I usually do Free & Easy Travel thus a lot of "Homeworks" needs to be done before each trip and I find it a waste to just dump it one side after all my hard work. So decided to to have a blog to record some of this up , hopefully someone might find this useful for them.
Wake up in the morning and trying to catch the sunrise but as per normal it's super cloudy this season in the morning. My new way of taking photo/time lapse is from the top window of the motorhome, this is where I dry my shoe/socks in the sun also.
It's so nice to wake up with the sound of waves, took a stroll on the beach and pick up some stones and shells just for picture only , I did not bring any of these home.today we will start to explore the southern part of the south island. We did not explore this part during our last time in 2005 and apparently there seems to be much lesser tourists here , We did not even spot another motorhome when we were at Invercargill.
Nice to finally see the Sea
Been driving for more then a week , finally we get to see the Sea. the problem is that the lakes here are so big that you often will mistake it as the sea. We be driving along the coast the next few days so it kinda like saying goodbye to Lakes/Mountains and "Hello" to the Sea/Wildlife.
All the beer in chiller room
We drop by supermarket at Invercargill to top up some food and realised that they DO NOT sell alcohol in the supermarket , been to both Countdown and Pak'nSave. Apparently this is because there are a lot of Southlander youth with drinking problem so they put a restriction to only sell alcohol at places with liquor license so as to better control the problem. , thus they only sell alcohol at shops like Liquorland.
We also drop by Devil Burger for early lunch. Read some online post there had been the comparison between Devil Burger Vs Fergbuger in Queenstown. So since we they have an outlet here, we decided to try and do our own comparison. I had to say we both feel Fergburger win hands down ( of cos there is no like on like burgers to compare) If you are in Queenstown and can only have ONE burger , please go try Fergburger. Do note that for Devil Burger , they have some promotion on the "red dot" burgers which are going for only $10 on certain day/time. ( see the first picture , lower right corner )
We drove to a few places and stop once in a while for photo shoot but it being to rain soon after we reach the Cliffs at Fortrose. ( we did wanted to visit the shipwreck at Fortrose but it was high tide so it can't be seen ) Next we drive to the lighthouse at Wapapa Point ( was trying to see seals/sealions ). Like I mentioned , the next few days will be trying to catch some wildlife in their nature habitat.
We will b staying at Curio Bay Camping Ground for the night as we need a power site to charge , usually recommended is to charge every 2-3 days but we stretched it to the 4th day and it was still ok as when the motorhome is moving , it will charge the house battery as well. There is an Petrified Forest just 5-10 min walk away from the reception block and also supposed to have chances to see the Yellow-eyed Penguin during evening time when they going back to their home.Yellow-eyed penguins are one of the rarest penguins in the world and are unique to New Zealand. They were given their Maori name, hoiho (meaning noise shouter) because of their shrill call.
Can you spot the Penguin ?
We managed to spot 3 of them after like 20 min ? but very far away , did not managed to close up as not to scare them off also the surface is quite slippery as it was still drizzling.You can really heard they way they shrill.
Do note that the kitchen here is without much utensil for cooking , please remember to bring your own plates and cutlery. Don't remember that they have any oven , just some stoves and 2 microwave. It's more like a cabin then a building.
Sky was bit cloudy but did clear up after a while but very soon the whole sky is filled with cloud again. Was thinking of finally can watch the Lord go The Ring with the DVD player onboard. We go the disks from Wilderness Motorhome when we collected the motorhome. But out of the 5 disks we took , some were empty, some were spoilt , and only 1 can be watched. Sent an email to Wilderness Motorhome to inform them of that and they did a very good recovery. They actually replied and ask us to just pick up new discs from some video shop they mentioned and they will pay us back the amount for the purchases. Of cos we did not bother to do that but to me that was very good customer services.
Was a cloudy and drizzling morning , would have go down to the lake if the weather was better ( quite windy and cold ) . Booked my skydive for 12:30 pm so decided to drive up to Glenorchy to take a look at the town. Was a bit worried cos forecast today was that it will rain and whole morning was very cloudy. Another thing was WEIGHT issue, there is a weight limit for tandem skydive and I am at that borderline so i still need to be assess by the tandem master when I am at the drop zone.
Glenorchy - a very quite and beautiful town by the lake. It was still cloudy when we were there but the sun seems to be coming out and the sky looks about to clear. We did not stop long as we still need to drive back to Queenstown for my skydive.
When we reach NZONE, we were told we can either drive there or take their shuttle bus. We opt to drive there as I am the only one doing it and also do not want to waste time to wait for the shuttle. My dive was supposed to be 12:30 pm , I reported earlier then that but was asked to wait for the tandem master to assess me. But apparently they did not follow up on that , ends up I waited for quite some time before they get back to me after asking them for a few time. From batch 9 i think i waited until batch 12 before i jumped. Also as the sky is very cloudy , they are not ablate make it to the 15,000ft for our jump , ends up we only jumped at 7,500 ft which is only half the height ( the lowest for their package is 9,00ft) . The earlier batch at least made it to 12,000ft ..... was super disappointed even though they did a refund for the lower jump.
Footage from the ground
Paid footage from the air
Bunny jump in 2005
I would say if to compare , skydiving is a bit like paragliding ( after the free fall) and it's not scary at all , if really need to compare , I would think Bungy jump will be more scarier as you are left standing there at the height where skydive is jump and off you go , you can't wait and think if you still wanna jump of not.
Cookie Time Cafe
Southern Swine Burger
Bullseye ( Steak burger )
After the jump , we headed back to Queenstown for the refund as they are not able to do it at the drop zone as I had paid cash for it. Also we wanted to have Fergburger again :P , I also wanted to check out the Cookie Time Cafe known as Cookie Muncher Cookie Bar, which is another mistake. Cos I was just hoping to grab some cookies as gift for colleague so i assumed it will be quite fast , so I ordered my burgers and then went to the cafe. Waited about 30 mins for the burger ( think because of steak ? ) cos saw some was quite fast even though they ordered after me. So after collecting the burgers , I walk over to the cafe which was like 5-10 min walk and ends up I had to queue like 30-45 min just to get my cookies and pay , cos there was a slight Q there plus the fact is there is only 3 staffs there and the cashier had to not only take orders but had to serve ice cream and drinks as well. If I had know , i would have not waited cos ends up our burger are all cold ( cos temperature is around 10 deg ? ) Lesson learnt ! if you just wanted to get cookies from Cookie Time , they actually had a cookie factory shop in Templeton ( about 20 min drive from Christchurch ) , if you are doing self drive , you can actually visit there , heard it's cheaper also But of cos if you wanna try their fresh cookies and drinks , you can only visit this one and only cafe in Queenstown.
It was about 5 pm when we finally had our burger and we decided to drive all the way down south for the night instead of staying near Queenstown , as we had changed our plan and hoping to have one more day for Lake Tekapo before we leave NZ ( big mistake again ).Before leaving we went to the nearby dump station to clear our waste. We came here the day before and could not find it. This is a very well hidden dump station , it's just between the petrol station and the carpark ( with no sign ) so if there were car parking , it could well hide it from view. Fresh water is nearby at the wall of the station , near the gas swap area.
We park at Colac Bay Freedom Camping ground for the night , there is a toilet nearby but think there is no lights at night. Also one thing we found out is that most freedom camping site in the south seems to come with toilet , guess not so much tourists come all the way south so it's much acceptable by the locals. Apparently some part of the country , the locals does not like tourists to freedom camp as some tends to dirty the place. Also surprising the toilets at these camp area in the south are quite clean ( in fact I think almost all the public toilets we went were clean, even some at very ulu places).
We were the only motorhome parking here for the night, there seems to be a campervan quite some distance away ( only saw it in the morning). This is also a great spot as we are parking just next to the sea and there isn't any light pollution here but too bad there was no solar activity that is strong enough for us to see any southern lights.
