Blogs from National Parks, New Zealand, Oceania - page 2

We spent our last few days in New Zealand on the Routeburn Track, a 3 day hike that takes you from the Queenstown area to the Milford sound area. It takes you through unbelievable river valleys, over rocky passes and along very narrow ridges. Aside from the horrible, torrential, hike- ruining, and view-destroying rains that occured all day on Day #2, it was a wonderful trek - like luxury 4 star hike compared to the Everest trek. At the end of the hike, we were picked up by a bus and taken to the Milford sound for lunch and a cruise. After a 5 hour bus ride back to Queenstown, we packed up our stuff and prepared to head back to Australia.... read more

Au Wades Landing Lodge, près de la petite ville de National Park, je rencontre Fran et Adam, le couple qui gère cette structure qui héberge les saisonniers des stations de ski en hiver et loue des canoes en été. C'est un peu l'ambiance colonie de vacances, dans de vieux batiments avec de petites chambres dans lesquelles s'entassent des lits superposés grinçants. Rapidement, je rencontre Marine et Loic, qui font du wwoofing dans le coin. Ils sont français et cela fait presque un an qu'ils parcourent la NZ dans leur van. On fait connaissance puis ils me proposent de faire ensemble le "Tongariro crossing", la rando à la journée "la plus célébre de NZ". Le lendemain on part donc tous les trois à l'aube. Effectivement, la notoriété de la rando fait que le sentier est assez fréquenté, ... read more

Great Walk #2. Kepler was everything that Routeburn wasn’t. The weather finally turned in our favour and it was fantastic. Kepler is one of the few tracks in New Zealand that is planned in a loop, so you don’t have the transport headaches at the start and finish. Despite this, we did cheat a little bit and took a boat at the start which saved us a couple of hours and 6km of trees. We’re so glad that we did because we arrived at the Luxmore Hut with enough time to summit Mt Luxmore while the weather and views were good. The alpine views were absolutely awesome and we finally felt redeemed after Routeburn. From the top of Luxmore, we could see a storm front blowing towards us so we raced down ahead of it and ... read more

Routeburn Track 3/2-6/2 English (Lisa) To say that it was raining when we drove from Milford Sound to the start of the Routeburn track is an understatement. It was rather as if the sky was continuously emptying buckets full of water. Luckily, heavy rain results in the most spectacular views in Fiordland. Many mountains are just bare rocks with hardly any trees on them, so the water has nowhere to go but to stream down them in the form of big waterfalls. While Erik and Jean were in complete awe in the front of the care, us two in the backseat were also slightly worried: we were about to start the Routeburn Track. The Routeburn Track is one of the nine ‘Great Walks’ in New Zealand. It’s 32 km long and the track goes through both ... read more

After our kayaking trip and 4 nights of very limited sleep and hard work actually staying pointing in the right direction in the canoe, (and also trying to keep my teeth) we decided to stay in a lodge. We where kindly dropped off by our Kayaking company at the National Park. The kayaking company Blazing Paddles comes highly recommended for the whanganui river. Fantastic service and we even got a cake at the end!!! (lucky i didnt loose my teeth on the branch!!) The weather was crap for a couple of days but we needed rest and our lodge had acess to a jacuzzi............ Well finally, after waiting a couple of days for the weather to clear and the winds to drop we had a window of opertunity to do the much spoken about Tongario crossing. ... read more