A Concise Tourists' Guide to New Zealand, part Three

Okay, I've now covered Auckland and the North Island. That just leaves me with the South Island.
You can't miss the South Island, no matter how hard you try. It's the big appendix-shaped bit of land that stops icebergs from floating into Wellington Harbour. Billy Connolly once said of the place "It's beautiful, but there's nobody there." And after a week there yourself, you'll understand why. Anyway, we'll go clockwise around the Southern Alps for this little tour...

Nelson and Marlborough is the name of the region that caps the northernmost bit of the South Island, and is the first place you'll hit when you cross Cook Strait.
You can't walk a kilometre in any direction here without falling over a winery and, given that they're some of the best wineries in the country, you won't walk a kilometre afterwards without falling over, period.

The city of Nelson likes to call itself the Sunshine Capital of New Zealand for good reason. In one direction is Golden Bay while in the other is the Marlborough Sounds. The place is a Disneyland for outdoor pursuits. So it will not surprise you to find out that Nelson and Marlborough residents tend to be smug little bastards.


Kaikoura is next. Kaikoura translates from Maori as "meal of crayfish" and the coastline has been crawling with the little crustaceans since forever. So if you like seafood, or if you just like waving one around and scaring the wife, this is probably a good place to visit.
Kaikoura also has a reputation as a whale-watching location. What this means is that some local will stick you in a wet and wobbly little boat and pilot you out into the water where you will huddle in the cold for a couple of hours. Then if you're lucky a whale will swim by and wiggle its arse at you.
And people pay good money for this?


Canterbury is basically a whole bunch of farms, with the Pacific Ocean on one side and the Southern Alps on the other. European settlers arrived around 1840, and it says something that the French settled in Akaroa Harbour - one of the most photogenic spots in the Banks Peninsula and one of the nicest small towns to spend time in, with street names like Rue Lavaud and Rue Balguerie - while the English decided to settle in a swamp.

I'm not kidding. In the early part of the nineteenth century a bunch of enterprising gentlemen back in Blighty decided that what New Zealand needed most was a little bit of England, so they got together some ships, stuffed them with Poms and sent them to a Cantabrian swamp - although the locals prefer to call them wetlands - upon which they founded the city of Christchurch. In Cathedral Square you will find plaques commemorating the first four ships and listing their passenger manifests. The city is so parochial that to this day, if your surname isn't on that list then you're not a true Christchurchian.

Outside Christchurch, Canterbury is basically a whole lot of flat farmland dotted with small towns. There are more pubs in each town than households to patronise them, and you'll hear gidday mate if the locals are friendly, or bugger off if they're not.
Just don't expect sophistication. A couple of years ago, my dear old dad asked a publican in Waikari to recommend a good red wine. The pub - stocked with every beer known in the South Island - had only one kind of wine, and it came from a cardboard box.


Otago is next, and you'll win no prizes for guessing which group of savage, kilted Celts settled here. The Scots believed that what the English could do they could do better, so while the sassanachs were building Christchurch out of the mud, they took the colder and more windswept bit below Canterbury and built the city of Dunedin. Never people to let a perfectly good feud go to waste, the English/Scottish rivalry continued down under, at least until Otago found out that they were sitting on a huge amount of gold.
Suddenly, everybody was Scottish.

These days the gold may be gone, but they still have the scarfies. Scarfies are, how to describe them... think of the drunkest, loudest, most testosterone-laden college students you know. Magnify them by ten. Now wrap them in blue and yellow scarves and stick them in the University of Otago. It's a year-round sub-antarctic Spring Break where fear and common sense have no place, yet somehow most manage to survive and end up running our country. God help us.

Inland of Otago is Wanaka and Queenstown, New Zealand's answer to Aspen. Queenstown is a "winter sports mecca", whatever that means. As far as I can tell it means you can either career to your destruction down a mountainside with boards strapped to your feet, or drown in the whitewater rapids in the valleys, or throw yourself off a bridge with a rubber band tied around your legs.
Personally my idea of winter sports involves a large amount of beer by the fire in a pub. Being in the South Island means the beer is excellent - South Islanders worship according to the book of Speights and Monteiths - and being in Queenstown means it's expensive.
Visiting here is much like visiting Auckland. Bring money.


Southland caps the bottom of the South Island, and it is like Otago, only slower. The highlight of the year is the Bluff oyster season. That this is because the oysters have more personality than the locals is hotly denied by Southlanders, once they've figured out exactly what you've just said.

West of Southland, where the Southern Alps descend into the ocean, you will find Fiordland. Fiordland is a region of, well, fjords and brings new meaning to the word "rugged".
It is ribboned with walking tracks and New Zealand's most famous, the Milford Track, is here. Fiordland is a haven for all sorts of birdlife: the Takahe, the Kakapo, the Morepork, three types of Kiwi and the Weka. Penguins are plentiful among the rocks by the water's edge. Dolphins play in Milford Sound.
You will notice none of these. The only thing you will be aware of (smack!, get off! swat!) will be the millions and millions of sandflies. These little bastards are more numerous than streetkids in Mumbai and more persistent than beggars in New York. Do not even think about coming here without lots of insect repellent or a particularly smelly travelling companion to distract them from you. Otherwise you will still be scratching on the flight back home.


North of Fiordland, running up the western length of the Southern Alps and completing our clockwise tour, is the West Coast. Check out the Fox and Franz Josef glaciers before global warming turns them into waterslides, and the beech rainforests before the locals have chopped them all down.

The word primeval is used to describe many things here, including the locals. No matter where you are or what you're doing, if you're in the company of a Coaster you can be guaranteed that somehow he's taking the piss. And if you don't believe me then pay a visit to the Hokitika Wildfoods Festival: every March, Coasters gather together to showcase the huge range of old-style bush tucker that is available, from such delicacies as huhu grubs, earthworms, snails and deep-fried grasshoppers, to oppossum steaks and sautéed lamb entrails.

Pay attention however, and you will see that the only people silly enough to eat these, let alone pay for the privilege, are the tourists. You won't see a local touch the stuff. They're too busy munching on hamburgers and fish and chips.


Okay, that pretty much concludes my cynic's guide to New Zealand. If you still want to visit, then I don't know what else I can do to dissuade you. Come on down. We'll happily take your money. We may even let you get out alive.