For the beginning of the break Arcadia (my program) put on a trip to Queen Charlotte Sound (this is in the northeast of the south island.) A lot of the Wellington kids came to join too, so it was kind of nice to have some fresh blood around. We all arrived on Saturday in Picton and took a water taxi out into the sound where we began to hike the Queen Charlotte Track. As you might imagine, this is a trail that runs around the edge of the sound. The first day was an easy but amazingly beautiful hike of probably 2-3hrs. The small group of us Aucklanders who were up at the front stopped at this beach to skip some rocks out over the sound.
Oh yeah, and Liz and I set up for a ninja fight of course.
We arrived at our hostel by early evening. We made a lot of tea, a huge dinner, and proceeded to drink a huge pot of hot chocolate....and ate some timtams, chocolate bars, and other chocolate involving products. Turns out I'm not the only one with an addiction...nancy : ) At some point, Julianne also came up to the lodge with her personal stash of cheese in her pants. Liz outed her (her exact word being "sssshhhh liz you weren't supposed to tell anyone", but I thought it was pretty fantastic that she had cheese so closely on hand. I was actually staying in the same room as her and was present for the initial stashing.
As you can see it's awfully pretty as per usual.
The next morning we got up and continued the hike along the track. This is a small, one person at a time only, swing bridge. Kind of Indiana Jones.
Nancy and I took off out in front where we stayed for the day. It was more like a four hour hike if I remember and once again so beautiful. The track runs along the hills in a temperate rain forest of sorts mostly along the waters edge (but high up.) Every so often the trees clear and we would get this stunning view out over the sound like the unrotated picture below. Doesn't that water look unreal? Nancy and I wanted to jump off the side and go swimming. I realize how over used these exclamation of beauty words are so I'm trying to think of new ones.
It was really nice to spend the day walking with Nancy alone in the woods. We eventually stopped at this little beach about 20 minutes from our final destination. Turns out Sean, one of the guys on the trip, wasn't too far behind and so he joined us for an apple on the water. The three of us continued to the end together eventually reaching Mahana Lodge, a ridiculous hostel just on the sound. There's no road access here, you either walk or water taxi in. John and his wife (the owner/operators) built the lodge themselves and restored the little house by the water. It's supposed to be one of the oldest houses in NZ. They took wonderful care of us: John gave us a talk about the native flora and fauna of the area and introduced us to their herons, Harriet and Harold. These two wander the beach and came pretty close to us when we were laying out on the chairs reading in the afternoon. These other birds, weka's also come nice and close and like to steal things like cell phones, so we had to keep an eye on our stuff. Nancy fed them tons of crackers so there might be at least three weka's in queen charlotte sound that are in food comas. Well anyways, the group slowly arrived in spurts over the next hour and a half. The photo below is from the room I stayed in up the hill in the lodge. Liz and I shared a big bed...I got a cuddle buddy heck yes.... and what an amazing view right?
They made us a superb dinner, chicken for the meat eaters, and this awesome chickpea tomato rice thing for the vegetarians. We all got salads from their organic garden and a chocolate cake I could barely finish!!! I know, me. After dinner John took us up the hill about 50m up from our house and showed us glow worms. This is him showing the group the intricacies of their webbing. I explained all this in the cave post so I won't go much into it again. Basically they are bioluminescent creatures (this is caused by their intestines) who glow to attract prey. They live for 9 months in the worm stage during which time they eat endlessly by dangling those spit lines to catch flying things. They then spin a cocoon and spend three days as adults during which time they mate and lay eggs. Either way, they're an pretty blue color and fun to look at.
We ate a huge breakfast and drank lots of tea in the morning before our water taxi arrived. This is one of the many starfish we saw. They're 11-armed starfish and are pretty fun to hold. Julianne, nancy, and I spent the time waiting for the taxi trying not to pick up every shell on the beach to take home. It was tough. The water taxi did eventually come, and we took it to the kayaking launch point.
This is a view from the dock we caught the water taxi from.
So we went on this awesome sea kayaking trip around the sound. I had the privilege of being Julianne's partner. There was a brief stop for lunch where we saw this little blue penguin hiding in his/her cave. These little dudes climb up to 200m into the hills to nest. If you saw these hills and the size of these penguins you too would be impressed. So yeah, that was sweet as (have I explained this phrase...it's said here often, and really you can fill in the sweet as ....what yourself, but it's said, sweet as and that's it.)
In other kayaking news, we had jelly fish fights. There were these huge fields of jellies and you just reached in the water and grabbed them and threw them at other people. They're slimy, really slimy. My deck was covered in jelly goo (a deck is also known as a skirt for anyone who might know what I'm talking about.) Let me tell you that I felt like a moderately horrible human being for behaving so badly with the wildlife, but they're such a huge population, we didn't kill them...I don't think, and they don't have brains. Now in this preemptive apology, I should say that I was a good shot with these jellies so I didn't waste the opportunity. I got liz in the face and got Jane (our director) down the life jacket...yeah all the way down her jacket. Julianne and I had good fun with this as did everyone else I do believe. Our day and the whole trip ended with a drive back to Picton (down winding roads) with Jo, one of our guides . She played for a college in PA on a soccer scholarship so knew a bit about the US. The group split up here and Liz and I went on to hire our car, Dr. Beatrice Caldwell.
Liz and I drove immediately from Picton that monday evening to Nelson, a city located on the north central coast of the south island. We ended up with a great room in the Tasman Bay Backpackers, which serves free pudding and ice-cream every night at 8 (free being a relative term of course.) Pudding here is actually chocolate cake it turns out, and god was it amazing. We ended up spending all three nights at this place probably (definitely) for that reason. I have the recipe and plan to make it lots when I get home, and probably tomorrow as well.
Anyways, on our first day we went to Abel Tasman National Park. I decided to take a water taxi from Manuhau out into the park and hike the 15km back. Liz meanwhile went horseback riding on a horse from Lord of the Rings with its owner Harmony! She said this was awesome, but since I know not much of it, I will tell of my hike. Glenn, my water taxi driver was so fun and the water kept right up with his personality. It had been storming the night before so the 3o minute ride on this little boat was crazy. The boat is dragged out to the beach by a tractor and basically just slides off the trailer into the waves. I was sitting in the front (the boat pivots from the back) so I got the bumpiest spot in the house. Glenn told me I would have a particularly exciting time. He was so right. At one point I was lifted entirely out of my seat even though I had braced myself well. He took us to this rock, Split Apple Rock. He told us a story about how it was caused by Tongaroa and Tane Mahuta, two of the main Maori gods. Tane is god of forest, trees, and birds and tried to claim the rock while the tide was low (because this is when the rock is connected to him) and then Tongaroa claimed the rock when the tide was up. Then one day Tane came out with a spear and missed Tongaroa and ended up spearing the rock right in half. OR it could have just been that a glacier broke the rock apart.
So this picture shows the climb I had to take to get off the water taxi. It couldn't come that close so those of us that got off here just put our shoes and stuff over our heads and waded through the thigh high water to the beach.
The tide was low so I got to take the low tide crossing. I was completely alone and it was such a perfect experience. I had my shoes tied to my back and just waded through the rivers that ran across the sand to the other side of the path.
I kept walking barefoot up the path because it just seemed appropriate at the time. The time alone was good and much needed. Eventually I caught up with two other hikers, one from the Netherlands (Sanders) and one from the UK (Semina) who I ended up hiking with the rest of the way. They were both older, didn't know each other previously, and were traveling the world alone for a year or so. Semina works as a lawyer for the British govt and Sanders is a mechanic who was spending some of the money from a divorce he'd had a few years prior. They were both unbelievably kind and such good company. It ended up raining hard for most of the trip and so we all had a good time walking through the forest together talking about our lives, US politics, and other such fun things. They asked me at some point in the beginning how my parents felt about letting me be out all alone at such a young age...they though I was somewhere between 16 and 18...hahah of course. After talking for awhile they told me it was nice to know that there were young open-minded americans out there.
So it turned out that I ended up walking all 15km in my bare feet because after a point it just seemed like the thing to do. I've never known a path so well before. I noticed every time the consistency changed even just a bit and puddles, mud, and other usually avoided things became my loves. This is me on a bridge towards the end. The bridges had this plastic stuff on it to prevent them from being slippery, but after four hours of walking with no shoes I really hated the plastic crap with a passion.
My feet after climbing over this awesome mud slide that blocked the path.
I met Liz back in Manuhau since she had been back from her ride for a good bit. There was this hitchhiker on the way back so naturally we picked him up (I know you're all probably cringing right now but it's not that weird here.) His name was Hamish. He worked at this music studio where he and his friends record often. He was super tall, had a great woolen sweater on, and was goofy looking with his huge red/brown beard and glasses. Liz and I intend to check out some of his music, and he gave us some good suggestions about stuff he likes. There's more Hamish story, but too much for this blog. Ask sometime and I'll tell you about his name... Liz and I dropped him at his house in Ruby Bay. He commutes by hitchhiking at the moment.
We continued on to nelosn to make some dinner, eat that pudding ice-cream gift, and read for a long while. We met two fun guys and a girl at dinner. Steven was from Scotland, matt/mike/mark as liz and I call him since we couldn't tell his name for real (not to his face of course), and Louise. Steven was hilarious and such a good dinner mate and mark (we'll call him for ease) was also quite funny...but certainly an oddball. Steve has been working and studying full time to change professions and become a lawyer. He took three months off between jobs to travel. He had gray hair (see the picture on the side) but these really young eyes so we couldn't really figure out how old he was. It was very cool though that he had studied so hard to do what he had a passion for. Mark is just starting an art gallery in Melbourne called the Makeshift Gallery. He ended up tagging along for our adventure the next day. This is Liz and I with our yummy dessert.
...and our room with its funny fat lady painting. Sorry the photo won't rotate.
The next day we decided to go up to Golden Bay (northwest corner of the south island). Matt-Mark wanted to get out of the hostel and so came along with us. The drive was good especially after we stopped at a drive-in apple place to get this huge bag of apples for $1.50 as well as three free apples of some variety I've never had that are kinda sour and sweet and need to be peeled. People are so nice here, it's cool.
This is a sign we ran into in this town, Takaka. There are little photos of all the things you might run into in the Golden Bay region. Please notice the pedestrians, it was comforting for me especially to know that people are wary of stupid road crossers : ) not that I'd know anything about people like that.
A photo from the drive up to Golden Bay.
We decided to hike towards the northern most point of the south island to this place called Wharariki Beach. These are some funny sheep in the beginning of what was supposed to be a 20 minute hike. I like to think that the one is trying to get the paint off the other one so he doesn't feel so branded.
So let me just admit that we weren't paying attention and ended up going 30 minutes in the wrong direction. It didn't take us too long to figure out that something had gone wrong, but it was unbelievably epic with the downpour of rain and gusting wind, so we just kept exploring. Liz and I thought the grass looked soft so we went in bare feet. Turned out to be covered in sheep poo, and not really that soft. My feet were already beyond that I think. We walked along this steep ridge in what was clearly private property. Eventually we jumped the fence and walked up another steep ridge. I was singing the bear went over the mountain cause it seemed like that kind of situation. We could see the sea far off, but clearly were too far away to have this be a reasonable hike. It was noted several times that this was clearly not a hike they would send the general public on.
We turned back and chose this crazy path through an enchanted forest. It was such good fun and probably one of the best things about traveling without plans.
Let me just say that this makes liz look taller than me but she's not!!!
Okay but let's just say that I looked up on our way back and noticed the actual path we were supposed to take (how we missed it I have no clue.) So we decided to just go down to the beach. It was stunning in every sense of the word. And as it turned out, it was a lot easier path to follow and a heck of a lot softer on the feet.
This is a seal we saw in this huge cave right on the beach. Jessie and Vikki who we saw the next day, said they had seen a seal here too. They named it Fred. We're assuming this is gender appropriate. Fred let me get really close, but I didn't want to disturb him so we left. FYI Seals have adorable faces. It's pupping time I do believe, so I think that this was probably a male.
Well we left fred to go play in the waves. We were so wet by this point that we just waded in wearing our pants. I was wearing Ryan's old long johns and they really do keep you warm when wet.
The sand dunes were amazing and spread so far away from the beach. Liz and I ran up and down them because it was just the obvious thing to do.
We also found a dead shark on the beach, so we touched it. Liz thinks it was a murder.... but a non-human one of course. She specifically asked that I tell everyone that she is honing her detective skills, or something of that nature. I would also just like to give a shout out to Harden and tell her that her hat has made it to this amazing beach (one of the northern most points of the south island) and so now you can't be sad that I can't tag you in facebook photos. I took this photo just for you.
It's also important to note that the sun made a big appearance right as we got back to the car. It rained the whole way back though.
It was good drive home, and the pudding and ice-cream were great again surprise surprise. We spent the next day hanging out in Picton with Jess and Vikki at the Juggler's Rest, a fun hostel with lots of juggling equipment. It was so great seeing them and having a calm day to talk. I had a flight at 6:55am back to Auckland so we stayed the night in Blenheim. This is Liz in a lavender patch...I leave it up to you all to figure out what she's doing.
So today's saturday, I did mostly nothing yesterday other than finish my book (Saturday), watch The Boondock Saints (a great movie), and start reading Ender's Game. I was pretty exhausted from the travels and early flight so I napped (sorry I didn't call you back mama!) This awesome fireworks show went off last night so liz and I watched that from my window.
Today however, I woke up to this beautiful rainbow out my window that pretty much spanned over the city. Then I had my first field hockey games in the afternoon. I play for the University of Auckland Field hockey club and the team is great. We're still figuring out how we all play since none of us have ever played together, but it was still great fun. I intend to continue for sure. Tomorrow is our last day of break, but I think I'm okay with that...I think means definitely not, but I'm accepting anyways. So that's that for now, I hope this finds you all well.
For those of you who actually made it down here, I wanted to say congrats to Yong for what I hear was an amazing Jr recital last week, and also happy 21st to Sean. Enjoy Oberlin spring for me guys!
No comments:
Post a Comment