Well, let’s take a short journey in the way-back machine. The date is Monday March 3rd. I was quite lucky in that the America’s Cup ended exactly one day before my scheduled-well-in-advance and not-at-all-changeable flight from Auckland to Christchurch. The morning of my flight was a bit of a cock-up as I had overslept and missed the bus I had wanted to catch out of Orewa. Fortunately I had built-in a margin of error in my plans and only lost half an hour. When I got to Sky City, which is also the departure point for the shuttle bus to the airport, there was no shuttle bus. I waited and waited. Still no bus. The taxi drivers eyed me hungrily. Then one new driver pulls up with a screech and offers me a ride to the airport for $6 less than the shuttle bus would have been. Overriding my paranoia, I accept. He gets me to the airport in record time, and I sail through check-in. After boarding the plane we are delayed on the tarmac for both lack of fuel and for an unspecified technical detail. Eventually we get in the air, but no one ever announced if these problems were fixed. As we headed south, we flew just along the west coast of the North Island, and I got an incredible view of Mt Taranaki, which was very cool to see since it was one of my favorite hikes. After arriving in Christchurch and taking the bus into town, I arrive at my hostel, only to learn that my booking was not for the day of my arrival, but the day after. I did some calling around and discovered that pretty much every single dorm bed in the city was take, so I booked a single at another hostel. Upon getting to that hostel and checking in, I went to arrange transportation on the TranzAlpine train for the following day. Turns out that train was fully booked, too. Sigh. I booked in the same hostel for a dorm bed the next day, and then the train the day after. A very roller-coaster kind of day.

This left me with a full day in Christchurch that I hadn’t been counting on, and I made the most of it. I had wanted to take some pictures of the Avon River, and I did that. I also purchased my bus pass for travel down the west coast. I went shopping for wool socks. That surprised me. You can’t get good, cheap wool socks in New Zealand. Go figure. You can get super expensive wool socks with all kinds of other fibers blended in, but not the simple, scratchy kind that I like. I was also able to run some other errands like picking up a backpack rain-cover (Barry was going to give me one of his, but then we both forgot) and a small sewing kit (one of my pairs of shorts had developed a tear in the crotch seam).

Ok, time to get on the train. The view was every bit as gorgeous as promised. Though there was one drawback. There’s only the one car with a viewing platform, and some tourists can be very selfish about where they stand. It took an admirably pushy woman to speak up and remind people about sharing before I was able to get an unobstructed view and some good pictures. The train was delayed getting into Greymouth because train tracks in New Zealand are continuously welded, which means that when they heat up, there’s no where for the expanded rails to expand and instead they tend to buckle. The solution is to cut the speed of all the trains down to less than half of normal speed whenever the air temperature gets over 70F or so. Once in Greymouth I checked into the YHA there and took a long walk. The first thing I noticed is that Greymouth isn’t actually at the mouth of the Grey River. So of course I had to walk all the way to the ocean, which took about an hour. On the way, I had my first encounter with that most vicious of New Zealand fauna: the sandfly.

Now I began the west coast leg of my trip. First I stopped for one night in Hokitika. This is the Pounamu (aka greenstone or jade) capital of New Zealand. I was able to find exactly the hei matau I was looking for at Traditional Jade. Alas, there is now some confusion. At the store they told me the stone was local NZ jade, but back at the hostel, a self-proclaimed expert (Gordon the Mad Kiwi who runs the hostel) claimed the stone was from British Columbia, Canada. I’ll have to take it to a couple of lapidaries back home if I want to settle the question. At least I think it is pretty and I enjoy wearing it. That’s what counts, right?

Took the bus down to Franz Josef. Franz Josef is the first of two glaciers I hiked on. The second was Fox. I did a full day hike with Franz Josef Glacier Guiding Company. They were great. They supplied water-proof leather boots, Ice Talonz(tm) and Gore-Tex raincoats. I had to bring my own food and warm layers. The IceTalonz(tm) are a lot like crampons, but their spikes are smaller and distributed all around the sole of the boot instead of just at the instep. They are also articulated in two places, making it quite simple to walk on the ice without slipping and without worrying. The hike really kicked my butt in terms of level of exertion, but it was totally worth it. On Fox things were similar, but we had conventional crampons and no Gore-Tex jacket. Fox glacier was just as pretty, but an easier hike, physically. Both were quite chilly, much to my delight. Franz Josef was a lot more popular with many more people on the glacier, while Fox had a much more peaceful and pure feel to it. I spent two nights at Franz Josef, and two nights at Fox, with a short bus ride in the middle. Oh yeah, my guide at Fox was much cuter than the guide at Franz Josef (who wasn’t even female). I even asked her to dinner. She accepted and we met at one of the three restaurants in town (Fox is a much smaller town than Franz Josef). Dinner was pretty much a flop, but it was better than sitting in my room and reading.

Right, back on the bus, this time to Queenstown. Not much to say about Queenstown for me. It is a resort town with lots of adrenalin-oriented activities. Since I had spent an extra day in Christchurch at the start, I couldn’t stay here for any exploring. I crashed for the one night and then got up at oh-dark-thirty to take the BBQ Bus to Milford Sound. Most people do Milford in a day: early bus, midday boat trip, afternoon bus back. I didn’t want to do it that way. So I stayed in the Milford Lodge (the only place, really) for two nights. I hopped on a late afternoon boat the same day I got there. The weather was great, which is a bad thing here. Yes, you can see the sun, but you can only see the four permanent waterfalls in the sound. There wasn’t any rain the second day, but on the morning of the third day, which was the day I was scheduled to leave, it did rain. I jumped right up and got on the next boat, and sure enough there were dozens of waterfalls all along the walls of the fjord. After the boat ride, I spent an hour at Milford Deep, which is like an inside-out aquarium. There is an observation area about 9 meters down which the humans go inside. Then the fish and seastars and coral and whatnot do what they naturally do nearby and you can watch through the windows. It is a very cool experience.

Next stop: Te Anau. Te Anau is the town that most people use as a base for tramping (hiking). I spent a full day here to get ready for the Kepler Track. I hired (rented) a pot, a pan, and a plastic cup. I bought lots of non-perishable food. I sorted out my stuff to see what could easily be left behind in a locker. I experimented with a freeze-dried meal for lunch, which came out alright, so I bought three more for my dinners while on the Track.

Right! Onward and upward. Day 1 on the Kepler Track was wonderful. I set a personal record for my longest hike with full pack (18km). I met some very cool people while walking. The first half was all flat, along the lakeside and then through the bush (forest). After a brief food stop at Brod Bay, I began the ascent. Several very tough hours later I burst back out into the sunshine - I had made it up to the alpine section above the bushline (treeline). Another 45 minutes and I was at the Luxmoore hut. They call it a hut, but it really is quite large. There was a kitchen and social area with a dozen LPG cookers and a half dozen picnic tables. There were two bunkrooms, with about 50 or 60 beds. The huts on these Great Walks (Kepler, Milford, Routeburn, etc) are serious buildings. After dinner, I did a sidetrip to see Luxmoore Cave, which was cool. I wish I had brought my camera.

Day 2 was interesting. I got a late start deliberately. Fog had rolled in over night and I wanted to wait until it burned off before setting out. That morning I had breakfast with Miyuki, Noelle and Erin by virtue of sitting at the same table (it later turned out that the four of us had a very similar walking pace and did most of the track together or nearby each other). Since the fog still hadn’t lifted, I brought out my Aquarius deck of cards and the four of us played for an hour or so. The fog still hadn’t lifted, but if we didn’t get moving (it was 10:30 am) we were never going to make it to the next hut before sunset. After the first hour of walking (uphill) we made it to the Luxmoore Summit side trail. Leaving our packs on the main trail, we took our lunches up to the summit in the hopes that the fog would break while we were up there. We had to wait half an hour, but that is exactly what happened, and it was totally worth it. We took a lot of pictures as the sun came out, and then headed back to the main trail and picked up our packs and carried on. The next section went down a little bit, then up again, then down again. All of this was in alpine terrain, with fabulous views all around, especially when walking on the ridge or saddle between two mountains. This was about when I realized my toes really hurt. It turns out I had been developing some really bad blisters. Noelle was a nurse, so she volunteered to help me clean things up. Several alcohol swabs, needle punctures, antiseptic creams and band-aids later, I was back on my feet for the final descent down to Iris Burn hut. This turned out to be a sticky one for me. I fell behind our little group and I violated my own policy for How to Hike. I do best treating my body like a steam locomotive. I need to continually (at least once an hour) thrown some non-trivial carbs down my gullet or I am prone to bonking. The last descent was billed as an hour and a half, and I had been doing most of the other segments faster than the listed time. I thought I would be ok. However, my blisters and overly-heavy pack slowed me down, and at the two hour mark I hadn’t made it to the hut, and I was out of energy. I needed to stop and rest, which I did after stumbling and tripping and almost falling over a couple of times. One chocolate bar, half a liter of water and 20 minutes later I was back on my feet and good as new. I made it to the hut in 15 minutes. Since I had no real idea how much further ahead the hut was, I feel very strongly I made the right decision to stop when I did and take care of myself.

Day 3 was a very easy day. No ups or downs, just a six hour stroll through the bush to Moturau hut (the last one on the Kepler Track). Kind of monotonous, but quiet and the easy trail gives you time to think about life and plans/ideas for after New Zealand. The last hour was painful on the feet with the blisters acting up, but I made it in one piece. The hut was next to a very pretty lake.

For Day 4 I had really wanted to close the loop and walk all the way back to where the track started, but my feet were in no condition for that. I bailed out at the earliest opportunity, a place called Rainbow Reach. I jumped on the 11am shuttle back to town, checking in to the YHA and took a shower and doctored my feet again. At 7pm I met up with Miyuki, Noelle and Erin. We had a couple of beers and then went out for Chinese food, which was a lot of fun.

We’re in the home stretch now. This brings us to Friday the 20th of March. Not much to report. I just took the bus from Te Anau down to Invercargill. Invercargill is New Zealand’s southernmost city. It doesn’t really have much to recommend it, which is what all the guidebooks say, and I can now comfortably confirm that.

For completion, I had to go the last little bit south. I took a round-trip bus as far south as possible, to the small town of Bluff. Bluff has a maritime museum, where I spent an hour and a half or so. Then I walked to the southernmost point on the South Island. They have a signpost there, much like the one at Cape Reinga, so I got another tourist to take my picture next to it. I still had an hour to kill before the bus took my back to Invercargill. Looking around, I stopped a bar across the road: The Drunken Sailor. It was fate. I went in and had a pint of beer. Then I walked back to the main part of town and waited for the bus. This was actually more painful than it might sound. You see, there had recently been a fire at the P&O warehouse. But they couldn’t clean it up because of a risk of exposure to asbestos. So all the food (especially fish) was sitting there rotting. For days. Not to put too fine a point on it, but the place stank. Businesses were closed on account of no one was shopping and the shopkeepers were on the verge of barfing all the time. Not fun.

I took the bus from Invercargill up to Dunedin. Dunedin had a nice “feel” to me. Reminded me a lot of Baltimore, actually. It is New Zealand’s 4th largest city. While in Dunedin, I went to the Otago Museum to see a collection of extremely good nature photographs. I also went to Cadbury World. Alas, it was late in the day and none of the machines were in action at that time, but they did give out a lot of sample chocolates. Yum! It’s a good thing I’ve got some self-control or I could have easily made myself sick that night.

This brings us to the last full day on the South Island. On my way to the bus station I stopped for a snack at the Bronx Bagel Company. Made me homesick. They even had a real “Medium Brown Bag” tacked up on the wall, along with a subway map and other memorabilia of New York. I checked in to the hostel in Christchurch and then went to meet Peter Tuffley (Chris’ dad) for dinner. We had pizza and beer. After he left, I watched Australia rack up an amazing 359-for-2 in their inning of the cricket world cup final. I didn’t find out until the next morning that India had failed to chase that down, making Australia the winner. No big surprise there.

Stay tuned to this channel for another update, detailing my last week in New Zealand. Also, look for the Golden Kiwi awards, coming soon to this blog.