Te Wahipounamu & Back Up North

Te Wahipounamu, Maori for "place of greenstone", is a World Heritage Site in southwest New Zealand covering 2.6 million hectares. I spent about three weeks there admiring my surroundings, but no greenstones were seen except at tourist shops. Click on the links to see photos!

Mt. Cook, the tallest mountain in NZ, stands at 12,316 feet. I didn't climb to the top, but I climbed a nearby hill into the snow for a view of some glaciers. The next day had perfect weather, and I took another scenic walk up closer to the mountain.

Next up were three Great Walks in Fiordland National Park.

The weather was perfect again for the Routeburn Track as the photos will attest.  

My weather luck ended on the Kepler Track, where fog obscured most of the views on the highest part of the track. I spotted this falcon checking out a baby possum living in a hole in the rocks.

The Milford Track, called "the finest walk in the world" by a poet 100 years ago, was indeed a highlight of my trip. It was all about the waterfalls. Here's a brief day-by-day account, as requested by a faithful blog reader!

The first day was sunny and started with a nice boat ride across Lake Te Anau. It was a short walk to the first hut along the Clinton River with large beech trees and views of the surrounding mountains along the way. The hut ranger was a friendly little old red bearded man who showed us some glowworms nearby and then gave us a tour of the stars and constellations of the southern hemisphere on a perfectly clear night.

 

The second day was quite rainy. My rain jacket, overtrousers and gore-tex boots all leaked. Despite my sogginess, I was blown away by the all the waterfalls that appeared on the mountains on either side of me. They looked like veins or lightning bolts, some of them falling off cliffs and disappearing into mist.

The third day was clear and sunny thankfully, as I hiked high over a pass with freezing winds. Near the end of the day's walk was Sutherland Falls, fifth highest in the world.

The final day of walking was drizzly. McKay Falls are not the tallest, but prettier than Sutherland's. One section of the track along a steep cliff had been created with dynamite in 1898. After the walk I went on a short cruise through Milford Sound. Fog obscured the peaks, but there were more impressive waterfalls streaming down, and a couple of fur seals lounging on rocks in the rain. Milford Sound gets an average of 6 to 9 meters of rain a year, once getting a meter in one day. And I complain about Olympia. Nobody really lives in Milford Sound though.

After all that walking, I drove up to Queenstown and tried flying. Hang gliding was expensive, surprisingly unthrilling, but definitely an interesting and unique experience. I enjoyed flying over sheep. That's me in the photo in blue on the left.

Wanaka, just north of Queenstown, has Puzzling World and the Toy & Transport Museum. I attempted this large maze in the photo, and failed. The Toy & Transport Museum is an absurdly large collection of toys, cars, airplanes and other vehicles that one guy has been collecting for about 60 years.

Skip the next paragraph if you don't want to read neurotic ramblings about my craptastic car.
  The end of my last entry ended with the sad story of a car without a Warrant of Fitness, potentially finable for $200, but with the exciting news that I was next visiting NZ's tallest mountain, Mt. Cook. Well, on my way out of Mt. Cook Park, there was a friendly police officer stopping cars and checking to see if they had Warrants of Fitness. So, I was given a $200 ticket, but even better, I endured the next two and half weeks paranoid that some other cop or someone was going to appear in some unlikely spot and give me further fines. I guess I was being over-anxious, but it didn't help that the cop said "they'll get ya in Queenstown." Or the mechanic who assured me I could get multiple fines. But really it's just a shame that I was spending all this time that I should be enjoying, instead constantly worrying and imagining what I was going to tell the next cop, or how I could keep my car off the road as much as possible, or how I could get the car fixed for a reasonable amount of money so that the fine would be waived. I was probably being petty about the amount of money concerned, but that's all part of my personality and upbringing I guess. ANYWAY, the car's been sold to wreckers for $160, and I wrote a letter to the police explaining my situation and asking them to waive the fine.

Yes, the saga of the Civic ended in Christchurch, where I got on a plane to Wellington. They were forecasting gusts of 140 km/h winds there, but the plane managed to land despite wobbling around a bit in the breeze.

I experienced more wind climbing up a volcano, Mt. Taranaki. The info site woman told me I'd need crampons and an ice axe because of the recent snow fall. The snow was starting to melt already however, and I knew from experience that info site people are full of bad info, so off I went. I climbed up a vertical mile in the gusty wind, partly over scoria, a crumbly volcanic rock that slides out from under your feet. Once on the crater, I wandered around in the snow, not knowing where the summit was until I saw a guy coming down from it. The way down was less windy, and most of the snow had melted at that point, but the scoria was still there. I more slid than climbed down, falling on my ass several times. It was definitely the toughest hike I've done. Apparantly 60 people have died on the volcano.

The touristy Waitomo Caves was my last stop on the way back to Auckland. I went on a tour and saw lots of glowworms, which are actually fly larvae whose tails light up to attract other insects into the sticky threads around their nests on the cave ceilings. The photos didn't turn out, but it's like looking up at stars in the night sky.

Tomorrow I fly back to Seattle and return to the farm in Olympia. I will have to relearn American English and the local social customs. Hopefully the culture shock won't be too great, and I'll get a job or something.

I just recently finished the book I brought with me on the trip, The Unsettling of America by Wendell Berry. Despite, or maybe because of, him being a Christian praising the virtues of getting married and living like the Amish, I found it a brilliant critique of American culture and agriculture. You should all read it! (Yeah, that'll happen.)