Day 74: 20231206 December 6, 2023 Traversing the South Island and Reboarding the Royal Princess
The breakfast at the Heritage Hotel was quite good, although there was less of a selection of meats. They had only crispy bacon and English bangers, both of which were fairly bland. The baked goods did include crumpets though.
The drive to Dunedin and Port Chalmers covered a lot of ground and also highlighted geological and historical changes along the way. The land closest to Milford Sound is characterized as the wildest and newest land, featuring jagged high mountain ranges. As we worked eastward, the mountains became older and more eroded or rounded by glaciation. Then as we approached the east coast, mountains were largely replaced by rolling hills and meadows. In the wilder areas to the west, gold mining was an important economic driver. Our first stop was at Arrowtown, which was still in the high mountains. In many ways, it’s like the western gold mining towns in America. Main Street was lined with shops and museums. Of particular note was the Arrowtown Gold Shop and Arrowtown Jade stores. The Gold Shop’s owners are a couple who have been gold prospectors for a long time. The husband has found some remarkable gold nuggets that are on display in the store including one nugget that weighs 14 oz. We actually got to hold that nugget in our hands. It’s worth more than its simple weight in gold because it is a rare natural specimen. The gold from the Arrow river tends to be 94% pure. The have a lot of interesting lockets that contain natural gold flakes rather than manufactured gold figures, although they do have plenty of conventional gold jewelry as well.
Across the street is a Jade Factory. The Maori call jade greenstone. This shop has a lapidary shop with a glass door where you could watch Jade items being manufactured, but there was no manufacturing going in the morning when we arrived. There were a lot of beautiful carvings and jewelry in the store. The larger carvings were particularly attractive.
We followed the Kawarau river as it worked its way east to the Pacific Ocean. It carved a steep gorge where the sport of Bungy Jumping was born. We stopped at the Kawarau Bridge Bungy, where the sport of Bungy jumping was first commercialized. They have built quite a fancy building next to an old suspension bridge that is now used only for pedestrian traffic since a 2 lane highway bridge was constructed to replace it. It seems Asian tourists are really drawn to this sport because the parking lot and center were full of Japanese and Chinese tourists clamoring for a chance to do a jump. We watched a diminutive Japanese girl do a jump. She did let out a very audible scream as she took the dive, but then she looked like a rag doll at the end of the bungy as they lowered her into a raft awaiting in the current below and unbuckled her. It looked like her legs were pretty shaky as she had to climb 134’ of elevation by stairs to get back to the rim of the canyon where the Bungy center is.
We continued to follow the Kawarau river gorge as it wound and twisted its way through the mountainous pass it was carving. The mountains in this part of the Southern Alps look like they are made of broken and lifted plates of schist. The rugged terrain is a little like the area around Icicle Creek area around Leavenworth in Eastern Washington, although the geology there is different, substituting granite for schist. The further we followed the river, the more it reminded us of the Eastern Cascades, descending into the Yakima Valley because this area is also filled with fruit trees and vineyards. Our next stop was a comfort stop at the Jones Family Fruit Stall, which sold fresh cherries the size of plums, although the top seller was probably the ice cream cones. They had a very nice rose garden next to the fruit stand, although most of the roses were past their peak. It did smell very nice though.
Adding to the similarities between this part of the Southern Island and Eastern Washington was presence of hydroelectric dams. However, salmon were never part of the ecology of New Zealand, so there are no fish ladders. They do have fish hatcheries and do raise salmon and trout but most of the freshwater fishing in New Zealand is supported by brown and rainbow trout that were originally sourced from the “Salmon Ponds” which we had visited when we were in Hobart. We stopped at an overlook of the Clyde Power Station.
Our lunch was in the former gold mining town of Clyde in the Old Post Office cafe and restaurant. We had a very nice lunch featuring savory pies which were miniaturized hand held quiche, Shepard’s pie and sausage rolls. There was also a very nice cheese and smoked meats platter and several salads to mix and match. They also had a venison stew and rice. Lunch included one beverage including beer and wine. They also had coffee, tea and fudge brownies. We were pretty stuffed.
As we continued our eastward journey, the landscape became more hilly and the schist more scattered into frequent outcrops in Conroy’s Gully. These were very prominently featured in one of the Lord of the Rings movies where the Fellowship were pursued by Orcs on Wargs through this landscape.
The next rest stop was in the town of Roxburgh. New Zealand has made quite an investment in public bathroom facilities along this Milford Sound to Dunedin tourism corridor because even in this small town, the public toilets are very modern featuring electronically controlled doors, stainless steel interiors, automatic flushing toilets and automatic sinks with hand dryers. When you enter, a voice announces “Welcome to … Please note that the toilet will flush automatically when you wash your hands. You have 10 minutes to take care of business. Thank you and have a nice day”. Then elevator music or bird songs play through the speakers and a fan feeds a constant stream of fresh air into the stall. Quite an upgraded experience over the Portland Loo. We encountered these high tech toilets at most of our rest stops and these are all free of charge.
Another bit of infrastructure we noted on this trip is a very extensive bicycle/tramping trail network that extends hundreds of kilometers, if not thousands. Some are along abandoned rail grades, but there were long dedicated causeways and bridges included in the network. Most of these have periodic bathroom facilities, and many are served by little coffee trailer vendors.
We made another comfort stop in the city of Lawrence. As we approached the coast, the hills became lower and fewer, and suburban housing developments, shopping malls, schools, golf courses and lawn bowling clubs became the norm.
We took a bus tour of Dunedin. The driver/guide was remarkably skilled in expertly maneuvering his 52 passenger coach through narrow city streets more suited to subcompact cars. Dunedin was settled by immigrants from Scotland, so the city looks very much like a suburb of Glasgow or Inverness. Log exports and support services (teaching, government, healthcare, and tourism) drive the local economy which appears quite healthy.
We did get a chance to get out and walk around the historic Dunedin train station before we were dropped off back at the ship at 5pm.
When we got back on the ship, our entire excursion group got flagged by security and held in quarantine because the system for scanning and correlating our Medallions was not programmed for our absence and return to the ship. All the ship knew was here was a group of passengers who had not scanned themselves off the boat earlier in the morning. It apparently wasn’t sophisticated enough to recognize that we had scanned off the ship 2 days ago and hadn’t scanned back in at the end of the first day. It took about 20 minutes for them to get that sorted and allow us to board the ship.
After dropping off our stuff and unpacking, Price and Janet decided to stay on the ship and have dinner while Ben and Ciara explored Port Chalmers on foot because the ship wasn’t scheduled to sail until 8:30pm.
Ben and Ciara managed to hike up to two nice lookouts- The Lady Thorn Dell Lookout behind the Iona Church, and the Flagstaff Lookout above the log storage yards adjacent to the ship. They had covered about 2 miles and 700’ in elevation to hit these two main tourist attractions in the small town. There was a market of local vendors in the City Hall, open when cruise ships are at port. There were a lot of hand crafted local goods. There was a Maori carver with some very nice antler carvings, and a Japanese woman who sold origami bird ear rings that were remarkably elaborate for their tiny size. Most of the shops and restaurants along the Main Street were closed so were back on the ship 40 minutes before the All Aboard sounded.
Ben and Ciara ran into Price and Janet in the Gelatto shop, eating the premium desserts. So Ben and Ciara also had some- why not eat dessert first?
Next, we participated in a Motown Trivia but got beat by one point due to careless errors on our part. Next time!
Tomorrow the ship arrives at Lyttelton Port, serving Christchurch. We have an all day long excursion to see more film sites for the Lord of the Rings and another high country sheep station. We’ll probably be over sheep by the time this trip is done.
