Mid-Semester Adventure

Hello everybody!

So I just got home last night from my 10 day trip circumnavigating the south island of New Zealand. I traveled with three other internationals: Alan who studies in Berkeley, California, Emma from Ottawa, Canada, and Dani from ISU. We drove in Alan's car named Buckley, which is a 1984 Toyota Vista.

Here is a map of the general route:

Day 1: I woke up early this morning to get all my stuff ready. It was pouring rain outside so I bundled up into my rain jacket and headed off to Dani's flat. We decided that it was raining too hard so we reversed our original plan to go to the west coast first and went up past Christchurch that night. It was raining really hard and there was quite a lot of flash flooding. We barely made it past two roads that were already almost washed out. We picked up a hitch hiker in Timaru named Sam who was a health studies teacher at a girls college in Tiumaru and we dropped him off in Christchurch.

The destroyed front of the Christchurch Cathedral.

After that we got dinner and then made our way to a campsite about an hour outside of Christchurch. The campsite was made up of a bunch of old train cars transformed into little dorm rooms. I realized that night that I had forgotten my toiletries bag back in Dunedin so that was a bummer. Anyway, we made it out of Otago and safely up north.

Our room for the night.

Day 2: We packed up from the train and made our way to Kaikoura. It was a beautifully sunny day and all of us were feeling good. Dani, Alan, and I went fishing in the ocean off Kaikoura that night and caught mostly Sea Perch, Sea Cod, and Dani caught a Barracuda. The charter we took let us keep the fish we caught so that night we loaded up on ingredients and had our own fish fry at our campsite for the night. We tent camped that night and finished our fish fry at about 11pm. We still had a lot of fish left over so Alan and Emma we to put the bagged fish in the river close by so they would stay cold for the night and we could eat them again the next day.

The fishing boat with the Kaikoura coast in the background.

Me and my sea cod that I caught.

Day 3: Woke up to a beautiful moonrise over the hills we were staying in. We retrieved the fish bag early and realized that it had a hole in it so the fish had just been festering in the river all night. It smelled pretty bad. We couldn't leave it there so we took it with us to Kaikoura. It was Easter Sunday so Dani, Alan, and Emma went to a local church and I spent the morning hiking out on the peninsula and sitting on the beach. Around 2pm we headed out for Nelson and picked up another hitch hiker just outside of Kaikoura. His name was Levi and he lived and worked in Nelson so we said we'd take him up there. We had a few issues making it out of there because the road leaving had been washed out by a landslide and crews were trying to clear the road but had only managed to clear one lane. Anyway, we made it out and got into Nelson around 8pm. That night we stayed in a small home hostel near the city center.

Sunset over Nelson.

Day 4: We woke up and made our way quickly to the i-site so that we could book our route through Abel Tasman National Park. We decided to do the coastal track and booked our two camps for the night and our water taxi to get us out after we were done. Once we had that booked we went to go find a mechanic because one of Buckley's tires was wearing pretty badly on one side. It was a national holiday though so no one was open but we managed to catch a shop owner who just dropped in for a bit and got an appointment for the next day at 8am. Once we had that done we went to one of Nelson's famous beaches and then went wine tasting, although we didn't get to taste anything as all the wineries were closed. We went to a local bar and had some craft beers instead, I had a medium dark Scottish ale that was superb. That night we stayed at the Palace hostel which is located up a hill with a good view of Nelson and the surrounding hills.

View from our window at the Palace Hostel.

Nelson's beach.

Day 5: We woke up early and got all packed up and ready to go to Abel Tasman. We got the tires realigned on Buckley and it turns out they were 1800% out of alignment. 9.8mm off instead of 0.5mm. That's why the tire was wearing so badly, so we rotated the tires and everything was looking good. We got food for the trip and then made our way up to Marahau where we would start our hike. We got into Marahau at 1pm and were out onto the track by 2pm. It started out rainy but the day finished cool but clear. We stayed at Anchorage campsite that night and I went star gazing on the beach for a few hours before falling asleep.

The view from Anchorage camp.

Day 6: We woke up early and got started hiking. It was a beautiful day, sunny and 75 degrees. We hiked 3 hours to a beach where we ate lunch and tanned and swam for a few hours before continuing on to our campsite at Onetahuti which was another 3 hour hike. We got in and pitched our tent and ate dinner which for me consisted of a carrot, an apple, and a can of baked beans. Luckily another guide was at that camp and came over later to give us her crews leftovers, curry with rice, and half a brownie. We ate like kings that night. It was too cloudy to see anything that night so I just went to sleep.

A beach in Abel Tasman.

The beach we ate lunch at.

Day 7: We woke up to make our final push to our final destination where the water taxi would pick us up. We explored a sea cave because it was low tide and then began our 2 hour hike to the Awaroa tidal crossing. This part of the track can only be crossed for a two hours before and after low tide and it consists of a few tidal rivers with some mud flats covered in mussels and sand crabs. After the crossing we had  another 2 hour hike to the beach where we would be picked up. The water taxi ride took about 45 minutes to take us back the same distance that took us three days to walk. In total we covered 42 kilometers of forest and beaches. What a great experience. We left Marahau at around 4pm and made our way out to Farewell Spit, the northernmost spot on the south island. After that we grabbed dinner in a small town called Takaka and then drove 6 hours to Greymouth getting to our campsite at 2am.

The beach at sunset at Onetahuti Camp.

Long fin Eel in a river in Abel Tasman.

Day 8: I woke up at 5am to an incredible thunderstorm. Lightning flashes followed one second later by huge rolling claps of thunder that shook my bones. The storm abated somewhat by around 8 and I got out of the car to see that one of our back tires was flat, we found nail in the edge of it. So we changed the tire in the rain and made our way to Hokitika to inflate the spare, which turned out to be a full sized tire. We also got it patched at a mechanics so we could use the old one as a spare. We left Hokitika and made our way down the coast to Franz Josef Glacier. That evening we hiked out to the Glacier and then spent the night in the hot tub relaxing.

Rainbow over the valley of Franz-Josef Glacier.

Franz-Josef Glacier

Day 9: We woke up on this morning and drove the girls out to the airfield to go sky diving and then Alan, myself, and a girl from our hostel named Mel went to Fox Glacier to hike. It took us about 45 minutes to make it to the closest point to the glacier and man was it worth it. The glacier flowed down the hill between two peaks and met a waterfall where they mixed. We could see huge ice chunks floating down the river and I touched one so I technically touched a glacier. After the glacier we drove south through Haast pass to Wanaka. We ate dinner at the first Mexican restaurant I have been to in NZ and went to see a movie at a local theater that had couches instead of seats and served fresh cookies.

Fox Glacier

Striations in the ice at Fox Glacier.

Day 10: We had a late start to the day and went wine tasting at a local vineyard. We had a Sauvignon Blanc, a Rosé, two Pinot Noirs, and Reisling, and a Gewürztraminer. After that we decided to head back to Dunedin and I got in around 5pm yesterday. It was an exhausting trip but very fun.

Lake Wanaka with fall colors and mountains.

The view from the tasting room of the winery looking over Lake Wanaka.

Well that's been my life for the past few days. Only five more weeks of class, then two weeks of finals and then I'll be making my way back to the Midwest! I can't believe that much time passed so quickly, nor how long it has felt.