parka. Fortunately, part-way through the voyage, there was an announcement that people who had animals in their cars, and who wanted to check on them would be allowed on the car deck for the next ten minutes, so John went down and looked for his parka. He found it on the tray of the ute right behind our car! It obviously wanted to “go home”!

The West Wind Farm above Makara (DP)

John’s parka flew away, but luckily landed on the ute behind our car (DP)

We were supposed to arrive at 4:30, and we finally rolled off at 5pm. And it rained! We drove into Kaikoura Top Ten Holiday Park at 7:15, got our key, dumped our bags and headed into the town to find some dinner. 

The studio unit that we stayed in was very nice. I think it will have to become our “go to” place to stay next time we come through Kaikoura. It is fresh, clean, good little kitchen bench, good bathroom, free wifi and plenty of power points to charge phones and laptops.

Friday 25 November – Kaikoura to Christchurch

It was a lovely day to drive to Christchurch. The coast road south of Kaikoura is a real treat. It is a beautiful road, a fantastic repair job done after it was severely damaged in the 2016 Kaikoura earthquake. In quite a few places one can still see the scars to the land caused by this massive quake.

Scars of the slips can still be seen along the coast road

We got to the northern reaches of Christchurch by about lunchtime, and did a little tour of Kaiapoi, Kainga and Brooklands. We lived in Kainga for three years in the 1970s, and much has changed there of course, especially after the Christchurch quakes in 2010 and 2011, when many buildings in Kaiapoi were damaged, and much of Brooklands suffered serious subsidence and liquefaction, and was declared a “red” zone. 

After that we had the rest of the afternoon to fill, so we went to Lyttelton. Traffic through town was horrible, but the map app on the phone helped us through. We were amused at the ‘lady’ on the app, who kept calling it “Ly-TEL-ton”. 

We had lunch in a small quirky café called The Shroom Room – away from the main drag, as that was swamped with passengers from a huge cruise ship. 

A huge cruise ship was in town (DP)

Enjoying the sun and the roses in a park near the café

This bronze sculpture by Mark Whyte of a sled dog celebrates Lyttelton’s Antarctica connections

With not much to do in Lyttelton – eateries and touristy shops in the main road did not interest us – we drove over the hill to Sumner. We walked along the Esplanade, where I was intrigued with some amazing plants.
 

This very tall flower stalk looked even more amazing in close-up (DP)

Enormous agave flowers (DP)

There is a big rocky outcrop on Sumner Beach, which has a cave running under it. I went though the Cave Rock tunnel while John waited at the other end, and then we had an ice-cream.

The tunnel under Cave Rock (DP)

 

 So true!

At first John had suggested we have an early dinner in Sumner, but it was only 4:15, so we went to find our motel – Central Park Lodge, on Riccarton Road. 

Unfortunately the motel was not terribly nice. In fact, it was downright awful. We were put in a unit upstairs, which meant that we could not charge the car from the room. The stairs were so narrow that you could barely get through carrying a bag, the bed was one of those awful springy, wobbly jobs, the bathroom was only so-so, there was no tea towel in the kitchenette, and the internet was S-L-O-W! I And the neighbours, an Indian restaurant, were extremely noisy at around 11:30 pm, when they were closing up, talking loudly and clattering rubbish bins and crates of bottles. If it wasn’t for the fact that I had already paid for two nights, we would have left the next day.

Saturday 26 November – Akaroa

John got up really early to find somewhere to charge the car, then took a walk through Hagley Park to Oxford Terrace. 

Hagley Park

This must be really pretty at night

Oxford Terrace – the historic tram goes through here on its rounds for the tourists

We decided to go to Akaroa. It is quite a long way (82 km) and we stopped at Little River Café and Store for some breakfast. After that we had a browse in the attached gallery, which was having an exhibition opening. I loved a couple of paintings of a tūī and of a kererū on a gold background. Luckily they were $2,900, way beyond my pocket, so I was not tempted to buy the tūī. We browsed around the shop for a bit as well, there were some nice things there too.

Breakfast in the garden behind the café

Then on to Akaroa. While the road to Little River was more or less flat (we biked here a few years ago), the road to Akaroa was over substantial hills. The scenery is gorgeous.

The weather was lovely, warm and sunny, with just a light breeze. We parked in the shade, and walked first to the wharf area and enquired at the i-Site about where the Giant’s House was.  

Akaroa Harbour

The Giant’s House is a magical place. The grand historic house has a wonderful garden full of the most delightful and whimsical mosaics and statues, enticing paths and steps decorated with mosaic, thriving plantings, and a gallery of artworks. It is all the work of the owner, Josie Martin, a highly original artist with bright blue hair. 

The driveway of the Giants House and Sculpture Garden (DP)

The entry was $24 pp, but well worth it. We had been here before, 12 years ago, and there were lots of new pieces, beautifully trimmed trees to sit beneath, and colourful flowers everywhere. A real delight.

There are life-size – and larger – statues of people covered in mosaics, three ‘swimmers’ around a fountain by a ship, people watching a chef cut a cake, a girl eating strawberries, a king and queen, and angels. 

The garden is terraced, and all the steps are covered in mosaics, the seats are too, perfectly trimmed trees, and gorgeous colourful flowerbeds. In the middle of the front lawn is a grand piano, covered in mosaics and ceramic fruit, with the lid up, and filled with succulents, and French chansons blasting out from it.

The good ship “Isola Bella” and its Captain John, watching swimmers around a fountain (DP)

Waiting for the cutting of the birthday cake (DP)

Strawberry girl

Blue stairway (DP)

Another colourful stairway (DP)

In the lap of the gods ... or is it an angel?

We had a ‘Devonshire tea’ – or rather plunger coffee for two. John had a date scone (his perennial favourite), and I had a classic scone with jam and cream. When the tray was brought to us, it was a beautiful arrangement: little dainty cups and saucers – cups with clocks on them, saucers with clock faces – alstroemeria flowers to decorate the spout of the coffee plunger and the jam and the cream, all on a gorgeous old-fashioned embroidered tray cloth. We sat in the shade of a brolly and enjoyed the ‘lunch’.
 

A beautifully arranged tray

 

I love this arrangement of tall lupins and sculptures

We spent nearly two hours enjoying the delights of this magical place. After this we drove round the supposedly “French” part of the village. The fact that Akaroa was originally founded by French settlers is being exploited shamelessly by the local businesses, which try to make everything sound French and romantic. But really, it is just another, admittedly very pretty, small NZ town. All that was French was a few of the street names. The shops and restaurants had French names, but the touristy stuff in the shops that they tried to pass off as French, was not. 

After a quick tour, we headed back to Christchurch, via Little River, Gebbie’s Pass and Lyttelton.