Abel Tasman

Nelson is a big town by South Island standards, but still only has about 4 main streets.  Our goal upon arrival was to find the best 3-5 days in the last 10 before I had to go back up to the North Island to do the coastal track.  The first step to this was to check the weather.  Checking the weather in NZ is a difficult task that frequently involves much guesswork.  The forecast usually changes every few hours, with drastic changes about every 6.  They are pretty much only accurate when they are telling you what the weather is at that moment outside, and even then they can be wrong sometimes.  But anyway, when checked the weather before we got there on Friday we thought it was meant to clear up about Tuesday so we would have the weekend to plan things out.  But surprise surprise the forecast changed so that the nice days would be Saturday through Tuesday.  “Well, I guess we should leave tomorrow then, and be done before the rain sets in.”  So we went to the information site to plan our track.  The coastal track is tricky to plan due to tidal crossings, which can only be achieved within certain hours of low tide, unless you want to walk an extra few kms to get around the beach.  But a) we didn’t want to add extra walking, and b) who would want to miss backpacking on the beach?  We carefully planned our trip and went ahead and booked campsites for each night, spreading out the walking fairly evenly over the 4 days.  It wasn’t until after that was booked that we gave any serious thought to how we would get back to our car after walking away from it for 4 days straight.  We learned that there was a bus that went back down a few times a day, or water taxis that went periodically, were very scenic, and shaved about an hour off the return time, so that seemed like the best option.  The only issue was that the water taxis only stopped a certain ways up the trail, and not that close to the end of it.  But we eye-balled it and thought we could make it to the end and back to the water taxi site by 3pm on our last day… we figured we would just sort out the details later.  A few pics from walking:

The first day we estimated we walked about 17 kms.  This is only an estimate for two reasons.  One, the maps we used had distances between certain points, but not to and from each point or even each campsite, and some of the campsites we stayed at were between the measurement points.  Two, the signs along the trail indicating distances between points are inconsistent.  For example, one might say you’ve been 4 kms and have 12 to go (total of 16 kms btn points), and the next will tell you you’ve been 6 kms and have 11 to go (total of 17kms… where did the extra km come from?!)  Either way, it was a lot of walking, especially the second day (I think about 20 kms), and after that my toes were pretty blistered and required much mole skin, held on by duct tape of course:

But we kept on, had a shorter 3^rd day due to a tidal crossing at noon that was right by our campsite, and then shortened the last day to save my toes and Tres’ heels, and to get to our water taxi on time.  The water taxi turned out to be a great decision because we had a very nice driver who acted as a tour guide and told us interesting things about each of the stops and some places in between.  We also saw a little blue penguin swimming around right next to the boat on our way in!  Also it started raining on our way back so seems like we did alright on timing our tramp.  After 4 days on trail we looked about the same as when we set off, but luckily photos do not exhibit smells…

And on our way back to town we came across this and couldn't resist:

West Coast

We finally dragged ourselves away from the beloved Wanaka just as the rain and clouds started to set in.  It was a trade off because it would have been nice to travel up the West Coast in fine weather to get the good views, but we didn’t want to spend all of the nice days in the car.  Plus we heard the sand flies were bad.  We still managed to see the glaciers (pronounced glassy-ers) even in the foggy weather:

And travel through small towns where gas literally costs:

We decided not to fill up here and instead take our chances at making it to the next town with the needle just about below the empty line.  Luckily we made it and celebrated by sharing a ham and cheese sandwich and a hard-boiled egg for lunch.

We stayed in a hostel in Hokitika as the wind was incredibly powerful and it was pouring down rain – not the best tent weather.  Hokitika was highly recommended ahead of Greymouth just a bit farther north because there was much more to do there.  After walking around the entire town of Hokitika in about 12 minutes (including entering the more interesting shops), we couldn’t even imagine how little there would have been to do in Greymouth.  We did go up and see the glow worms at night - it started pouring on our walk up to their cove which took longer than we expected and we got soaked - but it was cool to see.  We were in this tiny town the weekend before the Wild Foods Festival, which apparently attracts so many people that all accommodation is booked out months in advance.  People come from all over to try the craziest foods you can think of.  Usually this brings to mind ants and other bugs, maybe some delicacies like beef tongue or heart, and maybe even scorpions or something slightly scary, but we found out that the popular dare the year before was horse semen...  We weren’t too sad to miss out on the festivities.  Plus we were excited to get up to Nelson and do some backpacking!

Wanaka and Queenstown

Queenstown and Wanaka are in a little pocket of NZ and are surrounded by mountains, so while most of NZ has had the coldest summer anyone can remember, these two amazing little towns have had beautiful weather.  Queenstown is just north of a huge lake:

But as pretty as this is, Wanaka, north over a pass from Queenstown, quickly became my favorite place in New Zealand.  We got here the day before my birthday, and decided to stay at least until the day after my birthday, which would make it the place I'd spent the most time in so far on this trip.  Wanaka is also on a lake, and I really wanted to go on a boat for my birthday, but since it was raining in the morning, we decided to go to the toy and transport museum instead.  Luckily, while we were there the weather cleared up so we got to pedal around in this thing:

We tried calling a few places that rented out kayaks since the sun came out, but it seemed they had all made a quick decision in the morning upon seeing a cloud in the sky that the weather would not be good enough to work that day.  So we found a nice hike to do, which offered some good views:

After hiking we stopped at a little place we had been the day before for a beer/wine because they were having an after-party for a bike race in town.  Then for dinner we had mexican food since we heard that on your birthday you get something free at the only mexican spot in town.  This turned out not to be true, and mexican food is apparently so rare in NZ that we had to wait an hour and a half for a table!  But it was still tasty, and I had a delicious margarita to accompany our fajitas.

We checked a weather report and saw that it was expected to remain sunny and warm for the next few days, so we decided to stay longer, and possibly even spend Tres' bday here.  And since the next day it was sunny and warm and was my birthday in the states, where I was born so according to my mom was actually my birthday, I decided we should rent kayaks and go out to Ruby Island for a picnic.  This was a good decision.  Unfortunately the winds change quickly in Wanaka, so we were paddling against the wind both on the way too and from the island, but it was still a lot of fun.  We also found a nice spot where you can drive right onto the beach around the lake, so we spent afternoons here in the sun relaxing and reading, and even got in once though the water is very cold.

Christchurch to Fiordland

After three weeks of solo traveling I picked up a fellow adventurer in Christchurch:

Christchurch was... interesting to visit... the earthquake damage is pretty unbelievable and definitely shapes the whole experience of visiting.  Every other building in the city is in a pile of pieces of former building.  Luckily we stayed in a suburb called Sumner, which was a cute little beach town.  On the way to Sumner the road is being worked on following the damage, and you can see half houses on a hill that had partially fallen down.  Also on the night we stayed there we were woken up in the middle of the night by a 4.2 aftershock (pretty big!).  We learned that since the huge quake last year, they have had a pretty predictable pattern of small aftershocks and every once in a while a 6+ that causes even more damage (next one expected in March - don't think I'll be back down around Chch any time soon).

Thinking we only had 2 weeks to cover the whole South Island, we headed south the next day to Dunedin, which we walked around in finding a place to use the internet so we could look up where to go next, then headed on to camp at a smaller town a bit south.  On our way we stopped at the Moereke boulders, which are weird perfectly round rocks on the beach:

We continued South to the Otago Peninsula, where we went on a tour in these cool 8-wheel drive vehicles that took us over some pretty rough terrain:

I started out thinking it was too bad that it was a cloudy, drizzly day, but it turns out this is the best weather to see penguins!  The tour took us past a seal colony, where a ton of babies lived that had been born just a few months before so they were still pretty cute:

Then we went to a place where we could see beach but were still pretty far away so as not to scare away the yellow-eyed penguins.  Only a few thousand of them exist, and they are all in this one part of NZ, so it was pretty cool to be able to see them.  The places both where the seals and the penguins were are on protected land, so no humans have walked within their space in 12 years.  We saw a few penguins on the beach, and about 5 more up in the hills (too far away for a decent picture but it was cool to see them).  We also saw blue-nosed penguins, which are a lot smaller and hide in little holes in the sand, so we got to get pretty close to these guys:

Since the summer has been so cold in NZ this year, my start date for harvest got pushed off 2 weeks, so we had more time to explore!  We decided to go to Fiordland, supposedly one of the most scenic places in NZ.  It was cloudy, but still gorgeous: