glaciers, sunsets, and pirate ships

on the five-minute walk up to the franz josef glacier, there was a bench, so we took a much-needed break. look how winded we are.

oh hey, gla-ci-er

hanging around the pirate ship

side trip down to a gorgeous gorge with helen and carl. 

lovely weather on the west coast

waving across the tasman to the lovely miss tatlow

Mt Cook from the beach we camped at

the fox glacier

The West coast

waterfalls, gorgeous beaches... the us'

Side trip up to some natural hot springs

we're cute

oftentimes, i wake up and look out my tent window and this is what i see

dusky track: check

after two days of pouring rain, this what what the trail looked like.

snow on the pass

you can't really tell, but it's snowing 

dear gary, we love you, and cliff bars.

what now, ralph? 

dusky, dusky, dusky

I found the only wet spot in the middle of a meadow, and sunk up to my thigh

the sound

Side trip down to the sound; view from our hut.  This is what we swam across the next morning.

waterfall on the way back from supper cove, after our morning dip.

The wait is over: Dusky Track

At the start of the track, ready to kick the dusky's ass.

One of the 21 three-wire cable "bridges."  Not really a bridge at all, more like a tightrope. 

Side trip up to a peak by Lake Roe

Oh hey, beautiful day.  That's Dusky sound in the distance.

Jumping for joy at the top of the peak; southern alps in the background

roadtripping up the west coast

One thing that really stinks about being homeless: rainy days.  Today was the chilly, grey kind of morning where you want to curl up on a comfy couch by the fire with some tea and a book.  Unfortunately, when your home is a two-person tent and a Subaru, your rainy day options are somewhat limited.  Up until today, the weather has been really great – it actually felt like summer again once we got out of Queenstown and the freak snow flurries – and we’ve been ambling up the west coast, freedom camping (aka free – yippee!) on beaches, exploring the glaciers, and tramping up glacial river valleys to natural hot springs.  We don’t really have any specific itinerary, which is great, and lets us linger in the places we like; we’ve been keeping our bronze up to date by floating on our thermarests on a lake all day, we celebrated st. patty’s day with a bunch of Israelis by playing on a pirate ship replica by the beach, and we met up with Helen and Carl for a rainy day in Hokitika, the jade capital of New Zealand (not that jade had anything to do with anything we did in hokitown, or Helen and Carl, but it’s a fun little factoid).  We had wanted to do a day hike up to a peak in Arthur’s Pass, but of course, the weather came in today, so that plan was nixed, and instead we hung out at a coffee shop with the largest collection of teapots in the world, probably, and caught up and swapped notes on fun things to do and places to go and whatnot.  I was bummed we couldn’t spend more time with them, but we’re traveling in exactly opposite directions. 

Today we met up with our flatmate from qt, a lovely little Canadian named Anna, who took this week off work to come hang out with us, and we’re going to head up to the Nelson area, which is supposedly the sunniest place in nz, so hopefully the weather lets up.  

im stealing free internet from the library, and for some reason it won't let me upload photos, so you'll just have to wait on that for a bit more...

a not-so-brief update

A few things: we got stewart island pictures (yay!), and they are amazing and abundant, so they are going to take up residence in an album.  i have to post them later because that takes a long time, so check back.

You should check mel and ash’s blog for some of mel’s musings and insight.  http://ashnmel.blogspot.com

We’ve been keeping ourselves nice and busy, so get ready for a megapost.

After stewart island and some recuperation, we decided to take on the dusky track, rumored to be the most difficult track in nz. We got our act together, and hired transportation across lake haruko to the start of the track and found we had a day to kill.  So, we went and explored some caves.  Now, when I say caves, I mean legit underground limestone tunnels, complete with stalactites, stalagmites, and glowworms.  Yes, glowworms.  They light up the roof of the cave like a billion tiny greenish blue stars, and are impossible to capture on camera (we tried).  Now, we started out in the cave with one headlamp with batteries that were so close to dead I could barely see the wall before I was 4 inches from it, and a flashlight that was a few notches brighter.  Needless to say, it was a little tricky maneuvering over, under, and around the limestone rocks, but we made it an hour through the passageway, complete with a skillful scaling around a pool of frigid cave water and up and down some ladders and tunnels.  It was one of the coolest, most random and most unique things we’ve stumbled upon.  And the glowworms were pretty bomb.  Good thing we didn’t go on an overpriced and touristy glowworm cave tour.

The day we embarked on the Dusky, we had to get up at 530 in the morning, in the dark, and drive to where we had to catch a bus, pack our bags, catch the bus to the boat which took us across Lake Haruko (the deepest lake in new zealand!) and to the trailhead.  We were super stoked and rarin to go our first day, so we got to the first hut around three and decided to push on.  Good thing we did, because we got to have the hut to ourselves and steve, a chiropractor from Melbourne, Australia.  Now, when we went into the DOC to register for the track, they treated us like we were incompetent and were going to need to be rescued; when steve went in, one of the workers who just got off the track told him about a bunch of really cool side trips to do.  Luck for us, steve thought we were pretty cool, and we liked his sense of humor (dry, sarcastic, and just like us), so he let us in on some tidbits like a peak we should climb.  So, we woke up on day two and climbed a peak.  We had incredible weather – crystal clear skies and sun and we could see for miles, even all the way out to dusky sound.  It was pretty much awesome. 

We got down from the peak around three, and decided to push it to the next hut; it’s only five hours, we reasoned.  Unfortunately, we didn’t take into account how much energy we had spent peaking a mountain 8000 meters high, and the fact that the track to the next hut was a ridiculously steep decline through cliffs and tree roots.  I spent as much time clambering down backwards as I did forwards.  As the daylight began to fade, we began to wonder where the hut was.  Every step was slow and deliberate; I was nervous of falling and breaking something, and I felt like I barely had control of where my foot would land.  Steve broke out his headlamp once is got too dark to see, and we had to shine it back and forth so everyone could clamber down the boulders and roots in turn.  Too bad for me, I forgot to change my headlamp’s batteries, so it was useless, and the one had to do for all four of us. 

Finally we got to the valley and a river, and we had to cross a cable-wire bridge.  We had crossed a few the day before, but this one happened to be the longest one on the track. Awesome.  There’s nothing I love more than three unsteady cables strung 30 feet above a river and shaking wildly as I walk across it with an enormous pack and wet boots.  Steve shone his light across the bridge and we all made it safely, and while we were waiting to cross, I looked up at the most phenomenal sky bursting with stars.  The hut was just a few hundred meters after the bridge, and there was no one there that night except us, so we made a very late dinner and kicked ourselves for trying to take on so much.  Despite the long day, we all made the best of it, and even though it was hard and I was entirely exhausted at the end, it was worth it to do the peak, and then see the stars, and avoid the crowds in the other hut. 

The next day, we got suckered into taking a side-trip out to supper cove, which we hadn’t intended on doing originally.  It was a long walk out there, and the last part of the trail was full of rocks and roots and places to slip and fall – ash took a tumble coming down one steep set of roots and scraped her nose, and thank god she didn’t break her arm.  Once we got to supper cove, we were somewhat disappointed, because you couldn’t even see the open ocean, and the views weren’t that great, and we had to walk the same treacherous trail back the next day.  Well, we had heard that in low tide you could cut across the sound, so the next morning we woke up and agreed the tide looked low, so we started walking along the shore.  Soon the shore began to disappear, but we weren’t scared of getting our boots wet, and it was a nice day, so we sloshed through the surprisingly warm saltwater.  Unfortunately, the sound doesn’t have a normal beach bottom, where it gets shallow closer to shore, it’s a bit more random than that, so we found ourselves in deep water, and decided we should wrap our packs with garbage bags and float them.  We spent the next forty-five minutes or so pushing our packs and half swimming, half walking across the sound.  We also spent a good amount of time laughing at the utter ridiculousness of it all. 

We finally got to solid ground, sopping wet, but our packs safe and dry, and continued on the rest of the track, which was flat and easily ambled alongside a river.  We got to the hut and heard voices and, surprise! the new zealand army is there doing some sort of wilderness training exercise.  Getting paid to go tramping, more like.  They weren’t all that bad, except for the snoring, and they even gave me some army-rationed batteries for my headlamp.  cha-ching!  They also gave us a weather report: heavy rain and wind coming in two days. Crap.  That was the day we were supposed to do the next pass.  We trek on to kintail hut the next day, and it’s pretty flat and easy, and we get there before the rain sets in.  and then we spend two days there.  Ugh. talk about cabin fever.  The weather is a bit more severe here than some places, so a downpour of rain overnight means hundreds of waterfalls that didn’t exist the previous day pop up the next morning.  Since it was still pouring when we woke up and we knew what kind of trail we had to go over we decided to stay put.  It was kind of nice to have a layover day after some pretty intense ones, and we made the most of it by putting our camp counselor skills to use making friendship bracelets. And headbands. And hairwraps.  The real bummer came the next day when it was still pouring rain, the river that hadn’t existed when we arrived at the hut still rushing by 500 feet from the door, and the rain showing no chance if letting up.  we read our books, played some cards, took naps and twiddled our thumbs.  And then it started to hail.  After another less than restful night – I kept waking up to the rain, worrying about when we were going to be able to move on – we awoke to snow-covered peaks and a light drizzle.  The waterfalls had lessened, and the raging river had receded back to it’s puddle-sized self.  We were stoked to get back out on the trail and started off strong.  We got to the top of the pass in under three hours, tramped through some snow, got caught in a mini-blizzard, got numb fingers and toes, and then made it down to the hut by 3.  Huzzah! Since it was only 4 hours to the boat landing we were taking out the next day, and we knew it was flat, we decided to push on and stay at a hut there.  I know, considering our history that seemed risky, and when we ran into a couple on the trail who said they had been walking since 9 that morning (it was 4:30 and we were an hour from the hut), we almost got nervous.  But then we made it to the road by 7:30, and joked about how ridiculous those people were (what, were they walking backwards?  On their hands? Playing leapfrog?).  We had our 8^th and final night in a hut all to ourselves, and jumped on a boat across lake manipouri this morning.  Actually, we almost missed the boat, and were running to the dock when a huge tour bus came rumbling down the road and the driver motioned for us to get on.  We apologized to all the people on the bus, because we were wet and smelly and trying our hardest not to hit them in the face with our packs, and the driver gave a spiel about us:  “Now these here are what we call trampers!”  We made the boat and got ourselves set up in a hostel, showered, did laundry, tried to dry our things out and reorganize before heading north again.  We go back to queenstown tomorrow, and then things are sort of up in the air; I’m hoping to catch up with Helen and Carl soon, and then…? 

With heaps of love and hugs,

-d

 

ps – if you are wondering where tatty is and what she has been up to lately and why she hasn’t been following through on her part of the blog, so am i!  last I heard, she was somewhere in the desert, dancing around a fire with ostrich feathers…