Letter from Atlantia. May 2010. We missed the weather window to leave about a week ago and it has rained ever since. There have been numerous storm warnings around New Zealand and gale warnings in our area in force until yesterday. It was not quite the same when we visited South Island for a camping trip since we had no rain for the first eight days of our fourteen day motoring spree, but it was still very windy.

Our trip began in Opua when John and Nicole kindly took us and our baggage up the very steep hill to catch the bus, Atlantia being safely tucked up on the breakwater of the marina.

The journey was very pleasant through the low hills of Northland and past all the sheep and cows munching contentedly in the fields. We passed a sheep museum where all the sheep were dyed a bright pink. Good advertising, but the bus didn't stop. We were picked up by the rental company from the bus station in Auckland and taken to collect our camper van. We were more than a little put out to be charged another 30% of the rental cost for a proper insurance (something not advertised on their website when we booked on line) but after a small tantrum we hoisted ourselves into the van and motored away slightly lighter in the pocket. The van was quite a large beast to drive after the smaller rental cars we had been used to, but it handled quite well despite drinking petrol with its v6 engine. It did boast a double bed in the back though. On the first night we slept in the van in Hugo and Gislayne's driveway at their Auckland house. Hugo kindly wiped the virus from our computer whilst we helped Gislayne to write her CV as a specialist painter. Hopefully it assisted her in gaining the employment she wishes for.

The following day was the first full day of campervanning for us. Still in North Island we went down the highway south of Auckland and onto the quieter more scenic roads leading to Hobbitland where they filmed the hobbit village scenes for the Lord of the Rings. The fireworks were added afterwards. We passed on the outrageously expensive tour of the hobbitholes and made our way sedately to the pretty but rather touristy area of Rotorua. This area is on a south west/ north east rift in the land surface which provides hot springs and powers two electricity generating stations with its hot rocks. The land gently steams through many fissures and we were privileged to visit the champagne pool and mud baths at Waiotapa.

We were rewarded with the sight of mud bubbles bursting into the air and the smell of sulphur pervading the nostrils.

We camped that night at an official but privately owned camp site. These are dotted all over New Zealand and cater very well for the happy campers. Most sites even have small cabins where you can stay if you can't be bothered to put up the tent. They are not particularly cheap and our van cost $30NZ (about £15) to park for the night. On this particular occasion the facilities offered were very reasonable and included in the camping fee. There was a shower, a barbecue stove, and, the main reason for stopping there, a bath in the hot stream running only a few yards from our rear bumper. Very comfortable.

This is more than could be said of the bed in the back of the van, which was a little cramped with rather a thin mattress.

Onwards down to Wellington the destination we had not achieved in Atlantia. We were actually quite pleased we had not sailed there because it is indeed a 'windy city' and the anchorages are shallow and the marinas a little small. There is a preponderance of trailer sailors here, all with short masts.

Mike and Lexie, who live here and who we had met in Scotland at Christmas with Gordon and Maureen, very kindly gave us a bed for the night. The excellent dinner and rest were very welcome after a hard afternoons sight seeing in the city centre. There is a very large, brand new, Anglican Cathedral in the centre, which is most impressive. Similarly the adjacent government buildings are handsome, although of very varying styles. Of the cities visited here in New Zealand there is no doubt that Wellington and our last visited city, Christchurch, can certainly boast of decent architecture.

Crossing the Cook straight the following day proved windy but not rough. Sometimes even the interislander ferry is unable to sail. It is not surprising that Captain Cook was blown offshore during his charting of the coastline of the Islands in the eighteenth century.

The north east coast of South Island is hilly and beautiful, as indeed is the west coast. The entrance to the northern port of Picton takes the ferry several hours to traverse up the fjord and past scenic hills and bays. The high road out of Picton west to Nelson reminded us of travelling along some of the roads in Norway high above the deep indentations in the coastline. We passed through the grape growing area of Marlborough and were not surprised that there were many windbreaks growing there to shelter the vines and the other fruit trees in this fertile area.

Down the west coast and into the Southern Alps. During the nineteenth century there were a number of gold rushes in South Island. On the west coast there are many small towns where at one time gold nuggets could be plucked from the nearby stream as it ran down from the steep mountains. There are still areas where 'recreational' panning for gold is allowed, and we did a little searching next to a well known gold river. We think we found the tiniest amount attached to a piece of quartz.

At one time the extraction of gold from the area was big business, with whole hillsides being washed away by water jets to see if there was gold bearing gravel under the earth there.

There is no obvious advertising by modern gold mining companies but only a few years ago an enormous bucket dredger landlocked in a gravel lake was excavating over 1500 tons of ore bearing stone an hour in its search for gold. The area of its operation is now a nicely landscaped pond.

Old gold rush era buildings dot the local town, including a genuine bank that would not have looked out of place in a picture show about the wild west of America. The gold diggers sold their gold to the local bank who then shipped it away to the cities including those in Britain, who was busy colonising the Islands at the time. Sometimes gangs robbed the bank's agent who often travelled with an armed guard party of up to ten riflemen. It seems however that the most common infringement of the law was drunkenness and brawling. In one gold town we visited apparently every other building was a bar at that time. Many towns we visited had pictures and tales of brawls and bars and bordellos, and prospectors with long beards. There are some very nice small museums down this coast, all of them telling their tales of the gold, or about the coal mining which came a little later. There is little or no access to the black sand beaches on this coast, most probably because at one time gold was actually successfully panned from the beach sand! (and they wish to keep the sand for themselves).

The coast does however abound with other natural beauties. The fur seals at cape Foulwind ( named by Captain Cook for the contrary winds there) were one,

The pancake rocks were also most impressive with their depiction of faces in the cliffs and with adjacent blowholes.

Since there are only three passes across the South Island Alps we decided that all three had to be traversed.

Thus we travelled backwards and forwards across the island. We travelled south east through the Waka pass and then through the northern part of the Canterbury plains.

We swung away from Christchurch to climb back up into the mountains and through Arthur's pass to Hokotika back on the west coast. The night in the mountains was spent by a small loch where Maoris used to collect ducks for eating. The ducks were so tame that they allowed themselves to be driven to the end of the lake where they were just picked up!

We saw the rare southern grebe. This bird can fly but it can also swim and dive. In fact it looks very similar to our great crested grebe in Scotland.

Arthur's pass was created by the worthies of Christchurch so that they could share in some of the wealth created by the gold on the west coast. Regrettably, although a great feat of engineering the gold ran out before the road was completed. There is a railway running alongside the road in many places but through a long tunnel under some very unstable rocks. This is another civil engineering success. Both road and rail are now used predominantly by tourists.

The Franz Joseph glacier runs down from mount Tasman to the Tasman sea bordering the west coast again. The mountain is just next to mount Cook and nearly as high. The walk to the glacier base was fairly gentle but we had to keep well back from its face, in case of ice falls. Groups of people were being guided onto the ice by experienced guides and helicopters and ski planes were landing on upper parts of the glacier.

Down to Queenstown in the heart of the mountains. We were surrounded by areas where the Lord of the Rings was filmed, although there was so much computer enhancement in the films that we may not recognize all the places.

Queenstown is a thriving, bustling little town, full of tourists like us. There is plenty of kayaking, mountain climbing and walking from here in the summer, and skiing in the winter. The loch has a steam powered ship plying back and forth and the town is full of modern shops selling outdoor gear. Regrettably we didn't go on the ship but it is evidently very popular. The same unfortunately cannot be said for the steam train at Kingston at the other end of lake Wokatipu where the ship can also dock. It had a for sale sign hanging from one of its carriages. A great shame it is not still running, but a great project for someone to restore it to its former glory. All in good running order complete with 16 kilometres of rail line.

We entered the wettest and windiest part of our journey as we travelled into the Fjordland district park on the south east corner of the South Island . There is only one road here and it skirts an area about 120 miles long by 30 miles wide. The rest can only be approached by boat. The road goes to Milford Sound in the north end of Fjordland and which is a marine reserve. The radio told us yesterday that about 30% of the land in New Zealand is protected.

The Kea is a parrot that is found nowhere but South Island New Zealand. We saw a pair close to the roadside next to the Homer tunnel that leads to Milford Sound. They are quite tame but can pick out the rubber on the windscreen. We thought that excuse might be a bit far fetched for the windscreen insurance people, who obviously have no sense of humour. We did get a good look at the birds plumage however, which can withstand the harshest weather.

The other side of the unlined single lane tunnel there was a myriad of waterfalls cascading down the bare rock face. A full time squad of road menders with a digger and a large dumper truck manage to keep the road clear of landslides and rockfalls. They do sterling work, come rain or shine. Mostly rain!

Since we had dawdled down the west coat and meandered through all the alpine passes we only found ourselves with four days before we had to return the campervan to Christchurch airport. We made a hasty visit to the most southern part of mainland New Zealand and discovered we had travelled 5140 km from the equator, and that it only required another 4803km to reach the South Pole. No wonder it was cold and windy.

The south coast is known for its icy blasts, and the trees are similar to those in Scotland in some places where they have a distinct lean away from the prevailing wind.

We visited the Albatross Centre on the Otago peninsular, just east of Dunedin on the south east coast. The royal albatross chicks,, which were about four months old, were spectacular.

The guide gave us a model albatross chick to hold and its heaviness really surprised us. It was about the size of a small sheep and weighed about 10 kg. Apparently they weigh about 8 kg when fully grown. We could see the royal albatrosses and their chicks through the window of the hide. They are the largest seabird in the world with a three metre wingspan.

There was a most interesting gun on the same headland placed there in the 1890s. It was called the Armstrong Disappearing Gun (from Britain), and it did just that. Due to an ingenious recoil system utilising compressed air and water the gun lowers itself back into its housing in the ground after firing so the recipient of the shell cannot see where the shot was fired from. It had been beautifully restored and the models in the small museum were very lifelike. Scientists think that the albatross breeding on this headland has something to do with the restricted area caused by the gun emplacement and the resultant lack of humans. It would be nice to think so.

We had a quick look at Dunedin which is supposed to be the Edinburgh of the south. It looked more like South Gyle which is a modern housing and commercial estate just outside Edinburgh than the City of Edinburgh itself. The only architectural redeeming feature in Dunedin was the railway station which had granite columns shipped in from Aberdeen and some very attractive stained glass windows.

Further up the east coast before the delightful small town of Oamaru, we were very fortunate to spy some hectors dolphins, gambling in Curio bay.

At Oamaru we saw the yellow eyed penguins, indigenous to New Zealand. They are wary of the big fur seals lying on the beach as they come ashore, but they climb very steep cliffs to their nesting burrows high up above the sea. The fur seals can't climb cliffs.

Travelling once more inland we passed the enormous hydroelectric dams at Loch Aviemore and Loch Benmore named by a Scotsman wud you believe. They produce an impressive 30% of New Zealand's electricity in this valley.

On the eastern edge of the high mountains and at the very centre of the south island lies Twizel, this is the home of the very rare black stilt which lives near the man made reservoirs. You will be surprised to hear that we didn't actually see one despite a good look at a stream high in the hills where they are supposed to live. They can fly. Twizel was the original township built as a camp for the constructors of the hydroelectric dams and it has now morphed into a tourist town. Since it was very late in the tourist season and well before the skiing season, the town was deserted. It was raining as well.

With the exception of a delightful visit to Christchurch where we went on a tram, admired the architecture, and had an excellent indian dinner, that was the end of our holiday, well down under. Christchurch is half way down the east coast of South Island and is a little like the original Cambridge in England.

It is built beside a series of small rivers. It was originally the site of a Maori township which rested on a swamp. It now boasts some pretty college buildings and an extensive park at its centre. One of the trams was over a hundred years old and except for the lack of cigarette smoke reminded us of the wooden carriages they used to use on the Glasgow underground. (now in the transport museum).

Back at Opua we have sailed once more around the bay of islands with Mike and Lexie, showing them an itinerants way of life. We have also had some great times with our friends from Gannet, Ishka and Beduina as well as those from Son of the Sun, Zulu, Happy Monster and Balu. (all on land we should add).

The weather window looks like it will open next week for the trip north but don't be surprised if you get a letter in two weeks saying we are still in Opua!!! Hope you like the pics.

love ATLANTIA