Excellent Adventure (Part III)

Day 10:

Since Queenstown is the adrenaline rush capital of New Zealand, and probably the world, we figured we’d do something exciting. Last I was here was when I first went bungee jumping, but I thought I’d switch up the activity this time around, so we went sledging. I know, I’ve never heard of sledging either. So basically this sport is pretty much done only in this one river in NZ; it kind of like body boarding. You wear a wetsuit, flippers, a helmet, and basically have this big plastic board thing that you hang onto with your arms while the rest of your body hangs off. This is all we took with us as we went through crazy river rapids with names like “Dead Cow’s Crossing” and “Man-eater”. We went through whirlpools that would suck you in, spin you around, and spit you back out, and then grabbed waves to surf them. We stopped midway down the 15km stretch of our track to climb up some rock cliffs and jump off of them and into the water. It was crazy fun, and scary too as there were underground boulders to dodge and rock walls on either side of the river that you didn’t want to run into. It took up most of the day and got really tiring, but we were all smiles by the end of it.

That night we went out for some awesome sushi (because I eat fish now) and then the bars with a new group of Lincoln people that had arrived.


Day 11:

We got a head start that morning to hitch hike south to Te Anau. This really awesome older Kiwi guy picked us up and took us about half-way. The conversation wasn’t redundant at all; he was very outgoing and lively and full of the most random facts about the mountains and lake formations, glaciers history, etc. It turns out he runs a tour that drives people around and talks about the history of Queenstown. He told us his family is the oldest family still living in Queenstown (117 yrs he says). The way he talked was so engaging that I thought he would make a great salesman…and then came the pitch.

He wasn’t really trying to sell his product to us in particular, but he definitely wanted us to know everything about it and perhaps spread the word around. He knew we were ecologists also, which is probably why he was so keen and excited to tell us about it. So this product is something called “rock dust” that you put on your farm veggies and such. He says that they’ve just finished with a bunch of experimental trials, and its chemical free, and has been shown to raise soil pH, provide all required nutrients, increase the plant’s energy storage, etc. I don’t know all the specifics, but he claims it to be a breakthrough. Who really knows?

He dropped us off at an intersection. We were pretty far south on the island at this point and were headed to an even more remote location, so hitching from this point proved a lil more difficult. Eventually a hyped-up couple from southern California picked us up. They were awesome in that stereotypical chill/cool/hippie/surfer/talkative/friendly Californian kind of way. On the way to Te Anau we saw a perfectly bright and fully arched rainbow. It was beautiful :)

That night we went on a tour to see some glow worm caves. It was sooooo cool; they took a small group of us on a ferry over to some caves in Fordland where we saw neat cave features and waterfalls, and eventually got into a boat to see the glow worms. We slowly floated there in the pitch black and had to stay completely quiet. My eyes got to within inches of a group of over a thousand of them glowing brilliantly. It was unreal how spectacular it was. I can understand why insects are attracted to bright lights; you can’t stop staring at it and come into this kind of peaceful trance. The worms even create these strings that hang down about an inch, and are covered with a paralyzing solution, so when the bugs fly toward the bight lights they get stuck and paralysed until the worm comes down to eat it.

So one of Kathleen’s friends, with whom she shared her car with, had that car with her boyfriend to do her own roadtrip around the island. We were going to meet up with this girl in Te Anau to take the car for the second week of our holiday, but decided instead to keep on trucking with the hitchhiking. We figured it was more fun and adventurous this way and we’ve met some great people so far. We wanted to keep doing it just to see if we could. It was tough and exhausting at times, but it’d be a kind of challenge to ourselves to keep on going.

Day 12:

An early day once again greeted us as we decided to do part of the Kepler Track, which is one of NZ’s Great Walks. There are around 9 (?) NZ Great Walks, which are the tramps that are the most popular and offer the best scenic views. We didn’t have time to do the whole 3-4 day tramp, so we just did the first day. It was about 5.5hrs/ 15km to complete it. Even though we could barely walk by the end, we had to make it way down south to the tip of the south island to a place called Invercargill to spend the night, so we found a big road to go hitch at.

A Connecticut guy in his fifties picked us up, and his story just made us feel depressed. He was a sad quiet soul who just got recently divorced (3 weeks prior, actually) and decided on spur of the moment to fly to NZ to clear his head and not think about his life. His son was supposed to come with him, but got busted with drugs by the cops like two days before they were supposed to go, and so his kid couldn’t leave the country. He said he was going to split everything in the divorce 50/50, but now his wife wants to take him to the cleaners because she doesn’t trust him or something. He said he just did an $1100 helicopter ride, but had an extra ticket, so he asked the 70 yr old receptionist if she’d like to go with him. Poor guy, he didn’t drive us too far, but dropped us off in some unnamed horror-movie-scary type town. I had no clue where on the map we were, darkness was approaching, and only two cars had passed within the last half hour, so our nerves were jumping as we tried to figure out a place to camp out during the night where the flesh-eating mutants from the abandoned mechanics next door wouldn’t get us.

Ok, another thing we’ve learned. Stop freaking out! We’ve found that on this roadtrip, in the end, things will always work out, so just stop stressing out. For instance, a courier van was approaching, but we never stick out our thumbs for them because we figured they are on a delivery and their company probably doesn’t allow it. We tried anyways this time for the sake of desperation to leave this vacant town, and what do ya know he pulls over. Then we realised we were standing next to a mailbox…haha but he was actually pulling over for us. He told us courier vans are actually the most likely to pick up a hitchhiker, since they travel long direct distances and could always use some company.

This man was a breath of fresh air after a weird sore day. He was a young, good-looking half-aussie, half-kiwi guy with a 3-month old and the greatest personality ever. He was headed back to Invercargill, so we lucked out and got a full ride with him. On the way we even got to go on some courier stops, including picking up things like blood and organs from a hospital…

He dropped us off at a backpackers in town, where we could finally relax for the night. The whole reason for staying in Invercargill in the first place was as a base for getting on the ferry to Stewart Island. We had a 3-day tramp ahead of us, which wasn’t looking too appealing for us amateurs at the moment.


Day 13:

We took a shuttle to the wharf and hopped on the way overly-priced and bouncy ferry ride to Stewart Island, which I’m now abbreviating to SI. It was cute, there were dolphins jumping beside our window on the ferry. The track we’d be doing is called the Raikura track, which is a NZ Great Walk.

Now this is where writing about tramping gets a bit more difficult, and sometimes dull. Kathleen and I are just walking for the next 3 days. There you go; I could just end the blog now. But I think I’ll try and make it interesting.

The first day was about 13km and took only 5 hours, factoring in our packs and the uphill grade. There were great views and walks along the beach. There were even these freaky swing bridges that can only support one person at a time, and you had to carefully balance yourself on the narrow unsteady rope thing (for lack of a better word). Now the huts we were sleeping in were very basic; it had two big bedrooms consisting of big wooden slabs set against the length of the wall, and thin mats placed side by side on top of it. Thankfully, the hut wasn’t full, or else my personal space would’ve been seriously invaded. There was no heat or lights, but we did have running rainwater. Now I was excited for roughing it, but quickly realised how ill-prepared we were to do it right. We had no gas stove to cook our food, nor did we bring candles for when it got dark. Fortunately for us a big hunting group of a dozen men or so were staying there, and they obviously knew what they were doing, so the lent us there stove and shared there light like gentlemen. I’m thinking maybe girl scouts should focus a little more on outdoors preparation and camping, rather than making glittery crafts and going to horse camp…

Don’t even get me started on the toilet. I threw up. I actually threw up, because I made the mistake of breathing while sitting in the outhouse. That’s how rank it was. From that point on, the world was my bathroom.

On the plus side, SI was gorgeous. I couldn’t believe I was on a little island way in the south pacific. The island is basically one big native reserve, with a total population of like 300 people. That night I saw the most amazing night sky I have seen and will ever see again in my life. When I walked out of the hut that night I went “whoa!” and fell backwards out of surprise. The stars were so bright and dense and mesmerising that it just became unreal. Like many things here, I can’t give it full justice by writing; all I can say is everyone should be able to see this kind of sky before they die. It just seemed pure, how an untouched unpolluted sky should glow.


Day 14:

This was probably the most difficult of the three days. Scattered throughout the 6 hour tramp were thousands of makeshift stairs, mainly ascending since we were going up a mountain. Although we’ve figured out that going downhill is just as hard as uphill.

At one point when our energy was spent we took a break to make some lunch. We brought lots of chocolate with us for morale purposes. After being quite still and quiet for a while the SI bird life came to life. The bird’s songs here sound funky and very electronic, so when they all go at once you feel like you’re inside a computer game. We saw beautiful keas (a native blue/green parrot) flying and playing only 5 feet from us. It’s nice to have just your thoughts and yourself in the bush; we only saw one other couple on the trail.

We went to a viewpoint from the top of the mountain to get a good look at everything, and realised that this was the closest we’d ever get to Antarctica. It was pretty cool to know that all that separated us was a bit of ocean. Even more surprising was that the weather was awesome, not cold at all, considering how far south we were.


Day 15:

This was the last day of the tramp, and I finally started to understand the Kiwi mindset a little more. Our complaining stopped long ago, and I just do the tramps with the knowledge and acceptance that ok, my back’s going to be killing me from my pack and my legs will wobble if I stand still, but I just have to suck it up so I can enjoy my surroundings, and eventually those aches and pains are in the back of my mind.

The highlight of the last day was when we were just walking along through the ankle-deep mud (its gets really muddy here) and with my next step I instantly sank in the mud up to my knees. I screamed, then it was silent, then we both started cracking up for ages. As I tried to lift up my legs my shoes were falling off from the suction, so I grabbed onto a nearby branch and kind of crawled and squiggled my way out. Lucky for Kathleen I always lead the way and test out the track obstacles so she can avoid it…

Now this last day was supposed to be a 5.5 to 6 hour tramp back to the town, but we just booked it and finished in 4 hours, I think because we were A) stronger after 2 weeks of walking around with our packs, and B) motivated to get the tramp over with as soon as possible. I did enjoy myself more and more with each day; it was a good feeling to know that a hot shower awaited me with our return to Invercargill.

We arrived back to the SI town and decided that fish and chips were what we craved, after how ever many days of oats, peanut butter sandwiches and bland pasta. We took the ferry back and napped a lot from exhaustion, although we felt great for completing our first multi-day tramp.

Day 16:

Since Invercargill is a rather large city, it took us over an hour to walk out of town and another hour for someone to come pick us up. We were headed back up north, this time to the other coast, to Dunedin. A very cute kiwi boy picked us up. He makes this trip back and forth three days a week to play rugby. He even got an offer to play on a professional team in Scotland, so he must be pretty decent. Anyways, he was bored and just wanted some company. We figured with all the people who are bored or sad and have spilled their stories to us, we should just hold out a sign with our new motto: “We’re here to listen.”

We arrived and walked around the beautiful historical Scottish-inspired town, but for some reason forgot to take pictures…my bad. There were heaps of people around because it’s a big college town. We napped some more then headed to the bars for one last night of celebration before heading back to Christchurch in the morning.


Day 17:

The concept of coming back to Lincoln and responsibility was gloomy to say the least. We hitched back up with a boring Kiwi couple, then with a Swiss guy, and finally with a surfer Kiwi guy with dreads in his hair. I think the combination of tiredness and anticipation of Lincoln made the trip long and boring, because we just couldn’t be bothered with conversation. Our friend picked us up in the next town over, and finally we made it back to school and civilisation. Yay…

So that was my holiday, full of lots of crappy moments but even more awesome ones. Nonetheless, it was an adventure. And now finals are coming up soon, and then I leave to come back to the states! I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit freaked out about it. I’m pretty much done with my travels here, so this will most likely be my last blog, unless I do one about my stopover in Samoa after I get back. We’ll see.

So thanks to everyone who has been reading these blogs. I hope they’ve been entertaining and fun and informative and you’ve enjoyed reading them as much as I do writing them. THANKS and I’ll see ya’ll SOON!!

H a l l i e

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