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from art to alps
Published in the July-September 2010 issue.
Carol West discovers that Christchurch is the gateway to many South Island delights, from ski resorts to heritage towns and glacial scenery.
If you like being ‘in the loop’, Christchurch is your kind of town. A funky blend of the contemporary and the classic, the city is also the anchor-point for some of the South Island’s most scenic driving loops. And as Christchurch, it is claimed, has more cafés and bars per capita than any other New Zealand city, a boutique beer or espresso is never far from reach.
Setting off from the historic Antigua Boat Sheds, young men nattily attired in straw boaters and striped blazers punt along the River Avon, providing reclining passengers with glimpses of joggers and cyclists in Hagley Park, one of the world’s largest inner-city green wedges.
Everything from pottery to pearls, sheepskin boots to silken scarves is on sale at the Arts Centre Markets, held Saturdays and Sundays along Worcester Boulevard. Flamboyant goods are offset by the austere, grey-stone, Victorian-era buildings that frame the Arts Centre precinct. A faithfully restored wooden tram trundles to a halt outside the curvaceously sculptural Christchurch Art Gallery, Te Puna O Waiwhetu, where you can recharge between exhibits at Alchemy Café.
Local stylemeisters shop for designer duds in the precinct known as SOL (South of Lichfield) or prowl High or Victoria Streets. After dark, cross-genre musical talent can be heard at The Dux de Lux on the corner of Hereford and Montreal Streets and at Fat Eddie’s jazz bar, SOL Square, after cutting-edge cocktails at Minx. Pescatore restaurant at The George hotel offers imaginative top-shelf dining; there’s aromatic Moroccan at the Crowne Plaza’s Simos Restaurant.
The promise of warm, buttery croissants and strong coffee is all it takes to lure us to Akaroa, dubbed New Zealand’s Riviera, an easy 90 minutes’ drive south-east of Christchurch. In 1838, French whaling captain Jean Langlois negotiated to purchase the picturesque Banks Peninsula from a local Maori chief with a view to setting up a French colony. Imagine his chagrin, sailing in to Akaroa in 1840 with a boatload of settlers only to see the Union Jack fluttering there. Under the Treaty of Waitangi, the Brits had claimed sovereignty over Banks Peninsula a week earlier.
Thankfully, the Gallic visitors were allowed to remain and, even today, Akaroa’s charming seafront village retains the character of a French provincial town. Street names, cafés and hotels have a distinctive French ambience – and locally made croissants don’t disappoint.
The low, curved harbour wall lassos the gentle spurs of Banks Peninsula that slip into the protected jade-green waters in which Black Cat Cruises take visitors on maritime swimming adventures with the harbour’s resident: Hector’s dolphins – the world’s smallest. By limiting the group size to 10 swimmers per vessel, the company helps ensure this remains an ecologically sensitive experience.
Just 45 minutes’ drive from Christchurch airport on the edge of the Canterbury Plains’ Alpine Pacific Triangle, Claremont Country Estate & Nature Reserve is a working high-country farm and luxury getaway. From the superbly restored homestead, we took a bone-jarring Land Rover safari of the Waipara River valley, crossing braided streams, to look for dinosaur bones and huge spherical rocks, some dating back 70 million years and known today as God’s Marbles.
From here, a drive to Kaikoura on State Highway 1 is a day’s excursion. Alternatively, take a light-aircraft tour from the estate’s private airstrip that combines a scenic flight with whale-watching.
Lively waterfront seafood restaurants serve local crayfish, snapping-fresh from the sea – but Kaikoura’s exciting wildlife encounters are the big lure. Dramatic snow-capped peaks rise majestically from the sea, and the cavernous Kaikoura Canyon attracts an abundance of marine life including the sperm whale, our largest living animal.
Whale Watch is New Zealand’s only marine-based whale-watching company, offering visitors up-close encounters with the bay’s resident pod of giant sperm whales at any time of the year. So confident is the company that you’ll spot at least one of these gigantic cetaceans that they guarantee an 80 per cent refund of your tour cost if whales aren’t sighted.
To the Kati Kuri people, the word ‘sustainable’ has both a spiritual and physical meaning – and watching a giant sperm whale rise two kilometres from the depths of Kaikoura Canyon, expelling a plume of mist into the sky, manifests both. An enormous gleaming-black head scarred by aquatic skirmishes slowly disappears and, with a flick of his great tail, the agitated ocean becomes serene once more.
Looping back to Christchurch, we head inland on scenic State Highway 70 to the alpine village of Hanmer Springs. Nestled prettily in an idyllic valley surrounded by towering mountains, Hanmer Springs Thermal Pools & Spa is the perfect spot in which to release driving tension. Immersed in one of four outdoor mineral pools heated to between 38 and 40 degrees Celsius set in a native landscape, you’ll understand why these natural rock spas have been attracting visitors since 1883. The updated facility, with private sauna and steam rooms and six indoor thermal rooms, is just the antidote after you’ve trekked along the area’s walking trails, rafted along the Wairau River or engaged in a spot of bungy-jumping.
The South Island’s mercurial landscape of bronze-tinged trees, pewter-hued glacial plains and silvery-opalescent lakes carries the handprint of a master alchemist. Achingly fresh air and big skies hover over an epic landscape carved over aeons.
Travelling north from Christchurch on the Alpine Pacific Triangle, we pass valleys gouged out between towering ridge lines, sun-gilded rolling fields and jagged peaks softened with dustings of icing-sugar snow. It’s clear why this is one of the world’s great scenic drives.
It’s also clear that, when it comes to luxury lodges, New Zealand is the world’s go-to destination. Rooms for romance in incomparable settings and great hospitality, including aperitifs by roaring log fires and candlelit gourmet dinners, can be found at Terrace Downs Resort, just 20 minutes’ drive from the Mount Hutt access road and an easy hour’s journey from Christchurch. Perched on the edge of the spectacular Rakaia River, Mount Hutt beckons ski enthusiasts with stunning snow-cloaked vistas – and heli-skiing straight out of the car park.
As the road winds towards the west coast, the landscape’s plump curves embrace us while above, granite-topped peaks gleam, wreathed in their collars of cloud.
Reaching Arthur’s Pass, in the foothills of the Southern Alps, we stop at Cass for some wild high-country luxury at Grasmere Lodge, a 607-hectare property on which the owners run cattle, deer and fine merino sheep. Kayaking slowly across Lake Grasmere, we break the reflection of a bruised afternoon sky before taking a bracing hike and 4WD farm tour.
Since 1858, Grasmere’s elegantly furnished dining room has hosted many a dinner party: we join an international coterie of guests for a gourmet dinner with fine Pinot Noir from Central Otago, then retire to the library for vintage port and a game of billiards.
As we travel south on State Highway 6, the Southern Alps rear up from the high country’s sweeping tussocked plains to form the South Island’s backbone. Hugging the wild Westland coast, we enter the region that claims New Zealand’s highest mountains as well as glistening glaciers forged at nature’s anvil by relentless glacial flows.
The best way to view such grandeur is from the air, so we head for Air Safaris’ airfield within Westland National Park, around eight kilometres west of Franz Josef township. Hovering, we gaze in wonder over Franz Josef Glacier, a fast-moving river of ice that travels a metre a day, and pass Tasman Glacier’s shimmering 27-plus-metre-long ice flow and the peak of Mount Cook, rising majestically into a cerulean sky.
There are few places on earth where ancient glaciers are more accessible than in this wildly picturesque region. Remnants from the last Ice Age, they cascade from the Southern Alps’ glistening snowfields.
Both Franz Josef and Fox Glacier’s picturesque villages come with alpine amenities and accommodation that ranges from backpacker hostels to hotels such as Westwood Lodge, where the helpful manager provides visitors with her own ‘don’t-miss’ list.
Tramping along a grey-pebbled riverbed licked with green lichen, it’s a 90-minute loop to the face of Franz Josef Glacier, around seven thousand years old and part of an evolving environment. Here, waterfalls slither down sheer rock faces to rivers that flow tumultuously in full flood. In autumn, however, the milky-opalescent meltwater is barely a trickle, as the glacier’s 12-kilometre tongue of moving ice retreats farther up the valley’s serrated terraces. A similar hike brings us to Fox Glacier’s sapphire-ice terminal, a crystal palace in which an ice flow 13 kilometres long is suspended.
With the fresh scent of emptiness, icy coolness on the skin, coursing water and mountain vistas, New Zealand’s landscape satiates all the senses. •
Photography by Robert Muir / imageink.
TRAVEL FACTS
getting there
getting around
- AAT Kings, phone 1300 556 100 or visit www.aatkings.com.au
- Creative Holidays, phone 1300 747 400 or visit www.creativeholidays.com.au
- Driveaway Holidays, phone 1300 723 972 or visit www.driveaway.com.au
- Green Realm, phone +64 9 300 3085 or visit www.greenrealmtravel.com
- Kirra Holidays, phone 1800 007 373 or +64 3 355 0492 or visit www.kirratours.co.nz
- Platinum International Travel, phone 02 9264 4344 or visit www.platinuminternationaltravel.com.au
- Avis, phone 13 63 33 or visit www.avis.com.au
- Australian Pacific Touring, phone 1300 336 932 or visit www.aptouring.com.au
- Evergreen Tours, phone 02 4929 4333 or visit www.evergreentours.com
- Qantas Holidays, phone 1300 HOLIDAY or visit www.qantas.com.au
- Scenic Tours, phone 02 8274 1300 or visit www.scenictours.com
where to stay
furtherinformation
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