New Zealand #2

Hi! I am finally closing the New Zealand chapter of my trip. It’s been a truly lovely 2 1/2 months here and New Zealand has lived up to every expectation created by movies and travelers’ tall tales.
I’m on my way to the airport in a few hours to fly to Thailand and there’s a lot of ground to cover, so I’m just going to get the highlights out and then maybe make something coherent out of it…later.

HIGHLIGHTS

Biking! I spent a good bit of time on my bike (about half of which with a biking partner! Angi from UK) and covered just over 1,000 kilometers. Yes, there are a lot of hills in New Zealand, but either you prepare for them and get used to them, or you just skip the really big ones! The cars and trucks and campervans weren’t so very bad, but they weren’t great either (it seems like there’s just not enough general education about what courtesy to a cyclist means) — only had one minor altercation with a car and that was enough for me!

Rain! Rain! Rain! Hundred-year floods on the North Island (just after we left); early evacuation from Abel Tasman kayaking trip because of HUGE swells in sea; a few rain delays from biking — just an excuse to laze around really.

Ice climbing on the Franz Josef glacier! Really just rock climbing with different tools and very cold hands, but in a surreal ice environment, very cool!

Christchurch! I only spent half of a day there, but I fell in love instantly. never have I ever felt such a strong urge to live in a particular place — absolutely gorgeous with lots of people out running and biking and wonderful parks and lots of life going on — maybe someday…

The East Cape! Our first biking adventure, just getting up the learning curve of what’s what on the bike, but while riding along pristine coastline with huge, old trees everywhere you look and the bluest of blue water.

DOC huts! On all their paths in the National Parks, the New Zealand Department of Conservation has built huts for hikers to stay at, for a fee. This means you don’t have to bring a tent, a stove, water or a sleeping mat (if you don’t want to) and it’s a nice warm place to end the day. It also keeps our impact on the tracks as low as possible by keeping us all in one place. On the busier paths (like Milford and Routeburn), it also allows them to limit the amount of traffic on the track by requiring hut reservations.

The Heaphy track! In the Kongariro National park at the north end of the South Island, the walk took 4 days and each day was perfectly beautiful. I walked it heading west which meant starting inland and ending up on the west coast, and by the end of day 2 you could see the sea and the mouth of the river where the end of day 3 was, breathtaking really; then of course the end of day 3 is awesome, right on the beach where the sea and the river meet. there were lots of great people on the track, and they were mainly New Zealanders - yeah! Plus, I had perfect, perfect weather the whole time, which was very unexpected.

The Routeburn track! My second backpacking trip on my own, considerably more difficult than the Heaphy track, but the weather wasn’t cooperating and the spectacular views of day 2 (when you spend the day climbing up steep grades and then climbing back down the other side) were all clouded in. But, still a good trip (with a cool couple from Montana)!

Queen Charlotte Sound! This was a bit of a haphazard effort. Angi and I were meant to bike most of the track (in Marlborough Sounds), but on a whim decided to walk the first part of the track (which we couldn’t bike on anyway) and got more than we bargained for; it turned into a 7-hour walk for which we were not really prepared and it was really muddy. Because of the mud, biking was out for day 2 so Angi caught the boat to the next stop, but for some reason I thought walking the next section sounded like a good idea, despite the threatening weather conditions. I ended up walking for 6 hours in torrential rains with gale-force winds and near-freezing temperatures (this was the same storm that brought hundred-year floods to the North island) and all this in my jeans and without enough clothes on, but it was a challenge I proved worthy of and I made it in one piece, mainly by not stopping and running when I felt like I was getting too cold. Then we did bike the last section which was my first taste of off-road biking (with a crappy rental bike with bald tires), and only had one mishap of Angi slipping in the mud off the path (and landing with her bike on top of her, no injuries though), and all in all I thought it was great fun, although I can imagine how better tires would have made a big difference!

Smurf houses! Another highlight from Queen Charlotte track (and one of the main reasons my spirits stayed so high in all that rain) was that there were Smurf house mushrooms all along the way!! You know, the white stems with the big red caps and white dots — they made all the difference between laughing at the ludicrousness of my situation and just getting pissed about it!

Mt. Cook! My time in Mt. Cook was very rewarding. Mt. Cook itself is the highest mountain in New Zealand and climbing it is a serious mountaineering effort (Sir Edmund Hilary climbed in prep for Everest), so I just did a couple of the day hikes in that range of mountains. But the one up to Mueller hut was a definite thrill — for the most part you just climb straight up for a few hours, at first on a normal path, then on stone steps and then the path just keeps diminishing form there until you’re walking straight up on the slide of loose rocks and boulders (which actually wasn’t quite as bad as it looked like it was going to be). BUT, you are well rewarded once you get to the top and look across the valley to the other mountains and there’s a glacier right in front of you and you can hear it shifting and creaking, and big, booming avalanches echo through the valley — truly thrilling!

MISSES

Tongariro National Park

Biking to Lake Tekapo and up to Mt. Cook (was absolutely gorgeous and peaceful and would have been a breathtaking ride; the winds would have been awful, but tolerable if I hadn’t already been battling strong winds for 3 days)

Whale watching in Kaikoura (thought it would’ve been too commercial for my taste, but word on the street is that it’s really worthwhile)

Spending more time in Christchurch

The way South of the South Island (incl. Hump Ridge and Stewart Island)

NEXT STOP: Thailand!!
March 26, 2004 in New Zealand/Australia