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From the plains of Canterbury into the Southern Alps

Christchurch

A certain spontaneity was involved when I first thought about a holiday in New Zealand at the end of October 2011. The planned travel time from mid-December to the end of January means high summer, but also high season/school holidays in New Zealand.

A flight was found quickly; the airline Emirates offers 30 kg of free baggage (+ hand luggage), two pieces are allowed, including a bicycle packed in a cardboard box. Such boxes are available from many bike shops, because pre-assembled bikes are shipped to the dealer that way; just ask at your next bike shop.

After stopovers in Dubai, Bangkok and Sydney I finally arrived in the early afternoon on New Zealand’s South Island in Christchurch. In front of the airport I assembled the bike ready to ride, took a pitch on a campsite in Christchurch and got gas for my stove and a first basic stock of food. I coped quite well with the time change; as I was rather tired after the long flight, I fell asleep at a reasonable local time in the evening.

The next morning (16.12.) New Zealand and I did not become best friends straight away: heavy rain, and on the originally planned route along the coast to Akaroa the roads were completely closed because of roadworks: dead ends. Because of the miserable weather/visibility I skipped the lengthy detours and rode directly on minor roads to Rakaia.

There, at least the fish felt at home in this wet and cold weather. And the next day did not bring much better weather either. No great scenic highlights, the Canterbury plains are mostly used for farming, a few pictures of rivers and that was it. Past the ski area Mt Hutt a small mountain was on the programme today: Mt Somers (1688m): the path was interesting, the view rather mediocre until it got a bit better later in the afternoon...

Lake Tekapo

Burkes Pass the next morning was a weather divide; towards Lake Tekapo the sun came out and the whole landscape changes dramatically.

The high plateau is named after MacKenzie, a kind of Räuber Kneißl (a Bavarian outlaw) of the New Zealand Alpine foreland. I made the trip to Mt John and the observatory (you can get coffee and cake up there, too) in the afternoon and again in the evening, as I hoped for a better long-distance view in the evening.

The nearby glaciers feed Lake Tekapo with water and rock flour through their tributaries; the flour dissolves in the water and gives the lake its azure colour.

Mount Cook National Park

You ride into a dead end along Lake Pukaki to Mount Cook National Park/Aoraki. At this point the Wikipedia links to the two seafarers Abel Tasman (mid-17th century) and James Cook (mid-18th century), whose names you keep running into in New Zealand. At 3754 m Mount Cook is the highest mountain in New Zealand, not an entirely easy mountain. A well-known mountaineer was up there on 30 January 1948: Edmund Hillary, who 5 years later stood on the summit of Mt Everest together with Tenzing Norgay.

The roughly 115 km approach was quickly done, so that in the afternoon I wanted to use the good weather and climbed to the Mueller Hut (1800 m).

The next morning a short hike to the Hooker Glacier, past a memorial to mountaineers who lost their lives in the Southern Alps, and then back along Lake Pukaki to Omarama and along the lakes Aviemore and Waitaki to Kurow, in places in really strong headwind.