Akaroa

akaloa

Cool (adj) - Wearing New Zealand shirts in New Zealand

 

 

 

Farmdog Phoebe and her four puppies

We had few options after leaving Tekapo - the Mt. Somers Track in Canterbury and the Queen Charlotte Track in Marlborough were both flooded, and we could not afford to pay for accommodation while waiting out a week of rain.  We were lucky then to so easily find a work-exchange on the Onuku Farm Hostel in Akaroa, one of our very favorite towns in New Zealand.  We visited Akaroa last April when we walked the Banks Peninsula Track, and the first night's accommodation on the walk was actually on the Onuku Farm. 

The Onuku Farm Hostel just re-opened after being closed for the winter, so for about two and a half weeks we spent our mornings helping our friends Gemma, Tom, Jeff, and D get the place in order for the busy season.  It rained what seemed like every day, and the gale-force winds at night must have just failed to pick our caravan up and throw it into the sky.  But the poor weather gave us much time to sit in front of the fireplace and read, talk, draw, and nap.  We also taught ourselves to bake bread, and thanks to Peter Reinhart, we are now baking some serious stuff.  It's a new chapter in life.  In all, it was borderline hibernation.

I began to sense a dark undercurrent of evil in the animals of Akaroa, though.  My pants were gnawed on by donkeys, I was divebombed by an Australian Magpie*, and after finishing a day walk we were charged at by a horned cow!  We also experienced three aftershocks, the last a 5.5.  Warnings, perhaps, because on the morning of our departure Canterbury experienced major flooding.  We forded some minor floodzones on the highway, but when we saw about six sedans all pulled over to the side of the road, we knew things were now real.  In the riskiest decision of the trip ("WE'VE GOT A FERRY TO CATCH!  BUCKLE UP.") we forded the 100 yard flood.  We felt lucky to have not been stuck there, water flowing up to our car doors, but it wasn't until we arrived in Picton and turned on the radio that we realized how lucky we were.  Emergency services were still in the process of rescuing 35 trapped people.

The adventure continued, as the same storm that flooded Canterbury made for one miserable boatride to the North Island.  Every passenger was either barfing in the bathroom or lying flat on the ground, chasing the lowest center of gravity possible.  This to the tune of howling winds and shattering dishes in the ferry's kitchen.  Once we got through the strait the ride calmed down, but it was too windy to dock at Wellington.  After an hour of sitting in the harbor we were told a tugboat would come and guide us in.  An hour later we were told the tugboat couldn't handle the wind.  And finally, by the sixth hour, we docked and arrived in metropolitan Wellington, where we are now feasting on inexpensive and wonderful food and culture.

The Rugby World Cup finals are tomorrow (New Zealand vs France), and this is the place to watch it.  Next is an abbreviated tramping tour of the North Island, before selling our car and flying to Bangkok at the end of November.  The city is now literally opening the floodgates, so we are hoping for the best.


* I was attacked twice, walking to and returning from Akaroa, and I was followed by the bird for about another half mile, until it decided I was truly leaving the area (I was sprinting!).  Thankfully things did not escalate to the more advanced attack stages.  Much more on Australian Magpies, from a funny Wikipedia article, and you need to know it all:

"Magpies are ubiquitous in urban areas all over Australia, and have become accustomed to people. A small percentage of birds become highly aggressive during breeding season from late August to early October, and will swoop and sometimes attack passersby. The percentage has been difficult to estimate but is significantly less than 9%. Almost all attacking birds (around 99%) are male, and they are generally known to attack pedestrians at around 50 m (150 ft) from their nest, and cyclists at around 100 m (300 ft). Attacks begin as the eggs hatch, increase in frequency and severity as the chicks grow, and tail off as the chicks leave the nest.

These magpies may engage in an escalating series of behaviors to drive off intruders. Least threatening are alarm calls and distant swoops, where birds fly within several metres from behind and perch nearby. Next in intensity are close swoops, where a magpie will swoop in from behind or the side and audibly "snap" their beaks or even peck or bite at the face, neck, ears or eyes. More rarely, a bird may dive-bomb and strike the intruder's (usually a cyclist's) head with its chest. A magpie may rarely attack by landing on the ground in front of a person and lurching up and landing on the victim's chest and peck at the face and eyes.

Magpie attacks can cause injuries, typically wounds to the head and particularly the eyes, with potential detached retinas and bacterial infections from a beak used to fossick in the ground. A 13-year-old boy died from tetanus, apparently from a magpie injury, in northern New South Wales in 1946. Being unexpectedly swooped while cycling is not uncommon, and can result in loss of control of the bicycle, which may cause injury. In Ipswich, a 12 year old boy was killed in traffic while trying to evade a swooping magpie on 16 August 2010.

If it is necessary to walk near the nest, wearing a broad-brimmed or legionnaire's hat or using an umbrella will deter attacking birds, but beanies and bicycle helmets are of little value as birds attack the sides of the head and neck. Eyes painted on hats or helmets will deter attacks on pedestrians but not cyclists. Attaching a long pole with a flag to a bike is an effective deterrent. As of 2008, the use of cable ties on helmets has become common and appears to be effective. Magpies prefer to swoop at the back of the head; therefore, keeping the magpie in sight at all times can discourage the bird. Using a basic disguise to fool the magpie as to where a person is looking (such as painting eyes on a hat, or wearing sunglasses on the back of the head) can also prove effective. In some cases, magpies may become extremely aggressive and attack people's faces; it may become very difficult to deter these birds from swooping. Once attacked, shouting aggressively and waving one's arms at the bird should deter a second attack. If a bird presents a serious nuisance the local authorities may arrange for that bird to be legally destroyed, or more commonly, to be caught and translocated to an unpopulated area. Magpies have to be moved some distance as almost all are able to find their way home from distances of less than 25 km (15 mi). Removing the nest is of no use as birds will breed again and possibly be more aggressive the second time around.

[...]

The Magpies is the most famous poem by New Zealand poet Denis Glover (1912–1980). It helped define New Zealand's distinctive style of poetry. The poem was first published in Glover's 1964 anthology Enter Without Knocking.

Over the course of six short stanzas, the life of a farming couple from young man and wife through to their death of old age is recounted, each verse finishing with the couplet:

'And Quardle oodle ardle wardle doodle/The magpies said,'

except for the last verse, in which the last word is 'say.'

The intention of the poem is to indicate the passage of time and yet the timelessness of nature. A human lifetime passes, yet the underlying natural life - symbolised by the unchanging backdrop of the magpies' call - remains unchanging.

The phrase imitating the call of the Australian Magpie is one of the most well-known lines in New Zealand poetry."

Lake Tekapo

observatory

Church of the Good Shepherd

Southern Cross and Milky Way

Mt. John Observatory by day

One long day of travel took us from Stewart Island up to Lake Tekapo, a small town on the southern shore of its namesake lake, in Mackenzie Country, the center of the South Island.  Lake Tekapo is known simply for being scenic, offering views of mountains, the modest Church of the Good Shepherd, and the milky, turquoise lake.  (The lake is colored by the light-refracting "rock flour" left behind by the stony-bottomed glacier that carved out the lake's basin.)  Lake Tekapo is a popular stop for passers-by making the journey to Mt. Cook, and it is particularly popular with Japanese tourists, though we never learned why.

Because of its isolation from major coastal towns, Mackenzie Country has a reputation as one of the top spots in New Zealand to stargaze, and the University of Canterbury operates a research observatory atop Mt. John.  The university offers nighttime tours of the observatory, turning over all but one of the research telescopes for public use.  We allowed three days in Lake Tekapo, to rest, but also for a few chances at a clear night.  We arrived just after the new moon, and after missing out on the Southern Lights on Stewart Island, cosmological anticipation reached a feverish intensity.

Our first night in town looked to be by far the clearest, so we fought our travel fatigue and assembled for the 11pm shuttle up the mountain.  Though it was extremely windy, the night was perfectly clear and perfectly dark - flashlights were forbidden.  We were given heavy down jackets, hot chocolate, and a short orientation to the features of the Southern Hemisphere before we were cut loose on the three large telescopes.  Each telescope was manned by a University of Canterbury researcher who selected interesting features of the night sky for us to look at, and who answered whatever questions we had.  There was also an astrophotography station, where we were helped to our first shots of the stars.  Through the telescopes we saw nebulae, star clusters, galaxies, Jupiter, and many other astro-features, while with our naked eyes we could see the Small and Large Magellanic Clouds, Milky Way, and countless shooting stars.  It all amounted to one of my favorite evenings in New Zealand.

We followed it up the next afternoon in Tekapo at the lakeside hot pools and spa.  We paid 32 dollars for entry, so we worked hard to get our money's worth, alternating between hot, medium, and mild temperature pools, soaking for four consecutive hours!

Finally, before leaving town, we stopped by the Mt. John Astro Cafe, located atop Mt. John, just next to the observatory.  Certainly the coolest cafe location I've ever seen, it offers 360 degree views of the Mackenzie Basin, and allowed us to appreciate the beauty of the observatory now in the daylight.

Stewart Island

voi

 

Stewart Island Mud

Stewart Island Robin

Kākā comes to visit

As close as we got

Injuries forced us to skip over Stewart Island on our last trip south, but the call of the wild kiwi bird is impossible to ignore.  Reachable only by air or a choppy ferry across the Foveaux Strait, New Zealand's third island (south of the South Island) is home to only 400 humans - and up to 20,000 Stewart Island Brown Kiwi.

We have heard (and been woken up by) kiwi calls in Kahurangi, Mt. Aspiring, Fiordland, and Arthur's Pass, but opportunities to spot the bird in the wild are few.  Kiwi are shy and nocturnal, and mainland New Zealand populations are quickly shrinking due to predation.  And so if we wanted to give ourselves the best chance to see the 70 million-year-old flightless icon, we knew we'd best get ourselves to Stewart Island.

The two long tramping tracks on Stewart Island are the Rakiura Track and the Northwest Circuit.  The Northwest Circuit is 10-12 days long, and much of it plods through Stewart Island's infamous mud (it is has been known to reach up to your chest).  The Rakiura Track is an abbreviated version of the Northwest Circuit, and while the three-day Great Walk skips over the most majestic sites on the island, planks and boardwalks offer protection from much of the mud, and of course, it is not 11 days long.

Our Rakiura adventure got off to an inauspicious start when the sunshine and calm turned suddenly to a downpour of pebble-sized hail.  Minutes later, the sun was out shining again, which set the tempo for the next three days.  Storms blew in over our heads and back out to sea again before we ever had time to take out our rain gear, and we began to understand that 270 or so days of rain a year on the island did not mean plenty of sunshine couldn't be mixed in.

We began the track at Halfmoon Bay, which houses the island township of Oban, and followed the coast to sunny Horseshoe Bay before entering into the bush.  Stewart Island is dominated by native vegetation and does not feature beech as do the rainforests of the South Island.  The totara, rimu, miro, and rata we walked through gave us an idea of what much of New Zealand might have once looked like, and the forest did feel like it was from another order of creation.  Christina called it Dr. Seussian.

Unfortunately, what DOC said was our best opportunity to spot a kiwi on the track, our first night at Port William Hut, was washed out by a storm that never quite cleared.  We would later hear a kiwi while searching at twilight back in Oban, but on the track the closest we got to seeing the bird was the comments by former trampers in the hut logs: "Saw kiwi at Port William.  Came over and pecked my boot!" "Kiwis spotted: four.  Kiwi fights witnessed: two."  "WHAT CUTIES <3 <3"  etc., etc.

Not all of the Stewart Island experience was lost with the hiding kiwi, however.  Because the winter repairs to the track's boardwalk system were still underway, we answered such pressing questions as: Is this mud pool I am about to step in an inch deep or two feet deep?  With little longterm damage, Christina also briefly transformed into something called the "Mud-Witch."  And we did spot and hear many other native birds, including the kākā, a wild parrot related to the notorious alpine kea, green and red-crowned parakeets, bellbirds, tomtit, grey warblers, brown creepers, moreporks, and others.  The heavy winds and rains lessened the song and overall presence of the birds, though we were satisfied by a later trip to the wild bird sanctuary at the neighboring Ulva Island.

Our search for the globular phantom continues, though, I can't imagine we'll come as close again as we have been.  This is the enchantment and disappointment of Stewart Island.

Queenstown

outerspace

Four icecreams in 24 hours.

Fox Glacier

d

Terminal face of Fox Glacier

Through an ice tunnel

Surprise!

Séracs

The forecast predicted cloud and rain, but Christina had the good sense to make us climb the glacier anyway.  After some morning uncertainty, her faith was rewarded by a blue sky over the glacier, the Southern Alps, and the imposing Mt. Tasman.  What a turn of good luck!

Fox Glacier and Franz Josef glacier are the two largest of several thousand New Zealand glaciers, and they are also two of the healthiest glaciers in the world.  Whereas rising temperatures have forced most glaciers to retreat, the same heat is pushing the warm ocean air between New Zealand and Australia toward New Zealand's west coast, where it hits the alps and falls as precipitation, feeding the two glaciers.  Fox Glacier's nevé, its snow accumulation area, is a whopping 36 square kms (larger than Christchurch), and is what feeds the glacier's movement.  The abundance of snow turns to ice and gravity pushes the iceflow down the mountain.  Because it also travels down a very narrow passageway, the ice-river moves many times faster than its glacier-friends around the world.  And the 13 km long glacier falls to just 250m above sea level, and actually ends in a rainforest.  Very New Zealand!

We climbed up the glacier, beginning at the terminal face, in a group of eight.  We were given mountaineering boots, crampons (spikes that tie to the bottom of our boots), and an alpenstock (walking stick with a pick at the end).  Our guide cut fresh tracks and ice steps with his pickaxe for us to climb up, and we walked up the face of the glacier for about four to five hours.

Near the terminal face, the ice flows more like wavy hair - it is easy to walk on and features mostly simple structures.  Here we crawled through ice tunnels, stared down ice pits that fade to black, and listened to the rushing of water many meters below our feet.  And as we climbed higher, and we got quite high in a no-nonsense group, the valley got steeper and we got closer to the nevé, which means the force of gravity acting upon the ice became stronger.  This crunches the ice together, shooting jagged pinnacles of ice up into the sky, called séracs.

We concluded our climb through an intensely narrow passageway, made navigable only because the ice was so slippery, reaching a particularly dense area of séracs.  It was the most beautiful and fascinating area, and made for the perfect finale to our adventure.

Westland/ Welcome Flat

Punakaiki Pancake Rocks

Black swan at Lake Rotoiti

We left Blenheim driving at the speed of light, which means when we finally stopped in Nelson Lakes National Park, it took Christina 306 seconds to hear my exclamation of "fuck yeah!"

We stopped at Lake Rotoiti just long enough to feel the sweet itch of the first sandfly bites in months, and under the circumstances, it was most welcome.  We continued southwest towards the Punakaiki Pancake Rocks on the west coast.  During hightide these rock-stack towers transform into massive blowholes, shooting saltwater dozens of meters in the air, and when you catch a good one, all over you.

Our destination, though, was the small town at Fox Glacier, from where we would depart the next morning for the Copland Track.  The Copland Track was one of the most explored alpine routes in New Zealand, following the Copland River about 24 kms deep into the mountains, where it then climbed up the Copland Pass, all the way to the west coast.  Avalanches, landslides, and other forces have all but destroyed the track, and adventure companies no longer even offer guided tours through the pass.  You can, however, still follow the river through the mountainous valley all the way to the start of the pass, where you are stopped by this season's avalanche!

Did we remember how to move with our backpacks on?  Or did the very fine Blenheim cuisine make us soft?  Christina quickly answered the question of who would trip and fall on the trail first (face first into a puddle), as well as the question of who would fall the following four times.  Overall though, neither of us suffered worse than a few scrapes and bruises re-discovering our tramping legs.

We made a three day tramp of it, spending both nights at the Welcome Flat Hut.  This was the true purpose of our trek - the terrific alpine scenery actually a surprise bonus.  For at Welcome Flats, just one hundred meters away from the hut, are three geothermal hot springs, the largest the size of a tennis court.  Each holds a different temperature (between 35-55 C, which I am told is 95-131 F), controlled by small channels of water flowing from the source.  Unlike the pools in the North Island that are heated by volcanic activity, these pools are heated by the collision of plates at the Alpine Fault.  Rainwater falls through cracks in the earth's surface, and the tectonic energy heats the rainwater, pushing it up towards the surface, where it soothes the tired legs and backs of trampers.  The pools bubble and steam, though not because they are boiling, but because gases (often smelly gases - the pools were discovered late in the 19th century and first described as "just stinky enough to be valuable") are escaping from underneath the earth's crust.

We soaked in the pools at night, the only two people there (there was a chorus of toads), under the clearest, moonless nighttime sky, the starlight of which was reflected by the snowy peaks that surrounded us.  Spectacular!

We spent the first and third days walking to and from Welcome Flat, and on our second morning we walked the difficult route into the mountains to Douglas Rock Hut.  We returned late that afternoon to Welcome Flat to find that a larger crowd and a layer of cloud had settled in.  The previous night was unrepeatable, but the water was still plenty warm.

We arrived back at Fox Glacier worn out and completely satisfied, awaiting the weather forecast to see if we ought to get more intimate with the glacier the next morning.

The Dutch boy next to me is writing a blog entry of his own: Glowworms, Booze, and Strippers.  I think I am doing this trip all wrong.