Richmond, Not Just the Capitol of Virginia

Having survived our trek in the cloud, Lina and Gil headed south while Oded and I headed north. By chance we stopped for the night in Richmond, a town of no note to backpackers and kiwis alike. We arrived around seven and headed straight to a little festival in town someone told us about. Local wineries and breweries lined the streets serving tastes, glasses and bottles. Tables were packed with locals, young and old, consuming baked potatoes, crepes, and "American" hot dogs. Little boys walked barefoot eating shaved ice, dyed red, blue and orange. A band played in the background, an audience to the show the locals put on. They sang everything from Aretha to Pink to Sweet Home Alabama and after the wine took hold, everyone was on their feet, dancing. Teenage girls in short shorts danced in groups, their bra straps showing for effect. A mother swayed to the music with her son in her arms. Couples with white hair danced dances that have names that I should know (waltz?) and of course a quartet of Israeli boys jumped around, all curly hair and cigarettes. The sun set, at first lighting the sky in shades of purple and orange, but after time faded to soft pinks, blues and some purple still. The music lasted for hours and the crowd only sang louder and danced harder and when it was time to go home, couples strolled hand in hand while the neighborhood kids chased each other with cups of water, the slow at a disadvantage. A small town at its best.

Trek to the End of the World

After some rest and much stretching, Oded and I attempted our second and third multi-day treks. The second, the Routeburn, was a kinder gradient, and full of breathtaking scenery. We tramped 17 kilometers the first day through mountains, lakes, and saw past snow capped peaks all the way to the west coast of the south island. We also acquired two new friends, an Israeli couple on a two month honeymoon, with whom we traveled from the trek to Wanaka and onto the glaciers. We loved this trek for the views, the company and the track.

From the Routeburn, we headed to Angelus Hut in Nelson Lakes, a tramp that almost all the Israelis we've met recommend as one of the most beautiful treks in the whole island. A two day tramp mostly on the ridge, it is meant to be hard, but not as challenging as Kepler (our first trek). The tramp is a back country track and therefore the hut is less expensive, the track is less maintained and the fewer people crowd the path. With two of Oded's friends from Israel newly arrived in New Zealand, Lina & Gil, we headed to St. Arnaud. We began the morning after a rainy night and a dense cloud still remained. We figured the cloud would disappear as the day heated up. Wrong assumption. When the day is cloudy, do not trek in New Zealand. We climbed for a little over an hour, gaining close to 700 meters, and walked another 9 kilometers on the ridge ALL in a cloud--a cloud so thick we sometimes couldn't see the next pole or ten meters in front of us. In the beginning the track was dirt mixed with rocks but after 4 kilometers on the ridge, the track followed a steep path only accessed by climbing hand and foot over unsteady rocks. To top it off, it was both windy and rainy, making the rocks slippery and balance a necessity. It really felt like we were trekking to the end of the world--all white, blowing wind and rain, erupted mountainside and only a few other brave souls heading the opposite direction. Not as inspiring as I had hoped. After almost seven hours we reached our sleeping quarters, a hut set on a beautiful lake--yes, we could finally see!

We opted to walk the ridge back instead of the valley route we had intended to take, in the desperate hope that the day would be clear and we would finally see the views everyone raved about so enthusiastically. The next day was clearer and many hours faster--amazing how seeing in front of you speeds things up. The area was beautiful but I have come to the conclusion that I am either saturated with natural beauty or that when post-army Israelis say "beautiful" they actually mean "treacherous, blister-inducing and not all that different from every other lovely, flat view in New Zealand."

Face to Face

It is ever popular recently not just to speak of global warming and the environment but to also change your ways to help turn back the climate clock--going green, reducing our footprint. So we remember to shut off the lights, unplug the coffee, buy local produce, recycle, walk to work, all in an effort to keep the world's glaciers from receding to a state of nonexistence. These simple acts, if done en masse, could very well affect change, but this whole concept of glacial recession may be too abstract to truly inspire action. Having stood face to face with many glaciers in one week--Rob Roy, Fox & Franz Josef--I can say that it is way more motivating than any documentary.

As you drive up the road to view the glaciers, signs are posted as far as one kilometer out to show where the glacier reached in the 17 and 1800s. The glaciers themselves are beautiful, milky white turquoise ice, sculpted in jagged peaks, both reflecting and shaping the rocks that the ice once covered. But the glaciers have receded, and substantially--the glacial rivers are all rock bed and the ice changes everyday.Standing at the foot of these glaciers really inspires the feeling of witnessing a natural phenomenon, one that may sooner be history than present.

Australia does not live here

After surviving some of the hottest, sweatiest days of my life in Australia, I thought that New Zealand would be a relief, a chance to finally put my strategic layering system into use. Most days in NZ I am wearing some version of every piece of clothing that I brought on this 7 month journey--tank top, sweater, pants, dress, socks--you can only imagine how hip I look. So as we prepared for our first overnight tramping trip we realized that we needed even warmer, faster drying clothes and a good bit of gear that we didn't yet have. A few shopping trips later and we had new hats, gloves, thermals, a billy to boil water in, light weight mugs and food to last us three days--bread, nutella, muesli bars, rice, tea and hot cocoa. With all of this and our sleeping bags on our backs, we were each walking with 10-12 kilos on our backs.

We chose the Kepler track, a 50K trek in Fiordland in southwest New Zealand. The first day was 6 flat kilometers followed by a steady 8K uphill climb that brings you out of thee tree line to exposed ridge. We made it to the first hut in about four and a half hours, just as the rain started. By morning the weather had cleared and we had a perfect day in front of us which was key as the second day was chock full of views of mountains, fiords and gorgeous skies. By perfect weather I mean 3 degrees Celsius and 55 mph winds. At times I resembled a drunken sailor, weaving back and forth, often unable to stand or walk straight. We gained 1300 meters by the second day and saw some really sweeping alpine views from the track, a thin path cut into the rock with breathtakingly steep cliffs on one and sometimes both sides. I thought the wind and cold made the day hard but there are folks who brave the path with snow up to their knees. By the end of the second day we descended down 100 switch backs in the bush before reaching the second hut.

The third day should have been the easiest--a flat 22 kilometers back out to civilization. I learned quickly that flat has a different meaning in New Zealand--it also includes steep ascents and descents. Funny how English works differently in different places. It took us six hours of fast walking before we finally crossed the swing bridge that brought us back to the world where things other than feet count as transportation. The three days were full of beauty, nice folks and exhilarating climbs, but by the end each step hurt, all my muscles were sore and I was cursing not having stretched more along the way. Lessons for next time...

Porpoise Bay

Some Israelis that Oded met at Mt. Cook told us of a secluded bay at the very south of the south island where dolphins swim close to the shore. Not only had they seen them, but they swam with them. We checked into the camp in the late afternoon and immediately asked about the dolphin sighting possibility. The lady at reception casually pointed out the front door. I went out, stood on the edge of the cliff and immediately dolphins jumped out of the water, like a regular day at Sea World. I shouted for Oded and a few minutes later we were stripped down to our under things and running into the water.

Freeze frame for a second: this sounds amazing and fortunate but please consider that the day was sunless, the wind was whipping, and the water temperature was somewhere around 12 Celsius. OK, resume. Dolphins jumping and Oded and I doing our best to swim out over the huge waves to make it where the dolphins played. Once we got out to calmer waters, we lost the dolphins until one was five feet in front of me. And then there were five circling us and swimming with us. It was exhilarating and frightening, and amazing to see such truly beautiful creatures so close. We made it back to shore, fighting the waves, to hot showers and glasses of hot cocoa.

We also managed to see sea lions, seals and the rare yellow-eyed penguins throughout the day at different coastal spots. While I miss the constant presence of kangaroos, NZ has some great fauna of its own.

39 million sheep, 4 million people

First impressions of New Zealand: absolutely stunning scenery, lots of sheep. It seems off the bat that NZ will be less fun than Australia. OZ is rowdier, untamed, spontaneous. NZ is tidy, rule abiding and shuts down early. It makes sense, sort of, as these two islands are home to some of the most naturally beautiful places on earth--glaciers, lakes, and coasts galore. It looks like we have exchanged our beer mugs for tramping shoes...

We started in Christchurch, a quaint city with a great art museum, street markets and a nightlife and backpacker scene that we quickly figured out is rare outside of Queenstown. Our first task was picking up our new van--we moved out of Astro Boy and into Golden Tops, a name that gave no clue as to what the art would look like. Both sides of the van are covered in mushrooms, not the garden variety, but more reminiscent of the kind you would see in a store that sells black lights and smells of patchouli. The driver's side also boasts a youth who looks blissfully high...on life. I expected the back to say something about what a long, strange trip its been or something similar but instead it reads, "Bag girls are good girls that haven't been caught." Quite the non sequitur.

After leaving Christchurch in Golden Tops, we spent our first few days in the Banks Peninsula, a little knob just south of Christchurch. This first drive already proved NZ's reputation true--the turquoise bays in Lyttleton and Akaroa were surrounded by rugged volcanic masses but it was Lakes Tekapo and Pukaki that took the cake for the best scenery in the first few days. Milky turquoise lakes surrounded by dark green pines backlit by the Southern Alps--the color is so shocking it almost feels unnatural, like fairies and wizards are about to fly out of their hiding places. No wonder Lord of the Rings was filmed here. From the lakes we headed to Mt. Cook. At 3755 m, it is NZ's and Australasia's highest peak and means "cloud piercer" in Maori. The clouds cleared and hung low long enough for the peak to grace the Hooker Valley and its icy waters. We were also lucky enough to view the kea, the only arctic parrot.

After a few walks through the mountains, we headed to Omaru, a coastal town that produced sightings of penguins at dusk and then on to Shag Point to see the fur seals. The south island's second largest town, Dunedin, provided a welcome surprise in their free art gallery. Peter Stichbury's "Alumni", a collection of close to 40 works of acrylic on linen were shockingly stimulating. The visual effect was somewhere between animation and reality and the intention was to make a statement on the present culture of aesthetics, celebrity, and the concept of human canvases. It is the best modern collection I have seen in a very long time.