Tag Archives: Travel

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.

 

 

 

Cross Training

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Saturday March 7 2026 – Back to normal travelling routine with a bump this morning as the alarm was set for 0530; we only ever get up early when we’re travelling. The reason for this upheaval was that we had to join the TranzAlpine train, which crosses New Zealand from east to west (or vice versa), in our case starting from Christchurch and chuffing its way across the spiny middle of the country to Greymouth on the other coast. Departure time was 0815, for which we had to check in at least 30 minutes early. So we hit the hotel breakfast as soon as it opened, and grabbed a cab to the station soon after 0700. Check-in was crowded but we were in Scenic Plus class, dahling, so there was less of a queue before we got our boarding passes and handed our bags to chaps who put them on a long conveyor belt on the platform to take them down to the luggage car at the rear of the train.

We then stood around on the platform by our allotted carriage, together with our fellow travellers, waiting for someone to tell us what to do, until Jane had the bright idea of pressing the green button on the carriage door which opened it so we could all stream on board.

The carriages are comfortable and have large windows so that passengers are able to see the passing countryside,

though for photography enthusiasts there are a couple of open-sided carriages.

Astonishingly, the couple who were seated across the aisle from us were two of the Americans who had been on our Christchurch tour the previous afternoon. They were nice people, though I found the volume of his joviality a bit overwhelming at times. Fortunately, the open-sided carriage was the next one along so I had an escape route if I needed it. The couple opposite us, being Canadian, were much quieter and more gemütlich. For us posh people in Scenic Plus, meals and drinks were served at our seats, and the food was pretty decent; wine and beer were served at no extra charge.

To start with, the surroundings were quite unremarkable and not worthy of my photographic skills.  Before too long, though, the mountains that we were going to have to cross started to come closer

and the train made its first stop, at Springfield.

After the journey resumed, we were enjoined by the crew to remain seated and the open-sided carriage was closed as the train was due to go through some tunnels. Any photography would have to be done from one’s seat; and all the decent views were on the other side of the train, which was a little frustrating. But soon enough we were through the tunnels and free to use the open-sided car once again, and the scenery started to become more interesting,

and, in one place, slightly bizarre.

The train carried on up towards the mountains

and when the scenery started to get dramatic, the open-side carriage suddenly got really quite popular,

to the point where it was occasionally quite frustrating to be able to aim a camera as one would like. But with a bit of patience it was possible to get some lovely images of the passing countryside.

For a long time, the rail line ran alongside the Waimakariri and Bealey rivers, which, like many rivers at this time of year, were ribbons of water running through gravel.

We caught sight of our first snow-capped mountain

just before the train stopped at Arthur’s Pass, which is pretty much the highest point of the journey;

many passengers disembarked at that point – I think the idea was to spend some time there before catching the return train back to Christchurch in the afternoon.

There was a little more interesting scenery beyond Arthur’s Pass

but the variety in the landscape diminished as we descended towards Greymouth, which left us free to concentrate on the tasty dessert served up as the last course of three along the route. We also lost the sunshine which had marked the first half of the journey.

Shortly after 1pm, we arrived in Greymouth and everyone streamed off the train to get their luggage. I had been expecting to walk up the road from the station to a car hire office, but Jane cottoned on very quickly that there was a Budget desk among those on the platform and she bade me get in the queue whilst she got the luggage.  This was a very wise move. I was first to the Budget desk, and minutes after I got there, this was the scene among the car hire desks,

with the queue even stretching out of the door.

So we got our car very quickly and were able to head out with little bother. We are now driving a nice Kia Sportage, which is posher than the Mitsubishi, but with more knobs, dials and bongs to confuse the uninitiated.

Our ultimate destination was a town called Hokitika, which lies a little south of Greymouth; but first Jane wanted us to go north, to a place called Punakaiki. The road is by the coast, and it was at times difficult to know whether we were driving through spray, low cloud or rain.

Just south of Punakaiki village is a track which leads to a site called the “Pancake Rocks”, which Jane very much wanted to see. There’s a cafe there, which I was quite interested in, too.

Joking aside, the rocks are spectacular. There’s a trail which leads visitors on a loop around various viewpoints

and it’s a popular place.

There’s good reason for this; the rock formations at the cliff edge are really unusual.

You can see why they’re called the Pancake Rocks. (The similarity between the English and the  Māori names is entirely coincidental.) They are made up of sedimentary limestone, which has been compressed into rock by the weight of continuing sedimentation over the ages; the sedimented layers of limestone are interspersed with mudstone, which erodes more easily than the limestone, so action by seawater etches these layered patterns in the rock; it’s a startling sight. I had seen a photo of these rocks so I was pleased to be able to photograph them myself, but what I hadn’t expected was what the seas were up to around there. The track leads visitors cunningly through ever more dramatic landscapes

and what I wasn’t prepared for was the effect of the surging of the waves, which was very dramatic indeed. At one point they drive a blowhole (“The Chimney Pot”) right the way through the cliffs.

Jane got a much better picture from a different angle.

Each stopping point has more dramatic wave action than the last and the final surge pool is occasionally very action-packed.

Still photography can’t really do it justice. Here’s a video of some of what we saw, which I hope gives you a better idea.

Having spent quite some time there, and had that coffee, we headed back south to Hokitika, through more of the oddly misty weather.

We stayed at the Beachfront hotel, which is perfectly comfortable and well-organised without being noteworthy in any other respect, and rested up for the night before continuing our journey south the next day.  To find out how all of that went, please come back to these pages soon.

 

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