Hiking in Arthur's Pass

Jen was feeling a little hiked out, so Dave spent the day hiking solo in Arthur's pass. (Note to parents: Jen knew the plan and the return time (well before dark) to send help if something went wrong. I took lots of food and water, warm clothes, a headlamp, and a first aid kit. I was very safe).

The drive to Arthur's Pass from Greymouth was, itself, spectacular.

I stopped in this field to photograph the pass, because it was too amazing to keep driving, when another car pulled up and a lady and her son got out to do the same. It turns out she's from Jakarta, so I got to wish her selamat siang and terima kasi for taking my photo with the mountain (though this is not the one shown here, clearly).

The road took several cool turns, and was kind enough to provide after-the-fact viewing places so I could photograph them.

The trail I hiked basically took me up a high valley to the source of a stream. Here's a shot from more-or-less the bottom:

And a little further up:

Again, with the beautiful pools:

This shot is looking back down the valley to the start of the trail from mid-way up.

See how much closer that snow-capped mountain is now? I'm really making progress!

I liked this "likely rockfalls" sign. It actually means in the winter, though. It's a high-danger avalanche zone after heavy snowfalls, rains, etc.

Eventually, the trail started to disappear because the valley was narrow enough that the course was obvious, and also because the only ground from rock-wall to rock-wall was made of.....rocks.

And here's the top; or, at least the top of where I climbed to. There didn't seem to be a trail that continued beyond this point and, not wanting to take unnecessary risks (being the prudent solo-hiker that I am), I deemed it an appropriate place to turn around.

But look, snow!

The conclude the day's hike, I spotted this wonderful train on the drive home.

Tomorrow we spend the morning inter tubing through a cave of glowworms (!), and then drive to our campsite in the view of the Franz Joseph glacier!

Pancake Rocks

On the drive to Greymouth, we stopped and went on a short walk at Cape Foulwind, which was quite beautiful, and saw a seal colony which lives there.

We drove down the coast along some amazing roads, but for some reason none of the pictures I took came out! Sorry everyone!

What *did* come out were our pictures of the pancake rocks.

According to the sign, (and I quote), "...scientists can't quite fathom what caused them."

Camping at Lewis Pass

We thought we should mention that along the highways here you see this sign with astonishing frequency:

In some sections of highway, there's one every kilometer or so. When you follow the sign, it usually leads you to a nice picnic bench. Often under a tree. Usually (though not always) with some breathtaking view. Jen and I like to imagine that New Zealander's really hate to drive, and can't go for more than a few km without feeling the need to pull over and have a nice rest in a beautiful place. We have no idea if this is true about New Zealander's, but we think it's a nice image.

On the way to Lewis Pass, we stopped for lunch at this lake. But we quickly hopped back in the car because we discovered that the lakeside was infested with swarming sandflys! (That bite!) So we continued on to our campground, which was set at the edge of a beautiful valley.

About a 10-minute walk from the campsite, we found this river:

See what we were saying about /all/ the rivers in NZ being so clear? Here's the same river a little further along...

And, around the bend, it slows down, deepens, and somehow becomes much bluer!

Nice, huh? Dave thought this looked like a good place for a swim. He waited until fairly late in the day to start, but not to be swayed from his purpose by diminishing sunlight, he indeed did take a nice 30-second swim. This may seem a short amount of time, but if you try to immerse your entire body in ice water and count to 30, you will find that it can actually be quite a long time. Afterwards he felt very refreshed.

Dave also walked an hour or so along a trail that followed the river, giving more great views of it.

The next day, we both went on a kind of undirected ramble, which took us to the side of another shallow stream.

Here I am, philosophically enjoying one of Jen's excellent cheese scones, which she baked on our last night in the hostel.

And here is where we decided to sit and read for awhile. We're starting to really like the model of hiking where we make regular reading stops at beautiful locations.

Our next stop after camping was the in largest town on the south island's west coast: Greymouth. It turns out not to be a very large town, but it does have an excellent brewery. That's all for next post, though...

Clear Springs, Caves, and Farewell Spit

We spent two days in Takaka after camping in Canaan downs. Takaka sits on the Golden Bay, pictured here (thanks, Google!):

That finger extending from the top of the bay is a 20+ km sand bar called Farewell Spit. We spent our first morning hiking around on it (though they won't let you hike very far out on it because there are protected bird species that live there). It was a beautiful beach, however. Some parts of it had amazing sand dunes with the sort of delicate waving patterns I imagine on the dunes of a middle-eastern desert. Sadly, I left my camera at home, but here are some other people's photos that are basically exactly what we saw (though neither of them gets the good sand dunes, I'm sorry to say):

On the drive back to Takaka, we also saw hundreds of black swans on the water.

Takaka is also home to the Te Waikoropupu Springs (known locally as the Pupu Springs). The water in the springs has a horizontal visibility that averages 63 meters, making it the clearest body of fresh water in the world. According to New Zealand Journal of Marine and Freshwater Research (via Wikipedia), this approaches the theoretical maximum for optically pure water. Here it is!

While the water was certainly clear, you will see in our next post that the Pupu springs are by no means alone for having astonishingly clear water. Pretty much every body of water we have encountered since has shocked us with its clarity.

On day 2, we went on a short hike that took us to some caves whose name escapes me right now. The mouth of the cave had a huge number of stalagtights. There was a sort-of roped-off path into the cave itself, but it was really just two red lines stretched back and forth down into the depths. The main concern of whoever made it seemed to be to prevent people from disrupting the cave's ecology--not to give people an easy-to-traverse route in. It was quite slippery and steep at times, and both Jen and I were happy we had some good rock-climbing moves in our arsenal to help us.

The hostel we stayed at was another YHA, but this one is an affiliate--meaning it's a converted private residence. It was a very nice place, however, and full of interesting people. We met a guy who has decided to end his career as a commercial diver for something else, yet-to-be-determined. He was born in Zimbabwe, but has been living in Scotland. The hostel owner speaks Afrikaans, which greatly amused a Dutch girl staying there (since Afrikaans sounds roughly like a small child speaking Dutch to a native Dutch speaker). There were also two friendly, though somewhat over-the-top (for our taste) hippie couples. Actually, we only thought their costumes were over-the-top. One of them sang a very nice rendition of "Don't Worry; Be Happy" with his guitar, which had me whistling the tune all day.

From Takaka, we drove south to camp at Lewis Pass....

Camping at Canaan Downs

After our stay on the bay, we drove inland a bit and camped for 3 days at Cannan downs in the Able Tasman National Park. These photos are somewhat out of order, but I feel too tired to organize them right now...

This is about a 5-minute walk from our campsite. We spent our first day on an all-day hike in which we would hike for about an hour. Find a nice spot to sit with a beautiful vista, and Jen would read out loud from our new book: "Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell"

It was a wonderful new way to hike.

The drive to the campsite was at the end of an 11km unsealed road with some spectacular views:

About an hour's hike from our campsite was "Harwood's hole", a 200km shaft leading to a cave. The signs advised us to stay away from the lip, and strongly warned that only experienced cavers should enter. So we perched and looked down from the top.

Nearby, there was a hike up to a lookout point which was notable for its complete lack of any kind of barrier. The last 20m were a scramble over some rocks, and then the drop off. That's the way all lookouts should be!

New Zealand, part II

Our port on the south island was the small town of Picton.

As you can see from Google's satillite view, it's quite far inland, which provided for some amazing views from the ferry (aided by a slight clearing-up of the weather).

We drove about an hour down the coast, and arrived at our lodging for the night:

The owner was extremely friendly, and we also met a Swede named Claudio, and a Canadian couple who had been living and teaching for a year on the north island. (The Canadian couple was very excited to tell us to take the brewery tour in Greymouth, where we're headed in a day or so).

About 20 steps from our door was the small bay where we spent the afternoon kayaking.

In the morning, we drove further north around Golden Bay. We stopped for lunch on this beautiful beach. There was no one else there.

More about our camping adventures in the next post...