Abel Tasman Coastal Track, New Zealand

Our second major tramp of the trip is another of NZ's great walks: The Abel Tasman Coast Track. It is located just northwest of Nelson on the northern part of the South Island. 

After all the errors of the Routeburn track, we were determined to redeem ourselves on the Abel Tasman. It is a longer tramp, but by all accounts a relaxed one as you follow the coast instead of climbing up and down a mountain.

We actually gave ourselves time to plan our menu. We carefully measured out all our food to make sure we weren't bringing superfluous items, we made sure to get rid of extra packaging as we would have to carry all the garbage, and generally packed lighter items. Our packs were very manageable by the time we were finished and we happily tramped off to the first hut, Anchorage, which was about a 12km walk from the car park.

We were again graced with beautiful weather. The walk was just gorgeous.

Views from along the first days walk.

Goodman's gulch. I'm not sure what a gulch is, but it sure is a great word.

One happy tramper.

We got to our hut at Anchorage, which was really nice. It had just opened this past October and was really fancy (especially for two girls used to sleeping in a tent in the chilly fall nights!)

The one thing about the hut is that, unlike the Routeburn track huts, it didn't have any stovetops, and we hadn't packed our cooker. Suddenly our well packed meals of lentils and pasta seemed well inadequate. We had three nights on the tramp and about 1 meal and four granola bars we could eat without a stove. 

Well being Canadian, we hid our embarrassment and did not eye the others small camping stoves too covetously but rather pretended nothing was wrong. One German girl we befriended noticed our plight (as we munched on cheese and crackers) and allowed us to use her stove to make our porridge for breakfast the following day. 

Sunrise at anchorage. The mountains in the background are my favourite part.

Knowing we really did not have enough food to survive the tramp, we did the only thing we could think of of. Tramp back the 12km to the carpark, collect the stove, tramp once again to anchorage and then keep going on our planned walk of 13km (we of course missed the shorter low tide crossing at midday). Yes we did indeed walk a total of 37km in one day. I wouldn't recommend it. I think the lowest moment is when we got back to the Anchorage hut to collect the stuff we had left (mind you we had walked around 24km already) and found our stuff was missing. We finally located the incredibly handsome ranger who looked at us and said, "you're the Canadians right? Why didn't you come talk to me, we have spare stoves!" Ranger Steve! Don't tell me that after I've walked so far. We did make it after a very long day to our next hut at Bark Bay.

When the tide is out, the view of the walk is quite different.

Our third night, at Awaroa, almost passed by uneventfully. Jasmine was napping, and I decided to tempt her to wake up (I was bored) by making hot chocolate. Just as the water was about to boil the burner on our camp stove went out! We had run out of gas. We were left to the kindness of strangers once more. Good thing there was a kiwi couple in the hut with us. The woman overheard me inform Jaz of our plight and quickly offered to let us use her gas. We again did not go hungry (despite our total uselessness apparently).

Awaroa is by an estuary that is impassable when the tide is high. The view from outside our hut was very different when we woke up in the morning to high tide. Sting rays swam past what was all sandy beach the night before.

We didn't have much time to spare that day as we had to catch a 3:15pm water taxi from 6km further up the track. We waited and waited for the tide to go out, but decided to begin a little early.

Jaz was not happy about having to cross through icy cold waist deep water to get to the other side. I was too focused on not getting swept up by the tide at that point, so there is no photographic evidence of that plight. But we made it across in the end.

Waiting on the bay for our water taxi.

This tramp was again a ton of fun, although stressful at times. We drove back to Nelson and thought we deserved a drink after what we had gone through. Trying to be responsible, we looked up a campsite before going for dinner. The DOC website only gives vague maps, so we figured we had found one just on the outskirts of Nelson. We went to a great bar in Nelson which is a converted church. It keeps the community feeling with multigenerational all enjoying the space and the craft beer.

After dinner we got in the car to drive out to the planned campsite. After driving around for about 7 minutes, we were pulled over by the police. I have a deep seated fear of authority, so I went into full out panic mode. I thought something terrible was about to happen. Thankfully, 

the policeman had just pulled us over because one of the front lights had gone out. And since we are in NZ, of course, he turned out to be the most helpful person ever. Asking where we were planning to stay that night, he said, "girls! That campsite is 2 hours away. Do you really want to drive 2 hours in the dark right now?" and I said, "no sir" and so he kind of sized us up and was like, "now would you be willing to spend a little bit of money on a closer campground. It's not DOC, so it might be a little pricey like $15, but it does have showers" (yes we have embraced vagrant living so spending $15 seemed like a stretch to others) and I responded, "no that'd be great!" He did not trust my ability to find anything in the dark. So after looking us over suspiciously, he had us follow him to the campsite. Once we got there, he scrutinized us once again and decided he needed to lead us right to reception. Though reception was closed, he kindly made sure to ask, "now girls, did you see where the showers are?" "Yes. Thanks officer!" So jasmine and I have officially been smelly enough to get a police escort to showers. When he mentioned the showers for the third time I wasn't sure whether to hide in embarrassment or to burst out laughing. We did thoroughly enjoy the showers though, and for some reason reception never opened so we didn't have to break the bank with the $15 charge. 

Kaikoura, New Zealand

Sunday was a big driving day for us. We left Hokitika for Greymouth (where we replaced our cooking stove at long last! They didn't sell the proper camping ones at the bargain store we were at, but as we are mostly car camping this didn't seem like a big deal). We drove from the west coast to the east coast and after 7hours arrived in picturesque Kaikoura.

We actually organized our time well today, and so we went on a lovely coastal walk to a different seal colony. We had to do better than our first attempt!

We really lucked out with the weather in Kailoura. Here are some pictures from our walk.

The seals! Although this looks likes a battlefield, I swear this seals were happy and moving! They just liked to assume the corpse pose as soon as I whipped my camera out.

These lazy guys would loll over any rock crevice. I think they had it pretty good.

That's me clambering over the rocks.

After walking along the coast for a while, we climbed a little higher for a different perspective.

Farmland by the ocean. 

This photo is in the direction of Kaikoura. It is just a little town in a bay to the left of the photo.

The next morning we were up bright and early to go swim with the dusky dolphins!

The water outside Kaikoura is cold! We suited up in full length wetsuits with hoods and everything. We were cold and tired and a little nervous about whatever we had gotten ourselves into.

Sleepy Katie and Jasmine in their wetsuit gear. I tried to get a photo of jaz with her hood and mask on but she put her foot down. Where the suits covered was toasty but our fingers, toes, and faces got numb fast in the water. Good thing we were distracted by these guys:

Swimming with the dolphins is one of the most surreal things I have ever done. We were so bundled up that all our senses were muted. It was a hyper visual experience. Because of this, it's hard to fully process what happened. It just seems like a dream.

The dolphin pod was close to shore today. We were taken out in a boat and deposited in the middle of about 200-500 dolphins. The crew told us this wasn't sea world. We were there to amuse the dolphins not vice versa. The more playful we were, the better the experience would be. 

Tips for getting dolphins to play with you

1) sing into your snorkel

2) swim around in circles

3) dive down as far as you can under water.

The final one is by far the most effective. I never submerged without a dolphin rushing over.

We were in the water for about 50 minutes and it was magical! I don't know which was better maintaining eye contact with one dolphin and knowing, yes I'm playing with you (aka madly trying to keep up as it circles around you) or submerging totally underwater so that you are in the middle of a pack of twenty dolphins that are above, below and all around you. I could have reached our an touched them. It was so cool! I didn't have the technology required to take photos while swimming with them, but here are too many shots of the dolphins we swam with from the boat.

What our boat looked like.

The dolphins liked to race the boat. So they were always right underfoot.

This guy leapt out of the water for at least 5 minutes continuously. He also did a couple somersaults. This is the best shot I could get.

Mum and it's baby. The babies are almost full grown at this time of year.

So many dolphins! As you can see, conditions were perfect.

After this totally amazing morning, we went for lunch at this roadside food truck specializing in local crayfish (NZ lobster) and other seafood. Affordable lobster! I didn't think a day of dolphins could be approved upon.

Lunch!

I think our day in Kaikoura was easily the most perfect day of our trip. I can't even do justice to how amazing it all was. The crew at dolphin encounters said that it doesn't get any better than that. 

Glacier Country, New Zealand

On Saturday, we explored Fox and Franz Josef glaciers. The ice is retreating pretty quickly at these two glaciers so the trips onto the actual ice mostly involved taking a helicopter ride. Deciding between taking the heli tour and eating for the rest of the trip wasn't the toughest decision. It would have been really cool to do, but I think we will save that for we aren't quite so budget travellers. We did take advantage of a few (free) DOC walks to get within viewing distance of the two glaciers.

On the way to Fox glacier. All of the streams in NZ have had incredibly clear water. You generally can see meters under the surface. Not so here, the glacier water was an opaque grey colour. Finally water that we had no urge to jump into!

Relaxing walk to view Fox. Nothing can phase us after the Routeburn track.

Jaz was there too!

As close as we could get to Fox glacier.

Although not a great picture, its proof we were there.

In the afternoon, we headed to Franz Josef.

The dirty ice at the top is all we saw of Franz Josef. Oh well, just another reason to come back!

Jaz and I had have recently read the New Zealand novel The Luminaries set in Hokitika during the gold rush. After seeing the glaciers, we drove to Hokitika and talked excitedly about the book. It was all in all a lovely relaxing day.

 We camped near an abandoned mine just outside Hokitika. It was a DOC campsite, but in reality just a glorified parking lot. Only one spot was available, but it was pretty much out in the open. I decided to drive further in to see if there was a more private spot. No such luck,

Unfortunately, on the turn around I got the car stuck in a ditch. Thankfully there were New Zealanders camping at the same place. Before my wheels had uselessly rotated four times, one man had gathered up a group of four people to push us out. He instructed me on what to do. Jaz didn't even have to get out of the car. I think we were stuck for a total of one minute. The people in this country are so kind. People always talk about how nice Canadians. We just cannot compete. It's more of an awkward politeness than anything you would see in New Zealand. 

The Southern Alps, New Zealand

Feeling accomplished after the Routeburn track, we had exactly five days to see the South Island before beginning our next tramp at the north end of the island.

At first we struggled with getting anywhere on time. There are just too many beautiful walks to do just off the highway. It makes getting anywhere in a reasonable amount of time nearly impossible.

Example of one of the irresistible lookout points we had to stop at while trying to leave Queenstown. 

But we did eventually find our way to the second DOC campsite of our journey. 

The lake we camped by on Thursday night. 

We've made the decision to live on a slender budget while here, which means mostly camping and cooking our own food. To this end, we purchased a cute little gas cooker. Unfortunately, after owning it for only 10 minutes we abandoned it in the grocery store in Queenstown. Our plans of delicious soup for dinner were scuppered when we realized we were once again stove-less

Improvised uncooked dinner late at night in our tent.

On Friday, we continued moving North up the island to Fox Glacier. Our first stop was past the blue lagoon, aptly named for its clear blue waters. 

The blue lagoon. The shadows meant that my camera could not properly capture the colour of the water in most of the shots. Imagine the blue of the bottom-left picture to be the blue of all the water. It was quite lovely.

What was supposed to be a half hour stop quickly turned into a three hour walk as we wandered through the valleys passing scary-looking cows (whose faces looked like they were hockey masks in a very Jason-like fashion) who stared us down. 

Jason cows.

But the sun and the windflowers were out so we had a grand time in the valley.

We continued driving north until the highway met the sea.  Jasmine demanded the car be stopped as she madly rushed towards the water.

She stopped short of leaping in when she realized just how cold it is.

We finally made it to Fox Glacier township. On our helpful little map book we bought, it indicated that there was a seal colony near the township. Both our cellphones were dead (it's hard to keep them charged when you sleep outside every night) and our car for some reason does not display the time. We gleefully headed off in search of seals skipping along the beach in our flip flops. 

Sheep lined the pathway to get to the ocean. Mostly they were adorable. Further along the track we played chicken with one sheep who charged at us down the track.

Sheep running at us!

We bravely stood our ground and he backed off, but it was a fierce battle.

What was a lovely beach side walk turned into a serious tramp through the forest. Both jaz and I were forced to trudge barefoot along the rocky and muddy path. 

One of the many unexpected obstacles we had to climb through to get to the seal colony. 

Jaz's dainty lady feet slowed us down (an unusual shift as I am almost always the dawdler). Two hours later we made it to the seal colony to find not only were there no seals, but also it was rapidly getting dark. 

We started the long trek back to the car. We faired okay for the first bit, but by the end it was mighty hard to see where to place your feet. We finally emerged out of the woods in total blackness (bringing new meaning to the phrase we are out of the woods now). We felt like explorers trying to find our way back to our car navigating by the stars. All was fine until we got back to the sheep strewn alley. Sheep may be very cute in the daylight, but they are terrifying when they stare out at you from the bushes late at night. I'm ashamed to say in our second sheep encounter the sheep definitely came out victorious as we scurried terrified back to the car. 

Unfortunately we still hadn't managed to get ourselves a replacement cooker or a camping site for the night. Lesson learnt. Always pick your campsite before it gets pitch dark as driving down the windy lanes (chasing stupid hares that won't get off the road) in the darkness is no fun. One upside is we were forced to book a slightly nicer campsite, so we actually got to shower! Such a perk.

Queenstown, New Zealand

On Monday, March 17 our planned trip for New Zealand really began. We flew from Christchurch to Queenstown in what most be one of the world's shortest flights. Although it was barely more than half an hour Air New Zealand managed to feed us an entire meal (helpful for the tight budget) and play us the weirdest safety video I've ever seen. Jaz and I sat in bewilderment as sport's illustrated swimsuit models and Maori men demonstrated how to put on life jackets while having a grand time on some edenic island. We weren't sure whether to cry with laughter or be very offended. Either way it was certainly memorable!

Once in Queenstown, we rented our car. It is both huge and in some Chinese language. 

Jasmine packing up our car for the first time.

So far he has been a great car with the small exceptions that the radio does not work, it sometimes will try to tell us things in Chinese, and whenever I drive over 110km/hr it will show us a picture of itself. I'm assuming it wants praise for going so fast? It has fully embraced the Asian selfie though. The good news is that whenever it gets too cold to sleep in our tent, we can always snuggle up inside the car. It is very roomy! 

We didn't have much time to explore Queenstown. It was very reminiscent of Whistler to me. Most of our time was spent madly preparing for our first tramp on the Routeburn track. We did begun our rule of no hotels/hostels and spent the night by the lake in a lovely DOC campsite.

Christchurch, New Zealand

Our first stop on our tour of New Zealand was Christchurch. We mostly are here by accident. Although I mostly successfully planned our trip from a computer in Toronto, but we arranged to fly into Christchurch rather than our intended destination, Queenstown. However, it actually worked out spectacularly in the end.

As I'm sure you all know, the downtown (or central business district) of Christchurch was pretty severely decimated by an earthquake in 2011. The city is still trying to recover. Many people have left the city (especially jaz and my cohort) instead of participating in the renewal. We only had one day walking around the city and were amazed at how few people there were. It felt like you were in as university town when school was out for summer. If you want to picture Christchurch, you wouldn't be too far off if you imagined Kingston in Ontario. In defence of Christchurch, my claim should be mitigated by the fact that a) we were coming from Asia (where there are people everywhere!) and b) it was pouring rain and c) it was Sunday and we were in the business district. We had a bit of reverse shock in terms of the traffic. In Asia, there are almost no lights you just have to walk across and hope the wall of traffic coming at you parts to let you through. Here, you need definitely need to follow the crossing signs, despite the nearly empty streets. 

Our time in Christchurch was really made special by our host, Daniel. He may be one of the nicest people I have ever came across. He picked us up from the airport, chauffeured us around the city, and taught us an excellent card game. 

In our poverty (and the card scarceness in Asia), jasmine made us our own playing cards (she had lost our previous set in Koh Rong). Daniel took pity on us, and gave us our own real set! I think he was a little overwhelmed by how happy we were.

On out first night as a group we played cards, tried New Zealand ginger beer (which is excellent), and made nachos together.

We weren't too touristy in CC, but managed to buy all our camping equipment and do some laundry.

Wandering the city in the rain! Came across this bizarre furniture set.

Montreal St

Our main takeaways about New Zealand so far is that people don't really wear shoes here (like multiple people are barefoot in the supermarket), and they are incredibly kind. Toronto comes across as a terribly mean place in comparison. Every single New Zealander we have interacted with has gone out of their way to help us (bus drivers tell us secret routes to save money, another one made sure we knew what address we are going to, or flight attendants just giving us the best customer service.. Ever).

The last thing you need to know about CC is this cat, Snuggles

She was so cute! I almost had to steal her. I don't mean to be rude to the street cats of Asia, but they are mean-looking and mangey. Can't compete with this chubby housecat.

The affection was mutual. She didn't want us to leave.

I think this picture speaks for itself.