New Zealand

Overview of Attractions
New Zealand was voted top adventure travel destination by Wanderlust magazine last year. It's a wonderful place to visit, provided the weather is clement enough, and we were lucky. It's hard to imagine how a country this small can pack in some of the most spectacular landscapes in the world, from the awesome glaciers of the 'Southern Alps' to the bubbling volcanic mudpools of Rotorua, the dramatic west coast, the tropical rainforest of the Coromandel peninsula. It's a nature lovers paradise, with spine tingling encounters with rare penguins, sealions and wierd local birdlife. There is also some of the best walking territory in the world! For a good mountain Yomp, try Arthur's Pass. New Zealand is an outdoors place. The cities aren't much cop really, though Christchurch is very pleasant, and Wellington has a good nightlife and the new Te Papa national museum, which is worth a visit. If it's adrenalin pumping thrills you're after, New Zealand is the place to go. It is the adventure capital of the world. Anything goes! You can pan for gold, quad-bike, heli-bike, heli-hike, shoot rapids on a jet boat, bungy jump, naked bungy jump, tandem bungy jump, valentines day special bungy jump, paraglide, hang glide, go canyoning, fun-yaking, kayaking, ice-caving, skiing, snowboarding, sky diving and more! Our advice to all prospective world travellers is "Don't waste your time in Oz. New Zealand is a billion times better, so get on down and have fun.".		The ubiquitous fern a national emblem.

Christchurch We arrived at Christchurch from Sydney in the late morning, and landed in the midst of a squally rainstorm. The weather is the one thing that can ruin a trip to New Zealand - it's as unpredictable as the UK, and since most of the joy of this place is in the outdoors, it's a major risk. Fortunately for us, this was one of very few rainy days. We'd opted to go without a guidebook in New Zealand. You get sick of being led by the nose following a Lonely Planet guide, and to be honest, in New Zealand, you don't need one. The information desk at the tiny airport in Christchurch was a goldmine of pamphlets and friendly personal advice. We booked a hotel from the desk, (see below) and only had to wait a few minutes for hotel owner Richard to pick us up. Christchurch is New Zealand's oldest university town. It has a pleasant gentrified air, with attractive stone houses, and a meandering river, the Avon, bisecting the town. Having dropped our bags, we walked into town and found a lovely old pub called the Oxford and Avon, for a roast dinner - just the job! We spent the afternoon slumped on a huge sofa in the hotel's capacious lounge. It used to be a ballroom, built as a 50th anniversary present for the original owner. We spent the time thumbing through all of the brochures and pamphlets we'd picked up, trying to decide a rough itinerary around the south island. It all sounded very enticing. We also made the decision at this point to relax our hitherto strict budgetary controls, it being our final month of travel. "What the hell - put it on the plastic" became our watchwords. We also made the decision to hire a car (see below), rather than book with one of the regular budget traveller bus tours (Kiwi Magic, Magic Bus or Kiwi Experience). Buses are frequent and a good deal if you like sticking to a well worn route, and enjoy the company of vomiting gap year students. If you do hire a car, it's well worth shopping around. There is huge variation in price, and we managed to get ours for just $24NZ a day, that's about £8! Apart from moseying around the shops, the best way to enjoy Christchurch is on the river, hire a punt or a canoe, and paddle upstream for an hour.
Where to Stay Dorset House, 1 Dorset Street, Tel: 03-366 8268. Only opened a year ago, very friendly, modern, comfortable, peaceful. It is tastefully decorated, clean kitchen, 10 mins from town centre, free pick-up from the airport. Highly recommended. Go to Dorset House! and book online.	Hiring a car Ascot Rentals, Tel: 03-377-2622 $18 Per Day A car from a cheap hire company is more economical and more flexible than the bus. Ascot rentals in Christchurch is actually a breakers yard - so our 1986 Honda was probably an amalgam of several previous cars. It had 220,000kms on the clock, but it was dirt cheap and never let us down over 2000kms of driving.	Our 1986 Honda Hire Car - on the West Coast

Greymouth Greymouth is the centre of the Whitebait industry in New Zealand, it's renowned for it. Katie was intent that we should sample the local fish for dinner, but whitebait is out of season, and what we ate in the Hogs Head pub looked suspiciously like it'd just come out of a supermarket freezer. The local beer was more promising, Monteiths brewery is just down the road, and they do a good selection of bitter, lager and dark beers well worth sampling. The pub manager was very friendly, and gave us the low-down on the local interests, which include a free brewery tour. "Don't go to the North Island though" he advised us "it's full of spear chuckers and they'll rob you soon as look at you". This was the first of many examples of the North-South divide that we witnessed.
Where to Stay in Greymouth - Noah's Ark This Hostel is a popular backpacker's haunt, sadly it's on the Magic Bus circuit, so is somewhat prone to being taken over by drunk 18 year-olds. Aside from that it's a lovely old house with 'animal theme' rooms (Noahs Ark see - clever). It's run by an ex-policeman, so there's definitely no drug-smoking if that's what you're into.
There isn't really a great deal in Greymouth that's worth sticking around for. There is a bogus 'shantytown attraction' a reconstructed gold-mining settlement, but we'd seen the real thing in Bolivia, so we gave it a wide berth. On Yer Bike quad-biking adventures sounded more like it. It's about five kms north of town, on a farm. We drove out to check it out and make a booking. It's run by an incredibly thick bloke called Mick. We booked it for the following day. A further 15kms north of town, and you get to the Punakaiki Rocks - where there are some impressive blow-holes. You need to judge your visit to coincide with the high tide to really appreciate this natural effect, where the sea water is forced up through the blowholes as a violent jet. There is a charming little pub at Puna kaiki with lovely views of the rocky coastline and out to sea. The west-coast scenery is fantastic. After lunch, we returned to town, where we were booked into the free Monteith's Brewery Tour. This is an absolute MUST for visitors to Greymouth.
Monteith's Brewery Tour Monteith's brewery is a small one-site business, run by about 15 people in total. The receptionist doubles as the tour guide and also helps out on the bottling line when required. It's great because everyone who works there is passionate about what they do. The engineer was effusive in his explanation of how he'd completely re-engineered the ancient bottling line. Barry the lab technician was overjoyed to be asked about how he maintained a quality head on the beer. The methods used are traditional, i.e. they use no added chemicals, no pasteurisation, no huge vats. They brew five different beers, which include two lagers, two bitters, a chocolatey dark beer. Malts for all beers are initially mashed up to form a wort, which is mixed with hops and fermented for 7-9 days in an open container. At last we got to the bit we'd all been waiting for the tasting. After pouring us each a first pint, the receptionist / tour guide said she had some paper work to finish off and invited us to continue at our leisure. The tasting room was in fact a private bar, and we duly helped our selves to every variety on offer, with Katie pulling the pints. It was 4.30 by the time we staggered out into the sunlight.		Monteith's free bar
There are some good coastal walks in and around Greymouth, and to blow away the cobwebs, we decided to take in an 8km clifftop walk to a small village north of the town called Port Elizabeth. It was on this walk that we had our first serious conversation about all of the things we'd need to get organised once we got back to the UK. We'd been on the road for over a year, and Katie decided that she'd rather split up with me than face the torture of getting the house up and running again. Cheers!
Katie running to beat the tide on the way back from Port Elizabeth		We came down from the cliffs to a remote beachside pub. What excellent luck, I was starting to sober up so refuelled with a 12oz of lager before setting off back. On the way back, we took the beach route, a broad glistening sweep of empty sand, surrounded by towering cliffs. Allegedly there were some stairs at the far end, but we had our doubts as we raced across the sand to beat the tide. There were some stairs, but they were bloody dangerous. We went for it anyway.
Back in town, there was a barbecue on at the Railway Inn - this had been a very boozy day already, so why stop now. I won a free jug of ale for being the first person to have the balls to get up and sing on the Karaoke - 'Cool for Cats', and Katie won a New Zealand Pub Challenge T shirt for her rendition of 'Eternal Flame'.
Katie quadbiking	On Yer Bike This was the first instance of the 'Sod it only three weeks to go, put it on the plastic' policy - two and a half hours of quad-biking extravagance. Unlike many quad bike trips which confine you to a fairly limited course, this one took in the full extent of the farm. You also get fairly meaty 350cc Honda bikes to deal with. Katie drover hers a bit like an OAP on a shopping trip to sainsburys. Nevertheless we got very dirty (as promised), zooming through 2ft deep streams and mudslicks. About half way round, we stopped for a rest and Mike broke out some drinks. Mike had only been doing the job for a short while. Previously he had been a gold digger in Hokitika down the coast, operating a huge mechanical digger. The plant had been closed though when one of the excavators slid into the river nearly killing his mate in the process. It was great fun, and at $140NZ for both of us well worthwhile.
Walks near Punakaiki On our last day in Greymouth, we drove up to Punakaiki again. The blow holes weren't very impressive, so we decided to go for a walk. Once again, the visitor centre was a gold mine of information, and right near here was the start of a major inland footpath. There is a pleasant day hike called the Punakaiki Pororari loop, which heads inland alongside the beautiful tree-lined river Pororari, at the foot of a gorge. There were fern trees everywhere - the national symbol for New Zealand./ After an hour and a half the route splits, and you can wade across the river and head north on the old pack-horse route as far as the Fox river, several hours hence, or head south crossing over a steep forested ridge to the Punakaiki river, which you also have to wade across. The pack horse trail eventually emerged onto the main coast road a couple of clicks south of the car.

From Greymouth, we drove 60km south to Hokitika, a mining settlement on the coast.

You are reading the story of Adrian and Katie's travels around the world from February 1998 and March 1999.