Abel Tasman National Park and Golden Bay, a rough sea crossing and ready for home

After picking up Mij from Christchurch we headed quickly up to the north western tip of the South Island towards Golden Bay and Farewell Spit. We had been tipped off this was one of the best parts of the country by a number of people and it certainly did not disappoint. We were also joined by Mij's friend Derek and it seems their presence meant that a significant number of bottles of wine had to be consumed as we were in 'wine country' after all and it would be rude not too. We found a stunning campsite near the remote Wharariki Beach (located on the 'eye of the Kiwi apparently?!) which was in itself a beautiful pristine beach with large sandstone outcrops and a collection of seal pups who were more than happy to show off and mess about in front of an engrossed audience! We were also joined by a whole collection of wildlife including Pakaka's, Peacocks and not-so-wild horses. A pretty bonkers place really surrounded by 'cabbage trees' (we think they meant flax but we didn't have the heart to argue!).

The next day we ventured out on  to Farewell Spit which is an impressive 35km long sand dune jutting out into the Tasman Sea. Parts of it were like walking in a desert landscape - both surreal and beautiful at the sane time. Although the surreal elements may have in part been enhanced by the throbbing collective hangover we were all experiencing after consuming all those local wines! A fabulous meal at the wonderful Mussel Inn certainly cured some of the ails and it has to be said the hippies have done well in taking over this beautiful part of the country!

We then ventured south to the Abel Tasman National Park and did a days chunk of the Abel Tasman Coastal Track (another of the 'Great walks'). It was indeed a walk and it was indeed great - beach after stunning beach all slightly different in outlook and colour. Numerous swims in the sea were taken and we also some slightly interesting river crossings to add to the adventure and the campsite next to Totaranui Bay was fabulous although don't be deceived by the innocuous looking road - its epic!

It was a pleasure to have Mij and Derek along for a few days but they had their own adventures in store so we made the most of our last night with them staying in a teeny tiny cabin in a campsite near Takaka. The general atmosphere of our abode was further enhanced by the bean and wine induced, er, smells and a rousing play of the AC/DC greatest hits album courtesy of Derek's laptop...it made a nice chance from the Fleetwood Mac CD which was the only decent music we were able to play in the rental car for the last month!

Jaryn and I continued our tramping adventures by deciding it would be nice to have a treat and stay in a place in the Marlborough Sounds recommended in the Rough Guide. It involved a delightful walk along the Queen Charlotte Track down into a fabulous secluded bay only accessible on foot or by boat. The Lochmara Lodge was a great place, not too expensive (probably because of its inaccessibility!) with a great restaurant where we had a great evenings banter with the waitress and chef Simone and Martin who themselves were slowly travelling the world. After a mornings kayaking in the bay and having a shallow conversation with the talking parrot (that also had an entertaining repertoire of car alarm noises and mobile phone ringtones!) we had to be on our way.

We headed over to Picton for the ferry to Wellington under glorious sunshine with just the return leg of this beautiful ferry journey to get to the north island and moreorless end my trip. Naturally New Zealand had one last treat in-store in the form of an epic sea storm which bowled the ferry around like a beach ball and also resulted in me losing most of my dinner over the side of the boat on a couple of occasions. You would be forgiven for thinking that the 30 or so people lined up along the handrail on the side of the boat were looking out to see at the lovely scenery or at whales or something - well in fact it was like some kind of scene out of a horror movie with synchronized puking. Kind of funny afterwards but took most of the following day of wandering aimlessly around Wellington to recover from that! Jaryn headed north today to see Bruce Springsteen play in Auckland - you can imagine how happy he was about that! :)

Watch this space for the final, reflective blog posts from this amazing journey in some amazing places meeting some wonderful people...but for now my 34 hour journey home awaits :).


  

Up and over Arthur's Pass and towards Abel Tasman National Park

Some mixed emotions as the end date of this little odyssey, for me at least, looms closely. Jaryn has a few extra weeks here and beyond so his adventure will continue so I look forward to hearing about his exploits after my return home. There is no time for reflection just yet tho (that will be the last blog entry!) as we have a fantastic week ahead in what we hope will be one of the highlights of the country...more on this later!

Our last night on the west coast was a wet and miserable one for me, seems my trusty old Voyager tent has not taken well to some of the temperature changes out here and all of the sealing tape has started to fall off - meaning the big rain storm that hit overnight in our cosy campsite near Greymouth left me feeling rather damp. I guess I should have just jumped ship and shared the double air mattress with Jaryn in his waterproof tent! The weather first thing in the morning was back to its normal gloriousness tho so after drying out the tents and making a quick fry up we were on our way again.

Jaryn has been looking for a place to get a haircut for about 3 weeks now and seems every time we find a town that could have a decent barbers they are either too busy or closed...I guess the J-Dog will have to remain unkempt for a little while longer!

As the clouds started to roll in gently off the western coast we headed up towards Arthur's Pass. I had been tipped off this was one of the nicest areas of New Zealand and it certainly did not disappoint. The cute 'village' of 50 permanent inhabitants is perched right in the centre of the spine of the mountains and therefore you get a whole variety of weather effects. The regular bands of clouds and rain coming from the west struggle to break the threshold of the mountains, meaning the east side of the mountains have significantly less rainfall than they get in the west. The vegetation and landscape changes dramatically as you cross over the pass from lush alpine rainforest to a scrubby dusty wild landscape. It is a mountain weather geeks paradise.

We found this fabulous little cabin called the Snowgrass Cabin which was all decked out in the colours of the fabulous Kea (the beautiful, adorable, intelligent and mischievous mountain parrot only found in the south island - a few of which took great interest in the windscreen wipers and aerial on our car!). It was a cute cabin and was like stepping back into the 70's with some antique appliances and furniture. It was however very cosy and we were happy to have some home comforts for a couple of days.

The next day we went on a walk we were recommended to do along a fabulous ridge line called Bealey's Spur rising up to about 1600 metres with stunning views across to the glacial clad mountains in the west and the huge brutal glacial riverbeds towards the east. It was a broody day out west but we were bathed in sunshine most of the day but we did get snowed on a bit at one point! I could have happily sat here for hours but the chilly breeze meant we had to come back down again some point - but not before another memorable interaction with a couple more Kea's!

The next day we headed east to pick up our dear friend Mij from Christchurch and then head northwards. It was a great drive through some quickly changing landscapes and I have no doubt there will be plenty of tasty New Zealand wine drank over the next few days as we head towards the land of golden beaches and inviting seas...

Fox Glacier, Franz Josef Glacier, Gillespie Beach and on to Punakaiki

We spent the next day, which was absolutely baking hot in contrast to the last few days of showery weather exploring the various glaciers on the western edge of Mount Cook. After getting a lift with a delightful Swiss lady called Elizabeth and meeting Jaryn at the Fox Glacier the most striking thing is just how much these glaciers have retreated in the recent years. Well placed signs along the entrance road show where the glacier used to be in 1700, 1900 etc and then the huge distance away the glaciers are now. It seems they have retreated dramatically since some of the photographs for the postcards on sale at the DOC office were taken which was equally striking. It is probably not an exaggeration to say the next generation will be looking at an entirely bare valley wondering what all the fuss was about....sad times. :(

We found a fabulous (and I mean amazingly fabulous) free campsite near a beach called Gillespies Beach where you can walk up from the sea and look over the rocks to see the incredible mountain range behind. It was a stunning sunset and an honour to be able to see this place in its full glory.

We parted company with our friend Karen in Fox Glacier village and headed down the beautiful rugged west coast road towards Greymouth. It kind if reminded me of Workington, a bit of a dead end town but with amenity at least which we had not seen for many hundreds of kilometres now!

We found a great, albeit qwerky campsite on the way to Punakaiki and pitched our tents and went to see the Pancake Rocks. Have to admit although these were very cool, I was kind of having geology overload now from the last few days so perhaps their impact was slightly lost on me. They were a nice way to spend an evening tho and it has only today really dawned on me that I only have 8 days until I leave New Zealand and this epic trip is over...but no time for getting down about that just yet!! :)

Heading north, Haast Pass and the Gillespie Track

So with a heavy heart it was time to depart this stunning part of the South Island. After collecting Jaryn from his cruise where he delighted me with stories of all the great food he has eaten while I continued to, shall we say, 'struggle to digest subtley' the Backcountry mountain food which is so popular here. Trust me the Norwegians do it so much better and the stuff in Go Outdoors is much better and much less gas provoking as well! Anyhow...

We drove north through Queenstown (which we liked), put in 40 dollars worth of petrol and claimed our AA smart fuel points (up to 38 cents now, check us out!) and decided an appropriate place to stop was  the town of Wanaka which we liked very much when we passed by before and Jaryn was very keen to have another ice cream from the great ice creamery there! The weather was distinctly windier and more overcast than when we came before so the town was a all together different place - but is certainly our favourite town in NZ so far.

We had arranged to meet up with Karen, a delightful lass from San Francisco that we met on the Routeburn Track and a great guy called Tony from a small town in California which has a road called Kitchen Dick Road which at one point intersects with another road called Wood Cock road. This provided me with enough juvenile humour to keep me giggling to myself for some time. We met them in a totally and utterly random place called Manakora which was on the road towards an even more random place called Haast (more on this later!) which for some reason reminded me of that comedic pub next to the campsite on the Isle of Skye with the ball pit. Weather was pretty bad that night so we stayed in an A frame cabin and planned our next move.

The Gillespie Track is a much less used track than any of the others I have been on here. It weaves along thIck bush and through high hanging valleys towards the high Gillespie Pass. We decided it would be fun to walk to the first hut (Youngs Hut) and figured how epic could it possibly be? Well it was pretty darn epic and lots of fun getting up there but was a fun couple of days and by the time we had finished I was done with walking for a few days at least! We had lots of fun banter and there was a pleasant group of people in the hut, but not quite who we were hoping for...the group of hot Norwegian  girls I was imagining sadly never arrived, I hope they didn't get lost?! 

Karen and I left Tony to go and travel on to Wanaka and get ice cream and we had planned to meet Jaryn in Haast that evening. We easily managed to catch a lift with a brilliant Norwegian guy called Peter who worked in the hotel in Haast with his girlfriend Gill. I can only assume they are only there for the money because Haast is a very strange place, more a collection of shacks spread out over a large aa than a town. The weather was still pretty rubbish so Jaryn had continued on to the next stop so we hunkered down for the night at Peter's hotel and enjoyed a 'Roaring Billy' burger and some beers!

An ode to sand flies

For anyone who has not been to New Zealand then you have presumably not yet had the pleasure of enduring countless evenings in the company of the notorious NZ Sandfly!

They are horrible pesky disgusting creatures, swarming rather like a Scottish Midge, perhaps hanging around in slightly smaller numbers but with a lot more vigour! They land on you and proceed to tip their tails in the air and borrow their faces into you and extract all they can before you spot them. The ensuing furiously itchy patch must not be touched for at least half a hour or it will itch for days....!

They enjoy in particular to hang around in otherwise delightful locations like beaches, viewpoints, mountains, nice towns, forests, valleys and lakes. They can sense a human a mile off but will wait until you have settled down, got out your picnic (to relax and enjoy said delightful spot) and will then proceed to devour ankles, waists, hands, faces heads and basically wherever they can burrow.

They can ruin otherwise 'perfect' moments like sunsets and sunrises or stunning views appearing from behind clouds...

However, and this is important, they really do not like insect repellant spray (so that does help) and after speaking with many fellow sufferers we are all convinced that they must be one of the few reasons so many areas of the country are untouched by man. Therefore they do play an important role in protecting some of the worlds most stunning wilderness areas. For that I would like to say thank you to the sand flies - but for that reason alone! 

The Anau and the Kepler Track

After resting up after the fabulous Routeburn it was time to decide how best to make the most of this stunning area of New Zealand, particularly the area called Fjordland which is an aptly titled area in the south west of the country and is a huge huge area of stunning mountains, sounds, evergreen beech forest and pristine wilderness. It is a national park and a UNESCO World Heritage Site and is larger than the Yosemite and Yellowstone national parks combined apparently - totally awesome.

There are a number of thIngs we were advised to do here including seeing the glow worm caves off the  western corner of the lake and the famous Milford Sound of course (apparently Captain Cook missed it twice when he was sailing around NZ and it was actually discovered by a guy looking for seals a number of years later!). The mini cruise to the caves was very good as was the tour and the glow worms (or more accurately maggots with glowing pustular bits - but that doesn't sound so enchanting!) were very cool and indeed you could see your hand in front of your face due to their illumination of the cave - very cool. I also like how they call it a glow worm Grotto - could not see Santa tho, nor was I particularly interested in seeing him glowing in the dark due to his need to find (and possibly afterwards consume) his mate. Er, anyhow...

We took a cruise to Milford Sound as well but the weather was not ideal (but you won't catch me complaining about the weather!) which was very good and we even went briefly out into the Tasman Sea. Jaryn liked it so much he booked on to an overnight cruise to the spectacular sounding Doubtful Sound (apparently the aforementioned Mr Cook was not sure about it for some reason, I mean who was this guy?!). He had a great time and was lucky with overhead and under hull conditions and sounds like he really enjoyed himself eating very good food and paddling about on kayak's and drinking tea - sounds grand eh?!

I on the other hand decided I was keen to spend another few days putting my body through more hardship and pain and eating dehydrated food out of a bag and being bitten by sand flies (more on this later...) and set about doing another one of NZ's Great Walks - The Kepler Track. Well it was totally worth it naturally and the views on the first day were magnificent, really really great. Apparently it is always windy up there but it was still with stunning visibility. The next couple of days were mainly bush walking but still very pretty (at one point I got a little too excited about a mushroom I saw and fell over once again messing up my poor long suffering right knee - doh!). The huts on the walk were excellent as always with some comedic characters acting as hut wardens. Indeed one night I was nominated by the hut crowd to help Kay (our slightly bonkers warden) to deliver the hut safety talk. The stories of my bloody knee incident had by this time got around so I presume there was some irony in there somewhere...! Marshmallows and campfire on the beach of the stunning lake in the evening was always going to be a highlight. Met some great folks on this trek including some young energetic Canadian guys, a load of card-playing Kiwi's, a fantastic fun group of Israelis who took great interest in me trying to explain the difference between the UK and Great Britain. Also met a fab young Aussie couple Laurence and Jade who seemed to be putting themselves through their paces on a load of big tramps. Good luck to you guys - always nice to meet some friendly well rounded Australians ;).

On the return or Te Anau met up with a guy from Barnsley who had spent 9 days fishing and eating trout in the Greenstone valley and sleeping in the bush. Apparently he ate 7 trout in one day...I would have been desperate for a pizza after all that time but he seemed to already be planning his next survival adventure and I will admit I had a pang of envy of his spirit...maybe next time?!