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
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.
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