12/2/06: Hobart and Home

Today I spent the day playing tourist in Hobart. In the morning I headed down to Salamanca Market, an open air market held every Saturday. Vendors were selling wood carvings, used books, jewelry, chess sets, meat pies, baked goods, T-shirts, children’s toys, plants, honey, jams, photography, felt hats, crocheted scarves, lead soldiers, woolen products, lavender products, wind chimes, fossils, glassworks, and lots more. Lots of musicians, including a group with someone juggling flaming torches. And lots of people to talk to. One vendor was probably in his mid 60s and had been born in England. Had strong feelings about war, Bush, Blair, and John Howard (Australia’s PM). About 30 years ago, he had set out in a truck from England and spent 3 years driving through Europe to the Middle East and Afghanistan and India and China and Burma and to Australia, and I don’t remember where else. That's definitely a journey you couldn't do today. I also met someone who was selling some beautiful photography of some of the areas I’d been (much better than mine), but it was a bit too expensive.

The day alternated between brief showers and sun, so it was put the sunglasses on, take the sunglasses off. Put the rain jacket on, take the rain jacket off. Typical Tassie weather.

I walked back up to my B&B after making a number of purchases and packed my gear, wanting to find out if I needed to purchase another bag. (No, everything fits.) Then I spent the rest of the day wandering around Hobart. Had a delicious dinner at a restaurant where the host came out to each table and guest and explained every item on the menu and how it was prepared. Everything sounded so good it was hard to decide what to pick!

And then it was back to the B&B for the evening, getting ready to leave tomorrow. What an incredible month this has been. New Zealand, with its mountains and kayaking, unique places to stay and a great group to travel with. The Overland Track in Tassie, which was an amazing journey in a time when most of us don’t have the chance to spend 6 days walking with another wonderful group of people. A week on my own wandering around a beautiful country with a lot of history. The weather wasn’t always cooperative, but that’s the way the weather is in this part of the world at this time of the year. They call it the Roaring Forties, for the latitude. (Head south towards the Antarctic and you'll find the Furious Fifties and Screaming Sixties.)

I have been impressed by the Kiwi and Tassie people I’ve met. They have been self reliant and good natured, and have a deep love for their respective islands. People on both islands seem from the outside to have a lower level of gratuitous consumption than the US, which is a good lesson for us. They’ve managed to avoid many of the more egregious habits of the US, such as billboards and (to a large extent) mega mansions. Although there are huge ongoing battles with respect to the environment in Tassie (and some of the battles have been lost, such as damming rivers and logging old growth forests), much has been protected. Both countries are proud of their environment and their high quality local produce and cheeses and wine and chocolates and other products, and love to introduce their guests to these items.

It has been a very special time, and I’m grateful that I had the opportunity to take a trip like this. As I’ve traveled, I’ve also pondered the environmental impact of traveling. One of the things we learned on the REI trip is that starting in 2007, REI is going to be carbon neutral. That means (among other things) buying carbon offsets for its Adventure travel. Given the high environmental impact of plane travel, that’s something I’m going to look into when I get home. I don't think carbon offsets will "solve the problem" of global warming, but they are part of the search for answers.

Thanks to anyone who’s still reading this for coming along. I’ve enjoyed sharing my journey with my family and friends. Here’s to sharing our many journeys yet to come. Cheers!

Today's pictures are here.

12/1/06: Hobart to Bruny Island

With kayaking a no go due to the weather, I ended up going out to Bruny Island. On the way, I stopped by the Australian Antarctic Division Headquarters. The facility was mostly devoted to offices and research, but they had a few exhibits focused on the science they were doing. It was interesting to listen to video of several scientists talking about their work.

Then it was on to Kettering, a small marina with lots of sailboats and yachts, at which one gets on the ferry to Bruny Island. The island is quite rural and is made up of two big pieces of land joined by a very narrow isthmus. One side of the isthmus is a long curving white sand beach, on which there is a penguin rookery. Since the penguins are at sea during the day, there were no penguins to see while I was there.

The ferry lands on the north end of Bruny Island, and you drive around to the south end on paved and gravel roads, all narrow and winding. I went to Adventure Bay on the southeast corner of the island. Abel Tasman spotted this bay in 1642 but couldn’t land due to gale force winds. Captain Cook and Captain Forneaux left England in 1772 to explore the area and became separated in the southern seas. Forneaux found the bay again and named it Adventure Bay, after his ship. Cook returned in 1777 with William Bligh as his sailing master, and Bligh returned again in 1788. So there is a lot of documented history in this little bay, to say nothing of the unknown history we walk across unknowing wherever we travel.

Lots of whaling took place at the bay until the crash of the whale populations. It’s said that the ocean floor around the bay is littered with whale skeletons. (Not sure if that’s poetic license or not … don’t know how long a whale skeleton would last at the bottom of the ocean…)

From the south end of Adventure Bay I took a hike along the shore, then up to Fluted Cape. Beautiful sunny day, lovely hike. Fluted Cape has about 4 of the vertical columns that are similar to those on Tasman Peninsula. People fairly regularly climb the ones on Tasman, so I assume they climb these as well. After the hike I returned past Bligh's Creek, Captain Cook Creek, and a sign where Captain Cook's tree once stood (complete with his carved initials), then headed back to the ferry.

I had passed a chocolate factory on the way to Adventure Bay and thought I would stop on my return if I had time, but alas, when I returned the place was closed.

Back in Hobart, I headed down to Salamanca Street looking for dinner. Saturday morning there’s a huge market there, which I’ll go to tomorrow. But tonight only the restaurants were open, and I just wandered around and people watched. It’s nearly full summer here, so everyone was walking around in shirtsleeves, and it’s light until 8:30 or so. I listened to a bagpipe band that was fundraising. Seven pipers and two drummers, all in kilts, plus several people walking around selling raffle tickets for a bottle of scotch. (I didn't ask what kind of scotch...) The band was quite good, but I did a double take when they started playing Jingle Bells. Yes, it was nearly December, but on bagpipes? When it was summer and shirtsleeve weather?

One more full day, and then it’s time to go home. In some ways I’m looking forward to being home, and in other ways I’ll be very sad to leave. But there’s tomorrow to enjoy before thinking too hard about leaving. Cheers!

Today's pictures are here.

11/29/06: Tasman Peninsula from the Sea

This morning I took a quick walk down to the beach below my hotel to see the Tesselated Pavement. The term tessellated means “interior or exterior floor covering composed of stone tesserae (Latin: “dice”), cubes, or other regular shapes closely fitted together in simple or complex designs with a durable and waterproof cement, mortar, clay, or grout.”

In this case, what appears to be a flat stretch of cobblestone or flagstone pavement is a purely natural phenomenon. The flat surface of what is now the beach is siltstone, laid down when the area was at the bottom of a sea. The siltstone cracked due to stresses in the earth’s crust, with the cracks occurring in three different alignments. The cracking was followed by erosion. Areas farther from the ocean tend to erode at the surface more quickly than the joints, so they look more like flat tiles. Areas closer to the water get more erosion at the joints due to the salt crystals and sand, and tend to form more pan shaped or brick shaped forms.

After checking out of my hotel, next up was a “Sealife Experience Tasmania” cruise in a former whale-watching boat, which would go from Eaglehawk Neck down the east coast and around Tasman Island at the tip of the peninsula, about 30 kilometers each way. Finding the jetty from which the cruise departed took a bit of doing, and when I thought I was in the right place I walked down to check it out before I gathered up my jacket and camera. Turns out I was indeed in the right spot. Two young men owned the boat and took turns piloting and providing commentary. After they confirmed that I had the right place, one of them asked me if I was going to “rug up a bit before the trip.” (I.e., dress more warmly. And yes, most assuredly I was.)

The cruise was a chance to see the wild and rugged cliffs and coastline from the sea. We were able to maneuver quite close to features such as rock arches and caves, and right up to seals sunning (well, clouding, I guess) on the rocks and splashing into the water. The seas were fairly rough (at least from my inland lake perspective), and I was glad that I had fortified myself with some Dramamine before we left. One of the participants was looking a bit glassy eyed towards the end of the trip.

This area of Tasmania has a hugely varied geology. Sedimentary siltstone, sandstone, igneous dolorite and granite rocks. A lot of the siltstone has been (and continues to be) eroded out by the surf and waves, creating arches, caves, and blowholes. The water is incredibly clear, and there’s great scuba diving. I was kicking myself for not getting some scuba diving in, despite the cold water, but then I realized that with the tail end of my cold still hanging on, it would not have been pleasant to try to equalize the pressure in my ears.

In addition to seals, amazing rock formations and cliffs, we saw albatrosses and other sea birds and jellyfish and kelp forests and sea eagles' nests. Towards the end of the trip we stopped in a sheltered bay for wine (I had orange juice since I would be driving soon) and smoked salmon and cheese and squid and tuna. Quite tasty, although I passed on the squid.

At the end of the cruise I headed for Hobart, my last destination before returning home. On the way I stopped at a berry farm and had a Devonshire tea. As I was paying for my tea, I spotted a box of cherries that had been picked that morning and couldn't resist purchasing them. When I got to my bed and breakfast place in Hobart, I started nibbling on them. They were fabulous, and I quickly scarfed down the entire box. I’m not sure if it was simply that they were picked at the peak of freshness or whether Tasmanian fruit really is better or whether the exhilaration of the tour along the coast had whetted my appetite, but they were delicious.

My bed and breakfast is in the Battery Point area of Hobart. Battery Point is made up of lots of colonial houses built in the 1800s, now serving as bed and breakfasts, private homes, restaurants, and the like. Very nice place to walk around. I had dinner at a curry restaurant where the Indian cricket team is rumored to eat when it vists town, and spotted lots of other candidate restaurants for the next couple days.

My original plan had been to go kayaking on Friday (tomorrow) and spend Saturday puttering around Hobart and visiting the big open air market. Unfortunately, the kayaking has been called off due to high winds. So I’m pondering options for tomorrow. Stay tuned!

Pictures from yesterday and today are here.

11/28/06: Tasman Peninsula: Devils, Convicts, and Hiking

The Tasman Peninsula is on the southeast corner of Tasmania. It has 300 meter high cliffs, beautiful beaches, and a lot of history. During the 1800s, a place called Port Arthur was where convicts who had committed additional crimes after being transported to Australia were kept. The southern part of the peninsula was considered a natural penitentiary because its northern tip squeezes down to 100 meters at a place called Eaglehawk Neck, which was guarded by a line of chained dogs.

The place I ended up booking a hotel room was at Eaglehawk Neck, and when I drove around a corner and came to the overlook that looks down on the area, I was most impressed. Beautiful sunny day, huge half moon bay, white sands, tall cliffs. The hotel is right on the bay, and I can hear the surf pound all night long.

The day after I arrived I was quite tired. It felt like it did when I was rowing and had overtrained. Just going up a flight of stairs was tiring. So the first day here turned into a pure tourist day.

First stop was at the Tasmanian Devil Conservation Park. Tasmanian Devils are little black marsupials (maybe 2-3 feet long?). They’re slow and don’t see well and can’t hunt, but what they do very well is scavenge. They go after any dead meat they can come across. Their jaws are the strongest in the world for their size, and they eat anything they find, bones and all. They also love to fight, and they growl at each other ferociously. If one of them finds a lovely piece of road kill, the others will come up and try to take it away.

Unfortunately, the devils are being hit hard by a contagious cancerous disease that causes tumors to grow on their faces. Because they are always fighting, it seems to be spreading by the wounds they inflict on each other. Eventually the tumors get so big that they can’t eat and they end up starving to death. The conservation park is trying to keep a healthy breeding population alive, as well as assisting with efforts to find a cure.

In addition to the devils, the park had a variety of other birds and animals it has rescued, including kangaroos and wallabies and (hooray!) a 10 month old wombat.

After spending time at the park, I headed for Port Arthur, a former convict settlement, where I took the walking tour and the boat tour and later on the ghost tour. Interesting place, when you think of the lives that were spent there. The prison had some good intentions (teaching the convicts a trade, switching from corporal punishment to solitary confinement, caring for released prisoners who couldn’t function in the outer world and for people with mental illness.) But not all of its good intentions were achieved, and it was a harsh and sad place.

Next day my legs were back to normal, so I did a couple of hikes. The first was along the coast looking at arches and sea caves and waterfalls. After lunch, I headed for a cape walk. The first part of the hike was mostly climbing along the cliffs. Alas, just about the time I could see the tip of the cape I was heading to, I decided that it would be wise to turn back -- it was about 4:15 in the afternoon, it was my second hike of the day over rough ground, and although the guidebook said this was a heavily used trail, I had only seen one other person, and that had been quite a while ago. As a result, all I have is a picture of the final part of the hike.

Tomorrow, though, I’m taking a cruise out to the same cape, so will at least see it from the water. And after the cruise it’s on to Hobart.

Pictures from today and tomorrow are here.

11/26/06: Wineglass Bay and Hazards Beach

After a lovely breakfast at the B&B, I headed off for my morning hike. I started at the upper end of the Freycinet peninsula and hiked over the Hazards and down to Wineglass Bay, a half moon shaped beach with white sand and crystal clear water. (All of the water here is amazingly clear. One of the reasons is that there is very little agricultural runoff.) Often when I’m on a hike I get a little too task focused, and feel compelled to keep moving. I don’t know whether I’m relaxing a bit or whether Wineglass Bay is that special, but I ended up sitting on the rocks for an hour and just taking it in.

Next the trail crossed back to the other side of the peninsula and came out to another beautiful beach, then climbed up and came back along the cliffs above the water. Periodically you could hear the waves pounding below. The day had started out cloudy and turned sunny and hot, and it was a delightful hike.

Lunch was a cheese and spinach pie. Both here and in New Zealand, meat and vegetable pies are quite popular. Another big item is a “slice”, which we would probably call a kind of bar. Two layers of a biscuit-y cake, caramel or jam or something sweet in between, and frosting on top. Quite decadent. I’ve been able to exert some restraint when I’ve been on my own, but when they were packed in our lunches on the New Zealand trip, I felt obligated to find a home for them. And I have a recipe for one that one of the New Zealand guides emailed to me, so we may have to try one when I get home.

After a short break back at the B&B it was time for the twilight kayaking trip. There were only 3 of us, so I ended up paddling with one of the guides (always a good deal; they’re the best paddlers and you get lots of extra information.) We got soaked heading out through the waves, but as long as we were moving it was reasonably warm. We paddled in and out of several bays (including Honeymoon Bay, where we saw a wedding party doing their wedding pictures) and spent a lot of time looking for stingrays and skates and squid in the clear water. We stopped for hot drinks and a muffin at another bay. Getting out of the kayaks in our wet clothes was a little cold, and we tried sitting on the granite rocks that were still warm from the sun, but the bit of sun warmth was more illusory than real. When we paddled back to our starting point and finished, I was glad to put on a warm fleece and turn the heater up full blast as I drove back to the B&B.

Tomorrow I head to the Tasman Peninsula, another peninsula off the southeast corner of the island.

Today's pictures are here.

11/25/06: On to the Freycinet Peninsula

After getting back to the hotel in Launceston Friday night I had the happy task of doing laundry (it truly is a happy task when everything you have is dirty.) Saturday morning it was time to head off to Freycinet. And that meant it was to be my first day of driving on the left side of the road. I was a bit apprehensive about it, to be perfectly honest. All of my reflexes still expect to see cars keeping right, even after 3 weeks here.

As a result, and since I was still getting over my cold, I planned a very conservative day: just drive to the Freycinet Peninsula. In earlier plans I had considered heading an hour in the opposite direction to explore a very cool cave system, or going to a wonderful winery, but I kept it simple.

While I was waiting in line to get my rental car (or "hired car" as we say in Australia), the rental agent was warning the couple in front of me about how dangerous the roads were now that it was tourist season and there were so many people out on the roads who weren't used to driving on the left. More anxiousness ... I did NOT want to become a statistic! After complating the paperwork for the car, I went out to check it out, and immediately unlocked the left hand door to get in, which, of course, was the passenger’s side. Hoping this was not an omen of bad things to come, I loaded up the car and carefully headed off. Fortunately, other than the vigilance needed to make sure I don’t slip into a bad reflexive response, the driving has been fine, with the exception of the way I keep turning on the windshield wipers instead of using the turn signals. Roads are two lane, narrow, and winding. At one point I thought I might be able to test the hypothesis of whether you can get car sick if you’re driving, but I was fine.

I arrived safely in Cole’s Bay and found the Pelican Bay Bed and Breakfast. After a couple of lovely short walks that my host suggested followed by dinner, I’m now sitting in the living room with a wood stove crackling away while waiting for the sun to set.

Freycinet National Park is a southward extending peninsula on the east coast of Tasmania. At the upper end of the peninsula are several 300 meter high granite mountains known as The Hazards (the low mounds to the left of center in the picture at the beginning of this post). The area is well known for its beaches and rock formations. Tomorrow the plan is to do a day hike in the morning and a kayak paddle at 5:00 in the evening.

11/25/06: Overland Track/Cradle Huts

It’s difficult to know what to say about this wonderful adventure. The link to pictures is at the bottom of this post, and they tell much of the story.

I guess the best way to try to tell the rest of the story is to start with the basics and at the beginning. The hike was a six day guided walk with a company called Cradle Huts. “Guided” meant we had two guides and that we stayed at private huts. We walked from Cradle Mountain to the top of Lake St. Clair. With side trips, it was about 75 kilometers.

We met at the appointed pick up spot (a hotel in Launceston) at 6:20 in the morning on the first day of the hike. There are up to 10 people on each hike, and if the hike is full, single travelers are assigned roommates, who could be male or female. Being a single traveler, I was curious to see who my hiking companions would be. The first group I met was seven women friends from Australia. They were hiking on the occasion of one of their 50th birthdays, and had been told that one of the people on their trip was "an international girl." (Me.) (Long time since I've thought of myself as a girl...) The other two members of our party showed up soon, and were a delightful couple from Australia (Neville and Jenny) celebrating Jenny’s 50th birthday. So we ended up with 9 women and one man, all by chance aged 48 to 52. The seven friends were exuberant and extroverted, generous and welcoming, and the group got on well together. Neville looked a bit stunned when he walked into the meeting place and saw that he would be hiking with nine women, but he coped very well. Fortunately one of the group of seven had had the thoughtfulness to request that Cradle Huts include at least one male guide, which they did, so at least he wasn’t completely on his own.

After we had all assembled, we boarded the bus and headed out to the Cradle Huts headquarters on a property called Pleasant Banks. In addition to serving as the jumping off point for the hikes, Pleasant Banks is an equestrian/dressage facility, so there were a number of curious horses looking at us with interest as we drove up.

Our first task was to pack our gear. Cradle Huts provided packs and lightweight Gortex rain jackets. We carried all of our clothing and personal gear, but no sleeping bags, tents, cooking equipment or food. Due to the unpredictable weather extremes, we were required to bring quite a bit of bad weather gear, so our packs were still in the 20 to 25 pound range.

After having our gear inspected, we headed off in the bus again. A couple of hours later, we were at Waldheim, the starting point of the hike.

Day One was the steepest hike, as we had to climb up onto the plateau. The Overland Track mountains are not particularly high. The tallest is Mt. Ossa, at about 1700 meters (5,200 feet), and once you're on the plateau, the trail crosses high plains and open moorland dotted with lakes, winds around craggy mountains, and dips into magical rain forests with tall trees, ferns, mosses, streams and waterfalls. There had been snow the previous week, and there were still patches of white here and there in the highlands. Many of the trees in the area are ancient varieties -- conifers and ferns unchanged from their ancestors that evolved during the days of the dinosaurs. The eucalypt trees (gum trees) were unfamiliar to me, and always seemed very other-worldly with their pastel colored, multi-hued barks and their foliage growing in tufts or bunches at the tops of the tree. They may have filmed Lord of the Rings in New Zealand, but the areas we walked through certainly looked quite eldritch.

At the first lake we stopped at, we learned about the Six Day Challenge, which is to go swimming once each day on the hike. I was a wimp and declined to participate (didn't even consider it!), but our female guide ended up successfully completing the challenge. Another of our party swam 5 out of 6 days, but skipped the day that was quite windy and cold.

At our first lunch, we got water out of the nearby stream and the guides made tea, coffee or milo (a chocolate drink). As someone who has a tendency to make my lunch stops on hikes a brief stop for an energy bar and a little water, I found it quite civilized to eat a proper lunch, wait for the water to boil, and brew and sip our tea. At first it was a little disconcerting to be drinking out of streams (that hadn’t turned out well the time I tried it in the Smokey Mountains with D'Na, Pam, and Rob), but this area is so pristine that you can pretty much drink out of any stream or lake. Of course, the downside to a lovely break at lunch is that you have to get completely warmed up again when you start hiking, but that's doable.

At the end of the first day we got our first look at the huts that would be our homes for the next five nights. They were marvels of cozy efficiency. Six small bedrooms (five for the guests, one for the guides), a big kitchen/dining room/living area, hot showers, and a drying room. Solar energy charged the batteries that powered the lights. Rainwater was collected for water. The gas stoves, range, oven, and water heaters were powered by liquid propane gas. The huts are stocked via helicopter with staples twice a season. Each hut has a different dinner menu that is cooked every night: lentils and sausages at the first hut, risotto with mushrooms and peas at another, pasta and red sauce at another, etc. Food scraps not taken along for lunch are composted; recycling and waste are removed by helicopter.

The huts had no refrigeration, so the guides carried some fresh food items to supplement the hut staples for the first few nights. Each day, one guide would go ahead in the early afternoon to get the next hut ready. By the time we arrived, there were snacks (sometimes muffins, sometimes scones, etc.) and beverages waiting to tide us over until dinner.

Dinner was soup, an entrée, and a desert, with Tasmanian wine. Each group got a quota of 3 bottles of red and 2 bottles of white each night. The guides baked bread every night, so we had fresh toast for breakfast and fresh bread to make sandwiches out of for lunch each day.

Needless to say, most people who do the Overland Track don’t do it in such a pampered fashion … they carry their food, cooking gear, sleeping bag and tent, they do without showers, they use smelly pit toilets at the public huts, and they certainly don’t have wine for dinner every night. As we hiked, I frequently thought about what I would think of people doing the track the way we were doing it if I were doing it on my own, and my thoughts weren’t particularly charitable. But leaving aside the "right" or "wrong" way of doing the trip, we definitely traded some independence and self sufficiency for security and creature comforts, and the peace and solitude of a small group or solo hiker for the conversation and opportunity to meet new friends in a large group.

Day Three was land leech day, as most of us managed to collect a leech during our hike. I had not been aware until I went to Tasmania that there were such things as land leaches, but I got a first hand acquaintance with the little critters. They drop right off when you pour a little salt on them, though. We took several side trips that, in addition to passing through low brush where the leeches lived, were “unimproved.” Most of the muddy portions of the main track were duckboarded (i.e., improved with wooden tracks.) This is a huge benefit for the walkers, but was probably done just as much for environmental reasons. When the top layer of vegetation is broken at that altitude, it doesn’t recover, and the ground underneath quickly starts eroding. When it’s wet, the eroded ground turns to mud. Left to their own devices, hikers will keep walking farther and farther around the muddy spots, creating more eroded ground and larger and larger mud holes. As a result, low impact hiking guidelines say that when you come to a mud hole, you go right through the center. The unimproved trails were full of mud holes. And being environmentally sensitive hikers, we resolutely (if somewhat gingerly) marched through the mud. Most of the time it was only 4-5 inches deep, but sometimes you’d hit a hole and go down a foot or more, making us appreciate our gaiters. We passed some independent hikers who obviously hadn’t been trained in the value of low impact hiking. As they walked by on the edge of the mud hole and stayed clean and dry, they must have thought we were absolute idiots for squelching through the mud.

The weather was good every day but Day Four, which was the day we would have climbed Mt. Ossa. We typically left our packs on the side of the trail when we took side trips, and without packs, Mt. Ossa is usually a 5 hour round trip hike, including lunch at the top. But it was cold and rainy and extremely windy that day, and we couldn’t even see the top of the mountain through the clouds, so we ended up not doing the Mt. Ossa side trip. Nobody was terribly disappointed at the time. Day Four/Day Five was also the day the cold I had been fighting finally hit.

On the fifth night (Thanksgiving Day in the states) we had a combined 50th birthday party for the two birthday girls, Thanksgiving dinner for the Yank, and farewell dinner for the group.

All of the 50-ish people whose day jobs involved working in offices held up very well on the trip. Several people had concerns (foot problems, fear of heights, knee problems, back issues), but there was never a serious whine or complaint (or whinge as we say in Australia), and although it was sometimes difficult to get the group into motion, we traveled well (if noisily) once we were underway.

On the sixth day, we hiked down off the plateau to the top of Lake St. Clair and took a ferry about 15 kilometers to the other end, cutting a day or so off what could be an even longer hike. There we met the bus and drove back to Pleasant Banks, our starting point. As we unloaded the packs we had carried for the past 6 days and transferred our gear into our travel luggage, cell phones come out and were turned on and chirped with voice mail messages. A few people wandered off to converse with the outer world. Hiking gear was replaced by jeans and other travel-wear, and our group transformed back to city dwellers.

In a philosophical moment, I asked someone if we had been changed by our journey. Her reply was “you don’t always have to be changed by a journey; it’s enough to simply appreciate it.”

Then it was time for a glass of champagne and one last trip in the bus. The seven friends were headed to the airport and back to Sydney for the 50th birthday party, while Jenny and Neville and I headed to hotels in Launceston.

It’s hard to sum up the trip in words. The Overland Track is a unique and beautiful area. The guides and private huts were superb. At first I felt a bit guilty to have had such a luxurious trip (i.e. guided, staying in huts), but after thinking about it, I came to the conclusion that huts are maintained with a high respect for the environment, and that these trips provide the opportunity for a lot of people to do the Overland Track (and support the park by paying fees) who wouldn’t otherwise do so. I feel privileged to have had the opportunity to have done the hike. If I have a wish for the next hike I take (and for life in general), it is to continue growing more present to each moment. There were too many times when I caught myself doing heads-down hiking, or thinking or talking about something totally trivial, and realized I was missing out on the amazing world in front of me. And at the end of the trip I found myself thinking "but wait ... I didn't pay enough attention to every moment." What do they say ... life is a matter of moments, not milestones? Ah, well. An opportunity for my ongoing journey...

Pictures are here.

11/18/06: On to Tasmania

Leaving New Zealand involved lots of long lines (the wrong line, the right line, the pay-your-tax-to-leave-the-country line) and one short line (airport security is much simpler here). What seemed like a huge amount of time before my flight turned into just enough. Melbourne, Australia was the first stop, and even the light was different from New Zealand light ... drier, hazier and dustier. There's a drought going on in Australia, which may be contributing to the dust.

Tasmania is an island off the southeast coast of Australia. The plane from Melbourne to Launceston (LAWN-ces-ton; three syllables) was a turbo prop. We walked outside the terminal and climbed a ladder to board the plane. Kind of like George Bush does, I guess, although the ladder was much shorter, and we didn't turn around to wave at anyone.

On the plane I sat next to a gentleman from Launceston who had been working on the renovation of a gold mine in Papua New Guinea, and was home for a week. We talked about what it was like to work with such a different culture and how powerful the moments are when people from vastly different backgrounds can connect as just people. We also talked about Launceston and Tasmania and added items to my Tasmanian "to see" list, which is already too long.

Saturday I spent doing errands and laundry and going for a walk in the Cataract Gorge in Launceston. My airplane seat-mate loves to walk in the gorge, and we talked about how lucky a city is when it has a natural place for people to visit.

Tomorrow morning we start the Overland Track walk. The book says "The Overland Track is Tasmania's best known walk and has become a mecca for walkers from all parts of the globe. The track winds its way through Cradle Mountain - Lake St Clair National Park crossing exposed alpine plateaus, passing through dense forests and alongside tranquil lakes and tarns." It's about 65 kilometers, which we'll do in six days and five nights. I'll check in when I get back, which will be Friday night in Tasmania.

Cheers, and be well!

Pictures are here.

11/17/06: End of New Zealand Adventure

Our final dinner was awesome. It was also a birthday dinner for one of our group, and we had salmon on mashed koumara (I think that was the name … sweet potatoes) with spinach and mushrooms and a side garnish of sun dried tomatoes and feta cheese and olives, along with some champagne we had collected along the way and a bottle of wine a couple trip members donated from their wine tasting tour. The dinner was fabulous, and made us appeciate how lucky we were when it came to guides on this trip.

We hung out in the living room after dinner and talked, and made a list of our New Zealand-isms. From the plane flight came “do up your seatbelts.” The appetizers that were put out to appease the hungry hikers while dinner was cooking were “wee nibblies.” Our guides often encouraged us to “go have a wander” along the beach or elsewhere. Good on you. No worries. Cheers.

Next morning we headed off for the airport. Along the way we stopped at the Cookie Time factory, which is where the largest cookie in the world was made. The walls of the buildings are painted with chocolate chip cookies. We didn’t get a tour, but if you buy a cookie in the show room they have a microwave to heat it up, so they clearly have the proper respect for a warm chocolate chip cookie.

Then it was time to say good bye, much as we all wanted to go around again. We had become a family over the past 11 days, and I will miss my new friends. Most of the group headed for the flight to Auckland and home. I headed for the international terminal to fly to Australia and the Tasmania portion of my trip, and the van drove off for the last time with our guides and one person who will spend one more day in Christchurch. It was a wonderful trip with a great group of people in a very special place, led by guides who truly wanted to share their country with us. The weather was sometimes uncooperative, but we were able to do nearly all that we set out to do.

Next stop, Tasmania. Cheers!

11/16/06: Mt. Cook

The wind has been howling all day yesterday and overnight, rattling the windows and tugging at the roof, and it continued to blow today. This is apparently the windiest time of the year. We headed off to hike at Mt. Cook after breakfast. Since Braemar Station is fairly close to the same end of Lake Pukaki as Mt. Cook is and there’s no way to get around on the short end of the lake, we had to drive all the way to the end on one side of the lake and then all the way back on the other side, and the lake is probably 15 miles long. Clouds were drifting over the top of Mt. Cook as we drove, and sure enough, by the time we got there the day had clouded over. And the wind was still blowing.

There’s a cluster of buildings in the village of Mt. Cook … a high-end hotel called the Hermitage, a camp ground I think, a Department of Conservation (DOC) facility, a bar and café, etc. In the DOC building there are two loose leaf binders memorializing each climber who has died trying to climb Mt. Cook. There’s a list at the beginning of each binder with the names, cause of death, age of the person, and location where they were lost. Causes included hypothermia, falls, heart attacks, and several “no trace.” Following the list was a page for each person, showing a picture and something about them. It was very moving.

The DOC person said that the hike we had planned wouldn’t be a good idea due to the wind, so we took a hike to Hooker Lake instead. We crossed two suspension bridges over a rushing river, then walked through a valley with lots of glaciers on the slopes above. We saw and heard the rumble of a couple of small avalanches while we were walking. The hike ended at Hooker Lake, which is a glacier fed lake, with the terminal face of the glacier at one end of the lake and chunks of ice that have split off and drifted to the other end of the lake.

We had lunch in the (marginal) shelter of some rocks, then headed back. Tonight is our final night party (we’re eating the salmon we picked up yesterday). Tomorrow we head back to Christchurch and go our separate ways, which will be sad.

Pictures are here.

11/15/06: Lake Manipouri to Queenstown to Mt. Cook.

I did the bungy jump! But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let’s do this in order. Last night dinner was great fish and chips from the pub next door, and this morning the guides cooked breakfast for us in the motel’s kitchen. After breakfast we loaded the van, and while the guides cleaned up from breakfast and filled up the van with gas, we started off on foot. It was a country road, with fields of sheep and deer and the sound of birds all around. I don’t know enough about birdsongs to know which is which, but it’s quite lovely. At the time the first Europeans arrived it was said that the birds were so loud that you couldn’t hear yourself think. Because there were no land predators in New Zealand, many species of birds evolved as ground nesters. Alas, when they introduced stoats in the 1800s to try to control the rabbits they had previously introduced, the stoats wiped out huge numbers of birds. The current populations are something like 10% of what they used to be. They have a captive breeding program for the kiwi (a cute nocturnal bird that is the New Zealand namesake), and they’re using stoat puppets to try to teach the baby chicks that stoats are evil. They also trap stoats quite aggressively in some areas.

We’ve adjusted to some extent to driving on the left side of the road, but it still catches us off guard. I will often look at the person in the left hand front seat of another car and think “That person is way too young to be driving”, or “That driver should be paying more attention” or “Why is the dog driving?” On the walk along the side of the road, we all remembered to walk on the right side, but every time a car came along from the rear, I felt as if I was on the wrong side of the road.

The van eventually came along and picked us up, and we headed off to Queenstown, where we had two hours on our own while the guides got provisions for our days at Mt. Cook. I picked up a jar of Marmite and a few other things to bring home. Marmite is similar to Vegemite and is often eaten on toast. I actually liked it. Sort of. In small quantities.

Then it was off to the bungy jumping. I had decided not to jump. It wasn’t something I had my heart set on, and I figured why spend the money and take the risk of an injury when I still had two weeks of vacation left. I was being very practical and sensible. But this nagging voice kept saying “but I’d really like to try it.” So I watched one person do it and it didn’t seem too bad. This is one of the shorter bungy jumps … only 43 meters. (One of the other locations is something like 130 meters.) So I decided to go for it.

First step was handing all of the pieces of my life to one of my trip mates … my passport, my wallet, my camera, my sunglasses, my change, etc. You sign up for the jump by filling in a little card labeled “toe tag.” (Bungy jumping involves a lot of showmanship.) You get weighed and they write your weight on your hand in kilograms. (No fibbing about your weight on this gig.) Next they tell you they need you to sign your life away (more showmanship; you do sign a waiver, but it’s less intimidating than the one you sign to go kayaking at Lake Calhoun.)

Next you go up and out on the bridge. Our guides went first, jumping tandem. Then the jump crew called my name. The bungy rope connects around your feet. They wrap a very ordinary bath towel around both of your feet and take a few loops with one inch pack webbing and then a heavier belt and attach it to the bungy cord. The towel wasn’t folded properly when they first tried to wrap it around my feet, and two of them had to refold it, which was a little tricky in the wind. All in all, it was a very low tech connection. There’s also a backup/safety line attached to a climbing belt you’ve put on. They ask if you want to go into the water at the bottom of your jump, giving the impression that this is a finely calibrated operation. I’m not sure why, but I said no water.

When you’re all ready, you shuffle/hop (since your feet are strapped tightly together) out onto a small platform and put your toes over the edge. We’re all used to standing on tall objects with a window or railing between us and the edge. Here you are out on a little ledge with nothing but a handhold slightly behind you, while the water rushes by 43 meters below at 10 miles an hour or so and the wind is blowing hard. The river looks pretty narrow too. They count you down … “Five, four, three, two, one, jump!” I jumped before I had time to get too scared. As I approached the water, it was pretty apparent that I was going in. I got dunked up to my chest. You bounce back up with river water spraying all over. After you bob up and down a few times, a boat they have moored to the shore just up river from the jump site comes down to hand you a pole to grab, and and someone in the boat guides you to land on your back on on a trampoline while the people above lower you, and they undo your feet.

I had ordered a DVD of video of my jump but had initially turned down the photos. They go ahead and print 3 pictures of your jump and when you come up they hold them up in a nice folder and ask if you want them, and of course I did by that point. Ka-ching, ka-ching. But you don’t do this often, right? You also get a t-shirt that says “Jumper.” All in all it was quite fun. I don’t think I would have tried the jump that’s three times as high, though.

Next was the drive to Braemar Station, a working sheep station overlooking Lake Pukaki and Mt. Cook. On the way we stopped at a high country salmon farm and picked up salmon for our final night.

Braemar Station is located on rolling hills above the lake, which was carved out by glaciers. The station has lots of paddocks with sheep and cows. We only saw a tiny piece of it ... it's about 65,000 acres if I remember correctly. For some reason the cows in one of the paddocks were particularly fascinated by us every time we drove by and came rushing up to the fence line to say hello, while another group of cows we passed always ran in the opposite direction and wanted nothing to do with us.

We’re staying in what used to be sheep shearer’s quarters. One building has about 5 bedrooms and a kitchen, living room and bathroom, and a second building has a couple of bedrooms. We step outside to gorgeous scenery, including Mt. Cook.

We had another delicious dinner after our arrival, then built a fire in the fireplace and looked at everyone’s bungy DVD on my laptop. When it got dark we trooped out to look at the stars (saw the Southern Cross, and an upside down Orion, and the Magellenic Clouds.) This is the first clear night since we’ve been here.

Tomorrow is hiking towards Mt. Cook. We’ll do one hike up to some high lakes, and one more level hike. Then we have a party tomorrow on the occasion of our last night, and head back to Christchurch Friday morning.

Pictures are here.

Video of the bungy jump is here.

11/14/06: Milford Sound

The plan was to go kayaking on Milford Sound first thing in the morning. We listened to a hard, wind driven rain all night. Each time I woke up, I’d check to see if it was stopping, but alas, it was not. In the morning they cancelled the kayaking due to rough water and hard rain, so we headed out to see the sound on a cruise boat. It continued raining for the first half of the cruise, then stopped.

The area the cruise took us through normally has two permanent waterfalls, but with all the rain, there were hundreds of waterfalls cascading down the sides of the peaks. Standing in the bow of the boat (away from the engines) all you could hear was rushing water from all the waterfalls. And they're very ephemeral ... once the rain stops, most of the waterfalls disappear within 3 hours.

We went out as far as the ocean (the Tasman Ocean), then came back. We caught glimpses of two small penguins and two seals. The wildlife spotting was pretty amusing as people tried to point of the tiny black and white critters on the rocks. “It’s to the left of that tall crack, by the round rock.” “What crack, and which round rock?”

The sound/fjord has a unique underwater ecosystem. The high volume of water flowing into the fjord results in a tannin-filled layer of fresh water on the top of the ocean salt water. The result is that marine plants and animals that normally only live much deeper in the darker depths of the ocean can be found at much shallower depths, making them much more accessible to divers.

After lunch, we headed for the start of one of the famous walks in New Zealand, the Routeburn Track. We hiked up as far as the Key Summit. The trail started in tall beech forest, then passed through sub-alpine shrubs, and alpine bogs and tarns. We could also look across the valley to Lake Marian, where we had hiked yesterday. The area around us was sculpted by glaciers and today drains into 3 different river systems (the “Key Summit” being the key to the three systems.) It was cloudy, but the rain held off while we where hiking.

Back in the van, we headed to Lake Manipouri to stay overnight. Tomorrow we head to Mount Cook. There’s no hike tomorrow, so the guides suggested we start walking along the road we’ll be taking after breakfast and they’ll pick us up in the van after they get breakfast cleaned up. I guess they’re worried that on a day with no hike, we won’t get enough exercise. We’ll stop in Queenstown for any last minute purchases, then go to the bungy jump, and then on to Mount Cook and the Braeburn Sheep Station. If all goes well, we will be doing a 6 hour hike in the Mount Cook area, but rumor has it we may have to take some shorter walks due to the weather. We shall see.

I'll upload pictures when I have more time; today is Wednesday and we're making a quick stop in Queenstown for last minute shopping before heading up to the Mt. Cook. Cheers!

Today's pictures are here.

11/13/06: Lake Marian En Route to MIlford Sound

Today we left Queenstown to head to Milford Sound. Along the way we did a 4 hour hike up to a mountain lake (Lake Marian) that sits in a closed hanging glacial valley. The path went through what we’re now coming to expect as the truly magical New Zealand temperate rain forest. Tall beach trees, ferns, moss. The first half hour was fairly level as we hiked up along a creek to a waterfall. Then it became much steeper, with lots of rocks and branches, and a few awkward scrambles. Lake Marian was beautiful, surrounded by peaks. We spent close to an hour there. No bugs, no rain, warm enough to sit and eat lunch and enjoy the sights and sounds and smells.

The weather forecast called for rain starting in the PM, and we were once again fortunate as it held off until we were getting back into the van after the hike. The training hikes I did are certainly paying off; I finished the hike, hopped into the van for the ride to Milford Sound, and when we got out I expected to do the hobble I’ve been doing after long hikes at home. Instead, I was pleasantly surprised that I didn’t stiffen up at all.

After Lake Marian, we drove to Milford Sound. This is a national park, and we’re staying in a rustic lodge with private rooms but shared bathrooms (one for men, one for women). The power (including the heat) is provided by generators, which are shut off from 11:00 at night until 6:30 in the morning.

Milford Sound is actually a fjord. Sounds are carved out by rivers and filled with sea water; fjords are carved by glaciers. The mountains surrounding Milford drop straight down to the water, so you are surrounded by these hulking shapes rising vertically out of the edge of the fjord. In the clouds and rain, they look a bit ghostly. The area gets something like 7 meters of rainfall a year (more than 250 inches), and of course we’re expecting rain tomorrow. But they say the rain brings out the waterfalls. And the lodge is well designed for rain. Rooms open to the outside, and when you go out of your room you’re on a deck that goes all the way around the lodge. The deck keeps you from having to walk in the mud (especially nice if you are heading to the bathroom after dark), and is covered top and sides with a clear plexiglass which allows light in during the day but keeps the rain off.

We’ll be kayaking tomorrow morning. Breakfast at 6:30, be packed and ready to leave at 7:00, and at the kayak dock by 7:15 to do the paddle before it gets windy. Fortunately this is our earliest start of the trip. Usually we have a far more civilized schedule.

At dinner our guides announced that they were going to do a bungy jump on the way to Mt. Cook day after tomorrow and invited us to join them. I’m tempted to do so, but we shall see. It’s pretty safe; the only risk is a very rare retinal issue. But I’m rather partial to my retinas, so may pass. Stay tuned to find out what I end up doing!

Today's pictures are here.

11/12/06: Queenstown

We drove into Queenstown yesterday, with an hour and a half hike to the top of Mt. Iron and a stop in a former gold rush town called Arrowtown along the way.

Near Arrowtown was one of the many Lord of the Rings movie locations. At this one they filmed Arwen raising the river at the Ford of Bruinen when the Black Riders were trying to catch Frodo, although we didn't see the actual place. Arrowtown has lots of quaint shops, but our group pretty much made a bee line for the one with the home made chocolates. (I went for the dark chocolate w/ apricots, dark chocolate with prunes (interesting…), and dark chocolate with lavender.)

Queenstown sits above and along Lake Wakatipu, New Zealand’s third largest lake. The lake is about 50 miles long (82 kilometers) and parts are over a thousand feet deep. The city bills itself as the adrenaline/adventure capital of the world. We had a day off here with the option to choose to book activities such as bungy jumping (originated here!), jet boating down a steep and narrow canyon, hang gliding, helicopter rides, and probably a dozen other options.

I went for the horseback riding. It was billed as “The Ride of the Rings”, and after driving along the lake to a small town called Glenorchy, we spent an hour and a half riding through Lord of the Rings locations used for Lothlorien, Amon Hen, and the hill where Boromir was killed, and looked up at the mountains used for the backdrops of Isengard and Methedras. We also heard lots of stories from the filming. For example, the Orcs had so much makeup and prosthetics on that they couldn't see anything while they ran through the forest, and they kept running into things and falling.

They ride English style here, and it was the first time I've done that. You hold the reins differently because you don't neck rein, and you must wear a helmet. The ride itself was beautiful. Woods, valleys, mountains, sheep, deer; it was truly magical. In every field with sheep, each ewe has a lamb or two since it's spring here, and the lambs seem to be getting friskier as the days go by. They are quite cute with their undocked tails.

After our group spent the day with their chosen adrenaline activities, lunch, laundry and whatever else, we got together for dinner at a restaurant that serves Kiwi specialties and matches each dish with a recommended ale. Good food and superb ale!

Tomorrow we head to Milford Sound, with a 3 hour hike up to Lake Marian on the way. On this hike "the scenery keeps getting better with each step," according to our itinerary. We had beautiful weather today ... sunny and by afternoon it was long sleeve shirtsleeve weather. Tomorrow they're expecting rain again.

Next time I'm sure to have Internet access is the weekend. After kayaking on Milford Sound, we make our way back to Lake Manapouri, then drive to Mt. Cook, where we stay two nights at a sheep station. On Thursday we hike up towards Mt. Cook, and on Friday we head back to Christchurch, and from there I fly to Tasmania. Cheers!

Pictures are here.

11/10/06: En route to Makarora

Happy 60th Birthday, Tom! I’m sorry I’m not there.

Today we had several short hikes. It was too wet for the scheduled hike to the Franz Josef Glacier, so we hiked up to the terminal face of the Fox Glacier. We walked up the rock strewn valley the glacier has left behind as it has retreated. Right now it is actually advancing, but it has been steadily retreating over the past hundred years or so.

Next was a hike around Lake Matheson. In calm weather you get beautiful views of mountains reflected in the lake, but it was windy, so we did without the reflection and it was still very beautiful. We stopped at a deck-like structure overlooking the water and watched a 4 foot eel slithering through the underwater plants. The guide dropped a bit of food into the water to feed it, and the eel came up and appeared to be looking at us from below, but either it didn’t like the food or it didn’t like us, so it never surfaced while we were watching.

After hiking around the lake we left the coast and headed inland. We crossed the Haast Pass, then took a hike to some beautiful blue pools along a lovely river, crossing a swaying foot bridge (limited to 5 people at a time!).

We stopped in a little town to stretch our legs and I spotted a newspaper that said that the Democrats had taken Congress and Rumsfeld had resigned, and that New Zealand's government was hopeful that we might now be able to find a solution to the mess in Iraq. When we were back in the van I shared the news and the entire van cheered.

Tonight we’re at Makarora lodge. Another yummy dinner, after which we were introduced to a “Tim Tam Slam”. It involves a hot chocolate-like drink called Milo, and cookies called Tim Tams. The cookies are two layers of wafer with a caramel layer in between and a chocolate coating. They’re rectangular. You bite off the two ends, then suck the hot chocolate up through the cookie, using it as if it were a straw. Just before the cookie melts, you eat it. It takes a little practice to get the timing down so that the cookie doesn't collapse in a soggy mess before you can get it into your mouth.

We also had whitebait, a tiny fish that is a local delicacy. You cook them in potato and egg fritters. Not much taste of fish by the time you’re done. We all tried them and they were “interesting”, but most of us turned down seconds.

Tomorrow we head for Queenstown, with an hour and a half hike en route. Today's pictures are here.

Cheers!

11/9/06: Okarito

Okarito is a small town on the beach near a lagoon, population 35. Our first order of business in the morning was a kayak paddle. We headed off into the lagoon in 4 double kayaks. The route was self guided, so we followed a trail of sticks that had been set into the water to make a trail. There were mountains to the south and mountains to the east, and the lagoon was quite calm when we started. We saw a lot of black swans, which have white feathers on their wings. They look all black when they are on the water, but when they take off their white wings emerge and are quite beautiful.

We paddled up two different rivers with very different ecosystems, one that drained coastal land and one that drained forest land, if I remember the details correctly. The forest river looked like dark tea from all the tannins, and when the sun hit the water just right, it glowed red. All of the water here is very clear, and you can see far down to the bottom.

After lunch we took a hike south to another lagoon. We climbed up to an observation point (the guide described the path up as an outdoor stairmaster) and saw our first view of Mount Cook. The entire range of the Southern Alps stretched along the horizon.

Then we headed back down the coast. All of the forests here have trees and plants that we’re unfamiliar with, and they are magically beautiful. Lots of ferns and mosses and tall trees. We’ve only seen one mammal … a little mouse, which is one of the many invasive species.

Dinner was New Zealand lamb and roasted potatoes and roasted vegetables and cauliflower with cheese sauce. We’re eating very well. After dinner we walked out on the beach and watched the sun slip into the ocean.

Tomorrow we head to one of the glaciers and Makarora Lodge.

Pictures are here. Cheers!

11/8/06: Punakaiki

Punakaiki is a small village nestled below tall dark limestone cliffs. Where they could find a foothold on the steep terrain, trees and shrubs and ferns were growing, including palm trees. We stayed in cottages right on the beach, and listened to the surf over night. Several of us went for a walk in the morning, then the guides served pancakes in honor of our upcoming visit to the Pancake Rocks.

The main walk for the day again had to be cancelled due to the previous day's rain. Fortunately, the rain was in the process of ending during the course of the day. We got sprinkled a few times, and it rained pretty hard while we were in the van, but we avoided hiking in the rain today. We ended up taking several shorter hikes, seeing rocky cliffs and walking through podocarp forests.

After the hikes we headed south to a lagoon called Okarito, where we’ll stay for two nights. Along the way we stopped at The Bushman’s Store (or something like that) and watched a DVD of the efforts to cull the deer population in New Zealand. This country basically had no mammals at the time people arrived. For the most part, the introduced species have been a disaster because they have no natural predators and compete with the endemic species. Deer were one example. They multiplied wildly and were damaging the ecosystem. The movie made the case about the damage they were causing, and then told the story of the efforts to cull them, which later turned into efforts to capture them. Deer are now farmed, and we passed several fields with high fences holding herds of red deer. The movie called the culling and later capturing process “New Zealand’s last great adventure.” It started out with hunters going out on foot and muscling the deer carcasses back to where they could be sold (venison brought a good price), and over the decades evolved into the use of helicopters to shoot them and then airlift numerous carcasses and carry them back. Eventually, when it was decided that capturing them to farm them was the most economic approach, they first had men leaping out of helicopters onto the backs of the running deer to bring them down and hog tie them. Then they switched to using net guns to bring the deer down, followed by leaping out of helicopters to secure them for transport. It was a pretty wild film, all in all. Tackling deer has now become a group joke, with the variation of "tickling" deer added by the Kiwi accent.

Today's pictures are here.

11/7/06: We're Off!

Our group for the next 11 days has formed! There are 8 participants plus two guides. We added one person since the initial participant list showing 6 was mailed out, and there’s someone who works for the REI Adventures group coming along. There are four men and four women. The other participants appear to be in their twenties to forties. The two guides are young women, and they're both knowledgeable, competent and fun.

We're traveling in a yellow van towing a trailer for gear. It's been raining hard all day. Our lead guide said we were stuck in a good sized rainy weather pattern, but she was sure we'd get sun at some point during our trip. Not quite the cheery promise of no more rain that would have been nice, but on the other hand, we won’t melt.

Today after leaving Christchurch we drove west across the Canterbury plain, which is flat and fertile. Lots of sheep farms, and lots of sheep. In fact, there are supposed to be about 40 million sheep in New Zealand, and only about 4 million people. Even private homes often have a sheep or two grazing in the yard. On the plain, the fields are separated by hedgerows … some of them made of trees, some of them literally very tall hedges.

The roads are mostly two lanes, and many of the bridges are one lane. We even passed one bridge where there was one lane for both the cars AND the train. The guide said the train usually didn’t come through for another 3 or 4 minutes, and that we should have plenty of time to get across before it arrived. She has a very dry sense of humor; I never know for sure when she’s teasing.

About 45 minutes after leaving Christchurch, we spotted the foothills of the Southern Alps, which form the spine of the South Island. The view was limited, due to the rain. At the higher altitudes, snow was falling and the mountains were dusted with snow like powdered sugar on a cake. (Or "icing sugar", as they say here.)

The schedule called for a walk in Arthur's Pass, a mountainous area with fairly high peaks. We wouldn't know about the "high" part, though. The clouds were hiding the peaks and hovering in the valleys, so it's a bit like my trip to Seattle when Karen and Gordon kept assuring me that Mount Rainier was indeed out there, but I never saw it through the clouds. Parts of the movie Narnia were filmed in this area, so I may have to see the movie to see the scenery.

The trail for the planned hike was closed due to rock fall danger (perhaps because of the rain?), so we ended up taking a short hike to one of the many waterfalls around the world sharing the name of Bridal Veil Falls. Waterfalls are among the few things that are improved by the rain ... there were opportunistic waterfalls leaping out of the mountains to the left and right from places our guides said they’d never seen waterfalls.

This is an area of temperate rain forest, and the only others like it in the world are in Tasmania and Chile. Very lush, lots of mosses and ferns. And lots of water running down the trail, crossing the trail, and standing on the trail. Fortunately, my boots and gear are waterproof, at least so far.

After leaving Arthur's Pass, we headed west to the coast, then turned north to a small town called Punakaiki (Pyew-na-KEYE-key). The coastline is much like that off Washington and Oregon, with lots of sea stacks (rock formations) sticking up out of the surf.

We're staying in cottages right on the beach. Central heat is uncommon in New Zealand, but there’s a space heater in the cottage and they’re quite cozy. Most importantly, the cottage has a kitchen with a tea pot and tea, which really hit the spot when we arrived.

We crossed a couple rivers getting here, and one was in flood stage due to the heavy rains and one was close to flood stage. The rain will definitely affect our hiking plans, but there are apparently lots of variations we can take.

Dinner was superb, and the group is having fun together. The guides treated to wine tonight, so I suspect we’ll make it a habit and trade off who buys. All in all, it’s a great start to the trip!

Cheers!

11/7/06: Joining the group...

This morning our tour forms up. Six participants, two guides. I suspect that all are wondering who we will be. The book I brought along on the trip is "Saving Fish from Drowning" by Amy Tan. I was looking for a good trip book and this seemed perfect ... the story of a woman of Chinese descent living in San Francisco who organizes a tour of China and Burma with 11 of her friends. Unfortunately, she is mysteriously killed before the trip. The friends end up going anyway, and disaster follows as each acts according to his or her own reality, which conflicts not only with their fellow travellers' realities but, with even greater consequences, the cultures within which they are travelling. Lovely book (the word "lovely" is used far more in NZ than at home), and I was long overdue to read one of Amy Tan's books.

Today is cool and rainy, and expected to be rainier where we're headed. We cross the island (about 4 and a half hours), then do a bit of hiking on the west coast. Over the next few days we'll make our way down the coast, including a day of kayaking.

I updated yesterday's post with a little more detail. Not sure when I'll have Internet access next.

Cheers!

11/6/06: Hiking in the Port Hills Near Christchurch

Yesterday (Sunday) had been unseasonably warm and often sunny, in contrast to the rainy and cool weather that was expected today. Fortunately, up until dinner, the worst that the weather dished up today was dry and gray and 50-60 degrees, which left an opportunity for a hike.

Being from Minnesota, and this being my only free day in Christchurch, of course I headed for the hills and the ocean east of the city. Took a city bus out to where the houses petered out and the farmland and the Port Hills park reserves started, and hiked around the headland (maybe 4-5 miles?).

The Port Hills are a point of land that stretches east of Christchurch. There's ocean to the north and east, and Lyttleton Harbor to the south, with the Banks Peninsula on the other side of the harbor. The land is hilly, with houses hugging a narrow strip of the northern coastline where the land is relatively flat. With newer building methods and increasing population pressure, houses are spreading up into the valleys, often built on very steep slopes.

The bus took me to Sumner, a suburb of Christchurch on the north coast. I foolishly didn't ask what the best place to get off was, so I ended up going too far and backtracking to pick up the trail to Taylor's Mistake Beach. Not a bad thing, though, as I ended up walking and talking for a while with about six local folks in their 60s who were heading out for walk. They asked where I was from, and it turns out one of the women was from Iowa. She'd met a Kiwi who was studying in Iowa and ended up marrying him. These kind folks set me straight on the trail to take to Taylor's Mistake Beach. The beach was named after a captain named Taylor who thought he had rounded the point of land into Lyttleton Harbor. Unfortunately, he had not, and had instead simply entered a bay, and his ship soon ended up on the beach.

At first the trail passed by houses, but soon the terrain transitioned to tussock grasslands and rocky outcrops, and I started seeing sheep and hearing lambs. Saw a dolphin near Taylor's Mistake and a couple of amazing green birds that were flying together. For the most part there were no man-made sounds; just birds and the occasional baa of a lamb. Even planes going overhead were scarce. It was a splendid transition day to my vacation.

I hadn't decided how far to hike when I started. It was so peaceful at Taylor's Mistake beach that I decided to continue on to Godley's Head, which is the high point of land to the east. There were gun emplacements and radar here during World War II, which have been abandoned. From Godley's Head, I couldn't pass up taking the Crater Rim walk coming back along the south side of the hills (how can you pass up a walk with a name like Crater Rim?). That trail eventually linked up with the Captain Thomas walk to come back north along a lovely valley to Sumner. The trail hit the road, by happy circumstance, exactly where the bus stopped. The valley walk was lush, passing through trees and shrubs and lots of spring flowers.

Had a conversation with the bus driver while we waited for the time the bus was scheduled to depart. He was from Fiji, and had once had a significant position with the Fijian government. But there was a coup, and he lost everything, and he’s now driving a bus in New Zealand, hoping his family is still okay in Fiji, where there is another coup expected. Kind of puts things in perspective…

Tomorrow morning we start the tour, meeting in the lobby of a nearby hotel at the civilized hour of 10:00. The rain that had been scheduled for today is now due tomorrow. I ran into someone in the hotel elevator who was on another company’s tour. It was the last day of her tour, and she was very much looking forward to the trip being over. Hope that’s not how I feel!

Yesterday's and today's pictures are here.

11/5/06: Arriving in Christchurch

The adventure has begun! The plan is two weeks on the south island of New Zealand with an REI Adventure tour, then I'll fly to Tasmania, the island state off the south east coast of Australia. There I'll do a 6 day hike of the Overland Track with another group, then spend a week on my own before returning home. A whole, big, beautiful month.

As I'm writing this it's about 4:30 Monday morning (mid morning Sunday in Minneapolis), and I'm waiting for food options to open. My internal clock hasn't fully adjusted (went to sleep at 7 last night and got up at 4), but other than that, I feel fine. The "sleep on the plane" option didn't work at all. I sat uncomfortably with my eyes closed, but if any sleep came, I missed it. On the other hand, the crew on the Quantas flight was absolutely wonderful. Not only was the food actually good, but the service was superb and they were constantly giving us stuff. Eye masks, socks, toothbrush, blanket, and pillow were waiting on our seats; a snack before "bed" consisting of a bottle of water, mints, cookies and chips; hot towels before breakfast, etc. A bit of a contrast from the $5.00 "box lunch" (variations on cheese and crackers) that we had the option of purchasing from Northwest.

By the way, the noise cancelling ear phones worked very well. For anyone who hasn't tried them, they create a reverse soundwave that cancels out much of the drone of the engines. You can hear conversations and other non-engine noise just fine.

One of the movie selections available was Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, so I was pleased to have a chance to watch it. There were lots of folks on the plane who were headed for various research activities in the Antarctic. I sat next to a young woman who was going to measure ice depth, which was one of the things they had mentioned in the movie. She'll be there for a couple months, mostly camping out as they travel around the ice mapping gradients. It's her first trip to the Antarctic, and she was pretty excited. She starts grad school next fall in geology.

Finally arrived in Christchurch about 10:00 AM Sunday, local time. Spent the day finding some lunch and running errands in the city center, then took a delightful walk in a huge botanical garden that is clearly a much loved place by locals as well as tourists. Lots of magnificent trees that you don't see elsewhere. Terrific kids' playground, plus rose and azalea and herb and rock and New Zealand and lots of other gardens. On the walk I came across the gentleman in the picture who played an animated statue. He was a huge hit with the younger crowd.

Christchurch is a low rise city (not much over 10 stories) on the middle of the east coast of the South Island. They are dealing with urban sprawl, and I read an article in the paper that reported on a planning commission decision to go to more density in the city and its surrounding suburbs as opposed to continuing to spread into the rich farmland around here, yet they plan to avoid the high rise explosion that has occurred in many Asian cities.

New Zealand's economy depends heavily on food exports to the US and Europe. Between the rising costs of transportation and the continuing protectionism of other countries, there's discussion of whether they have put too many of their national economic eggs in one basket.

And I read an article in the paper today about a group saying the verdict wasn't in on global warming. An Inconvenient Truth made the point that the peer-reviewed scientific articles are unanimous on the human impact on global warming, while "for some reason", the popular articles are creating an impression of doubt. What baffles me about the "there is no global warming" argument is that even if there isn't, the other environmental, social and political costs of the path we are on are not sustainable.

Today I'm planning on taking a local bus out to a small town on a peninsula and doing a bit of walking on Godley's Head, a rocky point of land. Or, as they say here, Godley's "Hid." What do they say ... the US and Great Britain are two countries divided by a common language? True of New Zealand and Australia too. I find that it's very easy to understand someone who is enunciating clearly, but not so easy when they're speaking fast. And of course, most of us don't enunciate all that clearly in casual conversation, and I'm just as hard to understand for the Kiwis. But everyone has been very patient with repeating. In fact, I'm already seeing why people are always talking about how friendly New Zealanders are. I went into a store to pick up a southern hemisphere star chart and ended up talking with the store keeper for 15 minutes. And like everywhere else, they have a rowdy element; apparently there were lots of incidents and a few fires from fireworks on Guy Fawkes day.

Pictures from today (and tomorrow) are here.