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.