11/27/16: Flight then Auckland
There is nothing weirder than the overnight flight except when the flight also crosses the international date line. We get an Uber ride from James in his Oxnard Malibu to LAX. Both of us sleep a good deal on the flight and we land none the worse for the wear - on Sunday even though we left on Friday, thanks to crossing the International Date Line, whatever the hell that is. Buh-bye, Saturday. Peter the Hobbit is there to drop us off at the Skycity Motel right smack dab in the middle of Auckland. Too early for our room to be ready we drop off our luggage and hit the town.
It's cool and very windy. We stroll aimlessly about, the streets, the city getting ready for an annual Christmas parade, making our way down Queen's Street, the city's major shopping and entertainment hub. We stop for coffee and a roll and then make our way to Albert Park, a nice public space on the edge of downtown, which has as a defining spot - at least to the jet-lagged - a small, elevated platform set aside as a place for anyone who feels the need to speak in a public space. I climb up into the box but can't attract a crowd. After checking in to the hotel and getting upgraded to a two-room suite for the wait, we have a quick salad and early to bed.
Auckland is no big deal - sort of a clean and tidy big city where fully 30% of NZ resides. We're glad we have opted to not do much more than acclimate to the new time zone and rest up from the travel.
Quickly we discover the main NZ coffee drink: the Flat White. It's a bunch of milk and espresso coffee, doused with a few packs of sugar. Not as fluffy as a cappuccino but stronger than a latte - very tasty.
11/28/16: Auckland
Day Two dawns windy again. We've slept big and feel somewhat recharged. We walk a few blocks down to the harbor and jump on one of a series of ferries that ply the water - Auckland is composed of neighborhoods that are located all over the islands and peninsulas that make up the area so ferries are actually the quickest way to get around. Our destination is the suburb of Devonport which we can see across the harbor. The incoming ferry is jammed with commuters going to work.
Devonport, a small artsy town, is still waking up so we climb to the top of Mt. Victoria, a small hill which was originally a volcanic cone as is most of Auckland and much of NZ itself. It's more of a small hill that we climb to get great 360 degrees over the area. The wind is howling. There's the remnants of a fort that used to grace the summit - a perfect place to keep intruders out of the main harbor although nary a shot has been fired in defense.
We wander back down into town, look into a few shops, and then have one of the best meals of our trip at an outside tavern - vegetarian eggs Benedict for me and a fish dish containing some swimming thing that neither of us has ever heard of, and it comes up big. Back to the ferry for the trip into Auckland.
After our last few trips I have to say I really appreciate the ease and efficiency of everything. The ferry is on time; the entrance and price clearly marked; the boat is clean and safe and the captain doesn't appear to be on a large dose of methamphetamine. Quite relaxing.
We take off down sort of a busy, nondescript commercial thoroughfare that borders the harbor, Our destination is Parnell, allegedly a leafy inner suburb with lovingly restored clapboard villas but it looks like a dusty suburb to us after a windy, winding, occasionally confused walk. We continue our walk through a large park that houses the main museum - footsore we opt out - and then wind our way down a beautiful path that gives us a nice taste of all of the temperate rain forest vegetation that we're going to be seeing later on. Pretty cool stuff. Lunch is a couple of sandwiches as we laboriously trudge back to the Skycity, doing one more thing than we should have, of course.
We rest up a bit and then feel obligated to ascend upward. The Skytower - a landmark or an eyesore depending on your point of view - is right on top of our hotel. We take the elevator to the top - for a ridiculously elevated price - and get a panoramic view of the city's volcanic landscape. There are glass panels here and there that allow you to stand suspended over a long, long drop to the ground. You can also bungee jump from the top if by "you" you mean "not me." We come back to earth and eat Reubens at a deli across the street.
The food is very familiar and quite expensive. We had heard that NZ was very proud of their culinary traditions.
11/29/16: In Transit
I walk a block over to Avis to pick up our rental car - a snazzy red Corolla. It's my third try navigating the roads with a right hand drive car - all of the normal angles and lines of sight and perspectives are a little off kilter. I feel like I'm going to run the car off the road about half the time. We drive south for a bit before striking off on a less than major road, heading east to the Coromandel Peninsula. We get lost a few time but make it to the Rewa House B&B with no major incidents. Jet-lag and unfamiliarity with everything makes the unplanned detours more frustrating for me than they should be.
The land is Ireland-like in its varieties and shades of green, the terrain dotted with sheep and cows, the vegetation sort of temperate rain forest with large ferns and some palm trees.
The land is Ireland-like in its varieties and shades of green, the terrain dotted with sheep and cows, the vegetation sort of temperate rain forest with large ferns and some palm trees.
Why are they called Kiwis? Is it because of the fruit or because of the bird? They are definitely large and robust people
There are very few restaurants or shops or other tourist conveniences along the way. We stop for coffee at a ramshackle "cafe" which is a combo food store - hardware store - restaurant where SuperK is rebuffed for a bathroom. The coffee is espresso based, takes a long time to come out, and is damn good, surprising everyone, although we find that espresso machines are everywhere coffee is made, including gas stations and convenience stores. It's hard to find a bad cup of Flat White.
The bathroom situation turns out to be excellent. Public ones are found everywhere, reassuring for us older folks and very pleasant after the quality and frequency of toilets that we found in some of SE Asia's hairier spots.
The trees are robust.
It has been cold and blowy weather-wise. We suspect it doesn't ever get too hot.
We offload our crap at our small B&B and drive further up the coast to Cathedral Cove, an isolated section of beach that can only be accessed through at low tide through an arch in the rock that separates it from Mares Leg Cove - there's a nice hike that is packed with people. Felt good to stretch our legs after the time in the car.
We drive back through town and grab dinner at Pedro's. Where that name came from is a total mystery.
11/30/16: Tairua
Our hosts at the Rewa House B&B are Trish and Jeff, nice extroverted folks - he's a Brit, she's a native. Our breakfast is included - fried tomatoes, eggs, and mushrooms; yogurt and mueslix, toast, and coffee. We do the standard get lost thing trying to find Lynch Stream Trail - after some starting and stopping and stewing we drive to Sailor's Grave Beach and stroll along Otara Bay before a local gives us a heads up and we amazingly enough find the trail. It's a serious trail, rough and steep, so we hike but a short way through kauri trees and kohekoh and puiriri plants. There are a lot of huge fern trees and palms as well. Back to Tairua for a coffee and cake.
Rising out of the tidal bay around the town is a small defunct volcano called Paku, covered with vacation homes. We drive part of the way to the top, stopping at a park where another steep, slippery trail ends at the top with great views over the flats, the town, and the Pacific Ocean. We remark on the trip to Trish, who confides that she doesn't give that info out to everyone.
12/1/16: Tairua
Today we have another big AM feed with our wonderful hosts Trish and Jeff, then get picked up by Doug Johanson AKA Kiwi Dundee. This dude is right out of central casting: equal amounts enthusiasm, energy, and total bullshit. I don't know what to believe and what to roll my eyes at.
We drive south of town to Broken Hills Park where Doug eschews a well-marked trail and directs us to follow him vertically up a "track" which looks like unbroken forest to us. But it turns out he knows what he's doing - he uncovers relics that he has hidden in the past that come from an old gold mining village that used to be located in the area, and points out all of the native flora and fauna including fan ferns, black ferns, and silver ferns; the native Kauri trees; huge Monterrey Pines; and many types of birds. He is incredibly stoked about New Zealand and his energy is infectious. But he doesn't do much shutting up and it gets a little wearying for me.
We walk into some mines that are no longer in use - he points out glowworms hanging from the low ceiling, their name arising from a faint light they generate to attract prey. At one point he starts humming, the noise causing a vibrating resonance in the cave which he says is coming from a freight train crossing the mountains 20 miles away - this is total bullshit. Then he tells me to turn around in the pitch black cave and try to duplicate his efforts - when I fail he asks me to keep moving closer and closer to the wall. He flicks on his light and we see that the wall is covered with these big, black katydid/grasshopper looking things - harmless, of course, but pretty fearsome looking. He was a pretty funny guy.
"It's a beautiful country, Steve. Do you see those mountains over there, Steve? Beautiful. Amazing."
We had lunch of hamburgers and burritos in a Whangamata cafe - very tasty, topped off with the obligatory Flat White - before making our way to the Opoutere Beach Preserve. An hour or so of strolling on a . . . well, beach and mud flats. It does have a healthy population of mangroves, one of an unusual breed of the tree that thrives outside of tropical areas, as well as a lot of nesting shore birds including the ruby oyster catcher.
Doug is not a big fan of non-native animals, holding mammals like the stoat, ferret, rabbit, and possum in particular disregard. These animals don't have any natural predators in this closed ecosystem so they've thrived while simultaneously wrecking havoc on the native birds - creatures that have never been stalked so they make easy prey for the intruders. The ferrets were initially introduced to hunt the rabbits that were tearing up the grasslands but found it a lot easier to hunt flightless birds instead of quick bunnies. The result has been devastating to large, slow-moving birds like the kiwi.
12/2/16: Tairua then In Transit
We leave our great hosts and head South to an up and coming vacation town on the Pacific called Tauranga. We detour toward the ocean and climb to the top of a defunct volcano called Mt. Maunganui. It's a steep climb but we're afforded beautiful views over the town and the ocean. There's a huge cruise ship docked and a lot of old people tottering around.
Down the road another couple of hours to the geothermal capital of NZ - Rotorua, whose namesake lake when the large crater formed by a huge volcanic eruption collapsed in on itself. We're in the very ordinary Novotel right on the lake, paying $10 a day for slow Internet with another $30 tacked on for a "lake view room," the lake visible if you scrunch up in the corner of the room. A small dinner at a restaurant where the only other customers were an incredibly loud, incredibly unfunny group of drunks laughing uproariously, a stroll about, and into bed we go.
12/3/16: Rotorua
Rotorua is the most visible demonstration in NZ that the area is a morass of active volcanoes. About an hour south of Rotorua is Wai-O-Tapu geothermal site. It's an amazing place of diverse geothermal activity including huge volcanic craters, a big body of water called the Champagne Pool, steaming creeks, sinter terrace formations, bubbling mud pots, hot and cold pools of many different colors - yellow, gray, blue, green - depending on the kinds of minerals being leached out of the ground. We join a big group of people for the daily eruption of the Lady Knox Geyser which is stimulated by putting a surfactant into the opening, causing hot and cold water to mix which causes the geyser to blow. It's a little stagy, actually - not that big and not that long. We grab a quick lunch of ham sandwiches after walking around this amazing site for a few hours.
Closer to town but well off the beaten path is Waimangu Volcanic Valley, an area caused by the collapse of a bunch of smaller volcanoes. It's as empty as Wai-O-Tapu was jammed. It's home to the world's largest hot water spring, colorful geothermal terraces, and regenerating native forest. There's a big pool which has a fluctuating water level depending on several factors - rain fall, overflow from a lake, evaporation - and has a varying color depending on mineral content. It's a wild blue today. There are jets of steam shooting out of the earth everywhere and signs telling you that the water is at 212F.
The walk takes about an hour and a half - we're all alone for most of the time. It was very relaxing and very nice. It felt primordial, like a T Rex could come walking out of the fog and the mist. We end up at a lake where we could have taken a boat cruise but we were worn out at that point, choosing instead to hop the shuttle bus back to the entrance.
12/4/16: Rotorua
Today is the day of Volcanic Air. Some fruit and oatmeal in the room and then we walk 100 yds to the Volcanic Air Jetty for our helicopter ride to White Island, home of the most active volcano in New Zealand. When I ask the last time that it erupted the response was: "April." We figure that we are going to get picked up for a ride to the little regional airport that we passed on the way in and where there was a Volcanic Air terminal. Whap whap whap, here comes our helicopter, flying low over the lake. It slows, drops, and lands on a dock not much wider than the helicopter itself. Out pops Cory. We hop in, buckle up, put on our headsets, and spin up into the air. The front seat has full canopies all the way around so we can see exactly where we are going. We actually land on the lawn of a little lodge and pick up a couple of German tourists before resuming the flight. I feel like a door gunner in Nam.
It's about half an hour out to the island. We bank around so that we can get some photos before dropping right down onto the lava rock. It is actually privately owned - purchased a hundred years ago for a dollar - and contains the ruins of an old sulfur mining operation that existed in the 30s before eventually proving unprofitable. The volcano is spewing sulfurous steam into the air - there are bubbling mud pots and fumaroles galore. We spend an hour or so exploring before buckling in for our return flight. Cory stops at the airport to refuel - the copter is licensed for a certain amount of weight per trip so he couldn't just top off the tank before we started - and then we climb up to about 3000 feet and land on Mt. Tarawera.
Tarawera is a huge inactive volcano that last blew in the 1880s, obliterating several Maori villages and drastically altering the shape of several lakes in the area. It is now a sacred, closed Maori site. The views from the top are spectacular. It's also quite chilly and quite windy at that altitude. We take off, drop the Germans at their $1000/night lodge, and return to the landing dock. Quite the experience for both of us. We stagger into a restaurant for a big meal, both feeling the endorphins of the experience.
That was our Rock Star moment, blowing in to land on the dock while a hundred or so passengers waiting to board a tour boat out to the island were snapping pictures of us.
12/5/16: Rotorua then In Transit
We check out of our pretty ordinary Novotel by the lakeside and swing by Volcanic Air to snag a cap, then it's off to Tongariro National Park.
On the way we detour to Orakei Korako (or A Place of Adorning in Mauri) - a smaller, even more off-the-beaten track thermal attraction. A boat takes you a couple of hundred yards across a lake and from there you can walk the grounds. It's small and unremarkable but deserted so we enjoy ourselves. A flat white on the deck overlooking the lake and we're back on our way. We stop halfway at Lake Taupo - the largest lake in NZ - to take in the view and eat a sandwich, the road skirting the eastern shore, winding past little coves and bays.
We remark again at the fact that the lakes have no homes lining their shores and are free from jet-skis and noisy motorboats. The Kiwis prize their natural beauty, and silence is part of the equation. The road then heads for the Tongariro National Park, hemmed in by the impressive peaks of Tongariro, Ruapehu, and Ngauruhoe.
We arrive after a rather long drive - the roads are narrow and very windy and the whole driving on the left side of the road is not intuitive so I have to be hyper-vigilant about keeping the car where it's supposed to be - at the Ruapeho Country Lodge, a B&B on the southern flank of Tongariro. Our hosts - Heather and Peter - direct us to a tramp about 20 minutes away where we plunge into Hobbit Land - wet, green, mossy, ferny, every tree buried under layers of symbiotic vegetation. It's a great walk which ends at a waterfall. We grab a bit to eat at a local pub - expensive food again and not enough of it - and hit the sack early.
We're sort of surprised at the fu-fu quality and great expense of the Kiwi dining scene. We routinely shell out $50 for a meal and don't believe we've spent less than $35 yet.
12/6/16: Tongariro
Our guide for this day - Jemma - picks us up at our B&B. Lots of recent rains made our scheduled bike ride unnavigable so we substitute a couple of two hour hikes instead.
"Will we have time for a flat white in between the hikes?" I ask the owner the night before.
"Sure," she said.
"Or maybe a bite to eat?"
"Absolutely!" she said brightly.
I suspected a stiff headwind when I asked Jemma - a thoroughly delightful young woman - about the bushes covered with bright yellow flowers that we say everywhere.
"I know nothing about the local plant life," she replied. "I'm more of a rock person." This was the first of many lies and mis-directions and slight exaggerations that we'd get today.
We drove for about 50 minutes into Tongariro National Park, stopping briefly along the way so that she could coordinate things with her boss. The hike is called Silica Creek - it starts at a higher elevation, totally out in the open, windy, sunny, the ground covered in with low-growing native bush. As we wind down the mountain, the verdant Hobbit forest rises around us as we follow a snow-melt fed river cranking along side us.
Jemma has a bum knee and doesn't set a scorching pace even though KK is right on her ass. At one point I tell her that she certainly isn't moving too quickly for us. She is limping noticeably at times.
We finish the hike and have a coffee. Jemma is texting furiously and indicates that the hike took longer than it should have - both KK and I got the impression that she was laying the blame at our feet - and started throwing out a lot of conflicting and suspect estimates about our start times and end times and drive times. She steps away to talk to her boss, returning to suggest a couple of shorter hikes, indicating the second half of the hiking extravaganza would take her past a two o'clock stopping time. This was the first either of us had heard anything about a time limit. If there was a time limit then we would have expected an experienced guide to tell us to pick up the pace. That's what the guide was there for. To guide us.
Being a slightly miffable guy I began to get slightly miffed. Kindly, I think, I suggested that it might be better to just head back to the ranch rather than try to fit in less desirable activities to fit an arbitrary time slot. At this point it seemed that she picked up on the vibe that the customers might be getting a little miffed, and she started to get awfully chatty.
KK and I are nice people. We didn't make her feel bad. We didn't let it ruin the day, either. It's a long trip and there are going to be ups and downs, victories and defeats. This is The Program working in my life. I don't get too up or too down. I get miffed but the miffed-ness doesn't take me to A Dark Place anymore.
Through mountain beech forest, the Silica track travels alongside a cascading stream, arriving at the creamy-white terraces of Silica Rapids. Sub-alpine plants, amid a mixture of swamp and tussock country, feature around the track as it returns to the Bruce Road 2.5 kilometers above the starting point. This highly varied walk reveals a range of vegetation types and also has spectacular views of Ruapehu and Ngauruhoe on a clear day.
Anyway, there's a small town near our B&B - Ohakune - which mostly caters to the skiing crowd - the place is mostly shut down over the summer - where we grab a greasy fish and chips dinner.
I'm not sure that the pre-arranged part of the trip has been worth the money up to this point: thumbs-up for the chopper ride; Doug was a wash; and Jemma a bust.
12/7/16: Tongariro
A big breakfast this morning of fruit, yogurt, mueslix, eggs, and toast from our hosts Heather and Peter, and it's back on the road to the mountain. We do a couple of hikes today - Taranaki Falls and Whakapapa. We wind from Hobbit Land to open vistas populated with low growing native scrub. It's high elevation, windy, cold, so anything that survives is tough. There's water everywhere, ice-cold snow-melt coming down from the higher elevations. There's enough fresh water here to take care of poor, old, dry CA for a year.
Bogs develop in the sub-alpine and low alpine zones where drainage is poor. Suitable sites are hollows formed by glaciers and flat areas under high rainfall conditions on glacial terraces, mountain passes, and flat topped mountain ridges. Where rainfall is high, rain may provide most of the water in the bogs, but in drier eastern areas drainage from the surrounding slopes makes the major contribution. When the water table is near the surface, the dominant plants in the bogs are of cushion form. Cushion plants are freely but closely branched; and the ultimate twigs, with their upper living and lower dead leaves, are so closely pressed together lengthwise that the exposed tips of the living leaves form a firm, continuous, often unyielding surface. Many cushion plants can be stood on without suffering any visible effects.
I put that section in because we've been running into these weird, swampy areas high up on the mountains. These plants are tough.
"Oh, that's OK. Really," I said. I thought he was just trying to be nice. He was really quite insistent. He had already pulled the car out of the garage.
So I climb in this 40 year old, bright yellow sports car, get a feel for the clutch and steering wheel, and blast off. Half an hour later I climb out in the middle of a big endorphin rush. Wow, an old sports car, right hand drive, on a two lane road in NZ. Can't make this shit up.
There is a steaming hot tub at the facility that we soak in for a while which felt good on our old joints. Into town for another overpriced dinner and that's a wrap.
Our landlords have a small puppy called Ricki - a poodle/spaniel mix and he's beyond cute. We also ran into the smallest bird in NZ - less than 8 gm - called The Rifleman. They're running neck and neck with me for favorite animal so far.
12/8/16: In Transit then Wellington
Oh, Wellington we hardly knew ye.
We bid adieu to our Triumph-owning hosts and head south toward Wellington where we plan on catching the ferry across the Marlborough Sound to begin our conquest of the south island. The drive starts out on a small, narrow, winding road that snakes in and out of rolling hills on the route from Tongariro. Day: cool and cloudy. As we make our way south - stopping for a flat white that takes 15 minutes to make it out to us and a big shop at a Kathmandu outlet store - the land flattens out and becomes pasture and farmland. The skies darken and it begins to spit. Luckily we've made it off the snaky road and are now on a more major route because it starts to rain with purpose. We're right up against the ocean as the north island narrows before we enter Wellington proper.
It's a good day for a rain/travel day as both of us have sore feet and tired legs. We're in a sumptuous hotel right across the street from Te Papa Tongarewa, the national museum of NZ. We stroll through the exhibits which feature native Maori history. It's mildly interesting.
12/9/16: Ferry Then Nelson
There is something great about going to countries where things run smoothly. SuperK and I are trying to alternate exotic travel with less-exotic travel. On one side I don't think that I've eaten one foodstuff that I haven't eaten before - on the other hand goddam is it nice to be in a first world country where things run smoothly.
We get up this morning - a travel day - and head downstairs at our very tony hotel. Our car has been pulled up. Tim gives me directions to the ferry that will take us from the north island to the south island and they're good, accurate, truthful directions. We drive directly to the ferry and the route is so well signposted that I didn't even need Tim's directions. We park the car, toss the keys in a drop-off box, and check our luggage - all the kid needs is our surname to instantly confirm our reservations - and board the ferry. We've paid for a kind of first class lounge where we have comfy seats and scarf up a great breakfast with smoothies and espresso and cookies and shit. It's really comfortable. We even have our own bathrooms. There's a section of deck right outside the lounge where I spend a lot of time strolling about - it's kind of protected from the wind which has really picked up once we are out of the harbor.
The Wellington to Picton ferry is a big ship that carries people and a lot of vehicle traffic, including big lorries. We leave Wellington, the city perched on the hills at the very bottom of a very well-protected bay. It's cool and windy, the clouds sitting right on the hills. After we break out of the harbor and into the open ocean the skies clear and it becomes quite pleasant. After a couple of hours we enter the torturous passage through all of the small islands and peninsulas at the very northern tip of the south island. The clouds thicken and drop down low again. The captain pulls into Picton terminal and backs the huge ship into a narrow space like it was a motorcycle.
We disembark and head over to Avis. I walk in the room and see my name on a pre-packaged reservation. Smooth as silk although I bicker with an agent over where exactly my car is. It was supposed to be in spot 12B and it sure was not in spot 12B.
The drive to Nelson is on another twisty, turny road through the mountains. This is vineyard country and we pass winery after winery before the road meets up with the coast and we enter Nelson. Our B&B is in an old house originally built for a sea captain.
Before dinner we walk through town and into a park that leads straight up the side of a hill and gives us a great view over the harbor and the town. The name of the park - the Centre of NZ - reflects the work of John Spence Browning, the Chief Surveyor for Nelson in the 1870's. He used the top of the hill as a central survey point for doing the first geodetic survey of New Zealand when earlier isolated surveys where combined. An official survey in 1962 located the centre of New Zealand at 41 degrees South, 172 degrees East, which is a point in the Spooners Range in the Golden Downs Forest.
Dinner at an pizzeria and we call it a day.
12/10/16: Nelson
It's a windy, rainy day in Nelson, almost unheard of in this city which is reputedly the sunniest in NZ. We timed our stay for the Saturday Market where lots of local artisans set up tents outside. It's mostly food and produce - not too much in the way of fine art. The wind begins to blow with purpose - freaking out the locals, half of whom tear down their booths and skedaddle. We have a cup of coffee under shelter and then walk over to the city's cathedral, maybe 100 years old. It's uninspiring although there is a Christmas tree competition set up inside which amuses us for a half an hour. The weather is pretty grim at this point. SuperK snags a glass decoration before we hightail it back to the hotel.
After a brief nap we climb back up into the hills for exercise, taking a different route through the Centre of New Zealand, with good views over the city and ocean, and to hassle a bunch of sheep up there.
All in all not an overly thrilling day.
The B&B experiences have been uniformly pretty good - we've both enjoyed the people that we've stayed with. We'll have to consider these more seriously for our next trip.
12/11/16: Nelson
We're up and at 'em for an early breakfast, then outside for a 7:15AM pick up at our B&B to take us to the tip of the northern island, home of Abel Tasman National Park. The owner gets a call from downtown wondering where we are so we hotfoot it 15 minutes down to what turns out to be a public bus station and clamber on board a Greyhound type bus. This conveyance takes almost two hours to make the drive that would have taken an hour at most IN OUR CAR, stopping to pick up folks at bus stops, veering onto side streets to collect other tourists, even stopping to pick up a couple of bundles of newspapers and bread at one point. We're baffled after all of the first class treatment we've gotten so far.
We disembark at the small settlement of Kaiteriteri, the gateway to Abel Tasman where we join two other couples with our long-haired, guitar-playing, English-born kayak guide, Squid. We hop a ferry shuttle and scoot about a half hour up the beach and make a wet landing at the actual kayaking HQ. There is no access to the park itself except by boat or along isolated hiking trails - makes me think of beautiful Yellowstone in winter full of diesel-spewing, loud snowmobiles. Not in NZ, my friend.
I shit you not but it takes a good little while to get buckled into the two-person kayak - splash skirts and life jackets and dry sumps in the vehicle to store your gear. The seats are pretty ingenuous - there is a rubber skirt you put on that then pulls tight over the well so that your bottom half stays dry even with all of the splashing going on.
We're out there for the better part of four hours including a stop for lunch on a beach with an estuary behind it full of crabs and little silver fishes. On the way back we circle some small islands that make up part of the Tonga Island Sea Colony, with some seals lazing about.
It's hard work and I'm sure we'll be feeling it tomorrow. I bet that ocean kayaking is a lot harder than lake kayaking - once we had to take off from the beach through some small waves and we were constantly fighting swells and currents and the wind. I'm glad that we did it but I have no plans to do it again soon - I sure didn't see a lot of other people out there my age. I've never been a big fan of wet sports - walking barefoot on shells and shit like that.
We labor back to Nelson on the local and collapse into bed.
The Kiwis are kind of loud drunks. There have been a handful of times when we've had a meal in a restaurant with a group of people talking loudly and laughing uproariously. Because we can hear their elevated conversations I can say with certainty that they aren't as funny as they think they are. Reminds me of what an ass I was when I was drinking.
12/12/16: In Transit then Punakaiki
Long drive today which started out in a hilly region south of Nelson. The roads are narrow and often incredibly twisty so forward progress can be halting. After a couple of hours the path breaks out into a relatively straight line and goes through pretty but unremarkable farm and pasture land. The sky has been threatening all day and it begins to rain. Good day to be in a car on the road. Eventually we rendezvous with the Tasman sea on the southern island's east coast. The road turns torturous again as we wind along the ocean.
We've been told that gas stations can be few and far in between. We stopped for coffee this morning in the crummy town of Murchison, with about half a tank, never thinking that we needed to fill up. We drive and drive and drive through desperately empty land before reaching the coast and turning south - there we see a sign that tells us No Petrol for 90 KM. It was a bit anxiety-producing until we noticed the car had a range finder that told us we had about 150 KM worth of fuel left. Still a little anxiety-producing. Right before we get to our night's lodging traffic stops and people get out of their cars - the land here has marched right up to the edge of the water, again becoming very narrow and twisty and sitting high above the ocean. A local tells me that there are frequent mudslides and rock falls which block the road and there ain't any alternatives to the route - after about a 20 minute delay we're on our way again.
The beach, on the shores of the Tasman Sea, is quite remarkable. The waves begin breaking far out so that you end up getting several rows of waves - they are not trifling little waves, either. From time to time we can see a lone surfer in a wet suit giving it a try. Our hotel is in a tiny town called Punakaiki which is famous for something called the Pancake Rocks, a weird stacking of wind and ocean eroded limestone jutting out into the sea on a little headland. The park has a trail leading through more temperate rain forest that gives us views down on the rocks and blowholes and inlets that make up the attraction. Hanging onto the cliffs between the low and high tide lines are a type of kelp that adhere so tightly that the rock gives way before their tendrils do - pieces of the kelp are often found with rock interwoven in their roots.
We park our car and walk for a couple of hours on a trail called Pororari Creek. We follow this through amazing lowland rain forest, the trail tracking the fast-moving river. The vegetation is in control - there are big, old trees that are almost buried in mounds and layers of all kind of fern, moss, and lichen. There are actually small trees growing on bigger ones if the big guys get horizontal enough. The local trees are the northern rata, the rimo, and the miro; the local birds the tui, bellbird, and NZ pigeon, a huge animal. At one point I see a brown bird cross the trail and forage in the leaf detritus - the namesake kiwi bird.
Dinner tonight is at the hotel - 95 NZD, the most I've ever paid for a meal - and we're both still hungry. We head back up to the Pancakes because it's almost high tide - wow, what a difference. The waves are absolutely smashing into the cliff face, throwing sprays of water high into the air. They have, over time, created a lot of nooks and crannies that the water is blasting through. The highlight is the blowholes - when a large enough wave comes in bits of foam are ejected with a huff of air that almost sounds dragon-like. Totally cool.
12/13/16: In transit, then Franz Josef
It's cold this morning and there isn't that much to do here besides see the Pancake Rocks and hike so we blow south again. We drive in and out of light rain, the road always twisting and weaving and turning, flanked on one side by the Southern Alps and the ever-present ocean on the other. Our only stops were to grab a coffee and a tank of gas! We get a flat white at the petrol station and are pretty content just to know there's a full tank in the car. You know it's going to be a good day when the highlight is filling your tank with $5.50/gallon gas. About halfway there's a small town that used to be into gold mining so we stroll around there to stretch our legs a bit.
Our destination is the Westland National Park, home to the Franz Josef Glacier and it's brother Fox Glacier, rarities in the glacier world as they are nearly at sea level which makes them relatively accessible, glacier-wise. We have a heli-hike scheduled for tomorrow where we chopper up and walk around on the glacier itself for a few hours but the weather makes that seem dicey. It's one thing to walk on ice - another altogether to walk on wet ice in the rain.
We check into our hotel and get directions to a track that leads right up to the face of the FJ Glacier. It's no longer possible to hike unguided up to the glacier because its stability has deteriorated that much. It's raining steadily - of course - as we hike with a big crowd of people over a bland, uninspiring moraine leading as close to the glacier as you can get on your own. There's a lot of ice cold water pouring down a river and you can see by the rocky, unvegetated expanse that the river can be as much as ten times wider during maximum melt times. It's not much of a trip. The glacier looks dirty and sad, and the sheer volume of people jostling along the trail is a turn-off. Probably in the sun the view would be more beautiful but, as it is, this day another example of the prime attraction being a bit of a let-down.
There is an hilarious variety of outfits on the hike up ranging from people in T-shirts and sandals to those in full mountain climbing regalia. Remember this is in a steady, unrelenting rain - not a down-pour but not drizzle, either. If you don't have on rain gear you're going to get wet. There are a few ridiculous looking people using umbrellas. Real backwoods people.
On the way down we detour off on a short side track that leads to Peter's Pond, a small mountain pond that is at a perfect spot to reflect back the glacier. It's slowly being overtaken by vegetation and will one day turn into a bog.
We've debated the wisdom of the whole pre-booking thing with the tours - there have been a few times when the weather or our physical state would have made it nice not to go but then again how many of these things would we have done if we hadn't pre-booked?
Over here the sports are cricket, rugby, and that's about it. Maybe a little soccer - maybe a little horse racing. Rugby rules - the famous NZ All Blacks, purveyors of the Maori Haka meant to intimidate their opponent and inspire themselves.
12/14/16: Franz Josef
We wake up to a gruesome looking sky and light rain with a heavier downpour predicted for later. The helicopter people wouldn't cancel the flight last night - no doubt eager to book as many people as possible during the short summer season - and at 9 AM they are still keeping the reservation open, although they do say that the odd that we go are no better than 50/50. KK and I are both anxious at this point - the trip looks absolutely fantastic in the sun but we're both dubious about slipping and sliding on the ice in the rain and fog. Back to their office at 10 to get the final word that we're a no-go for today. It's more of a relief than anything and we've always said that with travel weather is the great wild-card - you can plan trips during periods that are historically calm, but you can't control it at all.
We take off in search of some local trails. First, we hike a track called Lake Wombat and it's fabulous - an hour and a half through more spectacular temperate rain forest. It's slow going at first because we're constantly stopping to gape at some ancient tree or a stump buried under 100 lbs of moss and ferns. The trail ends at the namesake lake and we backtrack to our car. There's a side trail that we follow for a hundred yards that we think might be too technical - if I come back I'm definitely going to bring real hiking boots and hiking poles. It's raining softly but that seems appropriate: rain in the rain forest. Rain on a trail is eminently more endurable than rain on the ice and in the wind.
After a short stop in town to buy some knicknacks we troop off to Callery Gorge. This track follows an access road up an incline before diving back into the rain forest. The rain is pouring down sluices and creeks and small rivers, thundering down to the main glacier feed. It's incredible. At the base of the hills you can see wisps and chunks of clouds clinging to the sides of the mountains - we walk through a couple of these, the track getting very foggy and wet when we do. We stop and call it good on a swinging bridge suspended over a rocky waterfall delivering water to the river down below.
The area seems full of magic. The forest is almost impenetrable to the eye and there is green shit growing on top of everything - many of the bigger trees are buried under several layers of guest vegetation: moss holding ferns holding small trees. We visualize hobbit homes and troll nooks and fairy glens. A few definitions for your edification.
Gnomes, probably from Latin gēnomos (‘earth dweller’), were first seen in the Renaissance period, lived underground, moving through earth as easily as we move through air. They were also kind of surly.
Dwarves, from Old English dwarȝ, are first seen in Norse mythology. They’re wise craftspeople, some of whom live underground but some of whom live freely in the forests or mountains. They are friendlier than gnomes and were originally not of particularly diminutive stature. At some point, possibly because ‘lesser’ supernatural creatures got interpreted as ‘smaller’, they became seen as short. In modern media, they are skilled brutes with a warrior sensibility.
Though elves have a complex mythology in the Norse Sagas, they took on a simpler, sinister turn for Anglophones. In the Middle Ages in England, they were seen as tricksters. In the Elizabethan era, they got mixed up with fairies. This is why we think of them as small, even though they were not originally seen that way. It was in the Victorian period that we started viewing them as ‘Keebler elves’ with pointed ears and stocking feet. This also leads to our modern idea of Santa's elves.
Back in the room we take a nap and the rain begins to fall in earnest. I mean coming down.
12/15/16: In transit then Queenstown
It really, really, really rained last night - a thunderous roar on the roof that woke me a couple of times. By morning it had slowed to a trickle - a good thing as I was concerned about wheeling my little white Corolla (red one on the north island) around the sinuous strips of asphalt that pass for roads here in NZ. The signs that warn of slippery conditions on wet roads really show a car going ajar, almost upside down.
We have an all-day drive from Franz J to Wellington so we take our time and stop a lot: for gas, to look at a few waterfalls - some visible from the viewpoint as advertised, some not - to pee; to pee outside; to eat lunch standing in a pull-off; to detour to Lake Matheson for what would have been a spectacular view of Mt. Cook and the glaciers had not the clouds been sitting right on top of the mountain tops; for a flat white; for another flat white; for gas and a flat white; and more of the same. There is no rain at all for the first third of the drive, all typical twisty affairs through mountains; then intermittent rain through some transitional territory; before finally turning to a hard, cold rain as we moved through the flat lands full of vineyards and apricot trees and into Queenstown. Near the end of the drive the road hugs the eastern shore of huge Lake Wanaka, jogs right over a narrow neck of land, and then hugs the western shore of huge Lake Hawea. I mean these are big-ass lakes.
Mercifully, we find the hotel without a hitch as it's really coming down. Dinner is noodles in front of the TV, agog at how cold it is outside, cold enough to bring snow down on the tops of The Remarkables, the mountain range we can see across Lake Wakatipu, the body of water that fronts Queenstown itself.
More noodles or sandwiches and cookies for dinner - no way we were leaving the hotel in this weather and after that long drive.
12/16/16: Queenstown
We eat breakfast in our very nice hotel room: oatmeal with mueslix and pb, a banana, the odd cookie or two. Our destination today is the famous Routeburn Track, a trail that takes three days to complete if you want to do the whole thing which we do not want to do. The track starts in the town of Glenorchy, about 50km north of Queenstown. It's a great drive, weaving in and out and around the hills that front Lake Wakatipu. The water is this surreal aquamarine color - the higher elevations are all blanketed with a light covering of snow. It feels like we're in the Alps. The temperature is up a bit but it's still frosty.
We mosey around lost for a bit on back roads - the paved variety having given away to rougher gravel roads - before we find the start of the trail. At one point we flag down a passing van to get some directions. There is another good, long stretch on gravel roads before we find where we want to be. It's a very nice hike - mossy but open beech forests tracking a fast moving river which is pouring down a rock-strewn bed. Because of all of the rain and the melting snow water is flowing everywhere - there are streams and waterfalls and water cascading in sheets over vertical moss beds. We eat lunch in the Routeburn Flats where we sit in a natural clearing surrounded by peaks and waterfalls.
As we climb it gets colder and colder until it's pretty goddam cold - we have on T-shirts and long sleeve shirts and vests and a rain jacket and it's still not enough. There are a number of swinging bridges that cross the larger streams and creeks. Routeburn is probably a treasure if you're making the three day crossing but we've been on a lot of nicer trails that were much less well-traveled.
Dinner in the room again - noodles and bread. Just too tired to get the car out of the cramped parking space and out the tortuously small drives to reach the main road.
12/16/16: Queenstown
Our hotel is on the outskirts of town so we hop a hotel shuttle that drops us off in the city center. We walk a few blocks to the quay and board a coal-fired, steam-powered 1912 ferry that takes us across this huge lake to Walter Peak High Point Country Farm, the trip taking about and hour. The highlight of the cruise occurs when I try to take two nice flat whites in porcelain cups out onto the deck. As I open the door a huge wind - totally non-existent when we were sitting at the dock - blows most of the contents onto my clothing. I got flat-whited.
Our pre-arranged tour today is for some cycling. We have imagined nice Huffy cruisers doodling slowly and peacefully down bucolic country lanes. Instead we get hulking Matt who places each of us on mountain bikes with huge tires and shoos us down what I would charitably call a rutted gravel road. The front wheel is constantly jumping laterally and bouncing over some of the larger rocks in the road - not taking a spill headfirst into the gravel quickly becomes Priority One. And being mountain bikes the seating angles us painfully forward to increase stability. It is not a comfortable position.
The first section of the miserable road is along the edge of Lake Wakatipu with the snowy Remarkables reflected in the water. It winds through private farms with sheep and cows. Once we have to stop to open up a sheep gate where we're ushered into an area rife with the animals who look up and gape at us, only scattering when we approach too closely - I feel like I'm herding them. There are a lot of cattle, too, and an unbelievable number of calves. Some of these guys flee when we pass - some stand and look at us as if to say: "What?"
The track bends inland and follows the Von River for a while, the valley narrowing, hemmed in with high, sere hills. After about 20 awful, grinding kilometers we reach a pretty much unfordable river. Matt picks us up, loads up the dusty bikes, and we drive another 30km to Lake Mavora. We had expected a picnic lunch stop at some point - when we realized this was not going to happen we gobble down our prepackaged roast beef sandwich and apple in the van - we've been working hard physically and it's now early afternoon.
We're not sure why we drove the extra distance as we get out, peek at the lake, then hop back onto the bikes for Round Two. At least now we're on flat land and there's even a downhill portion so we ride maybe another 10 km. We're basically staring at the ground, trying to keep moving and distract ourselves from the pain. A lot of the problem is that we're on rough ground on bikes we're not familiar with so we get to experience some new pains - wrists, necks, backs bent at unfamiliar angles.
I stop and wave a white hankie at Matt following in the chase van - the other couple on the trip had given up long ago. Matt drives us back to the farm for our poor man's High Tea - scones and jam, some little snack bars, and cold coffee. We're catatonic on the ferry back. We snare a couple of Subway sandwiches in Queenstown while waiting for the hotel shuttle because there is no WAY either of us could make it out the door to get food or sit at a restaurant. We're doing a lot more in the way of putting together quick meals in the room at night and in the morning simply because we're both tired of the effort of eating out.
NZ is definitely a place for the young. We're definitely in the older category on our adventures. Queenstown, for instance, is mostly a series of outlets for adventure sports: kayaking, helicopter or plane excursions, hiking, speedboat trips, hang-gliding, and the like.
12/17/16: Queenstown
We are toast this morning and I think I've a wee bit of a cold. The combination of a too long trek and a way too long bike ride has left both of us feeling stiff and sore and old so KK does laundry while I stock up at the local Pac N Save, then nap time. We do make it downtown for a walkabout, grabbing a coffee and some nice collapsible walking poles at our new favorite shop, Kathmandu. We stroll Queenstown Gardens, a large park on a spit of land jutting out into the lake, passing by the Queenstown Croquet Club.
The weather continues to suck - windy and cool although at least it doesn't rain. Back to the hotel for a nap. The rest of the day falls under the desultory category - although we had deliberately scheduled in an off day every week or so it's still hard to do. The body needs rest but the mind is keen to keep exploring.
12/18/16: In transit then Te Anau
Wee bit of a cold turns into a bitch of a cold. We have an easy two hour drive through high tussock country today to Te Anau, broken up with a stop for coffee about half way through. The road winds through the Slate Range to Five Rivers, cutting across mostly farmland for the rest of the way. Te Anau is a tiny place, set on a large lake of the same name, serving mostly as a gateway for trips to Fiordland National Park and the Milford Sound. It is cold as shit and the wind is positively howling. We walk around town, do a little shopping, and eat a sandwich in a public park before grabbing a nap in our room.
A little later we brave the winds and walk around the end of the lake to the Te Anau Wildlife Center, a private bird sanctuary that houses a few injured and/or endangered birds. It isn't much. We fight the wind back around the lake, stopping to snap some pictures of my pant legs whipping in the wind, and take refuge in the Lakefront Lodge. The wind is so strong that there are small waves breaking over the edge of the shore.
The Lakefront Lodge is angled perpendicularly to the lake - the owner's apt faces the lake directly. One can see the lake if one leans out one's patio door. The advertising, I think, is a bit deceptive.
12/19/16: Te Anau
Today we are picked up outside of our hotel by bus and driven about 20 km to the lakeside town of Manapouri, set on the edge of the second deepest lake in NZ. From there we hop onto a ferry for about another windy ferry ride west to the small settlement of West Arm. We load up on our second bus and travel another hour over the Wilmot Pass, stopping at the crest to view Doubtful Sound, our destination, far below. THEN we board our second ferry of the day, a catamaran, for a three hour tour of Doubtful Sound.
The west coast of NZ is home to the huge Fiordlands National Park and it's a remote place. There are many sounds and bays jutting inland from the Tasman Sea, some big, some small. Milford Sound to the north is more famous and also busier as there is a small town that you can drive to right on the edge of the park. Our treat for all of the buses and ferries is that we literally don't see anyone else the whole day - the only public access to the park is via boat entering the sounds by way of the Tasman Sea.
The catamaran tools up and down the sound, stopping to look at dolphins and the occasional seal, winding in and out of the bays, inlets, and islands. The hills are covered with unbroken rain forest marching right down to the water's edge, with small waterfalls, most of them impermanent, flowing, splashing, dropping down into the sound. The wind is blowing and blowing hard much of the time but we're lucky to have a dry albeit cloudy day as the sound gets 9 meters of rain a year. My math tells me that's about 325 inches of rain. Yowser, that's some water. At one point the ferry stops and all of the motors and shit are shut down, everyone urged to shut up. Quite quiet with most of the sound water splashing down.
There were a bunch of spots on the vertical mountainsides that had long, open gashes in them. These were caused by tree avalanches. It's so hard for vegetation to gain a foothold on the steep hills that the roots of all the plants get all tangled up so that when a big tree falls it starts a chain reaction of root-ripping-out that takes out a whole wedge of plant life.
The trip over was a cultural experience. A French guy next to me put on headphones and watched a movie on his tablet during both halves of the bus ride. There were several Indian families traveling together who screeched and screamed the entire trip, pausing only to sleep or take an endless series of photographs of themselves. I don't think they looked at anything outside the entire time. I can tell it's been a long trip and a long time between meetings as my patience begins to approach nil.
The Kiwis have a habit of ending many sentences with an ascending inflection. It's cute. Here are some words I like: signposted, trundle, trolley. There are tons of people here from other places, especially the UK but we have met people from Argentina, Scotland, the Czech Republic, the Philippines, Belgium, and more.
It was a long day but a good one. I'm not sure I would take another cruise out there, though. It's pretty monotonous in its uniformity.
12/20/16: Te Anau
We have a guided trek today which we bag to do as an unguided trek. The excursions pre-arranged by our tour company have not been top-notch. We drive about 15 minutes to the start of the world-famous Kepler Track which follows the lake shore through mountain and red beech forest, with kamahi and some scattered rimu, miro, and yellow-flowering kowhai. We pound along for about four hours. It's a good hike but not a great one - there are a handful of these tracks in NZ that I think are most famous for those who are looking to do a multi-day hike on trails that have huts or campsites set up at marked locations. We pass a lot of people who are humping some serious luggage on their backs. I like our technique: hike, nap, shower, hot meal, good bed. Lots of birds and lots of shit growing all over each other. I can't imagine they have termites here as the vegetation seems to eat up the vegetation - you better be tough or something is going to grow all over your ass.
We had our flat white at a nice cafe today and we head back there for dinner - Te Anau is small so it's not stressful or time consuming to make the short drive.
12/21/16: In transit then Dunedin
Up and at 'em, an in-room breakfast of oatmeal with mueslix and peanut butter and some NZ fruit. We make the 3 1/2 hour drive to the Scottish transplant city of Dunedin. We're staying at The Wain, a very old hotel that has been sort of modernized, right outside the city center which is set around an eight-sided street called the Octagon, packed with bars and restaurants.
Dry for the drive but should I mention that it has started to rain?
We settle in, stroll the downtown area, including the train station, a massive bluestone structure in Flemish Renaissance style. It really starts to pour as we walk around. We have a kebab and a nice chat with a Turkish transplant who knows more about American politics than your average American. We're very enamored with the nature aspect of this trip - it confirms our suspicions that staying in small towns and rural areas is more to our liking. The big places - Auckland, Queenstown, Wellington for a few hours, and Dunedin - have been more work than pleasure for us. And it has been a total nature trip - our sole cultural effort has been an hour in a museum in Wellington.
12/22/16: Dunedin
The Wain has a breakfast buffet - we're up early and at the feeding trough: fruit and yogurt, toast with rhubarb jam, and mueslix with a couple of cups of crappy Nescafe. We are picked up at our hotel by Tim with Monarch Cruises and Tours, who drives us down to the wharf for our wildlife cruise out to the Taiaroa Head. On the first half of the cruise we're alone on the boat with Jurgen, a Belgian transplant - when I ask him how he ended up in NZ he just swept his hand out at the horizon. After about a half hour trip out of the immediate harbor, past Port Chalmers and the NZ Marine Studies Center, Larnach Castle peeking out of the trees up on the hills, we arrive at Wellers Rock and pick up a bunch of passengers.
The sea life viewing portion of the cruise begins in earnest. We've put on big, heavy, hooded, squall jackets - these come in handy as an icy wind begins blowing - and hang out for an hour or so in the mouth of Otago Harbor. The tidal rise and fall is two meters and nearly half of the harbor dries out at low tide giving food to many wading bird species.
The big attraction is the albatross breeding colony on the shore, the only mainland colony of albatross in the world. These huge birds spend their entire lives at sea, coming on land only to breed, with most of the colonies located on Antarctica. They have a specialized beak which allows them to drink sea water and then drain the salt out of nostrils on their beaks so they can exist on the water for long periods of time. The largest have a wingspan of 12 feet so they ride the thermals and float, hang, and dive all around the boat. We see six varieties - a number the captain has never exceeded - as well as petrels and shearwaters. It rains on and off, of course. We get to see a lot of fur seals on the rocks around the bay, nearly hunted to extinction a hundred years ago along with the whale population which was devastated in just ten years. The whales don't come into the harbor anymore.
Buddy The Captain and Jurgen drop us back at Wellers Rock, along with the other passengers, most of whom spent the trip drinking beer and eating sandwiches. There we're picked up for a tour of the blue penguin sanctuary, sort of a rescue mission for this critically endangered penguin species. Kind of sad as their fate appears inevitable.
The final piece to the puzzle is our van trip from the penguin reserve back to the hotel. Part of the road twists around the harbor itself, right at sea level, then ascends to the ridge of the peninsula for nice views over both the Pacific and the Otago.
We take a nap then walk down to a Turkish restaurant for a kebab plate and a nice, long talk with the owner, a transplant from Istanbul, who knows more about American politics than most Americans.
12/24/16: Dunedin
A big breakfast of fruit and yogurt, mueslix, and toast before tromping off on foot down the main shopping thoroughfares of Dunedin, heading for the botanical gardens. They're large and varied so we spend a couple of hours wandering the grounds during a mostly sunny morning. They have an aviary and gardens featuring horticulture from several areas of the world.
SuperK has made a friend on one of her computer games who lives in Dunedin so she meets us at the gardens cafe and we have a nice lunch.
12/25/16: Dunedin then in transit.
Merry Christmas #1. Think travel isn't hard?
Leave hotel.
Drive to Dunedin Airport and drop off car.
Three hour wait.
Two hour flight to Auckland.
Six hour layover.
Twelve hours to LAX.
Collect luggage and figure out how to make the two hour trip from LAX to our home - we can choose between a fixed destination shuttle running at fixed times, a shuttle that will drop us off at home but also may or may not take other passengers which can cause the drive time to vary wildly, and a dedicated Uber drive. We end up arriving just in time to catch the first option, then schedule an Uber trip from a small local airport home.
It is about 26 hours hotel to door. We're grateful we both slept on the plane and that the time difference is about 24 hours so we're pretty much on a standard sleeping schedule - the tough transitions come when the time difference is an odd amount, like 8 hours, which can make it really hard to get the sleeping patterns reestablished.
A legendary trip. Definitely top 3. Probably going back.
Fin.
We drive back through town and grab dinner at Pedro's. Where that name came from is a total mystery.
11/30/16: Tairua
Our hosts at the Rewa House B&B are Trish and Jeff, nice extroverted folks - he's a Brit, she's a native. Our breakfast is included - fried tomatoes, eggs, and mushrooms; yogurt and mueslix, toast, and coffee. We do the standard get lost thing trying to find Lynch Stream Trail - after some starting and stopping and stewing we drive to Sailor's Grave Beach and stroll along Otara Bay before a local gives us a heads up and we amazingly enough find the trail. It's a serious trail, rough and steep, so we hike but a short way through kauri trees and kohekoh and puiriri plants. There are a lot of huge fern trees and palms as well. Back to Tairua for a coffee and cake.
Rising out of the tidal bay around the town is a small defunct volcano called Paku, covered with vacation homes. We drive part of the way to the top, stopping at a park where another steep, slippery trail ends at the top with great views over the flats, the town, and the Pacific Ocean. We remark on the trip to Trish, who confides that she doesn't give that info out to everyone.
12/1/16: Tairua
Today we have another big AM feed with our wonderful hosts Trish and Jeff, then get picked up by Doug Johanson AKA Kiwi Dundee. This dude is right out of central casting: equal amounts enthusiasm, energy, and total bullshit. I don't know what to believe and what to roll my eyes at.
We drive south of town to Broken Hills Park where Doug eschews a well-marked trail and directs us to follow him vertically up a "track" which looks like unbroken forest to us. But it turns out he knows what he's doing - he uncovers relics that he has hidden in the past that come from an old gold mining village that used to be located in the area, and points out all of the native flora and fauna including fan ferns, black ferns, and silver ferns; the native Kauri trees; huge Monterrey Pines; and many types of birds. He is incredibly stoked about New Zealand and his energy is infectious. But he doesn't do much shutting up and it gets a little wearying for me.
We walk into some mines that are no longer in use - he points out glowworms hanging from the low ceiling, their name arising from a faint light they generate to attract prey. At one point he starts humming, the noise causing a vibrating resonance in the cave which he says is coming from a freight train crossing the mountains 20 miles away - this is total bullshit. Then he tells me to turn around in the pitch black cave and try to duplicate his efforts - when I fail he asks me to keep moving closer and closer to the wall. He flicks on his light and we see that the wall is covered with these big, black katydid/grasshopper looking things - harmless, of course, but pretty fearsome looking. He was a pretty funny guy.
"It's a beautiful country, Steve. Do you see those mountains over there, Steve? Beautiful. Amazing."
We had lunch of hamburgers and burritos in a Whangamata cafe - very tasty, topped off with the obligatory Flat White - before making our way to the Opoutere Beach Preserve. An hour or so of strolling on a . . . well, beach and mud flats. It does have a healthy population of mangroves, one of an unusual breed of the tree that thrives outside of tropical areas, as well as a lot of nesting shore birds including the ruby oyster catcher.
Doug is not a big fan of non-native animals, holding mammals like the stoat, ferret, rabbit, and possum in particular disregard. These animals don't have any natural predators in this closed ecosystem so they've thrived while simultaneously wrecking havoc on the native birds - creatures that have never been stalked so they make easy prey for the intruders. The ferrets were initially introduced to hunt the rabbits that were tearing up the grasslands but found it a lot easier to hunt flightless birds instead of quick bunnies. The result has been devastating to large, slow-moving birds like the kiwi.
12/2/16: Tairua then In Transit
We leave our great hosts and head South to an up and coming vacation town on the Pacific called Tauranga. We detour toward the ocean and climb to the top of a defunct volcano called Mt. Maunganui. It's a steep climb but we're afforded beautiful views over the town and the ocean. There's a huge cruise ship docked and a lot of old people tottering around.
Down the road another couple of hours to the geothermal capital of NZ - Rotorua, whose namesake lake when the large crater formed by a huge volcanic eruption collapsed in on itself. We're in the very ordinary Novotel right on the lake, paying $10 a day for slow Internet with another $30 tacked on for a "lake view room," the lake visible if you scrunch up in the corner of the room. A small dinner at a restaurant where the only other customers were an incredibly loud, incredibly unfunny group of drunks laughing uproariously, a stroll about, and into bed we go.
12/3/16: Rotorua
Rotorua is the most visible demonstration in NZ that the area is a morass of active volcanoes. About an hour south of Rotorua is Wai-O-Tapu geothermal site. It's an amazing place of diverse geothermal activity including huge volcanic craters, a big body of water called the Champagne Pool, steaming creeks, sinter terrace formations, bubbling mud pots, hot and cold pools of many different colors - yellow, gray, blue, green - depending on the kinds of minerals being leached out of the ground. We join a big group of people for the daily eruption of the Lady Knox Geyser which is stimulated by putting a surfactant into the opening, causing hot and cold water to mix which causes the geyser to blow. It's a little stagy, actually - not that big and not that long. We grab a quick lunch of ham sandwiches after walking around this amazing site for a few hours.
Closer to town but well off the beaten path is Waimangu Volcanic Valley, an area caused by the collapse of a bunch of smaller volcanoes. It's as empty as Wai-O-Tapu was jammed. It's home to the world's largest hot water spring, colorful geothermal terraces, and regenerating native forest. There's a big pool which has a fluctuating water level depending on several factors - rain fall, overflow from a lake, evaporation - and has a varying color depending on mineral content. It's a wild blue today. There are jets of steam shooting out of the earth everywhere and signs telling you that the water is at 212F.
The walk takes about an hour and a half - we're all alone for most of the time. It was very relaxing and very nice. It felt primordial, like a T Rex could come walking out of the fog and the mist. We end up at a lake where we could have taken a boat cruise but we were worn out at that point, choosing instead to hop the shuttle bus back to the entrance.
12/4/16: Rotorua
Today is the day of Volcanic Air. Some fruit and oatmeal in the room and then we walk 100 yds to the Volcanic Air Jetty for our helicopter ride to White Island, home of the most active volcano in New Zealand. When I ask the last time that it erupted the response was: "April." We figure that we are going to get picked up for a ride to the little regional airport that we passed on the way in and where there was a Volcanic Air terminal. Whap whap whap, here comes our helicopter, flying low over the lake. It slows, drops, and lands on a dock not much wider than the helicopter itself. Out pops Cory. We hop in, buckle up, put on our headsets, and spin up into the air. The front seat has full canopies all the way around so we can see exactly where we are going. We actually land on the lawn of a little lodge and pick up a couple of German tourists before resuming the flight. I feel like a door gunner in Nam.
It's about half an hour out to the island. We bank around so that we can get some photos before dropping right down onto the lava rock. It is actually privately owned - purchased a hundred years ago for a dollar - and contains the ruins of an old sulfur mining operation that existed in the 30s before eventually proving unprofitable. The volcano is spewing sulfurous steam into the air - there are bubbling mud pots and fumaroles galore. We spend an hour or so exploring before buckling in for our return flight. Cory stops at the airport to refuel - the copter is licensed for a certain amount of weight per trip so he couldn't just top off the tank before we started - and then we climb up to about 3000 feet and land on Mt. Tarawera.
Tarawera is a huge inactive volcano that last blew in the 1880s, obliterating several Maori villages and drastically altering the shape of several lakes in the area. It is now a sacred, closed Maori site. The views from the top are spectacular. It's also quite chilly and quite windy at that altitude. We take off, drop the Germans at their $1000/night lodge, and return to the landing dock. Quite the experience for both of us. We stagger into a restaurant for a big meal, both feeling the endorphins of the experience.
That was our Rock Star moment, blowing in to land on the dock while a hundred or so passengers waiting to board a tour boat out to the island were snapping pictures of us.
12/5/16: Rotorua then In Transit
We check out of our pretty ordinary Novotel by the lakeside and swing by Volcanic Air to snag a cap, then it's off to Tongariro National Park.
On the way we detour to Orakei Korako (or A Place of Adorning in Mauri) - a smaller, even more off-the-beaten track thermal attraction. A boat takes you a couple of hundred yards across a lake and from there you can walk the grounds. It's small and unremarkable but deserted so we enjoy ourselves. A flat white on the deck overlooking the lake and we're back on our way. We stop halfway at Lake Taupo - the largest lake in NZ - to take in the view and eat a sandwich, the road skirting the eastern shore, winding past little coves and bays.
We remark again at the fact that the lakes have no homes lining their shores and are free from jet-skis and noisy motorboats. The Kiwis prize their natural beauty, and silence is part of the equation. The road then heads for the Tongariro National Park, hemmed in by the impressive peaks of Tongariro, Ruapehu, and Ngauruhoe.
We arrive after a rather long drive - the roads are narrow and very windy and the whole driving on the left side of the road is not intuitive so I have to be hyper-vigilant about keeping the car where it's supposed to be - at the Ruapeho Country Lodge, a B&B on the southern flank of Tongariro. Our hosts - Heather and Peter - direct us to a tramp about 20 minutes away where we plunge into Hobbit Land - wet, green, mossy, ferny, every tree buried under layers of symbiotic vegetation. It's a great walk which ends at a waterfall. We grab a bit to eat at a local pub - expensive food again and not enough of it - and hit the sack early.
We're sort of surprised at the fu-fu quality and great expense of the Kiwi dining scene. We routinely shell out $50 for a meal and don't believe we've spent less than $35 yet.
12/6/16: Tongariro
Our guide for this day - Jemma - picks us up at our B&B. Lots of recent rains made our scheduled bike ride unnavigable so we substitute a couple of two hour hikes instead.
"Will we have time for a flat white in between the hikes?" I ask the owner the night before.
"Sure," she said.
"Or maybe a bite to eat?"
"Absolutely!" she said brightly.
I suspected a stiff headwind when I asked Jemma - a thoroughly delightful young woman - about the bushes covered with bright yellow flowers that we say everywhere.
"I know nothing about the local plant life," she replied. "I'm more of a rock person." This was the first of many lies and mis-directions and slight exaggerations that we'd get today.
We drove for about 50 minutes into Tongariro National Park, stopping briefly along the way so that she could coordinate things with her boss. The hike is called Silica Creek - it starts at a higher elevation, totally out in the open, windy, sunny, the ground covered in with low-growing native bush. As we wind down the mountain, the verdant Hobbit forest rises around us as we follow a snow-melt fed river cranking along side us.
Jemma has a bum knee and doesn't set a scorching pace even though KK is right on her ass. At one point I tell her that she certainly isn't moving too quickly for us. She is limping noticeably at times.
We finish the hike and have a coffee. Jemma is texting furiously and indicates that the hike took longer than it should have - both KK and I got the impression that she was laying the blame at our feet - and started throwing out a lot of conflicting and suspect estimates about our start times and end times and drive times. She steps away to talk to her boss, returning to suggest a couple of shorter hikes, indicating the second half of the hiking extravaganza would take her past a two o'clock stopping time. This was the first either of us had heard anything about a time limit. If there was a time limit then we would have expected an experienced guide to tell us to pick up the pace. That's what the guide was there for. To guide us.
Being a slightly miffable guy I began to get slightly miffed. Kindly, I think, I suggested that it might be better to just head back to the ranch rather than try to fit in less desirable activities to fit an arbitrary time slot. At this point it seemed that she picked up on the vibe that the customers might be getting a little miffed, and she started to get awfully chatty.
KK and I are nice people. We didn't make her feel bad. We didn't let it ruin the day, either. It's a long trip and there are going to be ups and downs, victories and defeats. This is The Program working in my life. I don't get too up or too down. I get miffed but the miffed-ness doesn't take me to A Dark Place anymore.
Through mountain beech forest, the Silica track travels alongside a cascading stream, arriving at the creamy-white terraces of Silica Rapids. Sub-alpine plants, amid a mixture of swamp and tussock country, feature around the track as it returns to the Bruce Road 2.5 kilometers above the starting point. This highly varied walk reveals a range of vegetation types and also has spectacular views of Ruapehu and Ngauruhoe on a clear day.
Anyway, there's a small town near our B&B - Ohakune - which mostly caters to the skiing crowd - the place is mostly shut down over the summer - where we grab a greasy fish and chips dinner.
I'm not sure that the pre-arranged part of the trip has been worth the money up to this point: thumbs-up for the chopper ride; Doug was a wash; and Jemma a bust.
12/7/16: Tongariro
A big breakfast this morning of fruit, yogurt, mueslix, eggs, and toast from our hosts Heather and Peter, and it's back on the road to the mountain. We do a couple of hikes today - Taranaki Falls and Whakapapa. We wind from Hobbit Land to open vistas populated with low growing native scrub. It's high elevation, windy, cold, so anything that survives is tough. There's water everywhere, ice-cold snow-melt coming down from the higher elevations. There's enough fresh water here to take care of poor, old, dry CA for a year.
Bogs develop in the sub-alpine and low alpine zones where drainage is poor. Suitable sites are hollows formed by glaciers and flat areas under high rainfall conditions on glacial terraces, mountain passes, and flat topped mountain ridges. Where rainfall is high, rain may provide most of the water in the bogs, but in drier eastern areas drainage from the surrounding slopes makes the major contribution. When the water table is near the surface, the dominant plants in the bogs are of cushion form. Cushion plants are freely but closely branched; and the ultimate twigs, with their upper living and lower dead leaves, are so closely pressed together lengthwise that the exposed tips of the living leaves form a firm, continuous, often unyielding surface. Many cushion plants can be stood on without suffering any visible effects.
I put that section in because we've been running into these weird, swampy areas high up on the mountains. These plants are tough.
The upper and lower tracks form a loop with the waterfall situated around the half-way point. Tumbling 20 metres over the edge of a large lava flow, which erupted from Ruapehu 15,000 years ago, Taranaki Falls plunge into a boulder-ringed pool. From below the falls there are spectacular views into the water-worn gorges of the Wairere Stream.
We're relaxing in our room when Peter pops in to deliver a load of laundry. We chat a bit and then he says: "So do you want to give the Triumph a spin?" Peter has a collection of old Triumph sports cars - a couple of Spitfires and a TR-7 - that I have been admiring continually."Oh, that's OK. Really," I said. I thought he was just trying to be nice. He was really quite insistent. He had already pulled the car out of the garage.
So I climb in this 40 year old, bright yellow sports car, get a feel for the clutch and steering wheel, and blast off. Half an hour later I climb out in the middle of a big endorphin rush. Wow, an old sports car, right hand drive, on a two lane road in NZ. Can't make this shit up.
There is a steaming hot tub at the facility that we soak in for a while which felt good on our old joints. Into town for another overpriced dinner and that's a wrap.
Our landlords have a small puppy called Ricki - a poodle/spaniel mix and he's beyond cute. We also ran into the smallest bird in NZ - less than 8 gm - called The Rifleman. They're running neck and neck with me for favorite animal so far.
12/8/16: In Transit then Wellington
Oh, Wellington we hardly knew ye.
We bid adieu to our Triumph-owning hosts and head south toward Wellington where we plan on catching the ferry across the Marlborough Sound to begin our conquest of the south island. The drive starts out on a small, narrow, winding road that snakes in and out of rolling hills on the route from Tongariro. Day: cool and cloudy. As we make our way south - stopping for a flat white that takes 15 minutes to make it out to us and a big shop at a Kathmandu outlet store - the land flattens out and becomes pasture and farmland. The skies darken and it begins to spit. Luckily we've made it off the snaky road and are now on a more major route because it starts to rain with purpose. We're right up against the ocean as the north island narrows before we enter Wellington proper.
It's a good day for a rain/travel day as both of us have sore feet and tired legs. We're in a sumptuous hotel right across the street from Te Papa Tongarewa, the national museum of NZ. We stroll through the exhibits which feature native Maori history. It's mildly interesting.
12/9/16: Ferry Then Nelson
There is something great about going to countries where things run smoothly. SuperK and I are trying to alternate exotic travel with less-exotic travel. On one side I don't think that I've eaten one foodstuff that I haven't eaten before - on the other hand goddam is it nice to be in a first world country where things run smoothly.
We get up this morning - a travel day - and head downstairs at our very tony hotel. Our car has been pulled up. Tim gives me directions to the ferry that will take us from the north island to the south island and they're good, accurate, truthful directions. We drive directly to the ferry and the route is so well signposted that I didn't even need Tim's directions. We park the car, toss the keys in a drop-off box, and check our luggage - all the kid needs is our surname to instantly confirm our reservations - and board the ferry. We've paid for a kind of first class lounge where we have comfy seats and scarf up a great breakfast with smoothies and espresso and cookies and shit. It's really comfortable. We even have our own bathrooms. There's a section of deck right outside the lounge where I spend a lot of time strolling about - it's kind of protected from the wind which has really picked up once we are out of the harbor.
The Wellington to Picton ferry is a big ship that carries people and a lot of vehicle traffic, including big lorries. We leave Wellington, the city perched on the hills at the very bottom of a very well-protected bay. It's cool and windy, the clouds sitting right on the hills. After we break out of the harbor and into the open ocean the skies clear and it becomes quite pleasant. After a couple of hours we enter the torturous passage through all of the small islands and peninsulas at the very northern tip of the south island. The clouds thicken and drop down low again. The captain pulls into Picton terminal and backs the huge ship into a narrow space like it was a motorcycle.
We disembark and head over to Avis. I walk in the room and see my name on a pre-packaged reservation. Smooth as silk although I bicker with an agent over where exactly my car is. It was supposed to be in spot 12B and it sure was not in spot 12B.
The drive to Nelson is on another twisty, turny road through the mountains. This is vineyard country and we pass winery after winery before the road meets up with the coast and we enter Nelson. Our B&B is in an old house originally built for a sea captain.
Before dinner we walk through town and into a park that leads straight up the side of a hill and gives us a great view over the harbor and the town. The name of the park - the Centre of NZ - reflects the work of John Spence Browning, the Chief Surveyor for Nelson in the 1870's. He used the top of the hill as a central survey point for doing the first geodetic survey of New Zealand when earlier isolated surveys where combined. An official survey in 1962 located the centre of New Zealand at 41 degrees South, 172 degrees East, which is a point in the Spooners Range in the Golden Downs Forest.
Dinner at an pizzeria and we call it a day.
12/10/16: Nelson
It's a windy, rainy day in Nelson, almost unheard of in this city which is reputedly the sunniest in NZ. We timed our stay for the Saturday Market where lots of local artisans set up tents outside. It's mostly food and produce - not too much in the way of fine art. The wind begins to blow with purpose - freaking out the locals, half of whom tear down their booths and skedaddle. We have a cup of coffee under shelter and then walk over to the city's cathedral, maybe 100 years old. It's uninspiring although there is a Christmas tree competition set up inside which amuses us for a half an hour. The weather is pretty grim at this point. SuperK snags a glass decoration before we hightail it back to the hotel.
After a brief nap we climb back up into the hills for exercise, taking a different route through the Centre of New Zealand, with good views over the city and ocean, and to hassle a bunch of sheep up there.
All in all not an overly thrilling day.
The B&B experiences have been uniformly pretty good - we've both enjoyed the people that we've stayed with. We'll have to consider these more seriously for our next trip.
12/11/16: Nelson
We're up and at 'em for an early breakfast, then outside for a 7:15AM pick up at our B&B to take us to the tip of the northern island, home of Abel Tasman National Park. The owner gets a call from downtown wondering where we are so we hotfoot it 15 minutes down to what turns out to be a public bus station and clamber on board a Greyhound type bus. This conveyance takes almost two hours to make the drive that would have taken an hour at most IN OUR CAR, stopping to pick up folks at bus stops, veering onto side streets to collect other tourists, even stopping to pick up a couple of bundles of newspapers and bread at one point. We're baffled after all of the first class treatment we've gotten so far.
We disembark at the small settlement of Kaiteriteri, the gateway to Abel Tasman where we join two other couples with our long-haired, guitar-playing, English-born kayak guide, Squid. We hop a ferry shuttle and scoot about a half hour up the beach and make a wet landing at the actual kayaking HQ. There is no access to the park itself except by boat or along isolated hiking trails - makes me think of beautiful Yellowstone in winter full of diesel-spewing, loud snowmobiles. Not in NZ, my friend.
I shit you not but it takes a good little while to get buckled into the two-person kayak - splash skirts and life jackets and dry sumps in the vehicle to store your gear. The seats are pretty ingenuous - there is a rubber skirt you put on that then pulls tight over the well so that your bottom half stays dry even with all of the splashing going on.
We're out there for the better part of four hours including a stop for lunch on a beach with an estuary behind it full of crabs and little silver fishes. On the way back we circle some small islands that make up part of the Tonga Island Sea Colony, with some seals lazing about.
It's hard work and I'm sure we'll be feeling it tomorrow. I bet that ocean kayaking is a lot harder than lake kayaking - once we had to take off from the beach through some small waves and we were constantly fighting swells and currents and the wind. I'm glad that we did it but I have no plans to do it again soon - I sure didn't see a lot of other people out there my age. I've never been a big fan of wet sports - walking barefoot on shells and shit like that.
We labor back to Nelson on the local and collapse into bed.
The Kiwis are kind of loud drunks. There have been a handful of times when we've had a meal in a restaurant with a group of people talking loudly and laughing uproariously. Because we can hear their elevated conversations I can say with certainty that they aren't as funny as they think they are. Reminds me of what an ass I was when I was drinking.
12/12/16: In Transit then Punakaiki
Long drive today which started out in a hilly region south of Nelson. The roads are narrow and often incredibly twisty so forward progress can be halting. After a couple of hours the path breaks out into a relatively straight line and goes through pretty but unremarkable farm and pasture land. The sky has been threatening all day and it begins to rain. Good day to be in a car on the road. Eventually we rendezvous with the Tasman sea on the southern island's east coast. The road turns torturous again as we wind along the ocean.
We've been told that gas stations can be few and far in between. We stopped for coffee this morning in the crummy town of Murchison, with about half a tank, never thinking that we needed to fill up. We drive and drive and drive through desperately empty land before reaching the coast and turning south - there we see a sign that tells us No Petrol for 90 KM. It was a bit anxiety-producing until we noticed the car had a range finder that told us we had about 150 KM worth of fuel left. Still a little anxiety-producing. Right before we get to our night's lodging traffic stops and people get out of their cars - the land here has marched right up to the edge of the water, again becoming very narrow and twisty and sitting high above the ocean. A local tells me that there are frequent mudslides and rock falls which block the road and there ain't any alternatives to the route - after about a 20 minute delay we're on our way again.
The beach, on the shores of the Tasman Sea, is quite remarkable. The waves begin breaking far out so that you end up getting several rows of waves - they are not trifling little waves, either. From time to time we can see a lone surfer in a wet suit giving it a try. Our hotel is in a tiny town called Punakaiki which is famous for something called the Pancake Rocks, a weird stacking of wind and ocean eroded limestone jutting out into the sea on a little headland. The park has a trail leading through more temperate rain forest that gives us views down on the rocks and blowholes and inlets that make up the attraction. Hanging onto the cliffs between the low and high tide lines are a type of kelp that adhere so tightly that the rock gives way before their tendrils do - pieces of the kelp are often found with rock interwoven in their roots.
We park our car and walk for a couple of hours on a trail called Pororari Creek. We follow this through amazing lowland rain forest, the trail tracking the fast-moving river. The vegetation is in control - there are big, old trees that are almost buried in mounds and layers of all kind of fern, moss, and lichen. There are actually small trees growing on bigger ones if the big guys get horizontal enough. The local trees are the northern rata, the rimo, and the miro; the local birds the tui, bellbird, and NZ pigeon, a huge animal. At one point I see a brown bird cross the trail and forage in the leaf detritus - the namesake kiwi bird.
Dinner tonight is at the hotel - 95 NZD, the most I've ever paid for a meal - and we're both still hungry. We head back up to the Pancakes because it's almost high tide - wow, what a difference. The waves are absolutely smashing into the cliff face, throwing sprays of water high into the air. They have, over time, created a lot of nooks and crannies that the water is blasting through. The highlight is the blowholes - when a large enough wave comes in bits of foam are ejected with a huff of air that almost sounds dragon-like. Totally cool.
12/13/16: In transit, then Franz Josef
It's cold this morning and there isn't that much to do here besides see the Pancake Rocks and hike so we blow south again. We drive in and out of light rain, the road always twisting and weaving and turning, flanked on one side by the Southern Alps and the ever-present ocean on the other. Our only stops were to grab a coffee and a tank of gas! We get a flat white at the petrol station and are pretty content just to know there's a full tank in the car. You know it's going to be a good day when the highlight is filling your tank with $5.50/gallon gas. About halfway there's a small town that used to be into gold mining so we stroll around there to stretch our legs a bit.
Our destination is the Westland National Park, home to the Franz Josef Glacier and it's brother Fox Glacier, rarities in the glacier world as they are nearly at sea level which makes them relatively accessible, glacier-wise. We have a heli-hike scheduled for tomorrow where we chopper up and walk around on the glacier itself for a few hours but the weather makes that seem dicey. It's one thing to walk on ice - another altogether to walk on wet ice in the rain.
We check into our hotel and get directions to a track that leads right up to the face of the FJ Glacier. It's no longer possible to hike unguided up to the glacier because its stability has deteriorated that much. It's raining steadily - of course - as we hike with a big crowd of people over a bland, uninspiring moraine leading as close to the glacier as you can get on your own. There's a lot of ice cold water pouring down a river and you can see by the rocky, unvegetated expanse that the river can be as much as ten times wider during maximum melt times. It's not much of a trip. The glacier looks dirty and sad, and the sheer volume of people jostling along the trail is a turn-off. Probably in the sun the view would be more beautiful but, as it is, this day another example of the prime attraction being a bit of a let-down.
There is an hilarious variety of outfits on the hike up ranging from people in T-shirts and sandals to those in full mountain climbing regalia. Remember this is in a steady, unrelenting rain - not a down-pour but not drizzle, either. If you don't have on rain gear you're going to get wet. There are a few ridiculous looking people using umbrellas. Real backwoods people.
On the way down we detour off on a short side track that leads to Peter's Pond, a small mountain pond that is at a perfect spot to reflect back the glacier. It's slowly being overtaken by vegetation and will one day turn into a bog.
We've debated the wisdom of the whole pre-booking thing with the tours - there have been a few times when the weather or our physical state would have made it nice not to go but then again how many of these things would we have done if we hadn't pre-booked?
Over here the sports are cricket, rugby, and that's about it. Maybe a little soccer - maybe a little horse racing. Rugby rules - the famous NZ All Blacks, purveyors of the Maori Haka meant to intimidate their opponent and inspire themselves.
12/14/16: Franz Josef
We wake up to a gruesome looking sky and light rain with a heavier downpour predicted for later. The helicopter people wouldn't cancel the flight last night - no doubt eager to book as many people as possible during the short summer season - and at 9 AM they are still keeping the reservation open, although they do say that the odd that we go are no better than 50/50. KK and I are both anxious at this point - the trip looks absolutely fantastic in the sun but we're both dubious about slipping and sliding on the ice in the rain and fog. Back to their office at 10 to get the final word that we're a no-go for today. It's more of a relief than anything and we've always said that with travel weather is the great wild-card - you can plan trips during periods that are historically calm, but you can't control it at all.
We take off in search of some local trails. First, we hike a track called Lake Wombat and it's fabulous - an hour and a half through more spectacular temperate rain forest. It's slow going at first because we're constantly stopping to gape at some ancient tree or a stump buried under 100 lbs of moss and ferns. The trail ends at the namesake lake and we backtrack to our car. There's a side trail that we follow for a hundred yards that we think might be too technical - if I come back I'm definitely going to bring real hiking boots and hiking poles. It's raining softly but that seems appropriate: rain in the rain forest. Rain on a trail is eminently more endurable than rain on the ice and in the wind.
After a short stop in town to buy some knicknacks we troop off to Callery Gorge. This track follows an access road up an incline before diving back into the rain forest. The rain is pouring down sluices and creeks and small rivers, thundering down to the main glacier feed. It's incredible. At the base of the hills you can see wisps and chunks of clouds clinging to the sides of the mountains - we walk through a couple of these, the track getting very foggy and wet when we do. We stop and call it good on a swinging bridge suspended over a rocky waterfall delivering water to the river down below.
The area seems full of magic. The forest is almost impenetrable to the eye and there is green shit growing on top of everything - many of the bigger trees are buried under several layers of guest vegetation: moss holding ferns holding small trees. We visualize hobbit homes and troll nooks and fairy glens. A few definitions for your edification.
Gnomes, probably from Latin gēnomos (‘earth dweller’), were first seen in the Renaissance period, lived underground, moving through earth as easily as we move through air. They were also kind of surly.
Dwarves, from Old English dwarȝ, are first seen in Norse mythology. They’re wise craftspeople, some of whom live underground but some of whom live freely in the forests or mountains. They are friendlier than gnomes and were originally not of particularly diminutive stature. At some point, possibly because ‘lesser’ supernatural creatures got interpreted as ‘smaller’, they became seen as short. In modern media, they are skilled brutes with a warrior sensibility.
Though elves have a complex mythology in the Norse Sagas, they took on a simpler, sinister turn for Anglophones. In the Middle Ages in England, they were seen as tricksters. In the Elizabethan era, they got mixed up with fairies. This is why we think of them as small, even though they were not originally seen that way. It was in the Victorian period that we started viewing them as ‘Keebler elves’ with pointed ears and stocking feet. This also leads to our modern idea of Santa's elves.
Back in the room we take a nap and the rain begins to fall in earnest. I mean coming down.
12/15/16: In transit then Queenstown
It really, really, really rained last night - a thunderous roar on the roof that woke me a couple of times. By morning it had slowed to a trickle - a good thing as I was concerned about wheeling my little white Corolla (red one on the north island) around the sinuous strips of asphalt that pass for roads here in NZ. The signs that warn of slippery conditions on wet roads really show a car going ajar, almost upside down.
We have an all-day drive from Franz J to Wellington so we take our time and stop a lot: for gas, to look at a few waterfalls - some visible from the viewpoint as advertised, some not - to pee; to pee outside; to eat lunch standing in a pull-off; to detour to Lake Matheson for what would have been a spectacular view of Mt. Cook and the glaciers had not the clouds been sitting right on top of the mountain tops; for a flat white; for another flat white; for gas and a flat white; and more of the same. There is no rain at all for the first third of the drive, all typical twisty affairs through mountains; then intermittent rain through some transitional territory; before finally turning to a hard, cold rain as we moved through the flat lands full of vineyards and apricot trees and into Queenstown. Near the end of the drive the road hugs the eastern shore of huge Lake Wanaka, jogs right over a narrow neck of land, and then hugs the western shore of huge Lake Hawea. I mean these are big-ass lakes.
Mercifully, we find the hotel without a hitch as it's really coming down. Dinner is noodles in front of the TV, agog at how cold it is outside, cold enough to bring snow down on the tops of The Remarkables, the mountain range we can see across Lake Wakatipu, the body of water that fronts Queenstown itself.
More noodles or sandwiches and cookies for dinner - no way we were leaving the hotel in this weather and after that long drive.
12/16/16: Queenstown
We eat breakfast in our very nice hotel room: oatmeal with mueslix and pb, a banana, the odd cookie or two. Our destination today is the famous Routeburn Track, a trail that takes three days to complete if you want to do the whole thing which we do not want to do. The track starts in the town of Glenorchy, about 50km north of Queenstown. It's a great drive, weaving in and out and around the hills that front Lake Wakatipu. The water is this surreal aquamarine color - the higher elevations are all blanketed with a light covering of snow. It feels like we're in the Alps. The temperature is up a bit but it's still frosty.
We mosey around lost for a bit on back roads - the paved variety having given away to rougher gravel roads - before we find the start of the trail. At one point we flag down a passing van to get some directions. There is another good, long stretch on gravel roads before we find where we want to be. It's a very nice hike - mossy but open beech forests tracking a fast moving river which is pouring down a rock-strewn bed. Because of all of the rain and the melting snow water is flowing everywhere - there are streams and waterfalls and water cascading in sheets over vertical moss beds. We eat lunch in the Routeburn Flats where we sit in a natural clearing surrounded by peaks and waterfalls.
As we climb it gets colder and colder until it's pretty goddam cold - we have on T-shirts and long sleeve shirts and vests and a rain jacket and it's still not enough. There are a number of swinging bridges that cross the larger streams and creeks. Routeburn is probably a treasure if you're making the three day crossing but we've been on a lot of nicer trails that were much less well-traveled.
Dinner in the room again - noodles and bread. Just too tired to get the car out of the cramped parking space and out the tortuously small drives to reach the main road.
12/16/16: Queenstown
Our hotel is on the outskirts of town so we hop a hotel shuttle that drops us off in the city center. We walk a few blocks to the quay and board a coal-fired, steam-powered 1912 ferry that takes us across this huge lake to Walter Peak High Point Country Farm, the trip taking about and hour. The highlight of the cruise occurs when I try to take two nice flat whites in porcelain cups out onto the deck. As I open the door a huge wind - totally non-existent when we were sitting at the dock - blows most of the contents onto my clothing. I got flat-whited.
Our pre-arranged tour today is for some cycling. We have imagined nice Huffy cruisers doodling slowly and peacefully down bucolic country lanes. Instead we get hulking Matt who places each of us on mountain bikes with huge tires and shoos us down what I would charitably call a rutted gravel road. The front wheel is constantly jumping laterally and bouncing over some of the larger rocks in the road - not taking a spill headfirst into the gravel quickly becomes Priority One. And being mountain bikes the seating angles us painfully forward to increase stability. It is not a comfortable position.
The first section of the miserable road is along the edge of Lake Wakatipu with the snowy Remarkables reflected in the water. It winds through private farms with sheep and cows. Once we have to stop to open up a sheep gate where we're ushered into an area rife with the animals who look up and gape at us, only scattering when we approach too closely - I feel like I'm herding them. There are a lot of cattle, too, and an unbelievable number of calves. Some of these guys flee when we pass - some stand and look at us as if to say: "What?"
The track bends inland and follows the Von River for a while, the valley narrowing, hemmed in with high, sere hills. After about 20 awful, grinding kilometers we reach a pretty much unfordable river. Matt picks us up, loads up the dusty bikes, and we drive another 30km to Lake Mavora. We had expected a picnic lunch stop at some point - when we realized this was not going to happen we gobble down our prepackaged roast beef sandwich and apple in the van - we've been working hard physically and it's now early afternoon.
We're not sure why we drove the extra distance as we get out, peek at the lake, then hop back onto the bikes for Round Two. At least now we're on flat land and there's even a downhill portion so we ride maybe another 10 km. We're basically staring at the ground, trying to keep moving and distract ourselves from the pain. A lot of the problem is that we're on rough ground on bikes we're not familiar with so we get to experience some new pains - wrists, necks, backs bent at unfamiliar angles.
I stop and wave a white hankie at Matt following in the chase van - the other couple on the trip had given up long ago. Matt drives us back to the farm for our poor man's High Tea - scones and jam, some little snack bars, and cold coffee. We're catatonic on the ferry back. We snare a couple of Subway sandwiches in Queenstown while waiting for the hotel shuttle because there is no WAY either of us could make it out the door to get food or sit at a restaurant. We're doing a lot more in the way of putting together quick meals in the room at night and in the morning simply because we're both tired of the effort of eating out.
NZ is definitely a place for the young. We're definitely in the older category on our adventures. Queenstown, for instance, is mostly a series of outlets for adventure sports: kayaking, helicopter or plane excursions, hiking, speedboat trips, hang-gliding, and the like.
12/17/16: Queenstown
We are toast this morning and I think I've a wee bit of a cold. The combination of a too long trek and a way too long bike ride has left both of us feeling stiff and sore and old so KK does laundry while I stock up at the local Pac N Save, then nap time. We do make it downtown for a walkabout, grabbing a coffee and some nice collapsible walking poles at our new favorite shop, Kathmandu. We stroll Queenstown Gardens, a large park on a spit of land jutting out into the lake, passing by the Queenstown Croquet Club.
The weather continues to suck - windy and cool although at least it doesn't rain. Back to the hotel for a nap. The rest of the day falls under the desultory category - although we had deliberately scheduled in an off day every week or so it's still hard to do. The body needs rest but the mind is keen to keep exploring.
12/18/16: In transit then Te Anau
Wee bit of a cold turns into a bitch of a cold. We have an easy two hour drive through high tussock country today to Te Anau, broken up with a stop for coffee about half way through. The road winds through the Slate Range to Five Rivers, cutting across mostly farmland for the rest of the way. Te Anau is a tiny place, set on a large lake of the same name, serving mostly as a gateway for trips to Fiordland National Park and the Milford Sound. It is cold as shit and the wind is positively howling. We walk around town, do a little shopping, and eat a sandwich in a public park before grabbing a nap in our room.
A little later we brave the winds and walk around the end of the lake to the Te Anau Wildlife Center, a private bird sanctuary that houses a few injured and/or endangered birds. It isn't much. We fight the wind back around the lake, stopping to snap some pictures of my pant legs whipping in the wind, and take refuge in the Lakefront Lodge. The wind is so strong that there are small waves breaking over the edge of the shore.
The Lakefront Lodge is angled perpendicularly to the lake - the owner's apt faces the lake directly. One can see the lake if one leans out one's patio door. The advertising, I think, is a bit deceptive.
12/19/16: Te Anau
Today we are picked up outside of our hotel by bus and driven about 20 km to the lakeside town of Manapouri, set on the edge of the second deepest lake in NZ. From there we hop onto a ferry for about another windy ferry ride west to the small settlement of West Arm. We load up on our second bus and travel another hour over the Wilmot Pass, stopping at the crest to view Doubtful Sound, our destination, far below. THEN we board our second ferry of the day, a catamaran, for a three hour tour of Doubtful Sound.
The west coast of NZ is home to the huge Fiordlands National Park and it's a remote place. There are many sounds and bays jutting inland from the Tasman Sea, some big, some small. Milford Sound to the north is more famous and also busier as there is a small town that you can drive to right on the edge of the park. Our treat for all of the buses and ferries is that we literally don't see anyone else the whole day - the only public access to the park is via boat entering the sounds by way of the Tasman Sea.
The catamaran tools up and down the sound, stopping to look at dolphins and the occasional seal, winding in and out of the bays, inlets, and islands. The hills are covered with unbroken rain forest marching right down to the water's edge, with small waterfalls, most of them impermanent, flowing, splashing, dropping down into the sound. The wind is blowing and blowing hard much of the time but we're lucky to have a dry albeit cloudy day as the sound gets 9 meters of rain a year. My math tells me that's about 325 inches of rain. Yowser, that's some water. At one point the ferry stops and all of the motors and shit are shut down, everyone urged to shut up. Quite quiet with most of the sound water splashing down.
There were a bunch of spots on the vertical mountainsides that had long, open gashes in them. These were caused by tree avalanches. It's so hard for vegetation to gain a foothold on the steep hills that the roots of all the plants get all tangled up so that when a big tree falls it starts a chain reaction of root-ripping-out that takes out a whole wedge of plant life.
The trip over was a cultural experience. A French guy next to me put on headphones and watched a movie on his tablet during both halves of the bus ride. There were several Indian families traveling together who screeched and screamed the entire trip, pausing only to sleep or take an endless series of photographs of themselves. I don't think they looked at anything outside the entire time. I can tell it's been a long trip and a long time between meetings as my patience begins to approach nil.
The Kiwis have a habit of ending many sentences with an ascending inflection. It's cute. Here are some words I like: signposted, trundle, trolley. There are tons of people here from other places, especially the UK but we have met people from Argentina, Scotland, the Czech Republic, the Philippines, Belgium, and more.
It was a long day but a good one. I'm not sure I would take another cruise out there, though. It's pretty monotonous in its uniformity.
12/20/16: Te Anau
We have a guided trek today which we bag to do as an unguided trek. The excursions pre-arranged by our tour company have not been top-notch. We drive about 15 minutes to the start of the world-famous Kepler Track which follows the lake shore through mountain and red beech forest, with kamahi and some scattered rimu, miro, and yellow-flowering kowhai. We pound along for about four hours. It's a good hike but not a great one - there are a handful of these tracks in NZ that I think are most famous for those who are looking to do a multi-day hike on trails that have huts or campsites set up at marked locations. We pass a lot of people who are humping some serious luggage on their backs. I like our technique: hike, nap, shower, hot meal, good bed. Lots of birds and lots of shit growing all over each other. I can't imagine they have termites here as the vegetation seems to eat up the vegetation - you better be tough or something is going to grow all over your ass.
We had our flat white at a nice cafe today and we head back there for dinner - Te Anau is small so it's not stressful or time consuming to make the short drive.
12/21/16: In transit then Dunedin
Up and at 'em, an in-room breakfast of oatmeal with mueslix and peanut butter and some NZ fruit. We make the 3 1/2 hour drive to the Scottish transplant city of Dunedin. We're staying at The Wain, a very old hotel that has been sort of modernized, right outside the city center which is set around an eight-sided street called the Octagon, packed with bars and restaurants.
Dry for the drive but should I mention that it has started to rain?
We settle in, stroll the downtown area, including the train station, a massive bluestone structure in Flemish Renaissance style. It really starts to pour as we walk around. We have a kebab and a nice chat with a Turkish transplant who knows more about American politics than your average American. We're very enamored with the nature aspect of this trip - it confirms our suspicions that staying in small towns and rural areas is more to our liking. The big places - Auckland, Queenstown, Wellington for a few hours, and Dunedin - have been more work than pleasure for us. And it has been a total nature trip - our sole cultural effort has been an hour in a museum in Wellington.
12/22/16: Dunedin
The Wain has a breakfast buffet - we're up early and at the feeding trough: fruit and yogurt, toast with rhubarb jam, and mueslix with a couple of cups of crappy Nescafe. We are picked up at our hotel by Tim with Monarch Cruises and Tours, who drives us down to the wharf for our wildlife cruise out to the Taiaroa Head. On the first half of the cruise we're alone on the boat with Jurgen, a Belgian transplant - when I ask him how he ended up in NZ he just swept his hand out at the horizon. After about a half hour trip out of the immediate harbor, past Port Chalmers and the NZ Marine Studies Center, Larnach Castle peeking out of the trees up on the hills, we arrive at Wellers Rock and pick up a bunch of passengers.
The sea life viewing portion of the cruise begins in earnest. We've put on big, heavy, hooded, squall jackets - these come in handy as an icy wind begins blowing - and hang out for an hour or so in the mouth of Otago Harbor. The tidal rise and fall is two meters and nearly half of the harbor dries out at low tide giving food to many wading bird species.
The big attraction is the albatross breeding colony on the shore, the only mainland colony of albatross in the world. These huge birds spend their entire lives at sea, coming on land only to breed, with most of the colonies located on Antarctica. They have a specialized beak which allows them to drink sea water and then drain the salt out of nostrils on their beaks so they can exist on the water for long periods of time. The largest have a wingspan of 12 feet so they ride the thermals and float, hang, and dive all around the boat. We see six varieties - a number the captain has never exceeded - as well as petrels and shearwaters. It rains on and off, of course. We get to see a lot of fur seals on the rocks around the bay, nearly hunted to extinction a hundred years ago along with the whale population which was devastated in just ten years. The whales don't come into the harbor anymore.
Buddy The Captain and Jurgen drop us back at Wellers Rock, along with the other passengers, most of whom spent the trip drinking beer and eating sandwiches. There we're picked up for a tour of the blue penguin sanctuary, sort of a rescue mission for this critically endangered penguin species. Kind of sad as their fate appears inevitable.
The final piece to the puzzle is our van trip from the penguin reserve back to the hotel. Part of the road twists around the harbor itself, right at sea level, then ascends to the ridge of the peninsula for nice views over both the Pacific and the Otago.
We take a nap then walk down to a Turkish restaurant for a kebab plate and a nice, long talk with the owner, a transplant from Istanbul, who knows more about American politics than most Americans.
12/24/16: Dunedin
A big breakfast of fruit and yogurt, mueslix, and toast before tromping off on foot down the main shopping thoroughfares of Dunedin, heading for the botanical gardens. They're large and varied so we spend a couple of hours wandering the grounds during a mostly sunny morning. They have an aviary and gardens featuring horticulture from several areas of the world.
SuperK has made a friend on one of her computer games who lives in Dunedin so she meets us at the gardens cafe and we have a nice lunch.
12/25/16: Dunedin then in transit.
Merry Christmas #1. Think travel isn't hard?
Leave hotel.
Drive to Dunedin Airport and drop off car.
Three hour wait.
Two hour flight to Auckland.
Six hour layover.
Twelve hours to LAX.
Collect luggage and figure out how to make the two hour trip from LAX to our home - we can choose between a fixed destination shuttle running at fixed times, a shuttle that will drop us off at home but also may or may not take other passengers which can cause the drive time to vary wildly, and a dedicated Uber drive. We end up arriving just in time to catch the first option, then schedule an Uber trip from a small local airport home.
It is about 26 hours hotel to door. We're grateful we both slept on the plane and that the time difference is about 24 hours so we're pretty much on a standard sleeping schedule - the tough transitions come when the time difference is an odd amount, like 8 hours, which can make it really hard to get the sleeping patterns reestablished.
A legendary trip. Definitely top 3. Probably going back.
Fin.
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