I got back from New Zealand last Tuesday. Below is the second and final installment of my New Zealand travel journal. Warning: it is excessively long. :)
Summary: I saw Milford Sound, Mt. Cook, the Bay of Islands, Christchurch, and lots of other stuff. I had a blast, travelling by myself was cool, and I had more than enough stuff to do. (My friend David Day--who lived in New Zealand briefly--told me that I would never be able to find stuff to do for a whole month in New Zealand. I think I could have filled up another month.)
Later,
Sid
Sunday 10/13/02
Partha and I hiked around a bay in Picton, since we had some time to kill before taking the ferry back to the north island. We were skipping rocks on the bay until Partha accidentally (supposedly) beaned me in the head with one.
We took the ferry to Wellington, picked up the new rental car, and drove to Waitomo so that we could retrieve the stolen items the next day. I discovered that my camera had fallen out of my pocket either on the ferry or in the rental car shuttle.
Monday 10/14/02
I called the rental car place. They had found my camera and agreed to send it on to Auckland where I had to return the car.
We went to the police station and picked up Partha's stolen bag. Everything was there, except for money and credit cards. Passport and greencard were safe and sound.
We drove to Rotarua which is famous for its volcanic features. We walked through the park next to our hostel which had several steaming hot pools and bubbling mud pits. Several of the storm drains around town had steam coming out of them. That night we went to a Maori concert and traditional hangi dinner. The Maori are the native inhabitants of New Zealand.
Tuesday 10/15/02
Partha and I went to the Wai-O-Tapo volcanic park. We started off watching the eruption of the Lady Knox geyser, which goes off at 10:30 each day after being primed with a bag of laundry detergent. The rest of the park is a bunch of bubbling, steaming, oozing pools and pits of various sorts, all with names like Devil's something-or-other. (The park was quite similar to Lassen National Park in northern California.)
After the park, we had lunch and drove back to Auckland.
Tuesday 10/16/02
Auckland was rainy and dreary. I was extremely tired for some reason. For lack of any better ideas, we followed the path of historic buildings. This did not hold our interest, so we went to the art museum.
In the afternoon, Partha took a shuttle to the airport and headed for home. This marks my first time traveling abroad by myself. I was a bit aprehensive about not having anyone to talk to, but I started chatting with my dorm mates at the hostel, did my laundry and talked to people there, and that went a long way to alleviating this worry. For the rest of the trip, I never had any problems about feeling lonely or bored.
I went out and bought a book ("Second Chance at Eden" by Peter Hamilton, which I would recommend), had some Indian food, and logged onto the internet for a while.
Thursday 10/17/02
I left Auckland and drove up the east coast to Northland--the northernmost part of New Zealand. I didn't really know what my final destination was, and I was in a pretty foul mood. I decided to drive all the way to Cape Rienga--the northernmost point on the island. To get there, I had to drive for 20 minutes on a gravel road, which was not pleasant. Cape Rienga is where the Maori people believed that the spirits of the dead left the island. They picked a good spot for it. I expected the place to be full of tour buses and snack stands, but when I got there, I stood at the lighthouse on the cape for 15-20 minutes without encountering another soul. (Well, not a living one at least.) I hadn't expected much, but was pretty awestruck when I got there. This is probably largely because I hadn't expected much and because I had the whole place to myself. My foul mood was completely gone after visiting Cape Rienga.
I backtracked to Keri Keri, near the Bay of Islands, and stayed at a hostel there. I was the last person dining at one of the local restaurants and chatted with the waitress who had just moved there from Canada. I was dying for ice cream, so they made me a Sundae (which only appeared on the children's menu). The cook asked if I wanted "hundreds and thousands" on it. It turns out that that is a term for candy sprinkles.
Friday 10/18/02
I asked the hostel manager at Keri Keri to recommend some good walks. He recommended the waterfall hike in town, a hike around Opito Bay (which didn't show up on my map) and one in the Bay of Islands. The waterfall hike took about an hour and a half and ended with the waterfall. There were few other people on the trail. When I made my way to Opito Bay, I saw only two other people that I passed on the overlook trail and no one after that. I took the trail to the beach and had the whole thing to myself. I climbed along the rocks around the cliff and went completely around the point. I found several caves, one of which went completely through the point. After about 20 minutes of this, I could go no further because the water came up against the cliff wall. I went to Paihia to have lunch and take another hike, as well as send some postcards and look through the gift shops.
I drove to west side of the island to stay at the hostel in Oponino. The west side is covered in forest, and the hostel in Oponino is a sheep farm on the side of a mountain overlooking a forest. There were only two other people at the hostel, and they were both working there. They were also from the US--Colorado. I sat on the wraparound porch overlooking the forest as the sun went down and a heavy rain poured down.
Saturday 10/19/02
I decided to hike the Department of Conservation trail near the hostel. It followed a muddy road and I could not find where it split off the road. Finally, I just gave up. If I wanted to see a road I could do that in a car.
I drove down the west coast, through forests and mountains, with hardly a glimpse of the sea. I went back to Auckland, planning to stop at some of the beaches nearby before going downtown. Unfortunately, my ability to drive and navigate at the same time were not up to the task, so I just ended up downtown and checked in to the hostel.
Sunday 10/20/02
I did a fair amount of walking around Auckland. That afternoon I decided to go back to the south island. It made the most sense (in terms of time, money, and convenience) to fly to Christchurch and rent a car there. I made arrangements to fly the next morning.
Monday 10/21/02
I had a window seat on the flight from Auckland to Christchurch. Flying past the steep shores of the islands and sound at the northern end of the south island, it looked like everything was outlined in white because of the waves of the Tasman Sea crashing into the cliff sides. I could catch glimpses through the clouds of the snow capped peaks of the Southern Alps. Even flying over the Tasman on the west side of the island I could still see the Pacific on the east side of the island and the long beaches that ran along it.
I picked up my rental car and started driving towards Fiordland. I decided to take the route that took me past Mt. Cook--the highest peak in New Zealand. One can get to Mt. Cook by driving half an hour off the main highway. The weather was nice and sunny, but when I looked for Mt. Cook, all I could see was a smudge on the sky. Everthing was clear except for right around Mt. Cook, which was just a smear of rain and cloud. I drove down the side road to Mt. Cook, and drove right into the cloud and rain. I was going to stay at the hostel there, but when the girl at the desk told me that it was supposed to be just as bad in the morning, I decided to move on and get a hostel closer to the fiords. I ended up staying in Wanaka--a little resorty town on a very nice lake and surrounded by ski areas.Tuesday 10/22/02
I got up and drove to Te Anau, the gateway to Fiordland and the last town before Milford--my final destination. When I got there, I booked an overnight cruise on the Milford Sound and drove up the famous Milford road. (The road had just been reopened, having closed due to avalanche risk.) The scenery on the road was impressive--lakes, mountains, grasslands. Then I approached the tunnel, with an ominous pool of mist on the road in front of it. It was so dark in the tunnel after having been driving in the sun, that I though my lights weren't working. I was the only car in the tunnel at first and I couldn't see anything. The road was narrow, with a steep downhill grade, no lights, and water dripping from the ceiling. It was very creepy. When the tour busses came by from the other direction, they did not slow down and I was squeezed practically to the rock wall.
When I emerged from the tunnel, the view was spectacular. The rain from earlier in the day had cause the sheer rock walls of the valley to be covered with scores of waterfalls, hundreds of feet long cascading down the rock face. Most were no more than a couple of feet wide if even that. From there, the road switchbacked down to the valley floor and the sound.Since I was early for the cruise, I took a short hike to a very impressive waterfall feeding into the Milford Sound. When I got on the boat, I ended up chatting with my bunkmate Randy most of the time as we sailed out to the Tasman Sea. The boat was really bobbing up and down on the Sea. Pretty cool. Then we anchored in a sheltered cove for the night.
Wednesday 10/23/02
I got up before sunrise, but you couldn't see the sun come up anyway because the fiord was
surrounded by shear walls. It was raining all morning, so we didn't get to go kayaking. When we docked, I gave Randy a ride to Te Anau so he wouldn't have to ride the bus (and so I didn't have to drive back by myself.) Since it had been raining all morning, there were tons of waterfalls. There was also a bit of slush on the road. Just before we entered the tunnel, we had been talking about driving conditions and Randy said "we just can't die in an avalanche". At that exact moment we both looked up and saw an avalanche coming down the side of the mountain. It was not near the road and not a threat, so it was actually kind of cool.I dropped Randy off and headed back towards Christchurch. When I passed through Queenstown, I picked up a hitchhiker--my first ever. Hitchhiking is pretty common in New Zealand. She was headed for her home in Wanaka, which was just a few minutes out of my way. We chatted and I dropped her off and head for the main highway. Unfortunately, the bridge to that highway was closed for repairs, so I had to backtrack 20 minutes to cross on another bridge and head up the other side of the river to where I would have been if the bridge had not been out. So the little side trip to Wanaka which should have cost me about 10 minutes ended up costing me about an hour.
The weather looked good as I approached Mt. Cook, so I decided to stay there for the night. Where the road splits off to Mt. Cook, there was another hitchhiker so I gave him a ride to hostel in Mt. Cook, which was where we were both headed. He was a Londoner 3/4 of the way through his year of travel.
Thursday 10/24/02
I got up and hiked the trails around Mt. Cook. The Hooker trail was just OK, and the glacier at the end was just a dirty chunk of snow. The Kea trail was shorter and nicer. I got to see an avalanche way up on the mountain side. It wasn't very big--I only noticed it because I could see the dirtier snow suddenly getting whiter, and then I realized why.I left Mt. Cook and headed back to Christchurch. On my way out of Mt. Cook I picked up a hitchhiker who was just looking for a ride a few miles down the road. He was a young Israeli who had lived in New Zealand for 2 years and was hoping to find a job at one of the resorts around Mt. Cook.
When I got to Christchurch, I checked e-mail and got a mail from my boss telling me about the layoff at Sun and wanting to talk to me about my leave of absence. I told him I was still in NZ and told him to give me a number and a time to call. (The next day I got another e-mail telling me to ignore the first e-mail.)
Friday 10/25/02
I drove from Christchurch (which is on the east side of the south island) through Arthur's Pass to the west side. It was rainy the whole way, which is too bad because I wanted to go hiking, and there were some spectacular waterfalls to hike to. On the west coast, I went to Punakaiki to see the pancake rocks and blowholes. The pancake rocks are odd rock formations and the blowholes are holes in the rock where waves crash into the side and water shoots out the top. Unfortunately, the blowholes weren't at peak performance that day.
I drove back to Christchurch via the northern pass.
Saturday 10/26/02I drove around the hills overlooking Christchurch and took some very short hikes there. I also drove to the beach at South New Brighton on the east side of Christchurch. I walked through the botanical gardens in downtown Christchurch, which were very nice. I took my book with me and would pick a spot, read a bit, move to another spot, and read some more.
Sunday 10/27/02
I walked along the Avon river for a while and decided to venture off through Christchurch. I managed to get lost. By the time I found my way
back to the hostel I was dying to have lunch. The weather was very nice, but when I left the restaurant, I thought I heard thunder. I turned around and saw massive black clouds behind me. I returned my rental car and walked out of their door just in time to get caught in the hail. I went back to the hostel, waited for the rain to die down, and went souvenir shopping (and bought some cheap clothes for myself.) It hailed even worse then. The drains were clogged and the streets flooded, but I was fortunately wearing my waterproof hiking boots. Walking around later in the day, there were piles of hail all over the place.Monday 10/28/02
It was Labor Day in New Zealand. I did a little more shopping and wandering around Christchurch and that was about it.
Tuesday 10/29/02
My last day in New Zealand. I flew from Christchurch to Auckland and had about 6 hours to kill before my flight back home. I walked out of the airport and wandered down to the Mc Donalds (it was the only thing there.) Then wandered across a grassy field and found this little pond with trees growing out of it. It was like a little wetland oasis out of view of the airport.When I got on my flight back home, I failed to sleep all night. Appropriately enough, one of the inflight movies that I watched was Insomnia.
Then I got home. The end.
1 comment:
Nice ending.
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