Yesterday, Johanna and I drove through the Matukituki Valley to Mt. Aspiring National Park, which is a stunning 50km drive out of Wanaka (with only the last 20 or so kilometers on gravel road!). Even though the clouds had descended by the time we got on the road–about 1.30pm–the scenery, which was carved out of the land by the great Matukituki and Wanaka glaciers thousands of years ago, was still amazing. On the way, we stopped by Lake Wanaka and Glendhu Bay, a small offshoot of the lake, and got some great shots of puffy clouds and dark blue waves. I would have been happy with just seeing what I saw on the drive, really!

When we finally made it to Mt. Aspiring National Park, we were confronted with a series of fords starting 6km before the Raspberry Creek car park, where the Rob Rob Track started. We thought it might be a short distance and considered walking it, since Johanna’s car is so low-slung, but thought the better of it after being told how far it was and seeing many other low cars make it through safely.

It’s fortunate we did drive to the car park, because otherwise we would have never made it to the track at all, given the weather. It started spitting rain as soon as we got out of the car; by the time we were at the swing bridge–15 minutes into the track–it turned into a steady rain that beat down on us for the rest of the walk. The walk itself wasn’t too difficult–a little bit of uphill, but nothing too tiring–and fortunately most of it was covered by trees, so we didn’t get all that wet until we came out above the bushline for the last 10 minutes before the viewpoint. It took us a bit longer than it should have because I kept stopping and waiting for Johanna, who isn’t quite as in shape as numerous tracks have made me.

The view at the top would have been absolutely spectacular…if it hadn’t been cloudy and pouring. We could just barely see the section of the Rob Roy glacier that is precariously perched on the edge of a mountain, and we could see two white spots that marked other sections of the glacier as well. Still, it was a great sight, especially the numerous waterfalls pouring from the packed ice. There had to be at least 50 of them pouring from all different heights. Some poured water that seemed to completely disappear into clouds underneath. Others fed into the Rob Roy stream that ran next to much of the track, turning it from blue to a raging grey. Probably the coolest view was towards the end of the walk, when we saw the West Matukituki River join with the Rob Roy stream; one was brilliantly blue, the other grey. Unfortunately, the silty grey won.

The exhaustion that set in after walking for 3.5 hours in the rain didn’t go away even after a good night’s sleep, so I’m lucky it’s a lazy day. Johanna drove me to Queenstown, where it is raining and clouds are down over the Remarkables. A perfect day for taking naps, uploading pictures, and making DVDs of the thousands of pictures I’ve taken so far. I haven’t gotten to uploading Rob Roy shots, which explains the lack of illustration in this entry, but I have added shots from Puzzling World to my Wanaka album and I have updated my Copland Track album with most of the shots I took while walking. Here’s an interesting contrast of Shiels Creek shots (one from the day I walked in and one from the next day), to show why we couldn’t cross it for quite a while:

Also, I’ve added one of the videos that Rob, my tandem paragliding guide, took while in flight. Watch it below!

 Today was my second day in Wanaka, which is located in Central Otago about an hour north of Queenstown, the self-styled “adventure capital of the world” and by far the most expensive place in New Zealand. So far, I like Wanaka much more than Queenstown because the atmosphere is less about party, party, party and spend, spend, spend. It’s got more of a small town feel, yet it’s nestled on a lake every bit as beautiful as Lake Wakatipu (the lake Queenstown juts up against) and surrounded by stunning mountains. I like it here, and it’s not quite as expensive as Queenstown, meaning my wallet hasn’t had a hole burned in it quite yet!

That said, I’ve done my share of interesting activities since I’ve been here. On Tuesday, I met up with Johanna, one of the girls that I did jade carving with in Hokitika, because we both happened to book the same hostel for the same number of nights. She took me up to Puzzling World, which is a unique attraction boasting rooms full of illusions and the first “modern-style” maze in the world. We bought the $10 ticket that got us into all of the attractions and then spent a good hour in the illusions area. We looked at holograms and a wall of 168 faces that follow you as you move around. We stood in a perspective room similar to those used in The Lord of the Rings that had a high ceiling at one end and a low ceiling at the other. Boy, did I look like a giant on their video when I stood on the low-ceilinged side of the room! The coolest illusion room was definitely the tilted one, where the slanted floor made everything look off-balance. Balls “rolled uphill” and swings hung sidways. Quite weird. The pictures look pretty cool though; unfortunately I haven’t managed to upload those yet, but as always, I’ll let you know when I do.

The Great Maze surrounds the Puzzling World building and has four corners–the yellow, green, blue, and red towers. There are two different challenges. The first is to find the four towers in any order and then find your way to the finish (which is right next to the start), which takes 30 mins-1 hour on average. The other is to find the towers in that specific order, which takes 1-1.5 hours. We chose the shorter challenge and were still in the maze until well after the main office closed. After about 45 minutes, we’d found all the towers, and it was very tempting to take one of the many emergency exits (for those with “limited time or patience”) rather than finding our way back because we were a bit sick of walking in circles and running into dead ends!

 Yesterday, both Johanna and I went paragliding. It was Johanna’s idea–she had wanted to go in Nelson but the wind didn’t cooperate–and I thought it sounded fun (and much cheaper than skydiving) so I went too. We drove up to Treble Cone, which was a very scenic drive in itself. Treble Cone is one of the ski slopes in Wanaka, so it’s not a bad sized mountain. We went up to about 800m to “Pub Corner,” where we stood as our tandem guides laid out the parachute on the side of the mountain and suited us up. This suit was essentially some straps and a puffy seat to sit on while in flight. Then, the wind changed, and we had to walk to another take-off point slightly further around the mountain. It was definitely interesting trying to do that with a giant seat bouncing against my legs with each step!

After one aborted takeoff attempt, we ran down the hill until the wind took the parachute…and then we were flying! What a great feeling. It was definitely quite different to skydiving, where you are always going down. Thermals pushed us upwards as we flew over the van that had taken us up the mountain and the people that were standing and waving at us. I don’t have a clue how long we were in the air, but I loved every minute of it. We flew over Treble Cone and the Twin Waterfalls running down the side of it. We saw the windy road that had brought us up the hill, along with Lake Wanaka, Glendhu Bay, Rocky Mountain, and the Matukituki Valley. I don’t think it can get more scenic than that! At one point, Rob asked me if I liked roller coasters. I didn’t have time to regret my answer before he pulled us into a corkscrew spin. We flew towards the ground with that same stomach-dropping feeling that any good roller-coaster will give you, but I think it was much cooler. At another point, Rob asked if I’d had a shower yet as he flew directly at the waterfall! Eventually, we did have to land–which essentially involved just sticking my legs out and grinding to a halt on my butt as Rob tried not to fall over me–but then we got to watch the two other paragliders have the same fun that we did before we drove back. Definitely an amazing experience, and one I’d love to try again (they did warn us that flying is addictive), if only my budget would let me!

I’ve got plenty of pictures that both Rob and I took on the flight down, as well as a lot of scenic shots of Wanaka that I’ve taken in the last few days, in my Wanaka album. Also, I’ve managed to upload 2 videos from paragliding–with at least 3 more yet to come. You can watch those below.

James will be doing “The World’s Greatest Shave” on March 14th, which means he is raising money for leukemia and then shaving his head on that day. Please read the story below and donate if you can!

Craig Scott Donaldson 19/10/64 - 1/2/72
In 1970 Craig was a proficient reader with Dr Seuss’s ‘One Fish, Two Fish’ a favourite book. He lived on a farm with lots of boy things to do, thrived in his school environment & always striving to’ mix it’ with his university & senior high school brothers & their peers.Prior to his sixth birthday Craig was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia, the prognosis perhaps 3 months. Craig’s treatment at the POW hospital in Sydney was always considered to be linked to research into the disease & a piece in the jigsaw that may one day lead to cure. Observing a young lad, previously fit, connected to a drip in a hospital ward of similarly afflicted kids is daunting particularly knowing the futility of outcome.

In hospital Craig enjoyed Tolkien’s ‘The Hobbit’ & completed, but half, a ceramic tile coffee table. His family dealt with running a farm, university & year 12 studies, logistics of six hours between family farm to POW Sydney hospital & family separation.

It is worth noting that during Craig’s illness a man of religion paused on the veranda of the family home & prayed for a miracle for Craig’s cure. No miracle was forthcoming & we know that a cure will only be as a result of years of research by dedicated doctors & scientists such as those treating Craig 40 years ago.

Craig’s ceramic tile table was finished by his mother but in a distinguishable lack of pattern.
-Written by Ross Donaldson 18/02/08
Craig would have been my uncle. I will be shaving my head on Friday March 14th to raise money for the Leukaemia Foundation, however, if I reach my target, I’ll wax my legs as well and send photos around for the enjoyment of those sponsored me. Please just give whatever you feel comfortable with as every little bit helps.

Donations can be made by visiting James’ profile page.

Okay, so I left you guys hanging after saying that Rhoda got left behind. While that was happening, I was busy taking a nap (yes, I took a nap at 10am…I was exhausted from my 5 weeks of travel and going non-stop). Needless to say, I was very surprised when I woke up and went to Sally (the hut warden)’s room to ask for a can opener and I saw Rhoda sitting there!

After a long discussion about what a jerk John was, we all got into our rain gear and braved the non-stop rain. We went down to Shiels Creek just to see what it looked like. What a difference from the day before! What had been a trickle was now a full-blown waterfall with plenty of rapids at its base. There was no way we could cross it; Sally said that even the calmer crossing higher up the creek would have been dangerous with that sort of water going through it. When we got back to the hut, we continued down the track for a minute and crossed the Copland River swing bridge. The day before, the water had been relatively placid and an aquamarine color rivalling that of Hokitika Gorge; now it was slate grey and raging. From there, the guys went out hunting; we stayed in the calm, dry hut.

The weather forecast came through at 6pm, and it called for more heavy rain, easing in the afternoon, followed by even more heavy rain on Monday. Essentially, we needed to be ready to hang out in the hut for quite a while. In that same radio contact from the Dept of Conservation base, a message from John asking when Rhoda was coming back was relayed, so we found out that he made it safely (as unfortunate as that was). Hopefully the food in the car didn’t rot (or maybe just his did)!

We spent most of the evening hanging out in Sally’s room, mostly discussing mountaineers and their total craziness. Sally and Tash made some cheesecake, which was total luxury compared to all of our dehydrated food! Somehow the conversation went from the people we’d seen on the track to the poo pots that they have to use when out on the ice, since poo won’t naturally decompose in a frozen environment. I think we all decided we’re glad we’re not mountaineers!

Rhoda and I hadn’t been in the hot pools yet that day–the sandflies are absolutely atrocious during the day and take a lot of the fun out of it–so we decided to brave the storm and get into them at about 11.30pm. It was absolutely pouring and the winds were blowing like a hurricane was coming in, so obviously the sane thing to do is put on a swimsuit and run (with no towel) into some hot pools. The shallow pool hadn’t filled up with too much rainwater, so it was still hot, especially next to the hot stream feeding it.

Soaking in the springs during a big storm was probably the best part of the whole weekend. We had rain running down our faces as we looked around us, looking at the shadows of barely-moonlit mountains hiding behind quick-moving clouds. It was a completely different mood to the night before, but worth every second of the freezing cold run we had to make to get there! The only problem was that we didn’t want to get out once we were in the warmth of the pool, so we ended up spending about an hour there!

The next morning surprised us. When we woke up, light, fluffy clouds dotted the blue sky–there was no rain in sight. Jarna, one of Sally’s kiwi friends, didn’t let us hear the end of it; the day before, he kept claiming that it was “just a sunshower” and “it’s clearing!” It took a day, but he was proven right.

Unfortunately, none of us really wanted to walk out, since we’d gotten in the lazy mindset of just hanging out around the hut. Therefore, after our 11 o’clock start (we had to give the creeks time to go down) it only took 30 minutes before people were asking “are we there yet?” Since we’d already walked the track on the way in, it got a bit boring, but thankfully we had a lot of company to chat to as we clambered across rock after rock and got our boots wet in creek after creek. Towards the end, people were swearing that if they never saw a rock again, they’d be happy; sarcastic comments flowed easily at every creek. “Wow, I haven’t seen water yet today!” “A creek? No way, they have those here?!” At the last creek–Rough Creek–there was a sign pointing out that the creek crossing to the car park took 5 minutes but the flood bridge took 1 hour. Vowing that we would rather drown before walking on rocks for another hour, we walked straight through the calf-deep river (which was fortunately quite even with not many slippery rocks, so very easy to get through).

John was waiting in the carpark, and as soon as we crossed the river, he started the car and backed out, expecting Rhoda to just leave the people she’d spent the last day and 7 hour hike with to jump in the car with him. She didn’t. Instead, she had a nice beer with us in the carpark–Jarna came prepared and had a cooler of Tui in the back of his truck–and then calmly told John that Jarna was going back to Fox too so she’d get a ride with him. I wouldn’t have wanted to get in the car with him either after the way he’d treated her!

Even though Ivory Towers–the only hostel in Fox–screwed up and lost my reservation, I was very lucky and got the last bed in a female dorm, so I had a place to sleep that wasn’t a tent in the rain. Jarna didn’t have a reservation either, but the manager at the hostel did his best and shuffled a few people around. He ended up getting a bed in a twin room, so he didn’t have to pitch a tent anywhere either.

After showers to get off the smell of sweat/wet clothes/sulfur from the hot springs, we went and had an amazing meal at the Cook Saddle Pub. We started off with massive bottles of Tui and a huge plate of wedges with sweet chili and sour cream, and then I had a massive t-bone steak smothered in fried eggs and gravy for a main. It tasted so much better than dehydrated food or anything else we could have cooked in our state of exhaustion!

There’s a couple of post scripts to this story as well. The first is that Rhoda confronted John about the car the next morning; he said that they were no longer going to travel together and that he was taking the car(!!). Luckily, she managed to get her money back from him, but still. What a total pillock, especially since getting a rental car was her idea in the first place and he just latched onto her in a hostel.

The other post script has to do with the business I mentioned having to sort out over the phone yesterday. I had an Intercity bus booked to pick me up from the Copland Track at 2.55pm. Unfortunately, since we could only safely start the walk at 11am, there was no way I could get there in time without flying (and I certainly wouldn’t be able to take off with my backpack on my back!). Since we hiked back with people that had cars, I got back to Fox alright. I thought about going to meet the Intercity bus the next morning to let the driver know I was safe, but I didn’t make it out of the hostel in time to do so. Anyway, I thought the bus line would write me off as a no-show and not worry about it. Not so. They marked down that they needed to look for me at the trailhead yesterday, and when I didn’t show then either, the driver reported me missing to the New Zealand police! It kind of freaked me out when I read my email and saw one titled “New Zealand Police,” in which they said I had been reported missing by Intercity/Newmans Bus Lines and that if I didn’t reply shortly, a full scale search would be launched.

Needless to say, I replied as quickly as possible letting the policeman know what happened and that I was very sorry about causing any problems. It was a good thing I thought to call my mom too, since I had given Intercity my home phone number, to warn her what had happened and that I was not, in fact, missing, since the cops called her while I was on the phone! I ended up calling the policeman, who was not nearly as angry as I thought he might be, after my mom thanked him for taking such good care of his country’s tourists and hung up. He just asked that next time I “go bush” and miss booked transport at the end to let them know!

What an ending to a very wacky weekend.

Despite the title of this post, yesterday I got back from a wonderful weekend away on the Copland Track, which is about a 30 minute drive south of Fox Glacier in New Zealand’s Westland National Park. The full Copland Track is something that I couldn’t tackle without some immense help; it turns into a route past the point that I went to and then heads into ice and snow across the Copland Pass. On the way in, I met three people that had come across the pass from Mount Cook, and one had to be rescued by the other two twice. His knees looked pretty much nonexistent; apparently he slid down a lot of ice and could see the blood trail where he’d been. Not fun, so I stuck to the first 17kms (11 miles) of the track.

I started the track on my own after being dropped off by the Intercity/Newmans bus at the entrance on the main road. The bus driver was really helpful, and told me not to worry if the weather got bad and I had to miss the bus, even though I had a ticket booked for two days later; he said it wasn’t worth risking my life for, which I agreed with! He also told me how to get across the first creek without getting my feet wet and said that if I did that, my feet would stay dry for the rest of the walk.

The walk in took me nearly 8 hours, even though it was only signposted as 7, because I took quite a few flood bridges over creeks that looked a bit daunting to me with my large pack. The track essentially consists of rocks followed by rocks in creeks followed by more rocks again. Luckily, the creeks weren’t very high as it hadn’t rained in a number of days, so I got through with only one fall in the Unnamed Creek. All of the water was quite impressive though, especially the Copland River, whose aqua waters flowed to the right of the track for the vast majority of the time.

Once I arrived at Welcome Flat, where the Department of Conservation hut is located, I was greeted by Sally the hut warden. She was extremely friendly and helpful, especially in regards to weather plans (since the weather was supposed to turn rotten the following day). After talking to her I went to the main attraction of the hut: the natural hot pools that occur less than 100m away! There are 4 pools, the first of which is a cool 60 degrees C. I went in the third pool, which was quite a nice temperature, although barely waist deep when I sat down. It felt great on my tired feet and worn-out ankles, but unfortunately the sandflies were out in force. After five minutes of madly swatting, I gave up and went back to the hut.

The best time to enjoy the hot pools is after dark, once the sandflies have finally gone to sleep. Everyone staying in the hut went out on Friday night, since it was predicted to be the only non-rainy night where we could see the scenery around us while we bathed. Even in the darkness, we could see all of the (lightly snow-capped) mountains surrounding our hut; the location is absolutely second to none. As Sally said, we were in paradise. The hot water of the second-warmest (and deepest) pool felt amazing as we sat talking in the cool night. Sally had a group of friends visiting her for the weekend, and there were also two other trampers that arrived shortly after dark–a Canadian named John and an American girl named Rhoda. Luckily all of us got along (except John, who didn’t make an effort), since we ended up spending a lot of time together!

The next morning, we woke up to the expected rain. Rhoda and John, as well as two Hungarians that had been camping, headed off into the rain, hoping to beat the rising streams. The Copland is well-known for its lack of resistance under the strain of weather; as soon as heavy rains come in, all of the creeks crossing the track go into flood and make it very difficult to cross (plus, there’s an active landslip that can’t be crossed during bad rain due to the risk of falling rocks & earth). The Hungarians were lucky enough to make it past Shiels Creek, the closest creek to the hut (about 20 mins walk) and the only major unbridged creek on the track before it went into flood; John and Rhoda were not quite so lucky. When they arrived, the creek was raging and they took a lot of time scoping it out, trying to decide how they would possibly cross it without serious bodily injury. Then, out of the blue, John decided to cross without Rhoda and barely made it to the other side. Rhoda sensibly refused to risk her life attempting to cross, but John refused to cross it again. Instead, he threw their remaining sandwiches to her, said that he had to go back to the car so the food in it wouldn’t rot, and left her standing there. Really a top guy, huh? She’s lucky she was so close to the hut so she could easily return and wait until the creeks were at a more crossable level…and she’s also lucky that there were people at the hut, especially since John seemed to think that two PB&J sandwiches would last her for an extra day!

The story of this weekend is quite long, and there are a lot of details I can’t leave out or else it won’t quite make sense. I managed to spend a good amount of internet time on the phone today, sorting out a bit of business I will describe in the next post, but now I have to go grocery shopping and wash my clothes so I can have some dry, warm, clean clothes to wear tomorrow!

Also, I have added pictures from my trips to Gillespies Beach (the closest beach to Fox) and to the base of Fox Glacier here, which I took the day before I started the Copland. Pictures from around Welcome Flat Hut can be found here. I’ll add the rest of the pictures from the track tomorrow, since they are on my other camera that I didn’t get around to uploading today.

I wrote two days ago about having arrived in Fox Glacier and hoping for good weather. Well, I really couldn’t have asked for anything better–for two days, I’ve had brilliant sunshine. The clouds have been completely clear of the mountains in the mornings, but they always build up in the afternoon due to convection clouding over the glacier. Overall, it’s been a fantastic few days, and generally the complete polar opposite to Cristina, Megan, and my last visit here in 2005, when it rained so hard that we could only walk to the glacier, not on it, because of falling boulders.

Yesterday, I went on a full-day glacier walk with Fox Guides. We reported at 9.20am, excited that it was not raining in a place renowned for its ~200 days of rain a year. After they got us all geared up–I was fortunately allowed to wear my own boots, rather than rubbing blisters in a pair of boots that only marginally fit–we drove down to the glacier, which is about 6 or 7 kms out of town. At the entrance to the road leading to Fox, they stopped and let us out of the bus to take pictures of Mount Tasman, the second highest mountain in New Zealand, because they guaranteed that we wouldn’t be able to see it through the cloud by the end of the day. They were right.

From the car park, we walked for about an hour and a half across rocks ground into pebbles by the glacier and up 600 steps through rainforest. Even three years later, it struck me as funny that we were hiking through a temperate rainforest to get to a giant slab of ice. The walk hadn’t changed much since Cristina, Megan, and I did it last, but I think I was in much better shape for it this time!

Once we reached the ice, we were given optional wooden hiking poles and crampons to put underneath the arches in our boots (and we had to tuck our pants into our socks to stop them from getting ripped up by the crampons, which made us all look like a very fashionable group!). From there we headed onto the ice, where we stayed for over three hours. We walked a fair distance and eventually found ourselves as far up as we were safely allowed to go, since we were verging on ice fields full of large ice boulders and even bigger gaping holes. It was such a different experience to walking on land (as would be expected). For one, we had to walk completely differently. There was no crab walking down hills, putting feet sideways to try to skid downwards. Feet always had to be pointing forwards, because the crampons gripped on a lot more than you would expect without prior experience with them. I managed to keep my grip most of the time and didn’t fall down any massive crevasses, contrary to what some people would expect of me!

A funny incident occurred when the guide (John) decided to line us up so we could stand by a massive hole, one-by-one, and look down it while he was holding on to us, since it was “a bit bigger than I would like.” I was at the end of the line with a guy named Nick, and John told us we could go stand in between a few ice walls (pictured to the right) and take pictures. Nick made it in and out of the little cave just fine, so I handed him my camera and tried to do the same. Unfortunately, what looked like ice was actually not, and I suddenly found myself sunk knee-deep in icy water…and so did the lady behind me, because the hole happened to be U-shaped so all the water came spraying out of the other end! Luckily, water warms up relatively quickly once it’s found its way into your boot. John took advantage of my slight clumsiness to point out the next time we walked by a big hole that “for all Americans here [I was the only one], this is a hole.”

The trip took about 6 1/2 hours all told, and I didn’t think it was particularly physically taxing except for the walk up to the face. John might have thought otherwise, since we often had to wait while he wielded his ice pick to create stairways over mini ice mountains and into valleys. The landscape was unrivalled by anything I have ever seen before, and I was left in awe after we scaled each new wall and found a whole new landscape of crevasses and boulders (and the occasional blow-up penguin) waiting for us. Even though it was a bit overpriced–and why wouldn’t they overprice it, given that they are the only guide company in town?–I enjoyed every minute of it, even when I was knee-deep in ice. It would be really interesting to do a heli-hike, since they hike much closer to the neve (snow catchment area), so they get to see snow and ice caves and such, but at $330, it’s also a bit pricey. Same with the skydive, which takes you on a scenic flight around Mt. Cook/Aoraki (New Zealand’s tallest mountain) before they throw you out of the plane…all for $295 plus $175 for a video.

This morning I biked 6kms down to Lake Matheson with Nick, just as the sun was coming up over the mountains. Lake Matheson is the lake pictured in pretty much every postcard in New Zealand. It perfectly reflects Mt. Cook and Mt. Tasman on a good day, and this morning was a good day. I know Cristina and Megan are going to kill me, but two of the pictures in this post (the first one and the one to the right) are from the lake; it was absolutely gorgeous. Even though it was slightly hazy, the water at Reflection Island–a signposted 50 minute walk around the lake–was completely calm. Just beautiful, and it made me not mind the fact that I had to roll out of bed at 7am to get there!

The full gallery from my Fox Glacier hike and Lake Matheson can be found here.

I’m sorry it’s been a few days since I updated last, but the computer at my last hostel was so slow that every time I tried to resize a picture, it froze for a few minutes…leading to lots of frustration and wasted internet time, so I didn’t get a chance to actually update. Anyway, I’ve been pretty busy since I wrote in Punakaiki. Just after I updated, my friend from the hostel and I went back up to the Pancake Rocks to see them at high tide (and without rain), since the blowholes there are the best when the water is right up. All three of the big blowholes were spitting out loads of spray, enthralling the many tourists standing around with cameras hoping to capture it. We weren’t really game for waiting around at the rocks for sunset, so we ended up going back to the hostel and sitting on the beach to watch the sun set into the ocean. Everyone else in Punakaiki was there as well!

The next day I headed down to Hokitika, another town with a fun name on the west coast (for the curious, the most-used pronunciation is hokey-tick-uh). I decided to stay in Birdsong, a wonderful little hostel about 2km outside the town itself (which isn’t that big in the first place). Every room in the hostel was named after a different native NZ bird, and there were giant paintings of kiwis and woodpigeons (my room name) on the wall. I ran into quite a few people that I’d already met and talked to in other hostels; I’m sure I’ll meet them again along the way, since everyone heads in generally the same direction.

So to get to the title of this post, I carved my own greenstone at a carving studio called Bonz ‘n’ Stonz yesterday. Two of the girls in my room–Johanna and Anne from Germany–also went, so Johanna drove us all into town around 9. The first step of the process was choosing our design. We all pored over books for about 1/2 an hour before deciding on our designs, which we then had to draw. I used a design that was partly out of the book, partly of my own design. As the picture to the right shows, it was a combination of a triple twist, a fish hook, and a whale tail–all important symbols to the Maori. Their meanings are as follows:

Triple twist: friendship and loyalty for life
Fish hook (hei matau): prosperity, strength, determination, good health, and safe journey over water
Whale tail: Protection, strength but sensitivity

Steve, the carver that owns Bonz ‘n’ Stonz, was great. He helped us through all of the different steps necessary to create a greenstone carving. First, we cut out our designs and then traced them on the jade. Steve then had to begin the carving by getting rid of a lot of the excess greenstone; then we ground off the greenstone outside our traced designs and began to round off edges. After a bit of sanding and an hour and a half lunch break, the people that were carving bone were done. One of the guys was amazing and made a perfect whale tail with barely any help from Steve! The worst part of the bone carving was the smell–it reminded me of getting fillings. Yuck. After lunch it was only the three of us doing jade left. We got to bore holes in the stone and use smaller tools to do more detailed work. All of us had variations of whale tails in our designs, which require a great deal of precision, so we kept Steve busy! He definitely took care of my tiny whale tail, which I was ready to chop off since I had butchered it and thought it had no chance of recovering. Today someone saw the necklace and recognized the whale tail straight away, so he did well!

After all of the carving/grinding/precision work was done, it was time to polish and buff. We sanded the greenstone with five grades of sandpaper until they were shining just like jade you see in the shops (before, the jade only shone when it was wet; once it dried, it became a powdery green). Then we dipped them in oil, put them on a cord, and were done! It was a long, arduous process–I don’t know how Steve does it every day, because we were absolutely worn out after being in the studio from 9am-5.30pm. It was well worth it though, and I know that my necklace is a) pure NZ greenstone from the greenstone capital of NZ and b) totally unique because I made it myself from my own design! Plus, we paid $90 for the tutoring, use of the studio, and the necklace; that’s much less than a pendant the size of mine would market for normally. Then, to finish the evening, we all had a glass of wine and watched the sunset from our hostel–and we saw the flash of emerald green as the sun sunk into the horizon. Fitting, since that’s the color we’d been seeing all day.

This morning, we woke up to see that the sky was blue and the clouds were distant–not something that often happens on the West Coast of the Southern Alps. We all seized the opportunity and jumped into Johanna’s car for a short ride to Hokitika Gorge. This gorge was unlike the previous ones I’ve seen on the west coast in that the water was a brilliant bluey-turquoise color. It’s the brightest water I’ve ever seen that hasn’t been dyed; it was even bluer than the water in the Abel Tasman, which is saying a lot. There’s a swingbridge across the water, and you’re allowed to climb all you want on the rocks just on the other side. We did so, trying to get the perfect angle on the brilliant water (and the waterfall running into it), when Anne noticed that there was greenstone in amongst the rocks. We then spent a good 15 minutes running our fingers through the tiny pebbles trying to find our own little chunks of jade (not that we hadn’t made our own pendants the day before or anything :-P) I think the only reason we left was because the bloody sandflies started eating us alive.

From there, we went to Lake Kaniere, another local jewel. We had a long drive around the lake before we found Dorothy Falls, a huge waterfall barely feet off of the main road. We also did a 30-minute round trip walk called the Canoe Cove Walk–regardless of the fact that we found no canoes or coves. We did, however, find the craziest mushrooms I’ve ever seen. All along the path, there were bright blue, deep red, and orange/yellow mushrooms, nestled on top of logs or underneath a few dead leaves. We figured the mushrooms must have been so blue because of the water!

After that, it was a rush back into town so I could do some grocery shopping and catch the bus to where I am now–Fox Glacier. Cristina and Megan will appreciate the fact that it was drizzling when I arrived and the clouds were over the mountains (which is exactly how it was when we arrived here a bit more than three years ago). That’s why I’m in the internet cafe and I’m about to bombard you with an absurd number of photo links–because it’s raining, and Fox Glacier only has one street so therefore not much to do (unless you like riding motorcycles, which apparently a lot of people here today do–I’ve heard at least 20 drive past since I’ve been in here!). The forecast for tomorrow and the next day is good, though, so fingers crossed!

Anyway, below are links to the photos I’ve promised you.
Murchison: Shots from around Murchison and on the Skyline Track above the town.
Rafting the Buller River: Updated to include shots that White Water Action took from the banks.
Punakaiki: Pictures of the Pancake Rocks and the Blowholes, sunsets on the beach, and from my 3 hour walk through Paparoa National Park.
Hokitika: An incomplete gallery; currently contains all the shots I got of greenstone carving along with a few from Hokitika Gorge & Lake Kaniere.

Just a quick update before I go back outside to watch the sun set over the sea. I know, life is rough. Anyway, yesterday I arrived in Punakaiki, a tiny hamlet nestled between the coast and Paparoa National Park. The landscapes in Paparoa are unreal; Tiffany would be in absolute heaven here, since everywhere you look there are gorges and other rock formations. I went on a 3-hour walk this morning through one of the gorges, which was pretty interesting since I had to cross a very strong river–fed by all the recent rain–but a very kind tour guide walked me across the river after he got his entire group across. He said it’s the way he meets girls!

I feel like it’s one of the coolest places I’ve been so far, but then again, I feel that way about each new and completely different landscape I encounter here in New Zealand.

Punakaiki is a small place, but lots of people come and visit here because of the Pancake Rocks & blowholes. The rocks are interesting formations of limestone and (another form of stone that I’ve forgotten at the moment) that have been pancaked together to create really bizarre and unique cliffs. These cliffs are kind of like the Twelve Apostles in that the water is constantly wearing away at them, slowly changing them over thousands of years; this has created arches underneath them that allow a little water through, which sprays up into the air and creates a blowhole. It’s really amazing to see, especially today–yesterday I had a quick run down there when the heavy downpours stopped, but then they started again and I got soaked. It rained all through the night–typical on the West Coast of New Zealand, where it rains over 5m per year–but thankfully today has been beautiful.

Anyway, time is up. I will hopefully have more (and cheaper) internet time tomorrow, so hopefully I’ll get you some pictures then!

Well, I’ve spent too much time describing my pictures on Flickr that I don’t have much time left to update this (and I’ve run out of gold coins to feed into the machine!) Anyway, today I went rafting on the Buller River from Murchison. It was a great trip through class 3 & 4 rapids, and the guides were much more fun than the guides I’ve had in the US and on the Shotover River. We got to do things like floating through rapids (the smaller ones) on our backs, standing up on the boat and trying to balance while going through other small rapids, carrying the boat up banks so we could re-do rapids, and jumping off a 9-meter-high cliff into a deep pool in the river (which not everyone did, but I went for it and managed not to bellyflop!)

I bought a $20 disk of professional shots taken from the banks, which has some really great shots of the raft in rapids, but the CD-ROM on this computer appears to be broken. For now, you’ll have to be happy with the shots I took.

Thankfully, some people traveling around New Zealand have cars. That’s what I was thinking yesterday when I got a ride with a friend–for only the cost of gas and a coffee–from the hostel over to Wharariki Beach, which has to be one of the most other-worldly beaches on the planet. One minute, you’re walking through rolling hills, picking your way past sheep droppings, and the next you’re on sand dunes that wouldn’t be out of place in the middle of the desert. Just out of reach behind the semi-low tide were massive rocks that had slowly been eroded by the sea to form the coolest arches and other formations in their bases.

We spent about 2 hours walking up and down the beach, despite the strong winds that kept threatening to turn us into sand people (and nearly did). It seemed like every time we walked a couple feet there was another amazing angle to take pictures from, which meant that all 3 of us took entirely too many pictures. Just as we were about to leave, we realized that the tide had finally gone down enough that we could approach some of the smaller of the rocks, which seals happen to live on. We saw 4 seals in total, including one very tired-looking pup.

All in all, a very good day trip to one of the best beaches I’ve ever been to, despite the fact that it is nicknamed “the Washing Machine” and you therefore can’t swim in it at all. We got to see everything we wanted–the rocks, the seals–with the possible omission of a beautiful sunset. The weather was great, even though we drove through heavy storms and clouds swelled every once in a while, only to dissipate again. We ended it with a latte each at the cafe that looks out on Farewell Spit, a nature reserve that marks the end of the South Island.

I have to mention the hostel I stayed in in Golden Bay here–Golden Bay Barefoot Backpackers. The owners of the hostel had just taken over two days prior, so they were running around like chickens with their heads cut off, which made for a very interesting stay. It was good in the end, but I had my doubts in the beginning when I found out they didn’t have my booking because the previous owner had continued making reservations for people without telling them…

I’ve abandoned my original plan for this leg of the trip, which was to walk the 5-day, 85km Heaphy Track down the West Coast and then catching a bus from there. My ankle isn’t doing badly, but since it’s a bit iffy, I figured it wouldn’t be a good idea to start a walk that I have to finish once I’ve started, since there aren’t water taxis and the like available in that very remote area. Instead, I’m back in Nelson for a bit, where it is pouring with rain. That’s why I’m on the computer and uploading so many pictures, and I daresay everyone else in the packed cafe had the same idea. If you hadn’t noticed from the pictures included in this post, I have added (too many) shots from Wharariki Beach to my Golden Bay gallery; I’ve also fixed the first seal swim video in the last post, which wasn’t showing up before, and have uploaded more of the seals: