The Geeky Brit

So we were heading down south towards Queenstown, when we came across the town of Twizel. This was a temporary town built in the 1980’s to house the workers as they built the 3 hydro-electric dams that are in the area. The population is only around 1000, but the whole town got a treat in 2000 when Peter Jackson and the film crew of “Lord of the Rings” invaded the little town to film the greatest battle in cinematic history, the Battle of Pelannor Fields.

As we drove close, I said to my lovely wife “We’ve got to do the tour, no matter how much it is”. She smiled, and said we’ll see. Well, we did it, and it was great.

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We stayed at the Hermitage Mount Cook, one of the oldest hotels in New Zealand. It is nestled on the glacial plane just below the tallest mountain in Australiasia. The drive to this mountain was stunning. The journey to the Hermitage used to take a long time, 3 days by rail and then 10 hours on horseback. Today, it took us 60 minutes from the nearby town of Twizel.

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So we have left the lovely city of Christchurch behind us as we set off driving ourselves south. We were heading for Mt Cook, but we were to enjoy a 4 hour drive through amazing and different scenery along the way.

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Our second day trip from Christchurch was to drive up the coast to the little whaling town on Kaikora. Instead of killing whales, ecotourism has taken over and now there are boats to spot the whales that pass through this part of the world.
The most common whale to be seen is the Sperm Whale, but there are also other species that come through occasionally, including the massive Blue Whale.
Needless to say my lovely wife and I was pretty excited. And there was no disappointment. We got taken out a few miles into the fairly rough seas of the shore. There the crew listened on the hydrophones, searching for the sperm whales as the fed in the depths off the continental shelf. After about 20 minutes of searching we came across a sperm whale breathing on the surface. It was magnificent. What an amazing creature. So large, and so graceful. What a privilege it was to be so close.

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