There seemed little point staying in Wellington over new years when when everyone had left so I thought I'd leave too and have a tiki tour around the south island in the car. This involved minimal planning or thought and quite a lot of fuel so I took the Bluebridge ferry over to Picton on the 31st December 2012.
The other alternatives were to spent new years with my housemates who would probably spend it on their computers, or go for a long wet tramp with AW in the Tararuas up a hill and stay in a DOC hut for the night, which sounded like too much hard work and involved more organisation that just buying a ticket to Picton and escaping on a tiki tour, which is what I did.
The crossing was fine and the weather in Picton hot and sunny when I arrived, before driving straight off I went for a walk along the Snout track, a 2-3hr return walk from Picton along a peninsular of land, on the way back I had a sudden thought about my bicycle tires heating up too much and bursting in the heat of the car, I had about 20 mins still to go before reaching the car during which time I was convinced I'd have shredded tires everywhere when I got there, it was fine, but I let the tires down a bit anyway.
Between Picton and Nelson Lakes, where I had booked a few nights at a doc campsite, some unauthorized weather settled itself in and proceeded to drizzle for the rest of the day. The next day I did some low level walks and then started up the hill in the afternoon, got to a point where the hill disappeared into the clouds and decided to come back down as I had forgotten any suitable walking trousers and only had jeans, which don't like getting wet.
From Nelson Lakes I continued down the west coast with the aim of stopping at a little village just north of Franz Josef, the weather had other ideas, as I continued down the west coast so the weather continued to get worse, until the whole place was one big thunderstorm washing away a bridge further down the coast and causing land slides in Arthers pass, which meant a 370km detour and half a tank of fuel (I googled mapped it) back up to Lewis Pass and over that to Hamner Springs in weather so wet the rain seemed solid with lightning bolts firing off all over the place, Hamner was fully booked and there was no way I was camping having found in Nelson Lakes my tent is not completely water proof anymore, so I slept in the car.
After 3 days of rain the weather broke, I was up early and away by 7am down the East coast in what turned out to be lovely weather for 456km drive to Mt Cook, by which time the weather came back for one more drizzle. Thankfully the morning was bright and clear and I was able to do a couple of quiet walks on the other side of the village avoiding the bus loads of Japanese tourists traipsing up the Hooker valley walk. By noon I was on my way again to Queenstown passing the beautiful milky blue Pukaki lake and over the Lindas Pass and into Wanaka for a nice rest top and stretching of legs and then over the Crown range, before arriving with every other tourist into Queenstown, then passing straight through to camp at the Doc site 10km out of town on the Glenorchy rd next to Lake Wakitipu.
I was glad to reach the southern most point of the trip and was keen to use my bike I brought all the way in the back of the car, I drove to the edge of town and reassembled the bike and headed through town towards Frankton where a there's a nice low level cycle/ walking path that runs all the way round the headland opposite Queenstown. It was still quite early and the town was dead, which was quite a nice way to see Queenstown before everyone gets up, after a coffee stop/ phone charging at the only cafe opening early
(Starbucks) I went on my way and bumped into a friend who's just survived the Milford Track, and yes the water was knee deep and they were stranded in a hut for an extra night during the heavy rainfall.
The ride around the water between Queenstown and Frankton to the far side and back was 33km, nothing compared to Jon's 1000 mile bike ride around the south island, who I went off to collect in the afternoon on the road pass Kingston on the way to Invercargill. I booked a proper campsite with real showers that night as I thought Jon would probably want showering facilities. Another friend was also in town on a road trip so that evening I met up with him and his friends in town to enjoy a nice glass of Sav, Jon after cycling a 1600km was a bit tired so just went to bed.
The car now had 2 bikes in the back so I rewarded him (the car, obviously, called Cuthbert) with several liters of oil which he appeared to have been missing, oops, still he's all better now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n62P3ES8a9A
