Back In The Saddle

I hate it when it’s been so long since I’ve written something meaningful that I can’t figure out where to start. We’ve done a lot in New Zealand in the past couple weeks. I’ve picked out a few topics to write about later at length, but here’s a quick overview.

New Zealand consists of two main islands: North and South. I think over two-thirds of the population of the whole country lives on the north half of the North Island, which means that everywhere else seems VERY sparsely populated. (Less populated than central Kansas, by far.)

The North Island, being closer to the equator, is a bit warmer than the South Island, and despite having a few volcanoes (Mordor from Lord of the Rings, for example) and thermal pools, it reminded me of Vermont, with lots of foliage and hills that look like big knobs rolling on the landscape. The South Island, on the other hand, is more alpine in nature, a kind of mix between Colorado and Alaska, with a little Hawaii thrown in on the coasts and Iowa on the narrow coastal plain.

We arrived in Auckland late on November 5th, and we spent the next day hanging out in the nice-but-not-overly-large downtown. I looked around the shops while Mr. Farmer went to the Maritime Museum. We took the ferry across the harbor to the “suburb” of Devonport, which is situated on a peninsula, and we climbed the big hill to catch some excellent views of the city skyline at dusk. (Followed by a really tasty dinner on the quaint main street.)

The next day we rented a car (in Kiwi-speak we “hired” a car), and Mr. Farmer adeptly adapted to driving on the left side of the road while in the right side of the car. (I’m still not used to this, and it’s been two weeks.) Our road trip took us about three hours southeast to the town of Rotarua, a place Mr. Farmer had been giddy about for weeks on account of its excellent trout fishing. For me, the drive was a taste of intensive rotational grazing, which means that a ranch (aka “station”) is divided into many smaller “paddocks,” and instead of having a big pasture with just a few animals, they graze a lot of animals in paddock and then move them to another one after a short time. This was evident everywhere in New Zealand, and the grass was really nice. (Sounds like a management nightmare to me.)

(Side note: I devoured The Thorn Birds while in Rotarua, and even learned a little about sheep farming by reading it.)

We stayed in Rotarua for two nights, and I’ll write more later specifically about each of the highlights, which include seeing a “sheep show” at the Agrodome, taking one of Mr. Farmer’s trout to a local restaurant in a see-through plastic bag to have them prepare it for dinner, and taking a stroll through Wai o Taupu (sp?), which is one of the many thermal parks in the area. (We missed the daily geyser performance at 10:15 a.m. due to jet lag.)

From Rotarua we drove a wee bit north to the coast (everything here is “wee” rather than “little”), passing through not only a logging area, but also a major region for kiwi fruit production. I’d never seen kiwi trees before – they look kind of like grape vines, but bigger. But the weirder thing was the wind breaks. They’d have a densely-planted row of cedar trees shaved to just a couple feet thick, creating a true wall. These tree walls outline all the orchards. Apparently they have wind.

Back in Auckland, we boarded a plane bound for Queenstown, located in the mountains in the south central part of the island. It’s a hot spot for adventure travel, and you can bungee, jet boat and skydive to your heart’s delight (though we did none of the above). Funny thing is that it has a population of only about 10,000, which seemed to be big on the South Island. The town sits on a glacial lake, which is like 1,000 feet deep – crystal clear. I’ve never seen a lake that’s so clear. We had excellent weather there with sun and highs in the 70s, and we took a couple 2-hour hikes on trails accessible from town.

After 48 hours in Queenstown, we hopped on a bus south and west to Te Anau, which sits at the edge of Fiordland National Park. Here we spent an afternoon renting gear and buying groceries for our hike on the Milford Track, which was 4 days and 3 nights.

The hike ended at Milford Sound, and there we met my parents for an overnight cruise. Super relaxing and fun. Truly stunning scenery.

The bus returned us via the mountainous Milford Road to Te Anau the next day, where we had to run around for a few hours to figure out transportation. Te Anau is teeny – about 3,500 people – and it’s in the middle of nowhere. There are few rental cars to be had, and the buses run about three times a day back to Queenstown. We had hoped to rent a car there to drive up the West Coast to Greymouth, but in the end there were no cars. So we booked a car in Queenstown, which we would reach by bus. But when we got to Te Anau, we learned that the rental car place was going to close before our bus would arrive. Mr. Farmer somehow convinced them to leave us a car with the keys in it, and all was fine in the end. We reached Wanaka (about an hour north of Queenstown) that evening.

The next morning we made the picturesque journey through the mountains, over the Haast Pass, and up the West Coast to glacier country. I’d never seen a glacier before, and the blue ice that peeks out under the rough jagged snow is quite impressive. Fortunately the weather was sunny and temperate, which made for good viewing of Fox Glacier from a distance. We drove up the road about 30 minutes to Franz Josepf glacier and hiked about 45 minutes over a dry river bed to the head of it. In the end, the helicopter ride ($150/person) probably would’ve been worth it, though I didn’t envy the people who chose the guided hike up the side! (They looked like ants – the size is deceptive from a distance.)

That night we stayed in the town of Franz Josepf (population about 300), and we drove up the coast the next day about 2.5 hours to Greymouth, where we caught the TranzAlpine train up through Arthur Pass and across the Canturbury Plains to Christchurch. There we stayed two nights, and now we’re in Australia, where we’re hoping to thaw out a bit. (It was in the 60s most of the time, and now we’re in the 80s.)

In the end, 16 days in New Zealand was barely enough to see the highlights. We could have easily spent a month on the South Island alone; many of the travelers we met along the way were spending three weeks, and they felt like they were hurrying. Some were staying a year. I would’ve liked to see Nelson and Marlborough in the north, and Dunedin and Invercargill on the southern tip. That’s not to mention the rest of the North Island. And tons of people rented RVs, which is a really easy way to travel the country.

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