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Published: April 16th 2007
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From the Abel Tasman area we headed East to Queen Charlotte Sound. To be more specific, we headed towards the Portage Hotel. While we camped in a free DOC site without a bathroom, straight across the road was a rambling hotel overlooking the water. For all practical purposes (including sink showers) we stayed at the hotel, reading the paper on the porch in the mornings and sipping champagne in the evenings. The hotel was right off of the Marlborogh Track, one of NZ's great walks, so we explored parts of it while we were there. One day we took a 6 hour hike that had wonderful views of the entire sounds area. The only downside was the cicades. While the sounds area doesn't have as many sandflies as other parts of NZ they have a huge number of cicades. At one point during the hike, while walking through a grove of trees, we had to cover our faces and run for it. They don't so much fly at you as simply dive bomb out of the trees, landing wherever they may, whether it be down your shirt or in your hair. They are like blindfolded kamikazies.
From the Sounds
area we headed towards Wanaka, a mini Boulder sitting in the middle of NZ. It's situated on a large lake and is surrounded by giant mountains. The town itself has a great feel to it with cool little restaurants and a funky theater where you sit in old cars or loveseats to watch the movie and the theater makes their own delicious ice cream. The climate is much like Colorado/Idaho so it felt even more like home. We took some beautiful hikes there as well. It was very hard to leave, but we didn't have much more time left in NZ and we still hadn't made it to Milford Sound, one of the things that we really wanted to see.
On our way to Milford Sound we stopped in Haast and Fox Glacier. Haast is a tiny town on the West Coast. It's famous for it's beaches and 'ruggedness'. We stayed for exactly one night and left as early as we could the next morning. Unfortunately it's also known for its sandflies. They were so bad there that we couldn't get out of the van without letting hundreds in with us. We also had a pretty funny incident where
the van got stuck on the beach. We tried digging out the tires with everything we had on the van--dishes, frisbees, and spoons. It was getting pretty late so I walked to the closest/only gas station in town to get help. One of the oldest men I've ever seen was working there with his ancient wife. I think that they were actually one of NZ's first immigrants. After explaining our situation he grunted, made a phone call, and hollered something unintelligable at me that sounded something like "...wait...you...now", so i waited with the sandflies. A couple of minutes later a rough kiwi came to our rescue, pulling the van out at breakneck speed, nearly knocking Dave out at the same time as he drug the van from its giant sinkhole. When we asked him why he lived in such a godforsaken place he said that he likes the sandflies since it keeps tourist like us away. He wasn't joking. Think 'Randy' from Trains, Planes, and Automobiles--the guys who gives Steve Martin and John Candy a lift to the train station in the pickup truck.
At about 6am the next morning we were happily on our way to Fox Glacier.
Unfortanately is was a cloudy day so we couldn't see much more than the dirty base. The water streaming out of the glacier was a magnificent, clear blue and it was pretty spectacular to watch the torrents sweep over the granite bed. We climbed around for awhile then left pretty quickly for Milford Sound.
The day we arrived in the Milford Sound area it was raining pretty hard. This was actually a great thing. The road from Te Anu to the Sound has gigantic, sheer cliffs dashing straight down into the valley. When it rains the rain water runs down the granite cliffs in huge waterfalls, so we drove past hundreds of these spectacular waterfalls. The next morning was a beautiful, blue day. We explored the Sound by boat and kayak the entire day. It was one of the highlights of our trip for sure. Check out the pictures and you'll see why.
The rest of our trip was a little bit of a blur. We went to the Caitlins, which looks a lot like romantic pictures of Ireland--sheep, green pastures, giant cliffs and turbulant seas. From there we headed up to the Dunedin Peninsula where we saw
penguins, seals, and sea lions.
From there we left for Australia.
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John Marlin
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Hey, world travellers...
Glad to see that you are having such a rotten time of it! :)