Hot Beach and Surfing

Hello hello!

When I last updated you, we were in Rotorua and the forecast was still really unpleasant for Tongariro, the area where we want to do our next hike. We decided to head north to the Coromandel Peninsula and see the sights while waiting on the weather.

The drive to Coromandel was really pretty. The hills pretty much all looked like Hobbit hills. There were also some really cool sights to see in Coromandel. We did a short walk to Cathedral Cove, which was a really cool beach that had a huge cave/tunnel. It was very pretty. After Cathedral Cove, we went to Hot Water Beach. That's right, Hot Water Beach. Hot Water Beach is a beach that has a natural hot spring under it. Around low tide you can dig a shallow hole in the beach and have your very own hot tub. The water is around 60 degrees Celcius, so we ended up having to devise a system of canals in order to not burn ourselves, but it was really worth the effort. We had the only hot pool with continuous inflow and outflow. (Trust a plumber's daughter). Hot Water Beach was AWESOME.

The next day we drove from the east coast to Raglan on the west coast. Raglan is world-famous for its surfing so we signed up for a lesson and gave it a try today. Surfing was also AWESOME. We had a good instructor and we both managed to stand up pretty easily. It was really fun and I was really impressed with how quickly we learned. Here is a picture of Jay:

Another cool thing about Raglan is that our hostel room is actually an old rail caboose. The hostel has about 15 cabooses and train cards in the yard. It is pretty cool.

The weather is finally getting better in Tongariro so we are heading back south tomorrow and we will hopefully be starting the Tongariro Northern Circuit on Saturday. We will be happy to be back on the trail.

Photos from Wellington, Napier, Taupo

Sorry these took a while to get posted. The Wellington ones are as old as 12 days, wow. Well here are the links to the 3 new galleries, and a juicy sample from each one. Wow! Erin is probably going to write a new post later today, detailing our latest exploits. No spoilers!

Wellington Gallery

From Wellington

Napier Gallery

From Napier

Taupo

From Taupo

Rain, rain, go away...

Since our last post, it has been raining every day and isn't going to get better anytime soon :(. Instead of starting our hike, we have been travelling in the Central Plateau region.

From Napier, we went to Taupo. Taupo is situated on Lake Taupo, NZ's largest lake. In Taupo we visited a dam and watched the river level as they opened and closed the floodgates of a dam. This was a bit more interesting than it sounds because the river was quite narrow after the dam, so the level rose really fast and created some pretty intense rapids.

After the dam, we went on a walk to the Huka Falls. The best part of the walk wasn't the falls (which were pretty nice), but the hot water stream at the start of the track. That's right...hot water stream! There was a pretty wide stream that was about knee deep and about 45 degrees Celsius right off of the track where we had a rest and soaked our feet...pretty awesome.

Yesterday we drove from Taupo to Rotorua. Rotorua is a touristy town in the centre of the thermal region. It is crazy driving through this region because there is steam rising from the sides of the road and a pretty strong smell of sulfur. In the evening we went to a Maori cultural performance. The evening started with an entrance of Maori warriors on a war canoe, followed by a traditional greeting and performance. After the performance, we had hangi, a feast cooked in a traditional method of digging a hole, filling it with hot rocks, burying the food with the hot stones, and letting it cook for several hours. The whole evening was really cool and I'm glad that we splurged on it.

This morning we visited a thermal area. We saw a geyser erupt 10-20 m in the air and then we toured the grounds. There were huge craters, boiling mud pools, and coloured lakes...it was really awesome.

Right now we are hanging out in the hostel. We don't really have any firm plans for the next few days because except that we will be keeping our eyes on the forecast for when we might be able to start our next hike.

Picton -> Wellington -> Napier

Hiii. We're in Napier right now, which is a little city on the south east coast of the North Island with a lot of character and a lot of wineries and vineyards in the area. More on that later.

Wellington was quite the nice city, but very windy. It's very pretty, and has maybe five times the urban hipness of Edmonton despite being less than half the size. Its hip city centre is totally cool! The YHA was huge and very nice. In Wellington we checked out the parliament (including the “Beehive”) and when on a tour there, and we went to Te Papa, which is Wellington's big ol' national museum. We were going to go to the city art gallery but it was CLOSED for renovations. Cafes and restaurants were visited and we had lots of good food, including splurging on some good sushi for dinner, which was overdue, I'm sure. Well, Wellington was nice but we have other places to see, so we headed off to...

Napier! Napier's really cool. It's been around since the mid 1800's I think, but an earthquake leveled the place in the early 1930's. The Art Deco style of architecture was very popular in America and Europe at the time, so all the buildings were rebuilt in that style. As a result I think it's pretty much the only place in the world with such a high concentration and amount of Art Deco architecture in the world. And I love it! It's so cool. It's retro but fresh at the same time. Like Coca Cola Classic, no? Other than than Napier is in the Hawke's bay area which is one of the oldest and more prestigious wine making areas in the country. Yesterday we rented bikes with the intent of biking to some nearby wineries to check them out and taste some samples, but the area was surprisingly built up in suburbia, with plenty of traffic. Well, we did make it to two wineries, but we'd had enough. Erin says it wasn't really what she expected. No little country roads, the wineries surrounded by suburban development.

I have no idea where we're going today. We're visiting the Napier museum and going to the NZ National Aquarium which is in town here, and then we're off to … I don't know. Either Gisborne, which is further east and north along the coast (it is the first city in the world to see the light of the new day... really ahead of the times), or into the interior, where there is our next tramp, volcanoes and geothermal activity, and a massive lake. Depends on the weather, Erin tells me.

Nelson Lakes photos are here

I make special for you. Enjoy.

From Nelson Lakes National Park

Sunset at St Arnaud.

From Nelson Lakes National Park

Angelus Hut and Lake Angelus.

From Nelson Lakes National Park

Milky Way over Mt Angelus.

From Nelson Lakes National Park

Lake Rotoroa in the morning.


Link to the full gallery ! !

And now we are in Picton

Hi everyone!

We just finished up a four-day excursion in Nelson Lakes National Park and it was a trip of extremes- it involved my favorite and least favorite days of hiking, as well as some extreme weather, and extremely crowded (and then uncrowded) huts.

The first day was probably my favourite day of hiking that we have done in New Zealand. The sky was pretty clear for 9 km of ridge walking, which was really cool. We passed along three different basins, all speckled with snow. The moutains were definitely the most epic-looking ones that we have come across in New Zealand. The hut we stayed at, Angelus Hut, was in an amazing locataion. It was in a basin right on a lake surrounded by high peaks.

On the second day, we had the worst weather we have had for hiking. The visibility was probably less than 5m at times and there was rain and strong winds. Luckily, we had planned to stay at Angelus hut for a second night and just do a side trip that day, so we cancelled the side trip and hung out in the hut all day. We we also in a very crowded hut that night - there were 26 beds and about 36 people because it was Easter weekend and there are two weeks of school holidays right now. I was ready to get the heck out of there the next morning.

On day three, we woke up to amazingly clear skies and hardly any wind. We did another ridge walk followed by a very very steep, muddy, and forested downhill that had me swearing by the end. At the end of the hike, we were greeted by the emptiest hut we have been to - 36 beds and only six people, so that was a real treat.

Day four was probably my least favorite day of hiking we have done on the trip. It was 7.5 hours of stepping over roots, around trees, and going up and down little valleys, through the forest the entire time. The end could not have come soon enough.

This was our last hiking trip on the south island and we are heading to the north island the day after tomorrow.

Cheers,

Erin

Abel Tasman Track photos

Here they are, enjoy.

>>>Link to the Gallery! <<<

From Abel Tasman Coast Track

Remains of Tonga Quarry

From Abel Tasman Coast Track

The beach at Mutton Cove

From Abel Tasman Coast Track

yay beaches!

Abel Tasman Coast Track

Greetings from sunny Nelson!

Yesterday we finished up the Abel Tasman Coast Track. The track was very beautiful. It was five days of meandering through forest and across beautiful beaches.

The Track:

The track was pretty much a walk in the park compared to the hikes we have done. The Department of Conservation doesn't even recommend that you wear boots for the walk, just running shoes. I also read a magazine article about a man pushing a stroller with his nine month old in it, and I believe that it could be done pretty easily. The track alternated between walking through forest and along very beautiful (and nearly deserted) beaches. We were able to take lots of time to lie in the sun and swim in the ocean during the day. It was a pretty relaxing time.

The Weather:

We had pretty good weather, but we did end up drenched in the pouring rain one day. It was getting pretty depressing, but then we stopped at our campsite and the sun came out and everything dried off and we were able to go swimming. It was also pretty cold on the last day of the hike, and there was snow on the tops of the nearby hills/mountains, but we survived.

The Wildlife:

There were some really cute seals playing in the surf by our last campsite and it was pretty cool to watch them play.
We also had our first (live) possum sighting. Previously, we have only seen dead possums on the road. The Department of Conservation recommends that you keep your food in your tent so that the possums cannot get into it. We don't really have room in our tent for our food, so we kept it in a airtight bag in the vestibule. During the night, something (possum or mouse or rat) chewed through two bags to get to the food, but didn't manage to steal anything.
Also, the sandflies continue to gnaw away at us. They were not as horrible as in Fiordland or the West Coast, but maybe that is because we have moved up from Deep Woods Off (25% DEET) to a lotion containing 40% DEET. We are both covered in bites still though. I even have one inside of my ear.

The Toe Report:

Jay is now minus two big toenails. Hopefully he does not post any pictures, because they look worse than before, but apparently they feel a lot better, and that is what counts, right?

Our next move:

We are spending today (Good Friday) in Nelson. Everything is closed so we are just going to be hanging out in the hostel. Tomorrow or Sunday we will head down to Nelson Lakes National Park to do our last hike on the South Island. I hear that there are beautiful lakes and snow capped mountains there, so it should be pretty beautiful.


That is all for now. Stay tuned for Jay's pictures of the awesome beaches. And have a hoppy Easter everyone!

Happy Birthday Siblings!

Happy birthday to our siblings who are turning 21!

Have fun!

Love, 

Erin and Jay

Avalanche Peak photos

Good evening, folks!

Whee! We've been in Arthur's Pass in the middle of the Southern Alps for a few days now, waiting for the weather to improve so we could climb up a popular day hike to Avalanche Peak. Well today was the day and yes sir it was a great hike. Over one vertical kilometre was climbed, and over one vertical kilometre was descended. The climb in many places was semi-scrambling, which I appreciated. It was quite steep, no bullshit... we climbed it in 3 hours but we really took our time. I think I could have done it in 2. Yeah. Well despite today's forecast, it was quite cloudy at the top, and we waited at the summit for over an hour for the clouds to go away, but they wouldn't! We were getting cold so we started descending, and not long after things really started clearing up! Oh well, we were still above the treeline at that time and got nice views. Did I mention the keas? NO? WELL.

These birds are hilarious and awesome. They are green with bright red armpits, the only mountain parrot in the world, exclusive to NZ, very intelligent, social, and curious, and in no way shy around people. And they are SO BAD. If you're not careful/smarter than a kea you will defintely get your things that you left lying on the ground either chewed up, stolen, or both. At one spot above the treeline I took off my pack and was changing camera lens and while I did this I got surrounded by 5 very curious kea, who all wanted to know what was in my bag or what my boots tasted like. Fighting off 5 kea is pretty challenging, but don't worry, they don't fly at you or anything. Once they're where they want to be they walk and hop around.

Link to the AVALANCHE PEAK Gallery

A sample:

From Arthur's Pass, Avalanche Peak

Erin faces a kea...


Well, that's it for now. Tomorrow we drive to the northern part of the west coast, where we will hike and camp on the end part of the Heaphy track for one night. Then it's eastward bound where we will before long do the Abel Tasman Coastal Track!

Fox Glacier Pictures

Here we go! I personally hand-picked the best photos I had from our glacier trek and have uploaded and now am presenting them to YOU, yes YOU for an exclusive engagement with GLACIER PHOTO 2009...

BOOK NOW!! (Gallery)

See what's inside...

From Fox Glacier

Jay On Ice

From Fox Glacier

Glacier no obstacle for Erin!

From Fox Glacier

Yes, this was for real

Earth Hour

At the Franz Josef YHA, they had an Earth Hour event: free BBQ (although it was vegetarian... oxymoron if you ask me!) and candle-light dinner for it. Pretty cool. Here's what it looked like.