Category Archives: Travel

What, The Actual Fox?

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Wednesday 11 March 2026 – As is becoming a common pattern in this trip, a short journey from one accommodation to the next turned out to be rather less dull – in a good way – than the simple journey of a couple of hours it might have been had Jane not done her usual thing of finding Things To Do En Route.

What we had to achieve was to get from Franz Josef to Lake Moeraki, a journey of just over 100km. Since the journey passes by the neighbouring Fox Glacier, Jane suggested that we should investigate a couple of viewpoints that present themselves on Google Maps. Although the distance between the Franz Josef and Fox Glaciers can be as little as five kilometres up in the mountains, it’s about 25km by road from one township to the other; as usual, quite a scenic drive.

The Fox Glacier township is even smaller than Franz Josef.

There is a Fox Glacier viewpoint marked on the maps; counter-intuitively, one drives 10km away from the glacier to reach it, but, distant as it is, it does offer a decent view of the glacier.

It also offers a fine view of a sweep of the southern alps, and a thoughtful person has installed a sighting device to help you identify what you’re looking at.

In theory, one can see Mounts Cook, Tasman, Dampier and Teichelmann (or, to give them their Māori names Aoraki, Rarkiroa, Rakiroa and Rakirua), but the weather was against us that day. As well as the sighting device, the site has an installation called “The Canoe of the Gods”.

An info board explains how this pays tribute to the myth of the creation of the mountains, which are named after four brothers whose canoe capsized and created the South Island.

We called in back at the township for a coffee and (in Jane’s case) a vast cheese scone (of which someone else ate half – Ed) at the excellent Cafe Nevé, and then carried on to the next viewpoint possibility, which is reached by a walk starting at a car park just outside town. The walk goes by the south side of the Fox River

along a well-made path. (It’s robust enough that one could drive up it and save all that energy; but that’s not allowed, and I’m rather glad, as it’s a pleasant walk. I was careful to walk in a butch kind of way, as I wanted to avoid the Fox Glacier mince.)

It’s exceedingly rainforesty – probably the most rainforesty rainforest we’ve yet walked in this trip.

We saw this sign

which indicates something I’m hoping for back in the UK. The temptation to see how warm the actual spring was by sticking a hand in evaporated somewhat on looking more closely at it.

The path leads gently uphill for about three km to a couple of viewpoints for the glacier, the first of which allows me to indulge in some photographic nerdery, because the light conditions were quite challenging – very dark foreground and bright background.

I had the Nikon with me as well as my phone.  Taking photos with the Nikon requires care – it would be easy to overexpose the bright parts, and once those highlights have been clipped they cannot be recovered. So the trick is to turn the exposure down so that the highlights are not lost. It is possible to do this on the phone, but it requires special buggering about which I can’t be bothered with. So I just pointed the phone at the scene to see how its software dealt with the conditions.  Here are the results.

Nikon, no processing
Phone, no processing

The phone’s Gallery app has its own processing capabilities and so I tweaked the phone image using the “Light Balance” slider. And, once I got to my laptop, I processed the Nikon RAW image using DxO Photolab. Again, here are the results.

Nikon, RAW processed
Samsung, Gallery processed

As ever, a certain amount of personal taste comes into this, but the Nikon image unsurprisingly has a lot more detail in it and I think looks a lot less garish. But putting the processed Nikon image next to the unprocessed phone image shows what a good job a modern software can do to improve phone images.

Nikon, RAW processed
Samsung, not processed

The path carries on from this viewpoint to another one where That Chap is on duty again to make sure you don’t do anything you might regret.

The view was fine enough

but Jane spotted that the clouds were moving leftwards so we waited a few minutes and – lo and behold!

we got a cracking photo of the glacier and the mountains beyond.

Much of the time we were there was accompanied by the soundtrack of helicopters whizzing about, and I wanted to wait to get the perfect shot of a helicopter against the glacier. So we waited and listened for a helicopter. Finally, one came along and flew by the glacier, as I wanted. You can see it in this photo.

Oh, yes you can.

I think that gives a great insight into the deceptively huge scale of the glacier.

Rather than just walk back along the path to the car park, we took a small diversion along what was signposted as a “Moraine Path”.  This was even more rainforesty.

It was a delightful diversion, including taking photos of the tiniest mushrooms you ever did see, which were growing out of a tree.

The path was quite up-and-downy for a while, but then offered the pleasing illusion of being part of a narrow gauge railway track.

It was a very enjoyable walk, but now it was time to head to Lake Moeraki, and our next destination, the Wilderness Lodge there. The weather had closed in a bit by then, and the landscapes on the drive were quite dramatic in places.

The Lodge is basically in the middle of nowhere – the nearest town is Haast, some 33km away.

It has cabins for guests

many of which, like ours, have a lovely view over the Moeraki River.

The lounges are very comfortable

and, as we discovered later, the food is excellent. But before we ate, we joined a guided tour organised by the Lodge, to explore a bit of the local area. Jack, our guide, explained a little bit about the unique nature of the environment. Lake Moeraki is near the west coast, but most of the bits north of it have been exploited in some way – what was forest is interspersed with farmland, which has changed the nature of the nature in it. But the Lake Moeraki area has never been exploited, and so is closer to what it was once originally.

The six of us were enjoined to don welly boots and Jack led us across the Munro Creek

and along a path where he explained about some of the trees we could see.

Silver Beech
White Pine (Kahikatea)
Red Pine (Rimu)
Mature Rimu
  • The Silver Beech, particularly one as old as this one, is a rare tree these days. It’s slow growing and doesn’t bear fruit – it reproduces via wind-blown pollen and seeds. The last ice age, 12,000 years ago, did for them and since that time other, faster growing trees have tended to dominate in the rainforest.
  • An example would be the White Pine, which is not a pine, actually – as any fule kno it is Dacrycarpus Dacrydioides. This particular tree was the basis for some added CGI and use in the film Avatar. It’s a faster-growing fruiting tree, hence being able to compete in the silent, slow war that is a rainforest. (Fruiting is useful – the fruit get eaten by birds, which then distribute the seeds.)
  • Finally, Jack asked us to guess the age of the Red Pine, or Rimu tree. To cut a long story short, we were all out by a long way: the one he showed us, not much taller then him, was about 100 years old – surviving by consuming tiny amounts of resource in order to grow.
  • He also showed us a mature Rimu, which, having got to the point where it reached the canopy, could compete on more equal terms with the trees around it and grow much faster. This one, like the other mature trees he showed us, is thought to be about 900 years old.

Then Jack took us towards the banks of the Moeraki River where he intended us to see a wildlife cabaret. But first we were distracted by a bit of birdlife – a fantail was flitting about in the trees near us, feasting on the insects we people disturb as we crash through their landscape.

I took many, many photos in an attempt to catch it with its tail doing the fan thing, but only managed to get this.

Not perfect, but you get the idea.

By the banks of the river, we had a view back to the Lodge

and Jack started the cabaret act by rinsing the chunks of meat he had in a container with river water and splashing the rinse water in, before throwing a couple of pieces of the meat into the river. Obligingly, the local denizens started appearing to feed.

and soon there were a lot of them.

These were Longfin Eels, the same species we’d seen in the Wildlife Centre in Hokitika, but living wild in the river. It’s worth emphasising that the eels are in no way dependent on this feeding, but they’re happy to join in if the food happens to be there.

Guide included for scale

Drinks and dinner followed our return to the Lodge and, well fed up and agreeably drunk, we retired for the night.  We had no formal activities planned for the next couple of days – a chance to relax, maybe, but my money is on Jane finding Interesting Things for us to Do.

 

Hokitika – damp but engaging

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Sunday 8 March 2026 – I had pigeonholed Hokitika as simply being a staging post on our journey south to do some real touristing, but the events of the day proved that there was more to the place than simply an overnight stay. The weather outlook was not promising.

A closer look didn’t make it any more appealing

but here we were, and Jane had found some Things To Look For. We’d debated going out the previous evening, when the weather was, if not actually sunny, rather better, but this blog doesn’t write itself, you know, so I voted to stay in. Not the correct decision, I agree, but then I was happy to have caught up somewhat with keeping you, dear reader, up to date with our adventures.

Anyhoo….it was damp, and I had low expectations of Hokitika. These were gradually confounded over the course of the morning.  Even in dull and grey conditions, it has a charm all its own; somewhat hippy,

and very arty.

The beach access street

was lined with artworks, the winners and runners up in a recent competition.

The town is also noted as a centre for “greenstone” – jade; you’ll remember the lady at the Beach Coffee Cart in Tongariro? She mentioned the jade connection, and Jane thought it would be worth looking around to see what was on offer.  There were many outlets and much exquisitely carved greenstone to admire, including this charming place called Bonz’n’Stonz,

where not only could you buy ornaments in jade and other materials, but you could also have a session where you could learn to carve it yourself.

After this window shopping, we stopped off for a coffee in Thatcher and Small, clearly a popular place for a Sunday breakfast and reading of the papers.

The coffee was very good, but it took them over 25 minutes to deliver it. You really have to be not in a hurry for your coffee in this country. Then we headed towards the town clock

which is a memorial erected to the memory of soldiers lost in the Boer War of 1899 – 1902. Pointing at it was another statue, commemorating the pioneer settlers of Westland.

Jane had spotted an “attraction” on Google maps called “Driftwood Sculptures”, so we headed in their direction, to find that they were just beside the Town Name

which itself was beside another name,

that of the tribe that formerly occupied much of the South Island before they were displaced by Ngāti Māmoe, who in turn were later dominated by Ngāi Tahu. There will be a quiz later. The driftwood sculptures themselves

were not something that made for a great attraction, particularly since the rain was becoming quite persistent by this stage, so, seeking indoor entertainment, we made our way to the National Kiwi Centre. Which is basically an aquarium. From the outside it looks rather ramshackle, but it’s well-organised inside, with several tanks of aquatic life, such as turtles

Kokopu, which the locals call Whitebait.

Not the same as UK whitebait, I don’t think… They have axolotls

which I’ve never seen before, but which any fule kno is a species of paedomorphic mole salamander. Oh, yes it is. They have a large tank with a lot of giant longfin eels in it – maybe 5 or 6 feet long and astonishingly as much as 100 years old

and one of the attractions of the place is the opportunity to feed these things. I was expecting this to be done by staff, but actually visitors are allowed to hand meat over to these creatures, which, it became clear, haven’t got very good vision.

I was expecting a feeding frenzy with lots of thrashing about, but actually it was a relatively calm affair. Visitors could also go and stroke them to understand what their skin felt like. Jane reports that it feels like stroking a plump, slightly warm, satin pillow.

Amazingly, for somewhere that bills itself as a national centre for the beasts, they do have a couple of kiwis, and these were fed after the eels. They are, of course, kept in dark conditions, but we were able to see the back end of one stubbornly sleeping in a corner, and another one fossicking around looking for food in its pen – it seemed more interested in that than the food which was placed there by the staff, actually.

OK, I confess; this is a photo of a photo which we were given at the centre; photography by visitors was strictly forbidden.

All these things served to combat the grey and depressing nature of the weather and left a nice impression of Hokitika, which is small but full of character.  But we only had the one day there, and it was time to go into Haydn, which I’ll tell you all about in the next entry.

 

 

 

Christchurch II – The other bits

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Friday 6 March 2026 – In the manner of matters serendipitous, things worked out well for our stay in Christchurch. The weather was fantastic, the walking around in the city centre was interesting and we went on an afternoon tour which accidentally supplemented our wanderings rather well. The tour was part of our scheduled itinerary and billed as “Discover Christchurch” and so I rather wondered what else I would discover about Christchurch on this tour. The answer was, frankly, not a lot, but it was an enjoyable half day and we did get to see other parts of the environs that we wouldn’t have otherwise seen. We had been walking around the city (obviously) in the morning, and knew that driver Brent would be picking us up at the hotel at 13.25, so we had to scurry back to be in time. We didn’t want to make Brent cross*, after all.

Brent carted a minivan load of us around for the afternoon; a motley crew consisting of four Indians, four Yanks and us two Brits. He started off by driving us around the city centre, giving a desultory commentary about what we could see out of the windows. Since we’d already walked around the city centre – twice! – there was very little in this that was new to us, although we did get a good idea of the huge expanse of Hagley Park, which an enlightened government decreed in 1855 should be “reserved forever as a public park, and shall be open for the recreation and enjoyment of the public.” It was from Brent that we learned something about the new sports stadium (such as its cost, its lack of parking and the fact that he thought the money would have been better used for a mass transit rail system. The traffic we saw at times during the afternoon strongly supports this view.)

Having shown us the city centre, Brent then took us out of the city proper, to Mona Vale, an area around a public park in the suburbs to the west of the city. It has some very attractive (and very expensive) housing

and a Homestead building

which functions now as a very decent-looking cafe, offering, inter alia, a posh High Tea. The Homestead has what I would call a conservatory

but which is officially called a Bath House. Walking further through the park, we spotted something which we were never promised:

a Rose Garden. There was a vast number of different rose varieties planted there and even I could appreciate the scent – it was lovely.

The next thing on the itinerary was a visit to “The Sign Of The Takahē”. I was expecting some kind of ecological message, or at least a bird statue, but actually it was

a restaurant and coffee shop, on a hill to the south of Christchurch. It was originally built in 1918 at the behest, mainly, of one George Henry Ell, a New Zealand MP, who envisaged the building as the gateway into the Port Hills area. It was to be one of four planned rest houses in the area for those walking in the Port Hills that overlook Christchurch and Lyttelton harbour. The other rest houses were to be Sign of the Kiwi, Sign of the Bellbird, and Sign of the Packhorse, but only the Sign of the Kiwi has survived. We stopped for coffee and a scone there (scones are a bit of a thing in New Zealand) and then took the short walk to the viewpoint over Christchurch.

It kind of makes you grateful for the new stadium; at least one knows where to look, because it would otherwise be difficult to know exactly where the centre of the city was. Even the vast area of Hagley Park can’t easily be made out, which was a surprise to me. (I think it’s the green area to mid-left of the picture, but I’m not sure.)

After this, Brent took us south towards Lyttleton, which is a major port; the journey there allowed us to see that by going to the Sign of the Takahe and then further south we were going over the lip of an extinct (it is hoped) volcano.

We passed the village of Rapaki

and stopped at a sort of viewpoint. We couldn’t see much of the town of Lyttleton, but we could see its container port.

We amused ourselves for a while watching the container transport vehicles – I had never seen these in action before, believing that all the container action was done by crane. But these vehicles are rather neat.

That was it for the tour. Brent’s route back into the city demonstrated the sense of his assertion that a mass transit system would alleviate the traffic problem. A couple of the junctions we had to turn right at were just ridiculously gridlocked, but, there you go. They’ve got the stadium. We did pass some more murals

and an intriguing but incomprehensible installation.

The day, though, wasn’t done, because we then took the opportunity to go for an evening walk. Obviously. Our target was the Botanic Garden, which occupies a part of Hagley Park, and our visit there chimed nicely with our meeting with friends of mine the previous evening. Janet used to lead the ‘cello section in the same orchestra as me in Surrey, back in the UK; and the reason she was in New Zealand was because her husband, Wolfgang, had been invited to come over from the UK to run the Botanic Garden. The four of us had had a delightful meal together in the excellent restaurant at the George, 50 Bistro.  As with the other encounters we’ve had as we’ve travelled across New Zealand, it was a lovely opportunity to catch up with friends I haven’t seen for years, and particularly interesting to hear Wolfgang’s perspective on the Botanic Gardens and some of the heritage buildings that also fall under his remit. Janet, ever supremely thoughtful, had brought along a supply of Twinings finest Earl Grey, as she was worried that we might go short.

So: we walked along the side of Hagley Park from the George. It was clear that Something Had Been Going On in the park, from the sheer number of portable toilets that were set up.

We think it might have been a festival of some kind.

Our main target was indeed the Botanic Gardens, but en route we passed a couple of notable constructions. The first was an arresting sight of the reconstruction/modernisation of the Canterbury Museum.

The building is undergoing significant structural work, with parts of the facade supported by extensive temporary steel bracing. In the meantime, its content have been housed elsewhere in the city.

On the other side of the road is another handsome building, the Christchurch Arts Centre (formerly the University of New Zealand Canterbury College).

It appeared to be open, so we peeked in. It has a couple of magnificent quadrangles

one of which hosts a wine bar.

It would have been lovely just to sit and while away some time there, but we wanted to take a look in the Botanic Gardens, which are directly opposite, so we hauled ourselves away and crossed the road.

The Botanic Gardens area is huge – 21 hectares – and based around the river Avon, which makes it very pleasant to walk around. We hadn’t that much time before it closed, but we managed to see a few corners of it, such as the World Peace Bell

and the Dahlia display

before we had to start heading back to the hotel.  On one lawn was a handsome pair of Paradise Shelducks

(with a decidedly frisky male and a less interested female) and on a path we came across some terminally cute Californian Quail chicks,

being minded by their parents.

It was utterly charming to see them in action.

We also passed a striking 2013 artwork by David McCracken called “Diminish and Ascend”, intending to create the illusion of a staircase to the sky.

So, that was it for Christchurch – lots of walking about, many artworks and a splendid reacquaintance with friends, all in delightful weather. One can’t ask for much better when travelling, I reckon.

Tomorrow, we have to leave Christchurch; we’re getting in training. Stay tuned to hear more.

 

 

 

*  Brent Cross