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Published: March 23rd 2007
Our next few blogs will mainly be about the stunning mountains of New Zealand - definitely the highlight of our whole trip! It is very hard to capture such grand scenery on a lens (especially with our limited photographic skills!) but we took millions of photos of Fiordland and the Southern Alps anyway!
Queenstown After Christchurch we headed inland to the mountains of Fiordland where we would soon be doing some of New Zealand's most famous overnight treks. The first reasoanly big town we arrived at was Queenstown, where we spent a few nights and found it to be a totally charmless place. It was once a gold mining town but these days it mostly just caters for tourists who are overcharged for everything.
Nonetheless, Queenstown offers a lot... and the coolest thing we did was luging, which we did on a mountain overlooking the town (with fantastic views!). The luges went on concrete rarther than ice (like the ones you see in the winter olympics) and you got chairlifting up to the start of the run where you jumped into your luge and drove back down a choice of two winding routes - great fun!
The Kepler Track After a few days relaxing on a deer farm just south of Te Anau, we started the 67km Kepler Track on the 27th February. Located in the lower mountains of the Southern Alps, it is the least walked of the major tracks. You get to climb to the tops of mountains for some far reaching views and we also had glorious weather for all 3 days which made for an amazing walk!
The second day was our favourite, which we mostly spent on a ridge with stunning views before descending steeply into a beach forest. On the third evening (which we spent in a hut on the shore of the beautiful Lake Manapouri) we were given an interesting talk by our hut warden. She told us about the Kepler Race which happens every year and where contestants run the whole track in a day - the record is 4 hours! She also had some funny stories about campers blowing themselves up by not turning off the gas, and people breaking feet when going to the toilet at night (actually maybe her stories were more concerning than funny, but we all laughed anyway!).
After
completing the track we spent a couple of days relaxing in glorious sunshine in a little cabin with stunning views of Lake Manapouri. We obviously didn't realise it at the time, but they would also be our last hot and sunny days for a while... Oh well, I suppose there is a reason why there are so many lakes in Fiordland!
The Milford Track On Monday 5th March we started on the 54km Milford Track, the most famous of the Great New Zealand walks. Since the walk is so popular you have to book the huts months in advance and you do not get any flexibility on how long you take to walk the track - everyone has to spend 3 nights doing it. Because of this we actually found that there wasn't much walking each day and we spent a lot of time in the huts playing cards and chatting with the very friendly people that we met.
Our Milford adventure started with an hour long boat ride to the start of the track (there being no road access), after which was a short walk through beach forest to our first hut. Unfortunately, that night
heavy rain started and didn't relent for the next 40 hours (raining 50 cm in that period). The next day we had no choice but to set off in this rain. One good thing about this is that all of the mountains end up being covered by hundreds of waterfalls pouring down the cliff faces. Another is that the rainforests come into their own, both looking and sounding beautiful. The bad points are that you can only actually see the bottom few metres of the mountains and the path completely floods in parts so that you are aften faced with wading through knee high (or higher!) water. It was definitely an experience!
We arrived at our second hut of the Milford Track after 5 hours of walking, and in a soaking wet state. We spent the rest of the afternoon trying in vain to dry our boots and clothes! On day 3 we put on our still wet gear and set off in the rain again. This was the day where we climbed over the famous McKinnon Pass (named after the Scottish guide who first found the route through). We have been told that the views from here are
Sandfly Point
James has a good excuse for those tights...spectacular... Unfortunately, at the top we were only greeted by pelting rain and glacial winds and were extremely glad to dive into the emergency shelter up there to warm up and try to rediscover some feeling in our extremities! Happily, the rain did actually start easing up in the afternoon and finally stopped in the evening.
We arrived at Sandly Point, the end of the walk, at lunchtime on day 4 and were stunned by just how beautiful Milford Sound is, especially as by this stage the sun had come out. We jumped onto a cruise boat that afternoon to sail around the Sound and all of the preceding days of rain were soon forgotten as we marvelled at the steep mountains rising sharply out of the sea to some 1,600m with the taller mountains providing a snowy backdrop - it was really a spectacular sight!
The Routeburn Track After a few days relaxing in Milford Sound, trying to take in the grand scenery, it was time to set off on the last of our three Great Walks in the south - the Routeburn Track. This is the shortest of the Fiordland Great Walks at only 32km.
After a few hours the weather turned and it again started pouring with rain. By lunchtime we had reached the place we were meant to be camping that night but the forecast for the next two days was so awful - with snow and heavy winds forecast on the high pass - that we decided to press on. Again we unfortunately missed out on the views over the Alpine Crossing and Harris Saddle and reached our next stop at about 7pm, tired and very wet! Luckily we were able to upgrade from the campsite to the hut, which was quite a relief as it rained all night and was freezing cold. The next day we only had a couple of hours walk to the road end and our bus - we had completed the whole track in just over a day!
Although we weren't that lucky with the weather on the Milford and Routeburn tracks, we were still awed by how beautiful the walks were and had a brilliant time. We have also decided that we must return to complete them in better weather!
Vanessa's favourite place in New Zealand (and therefore the world!) Our next rest
James and Delilah
Walking with our guide from Kinloch Lodge stop was Vanessa's favourite place in the whole of New Zealand - the stunning Kinloch Lodge. Although only 45 mintes drive from Queenstown (both are on the shore of Lake Wakatipu) the hostel is set in a complete mountain wilderness. It is not surprising that a hamlet situated only 20km away is called “Paradise”.
For Lord of the Rings fans it is the area where Isengard, Saraman's tower, was superimposed. We spent five days there shared between doing little mountain walks (along with the lodge's friendly dogs, Samson and Delilah) and watching lots of films in the hostel's comfy video lounge (which was virtually always empty) - what bliss!
One day when Vanessa was feeling particularly energetic (but James was feeling a bit injured) she walked to the top of the Harris Saddle (the high point of the Routeburn Track) in order to try and get the views that we had previously missed. The weather wasn't great but at least the Routeburn Valley and top of the pass were out of the clouds and so she managed to get a few photos.
Arrowtown Arrowtown was our final stop in Fiordland. It is a quaint little
place near to Queenstown. We did an exciting activity while we were there: white water rafting on the Shotover river. The scariest part of this was actually the bus ride to the start of the rafting! This is because the road up the Shotover valley is a very precarious and windy gravel track which is cut into one of the valley sides leaving a big drop. The road was originally built by gold miners who sifted the Shotover river about 100 years or so ago - and they probably didn't have bus loads of tourist in mind when they were building it!
The rafting itself was great fun, albeit pleasant rather than exhilerating owing to the river level being relatively low. Despite the tameness of the river, James still managed to fall overboard in one of the bumpier bits! Luckily he was pulled back into the boat pretty sharpish by everyone else on board.
Having developed a taste for sketchy roads, a couple of days later we drove up another gravel track to the Remarkables ski area. Our old car performed admirably to make it up this 13km climb. At the end of the road we continued on
foot to a look out point some 2,000m above sea level, which afforded us fantastic views of Queenstown, Lake Wakatipu and the surrounding countryside.
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