New Zealand's South Island

---

We left Kaikoura after having one of the most amazing experiences of our lives – swimming with wild dolphins in their natural environment – and knowing that we still had some pretty cool things ahead of us. Our longest drive in New Zealand fell on New Year’s Day, of all days, but thanks to one particular Frenchman the night before, we felt just fine! The seven hour drive would take us from New Zealand’s east coast to its west coast via Arthur’s Pass. While the drive was scenic, as all drives in New Zealand seem to be, the “pass” wasn’t exactly what we expected. Living in Colorado, we were envisioning a Loveland Pass or an Independence Pass, maybe even a Donner Pass if you’ve been to Lake Tahoe, but Arthur’s Pass was more of a small town in the mountains than anything. Yes the mountains were pretty, but the road seemed to follow a river valley instead of climbing up and over the mountains. Either way, we stopped for a bite to eat at a cute little roadside café and picked an outdoor table for a quiet lunch… or so we thought. Just as the waiter brought us our food, a huge parrot-like bird came leaping and bounding across the street (and yes, I said leaping and bounding, like a small dog almost) and straight for our table! I was about to take a bite just as this bird invited itself onto our table (not just the empty chair), and tried to jump onto my plate! I “shooed” the bird away, trying desperately to protect my delicious veggie quiche, leaving the bird to harass my husband, of course. This crazy bird tried to jump onto Eli’s plate too, but when he tried to “shoo” it away, the bird would not budge. No joke, Eli literally had a stare-down with a huge bird! I wasn’t exactly sure who would win from the looks of this bird’s beak, but luckily the bird found another table to harass before really getting into it with my husband. After this crazy bird encounter, we learned that the bird was actually a Kea, one of New Zealand’s more beloved and protected birds. We later learned that Keas can be quite destructive (we already knew they were a nuisance), tearing apart ski racks on cars, breaking into secured garbage cans and completely destroying outdoor furniture – they are worse than bears that find their way into your garbage can! After quite the eventful lunch, we stopped at a scenic overlook, which you should always do in gorgeous New Zealand because it’s “scenic” for a reason, and had a nice view of the river valley, along with more Keas that were scrounging for food scraps in the parking lot. The rest of the drive took us down and out of the mountains and along the west coast until we reached Franz Josef. This small but touristy town is the base for exploring two of New Zealand’s more famous natural wonders, Franz Josef Glacier and Fox Glacier. We were planning on camping at the free DOC campground, but since it was closed due to the fact that it was underwater from a flood, we found a Holiday Park to call home for the night. After making ourselves dinner and watching a pretty sunset with some hot chocolate (we still have not found summer in the southern hemisphere, hence the hot chocolate), we called it a night, excited to see the glaciers in the morning…

I awoke the next morning, uncertain whether I was inside or outside the tent due to the water that was lightly sprinkling my face (not the most pleasant “wake-up call” as you can imagine). I soon realized that I was indeed inside of our tent, that it was a full-on monsoon outside and that the large and heavy raindrops pounding our tent outside was helping the condensation drops inside to give me an unsolicited morning facial. Lovely! On a side note, while we love our little Nemo two-person tent, it has this really annoying problem of not breathing enough at night, which amounts to quite the condensation build-up in the mornings. Anyways, we woke up to a torrential downpour that we thought would surely pass. After a few hours and a few cups of tea, we unfortunately realized that the rain was not leaving anytime soon. Bummed about not getting to see Franz Josef Glacier, we hopped into our little Nissan Note to see if we would have any luck with Fox Glacier about 15 minutes down the road. It was no surprise that it was still pouring rain at Fox Glacier, but we were able to drive closer to this glacier than the last. The river was raging when we pulled into the parking lot, and despite the rain, we attempted to go on a little walk to see the glacier, at least until we found out that the trail was closed since it had been washed out earlier that morning. Finally, we called it quits with the glaciers and started driving to Wanaka, in hopes that we would find better weather.

Surprisingly, the heavy rain made the four-hour drive awesome! While we could not see the tops of the huge mountains or very far into the lush river valleys, we could see the hundreds of impressive waterfalls racing down the mountains above us. Around every turn there was a different waterfall – some delicately cascading in a narrow stream from great heights, some raging with enough force to power a small city and some billowing in all different directions down the faces of the mountains, much like intricate spider webs. The river was equally impressive, raging like an inland tsunami through the valley and having no sympathy for anything in its way. After several rainy stops and sore necks from looking up in awe at the incredible waterfalls, we made it to Wanaka for the night. We lucked into getting the last hotel room in town for the night, which meant no unsolicited morning facial the next day, but I was quite alright with that. That night, we enjoyed a bottle of kiwi-fruit wine and fresh strawberries in our very nice hotel room (which was more than we had hoped to pay, but it was warm and dry, so well worth the extra cost), hoping that we would awake to sunny skies and warmer weather.

Well, the kiwi-fruit wine didn’t quite bring us the luck we were looking for the next day. We awoke to lighter skies and got excited until we were told that it was just a little break in the rain and that Lake Wanaka would likely be flooded into the town in the next few days. Awesome. With more flooding on the way and still a lot of rain and quite dreary weather in Wanaka, we drove on to Queenstown, the adventure sport capital of the world. Finally, we found some nice weather and sunshine for a couple of days in this very busy New Zealand city, or perhaps I should say town. Like Eli had mentioned about Abel Tasman having half of Christchurch on vacation in their fancy campers, Queenstown had half of all “uni” (university) students on summer break, tooling around the streets and carousing around town. While a bit too crowded and touristy for our taste, Queenstown is set on the edge of a gorgeous turquoise lake and surrounded by towering mountains, so it’s certainly worth a visit. I had mentioned that Queenstown is the adventure junkie’s heart and soul, and it is, but the main problem is that everything is just so dang expensive! Our first day in Queenstown we chose a free activity of hiking the Queenstown Hill Hike up to an amazing view of the lake, city and surrounding valley. The next day was when one of us partook in a true adventure sport (you can probably guess who) – bungy jumping! Eli tried to convince me to go as well, but I guess all I can say is that I’m a big baby when it comes to falling and I thought it would be more fun just to watch him (I know, lame). AJ Hackett invented bungy jumping in New Zealand on the Kawarau Bridge, a 43 meter (about 140 feet) drop from an old but stable bridge to the beautiful and rushing turquoise river below. There are other places to bungy jump where you can fall much further (the Nevis jump gives you over 140 meters of falling, which is about 460 feet), but Eli went with the Kawarau Bridge jump because of its history, because it’s more affordable and because his lame wife could more easily watch from the observation deck (and take some great photos of him jumping). We got to the jump site on a gray morning, but the surroundings made up for the dull weather – limestone cliffs carving out the path for a rushing turquoise river with lush green mountains towering above…gorgeous! After signing the release form and trying one more time to get me to jump, Eli was ready to go and I was ready to go with the camera. Being the original bungy jump site, there was quite a line of people waiting to throw themselves off the Kawarau Bridge and to the river below. While waiting in line only made Eli anxious, it did give me quite the laugh at the observation deck. I saw about 10 people jump before my husband – anywhere from the little Asian lady who was terrified and really should not have just stepped off the platform to the kiwi teenager who just couldn’t seem to jump and was finally given a light push of encouragement to the kid who cried and refused to jump – and no one even came close to jumping like Eli did. My heart was pounding and I know for a fact that I was much more nervous than he was, but Eli got up to the edge and without much hesitation, very gracefully dove head first off the bridge! Holy s***! There goes my husband! Eli said the first part was really cool, and then it registered in his mind that he had just jumped off a bridge and was plummeting to the raging river below, what the heck! Soon enough, the bungy caught him and the recoil falls were another adrenaline rush, but all too quickly he was being collected by the yellow raft that gets people off the bungy and safely to shore. WOW! Very cool for Eli and very nerve-racking for me! After quite the rush of a morning, we got back into the car to drive towards Milford Sound, certainly not needing any coffee after an exciting morning.

The original plan was to drive to Milford Sound and camp for a night before sea kayaking the next day, but once again, due to monsoon-like rain, we were forced to stay at a Holiday Park in Te Anau instead. We found The Olive Branch, a great little café with healthy and organic food in Te Anau, which made our unexpected stay there a little bit better. The next morning we set out very early since we had a two hour drive to reach Milford Sound where we met Rosco’s Kayak Company at 8:00am. Of course it was pouring rain, which meant less pesky sandflies and more cascading waterfalls, but also meant heavy cloud-cover that would prevent us from really getting to see the sound. The drive itself was much like the drive from Franz Josef to Wanaka – huge cascading waterfalls around every corner, but still too cloudy to really see the mountains and river valley. In Milford, we met our guide and set out to get equipped in all sorts of rain gear. We kayaked 15 kilometers in Milford Sound, starting at one incredibly huge waterfall and ending up back at the kayak shop. Milford Sound, or what we could see of it, was amazingly beautiful! Huge and towering mountains rising a few thousand feet straight up from the sound and thousands of pristine waterfalls plummeting back down to the sound below. In our two-person sea kayak (Eli as captain and me as photographer in front), we kayaked for hours along the edge of the sound, past various seal colonies and past thousands of waterfalls. A few seals swam alongside our boat and one of the cascading waterfalls reached a height of nearly 900 meters (that’s close to 3,000 feet)! Although rainy , cloudy and a bit windy along the way, kayaking Milford Sound was incredible and something you should take the time to do if you are ever on New Zealand’s south island. Oh, and I almost forgot – I even got pink highlights in my hair from the Milford kayaking, pretty sweet! Haha. I borrowed a hat from the company, a red Canada hat, and after hours of being soaking wet, apparently the red color dyed my hair pink, and it did not come out as I tried desperately to wash it out in the sink. Perfect! Eli found all of this quite amusing and was very disappointed when later that night I washed my hair with shampoo and turned it back to its normal color. Whew for me, bummer for Eli!

The next day we set out on one of the excursions we had most been looking forward to in New Zealand, the Kepler Track. New Zealand is known for its famous walks, the most famous being the Milford Track in Milford Sound, but apparently, you have to book nearly a year in advance to get a spot on that trek. The treks are set up either in loops or out-and-backs, and you can either stay in the huts along the trail or pack your own gear and camp along the way, only at designated campgrounds. Kepler Track, known for being more of a local’s trek, is set up in a way that makes it hard to only camp along the way, so we planned our trek to stay in a hut the first night, camp the second night and stay in another hut the third night. The loop trail is about 60 kilometers, or about 40 miles, which we split up and did in four days. After stocking up on all sorts of legitimate backpacking food at the local grocery store in Te Anau (not the instant mashed potatoes or random rice side dishes we had to trek with in Torres del Paine), we set out in the early afternoon to hike around 15 kilometers to the Mt. Luxmore Hut for the night. The first hour and a half of the hike followed the edge of Lake Te Anau, winding through a lush and gorgeous fern forest until we reached Broad Bay, a pretty beach campsite where we took a little break from our heavy packs. After Broad Bay, the trail climbed straight up to Mt. Luxmore Hut, making it the steepest part of the trek for us. Not much could be seen through the dense forest, but once we reached the limestone cliffs, we had a nice lookout of the lake and valley below. The climb itself was not all that bad, nothing a quick trail mix break couldn’t fix. We reached the hut just in time for a pretty sunset over the valley below and in time to snag the best beds at the hut, with a little help from the nice ranger who had met us on the trail and said that he would save us two beds since it was close to a full house. That night as we were making our humble backpacking food and drinking our filtered water, there was a couple making an amazing dinner with fresh veggies, potatoes, chicken, loads of rice with a delicious sauce and even drinking a bottle of wine! Now, while we at first thought these people were crazy for carrying all of that heavy stuff on the Kepler, we quickly realized that it would be in our best interest to become friends with them. All joking aside, we met Greg and Erin at the Mt. Luxmore Hut and really enjoyed their company during our time on the Kepler. Greg, originally from Wyoming, was at the time living in Cairns, Australia and traveling around while Erin, from Philadelphia, was in between jobs and taking 6 weeks to travel in New Zealand and Australia with Greg. We unfortunately started talking them a little too late that first night, after they had finished their wine, but that’s OK, because we had a long hike the next day and were better off with just water, I guess...

Day 2 of Kepler was the longest but also the most incredible. In the morning, we took a short walk to the Luxmore Cave and went spelunking for about 30 minutes in an incredible limestone cave complete with a trickling stream and shimmering stalactites and stalagmites. After that little side trip, we put on our packs and started our trek to the Iris Burn campsite. Day 2 was quite the panoramic day, taking us to the highest peak of the trek and along ridges where you could see mountains and lakes for miles. We lucked out and had incredible weather, somewhat of a rarity in New Zealand we had come to find out the previous weeks. After a full day of hiking, we found ourselves at the Iris Burn campsite for the night, along with Greg and Erin, and had a nice dip in the freezing river (well, I did, Eli is a baby about cold water), another exciting backpacker’s dinner and a gorgeous view of the surrounding mountains from our tent. Day 3 started out with a short hike to a raging waterfall about 20 minutes from our campsite, where we enjoyed our breakfast of a One Square Meal bar (an apricot or cranberry energy bar that is delicious), before heading to the Lake Moturau Hut for the night. The 5 hour hike was not as exciting as the day before, but it was pretty and enjoyable as it wound through lush fern forests and along a river. The best part was when we reached Lake Moturau and hiked along its shimmering beaches until we reached our hut for the night. The hut was cool, but the best part was the gorgeous beach where we could bask in the sun and go for a refreshing swim in the mountainous lake that reminded me of Lake Tahoe. We had met four other Americans hiking the day before, and ended up spending the afternoon and sharing dinner with them, which was a sweet deal for us because they too had carried a lot of fresh food and made an amazing dinner. Day 4 was the least exciting of the trip. We woke up early and hit the trail by 6:45am since we had a drive to Dunedin ahead of us once we reached the car. The weather was not great, a bit drizzly and foggy, and the trail, while still pretty winding through the forest, was the least interesting. As we neared the end, our packs were feeling quite heavy, our legs were feeling like jello and our tummies were growling for a nice meal. Four days and 60 kilometers later, we reached the point where we began our journey on the Kepler, happy to have had a great time, but also happy to see the car.

From Te Anau and the Kepler we drove to Dunedin where we spent the night in a cool apartment-hotel and found a great Italian place for the much-anticipated meal we had been thinking of while hiking earlier that day. We were hoping to explore the Otago Peninsula the next morning, but the weather was gray and drizzly (surprise, surprise), so we instead hopped in the car and drove to our last stop in New Zealand, Christchurch. As many of you know, Christchurch has recently been devastated by a very strong earthquake, something that had been building up since the first major earthquake last September. We were only there for one night, enough time to walk around the city and grab dinner, but from the little bit we saw of the city, we could see some of the devastation from the September earthquake – cracks in buildings, streets, sidewalks, etc. Since then, much of Christchurch has been left in shambles and many people have lost their lives from the major earthquake that stuck at the end of February. The gorgeous and historic cathedral that we had walked by and admired in the city’s square was mostly demolished from the last quake. We can only hope that some of the nice people from Christchurch we met while in Abel Tasman survived the quake and are on the road to recovery. We left Christchurch without feeling the ground shake and caught a flight back to Auckland with a connection onto Sydney, Australia later that day. After three amazing weeks in gorgeous New Zealand, we flew to Australia for two weeks, in hopes of finding warmer temperatures and more sunshine. Eli will pick back up with our first week in Australia in the next blog…

‘Sweet As’
e squared everywhere (written by Erin)

P.S. Our apologies in not keeping up with the blog the past few months. Internet has been very challenging, we’ve been studying to get our scuba diving certification and we’ve been doing what we set out to do – traveling to remote places without much of a connection to the rest of the world. Right now we are in Uganda, Africa and hope to catch up on the blog as soon as possible. Thanks for your patience and I hope you will continue to enjoy reading about our travels, even if they are a few months behind.

---

Photos

New Zealand Kea
The funny nuisance of a bird we had an interesting encounter with at Arthur's Pass.

Franz Josef & Fox Glaciers
The closest we got to seeing these glaciers was on a postcard.

West Coast Rain
A pretty but rainy view of New Zealand's west coast.

Inland Tsunami
Not exactly an inland tsunami, but a raging river we drove along on the way to Wanaka.

Raging Waterfall
One of the many raging waterfalls we saw on our rainy drive to Wanaka.

Nissan Note
The driver and our great little rental car for 3 weeks in New Zealand.

Basket of Dreams
Cool artwork at the top of the Queenstown Hill Hike, overlooking Lake Wakatipu.

Queenstown Sunset
Gorgeous sunset view from the Hippo Lodge Hostel.

Kawarau Bridge - 43 meters
Where bungy jumping began with AJ Hackett and where Eli jumped!

Eli Bungy Jumping
He gracefully dove headfirst off the Kawarau Bridge... Livin' the Dream!

Kawarau Bridge View
A pretty view if you are going to bungy jump.

Kayaking Milford Sound
Although a bit rainy and cloudy, Milford Sound is gorgeous and fun to explore in a kayak!

Milford Sound Waterfall
One of the hundreds of waterfalls we kayaked past in Milford.

Kayak Captain
Eli navigating Milford Sound.

Milford Sound Seals
One of the seal colonies we kayaked past, some of them even swam up to us in the water!

Can you tell it's rainy?
Outfitted in the most rain gear ever, and somehow we still managed to get soaking wet.

The Banana Love Boat
Our 2-person kayak, we loved it!

Cool Rock Formation
Cool rock formations carved out by the rushing water.

Te Anau Holiday Park
Eli and our little 2-person Nemo tent getting ready for the Kepler Track.

Start of the Kepler
Ready, set, hike! 60 kilometers and 4 days on the Kepler Track in Fiordland National Park.

Fern Forest
Lush forest of ferns for the first 5 miles of Kepler.

Comments

[Mom C]

Unbelievable...
Simply unbelievable!