One and a half months and two countries later (currently in Laos) I am trying to remember what NZ was like... sorry for the writing delay, traveling and hanging out with cool people has surely kept me busy. Tough life I am telling you!
10/31-11/4/09 A short trip through the West Coast
The West Coast of the South Island stretches 600km from the north to the south and is only 70km at its widest point. It is a land of contrasts with palms and semi-tropical fruit trees in the north, to ice, snow and temperate rainforests in the south. In between are wild coastlines, deserted beaches, dense native forests of giant trees and numerous varieties of ferns and mosses. Big rivers, and little creeks, lakes, glaciers and the lofty snow covered mountains that form the Southern Alps.
After a relaxing day in Christchurch I flew further south to Queenstown where I rented a little car to explore the west coast. I would have loved to do one of the backpacking treks, especially the Routeburn, but the conditions were just too bad with daily avalanches and a helicopter flight over parts of it – clearly, it wouldn't have been a good idea!
So I changed plans around, decided to head to Auckland way sooner, and was therefore on a bit of a tight schedule for the south island. I left Queenstown after a couple of hours (went up to the top of the mountain to do a little hike and two luge rides – great fun) direction Wanaka, a small place right on the lake with magnificent snowy alps in the background – and all that could be seen from my hostel window!
Then a long, but spectacular drive towards and over Haast Pass brought me over to the West Coast where I headed north towards the glaciers.
The first stop was at Fox Glacier, where I walked as close as possible. While I was there a huge chunk crashed into the river, pretty cool but unfortunately my camera was hidden in the backpack, too bad. Fox Glacier is 13km long making it the longest glacier in the Westland National Park. It comes closer to sea level than any other temperate region glacier in the world.
Next day I joined a tour going up Franz Joseph Glacier “Franz”. Once I saw the steep slope we had to hike up to actually get on the glacier I absolutely regretted signing up, it looked enormous and super scary! Up we went and as soon as we were on the ice itself, everything was perfect, though very cold but I was happy to be there! Also the first time I used crampons to hike with, fun fun.
Then it was time to drive on to Greymouth in torrential rain to catch the TranzAlpine train back to Christchurch. It was a good train ride but not quite as spectacular as I had thought it was going to be. Probably much better going the other way as you see way more of the mountains.
11/15-17/09 kayaking and hiking Abel Tasman National Park
From Wellington I took the ferry over to Picton, hopped on the bus to Nelson and organized a 2-day adventure in Abel Tasman NP, another thing I absolutely wanted to do while in NZ.
The first day we kayaked in very rough sea, most other trips were canceled, but since we all had previous experience we decided to go out anyway. But then, already the water taxi to the starting point had to fight huge waves, a glimpse of what was to come and I was very thankful for a robust stomach!! Ahh kayaking was going to be such fun...
It turned out to be an awesome day! Sometimes the waves were huge, other times we were sheltered inside the coves and kayaked through perfectly blue calm sea. At one point we even sailed, no kidding! How to sail in a kayak: you need 3 or more kayaks and everybody needs to hold on tightly to the next one (under no circumstances should you let go!) and the outer two back kayakers hold their paddle up with the sail attached to the end. The outer two front people hold the other part of the sail in their hands and when there is enough wind catching the sail, the kayaks zoom through the water like a boat. It was great but also very tiring... at times I thought my arms would fall off! After lunch we paddled some more till we reached Anchor Bay, where I spent a night on a backpacker catamaran, 50m from shore - the coolest backpackers ever!
The second day I hiked for about 5h up and down hills (there are high and low tide crossings but I was always too early for the low ones and had to go around, adding more time and kms) till I got to the designated beach where the water taxi was going to pick me up.
Abel Tasman National Park, established in 1942, is renowned for its golden beaches, sculptured granite cliffs, and world-famous Abel Tasman Coast Track. At 22,530 hectares Abel Tasman is New Zealand's smallest national park. It is located at the top of the South Island.
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