Penguins Like Their Water Cold

I should have clued in the minute I saw these little guys hop, hop, hopping from the surf line up to their nests in the rocks (or when I saw those two sleeping on the beach getting a tan -- that's another story). No doubt about it, the ocean off the south end of NZ is cold.


Instead of drawing the logical conclusions others would, I could only pull up memories of old Batman TV episodes; the cackle of The Penguin lyrical in my head "Wah, wah, wah. I've got you now, Batman! Watch out for my umbrella - is spouts gas (frightening!). Now I'll dip you into this deep freeze water - wah, wah, wah..."


Yea, this isn't Bondi Beach. It is cold - at least without a wetsuit, and I didn't bring one. It just wasn't at my fingertips living in Singapore. Thankfully, there are beautiful breaks (not as nice as some we had in the southeast of Australia - Avoca beach almost brought a tear to my eye) as well as excellent beach vistas here.






After one particularly brisk body surfing session with A she came out of the surf covered in little flecks of green and brown seaweed; a top-notch mermaid impersonation. Sadly, there was no pocket for my camera in my swimming "togs" so I can't provide you with visuals.




The warmest water we've had in NZ was in Doubtful Sound(!). Those are the dark, icy looking waves in the last photo. Jumping off the cruise ship from the 2nd deck into the dark depths ellicited lots of satisfying "whoooa" comments from the elder passengers on board; highly recommended.




The fjord water was the blackest I have ever seen (last photo is of the fjord - expect Nessie to pop her head out any minute). The top layer is brackish and creates some sort of layer above the salt water underneath that sucks all the light out of everything. Supposedly it gets brighter after you get below where the brackish stops - but I couldn't dive that far down. Man, it was spooky... (cue Penguin laughter).

Delightful Doubtful Sound

We went out to Fjordland for a fantabulous day/overnight on Doubtful Sound (so named because Captain Cook was doubtful the ship would be able to get back out if they entered it there...heee). We had gorgeous weather, a great kayak outing and swimming (cold!!) off the back of the boat, lots of fur seals, a few bottlenose dolphins up close, and some beaker whales from very far away. And great food -- soup was served as afternoon snack as a warm-up after the activities, buffet dinner was really good, especially potatoes with hollandaise sauce.... And they sang HB to me because Brian has a big mouth. ;-)

We picked up bicycles today for a 2-week trek starting tomorrow -- first on the train across the mountains to Greymouth (west coast), then north around the top part of the South Island. We shouldn't need to ride every day to finish on time back here in ChCh, which is good because I've been having knee isues -- not good! I've been riding the stationary bike in gyms along the way and it's not giving me much trouble on those, so I hope it'll be OK. Taking way too much ibuprofen though!

Tramping the Hump Ridge Track

Glorious!

I didn’t go tramping the first time I was in NZ (1995) (because I strained a groin muscle just before the days I’d planned to do so; perfectly innocent explanation, really), so I was quite keen to do one on this trip. But we aren’t carrying our real backpacks, sleeping bags, or cooking gear, so we needed a route with a kitchen and beds and bedding available in the huts. This also meant we got to pack light, just our food and a change of clothes, yay!

I came across the Hump Ridge Track in my research before leaving Singapore, and knew it was the one for us – 3 days, lodges as needed, a variety of terrain and scenery, still relatively inexpensive. It’s also quite new, set up only in late 2001, which means it’s less-known / less-popular – handy for us since we didn’t know basic dates like when we were leaving Australia, when we’d be in the south of the South Island, etc.

HRT is 55K/34 miles over 3 days, and its profile is super-flat beach walk and steep hump (= day 1), hump ridge and downhill (= day 2), and small-hills forest and coast walk (= day 3).

The forest was simply beautiful, almost primeval – ferns and gnarled tree limbs and moss – so much moss:

A maximum of only 40 people a day go on the tramp, and we only had about 15 along with us. And everyone tramps the loop in the same direction, so you see few people on the trail.

Ah, the serenity!

Many views were filled with Dr. Seuss-esque trees:

I wanted to take this green ottoman home and put it in our living room (not that we have a living room at this point!):

HRT has lots of boardwalk – more than 12 miles! – which tends to make these parts of the trail less-than-arduous:
Although when the boardwalk is up up up, some arduousness creeps in -- we climbed to about 900 meters (nearly 3000 feet) the first day, most of it over the last few hours:

Most of the boardwalk is to protect the delicate terrain (particularly the tundra above tree line), and some of it traverses the worst of the mud fields. However, there is still a ton of mud and a lot of water on the trail – so much that I made up a song for it:

Pathmaker, pathmaker, make me a path
Cover the mud, put logs in the bog
Pathmaker, pathmaker, don’t make me wade
Just make me the perfect path

(In my defense, your honor, please note that this was after many hours of attempting to pick through mud fields in my new running shoes, and one’s mind wanders after a while.)

Though in some places, the trail was lovingly groomed by feet for great long stretches:

in others it was totally root-ridden:

The view from the top of the hump was fabulous – we were quite a way above tree line, looking down at the coast where we began (tree line is where dark turns to light in the picture, and we started right where the little spit of land juts into the water at 9:00; all of that distance was day 1.)


The lodges were fabulous – we had “premium” rooms both nights, as we’ve determined we’re too old and cranky for dorm rooms. Great kitchens, better-stocked with cooking gear, plates, and utensils than most hostels, probably because nothing disappears from the lodges since no one wants to carry out more than they brought! Hot oatmeal was included for breakfast both mornings…yum.

We got to drink water directly from nature – that doesn’t happen much in the US! And it was kinda fun to retrieve it using a billy-can on a rope on this bridge – delicious!

Aside from the blisters and knee problems (I won't go in to that...), it was an absolutely delightful tramp!

Part of me would love to get back to NZ with real gear to do one of the "great walks" in the real backcountry – but to tell you the truth, from what we hear those trails are more overcrowded than we had here, despite the little luxuries we got (chocolate mints in the room!). I'm perfectly happy to take the easy route when it leads to this much joy!

Moeraki boulders!

(backtracking a few days now that we have picture technology!)

The Moeraki boulders were definitely a highlight! Perched in the surf in a line -- only large ones are left because smaller ones all got carried away over the years.

It was hard to get a photo of the whole line without people in it -- I snuck a quick one in at an opportune moment because we only do point-and-shoot, but there was a guy with a fancy-dancy camera (and to those of you who own them, please know I say that in a nice/jealous way!) who was waiting for ages to get the shots he wanted.

The boulders come out from the cliff, and have a bit of a honeycomb pattern on them from their crystal-ish structure. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moeraki_Boulders for a better explanation than I can give.

Sand flies were here before you, and they'll be here long after you're gone

The most mischievous animal here is the small black sandfly which are exceedingly numerous and are so troublesome that they exceed everything of the kind I ever met with, wherever they light they cause swelling and such an intolerable itching that it is not possible to refrain from scratching and at last ends in ulcers like the small Pox.

Their almost continual rain may be reckoned another inconvenience attending this Bay. 

Captain James Cook, upon entering Dusky Sound, 1773

Tomorrow is February 4^th (Andrea’s birthday) - we'll start our cruise on Doubtful Sound – which makes my gift shopping much easier.  Nothing says romance like bug repellant and hydrocortisone cream.

Instead of posting a photo of the many scabs on our ankles following the hump ridge trek (party favors left by the sand flies after they bit us over and over and over) I’ve opted to provide a photo of a very typical stretch of road in southern NZ.  Isn’t that nice?  This is actually quite typical – a NZ road trip is top notch.  Don’t even think about sand flies.  They won’t be on the roads, they’re only “in the bush” that’s close to the coast or in the bays.  

World's Southernmost Micro Brewery!

The slackerboy was looking forward to a visit to the Invercargill brewery – the world’s southernmost!  We were first in line when attendants opened the facility - and long overstayed our welcome. We slowed down only long enough to take before and after pictures of our visit.

It may appear that Andrea had too much to drink in the "after" photo… not true!  What you’re seeing is the sisterly love that comes so naturally after bonding with a brew master.  That's our friendly brewing professional on the left.

We couldn’t tour the brewery during our visit because they were not brewing that morning.  This sad situation left more time for sampling the product and admiring the many awards won by the brewery.  Our favorite offering was the “pitch black” which scored a 9/10 from some contest we’d never heard of.  OK, to be completely honest, we liked anything that came in a two liter bottle.  http://invercargillbrewery.co.nz/

Being Cargille in Invercargill

Ahhhhhh, Invercargill.  I hoped to be welcomed like a prodigal son, or at least free wireless access – anything to take advantage of the surname connection.  Where’s my 30% family discount?  After we’d been here a few hours one of the locals told me that the Gaelic meaning of “Inver” loosely translates to “We cheat tourists who are named.”  Nuts.  Where’s the haggis?  Where can I get fitted for a kilt?  

The staff at the YMCA are letting me slip in for workouts, but only because I purchased a month-long New Zealand YMCA membership for about $35USD in Christchurch; what a bargain.  My cost per workout is already down to about $3.50 – ha!  Please admire the photo of the card provided, and note the low-tech approach to controlling membership privileges here - super cute.  The gym is not as high end as the fitness we had in Singapore, but you still get to listen to the funny accents of your fellow exercise partners which is great. 

Cardio in the Catlins

The hostel we stayed at in the southeast corner of the south island was fantastic - a converted 100 year old hospital - rambling with excellent wood floors.  Andrea and I focused on building our cardio base by riding razor scooters up and down the main hallway.  Also fantastic body surfing, and we saw penguins strolling up the beach! 

Rest assured that while the “Usually it’s open from 2-4pm” approach to customer service may be long gone from your home town, it is alive and well in New Zealand.  The lap pool we hoped to swim at in the Catlins was supposed to be open from 2-4 that day, and again from 6-8.  Sadly it was closed because the supervisor had left the county and forgot to tell anyone (true story). 

 

Seafood is abundant

In the interest of efficiency, Andrea and I have started buying fish in bulk. Adjusting our diet to almost exclusively salmon sashimi has also opened up more time for trekking and other ways to get big nasty blisters and itchy sand fly bites...

South of the South Island

If I've learned anything in New Zealand, it's that Kiwis will make any sport extreme if you give them even half a chance...