I'll admit I had to read my last post to figure out where we were the last time I wrote. With the last post from Bhutan, I have a lot of catching up to do. No excuses for the long lapse other than to say we have been on the road and on the go. Finding reliable internet was not the only challenge to regular posting. Finding the time after driving and hiking all day was by far the biggest barrier. Let me see what I can come up with to represent what we did and saw in New Zealand.
But before I even think about NZ, we spent a few days in Bangkok transitioning from Bhutan, or at least that is what the guide books said might be a nice thing to do. As was hopefully obvious, we really enjoyed Bhutan and felt little need to transition away from it back to the larger world.
And Bangkok is the larger world though we were better prepared for it on the return trip than when we arrived from Europe. Despite our previous visit, we weren't sure what was awaiting us as we flew in because of the massive flooding that affected all of Thailand and subsequently southeast Asia. Water is something the Thai people seem to understand because to our eyes the city seemed to be just as energetic as before the flooding. Sure, there were cars parked in long lines on every elevated road, but business appeared as usual to us. After just two days, we were on our way to New Zealand. Overall, our time in Thailand was very short, too short to say anything about Thai culture other than we met some wonderful people despite the overbearing tuk-tuk drivers.
Some fourteen hours after leaving Bangkok, we arrived in rainy and chilly Auckland. We thought we were headed back to summer but New Zealand offered us just about everything but summer. All I am going to write about New Zealand is as an impressionist might paint a scene because my memories are already sorting into pictures and feelings more than actual facts. We rented a Jucy campervan. With its distinctive green and purple markings it was very easy to see us and fellow Jucy renters on the road. A definite camaraderie developed among Jucy drivers identified by the way we would all flash our lights and wave when we passed each other on the road. While hardly spacious, the kids slept in a pop-up on top while Lucy and I got the inside compartment. With a little gas stove and some plates and utensils, we had most meals out of the back of the van or in the kitchens of the camp grounds we frequented.
We were new to campervanning. Just like arriving in a city is confusing for a few days, so it was with the campervan scene. There is a whole infrastructure built for campervanning with nuances learned only with time and practice. I found myself eying other campervans, checking out the set up of each one in an effort to improve our ride. As we became more practiced, we figured it all out allowing us to access the Department of Conservation free or nearly free campgrounds in the most out of the way locations along beaches or in the mountains. With such beautiful backdrops every night, we mused about the future of such a lifestyle.
Any reconnaissance of New Zealand, whether by guide book, internet, or on the ground will quickly demonstrate an immense variety of landscape and adventure potential. The North and South Islands have between them lakes and rivers, volcanoes and hot springs, mountains and glaciers, rain forests and fiords, and kilometers of beaches many of which are empty of people or nearly so but rich in tide pools and seals and sea lions with dolphins surfing the breaking wave faces. Imagine Colorado with a long coastline but throw in a bit of Yellowstone and the glacier cut peaks of the northern Rockies, with the grasslands of the high prairie and that begins to capture all of the natural wonder we enjoyed.
Our basic goal was to travel from Auckland to Invercargill and back again. Auckland is in the northern part of the North Island and Invercargill is the southern most city of the South Island. It was ambitious and maybe too much but we were glad to have toured through the places we did and still be able to spend several days with our friends Neil and Nory in Invercargill. Because we were in a different place almost every night, I will avoid the list of nightly campgrounds but instead try to describe some of the places we really loved along the way.
1. Mountain biking in Rotorua: New Zealand works its forests hard in that many of the forests we saw were actively managed by the timber industry. On the outskirts of one such forest, the local community has carved out awesome single track that curves and climbs, dips and rolls through recovering forest. Aidan and I rode for about two hours, which seemed just about right for our hiking trained legs.
2. Tongariro National Park and Craters of the Moon: the southern part of the North Island is formed by several large volcanoes and their outflow, some of which were featured in The Lord of the Rings. On the drive to the park we partly circled Lake Taupo, a volcanic crater forming the largest lake on the North Island created by the most violent volcanic explosion in the last several thousand years. Hiking through the grass covered open country of Tongariro NP over what was once lava flow gave us all yet another appreciation of the destructive/creative cycle of volcanoes. At Craters of the Moon, we walked the board walk around mud pots and steaming craters, listening to the earth hiss and bubble, reminding us that the place hasn't cooled off yet.
3. The Marlborough Sounds: welcome to the South Island! We ferried from Wellington to Picton and drove the Jucy to a beach side campground along one of the fingers of the Marlborough Sounds. There is far more to see and do here than sip sauvignon blanc wine. We spent an afternoon walking along the Queen Charlotte track high above fiord-like waterways. Though we arrived before the summer warmth settled in, we also arrived before the summer crowds. We thought it easier to deal with chill weather than crowds so we considered ourselves lucky.
4. Totaranui Beach and the Abel Tasman track: We drove some 70km away from the town of Nelson with its upscale feel to this isolated beach on the Golden Bay. Our timing again was perfect as we found the 850 person capacity campground with just a dozen or so folks leaving the several kilometer long beach for us to explore almost completely alone. The bonus here was access to the beautiful Abel Tasman track, which makes its way in a north/south direction along the coast. The hike that motivated the kids was the 15km round trip coursing over several deserted beaches to Separation Point where we could sit and watch a small seal colony play among the rocks in the surging surf. And while Auckland was rainy and chilly, we walked under horizon wide blue skies.
5. Thanksgiving with the Osorios and Kellers: we joined our friends for a belated Thanksgiving dinner. It was wonderful to share the American tradition with our friends, and gave our kids a sense that the world is not such a big place.
6. Mt. Cook National Park: though bad for Christchurch, the Southern Alps are the spectacular result of the Australasia and Pacific plates slowly grinding away at each other. The mountains rear up into some antarctically driven wet and windy weather guaranteeing enough snow to support glaciation. Again, the weather gods looked upon us favorably and changed the foggy, nearly snowing weather of our arrival in the park to a blue bird day the next day so we could enjoy the majesty of those peaks from the Hooker Valley Trail and Tasman Glacier. The park offers another special treat in the Edmund Hillary Alpine Center where we could listen to a recording of Hillary describing his ascent of Mt. Everest.
7. The Otago Penisula: that sheep should have the views they have from the pastures on this highland jutting into the Pacific Ocean above the city of Dunedin is something to be envied. We hiked through steep sheep pastures looking over beaches harboring the rare Yellow-eyed penguin, found only along the southeast coast of the South Island. The Pacific Ocean stretched before us unobstructed until Easter Island, thousands of miles to the east with still some 2000 miles yet to the coast of Chile. That is a lot of empty ocean!
8. The Catlins: our friends Neil and Nory invited us to stay with them in Invercargill, often described as the armpit of New Zealand. It lies at 46 degrees south latitude, in a stretch of the world known as the Roaring Forties for the relentless wind that circles the globe. The Catlins is a stretch of coastline occupied by sheep stations and is mostly un- or minimally inhabited. Nothing but high grass covered dunes and headlands, breaking waves and sand, penguins and sea lions, and the wind. If that is living in an armpit, we were happy to immerse in it. We surfed at Curio beach, as Hector's Dolphins, the smallest of the dolphins, played around us and showed us how to really play in the surf.
9. Invercargill: despite its rep as an armpit, a lovely town made even more comfortable by our friends.
10. Clifden Cave: imagine a limestone cave a few steps off of the road with a sign that shows the route through and then a mild warning of something like "if you go, it is your own decision and your own risk...". Only in the land that invented bungy jumping. We spent about forty minutes wandering through this small cave. The kids could not believe we had the place completely to ourselves. Oh, and did I mention there was nobody collecting an entrance fee?
11. The road to Milford Sound: if you ever Google Milford Sound, undoubtedly a picture of Mitre Peak towering some 1750 meters above the surface of the water will be prominent. Formed by glaciers, everything about Milford Sound fiord is drop-dead beautiful, except for the persistent sand fly. The fly is so obnoxious the Maori (indigenous people) have a legend about the creation of the fly that says one of their gods created it to remind man of his mortality lest the beauty of Milford Sound cause him to forget. The road to Milford Sound was just as beautiful as it cut through glacier cut valleys curtained by waterfalls affording several jumping off places for hikes to glacier fed lakes like the beautiful Lake Marion.
12. Queenstown: as the birth home of bungy jumping and the location of Middle Earth in The Lord of the Rings, Queenstown is the adrenaline capital of New Zealand and a definite tourist destination. Set on a long lake backed up by the Remarkable Mountains, it is easy to see why so many outdoor and aerobic junkies flock here. We had but a day as we passed through, but it was made far more memorable by our stay with our friends Chip and Lindsay.
13. Wanaka: Some twenty years ago, I bicycle toured around the South Island. While this trip proved that I have few accurate memories from that trip, I clearly remember riding into Wanaka, at the gate to Mt. Aspiring National Park, and thinking it to be a town I could happily retire to. Though a bit bigger and more upscale than when I was last there, the lake and mountains remain unchanged leaving me with that same feeling as we drove into town this time.
14. Gillespies Beach: we drove a long way to get to this free beach on the west coast, recommended by Chip and Lindsay. As we drove in, with the clouds hanging low on the Southern Alps, we laughed at the Mt. Cook View Hotel, guessing they had a picture of the view in their lobby. The ever present sand fly greeted us as we pulled into the little parking lot. We parked next to a van with a Canadian flag on the side window and I made a joke with the occupants asking them if they were really Americans posing as Canadians. We enjoyed Garreth and Shauna's company and stories of their year-long stay in NZ. And yes, they really were Canadian. But the biggest surprise, which crept up on us like all surprises do, was the lifting of the clouds freeing Mt. Cook and all of its neighbors to look down upon us with an air of grandeur more regal than any monarchy. We watched the sun set across those mountains, with the pounding surf at our backs, and considered ourselves once again extremely lucky.
Now that I have written all of this, I think about all the places I didn't mention. There are many of them. But I can't give all the magic away or nobody reading this would ever need to go. There is plenty of adventure and beauty in New Zealand I didn't describe so you can still find it for yourselves.
We made it back to Auckland but it was cold and rainy so it was easy to pack up for another fourteen hour flight to Chile and Patagonia.
Happy Holidays and great adventures in the New Year to all!
Paul
