My Excellent Adventure
So finally, after tweeting about this several times, here is the post on my excellent adventure—which basically involved having a visitor (always good) and using that as the spur to actually have a holiday.
Basically, I haven’t had a real holiday for quite some time—they’re always ‘busman’s holidays” where I’m doing something for the book or have an event, and even with family and friends, events are not exactly restful as we all know!
And because the spur for the holiday was entertaining a visitor, I did all those things that you do when you’re visiting a place, but so often don’t when you’re local. And that is why it was an excellent adventure, besides being a bit of a road trip as well, because really it brought home that I ‘should’ do these things more often!
So what did we do on the excellent adventure?
— We went over to Akaroa (NZ’s only French-in-origin settlement) and took a trip both on the harbour and beyond it along a bit of the coast, and saw Hector’s dolphins (lots of them!), white flippered penguins and NZ fur seals.
— And also visited the Giant’s House in Akaroa, the most amazing garden that is full of colourful mosaic sculptures. This I have seen several times now and it is always stunning.
— the next loop of the road trip was down through the South Canterbury hinterland to Mt Cook National Park. Mt Cook, or Aoraki, the Sky-piercer, is NZ’s largest mountain so this is alpine territory in NZ’s semi-arid high country. And there’s a glacier—the Tasman glacier—with a terminal lake that features actual icebergs. How cool is that?
—And finally we returned to Christchurch via the inland scenic route, with stops at cool places like the Rakaia gorge.
And although I am an indifferent photographer, even of the ‘point and click’ school, here are a few photios by way of ‘excellent adventure’ evidence.
PS The food encountered en route, like my photography, was mostly indifferent, although the Trading Rooms cafe in Akaroa was the exception that I’m afraid otherwise proved the rule. Sadly, the meal out we had in Christchurch must also be included in the ‘mediocre’ score card. 🙁
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Aoraki and Akaroa–two of my most favorite places on earth! Isn’t the terminus just a breathtaking site? We used to live in Albury, so only about an hour’s drive from the mountain and used to go quite often. I love the inland scenic route home, too. I’ve always wanted to go dolphin watching at Akaroa. It’s weird that the only dolphins I’ve seen close up were in San Diego, when I lived in both Kaikoura and close to Akaroa. It just goes to show you, don’t leave home ’til you’ve seen the country 🙂
Wen, I think you must have lived ‘all over!’:) But the whole of Mt Cook is breathtaking really and we were very lucky with the weather. Even though the glacier lake photos show clouds, we got to have breakfast looking out at Mt Cook while it was still ‘clear as a bell’ (though overcast) and then the cloud just rolled on down as it does in the mountains. The dolphins were wonderful though and I was so glad for my visitor’s sake that we saw a lot of them (since I of course can go back ‘any time’.) Sadly, the Hector’s dolphin is still endangered, because our worthless government won’t ban set-net fishing with its high level of collateral species damage.
I have to admit, with these things all local to you, it would be very tempting to live there and pretend to be a visitor, just for the sake of seeing them anew.
Gillian, I resolved to remind myself to get out there and see them all more often rather than taking what I have for granted.
I’m doing the same – it’s too easy to forget how green the grass is at home.
And there’s always something you haven’t seen, as well …
Looks like you had great weather – the view of Aoraki across Pukaki is frequently obscured by clouds. The Giant’s house looks great – never been there, but certainly on my list now.
We were very lucky with Mt Cook–it was raining until about Burke’s Pass the day we drove there, but the sun came out as we crossed into the McKenzie Country and stayed with us until the morning we left. And even then we got to do the glacier trip before the really bad weather set in.
As for the Giant’s House, I really think it is both unique and exceptional: very well worth the entry fee.
absolutely stunning pictures!! There aren’t any sites quite like those in my state of North Carolina. just wow .
Although I have seen some beautiful photographs of areas in North Carolina? I think ‘Last of the Mohicans’ was filmed in a national park there? But I agree there’s always something special about high mountains and the combination of the mountains with the lakes is stunning. And that part of the SI is very much ‘high loneseome.’