The Verdict.

4 months and one week in New Zealand, with 3 months being on the South Island.

The hitchhiking was adequate, but frequently frustrating. Too many empty cars drove by, too many long waits. Only 3-4 times did we not get to our end-destination.

As a mode of transport in general, obviously it's quite limited. Many hikes we couldn't even try to get to, and other where the logistics were just too much to be able to store our other gear, get food, and hitch to a trailhead.

We got just over 200 rides, generally from all sorts of people, though mostly New Zealanders. I think our most number of rides in a day was 7, and our longest ride with one car was 6 hours. We ran into other hitchikers about 5 times, although every few days we'd see someone somewhere else from a vehicle. On average, we had to wait close to an hour for each ride, with several waits around the 2.5 hour mark.

Still, had it not been for the hitching, our budget would have been considerably more and we wouldn't have gotten to know the local demographic. In the end, our daily/monthly costs were about $20/$600 per month in Canadian funds, but that includes being on farms (essentially no costs) for about a month, so when we were travelling, we still spent no more than $30/day. That's cheap. Damn cheap. And not always enjoyable. But even if you include the cost of our flights, our trip still cost less than half of most backpackers without even factoring in their flight. So there's some satisfaction in that.

The tramping was great, but the weather this year was shit. The hut system was great to rely on, even if it does bring a lot more people into the backcountry. The mountains and wild areas of the country are excellent. Beautiful and different, although often similar and familiar too. From what we've seen, the differences between hiking in BC and New Zealand comes down, aside from the huts, to small differences, like weather, not big differences like quality of scenery.

Still, much of the country was farmland and that novelty, even when green, hilly and quaint, wears off after a while. If I came back, I'd probably just stick to the parks and mountains, and undeveloped areas, which covers maybe 25% of the country, but is often hard to access (fair enough, though).

While we learned a lot from the WWOOFing and got lots of good ideas, we found the individual farms too uninspiring, generally. Most people's gardens weren't particularly ambitious and usually neglected, even with WWOOFers. Still, seeing what people were doing wrong was at least as helpful as seeing what they were doing right. Plus it did give us lots of down time and pretty good meals. We had to spend a lot of time tracking down farms with vacancy and rarely got onto the farms we really wanted to get onto.

In fact, had it not been for the farms, I'd have been malnourished. Not joking. Trying to eat cheap from the supermarkets has it's drawbacks. Just before the last farm we went to, I felt the return of pain that I hadn't felt since I'd been in Laos. At the time, the best diagnosis I could come up with was Vitamin B or Iron deficiency. I bought some supplements and the pain went away. After getting a few good meals on the farm this time, the pain went away too.

The combination of budgeting our food allowance and hitchhiking made for uninspiring and repetitive eating. Really wish we could've gotten to fruit stands more often, but it just didn't always work out.

Couchsurfing was a bit like WWOOFing in that it was hard to find someone with space, but we generally enjoyed the Couchsurfing hosts at least as much as the WWOOFing hosts, although obviously the experience was based on a different type of relationship and for short duration. Couchsurfing also helped with the costs of course.

Hennessey Hammocks. We erroneously decided hammocks would be great for this trip, but there just wasn't enough open woods to be able to count on. Sometimes we'd set them up as a lean-to

which helped insulate underneath, but put as more at the mercy of the wind. Overall, once we got used to the hammocks, we liked them enough, but in the future, I'd want to know the area I'm going into before deciding on a  tent or hammock and if car camping, bringing both alon. They aren't as warm and can be a bit tricky in the wind, but they do have advantages as well. Overall, a tent would have served us better, but it was fun to try something new and I'm glad we bought them.

So would we do it again? Yes, but differently. If we had more money to spend, traveling in a sleeper van would probably be number one. The main drawback of that, besides cost of petrol would be not meeting the locals. Not that the locals were all that different from your average Canadian, but it did help us to get our fingers on the pulse of the country a bit better. But since we covered the whole South Island and almost all of the North, we'd probably just focus on certain areas, especially tramping. Or come back with a work visa. I don't think we found any real stand-out towns that we'd both like to work and live in, but there were a few places that seemed quite reasonable in terms of size and proximity to sweet stuff.

But as I suspected before starting this trip, domestic travel seems to make more sense to me, at least for the foreseeable future. No plane tickets and no need to do everything, allowing for more tailored trips, instead of trying to fit everything into one pack for 4 months. We both appreciate BC, as I assume anyone does that travels and returns. We'd like to see more of Canada, especially the East Coast. We'd like to see more of Alaska too, and the Pacific Northwest in general. I wouldn't rule out a short surfing trip somewhere international, but the backpacking thing feels too much like a brief sampling and the only activities you can really do with what you've brought are expensive touristy tours. Glow-worm caves, jet-boat rides, wildlife tours, zip-lines, bungy jumps, sky dives, flightseeing.

Carrying around a camera, two lenses, and a light tripod, certainly adds to the weight, plus having a few grand in electronics certainly makes you wary of people and hitchhiking didn't exactly put us in too many situations where I could take the picture I wanted to take. I hope to come away with some good photos. Within the next two weeks, I'll be able to sort my photos from my big camera and edit them. I should have an album up on Facebook and my Flickr (username glacier_fed), with the albums overlapping but not identical. We definitely got some decent pics on the small camera as well, but I left the tougher and hopefully the best shots for the big camera.

I finished about 18 books on this trip, the best from authors I was unfamiliar with were Grapes of Wrath (Steinbeck), Disgrace (J.M. Coetzee), Contortionist's Handbook (Craig Clevenger), and I'll be stoked to read more Cormac McCarthy (The Road; and All The Pretty Horses). Also read more Douglas Coupland and Orwell. We were able to generally find enough secondhand bookstores to keep us busy, but often had to keep at least 4 books on hand between us to ensure always having something to read.


A few quotes from some of the books I read:
" A person's life story is equal to what they have plus what they want most in the world, minus what they're actually willing to sacrifice for it"
-Contortionist's Handbook

"Every age, every culture, every custom and tradition has its own character, its won weakness and own strength, its beauties and cruelties; it accepts certain sufferings as matter of course, puts up patiently with certain evils. Human life is reduced to real suffering, to hell, only when two ages, two cultures and religions overlap(...) Now there are times when a whole generation is caught in this way between two ages, between two modes of life and loses the feeling for itself, for the self-evident, for all morals, for being safe and innocent.:
-Herman Hesse

"There is a failure here that topples all our successes".
-Grapes of Wrath

In terms of cost breakdown for those interested in travelling here, read on. Otherwise, thanks for reading!


-Dan

I'd say the costs were similar for many things, but much more expensive for goods (buy all your gear at home) and gas (which has risen 30 cents since we arrived).  Budget $24-$30 for the cheapest dorm beds (although campgrounds often had cheaper units). Basic supermarket food was probably $20/day. The ferry between the islands is about $50 to walk on. Flights from Vancouver, I'd shoot for under $1600 (ours were $1350). I would've flown to and from Christchurch. Flights to Australia can be cheaper than flights within the country. The CDN/NZD exchange rate seems to have been very stable for the last year, coming in at around $1.33NZD per $1CDN. We got our mobile phone for about $50 and have probably spent $20/month in text and talk, mostly for farms and couchsurfing. Glad we had the phone for sure. The provider '2degrees' seems to be the best proved for traveller's needs, although not the best for signal coverage. Not having a laptop was bad enough, not that I condone travelling with one. It's around $100 for the hut pass. Great Huts though cost about $40 per night. Ridesharing is possible, but never worked out for us, so I wouldn't count on it too much, although you can certainly meet people along the way and might have more luck offereing rides than asking for them. There's a few websites set up for that. Camping at basic government sites is usually about $6 per person, but most campgrounds you'll come across will be $15-20 per person and will include use of fridge, stove and showers. Talked to a lot of people who just parked there van anywhere for a sleep, but it's certainly not as laissez-faire as I expected, so care is needed. Hitchhiking is safe enough for guys, but I wouldn't encourage girls to travel alone. Two girls together is probably fine, but still worrisome at times. We had people shout stuff all the time to us, but only once or twice could we hear what they said. Maybe they were supportive, maybe they were just cat-calling Amy. She definitely had a few innappropriate gestures sent her way, so you can imagine the types of people that would have stopped if I hadn't been there. Used books cost $5-12. Internet averaged $4-5/hr but if you're patient you can use the internet at most libraries that aren't in a major tourist town.

Well, see ya later

Nine hours from take off! Stoked to go home, sad to leave (sort of, sometimes). Looking forward to not living out of a backpack, not sleeping on the ground and not eating hummous every single day.

After escaping the madness of the Christchurch area post-earthquake, we decided to do a leisurely section of the St. James Walkway, spend a couple nights in huts (to avoid spending money) and get in some quality reading and general peace and quiet. After dropping our bags at a motel it took us a very leisurely 2.5 hours to hitch the 15 km back to the trailhead. WTFFFFFFFFFFF?!?! On our way out 3 days later, ran into a couple from BC who had huge packs with a tent because they "come from BC and don't even like to see huts." Ok, have fun trampling down the native grasses and shrubs instead of sleeping on an actual mattress. I will definitely miss the hut system here and it would be sweet to see something like that set up in BC to minimize the impact of campers (especially of the drive onto the beach and light a huge fire and shit in the creek and leave our garbage everywhere variety).

Made it back to Nelson to spend a week on the farm of a couple who had picked us up hitching near the beginning of our trip. We brought the rain the first time we visited and after they'd had pretty much nothing but sun all summer, brought the rain again. Spent a night in the beauuuuuuuuutiful Marlborough Sounds at a campsite and decided to hitch out further and do some sightseeing. We saw the sights alright and spent 4 hours on the side of the road (one vehicle drove by) waiting for a ride back to our hammocks and sweet sweet food. Ended up walking an hour to a real end of the road backpackers where the owners ever so generously gave us a water taxi ride for half price instead of paying for the most expensive dorm room in NZ. And then I didn't get car sick on the road back out towards the ferry. Everything's comin' up Milhouse!

Stayed with some of the nicest couchsurfers yet after getting off the ferry on the North Island.  Back to better hitching territory, even when we tried hitching from a prison. Our first night we showed up to veggie lasagne, a clean comfy bed and breakfast the next morning. The next few days around the volcanos filmed for Lord of the Rings, we woke up to frosts each morning, but safe and snug with more couchsurfers, this couple letting us stay free in their rental accom that goes for $400/night in the ski season. Later we decided to try our luck and hitch around the east cape of the north island which has like NO people and therefore little traffic other than rich white old couples squinting at the signs to try and find their beachfront B&B. We knew it was rural when we got our second ride of the trip in the back of a pickup truck.

We'd been warned about hitching in an area with 80%+ Maori and similar levels of unemployment, but luckily it ended up being one of the most chilled and scenic areas we'd been to and it was a nice break to go only short distances each day and enjoy the sun and warm ocean swimming. Even saw the country's most active volcano, White Island, spewing smoke in the distance. Lucked out with the price of out of season accomodation as well ($12 each for 4 walls and a bed)!

Unlike the Coromandel peninsula, which had pretty pricey camp sites and nowhere to freedom camp. Some of the most brain explodingly gorgeous beaches I've ever seen though

and Dan got to surf again. After all the rain we got on the South Island and despite aggravatingly hot days on the side of the road, I'm going to miss sweet lady sunshine when we get back to Canada. If we'd visited at the beginning of our trip we would've shared the beach and the road with thousands of other tourists. Helloooooooo quitting your job and staying somewhere longer than everyone else. Did our final farm stay as well, which entailed more weeding than I thought humanly possible in only 4 days. But we did get to learn about amateur radio, which is weird, trippy, and super dorky.

-Amy

New Zealand as brand

In the modern age, everything is branded. Even people try to brand themselves. Countries do it too. The U.S. has marketed the American Dream in the past; African countries their indomitable spirit and kindness; Alaska its frontier spirit, etc.

And New Zealand...


Note the caption

... cashing in on the Lord of the Rings mystique.

Well fair enough. Obviously if you've seen the movie, you probably wished you were there in those landscapes. But this 100% PURE brand image is a bit of a misnomer, as most ad campaigns are.

Take a look at a Google Maps satellite image of New Zealand and compare it to BC. The dark green in New Zealand is forest. EVERYTHING used to be dark green in New Zealand. For a country of 4 million people keen on agriculture, they're sure good at clearing land. Granted, it was the maori who started slash and burn tactics to drive birds out of the woods for hunting. And due to NZ's particular species of trees, forest doesn't regenerate as quickly in areas that have been cleared. But I'm not pointing fingers, I'm just saying that for Middle Earth, my expectations were for a bit more green cover. On the South Island, east of the main divide (which encompasses probably 40% of the country), it's all farm land. Uninterrupted forest is extremely rare. Plus it's hot and often dry, so brown tussock grass is the norm. And I'd thought all the brown hills that I saw in pictures were just avalanche slopes in the autumn! The North Island looks a bit greener from above, but is still back to back to back dairy farms.

So of this brand image, the question begs itself: 100% pure what exactly?

The common generalization of both travellers and kiwis themselves is that New Zealand is a fairly environmentally-friendly country and surely the tourism benefits from this belief. And certainly there is some world-class scenery, don't get me wrong. But from everything we've seen, there's as much environmental malpractice here as elsewhere. There's the NIMBYs fighting the wind farms, very little recycling facilities in remote areas, the mining history (including coal), the massive infringement of Big Dairy on the environment, and a ridiculous amount of food beign imported and exported unnecessarily.

There are the pluses though. While hydropower isn't going to save the world, it's certainly better than coal, and there is a fair amount of renewable energy here. The country does have a history of being proudly nuclear-free.

What I'm saying is that New Zealand isn't really ahead of the curve, in my opinion, not enough to deserve that reputation. The government will gladly pump out ads to bring you here to view its natural wonders, but as I was bluntly informed in Queenstown, "this is adventure tourism, not eco-tourism."

Some might say that perhaps the country's reputation means that tourists will hold the country up to some high standards, much in the way the China was given the Olympics to help boost democracy. Catch my drift?

The Department of Conservation (akin to Canada's Ministry of Environment) often seems more focused on bringing in tourist dollars than protecting the land. There was a huge fight a few years ago when the government wanted to start mining in National Parks. The hut system here is fantastic, but it didn't come about as some forward thinking outdoor recreation campaign. It was simply the huts leftover from trying to eradicate all the introduced species. With the hut system as it is, it's a bit of an interesting cycle. The wilderness brings hikers who enjoy the huts which brings more visitors which means more huts need to be built which means accomodation for even more hikers. And on and on. So it's great that the huts are here because it gets people outside and for the numbers that are here, minimizes their impact (much in the same way that not having facilities in national parks would minimize impact).

What is really needed, I think, is two things. For the Department of Conservation to impose an airport head tax on people entering the countries (all of who are their to see nature in one form or another) and a crackdown on goofball tourists. Leaving garbage behind at a hut needs to be punishable by law, becuase it's happening in a hundred places every day. And something like this:

...also needs to be punishable. Thousands of photos a day, many clearly violating posted signs. I was standing 10m from that seal when I took the photo. That lady was practically over top of the thing taking its portrait. It's rare that I'll actually reprimand a complete stranger like that, but boy did it feel good (and still accomplish nothing, judging by their complacent smiles). I've seen signs that say to stay 200m from penguins, the rarest in the world, mind you, and people oblivious and care-free, barely 30 feet away from the birds. And despite the popularity of the spot, no one within 10km that could possible enforce anything.

Am I becoming an eco-Nazi?

-Dan

The big shake

So first thing's first: the earthquake. September 4 last year, at 4:30am, there was a 7.1 quake. No one was killed. The epicentre was further from downtown Christchurch and deeper, and everyone was in bed (instead of standing in or under big buildings). Very lucky.

February 22, this year, at 12:51, there was a 6.3 quake. This time people were in all the wrong places and the epicentre was closer and shallower. The death toll so far is about 155, with about another 80 expected. By the end, this will rank as probably the 2nd worst earthquake in a Western country in the last decade. Asian and South American countries, plus Haiti of course, have been devastated time and time again by earthquakes. We actually spent a few days where the epicentre was, about a month before the quake. So it's really driven the destructive power of earthquakes home for us. We were close enough that we probably could've felt the ground move, but as we were in a moving vehicle and tired, we didn't notice anything. Gas, food, drinkable water, etc have all been scarce at times the closer you get to Christchurch and there is a pretty sizeable exodus in place. Christchurch is tied for the second largest city in the country and by far the biggest on the south island. I think there's a lot of unspoken questions about the future of the city. The damage is estimated around $20 billion. We met quite a few first-hand witnesses as they were fleeing the city over the week that followed, so we've gathered a pretty decent idea of how things went. Talked to a guy who helped bandage people up afterwards, a guy who saw two buses get crushed by falling debris, and a lady whose father-in-law was still missing. All that is hard enough to imagine, but of course it's the drawn-out period of body recovery, rubble removal, and general state of confusion that I don't think anyone, including us, can grasp without being present. The big difference here though, unlike Haiti for example (the deadliest quake in the last 30 years) is that disease won't ravage the country for years to come.

 We however, are realistically quite uneffected and unaffected by the quake, at least compared to most people. Some grocery store shelves were totally empty of water, oats, bread, and pasta, plus accomodation was a bit hard to find, but that was about the extent of inconveniences we had to put up with. Our route has taken us north of Christchurch for the last time, so we'll only be moving further and further from the areas most effected.

After our last tramp and another rendez-vous with my buddy Kyle, and about a week before the quake, we made our way back up the West Coast, this time in weather much more conducive to being able to appreciate the views. Mostly retraced our steps, but managed to make it up a one way road to a relatively remote part of the island. We stayed at a hostel and the lady let us borrow her car when she saw how long it was taking us to get rides. We got gas at the end-of-the-road town and not only was it the most I've ever paid for gas, it was TWICE as much as I've ever paid for gas. In Canadian dollars, about $3.02. Hopefully that's not a chilling vision of things to come in the future, with peak oil and all that, but it's probably inevitable everywhere at some point. But at least we got to give back a bit and were able to pick up 3 tired stranded hitchhikers, so that felt good. I think the best, though not safest, combination of hitchhikers is 2 girls.

After the quake, we decided to stock up on food and hit the trails, more to get away from the hitchhiking than to get closer to nature, but it helped that the area was nicer than expected...



Getting to the trailhead was probably some of the easier hitching we've had, since everyone was heading out of Christchurch and even though they were generally pretty full up with stuff, they had a lot of sympathy. But once we dropped our excess baggage off at a hotel, and had to backtrack in the other direction, sympathy for hitchhikers was back to normal and it took 2hrs to hitch 15km.

We're now back at a farm we'd stayed at before just working, resting, catching up on internet stuff (like this), and reading. Hoping the South Island will give us just one good stretch of weather for a final multi-day trip...

-Dan





Queenstown, Fiordland, and a big hike

So we're done with WWOOFing. Nice views, lots of learning, a few decent people. We used a knock-off website called HelpX as well, but it's less a way of learning about organics and more a way of just working for room and board. HelpX hosts still refer to use as WWOOFers instead of cheap labor,but generally have crappier jobs for you to do.

So in the households with children we've been to, we've learned that there are two ways of raising children. You either teach them discipline or park them in front of the TV. The families we've stayed with have been fairly alternative-minded and thus don't believe in TV, but as it turns out, don't believe in discipline either. This doesn't work at all. It's tough trying to enjoy a 5th generation farm on a hillside where the view is 150km out to sea and up the coast when there are screeching devil-spawn children to be dealt with.

We finally made it to Queenstown. Turns out its in a pretty nice location and it's not done up quite as heavily as Whistler or Banff. But aside from its location, it's basically a place to party, spend a lot of money trying to purchase that ever-elusive adventurer image,or in our case feign complete disgust at the second-hand bookstore's buyback and resale prices. And it'sa good place to get supplies. Distant contacts of Amy's retired there, so we had a nicelittle base of operations for a few days and went on a little driving tour of the valley.

Milford Sound was sweet. The road to get there was even better, despite tour buses every 2 minutes passing by. We'd love to go back and do a dayhike around Fiordland, but are finally starting to feel the crunch of time. Only 5 weeks to go!

And then there is the town of Gore. Once a quite prosperous town, now it's the equivalent of everything you fear that a small town would be like in the Deep South of the U.S. We saw low-rider trucks, heard rumours of white-power groups, and saw teenagers driving laps around town for lack of anything better to do. At least they only heckled us on the 2nd lap. We would've gotten where we were going that day, but our ride had to bail on us when her brakes started smoking. So we got to spend a night in Gore.

We've only had one ride offer from anyone in a rental backpacker van (despite seeing them non-stop), only one ride offer by Asians, and no a single ride from a Lexus, Mercedes, or BMW. Every other ride we seem to have landed a few times. We even got a ride from an ex-pat of Georgia (the country), warning us not to google the cancer and birth defect rates in that country from the fallout of Chernobyl.

Spent a few days doing the wildlife-watching thing, though we never did spot any Albatross. We also rented a car for the first and only time. Turns out we could've just hitchhiked it anyways, but I guess it was nice to have a break, and following up a tip from a Canadian couple who'd given us a lift, we found a great little off-the-beaten-path (it still exists!) lighthouse, where we were practically tripping over penguins and seals, all free of charge and empty of tourists. Before returning the rental car, we drove up the steepest street in the world. The little rental 4-banger barely made it up and was actually one of the highlights of the trip, short though it was.

I'd forgotten our cell phone in that Canadian couples' car and had to spend $35 in taxis to retrieve it. That night I promptly, but accidentally, put it through the washing machine as well. Days later I finally tracked down some precision screwdrivers to open it up and dry it out, and despite the naysayers, brought 'er back to life. Giddy up!

Finally got to do some proper tramping. Did a 5 day circuit in almost-great weather. Had to sit out a day for the weather warning, but otherwise had some darn scenic days. Unfortunately, being the first good stretch of weather we've seen in this La Nina year down here, and this being one of the most popular trails, everyone else had the same idea as us. Only by fluke accident did we end up walking the track in the opposite direction from everyone else, so that it was only crowded for us in the middle of the hike. The main hut's capacity is 32. There were 58 people, plus 12 more camping. 25 were Israeli.

Now young Israeli travellers have a bit of a reputation. Imagine every bad stereotype you've ever heard about American travelers. It's something like that. One group hiked through a weather warning in jeans without rain covers for their packs, played music on speakers in the hut, played a handheld Playstation, failed miserably at starting a fire in the stove and smoked out the whole cabin, later shoveling on so much coal and heating the place up so much that they walked around in their underwear, and brought ridiculous food (considering they'd be carrying it for 5 days). That was one group.

We came across another group of them crossing a creek where a girl was thigh-deep in the water and had to be practically dragged across. We assessed the stream and Amy crossed about 5 meters downstream from them by herself and only got wet to her ankles. That's not luck. We're not exactly river-crossing experts yet, but we have at least tried to learn the precautions.

Several groups very transparently trying to dodge out on their hut fees as well.

After that busy night, the warden told me he collected a burlap sack full of garbage left in the hut. Think about that. That's 30km over 2 days that people brought in excess packaging and decided it would be ok to just leave it behind, as if it were a hostel with paid housekeepers and town conveniences such as landfills.

Now if we'd only met a handful of Israelis throughout our travels, the usual "bad apples" analogy might work. But they're everywhere. The common thread for them all seems to be that they've all just finished their compulsory military service. Must be a rite of passage. I'd like to think that's the contributing factor. There's actually hostels out there that bar Israelis from entry.

They're arrogant, selfish, rude, obnoxious, exclusionary, and dangerously inexperienced when it comes to being in the backcountry. If the problem were only a quarter as bad and not spanning every country I've spent enough time in, maybe I'd just keep my causal observations to myself. I feel as if it would be dishonest of me NOT to mention the problem and just pretend like I hadn't noticed the trend. But this is spanning 3 trips for me over 4 years. Of course we've met a few exceptions to the rule and to their credit, Israelis do pick upmore hitchikers than others.

The actual two Americans we met at the hut were well-expericned, friendly and soft-spoken.

So as you can tell, there was a lot to be unimpressed about on the that hike. The views are supposedly and understandbly some of the best in the country, but with the crowds, it certainly wasn't a really down-to-nature experience for us. And that's not even a Great Walk.

There are 9 Great Walks in the country, earning their special designation because they were so popular that special bookings system have been put into place. The Milford Track and the Routeburn are two orf the more popular. The Routeburn sees 12,000 hikers per year (mostly in the summer). The nice thing about them is that they are controlled so as not to have a situation where 25 people have to sleep on the floor. Every stream is bridged. And it's about $40/night, or less to camp. Our annual hut passes, which cover almost every other hut in the country for 6 months, cost $90. More thoughts on that later.

-Dan

Sights

Our view from the guest bedroom we stayed at in Queenstown

On the road to Milford

Our view of Milford Sound, the summitof Mitre Peak not included today

Wide load

Farmers Market sideshow

Piglet

The hottest day of the year brings people to the beach even if the next thing south is Antarctica

A piece of Newfoundland

Yellow-Eyed Penguin,the rarest kind

Could this mean summer has finally arrived?

If at first you don't succeed...

Full hut

...try try again

Glacier-carved

addendum

Incredibly I forgot to mention the fact that the woman from the second farm used to be a dentist when they lived in Seattle, but she now writes homo-erotica on the Internet.

Figure that one out.

It was the Best of Times, it was the Blurst of Times

Amy's Turn:

Three farms in a row, our longest WWOOF stint yet. All started out pretty great with a couple living on 5 (or 10, we can't quite remember) acres in a house they'd built themselves when they were in their early 20s. They had the whole set-up: a cow, goats, sheep, a horse, a pig, fire wood, veggies and fruit, etc. etc. We ate loads from the garden (news flash: parsnips are f'n DELICIOUS), they gave us tons of info about getting on the self-sustainability train and they were just super nice and welcoming people. Unfortunately it seems their efforts are slightly wasted in a community where the neighbours aren't jumping at the idea of trading organic produce or information. The work was quite enjoyable if not quaint: chopping firewood for Dan, cutting grass by hand (!) and weeding for me. I got to talk to the wife a fair bit about her aspirations to teach overseas and the ideas of charities in general and it definitely feels good to be spending my younger years traveling and learning before settling down. She also takes after my own heart when it comes to animals; the cow and horse are well past their useful years but their place has become a sort of retirement home for geriatric farm animals turned pets.

Next farm was the smallest (1 acre) plot in a tiny bay of a pretty darn uninhabited peninsula, one of the more scenic locations we've stayed in yet. Also the warmest ocean water we've swam in thus far, and the best (not unbearably hot or rainy) weather we've had to work in. It was also our longest stay, unfortunately as it turns out. The work was decent but we put in more hours here than any other farm. There was a Spanish WWOOFer who got there the day before us (and didn't seem to understand he only needed to put in 4hrs a day, thus setting the precedent) and there was still plenty to go around. Luckily the food was GREAT and plentiful. Unluckily were the demon spawn that were the couple's 3 and 6 year old children. All I can say is thank goodness we had a private sleep out. I (being the only girl there) of course got suckered into babysitting (yay gender-roles!) and am getting nowhere near changing my mind on the whole having kids thing. Also the mother and father got into monumental screaming matches over the dinner table so I suppose it's for the best they don't have many neighbours.

With relief we were off to our next farm and even got a tour of the rest of the bays courtesy of the local rural mail man. This farm was 5th generation on the guy's side and his partner was from Vancouver Island. 3 kids, one of whom is a "handful", we were informed of over the phone. Again, our own private sleep out with kitchen and bathroom. Not so bad, we thought, except for the banshee screams and whines blowing on the wind from the main house no matter where we were working. I probably felt the most awkward at this house, with the 2 youngest kids simultaneously fighting, begging us to play with them, and trying to "help" us with our work. Unfortunately never got a chance to chat with the woman who had the biggest all-around interest in the farm and a good taste in books. The brand new calf and piglets and lambs were enough to keep my interest for a few days though. Sadly their gardens have seen a fair bit of neglect lately with the house renovations and the woman being called in to work in town more often and all their side projects so we didn't get to learn much about anything other than putting in fence posts.

This will probably be it for WWOOFing for awhile, unless the weather decides to keep pissing us off. We met people from all over doing things that were awesome and that worked and things that seem fairly ridiculous, but all in all it's exciting to think about what we might be able to do once we get back to BC. Still never having kids though.

Green Travel

An Argentinian/Californian expat couple heavy into food preservation and DIY let us informally couchsurf with them. They live in Lyttelton, a very liveable suburb of Christchurch:

Due to the lack of good secondhand book stores, we had to start hoarding books, but before we knew it, we ended up 11 books....

Another hike, but one with only a few highlights, including Amy's vehement refusal  when faced with a 3-wire bridge...

More hitchhiking, weather as yet unsettled...

Got a nice and cheap ride from the mail man, who's turned the mail delivery vehicle into a bit of a sightseeing venture, bringing along tourists who want to see the scenic side of the peninsula we've been WWOOFing on. But since he knew the farm we were going to, he gave us a deal.


Our current farm, slightly elevated. The view from our room...

From a bit higher up, we could see about 150km up along the coast and out to sea.

And an observation. Most houses we've been in here seem out of date compared to Canada. Not that they are necessarily older, but that they have such things as separate hot and cold faucets, coupled with sinks too small to wash your hands in. No bug screens on any windows, despite the pravelence of houseflies and sandflies. No insulation in the walls and no double-paned windows.


So we're halfway through the trip now and one of our themes to explore was what it means to try to travel green. Sometimes it's best to bounce off extremes to find your balance point, so we decided to really try to see all travel aspects through a green lens.


By hitchhiking I believe that even more so than taking public transportation, we're reducing our carbon footprint. This certainly isn't the only reason we're hitchhiking, but few people here seem to even consider the notion when asking why we're hitchhiking. It's more social, more environmental, it's more of an adventure, and I needed a break from driving for a while.

We made it our goal to recycle everything recyclable that we consumed. This caused us to ask questions and figure out how recycling works in New Zealand. Recycling is run much the same as in Canada, with rural areas unable to recycle nearly as much as rural areas. A few interesting recycling non-profits have a policy of not sending anything to China, so as not to completely negate the positive aspects of recycling by shipping things across the ocean for no reason. We've opted not to compost as this of course would stink us up a bit, but we have been good about rinsing out humus containers and keeping receipts, plus reusing all our grocery bags until they're tattered. We've been using only rechargeable batteries, which I don't find to be any more of a hassle than buying them new, and certainly means less batteries being consumed. I like how the grocery stores here give out resealable bulk bin bags. Makes them more easily reusable, there's a little opaque patch to write the bin code on (doing away with twist-ties), and they're thick enough that they're less likely to spring a leak over repeated uses. We haven't bought a single bottle of water. And we've actually stopped buying granola bars for all their useless packaging and started seeking out tea that isn't individually packaged. This is the first time I've ever really made consumer choices based solely on reducing packaging and it actually feels pretty good.

So trying to be pedantic about all this green stuff of course makes it a bit weird to do housekeeping in exchange for a dorm bed, because we're forced to throw out bars of soap that have been used once, spray chemicals non-stop, watch water getting wasted by the sheer amount of laundry being done all day in order to keep up, and replace rolls of toilet paper that are far from empty.

In a place like this, with as much sun exposure as we're getting between hitchhiking, farming, and hiking, we've gone through a lot of sunscreen and it's made us both want to start slipping on a shirt rather than slopping on some sticky, polluting, expensive, high-maintenance, potentially leaky, carcinogen-filled sunscreen. Using cancer-causing agents to reduce cancer causing agents. Fight that fire with fire!

In Canada, if you've got a washing machine, you've probably got a dryer too, but that's not the case here. Dryers, as they probably should be, are a real last resort and while it's certainly made me want to get a drying line when I get home if it's not against the local dinosaur aged bylaws, it's still not all that convenient for travel. I highly suggest wearing mostly synthetic clothing when traveling, because cotton, my friends, just doesn't dry fast enough.

-Dan

Mount Cook

After battling cold sores and canker sores for a record 3 weeks, my left eye mysteriously swelled half shut for a few more days. The joys of eating on the road....

We couchsurfed with a guy who ran his local farmers market, worked at an awesome recycling/second-hand non-profit outfit, and was nearly self-suficient with his awesome veggie garden and what he was able to trade for. And on only a 1/4 acre of property in town. We had many a fruitful discussion on self-sufficiency, community, and the like.

Did some more housekeeping too, in order to bank a few nights of free accommodation, the lowlight of which was watching a couple of fellow countrymen, calling themselves "Team Canada" playing strip poker, and the highlight of which was this sunset...

And then off we went, to Mount Cook village whose namesake is the highest in the country, over 3700m. For an altitude of 700m and a paved road, the scenery was astounding...

We stayed with a guy who'd couchsurfed with us in the Yukon, on his way home from Alaska to Colorado. He was living in staff housing, so we were only able to stay under the radar for so long, but managed to crank out some solid hiking. We left in less-than-ideal weather to beat the crowds, but spent an interesting 10 minutes covering our eyes and breathing through our shirts as clouds of silt were blown up from the glaciers moraine walls. The small 3-bunk hut fit us perfectly. Because it's a fairly popular area and there's some pretty gnarly terrain...

.... there's a radio in each hut. Listening to the radio check-in each night feels pretty romantic. The next morning, we got called specifically to keep an eye our for a missing party, who were literally stumbling past our hut as I got the call. The radio is in the outhouse, so you can picture the hilarity, so you can picture the awkwardness as I summoned the two exhausted Australians into the shitter for an impromtu radio pow-wow. They'd tried an 18hr undertaking in a single day, without extra food or overnight gear.

They're starting to use these emergency locator beacons whose technology the government has borrowed from the U.S. military. You can buy or rent them, and if you get stuck and would rather pay with your wallet than your life, you press the button and they can pinpoint your location to within 2m. And the helicopters they send out have some sort of night-vision goggles that can spot a candle-flame 15km away. If it's determined that you did nothing wrong and were simply the victim of unexpected weather, for example, you don't have to pay at all. Of course, the problem then arises that people will substitute the beacons for proper knowledge or gear...

North face of Mount Cook. True summit just out of sight. Many a glacier calving and small avalanches did we see and hear tumbling throughout the day.

The Tasman Glacier behind Amy, below, is the longest in the country at 27km, but is receding as fast as any other. It's lower reaches, as you can see behind Amy here, are completely covered in rock, the cause for which still confuses me.

We'd wanted to cross the glacier (flat and crevasse-free), but the river on the other side was too high to cross, so we'll leave that for another visit.

We'd lucked out a bit, arriving for the first good stretch of weather this season, so we decided to push our endurance and hike 4 days straight. Our second hut of the visit was perched smack dab in the middle of the second picture from the top of this post. Fantastic panorama, nobody else around and lots of falling rock and snow to listen to...

A little ways upstream of this pic I ran into a guy with a CMH shirt who'd met my dad back in the day. Small world... 

-Dan

Non-Sequitur

In the spirit of the recent housekeeping we did in exchange for a room and board, I thought I'd do some tidying up of some tidbits that didn't fit elsewhere

A few more observations about the Maori and why their current situation in NZ is probably better than Canada's native situation. 

-They didn't have residential schools here

-They signed a treaty with the government in the mid-1800s that gave them certain sovereignties. This treaty was only recently rediscovered and is has actually helped to lay the groundwork for retribution. 

-It has been said that the older the native civilization, the harder it was to assimilate into western civilization. The Aborigines of Australia were a civilation over 50,000 years old. The natives in Canada had been on the continent perhaps 10,000 years. The Maori were in NZ for about 500 years.

There's sheep everywhere here. They're cute, but the novelty has worn off. There's used to be more sheep and less dairy cows, but with the invention of synthetic materials, wool has lost out big time, and not just in clothing, but in carpets and other industries as well. Many farmers with sheep say the wool only brings in enough money to pay the shearer. Merino wool of course has a market, but it's a specific type of sheep only suited to the more continental (hotter, colder, drier) climate of south-central South Island.

 
We're often warned about the strength of the sun here, or rather the "hole in the ozone above New Zealand". 

I finally looked into it. 

There is a hole above the Antarctic, which is much bigger than anything over the Arctic, because the ozone depleting reactions are catalysed by the colder temperatures at the south pole. Outside of that, there aren't holes per se, only depletion. Between 35-60 degrees in the northern hemisphere, the depletion is about 3%, and at the same latitudes in the southern hemisphere, it is about 6%. So there is some truth to the matter, but very rarely a thinner area of ozone drifts over NZ (in which headlines are plastered with warnings) where depletion gets up to about 10%. Those events are rare, but are probably why everyone here is convinced there's a hole. The sun does feel strong to us. It's almost entirely overhead at noon. We're both worried about the effects of lathering on sunscreen day after day (note too mention how sticky it gets), and while it's better than nothing, there is certainly something to be said for just wearing long sleeve shirts, pants, and a hat. 

The biggest volcanic eruption of the past 70,000 years was from what is now Lake Taupo in New Zealand and was 50 times bigger than the Mt St. Helens eruption.

New Zealand has the most golf courses per capita. One course for every 10,000 people. Haven't seen them, but I did look it up to verify. The green fees are considerable cheaper.

Costs. Prices seem on par or a bitter higher at face value, but usually with the exchange it ends up beign a bit cheaper. Some deals on produce, but most goods seem pretty similar. A small rental vehicle in Auckland costs $60/day. Gas works out to $1.40 CDN. A hostel dorm is $20-25 CDN. Paid $25 for our surfboard and wetsuit rental and use of a car, all for 4hrs. Tax is included in all the prices, which not only makes things easier, but reduces the shrapnel in your wallet. Buses don't need exact change. Many goods here are much more expensive than home. For example, Amy's sleeping pad costs triple here, albeit in the NZ equivalent of Lake Louise. My day-hiking pack back home would cost double here. And so forth. Someone mentioned the cause for this being some law that companies must order through an "importer", thus adding another middle-man in the long chain of goods production and distribution. I'm sure we could be getting cheaper food if we could get to farmer's market more or stop at roadside stalls, but hitchhiking has made that tricky. We figure we're spending $15-20 a day on food, each, just from supermarkets. We've heard ski hills are cheaper, but maybe that's just the tiny ones. Most big hills are probably in the same range of exorbitance as North America.

Holidays in Huts

The difference between a spontaneous adventure and the stress of not knowing where you're going to sleep each night, is the weather.

It's been wet lately. We've sought out farms to get us out of the rain and we've had to leave farms because the rain spoiled any work they had in mind for us. 

From the top of the south, we made our way onto the West Coast, where water shortages are unheard of, and the population density is low, even for NZ. More people aim for self-sustainability down there out of necessity rather than choice. It's relatively remote and most of the work is in mining or tourism. Greymouth was the site of the recent disaster that I'm guessing everyone's heard of where 29 miners died in an underground coal mine explosion. This was driven home to us when we hopped in a car with a guy who had been in the mine that very day, but had decided to take off early, coincidentally saving his life.

It's a strange mix on the west coast. You've got the rain-soaked, hard-to-find work, boondocks, and you've got the tourist towns interspersed. One of our hosts mixes bio-dynamic (read: astrology-driven gardening) with selling glass beads to tourists. Strange mix and a stranger business plan. We saw a similar situation in Chicken, Alaska where a lady essentially owned the town and was 100% reliant on Holland-America, possibly the world's biggest cruise-ship company, sending tour buses her way. Which sounds like a decent money-maker, except that was down at dirt road in Alaska and the highway was washed out most of the summer. Personally, my sympathy with remote dwellers relying on tourism for income is: LOW. This was the first place I've ever been where they burned coal for heat. It's understandable because it's super cheap and way less effort than burning wood, but whether it stands up to the ethics of the times is another question. Still, when something that costs $400/yr heats your house, cooks your food, and provides hot water, you're bound to be a little biased. Either way, her place had a good view:

From the west coast...

we went into the mountains across one of the higher passes in the country. 

My research led me to a free hut that was only a 15 minute walk form the highway and gave us shelter for the rain for a few nights and time to finish a few books. The used bookstore situation in this country leaves something to be desired, so we spent a day hitching into Christchurch just to stock up on readable material. They have a chinook-ish wind on the east side of the island, so when it's pissing rain on the coast and in the mountains, as it had been, it's a hot dry wind on a sunny day on the east coast. Land of contrasts. Christchurch has been very slowly recovering from a 7.1 earthquake, with thousands of aftershocks, including a 4.9 tremor a few days after we were there.

With our Christmas tramping plans spoiled by the rain, we decided to meet up with my friend Kyle and his girlfriend and do an easy walk into a hut for Christmas back on the West Coast... 

It really didn't feel like that time of year prior to that, what with it being barbeque and summer holiday season, but with a few friendly faces and a tiny little wood-burning stove, we did our best. They're on a working visa trip and bought a cheap van, but otherwise our trips aren't to dissimilar. We did some comparing and contrasting as to our travel methods, but at the end of the day, fuel costs seem to be the clincher for us. Sure we can't stop at every roadside waterfall and snap a picture with the dazed masses, but our budget is a third what we saw quoted as the bare minimum in a guidebook, which goes towards explaining why we're staying 4 months instead of the average 2 months or less.

New Zealand has over 3000 glaciers, but Franz Josef Glacier and Fox Glacier are a few of the only glaciers in the world that descend into rainforest and within a few hundred meters of sea. A few others are in South America and Alaska, but those ones don't get up to 400 people per day walking on them, a few of whom may never have even walked on a dirt track before. On a clear day, the sound of helicopters is non-stop. We stopped here only to do some housekeeping at a resort in exchange for room and some board. We lucked out being able to score a room because it rained 300-400mm in 36hrs and closed about 4 different highways. Housekeeping was also a healthy reminder to think about the future. Nothing like cleaning toilets for 5hrs straight to get your priorities straight. I actually think everyone should be forced to do some housekeeping in their life, just to see how silly the whole accommodation industry really is, when viewed from the bottom up. These reflections led us to a discussion question: What is the best way to travel? Couldn't really come up with a perfect answer, but it helped pass the time, surrounded by bus-loads of hop-on, hop-off backpackers. "Contiki buses: The world leader in tours for 18-35s". Good grief.

Those were both taken the day after the rains. You know that cliche: If you don't like the weather, wait 15 minutes? Well it's parroted all over the world except here, where it applies more than anywhere else.

For New Years, we ducked into Wanaka, which is to Queenstown what Lake Louise is to Banff, but looks more like Penticton. 

Well ok, maybe not from that viewpoint. The landscapes can change her pretty quick.

 But Wanaka was mental. Between Christmas and New Years, it's party central for high school kids and foreign families. Luckily, we were able to get our groceries, get out, and be on our way up on our first proper alpine hike (but not before I clumsily left my walled on the ground and had it returned to me later on). 

The hut was nearly full, but was a good bunch of people, including a mountain guide who guided up Mt Everest, in Mongolia, and Canada, and up Mt Cook, the highest in NZ. Luckily, the partiers stayed in the towns, and those wishing a bit quieter of a celebration went into the alpine. Case in point: we were all in bed long before midnight.

-Dan