Hello everyone. It’s been a while. I have been busy entertaining my brother and sister-in-law who came to visit at the beginning of February and went home last week. My brother had never been to New Zealand before, so I wanted to make his visit a holiday that he would never forget.
They flew into Christchurch. Our plan was to stay in Christchurch for a few days, then drive them back to the West Coast, with all the fabulous scenery of Arthurs Pass and the coast roads…then take it from there. We also wanted to take them on a tour of the best scenery of the South Island, and arrive back in Christchurch for them to catch their flight home.
We arrived in Christchurch to take up rooms that were booked and paid for last November, to find that the hotel had no record of our booking. When I showed them the confirmation email, the reservation was magically found… but they had given away our rooms. Eventually, we were given two alternative rooms which had no air conditioning. Christchurch was 34 degrees that day. Welcome to New Zealand, little brother.
After Christchurch, heading for the West Coast, we stopped for lunch at Arthurs Pass. There, we went to a cafe with queues out of the door that, due to staff shortages, had an extremely limited menu. Basically, they had a small amount of cabinet food, and pies. We opted for the pies.
We had a lot of fun. We spent lovely warm evenings sitting out on the patio, looking at the stars. One night, we saw one of those ‘pearl strings’ – rows of satellites being taken into space – with about 30 satellites in the string. My brother commented that they would never be able to see that from the UK. Magic.
After a week or so, we decided to head north to Wellington, but we couldn’t get a ferry. Some of the crossings had been cancelled because of the cyclone, meaning that there were no spaces available. We looked at various ways of getting them to Auckland, where they have friends. Hiring a car looked good, but they didn’t want to pay $354 per day. In the end, we drove them to Nelson, they caught a flight to Wellington, stayed the night there, and then took the Northerner train the next day, arriving in Auckland in the evening. They flew back to Nelson five days later, and we picked them up, and drove back to Westport.
We were unclear as to why ferries were cancelled, seeing that Wellington was mostly unaffected by the cyclone. There was rain, but not much else. Maybe the crew anticipated bad weather in Wellington, but it never happened, and many travellers’ plans were disrupted unnecessarily.
At least they travelled on the Northerner, and enjoyed the scenery on the Central Plateau. They had a great stay in Auckland, catching up with friends from long ago and seeing the sights of Auckland.
While they were away, I made bookings for the South Island trip that was now going to be longer than originally planned. There was no difficulty booking accommodation anywhere, as it was late February and the tourist season was mostly over. We travelled from Westport to Franz Josef, then to Fox Glacier, then to Haast, then to Queenstown for a few nights, then Cromwell, then Twizel, Lake Tekapo and then back to Christchurch. The weather was good, the scenery was spectacular, and we found good food in lots of lovely places (we particularly loved Fox Glacier and Twizel), and generally had a lovely time.
As they were leaving on a very early flight from Christchurch, we had booked ourselves on a ferry from Picton to Wellington later the same day, needing to get back to Wellington for a wedding. But at 5.30 the night before, an email from Interislander informed me that the crossing was cancelled. That was it. No offer of another sailing… nothing. I checked the Herald, which reported the cancellations, but claimed that Interislander were accommodating passengers on other sailings, and making alternative arrangements for people, but that was just not true. We were, like hundreds of others, just left high and dry, with a vehicle in the South Island and a need to get to Wellington within the next few days.
We solved it, of course. I flew from Christchurch to Wellington but my husband had to drive the truck back to Westport and flew on from there a few days later. But I heard stories of people sleeping in their cars at the ferry terminals, and of one family stranded who could not get another ferry for three weeks and had to pay for accommodation for all of that time. What if you were an international tourist with accommodation prepaid in Wellington who could now not get there? What if you couldn’t find anywhere to stay, or couldn’t afford to pay for extra accommodation? Sure, Interislander refunded fares, but the inconvenience and extra costs for everyone involved must have been colossal. And then there is the disruption to freight traffic between the islands. There will be more empty shelves and shortages to businesses because of this, as freight is delayed over and over again by a poor service that has just become completely unreliable.
Transport Minister Michael Wood, blamed previous governments for not investing in Interislander but, naturally, he was pointing the finger at the last National Government. Michael Cullen’s final act of spite when Labour lost the 2008 election was to buy back Kiwirail for a song, leaving the new government to bear the consequences. But Michael Wood conveniently forgets that there were no significant problems with the ships during the last government; problems have only happened recently… so the lack of investment and planning sits squarely with the current Labour Government.
My brother had a great trip. I’m glad we managed to do most of what we had planned, even if they did miss out on the Wairarapa, Wellington (mostly) and the Marlborough Sounds. But he was lucky that we could help them solve some of the travel disruptions that all tourists are now facing here. The truth is that travel in New Zealand nowadays is very difficult. We are still bearing the cost of lockdowns and closed borders. Tourist venues have no staff because young people from overseas cannot get here for their working holidays. And then there are the Cook Strait ferries, once the lifeblood of New Zealand travel… now a complete joke. I don’t really care who is to blame. I care about passenger travel, freight travel and the enormous cost and inconvenience to tourists and locals alike.
You may remember how Stuart Nash, said he wanted only high-class tourists to come here. Well, he has got his wish, as only they can afford car hire at $354 a day. But high-class tourists also expect high-class service, and every outlet we visited had staffing issues. Mostly, the service was average, poor or non-existent.
I really love this country, but I hate what has happened to it in the last few years. I’m only talking tourism here – but then there is health, education, crime…We have to get rid of this Labour Government. But even if we do, our country may never be the same again.
