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
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.
Nice buddie. I just got back from "Tassie" as they call it. Saw a lot of wild life including a tiger snake on my first day there. Pics to come on Facebook.
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