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