Copland track to Cromwell

As we were told that the Copland track would only take us 4 hours we didn't rush to get of in the morning. We went to see a famous lake which, on a clear day which it wasn't it was still raining, would have a great reflection of the mountains. We did a short walk and went for coffee. In the parking lot we packed our backpacks for our 2 day adventure and headed to the beginning of the track 26 km south of Fox.

We started walking at 1 and to get to the track we had to cross a river by climbing over tree trunks and pulling ourselves up a ridge. It seemed as if some of the land had slid away because of the river taking the beginning of he track with it. This was a promising start of the whole track. Martha has all of the professional gear but I haven't. I just have normal boots with a flexible sole, and was wearing cotton shirt with my ski jacket. All this and the fact that I was still tiered of our glacier walk and fighting and infection (yes still there) made this track very hard for me. We were constantly climbing over tree, crossing little creeks, jumping form rock to rock over bigger streams and if that wasn't enough the track was mostly covered with small rocks which, because of my crappy shoes, made my feet hurt. We met some people coming down and learned that we had to walk or even run to make it before dark. We made it with the last bit of light to arrive at a beautiful hut which was already warm from the fire the other trampers had lit. We were soaked to the bone and cold so the first thing we did was just in the nice and hot natural springs. This made the whole walk up worth while!

After a night of sleeping in my skiing trousers, a fleece, a hot water bottle and wearing a hat I woke up to see that it was still raining! We jumped it the springs again to warm up and then started going down. This time it didn't take us just 5 but 7,5 hours. We stopped for lunch at a small hut and changed in a dry set of clothes. Seeing as it hadn't stopped raining for 3 days now, the rivers were becoming more fierce. You could see the difference from the day before and some rivers we couldn't even cross anymore by jumping rocks, so we had to take the longer flood bridge routes. Again we made it with the last bit of light. Our planning could not have been tighter! Again we changed out of our wet clothes which wasn't a good idea because we got attacked by sandflies. A relaxing ending to this extremely exhausting track, two screaming girls trying to get into the car quickly with not to many bites! Martha drove us to Haast while I was still killing sandflies that joined us in the car.

We expected Haast to be a bigger town like Westport but the truth is that Haast isn't even a town. It's a region of approximately 300 km with 300 people! We had dinner in a pub sitting right next to the fire still trying to warm up while witnessing one of the advantages of living in such a remote place: you can play a game of pool, leave it half way to have your dinner and then resume playing! How wonderful is that.

The next day Marieke was arriving in Queenstown at 3.45. It was only a 3 hour drive so we figured that if we drove off at 9 that would give us enough time to get to the hostel, settle in and do our washing. We had managed to fill a whole bin bag with wet muddy clothes and the hostel in Haast didn't have a dryer so they were starting to smell a bit funny. At breakfast the lady of the hostel asked us where we were heading and at our reply: Queenstown she smiled and said good luck. There had been a landslide and a big rock had blocked the road. You would think no problem just take another road but there isn't one! The only option is driving back north and cross at Arthurs pass which would take us 15 hours to get to Queenstown!

As you all probably now I usually plan things very carefully so I could kick my self. But what to do. Luckily marieke was already in the country, she had arrived in Auckland so I was able to reach her with the good news. She also has good news, her luggage was left in Singapore. I think this is what they call Murphy's law! After sitting around in the local pub we heard rumors that they were letting cars pas one by one so we jumped in the car and lined up infront of the massive landslide. We made it to the airport at 3.30, all stressed and with red cheeks but in time to give Marieke a big hug when she got of the plane.

Wednesday we relaxed, did some shopping for Marieke with the compensation money from Air New Zealand and sheltered from the rain. This was the fifth day in a row! But out luck would change.

The next two day we went skiing in both ski resorts near Queenstown. Cornet peak and the remarkables. Getting there was quite interesting seeing as I had no snow chains. We parked the car at the bottom of the mountain, got our skiboots on and hitched a ride up. This was amazingly easy. And for the first time in 5 day we saw some blue sky again. The second day marieke and I were together because Martha went heli skiing. This didn't fit in our budget but hearing her stories afterwards did put it on my wish list.

Friday night we drove to Cromwell to stay with Audrey, the mother of Rob a friend of Martha. We convinced her to come along the next day for the most thrilling ride of her life and ours for that matter. Yes we went ski diving!

I was scared but decided not to think and just go. So I was introduced to Simon, my buddy. Got a nice red and yellow suit, a ridiculous hat and goggles, was strapped in and told what to do which basically meant smile and enjoy. We went up with the four of us to 12.000 ft and let ourselves fall out of a plane fully trusting a complete stranger strapped to out backs! As martha said this must be the weirdest short term relationship ever!

It was amazing! The first few seconds you accelerate and fall into what feels like nothing. When you exit the plane you make a head roll and even though your just 2 seconds out of the plane you just see it far above you. Then you level out and the pressure of the air makes it feel like your hanging still in the air. We had the most amazing view over snowy mountains, lake Wanaka and in the far distance we could see mount Cook, the highest mountain of NZ. Just a little fact: we just started our jump higher that the summit of Mt Cook. the 45 sec freefall were the best and when the parachute opens your down in 5 minutes. It was the most scary but truly cool thing I have ever done!

Today skiing in Cadrona didn't seem that exciting compared to yesterday but it was the best of the tree resort I have seen yet. Tomorrow we're off to Te Anau in the Fiordland. Hopefully we cam do a day of the routeburn track, if it's dry because this is supposed to be the wettest place in NZ.

Golden Bay to Fox Glacier

Monday was the last day at rose's place. After a day of relaxing and going to the dentist I arrived back at Rose's to find Martha there who had come back from her 3 day walk trough the Abel Tasman. We made a nice going away and thank you dinner for Rose and Richard. Broccoli soup and the salmon Richard and I had caught the day before. Because the next day was martha's birthday we had also bought some presents and celebrated her birthday a bit.

The next day we said good bye and headed for Hector on the west coast but not before stopping in Motueka for some coffee and cake for Martha's birthday. The drive was beautiful even though it was dark and raining. We drove through the Buller gorge and stopped at a swing bridge. This is supposed to be the longest swing bridge of NZ but turned out to be a complete joke. You had to pay $5 dollars and it might have been the longest nut certainly not the highest or most impressive one.

Just before Hector is one of the bigger places on the westcoast, Westport. The population of the entire westcoast is 30.000 and there are mainly small towns with just a few hundred people. But even Westport wasn't much. It's just one main street and, as a lot of the towns here in NZ, it had a American Western feel to it. It was almost dark when we arrived at our new hostel which was named the old slaughter house. I don't no why but somehow this gave us a bit of an eerie feeling ;-)! It turned out to be a beautiful self built house which can only be reached by a ten minute walk up a hill. Lucky for us they had a quad bike to bring all our stuff up the hill. We stayed there all night by the fire, knitting and talking to Meredith who was hitching and we picked her up. Her plan was to go to another hostel but decided to come with us for a night and didn't regret it in the morning because the view from the front porch was stunning.

We were really very inactive that morning and it took us till 3 to finely drive from Westport to Punakaiki. This turned out to be perfect timing because when we arrived at the famous pancakerocks it was hi-tide and that is when these rocks show their beauty. The rocks are shaped in thin vertical slices. They don't know exactly how this was formed but it is truly amazing. The waves come crashing in and throught the blowholes the water spurts out like a big fountain. With the setting sun it was altogether just beautiful.

After arriving in the hostel, which was right on the beach oh how I love the ocean!, we made dinner and headed for the local pub. There were only a few people there and after an our of sitting at the bar we met Timmie. At first we thought he was just very drunk (which he was) but he was also a bit special. We think he has a learning disadvantage and as you often see people like this can be very honest and that caused some hilarious situations. The bottom line is that Timmie very much liked these 2 beautiful strangers ;-). We ended up going to the next town with all the other people in the bar to watch a rugby game.

Thursday we did a beautiful 3 hour walk and had dinner in the pub with Deb, a friend of Monique. The night ended in the local radio station which isn't more that a shed in someone's backyard. It was great. The radio station transmits over a distance of 2 km in which 150 people live. They all take turns in making radio for a night. This night it was all reaggea music because the dj was going to the Caribbean the next week. Again we managed to get in contact with the locals and had a great night.

Friday was a very creative day. I made a bone carving and Martha made a knife. Both turned out very good. As our planning was becoming a bit tighter, we had to be in Queenstown on tuesday to pick up Marieke a friend of mine, we drove 4 hours in the dark to Fox glacier and arrived at 10. We went straight to bed because we wanted to go for a glacier walk the next day.

When we woke up it was raining, and as we didn't know then it wouldn't stop for a few days. We didn't let the water stop us and went for a 7 hour walk through cravases and it was one of the most beautiful things I have seen here in NZ. The next day we made a slight change of plans and instead of driving to Wanaka we started a 2 day walk, the Copland track. The guide from the glacier walk said it would only take us 4 hours and at the hut there were nice natural hot springs. Next time a will write al about this walk which turned out to be quite a chalange.

Portage to Golden Bay

After the exciting night we woke up at 8 to a messy and smoky apartment after only having slept 5 hours. Although you would think we would take an easy day Martha and I decided to walk a leg of the famous Queen Charlotte track. One option was taking a sea kayak. Kayak to Te Mahia which would take 2 hours and than walk back. But seeing as we weren’t in to good a shape we decided to lift to Te Mahia and just walk back. Luckily we caught a ride after just 10 minutes because there aren't many people living further than Portage so we where a bit worried that it would take forever before we would see a car.

We caught a ride up to 5km before Te Mahia and started to walk to rest until another car stopped for us. We had just jumped into the car, and maybe driven 500 m, when we saw a sign for the track but because we hadn’t arrived in Te Mahia yet we decided to go further. And yes that meant that we had to walk back from Te Mahia up the hill for 10 minutes to the sign. We girls must learn to navigate better and be more assertive. Would save a lot of energy ;-)!

The track was truly amazing! It was a 3 hour walk back to Portage and we also took a side track to the lookout point. From up there we could see the all over the sounds (which are what we call fiords in Europe). I think this must be the most beautiful thing I've seen here in NZ.
After dinner we treated ourselves to another spa and turned in at 9. How sad is that. To girls in the prime of their lives can't even handle one night out!

After a full 12 hours sleep, we both woke up excited. The sun was shining and today was the day we were going to take out our free yacht! We put on our innocent smile again and even managed to get free fishing gear. The only small setback was that there wasn't any wind. Luckily our luxurious yacht was equipped with a motor so we were off. We both enjoy being on the water so much and with the sun on our faces we just relaxed. We came to a mussel farm a tied the boat to it. It was time to start our fishing adventure. We had taken some mussels from the wharf in Portage. Martha did the disgusting job of opening them, scraping out the mussel and cutting them up. We put them on the hook and cast out lines. Expecting to sit there waiting for hours we were shocked that the line started pulling after only 10 seconds. But when Martha started to pulling in the catch the realisation hit us. We would have to do something with this fish! We both freaked out but we're tough girls and we managed to hold the fish and get the hook out. I must admit we both needed a cigarette after al this excitement. We went trough this whole process another 4 times before we decided the last one was big enough to keep. There is a legal size the fish must have before you can take them. So basically you can kill the parents but not the kids! We where very disappointed to here from Michael that what we had caught was a spotty and wasn't eatable. So not only had we wounded 3 innocent fish we also killed one! Some people call fishing fun but its just cruel and we city girls felt guilty.

Full of anticipation we went in to the hostel. The whole week we had heard of "the 9". Murray, from the Mahana lodge, had mentioned them and when we booked into the shop at Portage they also told us that we would be sharing the hostel on Sunday. In the last days we had built al different kinds of theories around this mysterious group. We met them in the bar and they turned out to be a group of colleagues who tramp a lot together. They invited us to join for Christmas pudding! Yes you read it right, here in NZ they have midwinter Christmas and have a proper Christmas dinner. This was my first taste of the real English pudding and it was delicious! We sat around chatting to them for hours and at the end of the night Rose invited us to stay with her in Kaiteri on the Golden Bay! Off course we were happy to except.

Monday morning we left this idyllic, beautiful place. I'm definitely considering coming back in spring and learn wakeboarding, work in the hostel and just join into the low pace of life.

We arrived in Nelson in the afternoon and not having seen a shop for a full week we went into the warehouse and came out when it had already turned dark! We both bought some warm boots and made another step towards blending into the kiwi culture.

Our hostel was full of alternative people wearing rags and having Rasta’s. We city girls with our new boots just didn't seem to blend in here. After dinner we made muffins, double chocolate with banana! We had planed to share them and make friends because the next day was my birthday and it would be nice to go out with a big group. We canceled this plan and drew our conclusion as it didn't seem that these people were going to accept us. We decided to go out for drinks instead and for the first time I sat in a bar for 2 hours had a great time and didn't spent any money! Ok our plan to get drinks form guys didn't work out as there were only 2 couples in the bar but we managed to get a lemon, lime and bitter of the barman!

Tuesday, 27th of June, my birthday! Martha made me breakfast, we went into town to have a cappuccino and went on a shopping spree. Under the motto of "birthday presents" I bought myself some tight jeans and a nice shirt for the night.

Back at the hostel the owner was making a big roast dinner with chicken, sprouts and carrots. To our great surprise he invited to join and we did! Although it was a big group and they all had know each other for sometime, seeing as the all seemed to work there, there was a weird silence trough out the dinner. But that didn’t matter to us, we had a free birthday dinner! We felt a bit guilty for not sharing our muffins so decided to make coffee for everyone.

We went out to the same bar as the night before because we had found out that it was the barman’s birthday as well. This time we did bring money and ordered gin and tonics. We met up with some people from the hostel and it turned out to be a great birthday party. I went to bed feeling happy although I off course did miss my friends back home.

The next day we drove to Matueka and met up with Rose and her son Richard. After a short delay, because they had conveniently locked their keys in the car so we had to wait for the AA the open the door, we followed them to their house. They live 15 minutes north of Kaiteriteri and 5 minutes up a gravel driveway. When we arrived it was already dark and we couldn’t wait to see the view the next morning because we could hear the see front the deck in front of the house. As we assumed it was stunning. The house was right on the beach and looked out on the famous Split Apple rock. Unfortunately we couldn’t enjoy the view for too long because we had to rush out of the house to catch the water taxi into the Abel Tasman from Marahau. The Water taxi dropt us off at Bark Bay and the plan was to walk all the way back to Marahau which would take 6 hours.

The minute we hit the track I felt my body was so tired and my legs felt extremely heavy. But the views were so stunning that, although a walked at a slower pace as I normally would, I managed to walk to Anchourage via Torrent Bay in 3 hours. I decided to wait there for the water taxi pick-up as Martha went on. When I arrived back at Rose’s I crashed and just slept for 12 hours.

The next day when I woke up Richard had already made an appointment with the dentist for me as yet again my tooth was the problem. My third visit to the dentist in 2 months, you would almost think I’m doing a dentist tour! As the other dentist had also told me, this problem didn’t have a quick fix. I actually need surgery by a specialist who can drain the infection through the gum. The only other option he could offer me is to get the current perfectly fine looking root canal out and hope for a side canal through with the infection will drain. I decided to take the chance. He has made all the preparations and tomorrow, Monday, I have a follow up.

Seeing as I would have to stay over the weekend in Golden Bay, Richard, Martha and I planned a weekend trip further north to Farewell spit. We drove to Takaka where Martha introduced me to my next big adventure, knitting! We had bought some nice Marino wool in Nelson. I now know the basic stitches but, as Martha kindly pointed out to me, it will take some practice before I want to do this in public. Handling the needles is not as easy as it seems and at this point I look a bit retarded with this concentrated look on my face and my tong between my teeth.

The next day after coffee Martha left us to start her big 3 day walk trough the Abel Tasman. Richard and I drove to farewell spit, climbed a big hill and had the most amazing view of the west coast and the spit. We stayed in Collingwood in a hostel which, after Richard had just been telling me that there are hardly any Asian travelers in Golden Bay, was crowded with Japanese.

Today, after Richard made me a huge breakfast with bacon, sausages and eggs, we went to a Salmon farm were I could but my Portage fishing experience into practice. The motto here is what you catch, you eat. For $18,- they fillet you fish and for another $12,- you can get it smoked. With our thoughts on dinner we casted our lines out and 1 hours later we had both caught a beautiful big salmon. I was already familiar with the catching and getting the hook out but on the boat we just drowned the fish by putting it in a bucket. Richard showed me the proper way of killing a fish which is by putting a knife through his head right between the eyes. Yes, I screamed, but I pulled myself together and killed my own fish. 30 minutes later I was presented a perfectly smoked salmon in a pizza box and it tasted delicious!

I’m now back at Rose’s and have just enjoyed another lovely roast dinner. Rose invites a lot of travelers to stay with her and enjoys the company. Proof of all these visitors are the rocks around the wood burner with personal messages. So I’m going to quite writing now and be creative!