Romping and Roaming the South Island

After spending my first full month in New Zealand almost completely in Wanaka and nearby Hawea Flat, where Bruce and Swenja live, I headed up to Christchurch to re-unite with a great, new travel partner to join Mandy and I. After a crazy turn of events, some emails and a decisive phone call, Liza Mitchell decided to join me down here in New Zealand, and for the past two weeks the two of us have been romping and roaming around the south island.

Before leaving Bruce and Swenja's I sat down with Bruce and a large fold-out map of the south island. On said map, Bruce went systematically through all of the places where Liza and I should travel to, hike, tramp (NZ term for backpack/trek), and also climb. The old map became quickly filled with blue pen marks and my head was more importantly swarming with various ideas, plans, and Bruce's verbal directions to places I was bound to forget 5 minutes after talking with him. After this coffee meeting, post-last day of work, and a heartfelt good-bye and come visit again, I began the 6 hour drive up to Christchurch.

For the second time, my drive between Christchurch and Wanaka ended up being on an absolutely beautiful cloudless day. While a bummer since I was sitting on my butt the whole day, it was exciting due to the fact that I could see all of New Zealand's tallest mountains rise from their clearest lakes...quite a stunning drive. As with most of my drives I took my time, ate lots of food, and was frequently passed by cyclists.

The next morning I met an excited Liza at the airport and we began the journey of our touring NZ's south island. In an attempt at a nice gesture of welcome, I bought a couple chocolate bars, many bottles of variously NZ brewed beers and fermented wines, because well...I'm allowed to do that down here. Thus we had a delicious assortment of things to eat and drink for our travels...some still yet to be consumed.

This second leg of my New Zealand adventures as I see it is starkly different from my first leg. I am now in travel and explore mode versus live and work mode. Both have been rewarding and I'm confident I will get to do more of both in the future as well. For five days, Liza and I attempted the Travers-Sabine Circuit, a mountainous track taking anywhere from 5 to 7 days to complete. The hike starts following lake Rotoiti and into the Travers river valley. It then ascends the Travers pass at 1700 metres and descends the Sabine river valley back to the car park. About 3 hours into the first day we found that our planned route was going to be nearly impossible as the suggested hiking times were in fact quite accurate and not directed towards old, slow people. However, at the end of exhausted day two, we took our boots off at the upper travers hut at the base of the Travers pass ready to break until an afternoon exploration mission would tell us whether or not the pass would go, especially considering we had neither ice axes nor crampons. However, our answer quickly came in form of a helicopter. Not 5 minutes after sitting down on the porch of this hut, did a helicopter just start barreling up the valley towards the hut. At first we both exclaimed, " O cool, a helicopter!" Yet we quickly realized it was coming straight to the hut and in fact landed not 30 metres away! INCREDIBLE! Out came 2 Department of Conservation workers doing routine hut cleaning and repair checks as well as avalanche surveying and upon ignoring us for the first 10 minutes while they got themselves sorted, they informed us to not even think about attempting the pass. The other side was apparently a huge avalanche path currently with new snow. Good thing we got our answer!

With our new plan we decided to spend an extra day at this high alpine hut amidst giant mountains rising all around us, and on our break day, I did an exploratory scramble up a nearby peak. I quickly saw what they were talking about with pass as my vantage point from across the valley showed tons of snow on the pass and would probably have been fine had we had crampons and ice axe, but would have had to be done early in the morning when snow pack was still hard and avalanche risk from warming snow pack was low. Hower, we didn't have those things so we were resigned to retrace our steps out (skipping the hut we stayed in the first night however due to similar avalanche risk!!!) Our final 11 hours of hiking (over 2 days) back to the car were long, wet and cold, but we made it and rewarded ourselves with a hostel bed in Nelson versus the usual car sleeping arrangment we have set up here.

We took full advantage of this hostel, cooking for nearly 4 hours an assortment of things for snack, future breakfasts, dinner, and dessert. And this particular one offered free breakfast, which we conquered quite well. Since then we have reconnected with my friend from Bruce and Swenja's Tony and Lars and their new travel companion Nicky. The past few days the five of us have been all traveling together playing lots of music and drinking good beer not to mention eating good food. Life is good indeed. Three more weeks of traveling and adventure with Liza in which we hope to attack the west coast, reconnect in Wanaka, and take the darrans by storm. Until next time...Thanks for reading!