June 12, 2007
For over a week, we hung out with my old university friend Robin Stewart and her husband Zach Alison in the relaxed surfing town of Mount Maunganui, where Robin is teaching and Zach is building. They were great hosts, and we had long chats about the lifestyle of New Z compared to what seems like the rush and bustle of living in Ontario. It is hard not to enjoy life more fully when you live five minutes from the beach and run by the ocean everyday. Drew also got a two-stage haircut.
June 12, 2007
We leave for Australia on Thursday June 14 to visit with Em Wade in Melbourne, and hopefully, Tam Chafee in Canberra, for two weeks. Since leaving the Mount, we’ve road tripped through the Northland, stopping at every possible beach to find surf for Drew. We had a small world incident when we arrived at the beautiful hostel Endless Summer in the beach town of Ahipara. As we were walking up the steps of the lodge, I see this familiar face but one I haven’t seen in years of an old high school friend Barb. One of the beauties of travelling, you never know who you will meet.
June 12, 2007
After our three-day tour of Dunedin, we were pretty much done with the South Island. We booked it through the central region of the island, whizzing through the Waitpi Valley, Mount Cook National Park and Lake Tekapo, Arthur’s Pass National Park and the Nelson Lakes Region. It rained hard every day so we avoided any intense or long day hikes. We free camped every night. There were hardly any white, rental camper vans on the roads, leaving us with the feeling that we were the only tourists left on the South Island.
We made a pit-stop back at Beaconstone on the West Coast to pick up one of our large suitcases we left behind in storage. Grae and Nancy were in Australia. In the pouring rain, we hopped the fence and retrieved the bag from one of the unused washroom stalls where it was safely hiding for the three weeks we toured around the rest of the South Island.
We took the 5:45 a.m. ferry back to Wellington on May 22 saying goodbye to the South Island. I don’t ever want to have to get up that early again for a boat.
June 12, 2007
Lindsay Service whom travelled in New Zealand after university, said Dunedin was a must-stop, and her favourite NZ city. Drew and I agree. We’ve avoided most cities for any length of time (except Drew’s first week in Auckland) but Dunedin, tucked down in the cold south-east of the South Island is a hip and vibrant city, due mostly in part to the large campus of Otago University, New Zealand’s oldest university. Walking among the university buildings, for a moment made me want to be a student again.
On our second day in the city, Drew and I went in separate directions. He drove Sexy Times to the surfing beaches of St. Kilda’s and St. Clair, while I boarded the historic Taieri Gorge railway car for a picturesque ride through central Otago. It is rated as one of the world’s top railway rides.
[Photos (l-r): the Municipal Buildings in central Dunedin, the Registrar’s Office of Otago University, the ‘world’s steepest street’, Baldwin Street, flora from the Botanical Gardens, the central train station, inside the train station, and photos from the Taieri Gorge railway trip]
May 16, 2007
The Milford Track is supposedly the walk of a lifetime in New Zealand. Drew and I didn’t do it. There were severe storm warnings in affect – flooding of rivers, and the transportation costs compared to the cost of the Doubtful Sound boat trip swayed us in the other direction.
So we took another walk. The Humpridge in the most southerly reaches of Fiordland National Park. It is a privately-run track (which means the hut costs are slightly more expensive than Dept. of Conservation huts), and at this time of year, there are hardly any trampers on it.
Just two Canadians, and two fun-loving Kiwis from Wanaka. 14 mm per hour rains didn’t deter our start on a Friday morning. 19 kms in 6 hours (signposted to take 9 hours). Wet, wet clothes and no fire to look forward to in the ridge-top hut. The mountain beech forests however came alive in the rain and mist, and it made for some good laughs to be huddled in our sleeping bags in the dinning hall until bedtime.
The sun became our friend for the next two days as we tramped along the Hump ridge – incredible vistas of the Tasman Sea, Stewart Island and the beaches below. Sore feet after long days but on the second night, we were rewarded with a pot-bellied stove in an old school house from 1916 which now acts as a tramping hut.
May 16, 2007
After visiting the adrenaline-fuelled party-town of Queenstown (we stayed two days so Kirk could recuperate from a nasty head cold and visited her godmother’s niece Fiona, her husband-builder Chris, and the incredibly large one-year old Torquil; the most adrenaline-fuelled activity we engaged in was bowling), we drove toward Fiordland National Park.
Milford Sound gets around two million visitors per year. We opted for the quieter stillness of Doubtful Sound a little further south than Milford. It is the second largest fiord in the park, and being the winter season, we got a discounted rate for an overnight boat trip. The trip starts with a one-hour boat ride across Lake Manapouri (famous for a massive underground hydro-station which supplies 85% of the power for the aluminium smelter in Bluff, NZ). The lake was still and the sun shone brightly. The wind however, was strong on the observation level of the boat; we stayed out longer than anyone.
From Manapouri, we transferred onto a bus for the 45-minute drive along NZ’s costliest road ($2 per centimetre) to the harbour of Deep Cove. At Deep Cove, we boarded the 70-passenger Fiordland Navigator, and were quickly treated to freshly baked blueberry-coconut muffins. The boat slowly made it’s way through the south arm of the fiord, while the boat’s nature guide, “Dolphin Dave” (a former Dept. of Conversation employee) detailed in the driest voice ever, the unique eco-system we were passing through. Dave never really found us any dolphins to look at…just a couple of bottlenose who were too busy looking for food.
The trip included an hour kayak through a portion of the fiord. Not as wild as our experience in Abel Tasman but it was cool being able to touch the dark rock walls, and paddle underneath a few waterfalls. After a hot bowl of soup, we headed out to the end of the fiord, and into the Tasman sea. Much choppier than the protected waters of the fiord, we spent a few moments observing seals on an outcropping of rock.
Dinner was a feast. We slept like babies in our bunkroom (despite the loud snoring of another passenger in the next bunk; we’ve smartened up and carry earplugs for all of the communal sleep experiences).
At 6:45 a.m. we found ourselves eating again before heading to the observation deck to experience the early morning magic and stillness of Hall Arm, one of the narrowest fingers of the fiord. Kirk found it hard to talk because it was just so enthralling to stare at all the natural beauty. There are people lucky enough to spend weeks exploring Doubtful Sound by boat and kayak; to be so removed from televisions, shopping, suburbs, cars, maps and hostels, work…a lifetime experience. We tasted it for 24 hours.
May 16, 2007
The tricky aspect of many NZ Great Walks is the transport to and from the trailheads. The Routeburn is no exception. Rather than fork over big dollars for a pick-up 300 km away, we opted to hike in and out of this Great Walk from the same car park north of the picturesque village of Glenorchy.
Most trampers hike the first day to Routeburn Falls Hut, about three hours. But with a weather forecast of ‘pissing rain’ for Saturday, we hiked six hours through the Harris basin and over the Harris Saddle (1200m) to reach Mackenzie Lake Hut. Kirk was mighty impressed with this time as the sign-posted times for this distance (20 km) said it would take approximately 10 hours.
Our sweat was rewarded with amazingly brilliant sub-alpine views of snow-capped peaks, the Hollyford river below, and the Tasman sea to the far west. And, our hut experiences were much better than the Welcome Flats as there weren’t as many snoring trampers. We’ve also learned that our decision to leave many of the Great Walks until now, rather than in the peak tramping summer months has been a good one. You don’t have to pre-book, there are fewer people, and the hut accommodation is much cheaper. The only downside: you risk poorer weather, and the off chance of having no firewood. But Kiwis are tough. And so are Canadians.
