Waiting to start Mt Cook

Picked up dad in Christchurch 3 days ago, on the 27th.  We got ourselves to Mt Cook Village in a day's drive, spent another day planning the approach, putting together last-minute gear and packing.  Last night, was beautiful and clear and I got some great pictures of sunset light on the summit, which I will post later when I have a better internet connection.


Right now it's white out conditions on the mountain, so we are waiting for the the weather to clear before we head in to the high-mountain hut (base camp).  There is a big high-pressure system on it's way in from the West that should hover over the island for at least a few days, so fingers crossed, it looks like we will celebrate New Years on Mt. Cook.


Stay tuned...

Some More Good Pics from Milford

Classic NZ - been waiting for this to happen

Map Update

Poor Betsy!  I wonder how many times she's done this??!!

click here: http://g.co/maps/f24bj

The Big Brown from Milford Sound

Catch of my life!  

Betsy's New Look

Abel Tasman to Milford Sound

Hey everybody!  I’ve had a pretty epic couple of weeks here in New Zealand.  While I was on the Abel Tasman track, I met a cool Australian named Kristie, who is here traveling NZ for 3 weeks.  She was planning to head further South to meet friends in Milford Sound, but didn’t have a ride or specific plans, and I was headed the same way, so we’ve been traveling together since.  After we hiked out of the national park, we loaded up Betsy and headed out to the stormy West coast for a long haul southward through Queenstown to Milford Sound.   

It was 5 days on the road from there to here, but well worth the journey.  Put quite simply, Milford Sound is magical.  At risk of sounding too cliché, this place will take your breath away.  I find myself looking around everyday and murmuring to myself, “wow.”  It is one of those uniquely powerful and stunning places in nature, like Yosemite, or Death Valley that vibrates with a “specialness” that makes you feel grateful to be alive and yet tiny on the planet.  Here, deep valleys have been carved into the earth by ancient glaciers and then flooded by the sea, leaving towering, vertical cliff faces that plunge into the blue fiords below.  The steep granite cliffs continue below the water another several thousand feet – there are no beaches in the fiord, just water right up to the vertical rock.  The cliffs faces are carpeted in trees and moss, dotted by waterfalls cascading to the sea or falling from such a height that they turn to mist and dissipate before ever reaching the ocean, all backset against glacier-covered alpine peaks and ridges.  These are the vistas from Lord of the Rings and Avatar:

We are staying for a week with a team of ten kayak guides here in Milford Sound, two of which are former guiding companions of Kristie’s from a program in Alaska. They live here from roughly September to March with about 200 other seasonal workers (the area is snowed in during the winter by the world’s largest avalanches, accessible only by helicopter). Milford isn’t really a town or even a village; it’s more of a camp at the end of a two-lane road 2 hours from the closest town and 5 hours from any major city (Queenstown).   The guides work hard.   They have clients 7 days a week, usually 2 trips a day.  They care deeply for this place, are well-informed and highly-trained, and are passionate about what they do.

They also play hard.  I think it’s the nature of living in such a small, remote, and profound place, but when you put a bunch of very lively people together somewhere like this, you get a real rowdy party going when no one’s looking.  The first thing I noticed when I walked into their place were all the naked pictures on the walls.  I mean, there are lots of them!  These dudes love to get drunk and naked. When I asked about all the naked pictures (seriously, they get naked everywhere: on top of cars, on the sides of cliffs, bungy jumping, at the banks of rivers), I was told “Oh, those aren’t from parties, those are just from breakfast.”  Every year, at the end of the season, they have a naked run through the cold and dark 1km tunnel that’s been bored through the mountain to connect the road here.  Apparently, it’s becoming a well-known thing and attracting people from all over NZ.  I haven’t been witness to any of this nudity yet, but we did accompany the team to their Christmas party at the pub the other night.  This was a mild night:

This dude, Hory, is a bit of legend in Milford Sound.  He climbed Mitre Peak (a mile-high mountain rising directly from the water, the highest in the world, in record time, bare foot.  The old record was 14 hours.  He did it in 8.)

And when they are not guiding kayak trips or hikes, they are hiking or kayaking for fun, or mountain biking, swimming, cliff-diving, fishing, surfing – the list goes on.  You don’t often find people napping around here on a nice day.  There is so much to do and see.  The other night, we saw glowworms on the way home from the pub.  Yesterday, I kayaked over to the trailhead of the infamous Milford track with one of the guides, Jimmy, hiked for an hour to a lake, wrangled a stashed, leaky kayak out of the bush, waded through muddy eel-infested shore waters, and paddled out into the chop and howling mountain wind to catch what was by far the biggest trout of my life (a Brown, much bigger than the Taupo Rainbow – I’ll put pictures up later).  Two days ago, I paddled out onto the fiord with a group and saw a penguin and a handful of adolescent sea lions, close enough to touch:

So, Milford Sound has been truly epic, but I’ve completely skipped over Abel Tasman, which was a total success as well.  I hadn’t done too much research on the hike (other than hearing that it was a classic must-do), so I was surprised to figure out that it’s actually not so much a bush walk or a mountain climb, but follows the shoreline across some of the most beautiful beaches in New Zealand, known for their golden sand and crystal blue waters.   I also got really lucky with the weather (sun, shorts and sandals).   I hired a boat to drop me off about 24 miles up the coast and hiked back out to the car out over the course of three days, staying in huts along the way (didn’t have to carry a tent).  Here’s a shot of where they dropped me off:

The day I left Abel Tasman, I made it to the Tasman coast in time to squeeze in a little surf, but that was the only time I got in the water on my way to Milford.  The entire stretch of West coast on the South Island is notoriously stormy and gnarly, and it lived up to that reputation.  I stopped and checked probably 4 or 5 different spots, but all of them were unsurfable for one reason or another: howling onshore winds and messy seas, very short swell periods, mega outside sets, swarms of blue jelly fish, shark warnings, river mouths a mile wide… the list goes on.  So, I only surfed the once, but I might get to the Pacific coast beaches around Christmas before my dad shows up (supposed to be more mellow).

Most of the drive was stormy and wet, but I did get a few breaks in the weather along the way.  One was in a small coastal town called Punakaiki.  A hike out to the bluffs leads to a small natural wonder, the “pancake rocks”:

Geologists still don’t know exactly how they form like this.

I also wandered into a limestone cave hidden behind some lush tropical foliage along the side of the road:

At the end of the day, I farmed a small bag full of green-shell mussels from the tide pools and boiled them for dinner – good stuff!  But I’ll have to be more careful next time because the following day, during lunch, I found a barnacle stuck to the back of my tongue (strange and uncomfortable feeling).  Along the way, I caught a few salmon in the lakes we camped at along the way (also good eating – no barnacles!), and stopped at some beautiful blue pools where I was able to do some cliff jumping:

This one is about 40 feet.  There was a friendly guy there with a nice camera that took a sequence of shots.  He sent me his pictures via this link: https://plus.google.com/photos/107370410116765017198/albums/5685873521669860865

After four days of driving, we arrived in Queenstown, which has a pretty good vibe for a “big city”.  It kinda feels like a ski town, like Tahoe or Mammoth (which I suppose it is, in the winter, when the surrounding mountains are blanketed white and there’s a big snowboard crew in town).  But it also has a noticeable tourist scene: sky-diving, bungee jumping, a fancy “ice bar” (everything carved out of ice: bar top, stools, glasses) with a $30 cover charge, etc.  While I was there, I cooked and ate dinner on a small patch of grass planted along the main street through town.  Well-dressed passersby on their way to dinner would look and then quickly look away, but the only person that smiled and said ‘hi’ (with a friendly nod) was a total dirty, smelly, dread-locked hippie.

Needless to say, I’m definitely starting to feel like a bit of a dirty hippie myself (yeah, sleeping in a van for month didn’t do it).  I still haven’t shaved since the first week I was here and am resisting the urge to, but I’m enjoying the total departure from my regular habits.

I’ll follow up this big post with some smaller ones.  I updated the map, and I painted Betsy.  Also just have some other cool photos to share.  I’ve been able to keep up skype with Ollie once a week.  It works out that I can read him books for bedtime when I get up in the morning (it’s 7p over there).  I’ve found a couple of great NZ-themed children’s books here.  If I can, I set up outside, so he can see the jungle or the mountains, or the beach.  He keeps talking about New Zealand and wants to know if I’ll bring him here one day.  Definitely. 

Taupo, Tongariro, and Wellington

Well, I’m on the South Island now, in Nelson.  Betsy and I crossed the Cook Straight today on a large, inter-island, ocean ferry to Picton and then drove another couple hours over mountain passes, through the northern coastal fiords and inlets of the Marlborough Sound.

It was raining pretty hard today, so I decided to skip the camping and find dry accommodation.  I am writing this to you from a yurt, or a canvas tee-pee of sorts set up in the garden of a backpacker’s lodge.   Always wanted to stay in one of these things.  Kinda fun!  Tomorrow, I plan to start a multi-day hike through Abel Tasman National Park in the NW corner of the South Island.  I need to get the permits and my hut reservations sorted out tomorrow morning but it is supposed to be a classic NZ “tramp” – a boat ride to the trailhead and then a 4-day hike along the coast back to the car!  If I can get the hike done quickly enough, I might catch a swell on the West Coast by Sunday or Monday.

Also, my dad booked his flights for January, so Mt. Cook is now an inevitability.  He’s due into Christchurch right after Christmas where I’ll pick him up after a three-week tour of the South Island.   At that point, my remaining time in New Zealand will be dedicated to climbing Mt. Cook, getting rid of the car, and then figuring out how and where to go next (still haven’t made up my mind, although I know I won’t stay here to work: lots of boring visa details behind that, but I’ll either travel more (maybe Asia?) or come home for a while).  Initially, I had been thinking about looking for a construction job in Christchurch, but from what I hear they are turning people away because the ground is still shaking and they still haven’t figured out who is going to pay for all the repairs (insurance, government, etc.).  So, the major reconstruction efforts haven’t actually commenced yet. 

In any case, my last week on the North Island was definitely a memorable one.  The highlights were that I caught a huge trout on Lake Taupo (which is a beautiful place, definitely my favorite so far), I hiked a ten-mile mountain pass between two volcanoes (in the rain), and hung out in the capital, Wellington, for a couple days, which is maybe like the San Francisco of New Zealand.

(Mac's bar in Wellington):

Thinking back on my initial hopes for the trip, I remember just wanting to be in shorts and sandals everyday (my favorite attire), not unlike the times I’ve been to Hawaii or Costa Rica.  I’m not sure where I got this idea.  It’s just a persistent, irrational hope of mine that comes with thoughts of travel.  That hope was quickly burst and the necessary wardrobe has not been too unlike California: shorts and sandals in the middle of warm days, but mostly jeans and T-shirts, and a sweater in the evenings, plus a good rain jacket, kept handy for sudden cloud bursts.  So far, the weather has come in spurts, 3 or 4 days of sun followed by 3 or 4 days of rain.

My time on Lake Taupo saw a bit of both.  The first few days were clear enough to see across the lake to the snowy volcanic peaks beyond the opposite shore.  I spent one of those days cleaning up and restocking supplies, another fishing the tributary rivers, and the third on Lake Taupo itself, with a guide, which is how I caught this:

Biggest trout I ever caught, but it was barely big enough to legally keep.   The fishing here is world-class.  The trout get monstrous.  Most of the surrounding shops and restaurants have stuffed trophies on the walls: 20 lb beasts that are barely recognizable as trout anymore.  When they get that big, they look more like Salmon with long, hooked lower jaws that protrude like beaks with teeth.

The next day I did the mountain crossing, and wasn’t so lucky with the weather.  It was supposed to be clear with “occasional showers”.  The first ten minutes were like that.  The rest of the day was just “wet”.  I actually lost a pair of jeans to this hike.  They were getting old and ready to go anyway, but they got soaked through, and I as I tugged them up towards the end of the hike, they ripped across the thigh.   Funny enough, a handful of Kiwis had warned me about hiking in jeans and tennis shoes, which is what I always do at home, and that always works out fine.  People kept telling me I should have hiking pants and sturdy boots.  I was starting to say that if one more person told me that I was going to do it barefoot in my underwear just to prove them wrong.  Well, I lost my jeans and bought some lightweight, quick-drying pants.  So far, my shoes are fine, and I’m going to keep hiking in those.

In any case, given the miserable weather conditions, there wasn’t a whole lot to see or pleasant places to stop, so I just put my head down and kept walking.  I ended up doing this hike in 4.5 hours.  The expected time is 6.5 – 7 hours.  My pictures don’t quite hold up to the advertised tourist photos.  The hike starts around 3300’ elevation and abruptly climbs to a 9000’ pass between two active, snow-covered volcanoes.  Then it follows a knife-blade ridge past a red crater and couple of crystal blue and green thermal lakes to a long, gradual descent over alpine scrub and through a lush rainforest back to a dirt lot where you might have left your car or have a bus waiting to pick you up.  I hitched out.

The approach (my ascent into the clouds):

The fabled "Emerald" lakes near the summit:

Too cloudy for good pictures.  I did, however, get this shot from the road the day before:

Wellington was a pleasant city, like San Francisco, as I said: a compact metropolis with modern structures and old Victorians rolling over hills to the ocean and bays.  Much nicer than Auckland, but still not for me.  I actually found free camping along the waterfront in what appeared to be a fairly upscale neighborhood, and it was very popular with other vans like Betsy:

Actually saw Orcas swimming through here the second day, which was pretty cool, and I caught a fish right in front of the van, on the first cast, which made me a somewhat of a small celebrity in the camp.

It’s light from 5:30a to 8:30p, which means you can get a lot done in a day.  And away from the cities and backpacker’s, it’s quiet enough to listen to my iPod without speakers while I make dinner.  I wish I could put up these posts more often, but I’m not at a computer every day and wi-fi out here is sparse and expensive.  Besides, I need to be out doing stuff so I have something to write about.

On that note, until next time…

Murals seen in Taupo