I’m on my way to see some glaciers here on the South Island and I’m stuck here in a classic New Zealand rain forest downpour, so I’ve finally found an excuse to catch up on my blog…
After an hour delay on the ferry, we finally set sail from Wellington to Picton with everything imaginable on board. Trains, cars, tractor trailers, campers, people, and sheep. Lots of sheep. The trains surprised me, actually. The entire lower floor of the ferry was reserved for train cars. Trains appear to just run from north to south in New Zealand and hop on the ferry like everyone else. The sheep were actually in trucks and were nothing new to me, living in Fremantle (where they is a big notorious live sheep export business to the Middle East).
I managed to get into Picton a bit later than planned, but decided to make a mad dash to an interesting sounding youth hostel in an old former elementary school house in Haverlock. The school had a few famous graduates including one chap you migrated to the U.S. and became a famous nuclear scientist. It was a nice place with lots of character. One very pleasing thing about this region of New Zealand is that it boasts more hours of warmth and sunshine than any other.
One thing I’ve quickly learned about travelling in New Zealand, unlike Australia, if a road sign says 50 km and the speed limit is 100 kph, that doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll get there in about 30 minutes. You have to contend with the possibility you’ll be on switchback roads up and down mountain peaks that will slow you down to around 40 kph (even though the posted speed limit might be 100 kph). My mad dash to Haverlock ended up taking a lot longer than I thought and almost got me there too late.
After spending the night in Haverlock, I drove to Nelson in the beautiful warm sunshine and decided that I really wanted to take another crack at camping while I was in New Zealand. The weather certainly seemed right for it, so I aimed to get into the Abel Tasman National Park — which is famous for a multi-day coastal hiking trail and beautiful beaches. Unfortunately, I found myself getting caught up in another tediously long switchback pass over the “Takaka Hill”. Some hill! This road was gruelling enough to make any driver carsick.
I finally managed to get to the outskirts of the park around sunset, and thought it a safer strategy to grab a tent site from a commercial campground than to try heading deep into the park to find the ideal one before dark. It wasn’t a bad spot. Right along a beach and not too cold. Just a bit of heavy dew in the morning. I drove into the park early and had breakfast in the camp area I was aiming for before taking a sample 3 hour hike along the coastal track. It was very nice, dipping down to beautiful beaches with bright yellow sand and then back up into the densely wooded hills from time to time. There were two sections of the trail that could only be used at low tide since they went across tidal mud flats. I’ve been told by several locals that these trails are packed with tourists in the summer months. I saw about 20 people with packs while I was there.
After my successful camping outside of Abel Tasman National Park (in Takapou), I decided to try my luck getting into the Nelson Lakes National Park camp groups to the south. The Nelson Lakes region is quite spectacular with snow capped mountains dropping into crystal clear lakes. I found hardly anyone there at this time of year and set up camp for the night. It seemed a bit chilly, but everything seemed to be going well until around 1 AM, when you could really start to feel the cold. By morning, there was a thick frost on everything — including my tent. I was freezing for most of the night even though I was bundled up in a 3 season sleeping bag and a cheap thick quilt I picked up in a supermarker. I think a lot of other campers were as uncomfortable as I was that night because I could hear a continuous unzipping and zipping of tents and sleeping bags around me.
By morning I had enough and decided to skip my planned hike in the freezing cold and concentrate on getting to my next destination in enough time to enjoy it before it got dark (unlike my previous several destinations where I found myself rocking up just before sunset). I found the source of the Buller River (by accident, really — but there was a sign there) in the Nelson Lakes National Park and followed it all the way to the west coast where it drains into the sea at Westport. It was nice to follow because it runs through a huge gorge along the way.
Westport was nothing to get excited about, so I decided to head south to Punakaiki along the west coast and next to the Paparoa National Park. This place was really neat: a nice warm rain forest with lots of freshwater rivers beside a huge snow capped mountain range. I decided to take refuge in a warm youth hostel after my freezing Nelson Lakes experience (and also because of an incoming storm front). The youth hostel was spread out in a dense rainforest on a campus-like property. Although neigboring buildings were only about 10 meters apart, you felt like you were along because they were obscured behind the dense vegetation. It was really cool and the owners and visitors seemed very groovy. I was even able to score a couple of lucious home cooked meals while I was there. This place seems to remind lots of Americans of Big Sur in California, but it actually seemed a lot more accessible with loads of good trails heading up into the hills and mountains.
I did a couple of hikes up along creeks. One went to a creek source that ran out of a cave (“Cave Creek”) and the other along the beautiful Porarari River, which looked great for whitewater rafting, kayaking, or canoing. I found out over dinner that 14 students died on an inappropriately constructed viewing platform there back in 1994 when it collapsed 40 meters into a chasm. Gulp! I think they’ve made sure it is safe enough now.
