We left Hamilton on the morning of the 18th via bus. It was quite a struggle lugging all of our suitcases onto the Intercity bus. There was a luggage limit of two checked bags per person, so we managed to cram my blue backpack into one of our bigger suitcases. Where there’s a will, there’s a way! We were pretty much on the bus all day down to Wellington, where we crashed in a hostel for the night. The next morning we hopped straight onto a ferry for the South Island. It was quite unlike any ferry I’d ever been on before, with cafés and arcades and even a cinema on the lower decks! We sipped on coffees and read books most of the way there, but eventually we went up on deck to see our first few glimpses of New Zealand’s “better half.” The water everywhere here is so clear and blue. It’s pretty amazing. So unlike the muddy waters of my native Charleston.
Some of our first sights of the south island!
Our first night in the South was spent in Christchurch (after another looong bus ride to get there). The city just endured a 7.1 earthquake a few weeks back. Yet while we were there, the damage I saw was significantly less than I expected from such an event. The quake was the same scale as the one in Haiti, yet no lives at all were lost!! It was a very miraculous thing I think. Walking around the city reminded me a lot of Charleston actually. There are so many old buildings mixed in with McDonalds and KFCs. The city definitely had the same feel to it. It was strangely quite in the streets though, due to earthquake curfews.
The next day we picked up a rental car and started north. The island is pretty massive and all of the places to see are pretty far apart. I would describe this part of New Zealand as a bevy of little towns strung together by one-lane highways. Most of the towns we drive through are too small to even have banks or ATMs. Some don’t even have gas stations. I don’t know what most of the inhabitants do… they must drive ridiculously long ways for such common amenities. Rural lives are so different.
We had planned to drive from Christchurch to the Abel Tasman track in the north in time to get started on our five-day hike there. Unfortunately (yet rather providentially), the road we wanted to take to get there (which was about 100 kilometers shorter than the alternative) was snowed out to all vehicles except the ones with chains on their tires. We didn’t pull into the last town before the park until 7:30 at night, so we decided to find a place to crash for the night. There are a lot of roadside homey type hostels here in New Zealand. People take houses on the small town’s center roads and turn them into cozy places for backpackers to stay. Fortunately we’re here on the off-season, so there are plenty of vacancies wherever we go.
The next day we realized that because we got to the Abel Tasman too late, we wouldn’t be able to hike the full circle. Most people only hike the coastal track because it’s the scenic part of the park. We wanted to do both the coastal track and the inland track, but time constraints forced us to drop the two days we’d set aside for the inland part of the great walk. Turns out that was for the best. By the end of our 3.5 day walk, I had blisters the size of my pinky toes ON my pinky toes! It was rather painful (I think they sprung up due to the super tight hiking socks I’d acquired in South Korea) and I ended up limping into the last part of our walk. However, we did hike 32 miles total, so I think I can get a little leeway for that.
The hike itself was a pretty amazing experience. We started off in the north of the track, on a remote part of the park where most hikers don’t bother to go. I find this strange, since it was actually one of the most beautiful parts of the hike. There were golden sanded bays with azure waters surrounded by dramatic hills filled with forests of ferns and bright yellow-flowered thistles. Occasionally we’d catch sights of southern fur seals and crimson jellyfish in the crystal clear waters. The first day we only hiked an hour and a half to our hut. Most of the larger parks in New Zealand have huts for trampers to stay in (for a price of course). They’re for people who don’t want to lug tents around with them. Perfect for David and me! They didn’t have electricity of course, and the nights got a bit chilly, but they were equipped with wood burning pioneer stoves that got quite hot when they got going.
All huddled up.
Our first hut.
Wood to keep warm.
The second day was a bit of a longer hike, at 5.5 hours. At the very end of our walk that day we actually had to do a tidal crossing: we had to wait for low tide to come so that we could cross an inlet to get to our hut. The tides at the Abel Tasman are actually rather drastic; at places the difference between high tide and low tide can get up to 6 meters! We timed our arrival at the inlet just right. It was low tide when we got there, you could see all of the silt and the clams strewn across an expanse so vast is took nearly 20 minutes to cross. At one point we actually had to remove our shoes and wade through the tidal streams. It was quite cold and the shells were painful on my tender feet. We had to make similar crossings two more times on our journey to the southern trailhead.
The third day was by far our longest. We hiked 7 hours to our final hut before we crashed. One of the big highlights of that time was a rather unusually close encounter with a seal. We were walking along the beach (a lot of the trails led down to the beach) and passed a large group of people walking in the opposite direction as us. Alongside them, in the water, was a young seal. He was just a few feet from the shoreline, and at points he even ventured onto the sand. It was pretty cool to get so close to him.
At the end of our hike we took a water taxi back up to where our car was and immediately began the trek back down south to see more sights. We only have a few more days until we’re supposed to get to our host family/farm down in the extreme south, so we’re making the most of them that we can. We stopped in a town called Murchinson and got a much needed washing/heat/internet. (As you can imagine, after 4 days of intense exercise wearing mostly the same clothes, you begin to smell not so savory!)
Saturday morning we lingered around “The Lazy Cow” (our hostel in Murchinson) and drank some coffee before setting off further south. Our first stop, around noon, was to Punakaiki, a small settlement on the west coast of the island which is home to the famous “pancake rocks.” These are basically flat formations of limestone stacked up against each other to create the look of pancakes slapped together. They’re on the coastline, and the constant waves have created blowholes in them. We got there just as high tide was hitting, plus it was a windy day, so we got quite a show!! Every time a huge swell would arrive, water shot up through the blowholes and created a bright rainbow effect against the caramel rocks. It was really quite powerful and entrancing. The surf was incredibly rough… if you fell in you would get pummeled against the sides of the cliffs for sure.
We hopped back into the car again and traveled another three hours down south to the Franz Josef glacier. The roads in this part of the country are very, very windy. Back and forth. Back and forth. My stomach is getting too old for that (I never thought I’d say that). I was fighting back some serious car nausea. Ah well.
The glacier was quite accessible actually. You could drive up to a carpark and then do a 40 minute hike all the way to the glacier’s face. It was pretty awing. I know I’ve been saying that about almost everything here in New Zealand, but really, almost everything here is beautiful to the point of awe. The glacier though, was massive. From far away it looked small, climbable even. But up close you realized that simply the face of the glacier was almost 100 feet tall, not counting the heights is soared to further up the mountain.
We actually had another cool animal encounter. As we were returning down the long stony path that lead from the glacier, we ran into a bird called a Kea. Keas basically look like really huge green parrots (think the size of a hawk). This bird didn’t seem afraid of us in the slightest. It kept hopping down the path, literally a foot away from us, looking for food that tourists might have dropped in the cracks. David enjoyed trying to get a special shot of it.
The next day, Sunday, we went to see the other big glacier in the area, known as Fox Glacier. I must say that it wasn’t quite as visually impressive as the Franz Josef, but it was still a rather awing spectacle. You could get a bit closer to the ice face with this one, although not too much, since there’s still a lot of danger with ice falling and flooding. If you pay a good deal of money you can take guided tours onto the glacier. Some of the more expensive tours even go into the ice caves—but unfortunately it was out of our budget.
We made it to our host family in Winton. It's a really nice place, much neater and well kept than our last woofing experience. We've done a lot of weeding lately. In a few days we'll be off to the Milford Trek.
