Tramping New Zealand 2011

International travel is getting easier all the time and our journey to New Zealand was a further step in that direction. On our San Fransisco afternoon layover, Gail (Guatemala 1996) whisked us off to Chinatown to slurp Vietnamese noodles. We flew across the Pacific on New Year’s Eve. Air New Zealand looked after us but somewhere after the champagne was served and passing over Samoa, we lost a day. The bubbly was good, but not that good. Imagine waking up January 2 with a hangover from New Year’s Eve.

We connected with a flight to Whangarei to the north of Auckland and landed squarely on our feet. John & Colleen (Australia 2008) had generously arranged for us to stay at their place while they were vacationing further south. After adjusting to the mid-summer heat, walking upside down and sunburned feet, we set off north for the Bay of Islands. Glenn had pre-booked cheapie bus tickets on nakedbus.com (ask him about $1 seats), but when we took the bus as first-timers, they let us keep our clothes on. Pre-booking with Nakedbus put us in an informed position to book beds on the newly launched nakedsleeps.com. Though we later discovered that it was not a new hostel network, but rather a marketing of the Base Hostel network. So our NZD 5 (USD 4) beds were in an aging motel that had been converted into a hostel, in the thick of the 20 year old action in Pahia. If they were able to squeeze one more patron in the hostel bar at night, the only way to get through it would be by body surfing. We managed a few hours of kip and yes the Bay of Islands are beautiful.

Up at the top end, the Cape Reinga tramp remains our favorite hike of the trip. Deserted beaches, freshwater creeks, unlimited green lip mussels, sunsets, warm temperatures and back-packing in barefoot were tough to beat.

Back in Whangarei, John & Colleen introduced us to the nearby Northland coastline, some of yachtie community and hosted a real brai with a group of Kiwis all originally from South Africa. Later in New Zealand, we would come across boerwurst in supermarkets like New World (great name!), likely made by a local South African immigrant butcher. We were also fortunate enough to visit Woof Woof, the amazing talking Tui (NZ endemic bird) at the Whangarei Native Bird Recovery Centre before he passed away in February of 2011. Woof Woof was 16 years old, and that is a really good number of years for a Tui. Woof Woof was famous enough to have his own youtube videos but the TV3 (NZ national network) news video on the Tui Singing Pizza Hut jingle (video no longer available on-line) was proof that not much happens in NZ, except for earthquakes.

Whilst Auckland often reaches the top ten cities to live in (nice climate, ocean, interesting neighborhoods), it’s a dull tourist destination, but it is a good transportation hub. Nakedbus brought us to the central volcanic area (Tongaririo National Park). We elected to walk the “Round the Mountain” (Ruapehu) track, which is a quiet alternative to the Tongariro Northern Circuit. Mt Ruapehu is the highest peak on the North Island. Although it is relatively safe, it is one of the world's most active volcanoes. The last eruption prior to our visit was way back in 2007, accompanied by a 7 minute long earthquake; that would have been interesting. The walking was straight forward but getting our tongues around some of the hut names was another matter: Waihohonu, Mangaehuehu, Mangaturuturu. We also ran into our first deer hunters in the national park (think Elmer Fudd and you get the picture). Animals introduced by European settles have dramatically impacted endemic fora and fauna. Deer are now largely contained; it’s open hunting season all-year round in most places including national parks. Possums and stoats are now much more problematic. The latter is the native bird number one enemy in New Zealand. The DOC (Department of Conservation) program faces huge challenges and seems to have similar success probabilities on the main NZ islands as American incursions into Vietnam and Afghanistan had.

Wellington was our last stop on the North Island. Annette & Barry (Malaysia 1963!) welcomed us on our third visit to New Zealand. We try not to miss parliament building tours in capital cities and discovered the building is earthquake resistant, suspended on huge shock absorbers. They say that people from Wellington are so used to leaning into the wind, that when the wind stops, they fall over. There is some truth to that.

It was off to the “mainland” or South Island by inter-island ferry. In Picton, we jumped on the “mail-boat” to Ship Cove, at north end of the Queen Charlotte Track. It was more like a “tourist-boat” that also drops off mail to ranches along the way. Captain James Cook spent a lot of time at Ship Cove (the crew even established vegetable gardens there) back in the 1770’s but we didn't find any feral vegetables. The Queen Charlotte Track is an excellent way to experience the Marlborough Sounds region on foot. Most walkers opt for a luggage service, whereby your bag is boated from one overnight stop to the next. We opted to carry our own backpacks. At this stage, the reader might be thinking that, gosh Glenn is a hard-nosed cheap bugger. No denials, but it did pay rich dividends. While other trampers galloped along to reach their luggage, we were able to overnight in gorgeous, quiet alternative campsites with great clamming at low tide. We wouldn’t do it any other way.

The beautiful small city of Nelson was our next re-supply point. To the south, the Nelson Lakes offer some outstanding ridge walks. At lake level, the area has a well-deserved reputation for voracious sand flies. These pesky and hungry insects are actually black flies, but Captain Cook experienced them along the coast and the label stuck. In Nelson, Sheila had done some reading on local creatures; when long-fin eels are ready to breed, they leave New Zealand and swim 5,000 kilometres up into the tropical Pacific to spawn in deep ocean trenches near Tonga (whoa, that’s weird!) .At Lake Rotoroa, we went out at dusk and fed food scraps to a tumultuous group of large, aggressive eels. A week earlier, an Australian disappeared in Lake Rotoroa, presumed drowned. His body was never found......hmmmmm. Late-night skinny dipping in Lake Rotoroa is not advised!!

The Heaphy Track was our first “great walk”, which means a groomed trail (many parts of the Heaphy had “fish tank gravel”) and our hut pass was not valid (i.e. more dosh). The track links the northern part of the South Island to the West Coast and our typical approach of taking tramper shuttles to the beginning of the track and hitch-hiking out at the other end worked well on the Heaphy. Despite the higher costs, walking through wild nikau palm groves and along west coast beaches was priceless.

We then hitch-hiked down to a place called Punakaiki (or Pancake Rocks), a place of surging water and blowholes, so we should excused for not noticing the tremors when an EARTHQUAKE hit the opposite side of the island at Christchurch. More than180 died and property damage exceeded US $10 Billion. We later met a number of people directly affected by the catastrophe. The ongoing recovery efforts dominated NZ news for the remainder of our trip. We noticed minor food shortages for a short period and a significant drop-off of foreign visitors thereafter. So rather than watch the earthquake drama unfold on TV, we walked the “Inland Pack Track”. This is a route that is in need of re-branding or renaming. We didn’t meet any other trampers on the track and it was a beautiful walk through coastal karst environment with gorges, river walking and camping beneath a giant overhang.

From Greymouth, we set out for Arthur’s Pass National Park and a tramp over Kelly’s Saddle and onto Harmon Pass. It was another quiet hike, but as we headed up the Taipo River, the track steadily deteriorated and disappeared. The area had already received three metres of rain in the previous two months so sections of the track had been completely wiped out by the river. So, faced with more bush-whacking through thick vegetation, we “chickened out” and took an alternate route out.

After a large number of emails to and fro, we coordinated a meeting with Aussie friends Karen & Gary (USA 2009) and a tramp to the Cass-Lagoon saddles. On the walk, we passed through a pine tree plantation, complete with a North American mushroom eco-system on the forest floor. Karen & Gary know their mushrooms, so we collected a pile. They warned us that the shrooms might make us “poo green”. Let’s just say that our digestive systems settled down five days later.

La Niña brought with it a wet early summer to the SW of the South Island, so when we saw a five day forecast of sunshine, we made a dash along the normally soggy west coast. Glaciers and rain-forest at Fox Glacier, trench walking through rain-forest and hot springs at Welcome Flats and above tree-line walking near Mt Brewster were all magnificent. We met our guardian angel at Brewster hut; Zoe was looking for tramping companions, we were all heading in the same direction, we were similar minded and she had an “experienced” car. We traveled together and It marked a step-up in intensity. Gone were the day of rest between hikes. We shifted to a “good weather forecast - do laundry - buy food - get out of town in less than two hours” modus operandi.

The Motatpu track is a new kid on the block; it opened in 2008. Canadian country singer, Shania Twain and her husband at the time, purchased the lease to a huge land block near Wanaka. As part of the lease agreement, they funded the trail and huts and allowed public access. The track is sometimes referred to as the “Twain Twack”. Our hike coincided with the annual Motatapu adventure marathon. We had a race helicopter buzz us and then land near us because officials thought we might be slow runners in trouble.

Over at Aspiring National Park and the West Matukituki valley, DOC and the NZ Alpine club maintain two nice huts (Liverpool and French Ridge). At both huts, the outhouse is set in a beautiful, exposed spot to facilitate heli-loo service. We heard one story that someone went out to use the precarious French ridge outhouse one night and never came back. We can see how that might have happened.

Further along, near Glenorchy, we rushed to take advantage of another fine weather window and the Rees-Dart Track. We gave Zoe a leave of absence so that she could hike the Dusky Track (too boggy and sand-fly infested for chickens) with a previously Internet arranged hiking partner. The Rees-Dart is one of the must-do NZ tramps; it is anticipated that DOC will be introducing a hut pre-booking system in 2012 due to its increasing popularity. When we walked the Rees-Dart, post peak-season in late March, there were more trampers than bunks on some nights. The Greenstone track (we used it to travel between Glenorchy area to Fiordland) may move towards a pre-booking system in the near future.

Reunited with Zoe in Te Anau, we all had a look at Milford Sound from up high on the Gertrude Saddle/Barrier Col day hike and then we headed to the south coast of the South Island and walked a few days on the South Coast Path. The track has some sweet beach sections but mostly it travels through rain-forest to the site of an abandoned timber milling operation at Port Craig. Very little of the settlement remains as previous owners stripped the site in the 1930’s. The school house (government property) remained and was converted into a nice tramping hut. Further along the coast, the track follows the old tramway line and crosses four superb wood-trestle viaducts, the largest of which (Percy Burns) is 125 metres in length and it is one of the largest surviving wooden viaducts in the world. The tramp was also a milestone for us; we walked both ends of New Zealand (quite different from one end to another!).

For our final walk, we returned to Wanaka and Makaroa to complete the Wilkin-Young Track. The route had been complicated by high river levels earlier in the summer and then the central hut (Siberia) burnt down in March. We tented the Siberia Valley and discovered that hard frosts don’t kill off pesky sand-flies. We expected to shorten the loop with a flight out of Siberia (a “fly-back” was only USD 40) but the little plane never arrived due to high winds that particular day. So our last full day in NZ was an enjoyable but tiring 30km walk with 11 river crossings. Zoe was a little apprehensive of the rivers because she had been swept off her feet while crossing the Makaroa River on a previous attempt on the same hike, but she came out smiling.

We stayed over in Cromwell on our final NZ night (thanks Carol & Peter, NZ 2011) and then our guardian angel drove us to the Queenstown airport for a series of three flights from green NZ to Arid-zona, USA. Our five hour layover at Los Angeles blossomed into a delightful afternoon at nearby Venice Beach.

FOR THE RECORD

NZ BANANA INDEX: 3 for 1 USD (comparable to European norms). Note that the Australian Banana Index is once again in shambles following Cyclone Yasi which scored a bulls eye on the Queensland banana belt. For those readers who might be skeptical of the importance of the Banana Index, Time Magazine ran a story on Banananomics in May 2011 (no longer available on-line).

NZ TRAMPS (we tried for a variety of walks)

North Island: Cape Reinga, Around The Mountain (Mt Ruapehu)

South Island: Queen Charlotte Track, Nelson Lakes, Heaphy Track, Inland Pack Track, Arthur’s Pass (Kelly Saddle, Taipo River), Cass Lagoon Saddles, Mt Fox (day-hike), Welcome Flats, Brewster Hut (& Mt Armstrong), West Matukituki Valley (Liverpool & French Ridge huts), Rees Dart Track, Greenstone Track, Gertrude Saddle & Barrier Col (day-hike), South Coast Path, Wilkin-Young Track

NZ TRAMPS ON PREVIOUS TRIPS

Tongariro Crossing (day-hike), Abel Tasman Track (hike, kayak), Routeburn Track, Caples Track

NZ Tent and Hut Nights:74