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.
Saturday, January 29, 2011
Wednesday, January 26, 2011
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
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...
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
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
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
Monday, January 3, 2011
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.
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
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.
For New Years, we ducked into Wanaka, which is to Queenstown what Lake Louise is to Banff, but looks more like Penticton.
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
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