karamea to queenstown

happy belated thanksgiving! while i originally didn't think we were missing out on much by skipping thanksgiving this year, i've spent the last day and a half perusing everyone's thanksgiving pictures and facebook status updates and am now almost wishing that i'd had a chance to participate in black friday, as much as i revile it under ordinary circumstances.

advance notice: this update is, sadly, picture free; while our hostel has free internet, they(strangely) don't offer a USB connection. we gave in and bought another memory card for the camera, as we haven't been able to clear the pictures out quickly enough due to slow connections and expensive internet cafes.

tomorrow morning we're leaving for what should be a 7-day (monday to monday) link of three tracks in the area: 2 days on the greenstone track, 2 days on the routeburn, and 3-4 days on the rees-dart. this will be the longest we've been out without a resupply, so the packs feel insanely heavy with all of the food. wish us luck! here's what we've been up to since finishing the heaphy:

sun, nov 22
karamea

waste of a day. visited the information center to arrange transport to st arnaud (the main hub of nelson lakes national park), only to discover that a regular bus service hasn't run there since 2001, despite its location on what seems like it should be a prominent east-west route between blenheim and westport. striking a second blow to our tramping plans, we found out that our intended route included an alpine crossing that would be impassable without crampons, ice axes, and the skills needed to wield them. so we gave in and booked an early morning shuttle to westport as there seemed no other way out of this dang town. our original plan called for us to hike the wangapeka track across to the park's eastern bounday, but we just couldn't get ourselves excited about that trip. i'm not sure if this "i don't feel like it" option that we have while travelling is a good thing - it's not practical in other contexts, but is it acceptable here, given that this whole trip is really just one big indulgence?

mon, nov 23
karamea to arthur's pass

today has mercifully carried us far from karamea, though it wasn't cheap and wasn't without its frustrations. we took a shuttle to westport, which is big enough for an i-site but not big enough for a car rental, then hopped on another bus down to greymouth, where we succeeded at last in renting a car. to save money, we're travelling with david, an aspiring teacher from germany, whom we met at the bunkhouse in karamea. he's heading to queenstown, so i guess that's where we're going, too. the rental company has a 5-day minimum, so we'll explore the west coast until saturday and then go our separate ways. tonight we're camping between the highway and the train tracks (surprisingly, in an established camping site) in the town of arthur's pass, which is situated along the arthur's pass (road) in arthur's pass national park. setting up camp in the rain wasn't fun, but at least there's a spacious shelter in which to make dinner. tomorrow we'll look for a good day hike and then make our way back to the west coast highway.

tues, nov 24
arthur's pass to goldborough

the sun, though rising much too early for this time of year (6 am, late spring), revealed the beautiful alpine scenery that we were unable to appreciate in yesterday's foul weather. a consultation with a park ranger led us to the scott's track up to avalanche peak, though it was suggested with the warning that the wind was likely to reach gale strength and with the requirement that we submit an intentions form. intentions forms entail a submission of your hiking plans along with a notification of your safe return, and are required on the routes with more danger potential. the DOC office in nelson no longer accepts them due to so many casual hikers forgetting to complete the safe arrival portion and leading to unnecessary search and rescue efforts, but we've seen them more frequently as we've been heading south.
we made it to 1600m, a new personal high for us though still 250m shy of the summit, which we reluctantly decided not to attempt due to strong winds on a narrowing ridge. being a few hundred meters above treeline, the views were still incredible; never before had i felt so "in the mountains". i'm just glad to be kept from boredom by constantly finding myself in unfamiliar landscapes. after lunch we hit up a short track leading to a waterfall, which failed to impress. rather than risk bad weather for the dangerously steep drive out of the mountains tomorrow, we packed up and headed back to the west coast tonight, leaving a short drive into hokitika in the morning.
our camping spot tonight is situated in an old mining area, so bryan's gone down to the stream to find us some gold with which to finance the rest of this trip. the campsite's welcome sign displayed the usual symbols advertising bathrooms, a water source, and a cooking shelter, but the woman leaning over a river and carrying a basket containing three squares was puzzling to me until i spotted the gold fossicking information board. not a usual campsite amenity.

wed, nov 25
goldsborough to fox glacier

having partaken in an excellent meal of fish and chips and being quite snugly lodged in a warm hostel in this pouring rain, i can confidently assert that our decision to see the west coast by car was a good one. travelling with strangers is, obviously, potentially disastrous, but our plans have aligned well with david's and he's proven to be an amiable companion. we started the day with a half-hour walk in a forgotten mining area that led us through three short hand-carved tunnels, which, despite my shrieks of fear, contained no bats or rats. goldsborough, despite its possession of a town-identifying black dot on the map, is really no town at all. during the short-lived goldrush days of the 1860s its population peaked at 7000, but now all that remains is our tiny campground and a sign commemorating the hotel that distinguished itself as the last functioning building in town. i suppose what we now see isn't too far removed from what the area looked like before its resources were discovered at all.
other towns born in the gold rush had enough alternative resources to stick around beyond the initial boom. we spent a few hours in one of these towns, hokitika, which is now known for its greenstone (jade) carvings and for its annual wildfoods festival. for the first time in our travels, we stopped in a town and thought "oh, it's bigger than i'd pictured it!". most importantly for me, it had a museum; having seen plenty of references to the west coast's mining history, i was eager to learn more. bryan even patiently waited as i read all of the information panels, though i offered him the chance to roam around town instead. after lunch, we drove 2 hrs south to franz josef glacier, the first of the two glacier towns where you can pay for a guided glacier tour or even take a helicopter ride up to higher, bluer ice. we'll join the group for a half-day walk tomorrow, but for now satisfied ourselves with a 10-minute walk to a lookout. actually, it was fairly unsatisfying, the glacier being distant from the lookout and shrouding itself in the wet afternoon's low mist.
we'd planned to camp at a free spot a half hour out of town, but gave in to the appeal of the hostel with the rain beating down on the car windows. it's also given us the opportunity to shower, as i realized that i haven't done so since saturday and thought, in a way that now seems alarmingly casual, that maybe i could benefit from some soap and hot water.

thu, nov 26
fox glacier to lake paringa

our first "adventure experience" tourist splurge - a half-day walk on the fox glacier. as much as i don't want to admit disappointment, i probably wouldn't do it again; our group of 15 was too large and inexperienced (read: out of shape) to move along at a decent pace, resulting in barely an hour of ice time during a 4-hour tour. i was happy with our guide, nadine from australia, as she taught us quite a bit about glacial formation and movement. you can tell that it takes a lot of work (and money) to sustain tourism on a glacier: the parking lot, being built on the retreating glacier's "dead ice", is constantly under construction to keep it at a stable elevation, the trail from the parking lot falls victim to heavy rains and is reconstructed completely after every storm, and the ice steps on the glacier itself melt away daily. it seems as if the glacier is trying to keep itself inaccessible.

fri, nov 27
lake paringa to ithilien

i am in lord of the rings geek heaven: we are camping in ithilien. it may have disguised itself as a DOC campsite just minutes outside of queenstown, but i see through this facade and would not at all be surprised to see an oliphant wandering past our tent. i will admit that, in choosing our campsite, the yellow movie reel symbol on our road atlas indicating a filming location held some sway.
it's just the two of us tonight, as david, having just over two weeks left in nz, is hoping to get on the trail as soon as possible and had us drop him off in queenstown a day early. most of our day was spent driving, though we made short stops in haast (visitor center and overpriced grocery store), wanaka (lunch break - ate in the car because of the fierce winds), arrowtown (kitschy historic town; we stopped for the gelato), and hit up a few short walks off of the highway where it ran through mt aspiring national park.

sat, nov 28
ithilien to queenstown

here we are in queenstown, the "party town" that i just recently publicly resolved not to visit. while its terrible aspects were not overplayed, i suppose i have failed to give credit to some of its better qualities: an abundance of fantastic restaurants, a beautiful location on lake wakatipu, and an easy-to-navigate layout that includes plenty of green space on the fringes. our hostel, the best rated in town, is small (18 beds) and comfortable, with an impressive movie collection, so passing two nights here shouldn't be too difficult.

-rachel

takaka to karamea (heaphy track)

here's the official record of our four days on the heaphy track, the only one of new zealand's great walks that we've done so far.

wed, nov 18
takaka to perry saddle hut, 10.5 miles

our 10 am shuttle to the start of the heaphy track arrived at 11:30, so the day began with concerns about our ability to reach the first hut before sundown. while we waited for the bus, we foudn a brochure for a competitor that ran more frequently and more cheaphy and wished that we'd discovered this company earlier. the hour-long bus ride was interesting, as i sat next to a belgian guy my age who's had some incredible adventures aroudn the world. before arriving in nz he was in china, trekking across the gobi desert ("which isn't very wide...just three weeks to cross it") with his girlfriend and a donkey. they got lost when his compass filled with sand but were rescued by some passing bedouins. meeting these kinds of people knocks us down to size, curtailing our gloating sense of "we're real backpackers now!" it's good for us.
we made our way to the perry saddle hut with plenty of time to spare (it took 4 hours compared to DOC's 5 hour estimate), beating out the crowd of sprightly 70-somethings who are also joining us on this trip.

sign seen at a supermarket: "tasty nz corned silverback - $6.49/kilo". what the heck is a corned silverback?

thurs, nov 19
perry saddle hut to james mackay hut, 14.5 miles

what short days we have on the heaphy! 4 hours yesterday, barely 6 today, less tomorrow. the pressure to wake up for an early start is lessened as a result, so we were perfectly fine with leaving an hour or so after most of the older tramping club members.
the landscape between the huts today was incredible - wide expanses of high-altitude downs, flat and scrubby, that could almost be mistaken for the african savannah. i hope that's not a silly thing to say, as i've never seen the savannah. after so much forest hiking, pretty though it was, i'm fully embracing the change of scenery.

fri, nov 20
james mackay hut to heaphy hut, 12 miles

waking up is always a difficult process for me, even after consecutive nights of 11 hours of sleep, but i have recently been assisted by the partial deflation of my sleeping mat each night, which seems to want to help me by jamming my bony places with underlying sticks and rocks. this morning wasn't quite so bad, as the designated campsite placed us atop a wooden platform about 2 feet off the groups with straps hanging off from all sides to use as "stakes". surprisingly, this platform was located near a flat stretch of ground labeled "helicopter landing pad" - usually the landing pads are the platforms and the grass is for campers.
the 3-hour downhill stretch to the lewis hut was unremarkable, which emphasized the jurassic park-like landscape of tropical ferns and overhanging cliffs all the more. during yesterday's hike we crossed over from the nelson region into the west coast region (passing near the "rugged country south of rivendell"), and today we camped at the confluence of the heaphy river and the tasman sea. the sandflies, as we were warned, are out in full force; all evening it sounds like a light rain is tapping on the tent, but it's just the pesky flies hopping around on the underside of the rainfly. 

sat, nov 21
heaphy hut to karamea, 12 miles

but for the sandflies, there would have been no reason to hurry out of camp this morning, having just 5 hours ahead of us by DOC's generous estimates. great walks, being so visitor-accessible, have a high standard of maintenance that means easy tramping for those of us used to hiking on rougher standard tracks. in the end, it took us 3.5 hours plus a brief lunch break (we ate walking around in circles to avoid the sandflies) to reach the end of the trail, kohaihai shelter, where we'd planned to spend the night. being not even 1 pm, however, we chose to walk the 11 miles into karamea instead. 3 miles in, when a half-full shuttle offered us a ride at a price that "recognized the effort already put in", we took it and rode into town, finding a dirt cheap bunkhouse at a campground where we shared a room with a talkative elderly gentleman from reno who snored vigorously all night long. 
karamea itself, despite the attractive marketing brochures, is tiny and has little to offer, so we'll spend a day restocking and will then be on our way somewhere else...anywhere else.

-rachel

pictures:
1) crossing one of the many swingbridges over a flood-prone river 
2) a view of the scrubby downs. it was hard to get a picture, as it was so foggy.3) bryan perched on some rocks between lewis and heaphy huts 4) a bridge along the west coast on the final day of the trek

from greymouth

really brief update - we're in greymouth, arranging a rental car to take us down the west coast for a few days. we completed the heaphy track (beautiful!) on saturday, spent sunday in a really cheap bunkhouse in karamea with an older man from reno who was still ranting about the "anti-intellectuals" that he worked with as a physics professor 20 years ago, and took the bus south to westport and then another one to greymouth today. we're travelling with a german guy who also stayed in the bunkhouse and plan to end up in queenstown (hopefully just for a day!) on friday. the highlight of these few days should be a brief foray into arthur's pass national park and part of a day on fox glacier.

more updates when we can! thanks again for all of your wonderful notes on this blog and in emails and on facebook - you're fantastic!

-rachel and bryan

nelson to takaka (abel tasman national park)

hello friends and family! we're now safely in takaka, having completed the inland track at abel tasman national park, which forced us back into shape over the 5 days that we spent hiking along it. here's how it went:

friday, nov 13

marahau to castle rock hut, 7 miles

this morning we hopped on the 7:45 bus to marahau to begin working off ice cream and pizza pounds that have been accumulating this last month. we said a sad goodbye to our cozy home in nelson with one last mug of tea and the morning paper before setting off to hike the inland track at abel tasman national park. the bus ride was short and mostly uneventful; fortunately, the vast majority of passengers departed at kaiteri for a catamaran cruise, relieving our concerns about a congested trail experience. so far the track, which briefly follows the coastal track before branching off inland, has been good to us out-of-shape trampers, giving us some lovely views to compensate for our aching calves. we arrived at castle rocks hut in the early afternoon and claimed a couple of mattresses on the top berth before being joined by 5 others coming from the opposite direction. this is our first experience with huts, and i must say it's wonderful not having to set up the tent.

saturday, nov 14

castle rocks hut to awapoto hut, 8 miles

progress was unexpectedly good today, allowing us to stop for the day shortly before 3 pm at the spacious and comfortable awapoto hut. this hut is also devoid of other hikers, which we were hoping for after sharing last night's hut with a fast-talking american woman who kept one-upping everyone else with stories of her travels in asia.

bryan and i shared a perfect moment on the front porch at sunset, eating bowls of oatmeal and watching the sun's rays wash all of the color out of the eastern hills. afterwards we lit a fire in the wood stove, spread out across the bunks, and wished for an equally enjoyable day of tramping tomorrow.

sunday, nov 15

awapoto hut to anapai bay, 11 miles

learned a valuable lesson about map-reading today when my failure to scrutinize the topo lines gave us a severely over-optimistic impression of the route ahead. though it was true that our descent to sea level from 700m meant plenty of downhill, i neglected to notice that we'd frequently be required to scramble down into valleys from which we also had to climb back out. the potential terribleness of the day was, however, mitigated by an excursion to what may be the most scenic spot so far, seal-friendly separation point on the coast track. the pathway ends 50m above the rocky spit, where a sign asks you to remove your packs for the steep and precarious climb down to sea level. the forceful wind threatened to blow us into the sea, but we kept our balance long enough to spot two seals and snap pictures of the dramatic rock formations. from separation point the track took us along the beach to our stunning waterfront campsite at anapai bay. we're dreading tomorrow's long and strenuous uphill battle but are glad to have made today's detour.

monday, nov 16

anapai bay to wainui hut

a terrible day on the trail - who picked this route, anyway? eight hours of unending uphill torment has left us exhausted and ticked off, though i'm extremely proud not to have smashed my walking stick against a tree in anger, as i've done on a number of regretful occasions in the past few months. not much to eat, as a possum rifled through our food bag last night and pawed at our english muffins, so tomorrow's lunch will be peanut butter...just peanut butter.

wainui hut, where we'll spend the night, is a tiny 4-bed shelter with a fireplace that lets off a lot of smoke but doesn't actually seem conducive to keeping a fire burning - hopefully it'll stay lit long enough to dry out my socks and shoes that i soaked in a river crossing just minutes before arriving at the hut.

tuesday, nov 17

wainui hut to takaka

we finished up our abel tasman trip via the wainui and rameka tracks down to takaka, the nearest town to the west. a few miles outside of town, we were picked up by a jehovah's witness from whom we received a witnessing tract before being dropped off at the information center. we paid what seems like a fortune for groceries compared to prices in nelson, but we know that it will only get worse as our restocking stops become farther from civilization. tomorrow morning we'll hop on the shuttle bus to start the heaphy track, beginning the track with the highest climb, a 900 m hike up to perry saddle. we've opted to stay in campsites instead of at the huts, purely as a cost-saving measure (they're about half the price), so we're hoping that the famous west coast rain holds off until saturday evening, when we plan to arrive in karamea.

pictures:

1) the beginning of the treacherous inland track, where it branches off of the easygoing coast track

2) a short rocky climb on our first day of hiking

3) climbing down to see the seals at separation point

4) cute little wainui hut (other notes in the hut book called it a "wee hut")

P.S. - sorry about the strange formatting - i have trouble with this blog sometimes and don't have time to fix it now.

-rachel

we're really leaving...i promise.

with just one day left in nelson, we're bobbing somewhere between excitement and mourning, though i suppose the knowledge of an eventual departure has been hanging over us all month. as much as i love exploring a new locale, i also become quickly rooted, so nelson has become my new zealand home over these last few weeks and is difficult to leave. we've been so fortunate to have this opportunity to work at the bug, as the busy summer season is now upon us and we're getting calls daily for people looking for jobs here. we've grown close to some people here, especially our finnish friend salla, with whom i attended a catholic mass last week near her new apartment. those catholics are tricky - close your eyes for a second in reverent prayer and they've silently shifted to kneeling while you're still sitting. another new friend is our roommate julian, whom we affectionately refer to as "zhulian". we recently introduced him to the splendid combination of peanut butter and banana, and while he justly proclaims nutella's superiority, he's warming up to the flavor sensation.

bryan and i have been filling in as managers here for the last four days while the owners took a much-needed vacation. despite the endless work hours and constant phone calls, we've had a blast and would definitely do this again if another opportunity opens up. one of my favorite parts of the job is matching the people with their names. apparently, according to anthony, a courtney is always an american. i've discovered that a jemma is also equally identifiable as a brit. markus, fabian, and konrad are, not surprisingly, german. i was thrown off when another hostel called to book a room for a guy named "patty", but it was made clear when he arrived with an irish accent and the correct spelling, "paddy". there are a few that i'm still wondering about, though...the japanese "andrew" and israeli "eric", for starters. anyone want to try their hand at a few?

-edwin and marieke
-carl and mike
-livon and elad
-yusuhiro and misako
-claudia and anna-lisa
-pauline and jean-baptiste
-cariza and sergio

better get going, as it's midnight and we plan to wake up early enough to make tomorrow feel productive. not sure when we'll have (affordable) internet again, so it might be a little while before you hear from us. then again, our bus might skip our stop and send us along to an unplanned destination...you never really know.

-rachel

lessons learning

i think it's time for a more personal, reflective post. my philosophy of travel requires not just that a person see things but that they learn things, so i'll make an attempt to demonstrate that my brain is being engaged by these months abroad. here's what i (and sometimes we) have been thinking about lately:

we miss going to church. this morning as i refilled the coffee jar, the usually unenticing scent of cheap church-foyer coffee made me wish i was back with the preschoolers at oak hills church, where we were starting to get comfortable in our roles and in our friendships. our experience there was unlike our past church experiences - we didn't attend every church event, we weren't known by all that many people, we didn't serve in very public roles - but we were taught and taught others and genuinely looked forward to being there. not being burned out by your church is a beautiful thing. (i should clarify here that the coffee found at oak hills is quality stuff, not the crap alluded to above).

though not even 3 months into our trip, we're concerned that we won't be ready to settle back down when this year is over and are exploring opportunities to keep travelling for a while longer. much of the fun for me is in planning the trip, whether it's a year-long adventure or a weekend of camping, so i'm not surprised to find myself already longing to pull out the maps and budget sheets for the next stop. i'm quite familiar with grief and disappointment at the beginning of a trip, as this beginning really signals the end of a long process that's consumed me for weeks or months. terribly depressing, isn't it?

one of my biggest concerns before we left, which i shared with a few of you back at home, is that a natural shyness would prevent me from meeting others, leading to a lack of the great chance encounters that form the heart of international travel. i am pleased to report that this concern, as so many of you assured me, was quite unfounded and we've enjoyed many friendly and interesting conversations along the way. at the same time, not needing the constant presence of others allows us to enjoy the solitude of hiking, so we've been striking a nice balance with our travels so far.

that's enough self-disclosure for now. sorry if it felt like this was taken straight from a tearful session with my diary :)

-rachel

great nz commercials

here are a few new zealand commercials that we've been enjoying, in case you're in the mood for some youtube time.
1. spin the wheel - nz must take its driving very seriously, as we've spotted numerous dramatic commercials that end with something like "buckle up, new zealand drivers" or "stay safe: always look before turning".
2. 33% faster joke getting guy - a commercial for the beer company export 33. not sure if this is the one i was looking for, as there's no sound on these computers, but the youtube users think this one's pretty funny, too...
3. make it light and bubbly - this one, for cadbury bubbly chocolate, makes you want to pull out the exercise ball that's been hiding in your closet for the last few years and bounce around to the beat of this ad's infectious/irritating song.
4. you're so beautiful - this one's not a commercial, but we've been discovering the flight of the conchords (a tv comedy about a kiwi parody band trying to make it in new york) and this song, especially the line "you're so beautiful...you could be a waitress", induced much laughing and many tears even on its second watch.

in other news, we've set a date for leaving nelson and have booked bus tickets to help ourselves enforce this deadline. we'll be leaving on friday the 13th (uh-oh) and will follow the abel tasman-heaphy-wangapeka plan laid out a few blog posts ago. our guilt at having lingered so long was assuaged by an offer from anthony and steph, the bug's owners, to manage the hostel next weekend while they're out of town, so we'll be moving on up from bathrooms to bookings for a few days and are plenty excited about the opportunity.

generally the job seems pretty straightforward, but an irritating personality or two can make things interesting. we're just hoping that the american frat boy with the surfer dude voice (think crush the turtle from finding nemo) moves on in the next day or two. he's been here before, but when he returned yesterday from a trip to queenstown proclaiming that "it's such an awesome party city! everybody's just there to party hard!" and bragging about the amount of alcohol consumed on the bus ride there, we immediately crossed queenstown off of our list...and wrote him off as well. he embodies the american tourist stereotype that makes us want to claim canada as our homeland.

well, i've got some great movies (chariots of fire, the piano, wit - $1 each for a week!) calling my name and a few people waiting to use the internet, so i'd better move along. have a wonderful week!

-rachel