Forget the bungee jumping and horse riding you see in the brochures, New Zealand reveals its finest attractions and activities when you least expect it.
The Pancake Rocks at Punakaiki, Photo: Liz Chomiak
1. The Punakaiki Pancake Rocks
A small town on the West Coast of New Zealand’s South Island, Punakaiki has one main attraction – a natural rock formation that resembles stack of pancakes. While these interesting rocks are stunning in themselves, there’s something about standing on the boardwalk looking out to sea when it starts to pour with rain. Far from the pretty pictures in the tourist guides of the sun-drenched coastline, the rocks transform into cascades of water streaming into the sea, like runny syrup over a yummy breakfast. Just make sure your camera is waterproof when you inevitably take it out to snap photo after photo.
The view from the Milford Sound Highway, Photo: Liz Chomiak
Hokitika on the West Coast of New Zealand is a town renowned for its crafts for sale. There are all kinds of beautifully made art and jewellery – jade, bone, glass, pottery…and possum skin. It can be surprising and even incomprehensible to visitors why these cute and cuddly creatures would be so ruthlessly hunted, but the possum is an introduced species to a country with no native mammals, and so the locals do the best they can to keep numbers down. If this means their skins are sewn together to make a fashionable throw rug or satchel for you to buy, so be it.
Milford Sound Highway, Courtesy of Google Maps
Milford Sound is one of New Zealand’s most famous features and while the mountains rising out of the sea are breathtaking, you don’t expect the road there to be equally as amazing. Winding along the coast out of Te Anau, the Milford Sound Highway then snakes through misty rainforests, around lakes and climbs snowy mountains, cutting through them at the Homer Tunnel. The scenery is magnificent – eerie mists rolling over rocky hills, huge native trees and dripping wet ferns everywhere – it’s like wandering through the set of Jurassic Park or King Kong.
4. Your Life or Your Lupins!
Lupins! Photo: Liz Chomiak
Head to New Zealand in the Summer months and you’ll see rainbow fields of flowers lining the roadside. They aren’t natives, they’re lupins. Yet another introduced species, but a colourful one providing some contrast to the huge green forests and snowy mountain tops. Stop and pick the long stemmed flowers, have a swordfight and quote Monty Python’s highwayman Dennis Moore, who took his victims’ lupins.
Lake Tekapo, Photo: Liz Chomiak
5. Fish and chips at Lake Tekapo
The tiny town of Lake Tekapo is not renowned as a place to stay, with huge coaches zooming through every day, full of tourists stopping to take picture at the little church by the lake. Lake Tekapo is not designed for a stay of more than fifteen minutes – there is no ATM, only one hotel restaurant, a souvenir shop and a petrol station. But one of the best things to do in New Zealand is sit among the lupins on the edge of the pastel-blue lake, looking out across red and orange hills and sharing fish and chips with the friendly local cat.
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