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Published: March 1st 2006
No Hunting
Pat says, "No Challenge!" In NZ deer are actually farmed, and venison appears on restaurant menus. We have driven past countless paddocks full of the animals. In some places they are regarded as pests and shot like possums, not for the meat. Other hunters do use it.The first thing I'd say about driving up the west coast is WATCH OUT FOR the sand flies! They are annoying little hard black bugs that spring up on your legs as you dance in a phone booth trying to shake them off. Their bites are more itchy than mosquito bites, and stay for more than a week. Once one starts to itch you find yourself standing like a monkey scratching here and there.
Why a phone booth? We drove up from Queenstown, booked a room at Hopitika, and had to call back to confirm at 6pm but there was no reception. For two more hours, no reception. AT Haast the places were filled with some sort of conference of farmers (?!?) aand advised us that all places were booked. So we tried our long distance card at the pay phone near the highway ----- and began our Dance of the Sand Flies performance. I was wearing capri pants which made me a prime target for the pesky critters.
We ended up in a Backpacker's that night, sharing a room of bunks with a pair of sisters, each of whom looked to be in their sixties or so. One
lived in Nelson, the other in Christchurch. We took the last two beds available in Haast that night. Several hours later, after we made supper and stood in a queue to check our email on the one computer for the building, an older Irish couple came to the door while Pat was still in the queue -it must have been after 11. Pat had tucked in to some wine or beer and was Mr. Hospitality to this bedraggled man who came begging to find a spot to lie down and an urgent request for a washroom please!. He rousted the manageress who ended up giving them her daughter's bedroom - her home was at the back of the establishment.
The next morning the senior Irish couple was asking for directions for the nearest restaurant that made breakfast, and thanked the manageress again for the last-minute bed. She said, "Don't thank me, thank him!" pointing to Pat.
They told us they'd driven from Christchurch across country to our location on the west coast, and on to the Franz Josef Glacier up the coast where they planned to walk the next day. Mrs. said the drive was "easy-peasy" but when they
discovered not one bed in town anywhere for the night, the "easy-peasiness went right out of it all of a sudden!!!"
We said our goodbyes in the kitchen. A few hours later, we were hiking back from the Fox Glacier, and bumped into them just starting out on the walk. The manageress had advised them to go to the Fox instead, miss the crowds 27km further north at the Franz Josef, and then continue south on their trip to Queenstown. Mrs. had researched the glacier from Ireland and planned for a year to go, but was thankful to have an alternate way to see the glacier up close and avoid the crowds at the same time. So it all worked out.
We just said goodbye again to them when we encountered a man around our age (that's 29) sitting on a wheelchair in the path. He'd been pushed up the terribly steep bumpy muddy path by a few strong Irish blokes (not our friends) and now he decided it wasn't accessible after seeing the rest of the path strewn with rocks. His girlfriend was gone back for running shoes. We helped them down the hill, carrying the seat
cushion and he "bummed" his way down the hill with our tarp underneath him to save his pants. Another bunch of hikers took the wheelchair, I kicked the sharper stones out of his path, and the troup of us made our way slowly down the hill. Apparently he had seen the Franz Josef already, and it was better prepared for disabled tourists with a cinder path and fairly flat. He invited us in for tea in his caravan for the disabled but we had to push on.
The glaciers themselves are like the Columbia Icefields in Alberta - or actually more like the glacier at Lake Louise. These have been receding steadily as well, with markers of where it was in 1750 and 1870 and so on. It is a bit disorienting looking at the glaciers, they don't look that big, until you see tiny specks moving along an edge and realize they are people who are on one of the guided treks along the channels underneath or along its edge.
I don't have the pictures of the glacier with me at the time of this writing, I will have to upload them another time.
The drive
up the west coast is along a rainforest. We got out to do a walk at one point, but had to jump back in the car quickly. We had made the mistake of wearing shorts, and we ran back to grab our long pants and socks out of our suitcases. But the sand flies were biting so quickly and were so numerous we abandoned that plan and drove off, batting the flies out of the car as we went. We were still swatting our legs and arms three kilometres down the highway.
My brother Michael had alerted me to the fact that Hope, NZ was just outside Nelson, and encouraged me to do an update of the 1964 photo that my father took outside Hope, British Columbia when our family travelled out to the west coast from London Ontario. Four kids in the back of a new Rambler station wagon. We all stood around the sign saying "Entering Hope" so of course I had to do it again.
Nelson is said to be the sunniest place in New Zealand. The population is 55K and is apparently busy making itself modern and a good location for tourists. We
First snow I've seen
in almost a year. Have to fill in the name of the mountain later when I have my notes. It's the highest one as we came up the highway from Queenstown. had three solid days of sunshine and I was addicted at once. We had had so much rain in our travels on the South Island that I was more than ready for the change. It was about 27 -30 degrees for all three days, cooling off in the evenings.
Then on to Picton, where the ferry takes passengers to the North Island. We went on a winery tour 15 minutes after arriving at the Holiday Park. A bus took us to four wineries, and we were back by 6.
It's fun to watch the interactions change among the winery tourists as we progress. By the third one we are all laughing and chatting with everyone we see. I met a fellow Canadian at the third winery. I forgot about sampling the wine and just chatted with him; a young fellow from St. Paul, Alberta, working for Ducks Unlimited. He must have been all of 23, and heard me asking for the contact info for the Canadian distributor of that winery's products. He was leaving in a few weeks but his girlfriend was continuing on around Australia for a few months. He, too, was glad to be away from
Approaching the Fox and the Franz Joseph Glaciers
This area reminded me a bit of the Kootenays in British Columbia. A wide valley between low mountain ranges with higher ones in the background. the February snow and wind. When we lived in Alberta, we survived many a cold snap of 25 degrees below zero that lasted for a few days or a week at a time. I used to consult in the St. Paul area when I was an occupational therapist in the Edmonton Public School system. I can't say that St. Paul was any balmier than Edmonton, as a rule.
We had three glorious days of sunshine in the Nelson-Picton area. Originally we intended to go along the Marlborough Sound walk one day, but when we went to have a look the day before decided that the scenery wasn't that different from what we had seen before, and the first part was mostly in the forest. We ran one morning along a few of the paths in the peninsula across from the park where we were staying, and returned later in the day out of the heat, to hike along its higher paths (Snout Path) , towards the end of the peninsula. How pleasant after so many days of rain rain rain.
It was still warm with a cloudless sky as we boarded the ferry early Thurs Feb 23. On
the deck, people applied sunscreen as we cruised along the Marlborough Sound. As soon as we cleared the inlet and were out in the open sea, the clouds appeared over the mountains surrounding Wellington and we went indoors to escape the biting wind. At 10:45 we approached Wellington harbour. Cumulous clouds were building above the peaks, and the sky became overcase. Exactly one hour later we were plugging a meter in downtown Welly to have some lunch, and a huge wind blew up, the skies opened and we were subjected to a cold downpour. Wellingtonians hustled by in leather jackets and winter-weight pants, government workers on their lunch hours. We had to change out of our shorts and put on jackets.
A few hours later, Pat decided to extend his trip here. Instead of flying back to Canada on March the 4th, he is now staying until April 5th. We decided to head on to Napier, on the sunny east coast for more summer weather but first, stayed a few days visiting Erin in the Wellington area.
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anonymous
non-member comment
great photos